Searching for Wallenberg

by Alan Lelchuk

She shot him a look. “You mean as the daughter of the famous man?”

  Sensing her accusatory glance, he modulated, “Maybe part of it.”

  “If you are proposing that my mother is delusional,” she retorted, “I reject that. If you are saying that you have doubts about her powers as a medium, I can understand that.”

  She had a perfect small tongue, he observed, as it darted deftly like a baby snake at the receding cone. And she also made for a perfect intermediary, with her reasoned responses and deft omissions, white blouse and wraparound skirt.

  Were they playing him, in unison? Was he a kind of double sucker, one in service to the mom and the other to the daughter?

  “I will be careful in how I handle her papers, and her, I promise.” And you too, he thought.

  Gradually, a blossoming smile lighted her small face—that response a clear signal that he understood the ship’s fragile journey, and that he would not seek to sabotage it, along with the captain, the mother.

  “One last question: Do you believe Mr. Wallenberg was your grandfather?”

  Her mouth tightened. She spoke sternly. “I have already answered that question for you. Have you forgotten?”

  Yes, she had, and no, he had not forgotten, but he just thought, at the height of this cross-examining section, she might answer it differently.

  He tapped her shoulder, a kind of apology, and she relaxed at the touch, and stared at him with her brown eyes.

  CHAPTER 16

  The papers. He read them in the countryside over a period of three days. He insisted that she be out of the room entirely during his study of these six piles, each of which she had carefully described with a label for purposes of order. She was allowed to bring him a coffee at the beginning, and if he needed anything else, he would go to the kitchen and get it, or ask her. If he had questions, he would also call her over, and she could explain. Having her there, hovering over him, was impossible, he knew. And of course he was dying to ask her whether she had spoken to her father recently.

  He sat in the smallish living room, drank his strong coffee, and read.

  And what he discovered, or felt, upon a read-through, was that the material broke down into three sections: “Speculations and Inferences” were the nutty hand-scribblings of the madwoman, tiny squiggly penmanship filling the pages with melodramatic and unfounded conclusions; second, “Letters Wife and Daughter,” purported to be letters from prison, RW to Zsuzsa and her mother, which Manny read with fifty-percent interest, fifty-percent skepticism; and third, “Fragments from History,” which contained several documents and notes from other figures during the historical period. Were the last two categories authentic? He doubted it. What he would have to do, he knew, was to get a handwriting analyst to study a few of the letters, and see when they were written, the quality of the paper, and if possible try to match them up with original RW handwriting, wherever that could be found.

  But how to handle the woman here and now, in the country cottage? She hovered in the wings, bringing tea and sandwiches during the days, dinners by evening, waiting with eager anticipation and fervent zeal for him to give the word to start the editing process, not at all to question the materials. This was clear from her general remarks, suggestions for working hours, questions about how much rewriting she would have to do, and the strategic distribution of the overall narrative. Her hairstyle changed every day, one day upswept with a kind of teenage scrunchy, the next done in a French twist. Her attire shifted also, from pretty peasant skirts to out-of-date designer jeans. Zsuzsa seemed permanently flushed with excitement, waiting for the launching of her great project.

  “So,” he said, as she passed by with her eager glance on the third day, “tell me about this life of being a fortune-teller?”

  Stopping in her tracks, she faced him, fiercely. “I have never been a ‘fortune teller!’ I am not a gypsy!”

  He put out his hands to comfort her, “Well, a medium.”

  “Are you ignorant, Professor? Do you not know the great, the profound, difference?”

  Feeling ignorant, he said, “Well, yes, I probably don’t.”

  Her stiffened face relaxed slowly. “Yes, I used to help friends be in touch with loved ones whom they couldn’t leave off in their mourning. Is that what you mean?”

  He nodded, with sympathy … “Oh, I didn’t quite understand that. Tell me, why did you stop?”

  She shook her head and took an armchair opposite him, across a coffee table. “I had too much personally revolving in my own mind. There was little extra space for others who might have needed my help, my powers.”

  He drank a local ginger ale. “Do you have such powers?”

  She adjusted a cushion behind her, and her eyes narrowed, measuring him. “I won’t say I have general powers, only my own qualities.”

  “What does this entail?”

  She smiled. “Are you trying to trap me somehow? ‘Reduce’ me?”

  “Of course not,” he immediately responded.

  “Well, perhaps you are … but … Dickens has a short story, whose name I forget—maybe ‘The Signal-Man’?—where a man can see a ghost. And obviously in Shakespeare, Hamlet can see the ghost of his father. So there are great writers who do suggest that certain people do have certain powers, wouldn’t you admit?”

  Clever woman! “Yes, you are right. So please do tell me, what can you see?”

  She smiled girlishly. “I would prefer, first, to hear your report on my papers; it has been three days, you realize.”

  Clever again. He scratched his beard. “Oh, I think there are certain issues that we—”

  “Do you mean that we are not yet ready to proceed with our project?”

  “There are certain things I would like to check out first.”

  “Such as?”

  Should he delay the moment of truth? “Well, for purposes of historical accuracy, I will need to confirm the authenticity of those letters. That is the first thing.”

  She smiled, happily it seemed! “And what else?”

  “Well, then there are the surrounding documents from the period that I will need to verify, like those notes from Stockholm, say.”

  To his surprise, she put out her hands to him, palms up, for him to take hold of, and he could do nothing but accept them, out of courtesy. “You are a true historian, and I am grateful for that. That is why I have chosen you for this sacred partnership. Now, can we proceed to our working schedule?”

  More than surprised, he was amazed. She wanted to go on, and was accepting his terms! “Well, I am very glad to hear that, really. This will make things … smoother, easier.”

  “Of course.” She looked at him, locking him with her gray eyes.

  “Now perhaps you can answer my earlier question: What can you see with your special … qualities?”

  Holding his hands still, she stared for a full minute. “There are times when I can visualize my father, hear him, feel him, smell him. Yes, I will acknowledge this.”

  He breathed hard, listened to the birds, the big clock ticking … There were so many areas to ask about and dig into. “And when was the last time? And what did you see or feel?”

  “Please, let me explain to you, Emmanuel.” (Her use of his first name startled him!) “Do you know the term Umkehr?” When he shook his head, she went on. “This is Buber’s translation of the Hebrew t’shuvah and means return. The noun can be found in the Bible, but not in the sense that it is found commonly in Jewish literature and liturgy. The verb is frequently used in the Bible with the connotations that are relevant here; what is meant is the return to God. You can find examples of this in …”—she paused and checked a small notepad—“Isaiah 10:21 and 19:22, Deuteronomy 4:30 and 30:2, and Jeremiah 4:1.” She held his hand and looked at him, like a parent with a child. She smiled. “Do you understand yet?”

  He shook his head, dumbfounded, transported into a whole new space.

  “If you substitute my father for God, you will understand how I have be
en able to search for him and find him. This act of return is what has connected us, through the years. In the Judaic tradition the idea is very simple; at any time a man can return and be accepted by God, one to one. Organized religion has nothing to do with this. And this is how I have been able to reach and touch my father. For my father is God—God to me. Fahrstay?”

  Exhausted himself, he gently withdrew his hands. “And how often do you speak to Raoul?”

  “I cannot tell you this, because it does not happen according to any routine. Our meetings occur at random times and moments, though some of those moments are already filled with high feeling, emotion. For example, when I was collecting these papers, which included Father’s letters and memorablia, he came to me, late one night, and offered himself for dialogue; as I explained you to him, he understood, and offered his full approval; this was a blessing of sorts for our project. I would not have proceeded with you otherwise.”

  He listened carefully, trying to make sense of the bizarre reasoning, and saw the breeze shift through curtains of the mullioned window. “Very interesting,” he said, wanting to return kindly to the former track. “So you do have ‘powers’ or ‘qualities’—good. Tomorrow, let us go back into town, and I will try to hunt down the experts who can verify our papers here.”

  She smiled, nodding. “Tell me, please, Emmanuel, do you understand what I have been saying to you?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  Her smile turned weary. “I hope so too. Mine is a sacred trust; do you understand this?”

  Feeling coerced, he said, “Yes, I do.”

  “I will feel betrayed if you forget or betray our covenant.”

  What did this mean? “I will try not to betray you, or our covenant, but I will also do my job, my professional job. After all, that is my role.”

  She nodded, soberly.

  He did not add, as the moment was too charged, that if his professional role contradicted her “sacred trust” and “covenant,” he knew which agreement or contract he would have to honor. If it were to turn out, crazily, that there was some wild kernel of truth embedded somehow, somewhere deep in her accounts and papers, he would have secured a special cache, no doubt. One that would put him back on the historian’s map, for sure; and one that would excite his full energies too. But the odds of that happening were about as long as discovering another planet.

  But then he realized that they just had.

  At night, reading in the study—“my father’s,” she confided—he saw a small photograph of Raoul in the corner alongside one of his grandfather, in two matching oval frames, with an inscription that Manny couldn’t make out, in Swedish or German. Manny looked closer and saw a framed note with a quote from Raoul: “A person like me, who is both a Wallenberg and a part Jew, can never be defeated.” Manny was taken aback; was this a genuine quote? He knew that Raoul had been a small part Jewish, dating back to a great-great grandfather on his maternal side, named Benedicks, who had converted to Lutheranism, married a Christian girl, and done well. Manny also knew that Raoul had been proud of his Jewishness—but this proud? He had a thought, an inspiration, and opened his laptop, despite the late hour. He composed a note from Raoul’s grandfather, the good Gustaf:

  Dear Raoul,

  I have received your good letter from Haifa, and am both touched and disturbed by it. I am disturbed because I always wanted you to end up going into something practical, like commerce, and am sad to hear that you think it doesn’t suit you after all, for the long run. Especially after Erwin Freund, your boss, an excellent man and Jewish, has written to me how well you have done at his Holland Bank branch, praising you highly and saying you have a real future ahead of you in banking if you wish it. While I have been very satisfied to have you spend your three years in Ann Arbor studying architecture and receiving your diploma there, I always thought you would use that as a stepping stone to move into some form of commercial situation here in Stockholm, if not with your cousins, at least with some other successful firm.

  Naturally, I am very touched by your remarks on the Jewish refugees who have been streaming into Palestine, from Europe, through Haifa, and your strong feelings about them. The situation in Germany is growing more desperate, and to have this happen in ultracivilized Germany is most depressing. Once a dictator gains control over the masses, the outcome is tragic. But please, do not get personally involved; concerned, yes, but not involved. The difference is important, Raoul. Would things be easier for you if you moved from the kosher boarding house you are currently living in? I understand your deep sensitivity and sympathy, and even your own personal attachment to your mother’s great-great-grandfather, who was part Jewish. But that was a long time ago. It’s been a few hundred years since everyone in the family converted, you know, so that your mother grew up Lutheran and thought nothing of it. In these growing dangerous times, lead a prudent personal life, my grandson; no need to take extra risks, personally or politically. (Although I have long admired your high personal principles.)

  I have never been hostile to the Jewish people, you understand; on the contrary, I have long appreciated their worth and accomplishments. In every society they have lived, they have enhanced the society. Look, I sent you to my good friend Freund there at the bank in Haifa, because he is a superior banker and good man. And everywhere, always, the Jews have proved to be excellent bankers and leaders in finance. Consider the great banking families of Germany, the Loebs, the Lehmans, and the Guggenheims; they have been the backbone of high finance in Germany, and will go on doing that. I cannot believe that even this sleazy National Socialism and cheap little dictator will toss out those great banking families. Nonetheless, you be careful. Do not take on extra risk for yourself. Sympathy is one thing, highly commendable; but direct involvement is another, imprudent and problematic. Stay to your course, and accomplish much, but beyond politics, especially in this volatile day and age.

  I will only add that your extra sensitivities will probably not go over well with your cousins Jacob and Marcus, who feel little of the Jewish side you have always felt. And if you ever expect to get help from them in your future career, whatever that may be, no matter what you—or I—feel toward them, you should take into account their own sensitivities and preferences.

  I look forward to hearing from you and do give my best to Mr. Freund.

  Grandfather Gustaf

  Manny pulled back, reread the letter, and tried to remember when Grandfather Gustaf died. About 1937? Though it saddened Raoul, it also meant an escape from the loving old tyrant. And it left Raoul on his own, to commit freely to his extra risks and imprudent acts. How would the old man have acted toward Raoul in Budapest 1944–45, once he learned of his intense involvement? … Manny thought, or hoped, that Gustaf would have lauded his beloved grandson, while worrying deeply. And certainly the old grandfather would have broken down all private or public walls to try to free him from the Russians.

  The next day, he and Z. returned to Budapest, holding Zsuzsa’s papers; but her understanding of what he meant by checking on authenticity was not what he had hoped for. First off, she would not let the papers out of her hands or sight. This meant that she would accompany him everywhere. This was itself an embarrassment, he saw, after their first engagement with a handwriting analyst, who insisted that he be able to examine privately, over a period of forty-eight hours, the several letters they had chosen. Zsuzsa laughed derisively and said, “Forty-eight hours? You must be crazy! You can be safely in Vienna by then, and make your fortune, and we would never see you again. I know your type well!”

  Manny was shocked. But was her role real, or playacted perfectly? That’s what he needed to find out. So he tried another tack, and took her over to the national archives, where they were to examine some of the historical documents from the diplomatic office. Once again she created a huge fuss and semi-hysterical incident. The archivist, a paunchy bespectacled fellow in a frayed suit, brought out a variety of documents for her to sign and ge
t notarized and return with in a few days, and she blew up at him, in Hungarian! Who was this “little man” who thought he could order her and her American professor around? Manny tried to make peace, but it was hopeless, and as they left, Zsuzsa complained bitterly. He understood this was not going to be easy.

  “Supposing I take a few of these letters and a few other documents back to the states and find an analyst there who can give us verification?”

  She smiled, quite peaceably. “At least there we will have competence, without corruption. This is a backward place, you must understand.”

  All that sounded fine, until he came to understand, later at dinner at Rosenstein’s, near the train station, that she meant to accompany him to the US, if he were to take the originals. But chaperoning her was out of the question, he knew. So, what could he do? …

  At wit’s end, he suggested that he make copies of a half dozen or dozen originals, and take those. What did she think?

  “Yes, that would be possible. Copies—why not?” She paused. “This food is undercooked. We should have eaten in; my paprika chicken is superior.” She smiled impishly. “But while you are here, we may proceed with the start of our work?”

  Digesting his food, he felt trapped, and wiped his mouth with the linen napkin. “Well, we could do that, yes, and see how it goes. But I need to finish looking through the materials first, to see where and how to proceed.”

  A foursome arrived and sat down on the little platform area where they were seated. One couple noticed Zsuzsa, and they came over excitedly to give her a hug and kiss; they exchanged pleasantries, and Manny was introduced, “My American professor friend.” The couple returned to their table, and Zsuzsa raised her eyebrows. “Old Communists, now pretending to be liberal! Feh!”

  Just as they returned to their own dinner, Dora stood before them, a vision in white!

  Mother grinned and hugged her, and Manny stood and held a chair for her. She sat demurely, her face a beacon of innocence in the dour atmosphere.