Love and Treasure

by Waldman, Ayelet

  “And Gizella?” Amitai asked. “What did she play?”

  “This is from the newspaper Debreceni Független Újság,” Krisztián said. “From November sixteenth, 1933.” The ad announced the performance of the Lilliputs in the Csokonai Theatre in Debrecen. There was a small photograph of the troupe, each one holding an instrument.

  “Is this her?” Krisztián said, pointing to a small woman standing next to a miniature cymbal, a single drumstick in her hand.

  Natalie flipped open her locket and compared the photograph. “I can’t tell,” she said. “They all look so much alike.”

  The five women, though separated widely in age, were strikingly similar in appearance. They had wide lips painted in a shade of red so dark it appeared black in the old newsprint, heavy brows, and angular cheekbones. Their noses were long and narrow, flared slightly at the nostrils. Three had dark hair piled high on their heads, one a short bob. They were exotic and striking, even beautiful.

  Krisztián said, “According to this article, Gizella was the third of the sisters. Bluma, the eldest, was born in 1886, Franziska sometime after. Then Gizella. The newspaper reports of the Opera House incident give that girl’s age as twenty, which means, if it was Gizella, and it seems it must have been, she was born in 1893. That would make her approximately forty in 1933, at the time of the performance advertised here.”

  “The woman in this photo doesn’t look forty,” Natalie said.

  Amitai said, “The violinists Bluma and Franziska would have been approximately forty-seven and forty-five years old when this picture was taken, but they look much younger, too.”

  Krisztián said, “The woman at the drums and the woman with the guitar look far younger than the others, so they are Judit and Gitl. That leaves only the one at the cymbal. The one with the short hair. She must be Gizella. Perhaps it is an old photograph? Or perhaps they just look young? The women of Hungary are very beautiful, even the old ones.” He glanced at Amitai from the corner of his eye, as if to verify that the Israeli had noticed his granting of nationality to Gizella and her sisters. Amitai wondered if, absent their previous discussion, Krisztián might have complimented the beauty of Jewesses, which was, he had been told many times during his visits to Hungary, renowned.

  Amitai said, “Does the advertisement give any details about the performance?”

  “ ‘The world-famous Lilliput Troupe, players to kings and emperors, presents a program of love songs and popular tunes,’ ” Krisztián quoted.

  “ ‘Kings and emperors’?” Amitai asked.

  Krisztián smiled. “An exaggeration, I think. In Hungary we never called Franz Josef emperor. Hungary was itself a kingdom, and thus he was our king.”

  “You did very good work, Krisztián,” Amitai said. “You’re even a better research assistant than you are a waiter.”

  “Do Americans tip their research assistants like they tip their waiters?”

  “Perhaps. But then I’m Israeli, not American,” Amitai said, giving the young man the amount they’d agreed on, then, a moment later, the extra twenty euros he’d always planned on adding.

  • 20 •

  WITH A SECOND NIGHT TOGETHER, Amitai and Natalie turned a one-night stand into something else, something out of the ordinary in Amitai’s postdivorce life. He’d only rarely been with the same woman more than once, and never two nights in a row. But he had not wanted to let Natalie leave the hotel after they finished with Krisztián, had urged her to come upstairs to celebrate their successful day. She had been as eager as he, and in the morning he’d found himself for the first time not even craving the solitude of the swimming pool. In the elevator she looped her fingers through his. He used to hate it when Jessica did that. His hand had always immediately begun to twitch restlessly, eager to escape. But he found himself enjoying the feeling of Natalie’s cool, smooth fingers in his hand and did not let go until he had to open the taxicab door for her.

  Krisztián had agreed to meet them at the library of the Department of Justice. Out of his waiter’s tuxedo he looked much younger, and he’d added to the impression by putting gel in his hair and fashioning it into something that looked more like a porcupine’s pelt than a hairstyle. At the library, a young female reference librarian, made cheerfully cooperative by the lucky coincidence of her sharing Natalie’s name, handed them a thick dossier, the official records of the trial of the opera house conspirators. The Hungarian Natalia helped Krisztián read through the documents, and it was she who discovered the letter from the Office of the Prosecutor to the judge, informing him that a decision had been made not to prosecute a “girl dwarf” by the name of Miss Gizella Weisz for her involvement in the affair.

  Krisztián said, “It is because she was, how do you call it? Retard?”

  The Hungarian Natalia corrected him, “A mental defect.”

  Gizella Weisz, secretary to the most famous Hungarian feminist of the age, was described in the prosecutor’s letter as “defective of both body and mind,” a woman in possession of a “child’s shape and naïveté.”

  “They actually said she was mentally retarded?” Natalie asked, aghast.

  Natalia said, “Yes. The prosecutor says because Gizella is mentally retarded, she is not responsible. He says to release her, but on condition that she go to family in Transylvania. She becomes like a child, you know? She must live with her family, and if not with her family, in an institution.”

  “So, basically they took away her right to self-determination?”

  Krisztián and the librarian shared a glance, neither sure what Natalie meant, only that this information made her angry.

  Amitai said, “Clearly she was not retarded, or she could not have become Mrs. Schwimmer’s secretary. Therefore the prosecutor did what needed to be done to justify her release. Actually, she was a very lucky woman. The others were sentenced to years of hard labor. With her physical limitations, she would have died. Mrs. Schwimmer must have intervened to save her life.”

  “We should look for a connection, maybe, between the prosecutor and Mrs. Schwimmer,” Krisztián said. “His name is Einhorn Ignác. Also a Jew, right? Just like Gizella and just like Schwimmer. Maybe they all know each other. Maybe they go to synagogue together!”

  Natalia slapped Krisztián on the arm, and let loose a stream of irritable Hungarian, to which the young man replied in a voice that seemed genuinely confused. After a brief exchange he turned to Natalie and Amitai and said, “I am very sorry if I seem to be anti-Semite, because I am not. Only I am, according to Miss Natalia, an idiot, and I did not know that there were very many Jews, before, in Budapest, and just because one is a Jew does not mean one knows all other Jews. Although, may I say, my mother’s concierge, she is a Jew, and she is also the relative of my colleague at the university, so you see, two of the only Jews I know, know each other. But again, I apologize because, as Miss Natalia insists I must say to you, I am an idiot.”

  He looked to Natalia to see how he had done. She nodded, satisfied.

  “No, that’s good thinking,” Natalie said. “It can’t hurt to explore the connection.”

  “But why?” Amitai asked. “What’s the point? We are looking for the other young lady, remember? And we know she is not Mrs. Schwimmer. Obviously, she is not the prosecutor. At any rate, this prosecutor, he is just a factotum. Mrs. Schwimmer had friends high in the government who arranged for this document to be submitted on Gizella’s behalf.”

  Natalie pushed back her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and glared at him like an angry child. “Well, then what do you want to do? Because I can’t think of where to search next.”

  Amitai rubbed his forehead. As much as Natalie wanted to find the woman in the photograph in her locket, he wanted to find the painting more. He had, after all, been searching for years to Natalie’s few days. But he had been doing this work for a very long time and knew the seduction of fascinating stories and exciting leads, most of which turned out to be worthless. The sensible course of a
ction, having discovered that Natalie’s locket had been taken from the Gold Train, would have been immediately to concede defeat. If the woman’s property had been confiscated and ended up on the train, then it was gone. And yet he hadn’t quit. Out of hope, perhaps, or out of curiosity about and attraction to Natalie, he couldn’t tell. Still, he was a professional and should not be wasting his time.

  “Perhaps I am not so much the fan of lost causes as you’d hoped,” he said.

  Natalia, the Hungarian clerk, interrupted. “I will bring you the file of Einhorn Ignác, yes? You look. Maybe you find in there something.”

  More out of politeness than because he shared Natalie’s naïve hopes, Amitai agreed. And so it was that an hour later he was forced to eat crow, albeit only a small portion.

  Natalia translated the final entry in Einhorn’s file. “Dismissed from the prosecutor’s office in 1939 pursuant to the second anti-Jewish law. Moved with his family to his birthplace of Nagyvárad!”

  “Nagyvárad!” Natalie said triumphantly.

  She was all for packing up and setting off for Nagyvárad immediately, but Amitai convinced her that it would be better, first, to consult with the Jewish library at the Dohány Street Synagogue. He had worked in Romania before and tried to find information there, and while the Hungarian Jewish library was hardly a model of organization, it was better than anything he had ever found in the country next door. Moreover, the archivist herself, Anikó Vázsonyi, possessed admirable powers of recall and had often in the past surprised him with her capacity to pluck crucial bits of evidence from beneath teetering stacks of moldering books and folders.

  It was Friday evening, however, and Mrs. Vázsonyi observed the Sabbath. When Amitai called, a message cheerfully informed him that she would not be back at work until Monday.

  “So what should we do?” Natalie asked.

  They had thanked the reference librarian, tipped her well, dismissed Krisztián, who had to hurry back to the hotel for his shift, and now stood awkwardly at the taxi stand.

  “We have to wait,” Amitai said.

  “Okay.” Natalie fumbled around in her bag, extracted her wallet. “I guess I should get back to my hotel.”

  He nodded. Then, “Is it nice, your hotel?”

  “It’s all right. Nothing like yours.”

  “The Gellért is very nice. The pool especially.”

  “Well, I’d better get going.”

  “Do you like to swim?”

  “Do I like to swim?”

  “As I said. The pool is very nice. If you like to swim, you could swim at the Gellért.”

  “Now?” she asked. “You want to go swimming now?”

  “I usually swim in the morning. But I suppose if you wanted we could swim now. There are mineral baths also. To soak.”

  “Amitai, what are you asking me?”

  What was he asking her, he wondered. Not to join him for a swim, as much as he enjoyed swimming.

  “If your hotel room is not very nice, you could stay with me at the Gellért,” he said.

  “You want me to stay with you because my hotel’s a dump?” she said, gently teasing him. “Is that why?”

  “Yes. I mean, I would like you to stay with me. If you want. But if you don’t, no problem.”

  “No problem,” she said, laughing.

  He glanced up at the sky. The perpetual drizzle cooled his flushed cheeks.

  “Yes, Amitai,” she said. “I’d love to stay with you. At your big, fancy hotel.”

  “Excellent,” he said. He lifted his arm and, with a curt gesture, waved over the first taxi in the line.

  • 21 •

  AFTER RETRIEVING NATALIE’S BELONGINGS and checking out of her indeed dumpy hotel, they walked through the door of the Gellért to find Dror Tamid sitting on one of the lobby’s sofas, in the midst of a heated conversation with Pétér Elek. The day before, after his chance encounter with the Israeli in the baths, Amitai had considered moving hotels. But he would have missed the Gellért’s pool too much, and more important, his pride would not allow him to be driven away. Now he steered Natalie briskly through the lobby, in the vain hope that they would not be noticed.

  “Amitai Shasho!” Tamid called out in English. “You’re still here in Budapest.”

  “A classic Tamid insight.”

  Tamid blinked, struggling against his innate tone deafness to irony.

  “And with my lovely former student. Natalie! How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Dr. Tamid,” she said, glancing quickly at Amitai.

  “Our friend Mr. Shasho isn’t getting you into any trouble, I hope?”

  “On the contrary,” Amitai said. “It’s the other way around.”

  He nodded at Elek, and turned to cross the rotunda toward the bank of elevators, but Tamid held up his hand.

  “And you know, of course, Pétér Elek.”

  To Amitai, Elek’s smile seemed somewhat embarrassed.

  Tamid continued, “Elek, it is our friend Amitai you should be arguing with, not me.”

  Natalie turned to the Hungarian. “Why should Amitai argue with you, Mr. Elek?”

  “I’m sure he should not,” Elek said.

  Tamid, who had not bothered to rise, said, “Elek and I were debating the proper disposition of the Herzog Collection. Do you know about this, Natalie? It was amassed during the early part of the last century by a very wealthy man, a Budapest Jew, Baron Mór Lipót Herzog. Just now it is the subject of a large and important lawsuit, one that has caused quite a little diplomatic fracas between the Hungarians and the Americans. And also a diplomatic fracas between me and my friend here.”

  Elek again smiled, pretending, Amitai thought, not to take offense. “Come, Dr. Tamid,” Elek said. “There is no ‘fracas’ between us. I readily acknowledge the right of the Herzog family to compensation. I merely regret the loss of even more of Hungary’s art treasures to the West. Our country has already lost so much of its cultural patrimony. First during the Depression of the 1930s, when so many collectors were forced to sell and so few in Budapest were able to buy. And then again during the war, when first the Nazis and then the Soviets looted both the museums and the private collections.”

  Amitai gazed in wonder at his friend, who had helped him over the years extricate so many individual pieces of his country’s patrimony. Was Elek blustering for Tamid’s sake, or was he suddenly admitting a hitherto unacknowledged objection to the very work in which Amitai was engaged?

  As if in answer to the unasked question, Elek said, “This is not a small quantity of jewels or an assortment of valuable coins or stamps or even a single painting. Baron Herzog’s is one of the last great collections remaining in Hungary. If the family prevails in its lawsuit, all that will be lost to us, too.”

  Tamid said, “Baron Herzog’s collection was stolen by the Arrow Cross, the same villains who murdered his son and drove the rest of his family from the country. Is his family not entitled to the return of his property?”

  Amitai tugged gently at Natalie’s arm, urging her away, but she resisted. She was interested, it seemed, in the debate. He had been carrying her suitcase, and he set it down with a sigh.

  Elek said, “As I have told you before, Dr. Tamid, you and I are in agreement on this point. Like you, I find it offensive that Herzog’s El Grecos hang in our fine arts museum, their provenance unacknowledged. And unlike my government, I feel restitution is appropriate. But am I not entitled to regret my country’s loss? First we were raped by the Nazis, then by the Soviets—”

  “It is not rape if the woman consents,” Tamid said. “You and I both know how Hungary spread its legs for Hitler. You bent over for Eichmann like a Moldovan prostitute, with a smile on your face.”

  Amitai felt Natalie stiffen next to him. Softly, in Hebrew, he said, “Enough, Dror.”

  In English, Tamid snarled, “Why enough? It’s always ‘enough’ when it’s us, but to them no one says ‘enough.’ ”

  “It’s enough,” Amitai
said, in English, “because Elek is a Jew.”

  Like a surprising number of the citizens of Budapest—like Budapest itself—Pétér Elek concealed a Jewish history, a secret narrative that was written not in his face, a set of Slavic planes and angles, but in the tiny stature that brought him barely to the tip of Amitai’s chin. A Jew who grew up in Pest, mere blocks from the great Dohány Street Synagogue, he had survived the war because his mother managed to obtain false documents for herself and her son. She had taken an apartment in a non-Jewish neighborhood in Buda, where she masqueraded as a decent Hungarian Catholic woman. But the son, unlike his mother, carried between his legs the evidence that could betray them both. His mother was afraid to have him leave the safety of the apartment, even to go to school. So for two and a half years he had played the role of invalid, confined to his bed. Elek attributed his diminutive size to those years. He once told Amitai, “I went to bed a ten-year-old boy, and a ten-year-old boy I remained, in my body if not my mind.”

  At one time Amitai might have been astonished by the strange good fortune that had allowed Elek to survive. But if you worked in his business long enough, you came to realize that every Holocaust survivor represented, by definition, a story of miraculous happenstance, desperate subterfuge, random salvation. Those of whom no such story could be told were dead.

  “I am Hungarian,” Elek said now. “But yes, my family is of Jewish descent.”

  Tamid scowled. “Worse then. Of all people you should understand and have sympathy.”

  Elek bristled, finally indulging Tamid with the fracas that the Israeli had been so eager to provoke. “For whom should I have sympathy? The Herzog family? Aristocrats whose gold allowed them to escape in comfort and safety while the rest of Jewish Budapest tried to keep from being shot and thrown in the Danube? A gang of robber barons who got out with millions and lived to produce a gaggle of squabbling spoiled heirs? Those are the people with whom I should have sympathy? And what about those who were not able to go to America in 1944 when Eichmann came? What about those like my family, who lost everything, though it was so little? To my mother, a new pair of shoes was worth more than an El Greco to a Herzog. Where is her compensation? Why is it you do not argue on her behalf but only on behalf of the wealthy?”