The general removed his glasses. He was a long time cleaning them with his handkerchief, and then he put them on and gave Kozma a cool stare. “Cut your men loose,” he said. “All of them.”
Kozma looked disappointed, but he raised a hand to signal one of the guards.
“Not him,” the general said. “You do it.”
The words sent a shock of energy through the line of harnessed men, a frisson Andras felt through the leather straps at his chest and shoulders.
“At once, Major,” Nagy said. “I don’t like to repeat an order.”
And Kozma had to go to each man and cut the leather straps with his pocketknife, which required him to get closer to them than he’d gotten since they had first come under his command-close enough to smell them, Andras thought, close enough to put himself in danger of catching their chronic cough, their body lice. The major’s hands trembled as he fumbled with the interlaced straps. It took him a quarter of an hour to free the eight of them. The officer-trainees who had stopped to watch had disappeared now.
“Have your guards bring a truckload of wheelbarrows from the supply warehouse,” the general ordered Kozma. To the men he said, “You will rest here until the wheelbarrows arrive. Then you will remove the debris by the barrow-load.” He watched as the work foremen broke the men into their groups as they waited for the carts. Kozma stood silent at the general’s side, twisting and twisting his hands as if he meant to shuck them of their skins. The general seemed to have forgotten that his life was in danger, that the NKVD was aware of his presence at the camp. He paid no attention to his adjutant’s urgent request that he return to the bunker. At lunchtime, Nagy and the adjutant escorted the men to the new mess tent and saw that they received an extra twenty decagrams of bread and ten grams of margarine. The general had his adjutant drag a bench over to the patch of bare earth where the work servicemen were eating; he took his lunch with them, asking questions about their lives before the war and what they planned to do when it was over. The men responded tentatively at first, uncertain whether or not to trust this exalted person in his decorated jacket, but before long they began to speak more freely. Andras didn’t speak; he hovered at the edge of the group, aware that he was witnessing something extraordinary.
After lunch, the general ordered that the men of the 79/6th be deloused and bathed and given clean uniforms from the storehouses of the officers’ training school. They were to be examined by the medics at the school infirmary, their wounds and illnesses treated. Then they were to be reassigned to jobs that would allow them to recover their health. It was clear that they were too weak and sick to perform hard labor. For the rest of the day he sent them to work in the damp heat of the mess tent, where the cook set them to peeling potatoes and cutting onions for the officers’ dinner.
At dinnertime the men received another supplemental ration: twenty decagrams of bread again, and ten more grams of margarine. An unfamiliar officer, a tall ursine man who introduced himself to them as Major Bálint, announced that the supplement was to be permanent; the general had ordered that the men’s diet be altered. For the time being they would continue to serve in the mess tent rather than return to their work on the road. And there was to be another change: Bálint himself would be their new commander. Major Kozma would no longer have anything to do with the 79/6th, nor, if General Nagy had anything to say about it, with any other Munkaszolgálat company, except perhaps the one in which he would be forced to serve.
Not once since their arrival at Turka had there been a night at the orphanage that might have been called festive. Even when they’d observed the High Holidays they had done so with a sense of mournful duty, and an awareness of how far they were from everything and everyone they loved. That night at the barracks, at an hour when Kozma might ordinarily have lined them up outside and made them stand at attention until they fell to their knees, the men gathered in one of the downstairs classrooms to play cards and sing nonsense songs and read the news aloud from scraps of newspaper gleaned from the officers’ training school. The Soviets, the Ivory Tower read, continued to hold off the Nazi offensive at Stalingrad as the battle entered its eleventh week; bitter fighting continued on the streets of the city and in the northern suburbs, raising speculation that the Nazis might find themselves still entrenched in that fight when the Russian winter arrived. “Let them freeze!” the Ivory Tower cried, and crowned himself with a nautical hat Andras had folded from a page of advertisements. He grabbed Andras by the arms and made him dance a peasant dance. “We’re free, my darlings, free,” he sang, whirling him around the room. It wasn’t true, of course; Lukás and the other guards still kept watch at the door, and any member of the 79/6th could have been shot for walking down the road unaccompanied. But they had indeed been freed from Major Kozma. And as if that weren’t enough, they were clean and free of lice. General Nagy had gone so far as to order that their mattresses and blankets be dragged outside, burned, and replaced immediately with new bedding.
That night, from the fragrant comfort of a mattress stuffed with sweet hay, Andras wrote to Klara. Dear K, There has been a surprising turn of events. Our circumstances in T. have changed for the better. We are well, and have just received new uniforms and a good work assignment. You must not worry on our account. If an opportunity arises for you to go to the country again, you must go. I’ll follow as soon as I can. Unfortunately, I must confirm what you seem to have guessed about M.H. Please send love to my brother and Ilana. Kiss Tamás for me. As ever, your devoted A.
The next day, as he served lunch to the officer-trainees and their superiors, he waited impatiently for Erdő to come through the serving line. When Erdő came at last-grim-faced and devoid of his monocle, still mourning the loss of The Tatars in Hungary amid the camp’s other losses-Andras passed the letter to him underneath his tin plate. Without a sign or a wink or any other acknowledgment, Erdő moved down the serving line; Andras saw a flash of white as he transferred the note from his hand to his trouser pocket. As long as the mail kept moving between Ukraine and Hungary, Klara would know that Andras was well and that he wanted her to go to Palestine if she could.
General Nagy’s plan for the rehabilitation of the 79/6th continued through the middle of November. The sick men were treated at the infirmary, and those who could still work gained weight on the extra rations. It helped that they had been assigned to kitchen duty. Though the cooks kept the food supply under careful watch, it was often possible to glean a stray carrot or potato or an extra measure of soup. If Andras missed his long walks to the end of the road with the surveyor, he had the pleasure of Szolomon’s weekly visits to the officers’ training school. The surveyor brought news of the war, and, when he could, slipped Andras and József some Ukrainian delicacy or a piece of warm clothing. One chilly afternoon Andras watched József tear open a paper-wrapped package of the rolled dumplings called holushky-little ears-and felt he was watching his own ravenous self in Paris, unwrapping a poppyseed roll sent by the elder Mrs. Hász. What were they now, he and József, but a pair of hungry men on the ragged edge of a country at war, at the mercy of forces beyond their control? All the barriers between them, or at least all the markers of class that had seemed to separate them when they had lived in Paris, were arbitrary to the point of absurdity now. When József offered him the package of holushky, he took it and said köszönöm. József sent him a look of surprised relief, a reaction that confused Andras until it occurred to him that this was the first time he’d spoken a kind word to József since Mendel’s death. Strange, Andras thought, that war could lead you involuntarily to forgive a person who didn’t deserve forgiveness, just as it might make you kill a man you didn’t hate. It must have been the amnesiac effect of extremity, he thought, that bitter potion they ingested every day in Ukraine with their ration of soup and sandy bread.
One morning later that week, the men woke to find the courtyard of the orphanage blurred in a gray-white nimbus of snow. The clouds seemed intent upon giving up their content
s all at once, the flakes speeding to earth in acorn-sized clusters. Here was the winter they’d dreaded, making its unambiguous entrance; the temperature had dropped twenty degrees overnight. At lineup, snow swarmed into their ears and mouths and noses. It found its way into the crevices between their overcoats and neck wraps, worked itself in through the grommets of their boots. Major Bálint took his place at the front of the assembly yard and announced with regret that the men had been removed from their duties at the officers’ training school and assigned to snow removal. The guards unlocked the shed and handed the men their tools-the same pointed spades they’d used for road-building, not the curved rectangular blades that would have suited the job-and marched them out toward the village to begin their winter work.
That afternoon, when Szolomon found Andras and József among the snow-removal teams, he delivered the news that he’d been posted to a mapping office in Voronezh, and would depart on a military train that afternoon. He wished them a safe passage through the winter, said a blessing over their heads, and stuffed their pockets with long-unseen varieties of food-tins of meat and sardines, jars of pickled herring, bags of walnuts, dense rye biscuits. Then, without a word of goodbye, their reticent patron and protector hurried down the road and disappeared behind a veil of snow.
All week the temperature fell and fell, far below zero. Andras’s back burned with the work; his hands wept with new blisters. Nothing he had done in the Munkaszolgálat was as hard as clearing that snow, day after day, as the cold deepened. But it was impossible to give up hope when there was always a chance that a letter might arrive from Budapest. Every time they went to clear snow from the roads at the officers’ training school, Andras and József looked for Captain Erdő; whenever he had mail for them he found a way to slip it into their pockets. At the beginning of December a letter came from György Hász: The family fortunes had dwindled further still, and György, Elza, and the elder Mrs. Hász had been obliged to abandon the high-ceilinged flat on Andrássy út and move in with Klara. But they must not worry. K was safe. Everyone was fine. They must concern themselves only with their own survival.
Klara’s next missive brought the news that Tibor had been called back to the Munkaszolgálat and sent to the Eastern Front. Ilana and Ádám had come to live on Nefelejcs utca along with everyone else. Now the seven of them were getting by on the money that had been intended for the trip to Palestine, which Klara’s lawyer forwarded in small increments each month. Andras tried to imagine it: the bright rooms of the apartment filled with all the things the Hász family had brought from Andrássy út, the remaining rugs and armoires and bric-a-brac of their princely estate; Elza Hász, a mourning dove in a morning dress, her wings folded at her sides; Klara and Ilana trying to keep the babies clean and calm and fed in the midst of a crowd; Klara’s mother stoic and silent in her corner; the constant smell of potatoes and paprika; the flat blond light of Budapest in winter, falling indifferently through the tall windows. Absent from the letter was any mention of Mátyás, of whom Andras thought constantly as blizzards abraded the hills and fields of Ukraine.
In mid-December a note came from József’s mother: György had been admitted to the hospital with a burning pain in his chest and a high fever. The diagnosis was an infection of the pericardium, the membrane that surrounded the heart. His doctor wanted him to be treated with colchicine, pericardiocentesis, and three weeks of rest on a cardiac ward. The cost of this medical disaster, nearly five thousand pengő, threatened to unhouse them all; Klara was trying to arrange to have her lawyer send the money.
József was downcast and silent all day after he’d received the letter. That night at the orphanage he didn’t get into bed at the ordinary hour. Instead he stood at the window and stared down into the snowy depths of the courtyard, a coarse blanket wrapped around him like a dressing gown.
Andras rolled over on his bunk and propped himself up on an elbow. “What is it?” he said. “Your father?”
József gave a nod. “He hates to be sick,” he said. “Hates to be a burden to anyone. He’s miserable if he has to miss a day of work.” He pulled the blanket closer and looked down into the courtyard. “Meanwhile I’ve done nothing at all with my life. Nothing of use to anyone, certainly not my parents. Never had a job. Never even been in love, or been loved by anyone. Not by any of those girls in Paris. No one in Budapest, either. Not even Zsófia, who was pregnant with my child.”
“Zsófia’s pregnant?” Andras said.
“Not anymore. Last spring. She got rid of it somehow. She didn’t want it any more than I did, that was how little she cared for me.” He released a long breath. “I can’t imagine you’d have any sympathy for me, Andras. But it’s a hard thing to have to see oneself clearly all of a sudden. You must understand what I mean.”
Andras said he believed he did.
“I know you don’t think much of my paintings,” József said. “I could see it when you came by last year, the time you and Klara brought the baby to my flat.”
“On the contrary, I thought the new work was good. I told Klara as much.”
“What if I were to try to contact my art dealer in Budapest?” József said, turning to Andras. “Have him sell something? I never considered the new pieces to be finished, but a collector might think otherwise. I might ask Papp to see what he can get for those nine big pieces.”
“You’d sell your unfinished work?”
“I can’t imagine what else I can do,” József said, turning from the window. For a moment the curve of his forehead and the dark wing of his hair were like Klara’s, and Andras experienced an unwelcome jolt of affection for him. He lay back in bed and stared at the dark plane of the ceiling.
“The pieces I saw were good,” he told József. “They didn’t seem unfinished. They might fetch a high price. But it might not be necessary to sell them. Klara may be able to get the money sent from Vienna.”
“And what if she can?” József said. “Do you think they won’t need more money for something else next month? What if one of the children gets sick, or my grandmother? What if it’s something that can’t wait for Klara to contact her lawyer?” The question hovered in the air for a long moment while they both considered that frightening possibility.
“What can I tell you?” Andras said. “I think it’s a fine idea. If I had work to sell right now, I’d sell it.”
“Give me your pen,” József said. “I’ll write my mother. Then I’ll write to Papp.”
Andras felt around in his knapsack for his pen and the last precious bottle of India ink left over from their set-design supplies. Using the windowsill as a desk and the moonlight as a lamp, József began to write. But a moment later he spoke again into the dark.
“I’ve never given my father a single thing,” he said. “Not one thing.”
“He’ll know what it means for you to sell those paintings.”
“What if he dies before my mother gets this letter?”
“Then at least your mother will know what you meant to do,” Andras said. “And Klara will know too.”
The next morning they woke and cleared snow, and the day after that they cleared snow, and the following day they encountered Captain Erdő as he was marching his trainees along the road, and József managed to slip the letters into his hand. Every day after that they cleared snow and cleared snow, until, on the twentieth of December, Major Bálint announced that they were to pack their things and clean the orphanage from top to bottom; their unit was to move east the following day.
As much as they hated the orphanage, as much as every man had loathed his too-short bunk and cursed when he had to stoop to the child-sized sinks in the chill of a winter morning, as much as they had lived in terrified awareness of the killings that had taken place on the grounds, the murder of the children that had preceded their arrival, and the execution of Mendel Horovitz and László Goldfarb, as much as they had yearned to leave those rooms where they had been starved, beaten, and humiliated, they felt a strange resis
tance to the thought of turning the place over to another company, a group of unknown men. The 79/6th had become the caretakers of the graves of all their dead, the mounds marked with stones carried from the roadbed. They had kept the ground swept, the stones clean; they had placed smaller stones upon the larger ones in tribute to the men who had been shot or died of illness or overwork. They had become the caretakers, too, of the ghosts of the Jewish orphans of Turka; the 79/6th were the only ones who had seen those undersized footprints left behind in the hallways and the courtyard. They had eaten at the children’s abandoned tables, memorized the shapes of the Cyrillic letters scratched into the tops of the schoolroom desks, been bitten at night by the same bedbugs that had bitten the children, stubbed their toes on the bed frames where the children had stubbed their toes. Now they would have to abandon them, too, those children who had already been abandoned three times: once by their own parents, once by the state, and finally by life itself. But the men of the 79/6th-those who survived the winter-would say Kaddish for the Jewish orphans of Turka every August for as long as they lived.
They moved east, on foot, in the direction of danger. The land all around looked just as it did in Turka: snow-laden hills, heavy pines, the papery remains of cornstalks stubbling the white fields, stands of cows chuffing cumuli into the freezing air. The towns were nothing more than scatterings of farmhouses in the shadowy folds of the hills. The wind came through the men’s overcoats and settled into their bones. They had to quarter in stables with the workhorses or sleep on the floors of the peasants’ houses, where they lay open-eyed all night in fear of the peasants, who lay open-eyed all night in fear of them. At times there was no stable or village at all, and they had to bivouac in the freezing cold under the aurora-lit sky. The temperature dropped at night to -20°C. The men always had a fire, but the fire itself was dangerous; it could mesmerize you, it could cause you to stop moving, it could distract you from the difficult work of staying alive. If you fell asleep beside it during the night watch, tricked by its warmth into letting your blanket drop from your shoulders, it might burn itself to ash and leave you exposed to the cold. One morning Andras found the Ivory Tower that way, his arms around his knees, his large head bent forward in what appeared to be sleep. In front of him was the dead black ring where the fire had burned out in the snow, and on his shoulders lay a dusting of ice and frost. Andras put a hand to the Ivory Tower’s neck, but the skin was as cold and unyielding as the ground itself. They had to carry his body with them for three days before they came across a patch of earth soft enough to receive him. It was beside a stable, where the horses’ warmth had kept the ground from being frozen solid. They buried the Ivory Tower in the middle of the night and scratched his name and the date of his death into the side of the barn. They said the Ninety-first Psalm again. By that time they could all recite it from memory.
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