As soon as the door had closed, Andras ran to Mendel at the wall, knelt beside him, put a hand to his neck, his chest. No drumbeat of life; nothing. In the courtyard, silence. Not even the guards made a move. The Ivory Tower stepped forward and bent to László Goldfarb; no one stopped him. Then he got up and spoke quietly to the guard called Lukás. When he’d finished speaking, Lukás gave a nod and went to the corner of the yard. He removed a key ring from his belt and unlocked the wooden shed that held the shovels. The Ivory Tower took out a shovel and began to dig a hole near the courtyard wall. Andras watched through the haze of a nightmare, saw other men join the Ivory Tower at that incomprehensible task. József stood in open-mouthed silence until someone prodded him in the back; then he, too, took up a shovel and began to dig. Someone else must have helped Andras to his feet. He found himself stumbling toward the shed, taking the shovel Lukás handed him, bending beside József. As if in a dream, he angled the shovel toward the earth and jammed it in with all his strength. The earth was hard, compacted; the jolt of the blade radiated up the handle and into his bones. Under his breath he began to murmur a series of words in Hebrew: You deliver us from the snare of the fowler and the pestilence of destruction, cover us with your pinions, protect us from the plague that stalks in darkness and the disease that wastes at noon. You are our protection. No evil will befall us. The angels guard us on our way, carrying us in their hands. He knew the words came from the Ninety-first Psalm, the one recited at funerals. He knew he was digging a grave. But he could not make himself believe that the body beside the wall belonged to Mendel Horovitz, could not believe that this man he’d loved since boyhood had been killed. He could not grasp that stunning absolute. He could not breathe, could not think. In his head, the Ninety-first Psalm, the flash and crack of gunshots, the sound of shovels against cold earth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE. The Tatars in Hungary
THE MEN WERE BURIED at daybreak. There was no time for shivah, no time even to wash the bodies. Kozma considered it a kindness that he had let the 79/6th bury its fallen comrades. In compensation for that kindness, he withheld their soup rations for the rest of the week. The days passed in a kind of shocked silence, a vibrating disbelief. It was terrible enough to see older men worked to death, or dying of illness; it was another thing altogether to see young men shot. József Hász seemed to react with the deepest shock of all, as though it were new information that any action of his, any exercise of his will, might have disastrous consequences for another human being. After that first week, during which he ate little and slept less, he stunned the company by volunteering for Mendel’s position as the surveyor’s second assistant. By now the position was believed to be cursed; no one else would touch it. But József seemed to consider it a kind of penance. On the surveying runs he made himself Andras’s servant. If there was heavy equipment to carry, he carried it. He gathered wood, built the cooking fires, surrendered his share of any food the surveyor gleaned. The surveyor, who had heard the story of what had happened to Mendel Horovitz and László Goldfarb, accepted József’s servitude with quiet gravity. What had taken place was yet another of the Munkaszolgálat atrocities, playing out its second act now in the emotional torture of this inexperienced young man. But Andras, two decades younger than the surveyor and still capable of being stunned by human selfishness and cruelty, refused to forgive József, refused even to look at him. Every time he passed through Andras’s field of vision, the same ribbon of thoughts would unspool in Andras’s mind. Why had it been Mendel and not József? Why not József in the woods that night, József’s foot in a trap? Why could they not trade places still? Why not József, now, irrevocably gone? Andras had thought he’d tasted frustration and futility; he thought he’d been an intimate of grief. But what he felt now was sharper than any frustration, any grief, he’d ever known before. It seemed to refer not only to Mendel but to Andras too; it was not only the horror of Mendel’s death, the undeniable fact of Mendel’s being gone, but also the knowledge that Andras himself and all the 79/6th had entered another level of hell, that their lives were worthless to their commanding officers, that it was likely Andras would never see his wife and son again. József had done this, too, had brought Andras to this dangerous state of hopelessness. He found he could inhabit that place and still feel a burning anger at József for bringing him there. When a surveying assignment led Andras and József near a stretch of mined earth, he found himself wishing to see József subsumed in a deafening blast of fire. It seemed no worse than he deserved. Twice that year-once in Budapest, once in Ukraine -József had betrayed Andras at excruciating cost. The fact that József was connected by blood to Klara, the person Andras loved most in the world, was another agony; if he could have erased József from Klara’s memory, erased him from the Hász family altogether, he would have done it in an instant. But József stubbornly refused to be erased. He refused to trip a land mine. He hovered at the edge of Andras’s vision, a reminder that what had happened was not an illusion and would not change.
Evenings at the officers’ training school brought no relief. Andras and József were meant to be partners there too, Andras the set designer and József the artistic director. The play, Kisfaludy’s The Tatars in Hungary, was more than familiar to Andras; he’d studied it ad nauseam at his village school in Konyár. A strict schoolmaster had lodged the history soundly in his brain: Before Kisfaludy was a playwright, he’d been a soldier in the Napoleonic wars. When he came home from battle he wanted to bring his experience to the stage, but the recent wars seemed too fresh; instead he fixed his gaze on Hungary ’s distant past. Andras had written a long essay on Kisfaludy for his graduation from primary school. Now here he was, designing sets for The Tatars in Hungary at an officers’ training school in Ukraine in the midst of a world war, and his design partner was a man responsible, in some measure, for Mendel Horovitz’s death. But there was no time to dwell on that slice of irreality. Captain Erdő, the director of the project, was operating under a great urgency. The new minister of defense was soon to pay a visit to the officers’ training school; the play would make its debut in his honor.
On a Thursday evening early in October, Andras and József found themselves standing at attention in the cavernous meeting hall of the officers’ training school while Erdő reviewed their plans. The captain was a tall barrel-chested man with a corona of whitening hair cut close to the scalp. He cultivated a goatee and affected a monocle, but his air of self-mockery suggested it was all a farce, a costume: He considered himself ridiculous and wanted everyone else to be in on the joke. As he critiqued the plans, he spoke as if he were three or four people instead of just one. Instead of these painted trees, he said, might not a few real trees be brought in to suggest woods? Was that impractical? Terribly impractical! Real trees? Who had the time or inclination to dig up trees? But wasn’t it important to achieve an air of realism? Of course. Real trees, then; real trees. Real tents, too, might be used for the encampment. That was a fine idea. There were plenty of tents around, they wouldn’t cost a thing. This large-as-life cave meant to be constructed from chicken wire and papier-mâché, could it be built in two pieces to make it easier to move? Of course it could, if it were designed properly, and that was why he’d engaged József and Andras, wasn’t it? Everything had to be designed and carried out with the utmost professionalism. He didn’t have an enormous budget, but the school wanted to make a good impression upon the new minister of defense. He told Andras and József to make a list of building materials: wood, chicken wire, newspaper, canvas, whatever it was they needed. Then, leaning closer, he began to speak in a different tone.
“Listen, boys,” he said. “Szolomon tells me what goes on in that company of yours. Kozma’s a beast of a man. It’s abominable. Let me know what I can do for you. Anything. Do you need food? Clothes? Do you have enough blankets?”
Andras could hardly begin to answer. What did the 79/6th need? Everything. Morphine, penicillin, bandages, food, blankets, overcoats, boots and w
oolen underthings and trousers and a week’s worth of sleep. “Medical supplies,” he managed to say. “Any kind. And vitamin tablets. And blankets. We’re grateful for anything.”
But József had another thought. “You can send letters, can’t you?” he said. “You can let our families know we’re safe.”
Erdő nodded slowly.
“And you can get mail for us, too, if they send it to your attention.”
“I can, yes. But it’s a dangerous matter. What you’re suggesting goes against regulations, of course, and everything’s censored. You’ll have to be sure your family understands that. The wrong kind of letter might compromise us all.”
“We’ll make them understand,” József said. And then, “Can you get us pens and ink? And some kind of writing paper?”
“Of course. That’s easy enough.”
“If we bring the letters tomorrow, can you send them by the next day’s post?”
Erdő gave another stern and somber nod. “I can, boys,” he said. “I will.”
That night, as the guard named Lukás marched Andras and József back to the orphanage along with the others who’d been requisitioned to work on The Tatars in Hungary, Andras found himself forced to admit that József’s idea had been a good one. It made him dizzy to imagine what he might write to Klara that night. By now you know why I didn’t return home the day before our journey: I was kidnapped along with the rest of my company and sent to Ukraine. Since we’ve been here we’ve been starved, beaten, made sick with work, allowed to die of illness, killed outright. Mendel Horovitz is dead. He died blindfolded and naked before a firing squad, in part thanks to your nephew. As for myself, I can scarcely tell if I’m dead or alive. None of that could be written, of course; the truth would never pass the censors. But he could beg Klara to go to Palestine-he could find a way to get that into the letter, however coded the message might be. He even dared to hope she might be in Palestine already-that a reply from Elza Hász might bring the news that Klara and Tamás had gone down the Danube with Tibor and Ilana and Ádám, had crossed the Black Sea and passed through the Bosporus just as they’d planned, had taken up a life in Palestine where she and Tamás were safe from the war, relatively speaking. If he had known he would be posted to Ukraine, he would have begged her to go. He would have asked her to weigh her life and Tamás’s against his own, and would have made her see what she had to do. But he hadn’t been there to persuade her. Instead he had been deported, and the uncertainty of his situation would have argued for her to stay-her love for him a snare, a trap, but not the kind likely to keep her alive.
Dear K, he wrote that night. Your nephew and I send greetings from the town of T. I write with the hope that this letter will not reach you in Budapest, that you will have already departed for the country. If you have postponed that trip, I beg you not to delay longer for my sake. You must go at once if the opportunity arises. I am well, but would be better if I knew you were proceeding with our plans. And then the terrible news: Our friend M.H., I must tell you, was forced to depart a month ago for Lachaise. A reference to the cemetery in Paris. Would she understand? I feel as you might imagine. I miss you and Tamás terribly and think of you day and night. Will write again as soon as possible. With love, your A.
He folded the letter and hid it in the inner pocket of his jacket, and the next day he put it into Erdő’s hands. There was no way to know when or whether or how it might find its way to Klara, but the thought that it might do so eventually was the first consolation he’d had in recent memory.
If Andras was surprised when the young officers-in-training, his set-building crew, accepted his direction with respectful deference, the surprise faded quickly. After a few weeks of evening duty at the officers’ training school, it came to seem ordinary to walk among them as a kind of foreman, checking their adherence to his plans. Between them there was little consciousness of difference and little formality. The officers-in-training and the work servicemen called each other by their first names, then by diminutives-Sanyi, Józska, Bandi. They weren’t allowed to eat together in the officers’ mess hall, but often the crew went to the back door of the kitchen at dinnertime and brought back food for all of them. They ate on the stage, cross-legged amid the construction projects and half-painted backdrops. Andras and József, locked in a wordless struggle, nonetheless gained weight and got the sets built. They waited for answers to their letters, hoping each time Erdő entered the officers’ meeting hall that he would call them into his office and pull a smudged envelope from his breast pocket. But the weeks dragged on and no response came. Erdő told them to be patient; the mail service was notoriously slow, and even slower when the correspondence had to cross borders.
As the performance of The Tatars in Hungary drew nearer and still no response arrived, Andras grew half mad with worry. He was sure that Klara and György and Elza had been arrested and thrown in jail, that Tamás had been left in the care of strangers. Klara would be tried and convicted and killed. And he was trapped here in Ukraine, where he could do nothing, nothing; and once the play was finished he would lose his connection to Erdő, and with it the possibility of sending or receiving word from home.
On the twenty-ninth of October, the new Hungarian minister of defense arrived in Turka. There was to be an official procession through the village. All the companies in the vicinity were to be present. That morning, Major Kozma marched the men of the 79/6th to the central square of the village and commanded them to stand at attention along its western side. They had been ordered to wash and mend their torn uniforms in preparation for General Vilmos Nagy’s visit; thread and patches had been provided. They had done what they could, but still they looked like scarecrows. Roadwork had destroyed their jackets and trousers. They had managed to cadge a few pieces of civilian clothing from the Ukrainian black-market ragmen, but they couldn’t replace their torn uniforms with new ones; the army no longer supplied clothing for labor servicemen. Andras had observed the degeneration of his own uniform during his time at the officers’ training school. His jacket and trousers had come to look more and more like a vagrant’s costume alongside the young officers’ starched khakis.
At the head of a company of scrubbed-looking officer-trainees on the opposite side of the square, Andras could make out Erdő’s erect posture and winking monocle. His buttons flashed gold fire in the morning light. This was high drama for him, all of it. He was satisfied with the work Andras and József had done. When they’d displayed the finished sets and backdrops just before the dress rehearsal, he’d been so enthusiastic in his praise that he had burst a capillary in his left eye. The dress rehearsal itself had been perfect except for a few forgotten lines, but all had been rectified now, all had been polished to a military sheen. The sets, the costumes, even a grand curtain of red-and-gold-painted canvas, waited in readiness for the general’s arrival. The play would make its debut that night.
The general’s motorcade was preceded by the officer-trainees’ marching band: a few desperately earnest trumpeters, a phlegmatic trombonist, a fat flautist, a red-faced drummer. Behind them came a pair of armored trucks flying the Hungarian flag, then a string of military policemen on motorcycles, and finally General Vilmos Nagybaczoni Nagy in an open car, a glossy black Lada with white-rimmed tires. The general was younger than Andras had expected, not yet gray, still inhabiting a vigorous middle age. His uniform bristled with decorations of every shape and color, including the turquoise-and-gold cross that represented the Honvédség’s highest award for bravery in combat. Riding beside him was a younger man in a less resplendent uniform, apparently an adjutant or secretary. Every few moments the general would look away from the ranks of men to whisper something in the young officer’s ear, and the young officer would scribble furiously on a stenographer’s pad. The general’s gaze seemed to linger over the companies of work servicemen in particular. Andras didn’t dare look at him directly, but felt Nagy’s eyes passing over him as the motorcade rolled by. The general bent his head and s
poke to the adjutant, and the young man took notes. After the motorcade had made its turn around the square, the band stepped out of its way and the cars roared off in the direction of the officers’ training school.
When Andras and József arrived at the meeting hall to make the last preparations for the show, they found that all had fallen into confusion. The stage sets had been shoved aside so the chief officer of the academy might give the official welcome speech, and in the process, two of the backdrops had been torn and one side of the papier-mâché cave had been crushed. Erdő paced from one end of the stage to the other in panicked dismay, declaring at full volume that the repairs would never be finished in time, while Andras and József and the others rushed to make things right. Andras patched the cave with a bucket of paste and some brown paper; József mended a Roman ruin with a roll of canvas tape. The other men realigned and rehung the second torn backdrop. By the time the dinner hour was over, all was in order. The actors arrived to don their Tatar and Magyar costumes and practice their vocal exercises. They preened and buzzed and mumbled their lines backstage with as much gravity and self-importance as the actors at the Sarah-Bernhardt.
At half past eight the meeting hall filled with officers-in-training. There was a tense festivity in their clamor, a rising thrum of anticipation. Andras found a dim corner of the wings from which he could watch the speeches and the show. He caught a glimpse of the martial glitter of the general’s jacket as he strode up the center aisle and took his seat in the front row of benches. The school’s chief officer mounted the stage and made his address, a rhetorical pas de deux of deference and pomposity, punctuated with gestures that Andras recognized from newsreels of Hitler: the hammerlike fist on the podium, the uptwisting index finger, the conductorial palm. The chief officer’s bluster earned him six seconds of dutiful applause from the officers-in-training. But when General Nagy rose to take the stage, the men got to their feet and roared. He had chosen them, had graced them with the first stop of his eastern tour; when he left them he would go directly to Hitler’s headquarters at Vinnitsa. He raised a hand to thank them, and they sat down again and fell silent with anticipation.
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