Fever at Dawn

by Fever at Dawn (retail) (epub)

  I won’t write any more—it’s suddenly hit me that it’s all over. But afterwards, on the walk home, at the crossroads in the park, for a moment…

  By the time they were in the park—at the centre of which, carved in stone, sat Carl Linnaeus himself—it was getting dark. Miklós made up his mind.

  Sára tactfully walked two or three metres ahead, holding her palms out as if she were undertaking snowflake research for a meteorological institute. Miklós appreciated her tact. They walked past the gaze of Linnaeus’s stone eyes. The snow was crisp beneath their boots, and the stars actually sparkled.

  My father stopped Lili, stroked her face with his burning fingers—an inexplicable phenomenon in minus ten degrees without gloves—and kissed her on the lips. Lili snuggled into him and returned his kiss. Linnaeus was meditating above them.

  Reassured that she could no longer hear the disappointing crunch of two pairs of feet behind her, Sára walked to the edge of the park. She began to count to herself. She was still alone when she got to 132, which gave her a good feeling. She smiled. Her heart, too, was beating hard.

  Monday. A quiet day. Only the photographer. I bet you, too, were wondering what your mother would say about our combined portrait.

  The photography studio was at 38 Trädgårdsgatan. Miklós picked up the black-and-white leaflet advertising the place to save it for posterity. The photographer looked like Humphrey Bogart: a tall, handsome young man in a jacket and tie. He fiddled around with the positioning for a while, looking for the right angle. Miklós winced in jealousy every time Bogart gently touched Lili’s knee to get her to move to the left or right. Then, from under the black cover behind his camera, he fussed for ages about how they should hold their heads. Eventually he emerged, rushed up to my father and started to read the news-paper stuffed into the frame of his glasses. He asked my father to take off his glasses, and then vanished under the cover again. For five or six minutes he positioned the camera at different angles. Then he came out once again, walked over to my father and whispered in his ear.

  Miklós blushed. Bogart, using a very proper form of German, warned him that even if he, as the photographer, could discern that my father was aware of the problem, it didn’t alter the fact that those somewhat uninviting metallic teeth were, in this powerful light, shining like mad. As a quality photographer, he felt that it was his responsibility to advise that an ideal family portrait might best be achieved if Lili were to laugh outright while my father was just beginning to form a smile. This is what he for his part would advise.

  Half an hour later, the photographer of Trädgårdsgatan had finally taken my mother and father’s first photo together.

  That evening you came downstairs with me, then you got into the lift, pulled the grating shut and, before it moved upwards, I leaned in once more.

  The second night, Lili had made a foray down to the first floor for a goodnight kiss from Miklós. She was already in her nightdress and dressing-gown. She said goodnight to my father outside the lift, while the nurses were coming and going in the corridor. Lili got in. She pulled the iron grating across. Miklós managed to squeeze his head in between the bars, and in this hopeless position he tried to kiss her. In fact, he pressed his head towards her with such force that the white bars left their outline on his cheeks. The lift went up. Miklós couldn’t bring himself to leave. He was still waiting for Lili’s slippers to disappear when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  Dr Svensson was standing beside him in his white coat. ‘You speak German, don’t you?’

  ‘I speak it and understand it.’

  ‘Good. I’d like to call your attention to something.’

  Miklós had no doubt what the doctor was referring to. But right now, at this rather special moment, he had no wish to launch into a discussion about the state of his health. ‘I’m aware of everything, doctor. Currently my lungs are—’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of you,’ Svensson interrupted. ‘You misunderstand me.’

  Miklós breathed out.

  ‘All I wanted was to ask you to take good care of Lili,’ Svensson continued. ‘She is no ordinary girl.’ Dr Svensson took Miklós by the arm and guided him down the corridor. There was no one else around.

  ‘You see, by a cruel stroke of fate, I happened to be on the international team of doctors present when the women’s camp in Belsen was liberated. I’d like to forget that day. But it’s impossible. We thought we’d found everyone who showed the tiniest sign of life. Only the dead remained, lying on the bare concrete…nearly three hundred childlike bodies, naked, or in rags. Skeletons weighing twenty kilos.’

  Svensson stopped for a moment in the deserted hallway and stared into the distance. He seemed agitated. Miklós looked at him in surprise; the doctor’s face was distorted into a strange grimace, as if he were in pain.

  ‘We were on our way out. I looked back once more, just in case…I couldn’t decide whether I was seeing things or…if a finger really did move. Do you understand, Miklós? Look…like the last flutter of a dove’s wing…or the ripple of a leaf once the wind has died down.’ Svensson raised his hand and crooked his index finger. His voice cracked. ‘And so we brought Lili back among us.’

  Years later, it always sent a chill down my father’s spine when he recalled Svensson’s expression and his hand held up with its quivering finger. And all this merged inseparably with another memory from his visit to Eksjö.

  When the train puffed away and he was standing on the last step of the last carriage and waving until the station had disappeared, he was overjoyed that he could summon up Lili’s true image. All he had to do was shut his eyes—his last glimpse of her was etched forever into his memory. Lili was waving on the snowy platform. She was crying. And her fingers—my father claimed that he had watched her delicate hand and those slender fingers almost as though they were in close-up on a cinema screen. This, of course, was impossible at such a distance, especially with his smashed glasses, but even so. He was clinging to the open carriage, the train was gaining speed and he, behind his closed eyelids, really did see Lili’s fingers as they trembled in the wind like leaves.

  ‘Take care of her. Love her,’ Svensson instructed Miklós on that last evening in the hospital. ‘It would be so good if…’

  He fell silent for so long that Miklós wondered if he was searching for the appropriate word in German. ‘What would be so good?’ he asked.

  Svensson still didn’t speak. All at once it clicked—Svensson wasn’t having trouble with his German. He had arrived at a boundary that he didn’t want to cross. He never finished his sentence, but he gave Miklós a hug, which said more than any words could.

  In Ervalla, Miklós changed trains. He found a window seat. In the foreground of the night landscape, his own tired, stubbly face was reflected in the glass.

  On Tuesday I got up in a bad mood: it was the last day. We walked again to Stadshotell Square like we had on Sunday evening. And I could only steal one or two furtive kisses from you on the way.

  That last evening, they sat again in the two armchairs behind the palm. Lili was crying. Miklós held her hand; he couldn’t think of anything encouraging to say.

  ‘I dreamed about our flat last night,’ Lili said. ‘I saw Papa getting his suitcases ready. It was a Monday and just beginning to get light. I knew he would be setting off soon. In my dream I knew we wouldn’t see him for a week. Isn’t that odd?’

  She forgot about crying and that she was in hospital in a foreign country. She talked as if she were recalling the previous day’s picnic. When she was a child, her father’s routine had seemed like a jigsaw puzzle. Sándor Reich, suitcase salesman, prepared his wares at dawn on Monday. He packed two medium-sized suitcases into two trunks, and the smaller cases into the medium-sized ones. And he crammed the briefcases and handbags into a red children’s suitcase. It was quite incredible that all those leather goods could fit into two trunks.

  The truth was that Lili’s strong attachment to her parents dis
turbed Miklós. He had only one clear memory of his father. He couldn’t quite decide whether the scene remained so vivid because he saw it once or because he saw it many times. Maybe every Sunday lunch had ended in this way.

  My grandfather always tucked his damask napkin into the collar of his shirt. His thick hair shone with brilliantine. My grandmother, who always looked rather dishevelled, was taking a spoonful of soup. Pea soup, yes. A white china tureen of yellowy-green pea soup with globules of fat floating on the surface sat in the middle of the table. Beside it was a small dish piled with croutons. Miklós remembered every detail. He was just a boy, sitting opposite his mother in a black waistcoat. His father started shouting; he tore the napkin from his neck, jumped up and with a single movement yanked off the tablecloth.

  My father never forgot it. The pea soup shot out of the tureen. The yellowy-green liquid flowed onto his knees, burning him, and the croutons dropped to the floor like tiny winged angels.

  He told Lili this story, holding her hand, that evening under the palm.

  Lili changed the subject. ‘I don’t want to be…’

  ‘What don’t you want to be?’

  ‘It’s so dreadful to say it. But I want to be different.’

  ‘Different?’

  ‘Different from Mama and Papa.’

  Judit Gold appeared, carrying cups of tea. She couldn’t help overhearing. ‘What don’t you want to be, Lili?’

  Lili looked from her to Miklós. ‘I don’t want to be Jewish!’ she replied in a quiet, resolute tone.

  There might have been a hostile edge to her words.

  ‘It’s not a question of wanting or not wanting,’ retorted Judit, wiping a drop of tea off the table with her finger. She marched off as if Lili had personally offended her.

  Miklós was pensive. ‘I know a bishop. We’ll write to him. We’ll apply for a conversion. All right?’

  As usual, my father had exaggerated things a bit. He wasn’t acquainted with any kind of bishop. But he was convinced that sooner or later, if he looked, he’d find one.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ asked Lili, stroking my father’s hand.

  ‘It had occurred to me, too,’ said my father equitably.

  On the night train back to Avesta, as the stations flashed past, Miklós thought through the problem. For him the question of conversion was irrelevant. It didn’t mean a thing to him that he was Jewish. As a teenager, he was so hooked on the new socialist ideology that there was no room left for anything antiquated. If conversion was important for Lili, if that was what she wanted, then he would get hold of a priest. Or a bishop. Or the pope himself, if it came to that.

  He had gone through Örebro, Hallsberg, Lerbäck and Motala. Miklós was writing a letter.

  You can see, can’t you, dearest Lili, what a devoted soldier I am in the cause of freedom and the oppressed, the cause that has awakened the sons and daughters of every nation. You’ll be my companion in everyday life (you will, won’t you?), so be my faithful companion in this, too! You were once a bourgeois girl—now you should become a tough and militant socialist! You do feel so inclined, don’t you?

  I’ll contact the bishop as soon as I get back to Avesta. I’m counting the days until Christmas when I hope I’ll see you again!

  Many, many hugs and kisses,

  Miklós

  Eleven

  THE DAY after Miklós left Eksjö, at the end of the communal breakfast, Dr Svensson came in and tapped a spoon against a glass. The hum of chatter died away.

  Svensson seemed nervous. ‘I would like you all to remain patient and trusting. I have just received news that will bring certain changes to your lives. The Swedish Ministry of Health has decided to disband the Smålandsstenar rehabilitation hospital with immediate effect. This means that patients who have been cured in our hospital here in Eksjö will be permitted to leave. Others will be moving to another facility at Berga.’

  Svensson wanted to say more, but no one could hear him in the eruption of joy. The girls stood up on their chairs, some of them hugging each other, even screaming. Others tried to get close to Svensson, speaking to him in various languages. He tapped his glass to take control of the situation, but it was hopeless.

  This morning, in the midst of bedlam, they announced that the hospital here will be shut down, and we are moving to a vast rehab centre several hundred kilometres away—very soon. And it is my turn to visit you. But at least I’ll be a bit nearer to you and won’t have so far to travel when I come.

  The three Hungarian girls went straight to their ward. They were about to start packing when Lili noticed the theft.

  Half an hour later, a committee was trying to get the facts of the case, but Lili was in no condition to answer questions. She had one fit of crying after another, and finally she was given a sedative. She lay curled up on her side on her bed and didn’t say a word.

  So for the hundredth time Sára had to tell those concerned what had happened. ‘I said that before. It was open,’ she reported, pointing to the only cupboard, in the corner of the room.

  The cupboard, which the girls had used to store their things, was still wide open and more or less empty.

  A bespectacled man was whispering a translation of Sára’s words into Swedish for the benefit of the local head of the Red Cross, a tall blond scowling fellow with amazingly pale skin.

  Madame Ann-Marie Arvidsson was also there, writing the report. ‘What did the material look like?’ she asked.

  Sára stroked Lili’s curled back. ‘What was it like, Lili? I only saw it once.’

  But Lili just stared at the birch tree swaying in the breeze.

  Sára did her best. ‘It was brown fabric fit for a winter coat. Tweed, with a nap. She got it from her cousin.’

  The man in glasses translated in a whisper. ‘It must have happened while we were hearing the news in the dining hall. Everyone was downstairs.’

  Ann-Marie Arvidsson put down her pen. ‘There’s never been a theft in this hospital before. I really don’t know what to do,’ she said.

  ‘I do!’ announced the stern, blond man from the Red Cross, striking the table. ‘We’ll find it and return it to the owner.’

  When my father arrived back in Avesta he reported to the office, then walked across to the barracks to change. It was midday; everyone would be in the canteen.

  Miklós caught sight of him immediately and backed away. The booted feet formed an arc above the middle row of beds. The suitcase slipped out of Miklós’s hand. He took off his glasses and wiped the good lens. When he put his glasses back on, it was clear that he hadn’t imagined it. From where he was standing one of the metal cupboards blocked his view of the upper part of the barracks. But when he moved forward he saw the torso too: the grey trousers and the belt around the waist.

  It was Tibor Hirsch. He had hung himself. From a hook—a thick, bent nail near the overhead light. A letter lay on the ground beneath his body. Miklós’s legs and hands began to tremble, he had to sit down. Minutes passed. He had an irresistible urge to read the letter. He had to overcome this trembling, this feeling of revulsion. He could see that the letter had an official stamp at the bottom. He knew what it would say even before he forced himself to stand up and shuffle over to the hanging body.

  He was right, of course. He didn’t need to pick it up; he could tell that the last letter in the life of the electronic radio technician and photographer’s aide was a death notice. The death certificate of Mrs Tibor Hirsch, née Irma Klein.

  It flashed through Miklós’s mind that he had written to Lili about reports that Hirsch’s wife had been shot in Belsen. That was when the triumphant conga line had taken over the barracks. What had made him suppress his misgivings? Why had he not hurried over to Hirsch and shaken him to wake him up to the truth? But when? When would he have had the chance?

  Was it when Hirsch sat up in bed, waving the letter above his head? Or when he yelled out, ‘She’s alive! My wife’s alive!’? Should he have rushed over and shak
en him, shouting, ‘No, she isn’t alive, she’s dead—three people saw her shot down like a rabid dog’?

  Or could it have waited? Until when? When Hirsch set out between the beds holding up the message like a flag, turning the single word into a proclamation? Then? Or when Harry joined him, grasping his shoulders from behind, and together they began to chant their marching song?

  What could he have done when their fears were transformed into a glorious eruption of words? Alive, alive, alive, alive, alive! How could he have stopped this volcano?

  Should he have got up on the table and shouted above the chorus? What would he have shouted? Come to your senses! Come to your senses, you idiots. You are alone now, they’ve died, they’ve gone. All those you loved have turned into smoke. I saw it happen. I know. She’s not alive, not alive, not alive, not alive, not alive!

  But instead he had joined the line and become part of the snake, a part of the whole creature that wanted to abandon its common sense, to believe that nothing had changed.

  And now, here was Hirsch’s lifeless body hanging from the hook.

  That evening, when the effect of the sedative had worn off, Lili walked down to the office with Sára and made a formal complaint. Two days later, when she got a letter from Miklós—who, within a couple of hours of learning of the theft, had found out what the usual Swedish procedures were in such a case—the investigation was already underway. But both of them knew very well that Lili wouldn’t be wearing a decent overcoat that winter.

  My one and only darling Lili!

  You must report the theft to the police saying that the culprit is unknown. You must write a letter in German in triplicate (one copy for the hospital, one for the foreigners’ office and one for the police) giving exact details of the loss—three and a half metres of brown material for a winter coat, etc.