Andras drew a breath into the constricted passages of his lungs. “So that’s what you’ve done,” he said. “That’s where the money’s going.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And she knows nothing about it?”
“Nothing. I want her to have the illusion of safety, at least. I think it’s best to say nothing to her unless the situation changes significantly for the better or the worse. If she knew, I’m certain she would try to stop me. I don’t know what form her attempt might take or what its consequences might be. I’ve informed my wife about the arrangement, of course-I’ve had to explain to her why it’s been necessary to dissolve so many of our assets-and she agrees it’s best to keep the whole thing from Klara for now. My mother disagrees, but thus far I’ve managed to make her see my perspective.”
“But how long can it go on?” Andras said. “They’ll bleed you dry.”
“That seems to be their plan. I’ve already had to place this house under a second mortgage, and recently I’ve had to ask my wife to part with some of her jewelry. We’ve sold the car and the piano and some valuable paintings. There are other things that can be sold, but not an endless supply. And as my assets diminish, the percentage inches up-it’s a way to keep the arrangement lucrative for this magistrate and his cronies in the Ministry of Justice. I believe we’ll have to sell the house soon and take a flat closer to the center of town. I dread that-it’ll become increasingly difficult to explain to Klara why we have to do these things. It’s not possible to claim József’s exemption as a continual drain of that magnitude. But Klara’s freedom may be infinitely dear. Now that the government has found a way to siphon away our assets, I’m sure they won’t stop until there’s nothing left.”
“But the government is the guilty party! Sándor Goldstein was killed. Klara was raped. Her daughter is the evidence. The government was responsible. They’re the ones who should be paying her.”
“In a just world, it might be possible to prove their guilt,” said Hász. “But my lawyers assure me that Klara’s accusations of rape would mean nothing now, particularly considering the fact that Klara fled justice herself. Not that they would have meant much at the time, mind you. Her situation was desperate from the beginning. If she’d stayed, the authorities would have pulled every dirty trick to demonstrate her guilt and hide their own. That was why my father and his lawyer decided she had to leave the country, and why they couldn’t bring her back. My father never stopped trying, though-until his dying day he hoped it might still be done.”
Andras rose and went to the fire, where the logs had burned down to glowing coals. The heat of them seemed to reach inside him and send a bright wave of anger through his chest. He turned to look into his brother-in-law’s eyes. “Klara has been in danger for months, and you didn’t tell me,” he said. “You didn’t think I could bear to know. Maybe you thought I didn’t know what existed between Klara and Novak in Paris. Maybe you’re afraid yourself that something’s happened between them here in Budapest. Did you plan to keep making these payments until the problem went away? Were you going to leave me in the dark forever?”
The furrows of Hász’s brow deepened again. “You have a right to be angry,” he said. “I did keep you in the dark. I didn’t feel I could trust you not to tell her. You have an uncommon relationship with your wife. The two of you seem to confide everything to each other. But perhaps you can understand my position, too. I wanted to protect her, and I didn’t see how the knowledge could help either of you. I imagined it could only bring you pain.”
“I’d rather have worried,” Andras said. “I’d rather have had the pain than been kept ignorant of any problem that concerns my wife.”
“I know how Klara loves you,” György said. “I wish you and I had gotten to know each other better before you were conscripted. Maybe if we had, you’d understand why I felt it was right to act as I did.”
Andras could only nod in silence.
“But as to the question of Klara’s fidelity, I can assure you I’ve never felt the slightest uncertainty in that quarter. As far as I can divine, my sister adores you and you alone. She’s never given me reason to believe otherwise, not in all the time you’ve been away.” He took the poker in his hand and looked toward the fire again, and his shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. “If I had anything like my former property or influence, I might be more certain of being able to do something for your brother. The military has become increasingly greedy regarding bribes and favors. But I’ll see if I can speak to someone I know.”
“And what about Klara?” Andras said. “How can we be certain she’s safe?”
“For now, apparently, the payments protect her. We can hope that the authorities will lose interest before my assets are exhausted. If the war goes on, they’ll have more pressing worries. As for taking the course we took before-in 1920, I mean-Klara’s leaving the country is an impossibility, particularly in her current state. Her comings and goings are too closely watched. In any case, it’s impossible to get entry visas now to the countries where she might be safe. We’ll have to persevere, that’s all.”
“Klara is an intelligent woman,” Andras said. “Perhaps she could help us see a way through this.”
“I have the most profound admiration for my sister’s intelligence,” Hász said. “She’s managed brilliantly in adverse circumstances. But I don’t want these concerns to weigh upon her. I want her to feel safe as long as she can.”
“So do I,” Andras said. “But, as you observed, I’m not in the habit of keeping secrets from my wife.”
“You’ve got to promise me you won’t speak to her about it. I don’t like to place you in a position of incomplete honesty, but in this situation I find I have no choice.”
“You mean to say that I have no choice.”
“Understand me, Andras. We’ve invested a great deal in Klara’s safety already. If you were to tell her now, it might all have been in vain.”
“What if it were my wife’s wish not to bring her family to ruin?”
“What else can we do? Would you prefer that she turn herself in? Or that she risk her own life and your child’s in an escape attempt?” He got to his feet and paced before the fireplace. “I assure you I’ve considered the problem from every angle. I see no other course. I beg you to respect my judgment, Andras. You must believe that I have some insight into Klara’s character too.”
Though it still seemed a betrayal, Andras agreed to keep his silence. In fact he had no other choice; he had no money of his own, no high connections, no way to step between Klara and the law. And he was to leave again for Bánhida in the morning. At least the current arrangement would keep Klara protected while he was away. He thanked Hász for his pledge to see what might be done for Mátyás, and they parted with handshakes and serious looks that suggested they would move through this difficulty with the stoicism of Hungarian men. But as Andras left the house on Benczúr utca the news struck him again with all its original force. He felt as if he were walking through a different city, one that had lain all this time just behind the city he had known; the feeling brought to mind Monsieur Forestier’s stage sets, those palimpsestic architectures in which the familiar concealed the strange and terrifying. In this inside-out reality, the secret of Klara’s identity had become a secret kept from her, rather than one held by her; now Andras, no longer deceived, had agreed to become his wife’s deceiver.
He thought it might calm his nerves to go down to the river and stand on the Széchenyi Bridge. He needed some time to arrange the situation in his mind before he went home to Klara. How long after he’d entered the work service, he wondered, had Madame Novak gone to the authorities? Was it merely the memory of past wrongs that had sent her there, or had there been a more recent wound? What did he really know of the present situation between Klara and Novak? Was it possible that, despite György’s reassurances, Andras had been betrayed? A jolt of nausea went through him, and he had to stop at the curb and sit down. A stra
y mutt sniffed around his ankles; when he extended a hand toward the dog it drew back and ran away. He got up and pulled his coat closer, tightened his muffler around his throat. From Benczúr utca he walked to Bajza utca, and from Bajza to the tree-lined stretch of Andrássy út, where pedestrians huddled against the chilly wind and the streetcar sounded its familiar bell. But as he walked down Andrássy he found himself becoming increasingly anxious, and he realized that it was because he was approaching the Opera House, where, as far as he knew, Zoltán Novak was still director. It had been more than two years since he’d seen Novak; the party at Marcelle’s had been the last time. He wondered if the wounds Novak had suffered that night could have moved him to a cruel and subtle act-if he might have brought Klara’s peril to his wife’s attention, might have betrayed Klara through his knowledge that Edith would want to be rid of her. Andras stopped on the street before the Operaház and considered what he might say to Novak that very moment if he could walk into the man’s office and confront him. What accusations might he make, what would Novak admit? The knot of connection among the three of them, himself and Novak and Klara, was so convoluted that to pull at any one of its strands was to draw the whole mess tighter. It was possible that if Andras walked into that building he might emerge with the knowledge that Klara had betrayed him, had been unfaithful to him for months-even that the child she was carrying was not his own. But wasn’t it worse to stand outside in ignorance, worse to return to Bánhida and not know? The doors of the Operaház were open to the brisk afternoon; he could see men and women inside, waiting in line at the boxoffice window. He drew a breath and went in.
How many months had passed, he wondered, since he’d been inside a theater? It had been since his last summer in Paris-he and Klara had gone to see a dress rehearsal of La Fille Mal Gardée. Now he walked in through one of the Romanesque doorways of the performance space and made his way down the carpeted aisle. Onstage, the curtains had been drawn aside to reveal an Italian village square with a white marble fountain at its center. The buildings surrounding it were made of fake stone cut from yellow-painted pasteboard, with awnings of green-and-white-striped canvas. A carpenter bent over a set of steps leading into one of the buildings; the sound of his hammer in the open space of the auditorium gave Andras a pang of nostalgia. How he wished he were arriving here to install a set, or even to set up a coffee table for the actors and deliver their messages and fetch them when it was time to go onstage. How he wished he had a deskful of half-finished drawings waiting for him at home, a studio deadline looming in the near distance.
He ran to the front of the auditorium and climbed the steps at the side of the stage. The carpenter didn’t look up from his work. In the wings, a man who must have been the properties master was arranging props on their shelves; the whine of an electric saw rose from the set-building shop, and the smell of fresh-cut wood came to Andras with its layered suggestions of his father’s lumberyard and the Sarah-Bernhardt and Monsieur Forestier’s workshop and the labor camp in Subcarpathia. He wandered farther into the back hallways of the theater, up a set of stairs to the dressing rooms; the whitewashed doors, with their copperplate-lettered names in brass cardholders, chastely hid the disasters of makeup boxes and stained dressing gowns and plumed hats and torn stockings and dog-eared scripts and moldering armchairs and cracked mirrors and wilted bouquets that he knew must lie on the other side. When Klara had been a girl, he realized, she must have dressed for her performances in one of these rooms. He remembered a photograph from those days, Klara in a skirt of tattered leaves, her hair interwoven with twigs like a woodland fairy’s. He could almost see her sylphid shadow slipping across the hall from one room to another.
He walked down the hallway and climbed a flight of stairs; at the top, a hallway held another row of dressing rooms. The hall ended at a wooden door with a white enameled nameplate, the same one Novak had used at the Sarah-Bernhardt in Paris. There were the familiar words etched in black paint, their gold highlights and curlicues dimmed by the travel between Paris and Budapest: Zoltán Novak, Directeur. From behind the door came a deep cough. Andras raised a hand to knock, then let it drop. Now that he had arrived at this threshold, his courage had fled. He had no idea what he would say to Zoltán Novak. From within came another deep cough, and then a third, closer. The door opened, and Andras found himself face-to-face with Novak himself. He was pale, wasted, his eyes bright with what appeared to be fever; his moustache drooped, and his suit hung loose on his frame. When he saw Andras before him his shoulders went slack.
“Lévi,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Andras said. “I suppose I wanted a word with you.”
Novak stood for a long moment before Andras, taking in the Munkaszolgálat uniform and the other changes that accompanied it. He let out a long and labored exhalation, then lifted his eyes to Andras’s.
“I must say you’re the last person I would have expected to find outside my door,” he said. “And, to be perfectly honest, among the last I might have wanted to see. But since you’re here, you might as well come in.”
Andras found himself following Novak into the dim sanctum of the office and standing before the large leather-topped desk. Novak waved a hand toward a chair, and Andras took off his cap and sat down. He glanced around at the shelves of libretti, the ledger books, the photographs of opera stars in costume. It was the Sarah-Bernhardt office refigured in a smaller, darker form.
“Well,” Novak said. “You might as well tell me what brings you here, Lévi.”
Andras folded and unfolded his Munkaszolgálat cap. “I had some news this afternoon,” he said. “I’ve just learned that your wife revealed Klara’s identity to the Hungarian police.”
“You learned that just this afternoon?” Novak said. “But it happened nearly two years ago.”
Andras’s face flamed, but he kept his eyes steady on Novak’s. “György Hász saw to it that I knew nothing. I went to him today to see if he could help exempt my brother from front-line duty, and he told me that his funds were engaged in keeping my wife out of jail.”
Novak got up to pour himself a drink from the decanter that stood on a table in the corner. He glanced back over his shoulder. Andras shook his head.
“It’s just tea,” Novak said. “I can’t take spirits anymore.”
“No, thank you,” Andras said.
Novak returned to the desk with his glass of tea. He was pale and haggard, but his eyes burned with a terrible fierce light, the source of which Andras was afraid to guess. “The government is a clever extortionist,” Novak said.
“Thanks to Edith, Klara’s life is in danger,” Andras said. “And my brother is on a train to Belgorod as we speak. I’m to rejoin my company in Bánhida tomorrow morning and can do nothing about any of it.”
“We all have our tragedies,” Novak said. “Those are yours. I’ve got mine.”
“How can you speak that way?” Andras said. “It’s your own wife who did this. And it wouldn’t surprise me if you’d had a hand in it.”
“Edith did what she got it into her mind to do,” Novak said curtly. “She heard a rumor from a friend that Klara had come back to town. Heard she’d married you, and that you’d gone to the work service. I suppose she thought I might go looking for Klara, or that Klara might look for me.” He spoke the last words in a tone of bitter irony. “Edith wanted to give her what she thought she deserved. She thought it would be a simple matter, but she didn’t count on the Ministry of Justice to be so willing to be bought off. When she heard about the arrangement they’d made with your brother-in-law, she was furious.”
“And now? How do I know she won’t do something more, or worse?”
“Edith died of ovarian cancer last spring,” Novak said. He gave Andras a challenging look, as if daring him to show pity.
“I’m sorry,” Andras said.
“Spare me your condolences. If you’re sorry, it’s only because you’ve lost the chance to hol
d her accountable for what she did. But she was punished enough while she lived. Her death was a terrible one. My son and I had to watch her go through it. Carry that back with you to the work service, if you want something to ease your anger.”
Andras twisted his hat in silence. There was no way to reply. Novak, seeing he’d rendered Andras mute, seemed to relent a little. “I miss her,” he said. “I was never as good to her as she deserved. I suspect it’s my own guilt that makes me cruel to you.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Andras said.
“I’m glad you did. I’m glad to know Klara’s still safe, at least. I’ve tried not to hear of her at all, but I’m glad to know that much.” He began to cough deeply, and had to wipe his eyes and take a drink of his tea. “I won’t know more of her for a long time, if ever. I’m leaving here in a month. I’ve been called too.”
“Called where?”
“To the labor service.”
“But that’s impossible,” Andras said. “You’re not of military age. You have your position here at the Opera. You’re not even Jewish.”
“I’m Jewish enough for them,” Novak said. “My mother was a Jew. I converted as a young man, but no one cares much about that now. I shouldn’t have been allowed to keep this job after the race laws changed, but some friends of mine in the Ministry of Culture chose to look the other way. They’ve all lost their jobs by now. As for my position in the community, that’s part of the problem. They mean to remove me from it. Apparently there’s a new secret quota for the labor battalions. A certain percentage of conscripts must be so-called prominent Jews. I’ll be in illustrious company. My colleague at the symphony was called to the same battalion, and we’ve just learned that the former president of the engineering college will be joining us too. Age isn’t a factor. Nor, unfortunately, is fitness for service. I’ve never quite shaken the consumption that brought me back here in ’37. You’ve been through the service yourself; you know as well as I do that I’m not likely to return.”
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