The Invisible Bridge

by Julie Orringer

  When Andras and Jozsef arrived at the meeting hall to make the last preparations for the show, they found that all had fallen into confusion. The stage sets had been shoved aside so the chief officer of the academy might give the official welcome speech, and in the process, two of the backdrops had been torn and one side of the papier-mache cave had been crushed. Erdo paced from one end of the stage to the other in panicked dismay, declaring at full volume that the repairs would never be finished in time, while Andras and Jozsef and the others rushed to make things right. Andras patched the cave with a bucket of paste and some brown paper; Jozsef mended a Roman ruin with a roll of canvas tape. The other men realigned and rehung the second torn backdrop. By the time the dinner hour was over, all was in order. The actors arrived to don their Tatar and Magyar costumes and practice their vocal exercises. They preened and buzzed and mumbled their lines backstage with as much gravity and self-importance as the actors at the Sarah-Bernhardt.

  At half past eight the meeting hall filled with officers-in-training. There was a tense festivity in their clamor, a rising thrum of anticipation. Andras found a dim corner of the wings from which he could watch the speeches and the show. He caught a glimpse of the martial glitter of the general's jacket as he strode up the center aisle and took his seat in the front row of benches. The school's chief officer mounted the stage and made his address, a rhetorical pas de deux of deference and pomposity, punctuated with gestures that Andras recognized from newsreels of Hitler: the hammerlike fist on the podium, the uptwisting index finger, the conductorial palm. The chief officer's bluster earned him six seconds of dutiful applause from the officers-in-training. But when General Nagy rose to take the stage, the men got to their feet and roared. He had chosen them, had graced them with the first stop of his eastern tour; when he left them he would go directly to Hitler's headquarters at Vinnitsa. He raised a hand to thank them, and they sat down again and fell silent with anticipation.

  "Soldiers," he began. "Young men. I won't make a long speech. I don't have to tell you that war is a terrible thing. You're far from home and family, and you'll go farther still before you return. You're brave boys, all of you." Vilmos Nagy had none of the swagger or dramatic fire of the school's commanding officer; he spoke with the rounded vowels of a Hajdu peasant, gripping the podium with his large red hands. "I'll speak frankly," he said. "The Soviets are stronger than we thought. You're here because we didn't take Russia in the spring. Many of your comrades have died already. You're being trained to lead more men into battle. But you are Magyars, boys. You've survived a thousand years of battle. No enemy can match you. No foe can defeat you. You slew the Tatars at Pest. You routed eighty thousand Turks at Eger Castle. You were better warriors and better leaders."

  A round of wild cheers broke forth from the officers-in-training; the general waited until the noise had subsided. "Remember," he said, "you're fighting for Hungary.

  For Hungary, and no one else. The Germans may be our allies, but they're not our masters. Their way is not our way. The Magyars are not an Aryan people. The Germans see us as a benighted nation. We've got barbarian blood, wild ideas. We refuse to embrace totalitarianism. We won't deport our Jews or our Gypsies. We cling to our strange language. We fight to win, not to die."

  Another cheer from the men, this one more tentative. The young officers-in-training had been taught to revere German authority absolutely; they had been taught to speak of Hungary's all-important and all-powerful ally with unconditional respect.

  "Remember what happened this summer on the banks of the Don," Nagy said.

  "Our General Jany's ten divisions were spread over a hundred kilometers between Voronezh and Pavlovsk. With just those ten light divisions, Generalfeldmarschall von Weichs expected us to keep the Russians on the east bank. But you know the story: Our tanks were defenseless against the Soviets' T-34s. Our arms were outmatched. Our supply chain failed. Our men were dying. So Jany pulled his divisions back and made them take defensive positions. He saw where he stood and made a decision that saved the lives of thousands of men. For this, von Weichs and General Halder accused us of cowardice!

  Perhaps they would have admired us more if we'd let forty or sixty thousand of our men die, instead of only twenty thousand. Perhaps they would have liked to see us spill every last drop of our barbarian blood." He paused and looked out across the rows of silent men, seeming to meet their eyes in the dark. "Germany is our ally. Her victory will strengthen us. But never believe that Germany has any other aim besides the survival of the Reich. Our aim is Hungary's survival--and by that I mean not just the preservation of our sovereignty and our territories, but of our young men's lives."

  The men had fallen into a rapt silence. No one applauded now; they were all waiting for Nagy to go on. So seldom had they been told the truth, Andras thought, that it had struck them dumb.

  "You men have been trained to fight intelligently and minimize our losses," Nagy continued. "We want to bring you home alive. We won't need you any less once the war is over." He paused and gave a deep sigh; his hands were trembling now, as if the effort of delivering the speech had exhausted him. He glanced into the wings of the stage, into the darkness where Andras stood watching. His eyes settled on Andras for a long moment, and then he looked out at the young officers-in-training again. "And one more thing," he said. "Respect the labor servicemen. They're getting their hands dirty for you.

  They're your brothers in this war. Some officers have chosen to treat them like dogs, but that's going to change. Be good men, is what I'm saying. Give respect where it's due." He bowed his head as if in thought, and then shrugged. "That's all," he said. "You're fine brave soldiers, all of you. I thank you for your work."

  He stepped down from the podium to an accompaniment of somber, bewildered applause. No one seemed to know quite what to think of this new minister of defense; some of the things he'd just said sounded as though they shouldn't have been uttered in public, and certainly not at an officers' training school. But there was little opportunity to react. It was time for the play to begin. The Magyars assembled onstage for the first scene, and the work servicemen dragged the Roman ruin into place and lowered a backdrop that depicted a wash of blue sky above the moss-colored hills of Buda. When they hoisted the curtain a flood of light filled the stage, illuminating the martial-looking Hungarians in their painted armor. The Magyar chieftain drew his sword and raised it aloft. Then, just before he could speak his opening line, the air itself seemed to break into a deep keening. The assembly hall reverberated with a rising and falling plaint of grief.

  Andras knew the sound: It was an air-raid siren. They had all practiced the drill, both here and at the orphanage. But there was no drill planned for this evening, nor was this part of the play. This was the real thing. They were going to be bombed.

  All at once the audience got to its feet and began pushing toward the exits. A cluster of officers surrounded General Nagy, who lost his hat in the crush. He clutched at his bare head and glanced around him as his staff hustled him to a side door. The actors fled the stage, dropping their pasteboard weapons, and began to crowd toward a stairway at the back of the hall. Andras and Jozsef and the other work servicemen followed the actors down a flight of stairs that led to a shelter beneath the building. The shelter was a honeycomb of concrete rooms linked by low-ceilinged hallways. The men pushed into a dark enclosure at a turn of one of the hallways; more officers-in-training poured into the room after them. Far above, the air-raid sirens wailed.

  When the first bombs hit, the shelter shook as if the moon itself had fallen from its orbit and crashed to earth just overhead. Concrete dust rained from the ceiling, and the lightbulbs flickered in their wire cages. A few men cursed. Others closed their eyes as if in prayer. Jozsef asked an officer-in-training for a cigarette and began to smoke it.

  "Put that out," Andras whispered. "If there's a gas leak down here, we'll all be killed."

  "If I'm about to die, I'm going to smoke," Jozsef said. />
  Andras shook his head. Beside him, Jozsef released a complex luxuriant cloud through his nostrils, as if he meant to take his time. But another concussive blast threw him against Andras, and he dropped the cigarette. A series of shuddering jolts rocketed through the foundation of the building like small earthquakes; this was anti-aircraft fire, the kick of the artillery installation housed not far from the assembly hall. Glass exploded above, and faint cries reached the men through the walls of the shelter.

  "At attention, men!" one of the officers commanded. They stood at attention. It took some concentration, there in the flickering dark; they stood that way until the next bombs hit. As the foundation shuddered, Andras thought of the weight of building materials arranged above him: the heavy beams, the flooring, the walls, the tons of cinderblock and brickwork, the roof struts and frame, the thousands and thousands of slate tiles. He thought of all those materials raining down upon the architecture of his own body. Fragile skin, fragile muscle, fragile bone, the clever structures of the organs, the intricate arrangement of his cells--all the things Tibor had pointed out in Klara's anatomy book a lifetime ago in Paris. Suddenly he couldn't breathe. Another detonation knocked the room sideways, and a crack appeared in the ceiling.

  Then there was a lull. The men stood silent, waiting. The anti-aircraft artillery must have been hit, or the gunners must have been waiting for the next wave of planes.

  That was worse--not to know when the next barrage was going to come. Jozsef's lips moved with some whispered incantation. Andras leaned in, wondering what psalm or prayer might have brought such a look of tranquility to Jozsef's features; when the words resolved into an intelligible line, he almost laughed aloud. It was a Cole Porter tune Jozsef had often played on his phonograph at parties. I'm with you once more under the stars / And down by the shore an orchestra's playing / And even the palms seem to be swaying / When they begin the beguine. The quiet ended with the renewed staccato of anti-aircraft fire, then a percussive chord of blasts, as if a trio of bombs had struck all at once. The men fell to their knees and the lights went out. Jozsef made an animal noise of panic. So this was how it would happen, Andras thought: Jozsef would receive his retribution here in this tomb under the officers' meeting hall. How like a fairy tale, where selfish wishes often carried a cruel price: Jozsef would die, but Andras would have to die with him. As the bombs continued to fall, Jozsef lowered his forehead to Andras's collarbone and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." The cigarette smoke in his hair was the smell of evenings in Paris. For one unthinking moment, Andras put a hand on Jozsef's head.

  Then, all at once, the lights flickered on again. The men got to their feet. They dusted off their uniforms and pretended they hadn't just been clutching each other's arms, crushing their faces against each other's chests, praying and crying and apologizing. They glanced around as if to confirm that none of them had really been afraid. The earth had gone still now; the bombing had stopped. Above, all was silent.

  "All right, men," said the officer who had commanded them to stand at attention.

  "Wait for the all clear."

  It was a long time before the signal sounded. When it came at last there was a push toward the hallways, a crush of men talking in shock-dulled voices. No one knew what they would find when they emerged. Andras thought of the labor camp where they were supposed to stay when they had first arrived in Turka--its mass grave, the wet dirt slumped into the ground like a sodden blanket. He and Jozsef shouldered into a stream of men making their way back toward the staircase. The air in the bunker seemed overbreathed, devoid of oxygen.

  There was a bottleneck at the foot of the stairway. As Andras shuffled toward the stairs, someone bumped against him and pushed something into his hand. It was Erdo, his face red and wet, his monocle fallen. "I didn't think of it earlier," he said into Andras's ear. "I was preoccupied with the play. I might have died and never given it to you, or you might have died and never gotten it."

  Andras looked down to see what he held in his hand. It was a piece of folded paper wrapped in a handkerchief.

  He couldn't wait. He had to see. He unwrapped the corner of the handkerchief, and there was Klara's handwriting on a thin blue envelope. His heart lurched in his chest.

  "Hide that," Erdo said, and Andras did.

  Back at the orphanage he wanted only to be alone--to get to some private place where he could read Klara's letter. But the men of Company 79/6 met him and the others with a storm of questions. What had happened? Had they seen the planes? Had anyone been killed? Had they themselves been injured? What was the meaning of an air raid so far from the front lines? The guards had been listening to the radio in Kozma's private quarters, but had told the men nothing, of course; the bombing had gone on for so long that the men thought everyone at the school must be dead.

  Men had died. That much was true. When they'd come out of the meeting hall--the three walls that remained of it, in any case--they'd been swept into a stream of men running for one of the shelters, which had caved in upon the officers-in-training who had been huddled there. For three hours the labor servicemen and soldiers worked with shovels and pickaxes, ropes and jeeps, to move the mass of wood and concrete that had trapped the men. Seventeen of them had been killed outright by the cave-in. Dozens of others were injured. There were other casualties elsewhere: The mess hall had been flattened before the cooks and dishwashers could get to a shelter, and eleven men had died. It was deduced that General Vilmos Nagy had been the reason for the raid; intelligence of his visit must have reached the NKVD, and Soviet Air Force troops commissioned to attempt an assassination via bombing. But General Nagy had survived.

  He had personally supervised the attempt to rescue the men from the collapsed shelter, to the dismay of his young adjutant, who stood nearby surveying the firelit cloud cover as if another rain of Soviet YAK-1s might drop out of it at any moment.

  All that time, Andras had carried Klara's letter in his pocket, not daring to read it.

  Now, finally, he was at liberty to climb into his bunk and try to decipher her lines in the dark. Jozsef seemed nearly as anxious as Andras; he sat cross-legged on the bunk below, awaiting news. Andras slit the envelope carefully with his razor, then maneuvered into a position that would allow him to use the moonlight as a torch. He pulled the letter out and unfolded it with trembling hands. 15 October 1942

  BudapestDear A,

  Imagine my relief, and your brother's, when we received your letter! We have all decided to postpone our trip to the country until you return. Tamas is well, and I am as well as might be expected. Your parents are in good health. Please send greetings to my nephew.

  His parents are well, too. As for what you wrote about M.H.'s departure for Lachaise, I must hope I have misunderstood you. Please write again soon. As ever, Your K.

  We have all decided to postpone. It was just as he had feared, only worse. Not just Klara, but Tibor and Ilana too. He would have done the same, of course--would never have left Ilana and Adam alone in Budapest three days after Tibor had disappeared--but it was sad and infuriating nonetheless. In one stroke the Hungarian Army had grounded the entire Levi clan. For the sake of an underground business in army boots and tinned meat, ammunition and jeep tires, they had all been tied to a continent intent upon erasing its Jews from the earth. That horrible truth lodged beneath his diaphragm and made it impossible for him to draw a full breath. He put his hand over the side of the bed and slipped the letter to Jozsef, who reacted with a low note of distress--Jozsef, who had long argued the foolishness of the trip to Palestine. Now, after three months in Ukraine, and after what they had just experienced and seen at the officers' training school, Jozsef knew what it meant to feel one's own vulnerability, to taste the salt of one's own mortality. He understood what it meant for Klara and Tamas, Tibor and Ilana and Adam, to be stranded in Hungary while the war drew closer on all sides. He must have known what his own deportation would have meant to his parents; beneath the well in Klara's single line about them,
he must have sensed the truth.

  But at least he and Andras had this letter, this evidence that life continued at home. Andras could hear Klara's voice reading the coded lines of the letter aloud; for a moment it was as though she were with him, curled small against him in his impossibly short bunk. Her skin hot beneath her close-wrapped dress. The warm black scent of her hair. Her mouth forming a string of spy words, dropping them into his ear like cool glass beads. We have decided to postpone our trip to the country. In another moment he would reply, would tell her all that had happened. Then the illusion vanished, and he was alone in his bunk again. He rolled over and stared into the cold muddy square of the courtyard, where the footprints of his comrades had long ago obscured the child-sized prints that had been there when they'd first arrived. In the moonlight he could make out the twin mounds of earth that were Mendel's and Goldfarb's graves, and beyond them the high brick wall, and above it the tops of the trees, and, farther still, a mesh of stars against the blue-black void of the sky.