There’s only one person she can call at this time of night who will forgive the intrusion and share her excitement at her revelation. Only one person she wants to confide in.
‘Dov?’ Her voice is trembling. ‘Dov, there’s something I have to tell you. I know it’s the middle of the night, but can I come over?’
On the way to his apartment in a taxi, her brain is throbbing and every red light makes her groan. He is already standing downstairs waiting for her, and as soon as the taxi pulls up she rushes out, and falls into his arms. He holds her close, caressing her, and doesn’t ask any questions. That’s the moment, she later realises, that she felt the joy of being understood and accepted, and knew he was the man with whom she would always feel that unconditional love, and that she would never let him go.
He puts his arms around her, and she leans against him and feels his warmth as he leads her inside and waits for her to speak.
‘It’s so incredible, I can’t believe it. You won’t believe it either, you’ll think I’m crazy, or that I’ve made this up. This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. I had to come and tell you.’
He is still holding her, gently stroking her hair, waiting for her to explain.
She pulls away, takes a very deep breath, and with an unsteady voice, she says, ‘It sounds so bizarre, I don’t even know how to say it. Miklós Nagy was my grandfather.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Tel Aviv, 2005
The day she has dreaded has now arrived, and Dov is driving her to the airport, one hand on the wheel, the other clasping hers. Annika squeezes his hand and tries not to think of the moment when they will have to say goodbye.
He gives her a sidelong glance. ‘Are you sure you’re not going to stop over in Budapest to see that guy?’
He’s jealous, and she likes that. ‘Maybe I will,’ she teases.
He leans towards her and presses a kiss on her cheek.
‘That’s like the chaste kiss you gave me the day you dropped me back at the hotel after we’d been to Jerusalem, remember?’
‘After you went inside, I sat outside the hotel for half an hour, fighting with myself. I wanted to go after you, to kiss you the way I wanted to, and tell you how I felt, but I didn’t want to scare you off.’
They look at each other and laugh, the knowing laugh of lovers who have just shared a night so tender and intimate that every cell in her body is still tingling at the memory. She marvels how naturally it happened that one minute she was in his arms, blurting out her improbable news, and the next she was in his bedroom, and they were making love. She can still hear his voice thick with desire, murmuring, ‘After we met in Ari’s café that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. You were such a fascinating mixture of confusion, vulnerability and determination. I felt like putting my arms around you to make you feel safe.’
She can’t resist teasing him. ‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Because I knew it was hopeless. You were a tourist from the other side of the world. We were probably never going to see each other again.’
‘You kept your feelings well hidden,’ she said with a hint of reproach. ‘I had no idea you felt that way right from the start.’
He held her against him and looked searchingly into her eyes. ‘What about you? When did you feel that we might have a future together? ’
‘When you played that Leonard Cohen CD.’
Although she was teasing him, there was some truth in what she said. She started to explain why their connection with her favourite songwriter meant so much to her, but before she had a chance to say it, he was pressing those sensual lips against hers, exploring her mouth, whispering that he loved and wanted her, and gently undressing her. By then she felt no need to explain anything.
After making love, they talked until morning about their lives, their regrets, and their dreams, the things they had done that they were proud of, and the ones they felt guilty about, revealing themselves without embarrassment or inhibition. It seemed to Annika that they were looking into each other’s souls. For the first time in her life, she knew that she had been truly seen and understood. This wasn’t just sex, it was the connection she had always dreamed about but didn’t believe she’d ever find, the ache for the other half that had always been missing, the soul mate she had always longed for, the loving partner who accepted her as she was without trying to change her, who cared as much about her pleasure as about his own.
‘Do you realise,’ she murmured, ‘everything in our lives, every single thing, had to happen exactly the way it did so we could be together now?’
His eyes glistened, and he held her closer.
He pulls up outside the airport and they turn towards each other. Even if she could find the words, there is too much to say and too little time to say it. But she looks at him, and knows that after last night, there is no need to say anything. She has seen her future and it’s flooded with light.
They step out of the car and he folds his arms around her. She looks up and sees that behind his glasses, his sea-green eyes are brighter than usual. He is holding her so tightly that she can hardly tell where she ends and he begins.
‘I can’t bear the thought of losing you now that we’ve found each other,’ he says in a hoarse voice. ‘I’ll come to Sydney to meet your folks, but I’ll wait for you to let me know that you still want me to come, in case you change your mind.’
She blinks a few times and strokes his hair. She knows that home is not a place, it’s the person you love, that this is what she has been longing for all her life. This has been a gradual awakening that feels solid, deep and secure, and despite the distance and the difficulties ahead, she will try and make it work. Then she thinks about her grandmother and Miklós Nagy, and a thought chills her. What if love really wasn’t enough?
Her voice is husky, and she has to clear her throat several times before speaking. ‘I won’t change my mind. I can’t wait for my mother and grandmother to meet you. Then I’ll come back to Tel Aviv so we can be together. And when I’m back, whether you like it or not, I’m going to join Peace Now.’ She had never imagined that making a commitment could be so easy.
In reply he cradles her face in his hands and kisses her lips softly, tenderly, and then more passionately, and they cling together. With tears in her eyes, she pulls away, picks up her suitcase and walks into the airport building. Although she doesn’t trust herself to look back, she knows that he is still there, watching her, as she knows he will always watch her, with love and solicitude.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
2005
As she boards the plane, Annika is in a daze, reliving her night with Dov, thinking about the life ahead of them, but unafraid of the challenges ahead. Love was worth fighting for. Her thoughts turn to Miklós Nagy and her grandmother, and to the secret that Marika has concealed all her life. Had she really stumbled on this revelation by chance? Was her obsession to uncover the truth about a total stranger whose only link with her was her grandmother’s inexplicable reaction more than a journalist’s curiosity to pursue a mysterious story? Is it possible that, in some hidden corner of her psyche, she has sensed all along that this was not just an intellectual quest, but a search for a personal connection that her unconscious mind had somehow divined?
It seemed as though everything had conspired to lead her to the unlikely door of the ex-prisoner who held the key to a mystery she didn’t even know she needed to unravel. She recalls that it was Dov whose perceptive mind had intimated this the day they met in Jaffa. She had dismissed his idea then, but now she marvels at his insight. So soon after they met, he was already so attuned to her that he had intuited the meaning behind her search. Her love for him courses so strongly in her veins that she wonders if that radiance is visible to those around her.
It seems a lifetime since she arrived in Israel, and yet it also seems as if it was only yesterday, and she still can’t believe what has happened in those few weeks. Her thoughts turn to Eitan
, and the way fate had thrown him in her path. Before leaving the hotel she called him to explain why his grandfather had died with Ilonka’s name on his lips, but she only told him part of the story. The part about the love affair. She couldn’t bring herself to expose the secret shame that her grandmother had guarded all her life, even though it would have meant revealing that she and Eitan were cousins. One day, when she was back in Tel Aviv, she would tell him everything face to face.
She can’t wait to see Cassie’s face when she tells her that she has finally made a commitment and has decided to move in with Dov. She can almost hear her friend saying in her deadpan voice, ‘And your perfect guy lives in Israel? That’d be right.’
This time she changes planes in Budapest without stopping over. She thinks about Jansci with affection and gratitude. He made her feel desirable again, rekindled her capacity to love. Love was a leap into the unknown, a risk she had always avoided, but thanks to Jansci she now had enough faith in herself to make a commitment to a man who lived on the other side of the world.
Now, on the flight home, window blinds are pulled down and passengers settle down for the night with eyeshades and blankets, but her tumultuous thoughts make sleep impossible. She thinks about Miklós Nagy, the man who was so unjustly maligned. It is still hard to think of him as her grandmother’s lover, or as her grandfather. Not only had he never received the acclaim he deserved, but what was even more cruel, he had died never knowing that he’d been exonerated. Now she understands the cryptic comment of the guide at the Sydney Jewish Museum: no good deed goes unpunished.
The injustice of Miklós’s fate, and her determination to do something to restore his reputation and his memory, makes her so restless that she tosses and turns in her seat, unable to find a comfortable spot.
In a somnolent zone between wakefulness and sleep, she sees herself back in Israel, no longer powerless, but full of energy and hope. She is arguing with the director of the museum in Tel Aviv that he should create a space for Miklós Nagy among the section devoted to the rescuers, and she succeeds in convincing him. Next, she contacts the survivors and their descendants and persuades them to contribute to a memorial to the man who saved them. She envisages thousands of them arriving from all over the world to honour him, the remaining survivors from the rescue train, and their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. At the unveiling of the memorial, which consists of a marble obelisk with his name and a simple inscription on one side, and the names of those he rescued on the other, she can hear herself making an impassioned speech, a fitting tribute to her heroic grandfather. She looks around at the gathering, and there’s her grandmother sitting in the front row…
Then she stops fantasising. There was no way her grandmother would ever honour the man who, in her eyes, had deceived and betrayed her. No way that she would ever forgive him, even after sixty years. Sixty years. Marika had disappeared from his life without another word, and wrapped herself in a lifelong cocoon of resentment and hurt pride that had fed on itself and become a second skin. She had succeeded in guarding her secret, but had lost herself in the process.
Marika had become a phantom in her own life, picking her way through it in her fine Italian leather shoes, her chic French suits, advising her clients in her silken way how to enhance their good features and make the most of their appearance. Because that was all her life was — appearances, images, and mirrors smudged with smoke.
Annika is suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of anger. She too had been compelled to live in the shadow of that deceit which precluded intimacy and honesty. Her grandmother was entitled to keep a secret if it affected only her and no-one else, but this one affected the whole family. She and her mother were entitled to know who their father and grandfather was. Her mother had accepted what she was told, but deep in her soul, Annika knew that she herself never had, and she wonders whether her lifelong resentment and rebellion is the result of sensing that her grandmother was hiding something, that what she was presenting to the world was a brightly fashioned mask concealing a darker reality.
What a heavy burden the fear of exposure must be. Unable to face the shame, Marika had created a new persona, and foregone the freedom of being herself and the relief of being truly known, even by her closest friends. But how close could those friendships be, when she had deleted her past, concealed her true self, and presented only an invention? Don’t we all long to be accepted and loved for who we really are, regardless of our mistakes? Surely what we yearn for is the warmth and comfort of connectedness. What Annika has always perceived as Marika’s strength and fortitude is merely pride fuelled by anger, revenge, and frozen disappointment.
Most of the other passengers are sleeping, but she sits up, wide awake, immersed in her thoughts. For the first time in her life, she understands her grandmother. She feels empathy for Marika, and no longer judges her. So what should she tell her? Should she presume to tell her anything at all? Did she have the right to strip away the image so carefully cultivated over a lifetime and reveal that she knew the truth?
Marika was in her eighties. How would she cope with the fact that her granddaughter knew her secret? Knew that she had lied to her own daughter about who her father really was? Perhaps she had wanted to shield Eva from discovering that she had had an affair, and to shield herself from gossip that she wasn’t the paragon of virtue she set herself up to be. Perhaps she was desperate to keep Eva from discovering that she was illegitimate, and that her father was a man Marika hated, a man she had tried to erase from her memory and her life. But, as Annika now realises, her effort to erase him had only made the memories fester. She had probably wanted to protect herself from having to admit the most painful fact of all, that the man for whom she had given up everything had betrayed her love.
Annika’s thoughts turn to her mother. She wonders how Eva will cope with the news that all her life Marika had lied to her, not only about her own life, but about the identity of her father. How painful would it be for her to discover that she has been deprived of knowing anything about the man she never had the chance to meet, a hero who had been vilified, crucified and vindicated, and was still a controversial figure after fifty years.
How would Eva feel knowing that she was illegitimate, and that Marika regarded her birth as a source of such shame that she had concealed the truth all her life? Would she ever forgive her mother for withholding that knowledge and cheating her of her true identity? And would Marika forgive her for divulging it?
Annika has always felt powerless in her grandmother’s presence. Now that she knows the truth, she is the one with power, but the knowledge doesn’t bring a sense of triumph.
What she feels is a heavy sense of responsibility to use this power carefully, compassionately, and with love. Her training as a reporter emphasised the importance of digging relentlessly for the truth and then revealing it, irrespective of its effect on anyone, especially those who most wished to conceal it, but now she wonders whether this is one story that should be suppressed.
Before deciding whether she would reveal all or any of it, she has to be sure that whatever she does is for her grandmother’s benefit, not for the gratification of her own ego. Once the story was revealed, it could never be redacted, rescinded or deleted. It could bring destruction in its wake, to her grandmother’s peace of mind, to her mother, and to their relationship.
Annika must have finally fallen asleep because she wakes with a start in the darkened cabin. And in that moment she knows exactly what she is going to say.
SYDNEY
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
2005
When Annika steps into the crowded arrival hall of Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport, she is astonished to see her mother waiting for her. She’s even more surprised when Eva throws her arms around her and says, ‘I’ve missed you, Annika. You were away for such a long time. I’m glad you’re home at last.’
She picks up Annika’s suitcase and as she rolls it towards the car park, she pats he
r daughter’s arm and says, ‘You must be tired after such a long flight.’ And she repeats, ‘It’s good to have you back.’
Annika glances at her mother. Eva is not usually so demonstrative, and she decides this is a good omen. She can’t wait to tell her about Dov, or to reveal that she has found out the secret that Marika has guarded all her life, but at the same time she feels nervous at the prospect of revealing both these things — particularly the latter. It is such explosive, potentially destructive information. What if she says too much, shakes her mother’s confidence about her own identity, and destroys her relationship with Marika?
‘Your hands are shaking, you look as pale as a ghost,’ Eva says. ‘I hope you didn’t pick something up on your travels. You have to be so careful on flights these days.’
‘I’m fine, don’t fuss.’
‘I can’t wait to hear all about your trip,’ Eva says as she hauls Annika’s suitcase into the boot of her green Toyota. ‘You didn’t say much on the phone, I was worried about you. So tell me, what was Budapest like?’
‘Let’s wait till we get home. I’m tired, I couldn’t sleep on the plane, and I’m dying for a cup of tea,’ Annika mumbles, and closes her eyes while Eva drives.
From time to time she opens her eyes. Although it’s early June, the weather is mild with the bright freshness of early winter. The bright blue bays of Sydney Harbour are dotted with white yachts, their spinnakers swelling in the nor’easter. In parks beside the road, Moreton Bay figs cast wide circles of shade on emerald lawns. Annika takes a deep breath. It was good to be back.
Inside her apartment, Eva bustles around the kitchen, taking out mugs and filling the kettle. Annika glances out of the window, and sees a flash of olive and scarlet, and hears the metallic twittering of lorikeets flying towards the umbrella tree. The bright red berries of the cotoneaster make a mess on the paving of the courtyard, and the narrow leaves of the stringybarks shiver in the breeze. The brightness of the light pouring from the sky makes her heart skip. She feels her resolve wavering. How can she leave this behind and move to Tel Aviv?
The Collaborator Page 36
