“You’re going to give up the building in Paris.”
“Of course,” she said. “Think of how much my brother’s already lost.”
“But how will we get them to stop dunning him? If you flee, won’t they go after him to tell them where you are?”
“He’s got to come too. He’s got to sell whatever’s left and get out as soon as he can.”
“And your mother? And my parents? And Mátyás? We can’t leave without knowing what’s happened to him. We’ve talked about this, Klara. We can’t do it.”
“We’ll take our parents. We’ll arrange for Mátyás to have passage too, if he returns in time.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll speak to Klein and arrange for him to join us when he does return.”
“Listen to me. Hundreds of people have died trying to get to Palestine.”
“I understand. But we have to try. If we stay, they’ll bleed the family of everything. And in the end they might not be satisfied with the money.”
Andras sat silent for a long moment. “You know how Tibor feels about this,” he said. “He wanted us to go a long time ago.”
“And what do you think?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Her chest rose and fell beneath the drape of her blouse. “You have to understand,” she said. “I can’t stay here and allow us, or my family, to be done to this way. I didn’t then. And I won’t now.”
He did understand. Of course he’d known this about her: It was her nature. This was why György hadn’t told her. They were going to have to leave Hungary. They would sell the property in Paris; they would go to Klein and beg him to arrange one last trip. That night they would begin to plan how it might be done. But for the moment there was nothing more to say. He took her hand again and she held his gaze, and he knew, too, that she understood why he’d kept the truth from her for so many months.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. Passage to the East
IN THE WEEKS that followed, he tried not to think about the Struma. He tried not to think about the deceived passengers who found themselves aboard a wreck of a ship, ill-provisioned and ill-equipped for the journey. He tried not to think about the prospect of their own passage down the Danube, the constant fear of discovery, his wife and son suffering for lack of food and water; he tried not to think about leaving his brother and his parents behind in Europe. He tried to think only of the necessity of getting out, and the means for arranging the trip. He wired Rosen to tell him of the change in their situation, the new urgency that had come upon them. Two weeks later, a reply came via air mail with the news that Shalhevet had secured six emergency visas-six!-enough for Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana, and the children. Once they arrived in Palestine, he wrote, it would be easier to arrange visas for the others-for Mendel Horovitz, who would be so valuable to the Yishuv; and for György and Elza and Andras’s parents and the rest of the family. There was no time to celebrate the news; there was too much to be done. Klara had to write to her solicitor in Paris to hasten the sale of the property. Andras had to write to his parents to explain what was happening, and why. And they had to see Klein.
It was Klara’s idea that they should go together, all six of them. She believed he might be more inclined to help if he met the people he’d be saving. They arranged to go on a Sunday afternoon; they dressed in visiting clothes and pushed the babies in their perambulators. Klara and Ilana walked ahead, their summer hats dipping toward each other like two bellflowers. Andras and Tibor followed. They might have been any Hungarian family out for a Sunday stroll. No one would have guessed that they were missing a seventh, a brother who was lost in Ukraine. No one would have guessed that they were trying to arrange an illegal flight from Europe. In her pocketbook Klara carried a telegram from her solicitor, stating that her property on the rue de Sévigné would be listed for ninety thousand francs, and that the transfer of the money from the sale, though difficult, might be accomplished through his contacts in Vienna, who had contacts in Budapest. Nothing would be done in Klara’s name; ownership of the building had already been officially transferred to the non-Jewish solicitor himself, because it had become illegal for Jews to own real estate in occupied France. Everyone would have to be paid along the way, of course, but if the sale went well, there would still be some seventy thousand francs left over. No one would have known, looking at Klara as she walked along Váci út that Sunday afternoon-her fine-boned back held straight, her features composed under the pale blue shadow of her hat-how unhappy she’d been two nights earlier as she’d drafted a telegram to her solicitor, instructing him to make the sale. It had been a long time since she and Andras had imagined they might go back someday to reclaim their Paris lives. But the apartment and the studio were real things that still belonged to her, things that marked out a territory for her in the city that had been her home for seventeen years. The property had made the impossible seem possible; it made them believe that everything might change, that they might return someday. The decision to sell the building carried a sense of finality. They were giving up that source of hope in order to fund a desperate journey that might fail, to a place that was utterly foreign to them-an embattled desert territory ruled by the British. But they had made their decision. They would try. And so Klara had written to her solicitor, directing him to forward the proceeds of the sale to his agents in Vienna and Budapest.
At the house in Frangepán köz, where time stood still and the very sunlight filtering down through the high clouds seemed antique, they found the milk goats bleating in their yard and pulling at a stack of sweet hay. Seven-month-old Tamás stared in fascination. He looked at Klara as though to ask if he should be alarmed. When he saw she was smiling, he turned again to the goats and pointed a finger.
“Our sons are city boys,” Tibor said. “By the time I was his age, I’d seen a thousand goats.”
“Perhaps they won’t be city boys for long,” Klara said.
They turned away from the goats and walked the stone path to the door. Tibor knocked, and Klein’s grandmother answered, her white hair hidden under a kerchief, her dress covered with a red-embroidered apron. From the kitchen came the smell of stuffed cabbage. Andras, exhausted from the week’s work, became suddenly and ravenously hungry. Klein’s grandmother beckoned them into the bright sitting room, where the elder Mr. Klein sat in an armchair with his feet soaking in a tin basin. He wore the same faded crimson robe he’d worn when Andras and Tibor had last visited; his hair stood up in the same winged style, as if his head meant to take flight. A haze of tea-scented steam wreathed his legs. He raised a hand in greeting.
“My husband’s bunions are bothering him,” his wife said. “Otherwise he would get up to welcome you.”
“I welcome you,” the old man said, and made a polite half bow. “Please sit.”
Mrs. Klein went off down the portrait-lined hall to get her grandson. None of them sat, despite the elder Klein’s invitation. Instead they waited in a close-shouldered group, glancing around at the room’s ancient furniture and its profusion of photographs. Andras saw Klara’s eyes move over the images of the little family-the boy that must have been the child Klein, the beautiful and mysterious woman, the sad-eyed man-and he felt again as though the house contained the ghost of some long-ago loss. Klara must have sensed it too; she drew Tamás closer and passed her thumb across his mouth, as if removing an invisible film of milk.
Klein followed his grandmother back down the hall and into the sitting room. She ducked into the kitchen; he came forward, blinking in the afternoon light. Andras had to wonder how long it had been since he’d last emerged from his den of dossiers and maps and radios. His eyes were dark-shadowed, his hair stiff for want of washing. He wore a cotton undershirt and a pair of ink-stained trousers. His feet were bare. He needed a shave. He scrutinized the group of them and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No, I tell you. Not a chance.”
“Let me make some tea whil
e you’re talking,” Klein’s grandmother called.
“No tea,” he called back to her. “We’re not talking. They’re leaving. Do you understand?” But they could hear a kitchen cabinet open and close, and water rolling into the metallic hollow of a teapot.
Klein raised his hands toward the ceiling.
“Be civil,” the elder Klein said to his grandson. “They’ve come all this way.”
“What you’re asking is impossible,” Klein said, speaking to Andras and Tibor. “Impossible, and illegal. You could all end up in jail, or dead.”
“We’ve considered that,” Klara said, her tone demanding that he look at her. “We still want to go.”
“Impossible!” he repeated.
“But this is what you do,” Andras said. “You’ve done it before. We can pay you. We’ve got the money, or we’ll have it soon.”
“Lower your voice,” Klein said. “The windows are open. You don’t know who might be listening.”
Andras lowered his voice. “Our situation has become urgent,” he said. “We want you to arrange our transport, and then we want to get the rest of our family out.”
Klein sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. “Get someone else to help you,” he said.
“Why should they get someone else?” his grandfather said. “You’re the best.”
Klein made a sound of frustration in his throat. His grandmother, having finished her preparations in the kitchen, wheeled a little tea cart into the room, parked it beside the sofa, and began to fill ancient-looking Herend cups.
“If you don’t help them, they will try someone else,” she said, with a note of quiet reproach. She cocked her head, pausing in her tea-pouring to scrutinize Klara, as if the future were written upon the dotted swiss of her dress. “They’ll go to Pál Behrenbohm, and he’ll turn them away. They’ll go to Szászon. They’ll go to Blum. And if that fails, they’ll go to János Speitzer. And you know what will happen then.” She handed the cups around, offering sugar and cream, and poured a final cup for herself.
Klein looked from his grandmother to Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana and the babies. He wiped his palms against his undershirt. He was one man against all of them. He raised his hands in defeat. “It’s your funeral,” he said.
“Please sit and drink your tea,” Klein’s grandmother said. “And Miklós, you need not use that morbid language.”
They took their places around the table and drank the strange smoky tea she’d prepared for them. It tasted like wood fires burning, and it made Andras think of fall. In lowered voices they talked about the details: how Klein would arrange transport down the Danube with a friend who owned a barge, and how the families would be secreted away in two ingeniously built compartments in the cargo area, and how drugged milk must be prepared for the babies so they wouldn’t cry, and how they would need to bring emergency food enough for two weeks’ travel, because a trip that ordinarily took a few days might take much longer in wartime. Klein would have to make inquiries about ships leaving from Romania, and where and how they might gain passage aboard one of them. It might take a month or two to arrange the journey, if all went well. He, Klein, was not a swindler, not like János Speitzer. He would not book passage for them upon an unsound boat, nor tell them to bring less food than was needed so they would have to buy more from his friends at cruel prices. He would not place them in care of a crew that would steal their luggage or prevent them from going ashore to a doctor if they needed one. Nor would he make false promises about the safety or success of the trip. It might fail at any point. They had to understand that.
When Klein had finished, he sat back against the sofa and scratched his chest through his undershirt. “That’s how it works,” he concluded. “A hard, risky trip. No guarantees.”
Klara moved forward in her chair and placed her cup on the little table. “No guarantees,” she repeated. “But at least we’ll have a chance.”
“I’m not going to speculate about your chances,” Klein said. “But if you still want to engage my services, I’m willing to do the work.”
They exchanged a look-Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana. They were ready. This was what they’d hoped for. “By all means,” Tibor said. “We’ll take whatever risks we have to take.”
The men shook hands and arranged to meet again in a week. Klein bowed to the women and retreated back down the hallway, where they heard the door of his room open and close. Andras imagined him taking a new manila folder from a box and inscribing their family name upon its tab. The thought filled him with sudden panic. So many files. Stacks and stacks of them, all over the bed and desk and bureau. What had happened to those people? How many of them had made it to Palestine?
The next evening Klara went to her brother to ask his forgiveness. She and Andras walked together to the house on Benczúr utca, pushing the baby in his carriage. In György’s study, Klara took her brother’s hands in her own and asked that he excuse her, that he understand how surprised she’d been and how incapable, at that moment, of appreciating what he’d done. She hated the thought that he’d already lost so much of his estate. She had authorized the sale of her property in Paris, she told him, and would begin to repay her debt to him as soon as she had access to the money.
“You’re in no debt to me,” György said. “What’s mine is yours. Most of what I had came from our father’s estate, in any case. And it’ll do little good for you to put money into my hands now. Our extortionists will only find a way to take it.”
“But what can I do?” she said, on the verge of tears. “How can I repay you?”
“You can forgive me for operating on your behalf without your knowledge. And perhaps you can convince your husband to forgive me for requiring that he keep the secret from you.”
“I do, of course,” Klara said; and Andras said he did as well. Everyone agreed that György had acted in Klara’s best interest, and György expressed the hope that his son would seek Klara and Andras’s forgiveness too. But as he said it, his voice faltered and broke.
“What is it?” Klara said. “What’s happened?”
“He’s received another call-up notice,” György said. “This time he’ll have to go. There’s nothing more we can do about it. We’ve offered a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the house, but it’s not the money they want. They want to make an example of young men like József.”
“Oh, György,” Klara said.
Andras found himself speechless. He could no more imagine József Hász in the Munkaszolgálat than he could imagine Miklós Horthy himself showing up one morning on the bus from Óbuda to Szentendre, a tattered coat on his back, a lunch pail in his hand. His first sensation was one of satisfaction. Why shouldn’t József have to serve, when he, Andras, had already served for two years and was serving still? But György’s pained expression brought him back to himself. Whatever else József was, he was György’s child.
“I haven’t done a very good job of raising my son,” György said, turning his gaze toward the window. “I gave him everything he wanted, and tried to keep him from anything that would hurt him. But I gave him too much. I protected him too much. He’s come to believe that the world should present itself at his feet. He’s been living in comfort in Buda while other men serve in his place. Now he’ll have to get by on his strength and his wits, like everyone else. I hope he’s got enough of both.”
“Perhaps he can be assigned to one of the companies close to home,” Andras said.
“That won’t be up to him,” György said. “They’ll put him where they want to.”
“I can write to General Martón.”
“You don’t owe József anything,” György said.
“He helped me in Paris. More than once.”
György nodded slowly. “He can be generous when he wants to be.”
“Andras will write to the general,” Klara said. “And then maybe József will come to Palestine, with the rest of us.”
“To Palestine?�
� György said. “You’re not going to Palestine.”
“Yes,” Klara said. “We have no other choice.”
“But, darling, there’s no way to get to Palestine.”
Klara explained about Klein. György’s eyes grew stern as she spoke.
“Don’t you understand?” he said. “This is why I paid the Ministry of Justice. This is why I sold the paintings and the rugs and the furniture. This is why I’m selling the house! To keep you from taking a foolish risk like this.”
“It would be foolish to throw away what we have left,” Klara said.
György turned to Andras. “Please tell me you haven’t agreed to this wild scheme.”
“My brother witnessed the massacre in the Délvidék. He thinks it could happen here, and worse.”
György sank back in his chair, his face drained of blood. From outside came the drumbeat and brass of a military band; they must have been marching up Andrássy út to Heroes’ Square. “What about us?” he said, faintly. “What’s going to happen once they discover you’re gone? Who do you think they’ll question? Who’ll get the blame for spiriting you away?”
“You must join us in Palestine,” Klara said.
He shook his head. “Impossible. I’m too old to begin a new life.”
“What choice do you have?” she said. “They’ve taken away your position, your fortune, your home. Now they’re taking your son.”
“You’re dreaming,” he said.
“I wish you’d talk to Elza about it. By the end of the year they’ll call you to the labor service too. Elza and Mother will be left all alone.”
He touched the edge of his blotter with his thumbs. A stack of documents lay before him, thick sheaves of ivory legal paper. “Do you see this?” he said, pushing at the papers. “These are the documents assigning possession of the house to the new owner.”
“Who is it?” Klara asked.
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