Love and Treasure

by Waldman, Ayelet

  “What in heaven’s name are you up to, Imré, traipsing around the city in the middle of the night?” she asked.

  “It’s my fault,” Nina said from behind me, where she’d been concealed in the gloom of the hall.

  “Let us in, quickly,” I said. Jolán’s apartment was on the fourth story, the floor directly below the one reserved, even in these simple buildings, for the servants, and I feared that someone might peer out and see my young fugitive. At the time I had no inkling that Nina had done something that might result in her being sought by the police. I knew only that I had undertaken to protect her, and I was concerned that she might by some unfortunate coincidence be recognized. The gossip network of servants is notorious.

  In the end it was Jolán in whom Nina confided, and then only once I had been peremptorily dismissed and sent on my way home, where I spent an unpleasant night tossing and turning and vowing that my stubborn sister was going to be put on the telephone, whether she liked it or not.

  The next day I had a full calendar of patients, and not wishing to spark my wife’s curiosity, I was forced to stay in my consulting room for the entire early part of the morning. I should mention at this point that concealing my actions from my dear wife caused me no small consternation. Over the decades of our marriage, Mrs. Zobel has been more than a helpmeet and a lover, she has been a friend in the true nature of the word, a person in whom one can confide, a person whose counsel one can trust. It pained me to deceive her, but I knew my wife well. As devoted a wife as she is, she is even more devoted a mother, and her thoughts would have been with Mrs. S. She would not have been able to refrain from letting that unfortunate woman know that her daughter was safe.

  It is my custom when my schedule permits to take a short break at 10 a.m. to enjoy a cup of coffee and a quiet half hour with the morning’s newspapers. I debated forgoing the ritual and rushing across town to my sister’s apartment, but I had patients due to arrive after the morning break and discretion demanded that I keep to my schedule. I arrived at the Szabadság Coffeehouse, pulled a few newspapers from the rack as I walked in the door, and signaled to the waiter to bring me a coffee.

  “Mit Schlag, Herr Doktor?” the Viennese waiter asked.

  “Why not?” I asked. I only occasionally indulged myself, but even before I opened the papers I felt it a likely morning for the comfort of cream in my coffee.

  On the cover of each of the papers I normally read in the morning—Pest Diary, Hungarian Nation, and, my tabloid indulgence, the Sun—were screamingly large headlines. ATTACK ON THE OPERA HOUSE, THE PRIDE OF BUDAPEST! read the Pest Diary. ANARCHISTS INVADE THE KING’S BOX! read the Hungarian Nation. The Sun, typically, took it a step further: BOLSHEVIK GIRL-DWARF AND CONSPIRATORS WREAK HAVOC ON OPERA!

  Oh, Nina, I thought. What have you done? What on earth have you done?

  • 41 •

  IT WAS JOLÁN WHO determined the course of action that saved both Nina and Gizella from prosecution and incarceration but resulted, to their mutual heartbreak but to Nina’s family’s relief, in their permanent breech. Nina had not waited for the morning papers to arrive. As soon as I was gone, she confided in my sister what she had done, explaining, as Jolán later told me, that the message had gone awry.

  “It was supposed to be about universal suffrage. About the rights of all people to vote, regardless of class or sex. But my …” She hesitated.

  “Your accomplices?” Jolán said drily.

  “My friends printed pamphlets calling for revolution by the worker against the empire. Their motives are pure,” she hastened to add. “There’s terrible injustice in the world. So much poverty! But revolution? I had not thought of myself as a revolutionary!”

  “Granting women the right to vote for the first time is not revolutionary?”

  “Oh, it is … it’s just … I fear they might be misunderstood as calling for a violent overthrow of the government.”

  “And you fear violent revolutionaries, anarchists, and Bolsheviks will be punished more severely than suffragists.”

  “Exactly.”

  Though other countries were notoriously cruel in their treatment of women seeking the right to vote, the Hapsburg Empire, whatever the flaws perceived by Nina’s radical friends, had never tortured or even imprisoned women demonstrating on behalf of suffrage. In England, British suffragists were incarcerated and, when they went on hunger strikes to protest the brutality of the treatment they endured, were force-fed with great violence, using nasal tubes far larger than necessary for the procedure. In Budapest and Vienna, however, suffragists demonstrated virtually unmolested. The mayor, as I said, even attended the Suffrage Congress. Of course, neither the Diet nor the king had any intention of granting women the vote, but still, violent reprisal was not part of the Austro-Hungarian response. One could argue, I suppose, that our Magyar feminists were of a more timid stripe than their hunger-striking brethren abroad, but I think Rózsa Schwimmer and her sisters would take issue with that characterization. No, Franz Josef and his government had been open-minded and generous with the suffragists, but this was most assuredly not the case with the Bolsheviks and anarchists who made no secret of their desire for his usurpation. And how could it be otherwise, given that the king had lost his beloved queen to an anarchist’s treacherous knife?

  It was nearly dawn by now, and Nina and Jolán were both exhausted. “I shall have to turn myself in to the authorities,” Nina said. “There’s no other choice. I can’t put my comrades in the position of hiding my identity.”

  “Nonsense,” Jolán said. “What good will that do? Another neck for the noose.”

  Nina flinched, but stiffened her spine. “If that’s the case, I cannot let them die alone.”

  “Let’s leave off with the Sarah Bernhardt performance, shall we?” Jolán said. “I was speaking metaphorically. I have no idea if your accomplices are facing execution. No one was hurt in the action, correct?”

  “Of course not! We would never have caused anyone harm.”

  “Then surely they will be facing only long prison sentences. Though, frankly, I’m not sure I myself wouldn’t prefer death to a decade of hard labor. At any rate, we must think sensibly.”

  “All right then,” Nina said, now annoyed. “How’s this for sensible? If I fail to turn myself in, and my friends are forced to give my name, surely things will go worse for me. Surely the court will give me some credit for my honesty if I voluntarily appear.”

  “Perhaps,” my sister said. “But I don’t know that, and neither do you. What we need, my dear, is the assistance of an attorney. And I know just the one.”

  There were many people in Budapest and even as far abroad as Germany and England who read about the arrest of Gizella Weisz, suffragist, assistant to Rózsa Schwimmer, and dwarf. Delegates to the International Woman Suffrage Congress remembered Gizella, for who wouldn’t? Her stature and her beauty made her memorable. There might even have been those who recalled her bosom friend, the two of them as often as not dressed in matching white gowns, eagerly crowding the back of the hall when their duties permitted, to hear the speakers and witness the debates. I imagine that over morning coffee and tea, ladies of the suffrage movement throughout Europe exclaimed over their morning newspapers and telephoned one another to ask urgent questions and share suppositions. Surely a few of the ladies of the German delegation, in whose service Nina had been a page, even remembered or thought they remembered the name of Gizella’s close friend. “Lili?” they likely asked one another. “Nina?” The great Rózsa Schwimmer certainly knew the name of her secretary’s friend. And then there were those of Nina’s acquaintance who had met the dwarf in her company. Her extended family, friends from the community of Budapest feminists and suffragists, a few girlfriends from gymnasium, a number of the women with whom she studied for her matura and her medical school admissions examinations. And, of course, the E.’s, who had dined with Gizella, and who had witnessed Nina’s final rupture from her parents. All of these peopl
e undoubtedly knew or worried that Nina S. might be involved in her closest friend’s imbroglio, and none, not a single one, reported her to the agents of the Hapsburg police.

  But though none of the dozens of people who knew or suspected that Nina might be implicated took their suspicions to the authorities, neither did they keep them to themselves. There are few who can resist the allure of gossip, few who are able to comply with our religious tradition to avoid lashon horah, speaking ill of others. There were rumors and whispers, many though not all hushed by the time Nina made her way down the aisle at the Dohány Street Synagogue to the chuppah made from the tallith of her husband’s great-grandfather.

  When I read about the terrible exploits at the Opera House, I rushed from my coffeehouse to my sister’s apartment, my journey crossing, it turned out, with that of the telegram she had sent begging that I come at once. Once there I found myself in complete agreement with the women’s plan, though I expect that even if I had had doubts they would not have tolerated them.

  From the apartment I hastened to the Royal Prosecutor’s Office of Budapest. I waited in the ornate antechambers for no more than a moment before I was ushered inside by a clerk.

  Ignác E. leaped to his feet when I entered the room, shooed the clerk out, and shut the door.

  “My God, Doctor,” he said. “What has she done?”

  Ignác’s tie was askew, and through the flaps of his unbuttoned jacket I could see circles of damp staining the underarms of his shirt. This privileged young man had never known a moment’s deprivation in his life, had by virtue of fine family connections and a more than passable intellect made it to heights in his profession unusual for a man of his youth and, more important, his race. Previous to this, his most serious discomposure had been a result of failing to earn a medal in his Olympic swim race. His consternation was a credit to him and to the intensity of his affection for Nina, despite both her actions and the disdain with which she regularly treated him.

  “She is involved, isn’t she?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “I fear so. But please believe me, Ignác, Nina is not a radical.”

  “I wish I could believe you, but look.” He passed me a copy of the newspaper Hungarian Nation, in which was reproduced an image of the pamphlet that had fluttered down from the royal box. “These are the words of Bolsheviks and anarchists.”

  “Nina had no knowledge of the pamphlet. Yes, she committed a crime, but she believed her protest to be on behalf only of suffrage. The young men kept the pamphlet a secret from her and from Miss Weisz.”

  An expression of relief passed over Ignác’s face, but only for a moment before he said, “And her Ruthenian accomplice? A known revolutionary!”

  “I’m sure Nina knew nothing of this.”

  “Is the man her … her lover?”

  “No! Absolutely not. Neither is the other man, Endre Bauer. He is merely a friend.”

  At that word, Ignác sputtered in disgust. “You see, Dr. Zobel, I was under the foolish impression that I was her friend.”

  “You are, sir, you are. It is because of that friendship that she has asked me to come to you.”

  “She asked you to come?” he said, hopefully. No matter what Nina felt about this young man, his affection for her was true.

  “Yes. She is desperate for your help.”

  “Ah. Of course. It is legal counsel she seeks.”

  “Yes, legal counsel. But also your friendship. She is all but alone, Ignác. She needs a friend.”

  At war in Ignác’s heart were dueling impulses, one to punish the girl who had rejected his advances, the other to save the woman he admired and knew he could one day love.

  “Do you promise, Dr. Zobel, to be honest with me?”

  “I do.”

  “Then tell me. Her virtue. Has it been compromised? Is she chaste?”

  “Need you ask?”

  “Yes, I am afraid I must.”

  So I told him what I hoped was true.

  Ignác E. determined that our first step must be to speak to Miss Weisz, and luckily my profession offered him an excuse that he would not otherwise have been able to counterfeit. Ignác apprised his superiors of the petition by Miss Weisz’s personal physician to visit her and ascertain her physical condition. He requested permission to accompany the physician, in order to ensure no rules were violated. These requests were considered, reinforced by an additional petition from a senior prosecutor, an acquaintance of Mrs. Rózsa Schwimmer, and eventually granted.

  The necessary documents complete with official wax seals and signatures having been swiftly obtained, we repaired together to the Central Police Holding Facility, where we found Miss Weisz imprisoned in a small, malodorous cell, its damp stone walls furred with mold and inscribed with the desperate scribbles of previous occupants. She sat perched on the edge of a torn straw mattress, her feet swinging in the air above the filthy floor. The place was less a modern penal facility than a medieval dungeon, and even Ignác, though familiar as a prosecutor with the types of accommodation afforded by the realm to its delinquents, was disgusted by the treatment meted out to Miss Weisz.

  She had at least been allowed to remain dressed in her own clothes, although likely only because no alternative existed in her size.

  Though the dear girl’s spine was stiffened by pride, her relief at seeing us was palpable. Her eyes welled with tears, which she blinked quickly away. I performed a quick but thorough physical examination. Though no bones were broken, her wrists and ankles had been badly cut and bruised by the iron chains that the gendarme had used to restrain her. Her ribs too were bruised and she flinched beneath my probing fingers. At my insistence she spat into the linen handkerchief I held beneath her chin. Her sputum was tinged red. Her gums, I saw when I importuned her to open her mouth, were bloody, a few of the teeth loose.

  “Did someone strike you?” I asked.

  “I fell,” she said.

  “Pushed?”

  She shrugged. “The others?” she asked.

  “Your accomplices have all been arrested and are being held here as well,” Ignác said.

  Her olive skin paled to a sickly yellow. “I feared it was their screams I was hearing all through the night.”

  “The men are being treated as well as can be expected,” Ignác said, laying meaningful stress on the word “men.”

  “And?” she said, her clear voice reverberating like a bell in the stone shell of the room. I was not surprised years later to find out that Miss Weisz was a gifted singer who, with training and in a world devoid of bias against the deformed, might have been an accomplished mezzo-soprano.

  “And that is all,” Ignác said.

  Miss Weisz glanced at me, imploringly. She feared prying ears too much to say Nina’s name, but I knew she was knotted with concern for her friend.

  “All is well, dear little Miss Weisz,” I said.

  “Well?” she repeated.

  “Yes. Well.”

  “Safe?”

  “For the time being,” Ignác said. “But everything depends on you. Cooperate with the authorities, tell them all you know about the men with whom you conspired”—again that all but unnoticeable emphasis on the word “men”—“and all will continue to be well.”

  “I will not tell anything to anyone,” she said.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Of course not. You’ll say only what must be said, about these men who so shamefully took advantage of your innocence, who used you to further an agenda you did not support.”

  “I will say nothing. Nothing about anyone.”

  Ignác glared at her. He was standing on the other side of the cell, as far from her as the constricting walls would allow. “You’ll say what you’re told to say, if you value your life.”

  “I value freedom, Mr. E. Honor and freedom and dignity and justice. But life alone? What is there to value in that?”

  I said, “Miss Weisz, dear girl. Please don’t be so silly. Look around you. Is this where you wan
t to finish your days? Here in this horrible cell or in another like it?” A black beetle scampered across my shoe and I flung it off and crushed it beneath my sole. “Amidst the vermin?”

  “The rats come out only after the sun sets,” she said.

  “Is imbecility one of your afflictions?” Ignác asked.

  I shook my head at him, and laid a calming hand on Gizella’s small one. “Mr. E. is justifiably concerned. About your future. Yours and … others’.”

  “Mr. E. can rest assured that I will speak of nothing and no one, no matter what he and his fellow prosecutors demand.”

  The door to the cell creaked open, and the jailer’s face peered in. “Will you be needing more time, sir?” he asked Ignác.

  “No,” the prosecutor said, and swept out of the cell.

  I gave Miss Weisz a last squeeze of her hand and stood to follow him out.

  “Dr. Zobel,” she said.

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “Can I ask … If you would …”

  “What?”

  She blushed furiously and raised a trembling hand to her face. Only now did her tears fall. “I need bandages. Supplies. It’s …” She motioned to her skirt, which was stained and damp.

  “Your menses.”

  “Yes,” she said, crying now in earnest. “I have asked to see the matron, but …”

  “Worry not. I’ll have a basket sent to you immediately. Are you in pain?”

  “No.”

  “That at least is a relief,” I said, again turning to the door.

  “Doctor! Wait,” she said. She reached into her bodice and extracted something she had secreted there. She held it out to me, and with some trepidation I took it. It was the peacock pendant she had worn on the night of the ill-fated dinner.

  “Can you give this to my friend for me? Please.”