My father was renting a room off Moszkva Square in Buda.
‘I’ve been too busy,’ he said, when I asked him why he hadn’t contacted Miklos or Dénes. ‘I have had no time. You go get some rest now, and I will show you my cell tomorrow.’
I found a room for myself nearby, had a reasonable night’s sleep and called on my father about lunchtime the next day. His room was down an alley stinking of cigarette smoke and urine, where no sun could penetrate. It was small and damp with a bed, a chair, a table, and a sink. I couldn’t see a scrap of food in the grimy cupboard in the shared kitchen. There was no fridge. But Gyuri showed me the gas ring and assured me that he was eating properly every day.
‘Before you came I had just boiled myself an egg for my lunch, Eva, but now I can’t find where I put it.’
We searched everywhere in the kitchen and in his tiny room, even under the bed and in the communal bathroom. Nothing.
‘Let’s go out to get something to eat,’ I said.
‘You were a hunted animal twenty-four hours a day,’ he said as soon as we sat down with our food in the workers’ canteen across the road. ‘But it was better than the cattle trucks. I was lucky I wasn’t among those rounded up when I came back from Russia.’ He waved his hands towards the Danube. ‘That’s where the unlucky ones were taken and shot.’
I had heard many times about his experiences as a slave labourer in Russia but not much about the events after his return and before the arrival of the liberating Soviet Army. By the time he had finished telling me about the last days, my helping of lecso and bread was gone; but his still sat uneaten and cold on his plate.
‘Eat,’ said a voice. ‘You cannot fill your stomach on the past.’ The words came from an old man in a thick winter coat with torn sleeves, sitting at the next table. Obediently my father began to eat.
‘I hope you’re not offended, but I couldn’t help overhearing something of your conversation,’ the old man said. ‘In my opinion, we Jews remember too much. That’s our misfortune.’
He accepted my father’s invitation to have a glass of tea with us. As soon as he was seated, he started to tell us his story. Originally from Sopron, he was the only one of his immediate family to survive the war. During the period when the city became a battlefield between the Germans and the Soviet Army, he was in Budapest. He had witnessed every cruelty and inhumanity: a horse, blinded and decapitated by young boys; a baby, strangled in front of his mother by two Arrow Cross thugs; and a young girl, raped by a Red Army corporal, lying bleeding and unconscious on the floor of the church where the deed had taken place.
When I couldn’t stand hearing any more, I left my father still listening to the old man and found the nearest underground station. I got off the train near Váci utca, crammed with tourists. This part of Budapest looked almost like any other city. People in jeans, leather jackets and Reeboks strolled about shopping and eating.
As I left the area behind and walked in the direction of the Danube, I thought of six years ago when I was last in Budapest with Douglas and Janet and both my parents. This time, with fewer distractions, I wanted to discover, if I could, what would have happened if we had stayed in Hungary. How might the story have turned out differently? It distressed me that the childhood I couldn’t properly remember had affected the rest of my life in New Zealand, including my relationships with William and Douglas. Had I really married for security rather than love?
I went through grey streets, across squares and dusty parks. I’m not sure how much time passed before I sat down, tired, at a café with a few tables and chairs out on the pavement. Waves of strong, sweet smell wafted in my direction from the river. The sickly stench of decay, I thought, getting to my feet and leaving the place before the waiter could come to take my order.
This time, I walked in a direction away from the Danube. Eventually I came upon a window advertising beer. It was a tavern but maybe it would have a coke or a lemonade. I went inside and said ‘Jó napot’ to the bartender and the one customer. They both looked at me, faces blank. The bartender kept wiping the bar top with a cloth. I asked him if I could have a coke, but he didn’t seem to understand my words. Then the other man, through rotted teeth, asked, ‘So, where’re you from?’
‘New Zealand.’
‘Is it a good country?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can people make a living?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much costs a car?’
‘$5000.’
‘Are there black people?’
‘No, Maori and Pacific Island people and…’
‘Are they decent people?’
‘Very.’
‘Are there Jews in New Zealand?’
‘A few.’
‘There are too many here. Not as many of them were killed by Hitler as they tell us.’
‘Why don’t you like Jews?’
‘They’re rich and think they’re superior to us Hungarians. They want to control us; they control the government.’
‘Why do they? How do you know? Do you know any Jews?’
‘No, they’re rich and superior and want to contr…’
‘I must go now. Jó napot.’
As so often happens in a moment of crisis, something went wrong. My rapid departure through the door I thought I had used to enter, led me only to a stinking urinal. Beating a swift retreat, I was back in the bar again. But only for a moment. I went through the right door this time and was thankful to find myself out in the street.
I started walking again, though it was getting late and I no longer knew what direction my landmark – the river – was. Why hadn’t I said to ‘rotten teeth’ that I was a Jew and that if he didn’t shut his racist mouth up I’d be back soon with someone who would make sure that he did? Could it have been fear?
All of a sudden I remembered that after we had crossed the border into Austria in 1956, we spent our first night in the stables of a nobleman’s mansion. The next day we were taken with others by truck to Vienna. It was late afternoon and nearly dark by the time we set out. Snow was falling hard, and the windshield was covered with it. I watched the windshield wipers struggling to keep the snow away from the window. Suddenly, the truck stopped. In front of us was an overturned car. A body on a stretcher was being carried to another car. Someone said it was an injured girl. With a sick feeling, I then remembered the other girl, hurt by the mine that was buried in the snow, who lost her arm and leg. I tried to stop myself thinking about her. I couldn’t remember arriving in Vienna, or anything that happened there. Not even eating that first, hard-to-peel orange, so sweet, juicy and full of pips, which my mother talked about from time to time. The orange was her present to me for my eighth birthday, which took place the day after our arrival in Vienna. Yes, I knew fragments about my past – but only indirectly. The things I could remember weren’t my own memories – they were people and events as described by my mother and father. My memories were mostly replacement memories.
Thinking of my first orange, I became aware of my dry, sore mouth. My gums ached from gritting my teeth. I carried on walking, seeing myself with grim satisfaction as a character from an Ingmar Bergman movie (Wild Strawberries came to mind) or, perhaps, as a Stephen Daedelus-like figure following a devious course amidst the squalor, noise and sloth of Budapest. My thoughts were going round and round, and I decided that if I ever wrote a novel it would be a stream of consciousness type about a woman walking around the city of her birth. But her thoughts would not be dashing back and forth in an undisciplined fashion; they would be focused on the big topics of bondage and freedom. When it occurred to me that Stephen, in his meanderings around Dublin in search of his artistic and other identities, was in fact circling round one of the numerous Dublin brothels, I stopped walking. Just ahead was a dusty park. I sat down on the only bench, squeezing myself between the rusty nails sticking up through the wood. There wasn’t a tree or shrub in sight, only a few statues. The nearest, on my left, was a youthful male figu
re, beaming and holding up a scythe. His companion was a beaming girl, a spade in her hand. A stone sculpture of two men – one seated, the other standing – caught my eye. I got up to have a closer look. The seated one was Marx; Engels was standing next to him. On Marx’s shoulder someone had written in the thick dust ‘Ruszki out’.
Unsure what to do next, I sat down again. I found myself thinking about Tomi, who had believed that no pain – not the bullying he had undergone, nor my rejection – could compare with what his parents had lived through. He seemed to want to feel what they had felt, to immerse himself in their suffering. And because such terrible things had been done to his mother and father, he had to be a good boy, a very good boy, always. How unlike me. I had always felt guilty about my parents but could never be as good a daughter as Tomi had been a son. I had squandered splendid opportunities to obtain a PhD and marry a suitable husband, and had yelled at them on numerous occasions to butt out of my life. I was getting even deeper into my extraordinarily perceptive and provocative analysis, comparing Tomi’s and my psyche, when the thought came to me that I’d had enough of Hungary. What I wanted was to be back in New Zealand with Janet, with friends. I wanted to get in contact with Mary again too. Why had we lost touch the last few years?
Though my feet ached and I was very thirsty, I started walking again. Surely the park I was approaching could not be the same one I had passed twenty or so minutes ago? It was getting dark and I didn’t know the way back to the Danube or to Váci utca. How I longed to be away from Budapest. I couldn’t wait to be back in my own house, reading in the garden under my huge cabbage tree. Or to be driving down the long narrow road between dark hills to the bright sea of Owhiro Bay. As I approached a shop window advertising beer, I thought ‘Good, at last, a drink’, but realised as I got closer that it might be the bar I had fled earlier. I decided that walking round in circles as I seemed to be doing, I would never find my way back on foot. When a tram came, I got on and eventually reached a part of Budapest familiar to me.
The next day when I called on my father he said straightaway, ‘I would like you to come with me to the waste ground.’
I proposed Elizabeth Island, Szentendre and even the Roman ruins at Aquincum but all to no avail.
‘Óbuda’s not too far from here. But we have to hurry or else we’ll miss the tram.’
After a three-quarters of an hour’s journey by tram, bus and tram again, we arrived at the place I had visited briefly at the end of my last visit to Budapest. By this time it was midday, and my father agreed to get something to eat.
‘This is where we lived,’ he said, as we walked around the neighbourhood looking for a place to eat. He pointed to an oblong-shaped warehouse. ‘It’s all industrial now – it used to be cottages and fields. Our street was then called Victory Street.’
He didn’t say much more as we walked around amidst the shoppers. Eventually we sat down at one of the outside tables of a small café near the station.
‘Tea,’ he said to the waiter, ‘and apple cake.’ He was in a fussy mood, quite different from usual. Why was there no food fit to eat in this country? The tea was too weak, the cake too dry. After he had told the waiter so, a conversation in raised angry tones ensued.
‘We lived above the shop. Did I ever tell you what happened to it?’ my father asked when we were served our fresh cups of tea. ‘It was a small grocery, but we didn’t just sell food; we stocked all sorts of things like string and candles as well.’
I nodded. I knew about the shop that my grandmother and father had to abandon during the Nazi period.
‘Have I told you about the Nagy family, our neighbours?’
I shook my head.
‘There were two boys in the family. They were close in age – one was only a year older than the other. They both had wide friendly faces and fresh complexions. They had never shouted “dirty Jew” as so many did. Their mother’s name was Rozsa néni; her husband was Bandi. When my stepfather broke my mother’s arm one night when he got drunk, they helped my mother get to the doctor and tried to comfort her. The next day Rozsa néni even made cauliflower soup, and one of the boys brought it over. Rozsa néni used to rock me in my cradle, my mother said.
‘The Nagy family had been our neighbours for twenty years when the law was passed that Jews were no longer allowed to own shops. Some people in the town went out that night and broke the glass in all the shops owned by Jews. The next day, Rozsa néni appeared in our kitchen.
‘“You may as well hand them over now,” she said to my mother, holding out her hand. She grasped the keys of my mother’s shop with a mixture of glee and guilt on her face. You know, Eva, I’ve never forgotten the look on Rozsa néni’s face as she turned on her heels and walked out of the door of our kitchen, keys dangling from her waist where she had attached them to the cord of her red and yellow apron. She’d had her eye on the shop for years, my mother said.
My father stood up, leaving his helping of tea and cakes untouched. He was silent as we left the café. I stole a look at him and saw the tears in his eyes, sliding down his cheeks. But it wasn’t till we were overlooking the waste ground that he said, ‘We lost everything with the shop. It was a good little business. Our whole livelihood taken away, just like that. We saved only the jewellery, some books, photos… There was nothing I could do to help my mother – I couldn’t protect her from Rozsa, just as I couldn’t save her from the bad man she married. That night, I found an area of waste ground, dug a hole and buried the jewellery and photos. Also a prayer book that had belonged to my father, the only thing I had from him. Afterwards, my mother prepared a meal. It was the last time she cooked for me. We left for Pest the next morning. One of the Nagy brothers waved cheerfully as we left; the other looked on seemingly indifferent. Several of their cobbers hurled stones, which caught my mother on her cheek. It was not long after that that the end came… I want to go back to my room now,’ my father said.
The following morning, when I arrived, his room smelled of caraway seed rolls, hot out of the oven, and freshly ground coffee beans. The small table was laden with körözöt, several types of salami and kolbász, cheeses, including two kinds of cottage cheese, stewed plums, fresh peppers and tomatoes.
‘This is a very good breakfast, Eva,’ my father said, his mouth full of kolbász pepper and roll. ‘Eat, Eva, eat. There is plenty here.’
I helped myself to coffee and milk, and asked my father a question about his father’s prayer book, which he had mentioned for the first time yesterday. He waved my question aside and also another about the Nagy family and the shop.
‘Later. We’ll speak of all that later. Right now, what is important is to sort out your future. Your mother can’t sleep at night for worrying about it. But luckily, I have an idea now.’
The solution had come to him after talking to Miklos, whose flat he had finally visited late last night. It turned out that Miklos had a friend, whose friend lived in Sydney, whose name was Gabi. Gabi had just lost his wife and urgently needed a new one.
‘He is not a young man, Eva, but not too old for you either. We will stop over to meet him on our way back to Wellington. Just say you agree and I will arrange it.’
This again. My heart sank. On the positive side, though, the renewed focus on my future rather than his past was a sure sign that my father was less troubled since our conversation yesterday.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.
‘I will phone Gabi and your mother as soon as I can find a phone that works in this God-forsaken country.’
Wait a minute, I wanted to say. I thought New Zealand, not Hungary, was the God-forsaken country.
‘Eva, it’s not natural for a woman to live alone without a man.’
‘I said I’ll think about it.’
On our last morning in Budapest, I called on my father after breakfast to go for our usual walk. Again it was his wish to make the journey to the waste ground. When we got there, he stood on the edge of the dusty ground starin
g at the block of flats occupying the area. Luckily, the people who lived in the flats never seemed to be about. With my father silent and motionless beside me, I tried my old trick to conjure up pictures of my childhood. Eyes shut, I stared into the black film, hoping for the developing chemical to work its magic. I saw the small girl on the toboggan, bundled up against the cold, surrounded by thick snow – the familiar photo in the family album. I waited, zooming in closer. Could that be a merry look on her face? Was she perhaps having at least an interesting time? The girl vanished and no matter how hard I peered, no new pictures emerged from the fog.
My father was still standing on the dusty ground, not moving, just looking. When I was a child growing up in New Zealand, I had wanted nothing else than to forget my early life in Hungary. It seemed that I had succeeded all too well in what I had set out to do.
Leaving Budapest with my father, we stood in an interminable queue in the crowded railway station, waiting to board the train for Vienna. As we rattled away from the badly lit station and gathered speed, he squeezed my hand. I squeezed his back but my mind was again on Douglas. We chugged on towards the Austrian border through the flat, pleasant countryside. Fields, houses and church spires floated by, and I thought that whatever my intentions in marrying Douglas had been, all that was now irrelevant. After all, we had been apart for a number of years and, although we hadn’t yet taken the final step of divorce, the marriage was well and truly over. I had to accept that.
I remembered then my father talking about how he had survived the forced march in a blizzard in Russia, in winter, without warm clothing, without adequate food.
Replacement Girl Page 18
