Part of Kroner, and he dared not acknowledge this even to himself, was thankful to Sep for keeping his daughter from embarking on such an adventure, to say nothing of the money. But the departure of her savior before that salvation was even brought up was a big disappointment for Vera. Only now did she see how mistaken she was not to have applied to her soldier uncle herself, to have let her father intercede for her when she knew how inadequate he was.
She would act on her own. As soon as she made this decision, she was amazed that she had not been led to it earlier by the personality of her newly designated helper. He had been there all along, constantly before her eyes, and yet she had not seen him. He caught her attention first simply as a man, then as the man who could deliver her from her terrible worries and difficult decisions. As she was mulling these over in her mind, she saw him walking across the courtyard, tall and powerful, full-blooded, with long, smooth brown hair and light, close-set sharp eyes that looked into hers with undisguised admiration. At lunch she heard plenty about him, for by now Kroner associated all the advantages and disadvantages of his business life with that same Miklós Armanyi, the official in charge of his business.
At first Kroner had feared that the foreigner might become his tormentor, for during the requisition of the store the man was cold and stern; he examined all the documents and looked into all the corners, and announced that from then on without his authorization nothing could be initiated, nothing changed. But it soon turned out that this strictness was an expression of inexperience, of fear of being drawn onto thin ice by deception. As soon as it became clear to him that Kroner’s only desire was for himself and his family to survive, Count Armanyi abandoned these precautionary measures. He remained distant, but had no hesitation in telling, about himself, what he felt was essential to establish basic human contact. Soon, at the Kroner dinner table, it became known that Count Armanyi was unmarried and a barrister’s clerk whom mobilization had thrust into this delicate position. A position he had no reason to complain of, since it brought with it a wage three times what he had previously earned, and a fine apartment in one of the commandeered buildings that had belonged to local civil servants, and the reputation of a government official entrusted with special responsibilities. But he did not seem to be able to make full use of this reputation in Novi Sad, where he felt half-exiled; among its mixed population, he did not know whether to be more suspicious of the noisy and wild Serbs or of his own Hungarians, who had fattened themselves on their neighbors’ property and now wallowed in the euphoria of their oriental slovenliness and indifference.
He himself was from Pest, a civil servant’s son who had been indoctrinated with the idea that the work and rank of a civil servant should be valued above all else. But here that conviction had been eroded, weakened under the dull pressure of the inefficiency, disorder, and uncertainties of wartime. In high school, Armanyi had learned that the whole nation wept when southern regions of Hungary were annexed by Yugoslavia, but now some of his neighbors told him firmly and openly, for they were Hungarians and not afraid to talk, that under the Yugoslav regime things had been in some ways better, that people had behaved with greater warmth and humanity. Looking at the dusty streets, at the cluttered, small bazaarlike shops, at the movie houses, where people pushed and shoved to reach the unnumbered seats, at the open squares in front of the churches where beggars stood in clusters, grimacing to arouse pity, Armanyi found in the dispossessed owner of the business he now managed, in the thin, dejected, peace-seeking and book-loving Robert Kroner, a spirit of industriousness most resembling his own.
He began to question Kroner about the world of Novi Sad, which he did not understand, and from the answers gathered that Kroner himself understood very little of that world but submitted to it in resignation; this brought them closer together. Did Armanyi feel exiled? Exiled was what Kroner had been here for these twenty-odd years, since the day he allowed himself to be lured back from Vienna to take over his father’s store—temporarily, until a buyer was found, he thought, and until he could talk his mother into agreeing to the sale. But the few months he had expected became years; he was sidetracked by marriage and fatherhood. His way back to the centers of wisdom and civilization he had learned to respect in his youth was cut off: in fact, those centers were no longer there when he came to look for them. Would the same thing happen to Armanyi? Armanyi, too, had been transferred to the south for a short time, until the skirmish with the rebellious forces in the Balkans, which German and Hungarian cool-headedness would know how to subdue, was over. But then the war spread to the immeasurably vast fields of Russia, where battles were being waged whose outcome was by no means certain, while here, in the rear, the Bačka, which had been so easily captured, was a long way from submission. People seethed with expectation, and with scorn for the present situation.
That expectation was personified, for Armanyi, by Kroner’s children, Gerhard and Vera, whom he could observe all day long from the window in their father’s store. These grown-up children lived in idleness, and although he knew that this idleness had been imposed on them by the same state machine that had brought him here to watch them, he could not help but feel that it was part of their character. How could they walk around the courtyard with nothing to do, their hands behind their backs, their faces turned as early as the month of March toward the morning sun as it appeared over the store roof? How could they—with no apparent reason, such as reading a book or having a conversation—wander for hours in that confined space, which would have suffocated him had he not had his duties and his documents to occupy him?
At the end of May, deck chairs appeared on the grass that had come up between the house and the office, and the children sat in them and ate snacks. A few weeks later, Vera brought out a light, gray blanket, spread it on the grass, and, glistening with oil, in a two-piece bathing suit, lay in the sun. Every day, for hours, she lay patiently on the blanket, turning over, from back to front, from front to back, bending alternately her left, then her right knee, to be more comfortable and have every part of her body embraced by the sun. Now and then she would disappear into the house to shower, as one could tell from the droplets on her sunburned skin and the streaks on her bathing suit. Armanyi thought it sacrilege for her to bake her transparently white, smooth skin to a dirty pink and then a bright red. But once it took on a copper hue, it showed off still better the firm and gentle outlines of her young body, making it so alluring as to be almost unreal.
One afternoon, they met at the gate, and though she was fully dressed and wearing stockings and sandals, Armanyi could not resist telling her the impression she had made on him. “You really do not need to lie in the sun all the time.” He removed his hat in greeting and held it in his hand. “I was going to speak about this to your esteemed father, but I restrained myself, and I am glad now, because it gives me the opportunity to address myself directly to you.”
She expressed surprise. “You think the sun’s not good for me?”
“Well, perhaps not good in such large doses,” Armanyi replied, embarrassed at having failed to make himself understood. “But I really meant your appearance.”
“My appearance? You don’t like my appearance?”
Instead of making her blush, it was he who blushed. “On the contrary, your appearance . . . I find your appearance lovely. You’re a beautiful girl, and watching you sunbathe every day is for me a privilege I never hoped for, especially here in a store, where in every other respect I am in despair, doing a job for which I am not equipped and for which I have not the slightest inclination. But still, it is a shame, because your white skin compliments your hair so exquisitely.”
“You don’t think a tan is becoming? It’s fashionable, you know.”
“Perhaps I am a little old-fashioned. Or old. That’s really the trouble.”
“How old is old?”
“Thirty-one. Much older than you and very much older than I would like to be now, talking to you.”
“W
hy? That’s a fine time of life. . . .”
“Perhaps. But not here. In Budapest it is. In a big, carefree city open to all pleasures and all ages. Have you ever been to Budapest?” Vera admitted she had never been. “Oh, you really should. Surely Mr. Kroner or Mrs. Kroner will take you someday to see our one and only capital.”
“There’s been talk of it, but no plans. We can’t go there without a pass, you know, and one needs a special reason for a pass.”
“Oh, if it’s only a question of a pass,” Armanyi said ardently, pressing his hat to his heart, “perhaps I can help. Besides”—he blushed again, realizing in which direction the conversation was headed—“you could come with me when I return to make my report. Traveling as my assistant, you would need no special authorization. What do you say? Would you like to?”
Vera shrugged hesitantly. “I don’t know. . . . Yes, I would. But I would have to talk to my father first.”
Armanyi coughed, uncomfortable. “Perhaps your father would not consider my offer entirely correct, at least not now. Perhaps it would be better to say nothing about this for the time being. But you and I, we are agreed, are we not? One day we will take off, escape from this boredom and have a taste of a fuller, more exciting life.”
Saying good-bye, they left it there. But they were both a little frightened by this conversation. Armanyi asked himself whether it had not been underhanded of him to urge the daughter of the house, a house in which he represented the civilization of his country, to run away with him, and whether he had not greatly overstepped his authority and courage in promising to break the law. Vera was amazed that she had agreed to go off somewhere with a strange man, alone, without her parents’ permission. But thinking it over as she lay in bed that night, she came to the surprising conclusion that she was not at all ashamed. She was sure of herself, convinced that Armanyi was in love with her. Recalling his misty-eyed look, the change of color in his face, the way his hand desperately pressed the soft hat to his chest, she almost laughed out loud. She was proud at having won such a big, strong, mature man, and was excited at the thought that she could, by her looks alone, by her body, which she was in a position to place in his way any time she wished, attach him to her still more strongly. She waited impatiently for the morning and the sun, when she could again show herself, almost naked, to his eyes, and with that thought she fell asleep.
And, indeed, the next day she lay on the blanket, in the sprouting grass as if in an embrace, her smile triumphant. For Armanyi, who feared that he had frightened her with his aggressive approach and that she might tell her parents everything, her reappearance on the grass was a clear sign that he had not made a mistake, that on the contrary his amorous advances had gone a long way to being reciprocated. He began to dream. He saw himself and the girl in a compartment of the Árpád express as it arrived, whistling, in Budapest’s eastern railway station; he saw himself with her in a taxi taking them to his bachelor apartment; he saw himself handing her his pajamas from the wardrobe—for some reason he imagined her leaving home in a hurry, neglecting to take anything with her, and therefore lying next to him in bed in that too-large man’s shirt, which emphasized the svelteness and vulnerability of her body. Crisply starched, the shirt crackled under his hand as he drew her toward him. The only thing he didn’t know was what legal framework would surround that embrace. Would it be achieved with a promise of marriage, or was marriage impossible with a Jewess? Would she consent to become his secret mistress? Would this mean that he would have to resign his post in Kroner’s store and make use of his connections and influence to be transferred back to Budapest? Or would their relationship receive the blessing of Vera’s parents?
Vera, too, had her dreams. She saw herself on a busy street crowded with people, streetcars, cars, glittering window displays, where she would pass unnoticed, no longer Vera Kroner, daughter of merchant Robert Kroner, but a nameless creature, reduced to her own healthy, supple body, in which she had full confidence. No longer would there be obstacles to her traveling, to her changing towns and places of dwelling, escaping from the closing trap that was the house of her parents. In these images there was little room for Armanyi; he stood at the edge, head bent, hat pressed to his heart, looking at her with misty eyes. But her reason, which also played a part in these fantasies, was prepared to allow him to approach her, to be next to her, even to possess her if he kept his promise and delivered her from the trap. The two of them waited, observing each other through the windows and through the veil of grass as if across the sights of invisible rifles. Days passed.
Sometimes Vera’s mother came out into the courtyard to caution her daughter (but absent-mindedly; her thoughts were on her son, who was away all day long) that she would get burned, or sometimes the maid brought out freshly washed fruit in a white dish, or sometimes Grandmother Kroner emerged, stooped and cautious, to heap muttered reproaches on her granddaughter for exposing herself, a Jewess, to the eyes of Gentiles. Sometimes Gerhard, returning home from his training in firearms, scornfully indifferent to the presence of his sister, wove his way lazily across the yard and, moving gracefully, like a panther, pulled himself up to the top of the fence in one movement and cast a swift glance toward the grass widow’s house. She, waiting for him there, at that sign would change her dress and come over, to go down with him into the cellar. Milinko, too, came in the evening hours, after a day spent with his books, to chat with Kroner and then with Vera, who by then would be bathed, cool, dressed, ready to listen to him in boredom and to exchange an occasional kiss.
On one such evening there was a ring at the door, and when the maid opened it, three policemen burst into the house, ordered everyone to their feet, checked papers, searched the rooms, pulled clothing out of the closets and books off the shelves, including the notebook with the inscription “Poésie,” which they leafed through but then tossed aside, because the dates in it were only prewar, and finally took Gerhard away. The reserve officer, arrested several hours earlier, under the very first blows had named him as one of the young men he taught how to fire a gun.
No one ever saw Gerhard again. He left behind him a yawning void, like an amputation, destroying the equilibrium that had been preserved, until then, with such great difficulty. Reza Kroner was stopped from hurling herself on the policemen by her husband, who restrained her physically. She demanded in her frenzy that the whole family immediately go and look for Gerhard, go from prison to prison and, if need be, tear him free with their bare nails. Kroner finally made her understand that her behavior was impossible, that it could even be harmful to Gerhard; he would intervene through a third person, and in a more effective manner, he assured her, without endangering the family. The only person of influence in whom he had any confidence, and the one he saw the next morning, was Count Armanyi. Armanyi was shocked by the news and readily promised to help. He went to see several lawyers of his acquaintance, who, like he, had been sent to work in Novi Sad from their native Hungary, but at posts closer to their profession, as judges and police officials. None, however, dared to intercede for a man arrested by the Gestapo, fearing that they themselves might come under suspicion. So their assistance was limited to information, arrived at second hand and unconfirmed: that the accusations against Gerhard were serious and that his fate depended on his confession and collaboration.
Knowing his son’s pigheadedness, Kroner could not bring himself to tell his wife this. He assured her, instead, that Gerhard was alive and in good health, though for the moment his whereabouts were unknown (which was true), since he was being held in secret, which boded well for the outcome of the inquiry. Having taken the burden of this embellishment upon himself, Kroner desperately tried to think of some way to persuade his son to give in and save himself. Through Armanyi he requested to be allowed to send his son a letter, but permission was denied. He then began to imagine their conversation in a cell, face to face, like their earlier discussions in the evening hours, when they listened to the radio, the radio for which no
w, alone, Kroner had neither the inclination nor the patience. But with the dank, solitary cell and barred windows as a setting, and with the sight of the bloodstained prisoner, his son’s viewpoint always came out on top. Gerhard had been right, Kroner told himself in those one-sided conversations based on words spoken long ago. But now, in the new, grim light of prison, and of the suffering and misery he pictured, it was too late to admit this. In a cowardly way he was almost relieved that he had no access to his son. He continued every day begging Armanyi for help. Armanyi sometimes tried to do something, and sometimes only said that he had tried. Kroner compounded Armanyi’s lie with his own, passing it on to his wife and daughter, and in time a dense and elaborate web of unreality was spun around the detainee.
Yet another person became entangled in this web, lured into it by Reza Kroner, who, not trusting the assurances of her husband, set about seeking help for her son in the quarter where she felt the most confidence: among her compatriots. Carrying a basket with food and clean clothing, she went to the German barracks, entered into conversation with the soldiers on guard, asked them to call the duty officer, and laid before the latter her petition. On one such occasion she came upon an NCO of the Field Police, Hermann Arbeitsam, a forty-year-old from Mainz, who took pity on her and promised to try to find out where her son was. He, too, was unsuccessful (his rank not high enough), but their acquaintance, deepened by frequent meetings in the park near the barracks, by the woman’s pleadings and the NCO’s clumsy comfortings, grew into a friendship, and the friendship, for Arbeitsam, who had never married, into a true, late-life passion.
The Use of Man Page 12
