The inspectors came and went in covered trucks. Soldiers drove the trucks directly into the inspection shed and parked them beside the train. Through the broad rectangular doors, Andras could see the soldiers moving quickly between the train and the trucks. The inspectors didn’t bother to conceal what was going on; they oversaw the operation with the confidence of their privileged place in the chain of command. Overcoats, blankets, potatoes, cans of beans, guns: Every day, a tithe of it drifted from the boxcars to the trucks. When the soldiers had finished with one boxcar, the inspectors would seal it and the train would roll forward so the soldiers could get to work on the next. They had to work fast for the trains to run on time; the railway schedule made no allowance for black-market siphoning. Once the soldiers had done their work, the inspectors would declare the trainload complete and sign the paperwork. Then they would send the train off to the front. The covered trucks would roll out, the siphoned goods would slide into the black market, and the inspectors would share the proceeds among themselves. It was a tidy and profitable business. In their shed, the inspectors smoked expensive cigars and compared gold pocket watches and played cards for piles of pengő. The guards must have been getting their share of the profits, too-at lunchtime, instead of standing in line at the mess tent, they drank beer and grilled strings of Debrecen sausages, smoked Mirjam cigarettes, and paid the work servicemen to polish their new-looking boots.
Andras knew what the skimming would mean to the soldiers and laborers on the front. There would be too few blankets to go around, too few potatoes in the soup. Someone might not get new boots when his old boots fell apart. The work servicemen would be the hardest hit: They’d be forced to write promissory notes for hundreds of pengő to buy the most basic supplies. Later, when the guards and officers went home on furlough, they would present the notes to the servicemen’s families, threatening that the men would be killed if their wives or mothers didn’t produce the money. But the labor servicemen at Szentendre Yard seemed to regard the practice as a matter of course. What could any of them have done to stop it? Day after day they loaded the trains and the soldiers unloaded them.
As if to remind them of their powerlessness, all the Jewish workers now had to wear distinguishing armbands, ugly canary-yellow tubes of fabric that slid over their sleeves. Klara had had to sew these for Andras before he reported for duty. Even Jews who had long ago converted to Christianity had to wear armbands, though theirs were white. The bands were mandatory at all times. Even when the weather turned unseasonably hot, the sun reflecting off the crushed rock of the rail yard as though from a million mirrors, and the laborers stripped off their shirts-even then, they had to wear the armbands over their bare arms. The first time Andras had been told to retrieve his band from his discarded shirt, he had stared at the guard in disbelief.
“You’re just as much a Jew with your shirt off as you are with it on,” the man had said, and he waited for Andras to put on the armband before he turned away.
The commander at Szentendre was a man called Varsádi, a tall paunchy flatlander with an even temper and a taste for leisure. Varsádi’s chief vices were mild ones: his pipe, his flask, his sweet tooth. He was a constant smoker and a happy drunk. He left the matter of discipline to his men, who were less forgiving, less easily distracted by a fine tin of Egyptian tobacco or a smoky Scotch. Varsádi himself liked to sit in the shade of the administrative office, which stood on a low artificial hill overlooking the river, and watch the proceedings of his rail yard while he entertained visiting commanders from other companies or enjoyed his share of the goods that had been intended for the front. Andras knew to be grateful that he was not a Barna nor even a Kálozi, but the sight of Varsádi with his heels on a wooden crate, his arms crossed over his chest in contentment, a lemniscate of smoke drifting from his pipe, was its own special brand of torture.
By the end of their first week, Andras and Mendel had begun to discuss the newspaper they might publish at Szentendre Yard-The Crooked Rail, it would be called. “À la Mode at Szentendre,” Mendel had extemporized to Andras one morning on the bus, indicating the band on his arm. “The color yellow, ever popular for spring, has surged to the leading edge of fashion.” Andras laughed, and Mendel took out his little notebook and began to write. The trendsetting young men of the 79/6th have made a bold statement in buttercup, he read aloud a few minutes later: Accessorize! The au courant favor a trim band of ten centimeters worn about the bicep, in an Egyptian twill suitable for all occasions. Next week: Our fashion correspondent investigates a new rage for nakedness among soldiers on the Eastern Front.
“Not bad,” Andras said.
“The Yard’s an easy target. I’m surprised they don’t have a paper already.”
“I’m not,” Andras said. “The other men seem half asleep.”
“That’s just it. Every day they’re watching these army stooges steal bread from the men on the front, and they take it all as a matter of course!”
“Only because they’re not being starved to death themselves.”
“Well, let’s wake them up,” Mendel said. “Let’s get them a little angry about what’s going on. First we’ll make them laugh in the usual manner. Then, later, we’ll slide in a piece or two about what it’s like in a real camp. Especially if you’re short on food or missing an overcoat. Maybe we’ll inspire them to slow down the operation a little. If we all drag our feet in the loading, the soldiers won’t have as much time to unload. The trains still have to roll out on time, you know.”
“But how to do it without risking our necks?”
“Maybe we don’t have to hide the paper from Varsádi and the guards. If the coating’s sweet enough, they’ll never taste what’s in the pill. We’ll praise Szentendre to the skies in comparison to the other hellholes we’ve been in, and both sides will hear what we want them to hear.”
Andras agreed, and that was where it began. The Crooked Rail would be a more elaborate operation than the previous two papers; their residence in Budapest would give them access to a typewriter, a drafting table, an array of supplies. The journey to and from Szentendre would provide time for two daily editorial meetings. They would begin slowly, filling the first issues with nothing but jokes. There would be the usual fabricated news, the usual sports, fashion, and weather; there would be a special arts section complete with event reviews. This week the Szentendre Ballet debuted “Boxcar,” Mendel wrote for the first issue, a brilliant ensemble piece choreographed by Varsádi Varsádius, Budapest’s enfant terrible of dance. A certain element of repetition was offset by a delightful variability in the ages and physiques of the dancers. And then there would be a new feature called “Ask Hitler.” On their second Monday at Szentendre, Mendel presented Andras with a typescript:
D EAR H ITLER: Please explain your plan for the progress of the war in the East. With affection, S OLDIER
D EAR S OLDIER: I’m so pleased you asked! My plan is to build a large meat-grinder in the vicinity of Leningrad, fill it with young men, and crank the handle as fast as I can. With double affection, H ITLER
D EAR H ITLER: How do you propose to fight the British fleet in the Mediterranean? Yours most sincerely, P OPEYE
D EAR P OPEYE: First of all, I’m a fan! I forgive you for being American. I hope you’ll pay us a visit in the Reich when this nasty business is all over. Secondly, here is my plan: Fire my admirals until I find one who’ll take orders from a Führer who’s never been to sea. With admiration, H ITLER
D EAR H ITLER: What is your position on Hungary? Yours, M. H ORTHY
D EAR H ORTHY: Missionary, though at times I favor the croupade, just for variation. Love, H ITLER
“Maybe we should speak to Frigyes Eppler,” Andras said, once he’d read the piece. “Maybe he’d let us print this paper on the Journal’s press. I’d hate to subject a piece of work as fine as this to the mimeograph.”
“You flatter me, Parisi,” Mendel said. “But do you think he’d go for it?”
“We can
ask,” Andras said. “I don’t think he’d begrudge us a little ink and paper.”
“Make your illustrations,” Mendel said. “That can only help our case.”
Andras did, spending a sleepless night at the drafting table. He made an elaborate heading for the paper, two empty boxcars flanking a title stencilled in Gothic script. The fashion section carried a drawing of a young dandy in full Munkaszolgálat uniform, his armband radiating light. The dance review showed a line of laborers, fat and slender, young and old, struggling to hold crates of ammunition aloft. For the Hitler section, austerity and gravity seemed the best approach; Andras made a detailed pencil drawing of the Führer from an old edition of the Pesti Napló. At two in the morning Klara woke to feed Tamás, who had not yet learned to sleep through the night. After she’d put him to bed again, she came out to the sitting room and went to Andras, pressing her body against his back.
“What are you doing up so late?” she said. “Won’t you come to bed?”
“I’m almost finished. I’ll be in soon.”
She leaned over the drafting table to look at what he’d taped to its tilted plane. “The Crooked Rail,” she read. “What is that? Another newspaper?”
“The best one we’ve made so far.”
“You can’t be serious, Andras! Think of what happened in Transylvania.”
“I have,” he said. “This isn’t Transylvania. Varsádi’s not Kálozi.”
“Varsádi, Kálozi. It’s all the same. Those men have your life in their hands. Isn’t it bad enough you had to be called again? ‘Ask Hitler’?”
“The situation’s different at Szentendre,” he said. “The command structure hardly deserves the name. We’re not even going to publish underground.”
“How will you not publish underground? Do you plan to offer Varsádi a subscription?”
“As soon as we’ve got the first issue printed.”
She shook her head. “You can’t do this,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I know the risks,” he said. “Perhaps even better than you do. This paper’s not just fun and games, Klara. We want to make the men think about what’s going on at Szentendre. We’re shorting our brothers on the front every day. In my case, perhaps literally.”
“And what makes you think Varsádi won’t object?”
“He’s a sybarite and a fond old fool. The paper will praise his leadership. He won’t see anything past that. He’s got no loyalty to anything but his own pleasures. I’d be surprised if he had any politics at all.”
“And what if you’re mistaken?”
“Then we’ll stop publishing.” He stood and put his arms around her, but she kept her back erect, her eyes on his own.
“I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you,” she said.
“I’m a husband and a father,” he said, following the ridge of her spine with his palm. “I’ll stop immediately if I think there’s any real danger.”
At that moment Tamás began to cry again, and Klara drew herself away and went to soothe him. Andras stayed up all night to finish the work. Klara would come to understand his reasons, Andras felt, even those he hadn’t voiced aloud-those that were more personal, and concerned the difference between feeling at the mercy of one’s fate and, to some small degree, the master of it.
That evening, Saturday night, he knew Eppler would be at the offices of the Journal, wrangling with the final edits of Sunday’s edition. After dinner he and Mendel took their pages to the newspaper’s offices and made their plea. They wanted permission to typeset and print a hundred copies of the paper each week. They would come in after hours and use the outdated handpress that the Journal retained strictly for emergencies.
“You want me to make you a gift of the paper and ink?” Eppler said.
“Think of it as the Magyar Jewish Journal’s contribution to the welfare of forced laborers,” Mendel said.
“What about my welfare?” Eppler said. “My managing editor does nothing but grouse about finances as it is. What will he say when supplies begin to disappear?”
“Just tell him you’re suffering from war shortages.”
“We’re already suffering from war shortages!”
“Do it for Parisi,” Mendel said. “The mimeograph blurs his drawings terribly.”
Eppler regarded Andras’s illustrations through the shallow refraction of his horn-rimmed glasses. “That’s not a bad Hitler,” he said. “I should have made better use of you when you were working for me.”
“You’ll make good use of me when I work for you again,” Andras said.
“If you let us print The Crooked Rail, Parisi will swear to work for you when he’s done with the Munkaszolgálat,” Mendel said.
“I hope he’ll get himself back to school once he’s done with the Munkaszolgálat.”
“I’ll need to have some way to pay tuition,” Andras said.
Eppler blew a stuttering breath, took out a large pocket handkerchief and wiped his brow, then glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he said. “You can print fifty copies of your rag, and no more. Monday nights. Don’t let anyone catch you at it.”
“We kiss your hand, Eppler-úr,” Mendel said. “You’re a good man.”
“I’m a bitter and disillusioned man,” Eppler said. “But I like the idea that one of our presses might print a true word about the state we’re in.”
When Andras and Mendel presented Major Varsádi with the inaugural copy of The Crooked Rail, he gratified them by laughing so hard he was forced to remove his pocket handkerchief and wipe his eyes. He praised them for knowing how to make light of their situation, and opined that the other men might have something to learn from their attitude. The right state of mind, he said, pointing the burning tip of his cigar at them to make his point, could lighten any load. That night Andras brought home to Klara the news that they’d gotten permission to publish The Crooked Rail, and she gave him her reluctant blessing. The next day he and Mendel distributed fifty copies of the first issue, which spread as quickly and were consumed with as much relish as the first issues of The Snow Goose and The Biting Fly. Before long Varsádi began the practice of reading the paper aloud to the Munkaszolgálat officers who paid lunchtime visits to Szentendre Yard; Andras and Mendel could hear their laughter drifting down from the artificial hill where they took their long lunches.
Everyone at Szentendre wanted to make an appearance in the paper, even the foremen and guards who had seemed so stern in comparison to Varsádi. Their own squad foreman, Faragó, a mercurial man who liked to whistle American show tunes but had a habit of kicking his men from behind when his temper ran short, began to wink at Andras and Mendel in a companionate manner as they worked. To gratify him and avert his kicks, they wrote a piece entitled “Songbird of Szentendre,” a music review in which they praised his ability to reproduce any Broadway melody down to the thirty-second note. Their third week at the camp provided another fortuitous subject: The rail yard received a vast and mysterious shipment of ladies’ underthings, and the men had gotten them half loaded onto a train before anyone thought to wonder why the soldiers at the front might need a hundred and forty gross of reinforced German brassieres. The inspectors, giddy with the prospect of the black-market demand for those garments, appropriated three squads of labor servicemen to get the German brassieres off the train and into the covered trucks; at midday, the lunch break devolved into a fashion show of the latest support garments from the Reich. Labor servicemen and guards alike paraded in the stiff-cupped brassieres, pausing in front of Andras so he might capture their likenesses. Though the rest of the afternoon was consumed with a harder variant of labor-a half-dozen truckloads of small munitions arrived and had to be transferred to the trains-Andras scarcely felt the strain in his back or the shipping-crate splinters in his hands. He was considering the set of fashion drawings he might make-Berlin Chic angles into Budapest!-and calculating how long it might be before he and Mendel began to sh
ift the paper toward their aim. As it turned out, the following week’s shipments provided the ideal material. For three days the supply trucks contained nothing but medical supplies, as if to stanch a great flow of blood in the east. As the soldiers transferred crates of morphine and suture to the black-market trucks, Andras thought of Tibor’s letters from his last company posting-No splints or casting materials or antibiotics, of course-and began to roll out a new section in his mind. “Complaints from the Front” it would be called, a series of letters from Munkaszolgálat conscripts in various states of illness and hunger and exposure, to which a representative of the KMOF would reply with admonitions to buck up and accept the hardships of war: Who did these whimpering fairies think they were? They should act like men, goddamn it, and consider that their suffering served the Magyar cause. Andras introduced the idea to Mendel that evening on the bus, and they mounted the series the following week, in a small box that ran on the back page.
By the end of the month an almost imperceptible shift had taken place among the ranks of the 79/6th. A few of the men seemed to be paying a different kind of attention to what went on each day in the inspection shed. In small huddled groups they watched the soldiers rushing to unload crates of food and clothing stamped with the KMOF logo. They followed the movement of the boxes from the train to the covered trucks, then watched the trucks depart through the rail-yard gates. Andras and Mendel, who had attained a certain status thanks to their role as publishers of The Crooked Rail, began to approach the groups and speak to a few of the men. In lowered voices they pointed out how little time the soldiers had to move the goods; a few small adjustments on the part of the laborers might delay the siphoning just long enough to get a few more bandages, a few more crates of overcoats, sent to the men at the front.
The InvisibleBridge Page 56
