Lunch with the Stationmaster

by Derek Hansen

  ‘So the shadow finally gains substance,’ said the major. ‘I was curious to know how he had gained so much influence in the railways so quickly. Loyalty to the father. I never even suspected the connection with Jozsef Heyman. More than anyone, he was responsible for the resurrection of the railways. His demotion was one of Gombolini’s last acts of folly. Gombos replaced him with one of his political friends, a man who couldn’t run a raffle let alone a railway. There was no need to humiliate Jozsef Heyman but the fool could not help himself. Now we bear the consequences of that stupidity.’

  The major turned his attention back to the dossier and read it through to the end.

  ‘You have done well, Officer Kiraly. You continue to surprise. He is a clever fish, your schoolfriend, very elusive but still one that is undersized. For the time being we’ll leave him and his master, Vilagosi, to the police and let them run for a while. But for your friend many people in Budapest would starve. Many would go without heating.’ He laughed unexpectedly. ‘Tell me, Officer Kiraly, who do you think supplies our coal?’

  Istvan wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to laugh too. The situation had never arisen before. He kept his face straight, his feet together and his hands by the seams of his trousers. The major’s smile hardened. He reached into a cabinet, rifled through it and extracted a file.

  ‘This file is now your responsibility. Flesh it out. I will make sure all new information is passed through to you. Write me a profile. Show me how he thinks. You were trained to do this at the academy, no?’

  ‘Sir!’ said Istvan. He had no need to glance at the file; he knew exactly whose name would be written on the cover. He had been handed a prize and both of them knew it.

  Milos leaned back in his chair and looked towards the kitchen. Gancio’s head appeared around the doorway almost immediately. Milos smiled and gave the signal for coffee.

  There were moments when he thought the restaurateur was telepathic.

  ‘That’s it?’ asked Ramon.

  ‘For today,’ said Milos. ‘I’m tired and Gabriella is tired. Besides, I kept you late last week, no?’

  ‘But what happened to your father and Gabriella’s mother and sister?’ Ramon paused theatrically. ‘Surely their fate belongs in today’s episode.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Milos. ‘You’re quite right, but I have just decided to deal with that first thing next week.’

  ‘What about your schedule?’ said Ramon.

  ‘I give in,’ said Milos wearily. ‘You are determined to interfere with the telling of my story.’

  ‘Keep it till next week then,’ said Ramon.

  ‘No,’ said Milos, ‘today or next week, what does it matter? The outcome is the same.’ He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.

  ‘Milos found out on the day the pigs arrived. It should have been an occasion for joy. The pigs promised an income and a future filled with opportunities. Andras took a lot of convincing that it had been Milos’s idea and not Tibor’s but, once convinced, Milos went up so high in his estimation it was embarrassing. Actually the idea was not so clever. Smallholders all over Hungary wanted breeding sows because the Russians had left so few; what their army hadn’t eaten had been sent back east. Milos’s only cleverness was in realising he could get hold of some and negotiating a way of paying that made the enterprise viable. It was a deal only Tibor could have agreed to and then only for his little brother. Milos bought some sweet red Tokaj wine in anticipation of a celebration and Aunt Klari made some palacsinta with preserved fruit.’

  ‘Palacsinta?’ said Ramon.

  ‘Sweet pancakes. Sometimes I think you don’t listen. This was to be the day they broke the shackles of the war and, of course, it was. But not in the way they anticipated. As a matter of course, Milos checked in at the town hall on his way to the station. As always he hoped the names would not be there. But on this day the lists had grown substantially and the names were all there, typed neatly in alphabetical order. He found his father’s first, then Aunt Katica’s and Elizabeth’s.

  ‘No one could fault the Germans’ record-keeping. The date of their deaths was also recorded. They all died on the same day, the day they arrived at Auschwitz. Their suffering was brief although their deaths must have been horrendous. They went straight into the gas.

  ‘The war ended for Milos and Gabriella the day the pigs arrived. The living had separated from the dead. There was no more doubt, no more wondering, no more hoping against hope. The grieving could begin, so that one day it could end.’

  ‘We found out about Balazs much later,’ said Gabriella bitterly. ‘It was no surprise to learn that he had died, only the manner.’

  ‘Are you going to tell us what happened?’

  ‘Yes, Ramon, since you have insisted upon knowing. For once, German efficiency failed. My poor brother never made it to the Russian front. None of that contingent from Sarospatak and Satoraljaujhely did. Their carriages were detached and left in a siding near Lvov. They were to be coupled to another train heading through to the front. That night a fierce snow storm broke and German communications failed. Messages were lost or instructions changed; either way the carriages were overlooked. By the time the Germans realised their error, everyone inside had frozen to death. We understand that a bulldozer gouged a hole in the frozen soil and Balazs and the rest of the contingent were buried there. Nobody in Sarospatak heard about it because none of the conscripts had lived to tell the tale. The truth only emerged after the war in a search through German records. What a waste!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ramon.

  ‘You’re sorry?’ said Gabriella. ‘Sorry doesn’t even come close! When did you become so facile, Ramon? Have you swapped roles with Neil? He was wonderful, my brother, wise, warm and wonderful. He wanted to be a lawyer so that he could become a politician and the kind of leader Hungary has always lacked. Balasz would have been a great leader. A great leader and a compassionate one. But he died for no purpose and his talent with him. Nobody prospered by his death, but Hungary became a poorer place. The world became a poorer place for all the wonderful people who died. But I survived. Me, who had nothing to give the world but a pretty face. I survived because the Germans needed pretty faces to fool the Red Cross and my Uncle Jozsef had the wit and courage to see the glimmer of a lifeline amid all the darkness and horror. Can you imagine how that makes me feel?’

  ‘Gabi, that’s enough. That’s enough now. Here is Gancio with our coffee. Drink now. Yes?’ Milos put his arm around her protectively. ‘Are you satisfied now, Ramon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the blind man. ‘And I apologise.’

  ‘Like it,’ said Neil in the silence that followed. The others turned towards him, puzzled by the non sequitur. ‘Nice to see Ramon copping the shit for a change.’

  FOURTH THURSDAY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘You must hate the Germans,’ said Neil.

  Gabriella smiled and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t hate the Germans. Every country has its bad people and its good people. All the Nazis did was create a situation where the scum rose to the top instead of the cream.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Neil. ‘If they’d treated me the way they treated you I’d never forgive them.’

  ‘My friend the doctor asked if I hated the Germans and I told him no. I told him I didn’t hate the Russians either.’ Gabriella rubbed her hand across her eyes then took a tiny sip from her glass of wine. ‘“Then who do you hate?” he asked.’

  ‘And?’ said Neil.

  ‘Myself. I told him I hated myself.’

  ‘What? Why? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Neil, you have so much to learn. All these years you have turned deaf ears to the suffering of others. If you’d listened you would understand.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ said Lucio.

  ‘Ramon, what about you? Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course. You made that clear last week. You hate yourself for surviving while others who you c
onsider more deserving did not. This guilt is common. It was common in Argentina after the reign of the Generals.’

  ‘Thank you, Ramon. You see where your intolerance has left you, Neil? Ignorant and insensitive. Yes, I hated myself for surviving, but that is only half the reason. I hated myself for not doing more with my life, for not making good use of my survival. I told you, Neil, on that first day that I am Milos’s baggage. I was baggage when I arrived in this beautiful country, unable to build a future because I was incapable of dealing with my past.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Neil once more. ‘You survived because a proportion of Jews survived and you happened to be among them. You have told us about the lack of system in the selections, the random elements in determining who lived and who died. It was all a matter of luck. You were lucky. There’s no reason to feel guilty for being lucky, any more than there is a reason to feel guilty for being unlucky.’

  ‘I think my friend the doctor would enjoy talking to you, Neil. I think he would find your point of view refreshing.’

  ‘You keep mentioning your friend the doctor,’ said Ramon. ‘Are you going to tell us about this part of your life?’

  ‘Yes, it is part of our story,’ said Gabriella. ‘It is out of sequence if I tell you this part now, but if Milos has no objection, and if it doesn’t interfere with the story he has planned for today, I can perhaps tell you a little.’

  ‘Well, Milos?’ asked Ramon.

  ‘Why not?’ said Milos resignedly. ‘For reasons I cannot even begin to guess at, you have again decided to usurp the telling of my story. Every day you interfere, no? Well, let’s get your interference over and done with now.’ He glared at the blind man and anger crept into his voice. ‘Tell your story, Gabi. Leave me to figure out how to tie the ragged ends together!’

  ‘I will only tell so much,’ said Gabriella placatingly. ‘I won’t tell them anything that interferes with your storytelling, I promise.’ She kissed Milos lightly on his cheek. ‘But I am here, Milos. You brought me here and I like to contribute.’

  ‘Milos, forgive us, but Gabriella is helping your story,’ said Lucio. ‘She adds colour and a relevance and because of her intimate involvement she also adds tension. It is wonderful, incredible, to look at Gabriella and know she is the Gabi in your story. It gives it another, entirely unexpected dimension.’

  ‘Lucio’s right. You tell a good story, Milos, but Gabriella makes it real. She’s sure brought it home to me,’ said Neil.

  ‘Thank you, Lucio,’ said Gabriella. ‘And you, Neil, as always you exaggerate.’

  ‘Your friend the doctor,’ reminded Ramon. He was anxious to progress the story but realised he would have to be patient. Gancio was approaching with their entrée.

  ‘Scampi,’ said Gancio. ‘From West Australia. Split down the middle and lightly grilled with a little butter, garlic and herbs. Beautiful.’

  It was another five minutes before Gabriella took up her story.

  ‘It happened the first time on the ship to Australia. My first panic attack. Of all the places it should happen. We were aboard the Arawa, a boat that had once carried frozen meat and now carried reconstituted human beings. My mind was in turmoil, my whole life was in turmoil, but I felt safe aboard that ship. I was leaving Europe and escaping to the new world. We had travel documents supplied by refugee organisations and these papers meant everything to me. They said who we were: Gabriella and Milos Heyman, man and wife. And they said where we were going: Sydney, Australia. There was no arguing with our documents. Amid the tumult of my mind, these were reality, the things I clung to. Our identity. Our destination. The documents were our life and our future.

  ‘The Arawa also carried paying migrants as well as refugees. Some were getting off in Cape Town, some in Perth, some Melbourne, and the remainder were going on to New Zealand. There was a lot of sadness on the ship, for what people were leaving behind, and apprehension about the future. None of us had any concept of Australia, none of us knew what it would be like, but there was also a lot of hope aboard that ship.

  ‘I was not the only one struggling to shake off the past and embrace the future. My new life was not yet mine. I, Gabriella Heyman of Sarospatak, Hungary, was on a ship and on my way to becoming an Australian. The documents said so, and said my husband, Milos Heyman, was travelling with me. I was between two lives: one I was fleeing and another which was unknown. I was displaced, disoriented and distressed. Can you understand my dependence on my documents? My world had disintegrated. I was reduced to pieces of paper that told me who I was, who I was with and where I was going.

  ‘For days I stayed in my cabin, which I shared with three other women.’

  ‘But you were married,’ cut in Neil. ‘Why didn’t you have your own cabin?’

  ‘You think this was a cruise ship? It was a refugee ship, Neil, a migrant ship. We were fortunate to get any bed on board. Twin cabins were never an option. Now, may I continue?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Two of the women in my cabin were English and they were very kind. Mostly my new husband brought food to me from the dining room but sometimes it was these women. They talked to me about England. Lying on my bed listening to them reminded me of Tokaj Street and our English governess reading to me. One day I awoke feeling strong enough to get up and go to the dining room for breakfast. My old friend hunger had returned and I needed to eat. It’s a funny thing, but I also wanted to be part of the ship’s routine. Ironically, it was my time in Theresienstadt and the other camps that instilled in me a need for routine. There was familiarity in it and a sense of place. Even lying on my bunk I was aware of the routine. The set times to eat. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, entertainment and lights out in the cabins at ten-thirty. When we walked into the dining room Milos raced over and took my hand.

  ‘“Gabi!” said the other half of my identity. “So good to see you up at last.”

  ‘“Hello Milos,” said my English friends.

  ‘Milos and Gabriella, that’s who we were. Milos kissed my cheek and the cheeks of the English girls. They were very taken with him. We sat together at a table and waiters brought us bowls of porridge with cream and sugar. My friends ignored theirs but I cleaned my bowl and so did Milos. We were not accustomed to leaving food, even food so strange. My friends were entertaining themselves by trying to teach Milos English words. Milos made them laugh with the way he pronounced things so he started teaching them Hungarian words. Even I had to smile at their attempts. Magyarul is not easy. We were all like children, laughing and playing this childish game, when the people at the table behind me started breaking eggs. They’d begun breakfast before us, you see, and the waiters had brought them toast and boiled eggs to follow the porridge. I had no warning and even if I had, what would it have meant? I had no idea that listening to the eggs break would trigger a collapse.

  ‘I screamed and covered my ears but it was too late. The nightmares had returned and with such force that every closed door in my fragile mind burst open. Nightmares, horrors and fears uncountable spilled forth. Everything I had suppressed for the sake of survival and sanity. How fast does a mind work? Let me tell you, faster than you can ever imagine. My mind embraced eight years of horrors in less than the blink of an eye. I ran from that dining room blinded by tears, thinking I was running away from my nightmares. But of course that was impossible.’ Gabriella paused, staring unblinking at the plate in front of her, seeing but not seeing the two scampi shells and the bed of rocket.

  ‘You mentioned listening to the eggs breaking before,’ said Ramon gently. ‘Can you explain?’

  Gabriella looked up at Ramon. He couldn’t see the shine in her eyes or the redness but the others could and were embarrassed.

  ‘Explain? Yes, I can explain! But not now. It took ten years of skill and patience for my friend the doctor to get me to tell him about the eggs. Now you want me to explain after what — a few minutes? No, Ramon, you will wait. You will all wait. You will not get the explanation so eas
ily.’

  Gancio brought the main course, veal al limone with asparagus and baby new potatoes, boiled and served with a herb butter. Gabriella kept speaking as she picked at her food.

  ‘Everyone was understanding and sympathetic although nobody really understood what was happening. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for others, I was not the only one traumatised in this way. Everyone put it down to the war, to internment, and expected us sufferers to get over it once we reached Australia. Post-traumatic stress disorder had not been named or even identified at that time. It took the Vietnam War and thousands of grossly disturbed boys for anyone to put a label to my illness. Even if the sickness had been known, I don’t think the doctor on board the Arawa would have treated me any differently. He gave me sedatives and put me to sleep.

  ‘This was to become the standard form of treatment. When I couldn’t face life, doctors put me to sleep. When I was asleep, I didn’t have to deal with my problems and neither did they. They must have thought it was a good solution all round. But for my friend the doctor, I’d still be asleep today.

  ‘My attacks eased as the voyage went on. We were five weeks at sea in our lovely white cocoon. There was comfort in our isolated world, in our insular little community and in the ship’s routine. Every face was familiar and every minute accounted for. There were no surprises and no doubts. The ship was not just our home but our entire world and just small enough for my troubled mind to cope with.

  ‘Who knows why phobias develop? All through the war and its aftermath I’d kept my terrors locked away in a watertight compartment. Only when I was asleep and off guard did that watertight compartment leak and I’d be engulfed by nightmares. But somewhere along the way, probably that morning on the Arawa when I heard the eggs break, a crack had developed and the compartment in my brain was no longer watertight.

  ‘We arrived in Sydney and found a city that was grey and depressing with a population suspicious of foreigners. We had felt an affinity with the cities we’d passed through in Europe, but this city which was to be our home was totally alien. It frightened me. I begged Milos to take me back on board our ship. I wanted to sail for ever in my little white cocoon and never again set foot on land. Australia was our promised land but instead all I felt was terror. My mind flashed back and connected with another time and place: Krakow station when I had been left all alone in a strange country filled with strangers. Everything and everyone scared me. My watertight compartment burst open. Of course I broke down.’