The Girl With 39 Graves

by Michael Beres

  “Cover up,” said Janos. “Doctor Marta Adamivna Voronko’s research into the death of her father is connected to his research into the death of his father. The grandfather was an American citizen who moved back to Ukraine and married after World War II. There’s a US connection with Mafia smell. It goes back to before the war. Sonia said the year 1939 is significant. That, and something about a girl’s hair.”

  “Janos, if you smell Mafia—”

  “Yes, next time we’ll need to speak carefully.”

  After hanging up, Lazlo opened his laptop, using the Internet for a trip into the past.

  1939—Joe Lewis KOs John Henry and, on a dare, New Jersey bartender Tony Galento; Eleanor Roosevelt resigns the DAR to protest denial of Marion Anderson’s appearance; Shirley Temple turns ten; Al Capone released from prison on parole; the New Deal on the wane as war in Europe approaches; in Rome a pope dies and another is elected; after German troops move in, Czechoslovakia ceases to exist and the Carpatho-Ukraine is in conflict, with Czechs, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and Hungarians at odds, Hitler and Stalin stirring the pot; the “Beer Barrel Polka,” originally written by a Czech named Vejovoda, gets rewritten in the US and becomes a hit.

  Although Lazlo was not yet born in 1939, Father shared stories with Lazlo and his brother Mihaly when they were boys. Their farm was once in Czechoslovakia, and before that, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Contention as far back as Father could recall—the famine of the 1930s when Stalin’s troops came for their grain, Jews rounded up by Nazis, Nazi-backed Hungarian Army declaring war, formally annexing Carpatho-Ukraine in 1939.

  Transcarpathia was the rope in a tug of war. The city of Uzhgorod, originally called Ungvár under Hungarian rule, was at the center. Now, with Janos telling about the Kiev waitress from Uzhgorod murdered and a Star of David on her forehead, Lazlo wondered about the role of Hungarians in the fate of Transcarpathian Jews. Silence on the subject, passed down through the Soviet educational system, was obvious. He recalled hearing epithets of local men against Jews in each language of the region—Hungarian, Slovakian, Ukrainian, and Russian. Older men spoke of troops collecting bodies of those who’d starved to death following Stalin’s famine. Younger men made up conspiracies—why were no Jewish bodies collected?

  During his Internet search, Lazlo stumbled upon women’s hairstyles. Curls, lots of movie star curls. He closed his laptop and closed his eyes. There’d been no movie house in his Ukraine village. Only a record player to entertain themselves. His memory retrieved Father’s words, whispering in Hungarian.

  “My sons, it was so bad during 1938 and 1939, I wished escape. But there was nowhere to go. Some speculated before the first war, heading to America, working, having children there, and coming back to buy farmland. A mistake because Stalin collectivized the land. However, going to America before the first war gave an advantage to sons born there. They retained US citizenship, returning to take advantage of Roosevelt’s programs. If I’d been born there, you’d be Americans and we wouldn’t need to whisper about our past, present, and future.”

  Lazlo opened his eyes to a dark apartment. He stood and went back to his window. The marquee of the Ukrainian restaurant across the street, once a movie theater, was brightly lit and he thought of Janos Nagy, Mariya Nemeth, Janos’ sister Sonia, and Doctor Marta Adamivna Voronko. He looked at the time on his cell phone, did a quick calculation. By now it would be dawn in Ukraine. Because he’d been a Kiev Militia investigator for years, Lazlo could see, hear, and smell the Kiev dawn—the bakeries opening, traffic beginning to move, church bells. In spirit Lazlo was still there, still a militia investigator on a case of special interest.

  What was the significance of the soil traced to isotopes in contaminated Chernobyl soil? What could the Star of David drawn on a waitress’ forehead in her own blood mean? Jewish vengeance against Hungarians? What about Doctor Voronko’s hair placed in her mouth after her murder? Could it have anything to do with the old man beneath the bus on North Avenue with strands of hair in his wallet? Perhaps Janos, Mariya, and Janos’ sister Sonia had visas prepared and he’d soon see them here in Chicago.

  The sound of music came from a passing car. Not Ukrainian music or salsa, not hip-hop or classic rock. A big band blasting from loudspeakers, the bass notes booming. Lazlo opened his window and leaned out. The music faded as a shiny classic ‘40s coupe with an oval rear window disappeared up the street. Was it Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman?

  It must have been Benny Goodman. When he and Mihaly were boys Father had gotten hold of some of Goodman’s records. Father compared the rhythms to Gypsy music. He recalled Father dancing in the house, the music turned low so passersby would not hear. As the tom-tom drums beat in the background, he recalled Father whispering in English, “The King of Swing.”

  Had a ‘40s coupe playing a Benny Goodman tune really driven past? Perhaps the black coupe, having rolled off a Detroit assembly line decades earlier, was like a crow, an omen. He recalled Mother saying for Gypsies, seeing a single crow was a bad sign. The smell of Mother’s hair came to him from the past. A smell like fresh linen she has warmed at the hearth and brought to his boyhood bed. Despite the crow, it was time for sleep.

  Hair, something about hair affecting events. Not Mother’s hair, not Doctor Voronko’s hair, but hair saved. Instead of being buried with the dead, hair from the dead is often saved. Hair in a wallet would definitely be from the past. Hair in a man’s wallet might be from a dead wife. But the hair in the wallet of the old man killed beneath the bus on North Avenue was not gray. The hair in the old man’s wallet was reddish brown, definitely from a young woman a man does not want to forget.

  Chapter 9

  January 1939. Bela Adamovych Voronko, age 21, arrives New York on Cunard White Star Aquitania. At dock, with US passport, he’s separated from others, taken to a port authority office, and told to wait. The room has benches, yet he’s alone. In past it must have been packed, hands and hair creating horizontal gray areas on otherwise white walls. Two caged windows on one wall remind him of a Gypsy zoo monkey exhibit. A calendar between windows shows the China Clipper flying boat taking off from San Francisco Bay. In 1935 he’d cut the same photograph from the Uzhgorod newspaper and hung it high in the barn safe from chickens. A brief memory—the barn smell, chickens clucking. Here smells are pipes and cigarettes puffed beyond the caged windows. Men’s voices tempt Bela to look inside. But the uniformed escort said sit and wait. So he sits, recalling the journey that seemed half his life.

  Although the ship was at sea a matter of days, Bela’s journey from Uzhgorod, began in 1938 when he was 20, and had taken months. First, the Prague train and the American Consulate General’s office to prove he’d been born in the US. Next, back to Budapest for a three-month stay with Cousin Gabor and wife Katica. Perhaps his interlude in Budapest would result in tension easing in his Carpathian homeland. He should have known better when his passport was stamped with the flying eagle over the swastika.

  Katica studied English at Budapest University and evenings prepared Bela for a fresh start in his birth country. Daytimes he worked at Cousin Gabor’s barbershop, learning the basics. After leaving Budapest, trains through Austria, Germany, and France to the port of Cherbourg were ripe with war rumors. Passing through Germany, swastika flags were waved by increasingly larger groups of young men in brown uniforms. Would it have been better to join the Hungarian Army? But how could he join men becoming angrier as the train neared the French border? Discarded newspapers claimed tension in his homeland was worse than ever.

  In Paris, awaiting the train for Cherbourg, he admired the magnificent station and stared at thousands of people scurrying about. In Cherbourg, waiting overnight for Aquitania’s departure, hundreds slept on floors and benches in a Cunard White Star building. Separate sections for men, women, and families. Wild rumors in semi-darkness. One old man claimed Nazis were on the march following the tracks, would be there by morning, an
d young men would not be allowed onboard. At daylight the old man mocked younger men with his toothless grin.

  On the huge Aquitania, with its four funnels, more rumors. A Polish joker insisted the ship, built before the Great War, was taking a northern passage and would be scrapped in Greenland. At a glassed-in world map on deck, the joker traced the new route, using each day being colder as evidence. “It’s January, what do you expect?” said a well-dressed man. With this the joker stared ominously at the sky.

  While waiting in the port authority room, Bela wondered why the Polish joker, the old man from Cherbourg, and others were not here? Was this a special room? Had America signed a pact with Hitler to have Carpathian Hungarians sent back?

  Suddenly, sounds from the caged windows became chaotic. Screeches, whines, and loud voices as if from zoo monkeys. Then the flutter of Benny Goodman’s clarinet, more screeching, and Bela realizing someone was tuning a radio. The radio settled on news. He’d learned enough English to understand an earthquake had caused thousands of deaths in Chile in South America.

  A man in a white shirt and blue tie brought a file to one of the windows. The man inhaled deeply on a cigarette held in one corner of his mouth and blew smoke from the other corner before motioning to Bela. During the interview the cigarette did not leave the man’s mouth, he did not look up from the papers, and he repeatedly blew smoke. When Bela retrieved his copies, the smell of smoke came with them.

  With US citizenship intact, Bela followed directions attached to his papers and walked toward Grand Central Station. He stared up at buildings, dodging pedestrians and cars, trying to look American. In his homeland he would have stared at the ground, not because buildings there were not tall, but to watch for horseshit piles. There were fewer horses in New York, all of them down side streets. Main streets and sidewalks were smoothly paved, so it really was possible to walk with one’s head in the air, smelling the bakeries, delicatessens, and shops steam cleaning clothing. Engines, horns, and people speaking loudly filled his ears. A newsboy shouting “Earthquake!” while holding up a bundle of papers reminded Bela of a Gypsy singer.

  The wool suit given Bela by his parents was thick, loose, and unfaded. It belonged to Uncle Sandor, who enjoyed dumplings and pastry. Bela’s original threadbare suit switched with Uncle Sandor’s newer funeral suit before the coffin sealing. Bela’s mother brushed the suit and packed it carefully in his bag. He wore it during his passport photo in Prague, in Budapest for a farewell dinner, and finally during the train journey to France so he’d look exactly like the photo. The suit remained in the bag for the trip across the Atlantic, safe from sickness and overflowing toilets. While washing older clothing he’d worn on the ship in the washroom for men at the immigration office and steaming it dry on a radiator, he discovered a lock of gray hair tied with a ribbon deep in the suit’s vest pocket. His mother had forgotten Uncle Sandor wanted to be buried with a lock of his dead wife’s hair. Perhaps the hair would bring him luck, perhaps not.

  Having been only four when he left the US, few memories remained—a train ride from Ohio, the rolling and pitching of a ship, another train to Uzhgorod from Trieste. In boyhood, the farm outside Uzhgorod had been a wonderful place. But with Stalin and Hitler one could easily lose track of the name of his country and even his village. Although now a man, Bela sometimes felt like a little boy running away from home.

  The dilemma for Bela’s family came when he was old enough for recruitment. With American citizenship he could escape recruitment from one side or the other, from east or west, from the chaos infecting his homeland. The last was the Hungarian Brigade in their supposed fight to hang onto their sliver of western Carpathia.

  Jews suffered most, even those who made it overland to the Aquitania. They traveled third class. One day, passing a chained-off stairway and smelling the steam forced Bela to the outside deck covered with ice so he could vomit. Because of ice accumulating during the trip, he didn’t make it to the rail and added his meal to hundreds of others frozen like stalagmites where deck chairs should have been. At port, Bela looked back at the ship and watched as poor souls from third class slipped and slid over the deck ice in New York’s sun, climbed wearily down the ramp, and just when he thought he might see a smile or a Jew kneel to kiss the ground, they were whisked away like cattle to a barge headed for Ellis Island. Bela was not alone watching the Jews. Others also watched, many with contempt.

  As he walked along the street nearing the train station, Bela saw several huge American automobiles. One he recognized as a 1939 Packard. Father had shown him a photograph in a magazine back home, saying because Grandfather was born 100 years earlier in 1839, the Packard’s year in America would be Bela’s lucky year.

  At Grand Central Station, Bela purchased his ticket for Youngstown, Ohio, home of Uncle Stephan and Aunt Helen. Uncle Stephan was his father’s brother. Aunt Helen was a Polish woman his uncle met in Ohio. Stephan and Helen Voronko would become Bela’s new family. Uncle Stephan had written he might get Bela a job at the pig iron plant, but because of unemployment made no promises and said there were other options.

  One was the US Army; obviously Hitler and Stalin were determined to take the world to war. Whether the US declared war or not, Bela knew there’d be growth in the Army because America would at least need to protect its shores. He had come from a ship packed with passengers on every deck. With his fresh understanding of English, he overheard British crewmembers with experience from the first war discussing the next war as if it were a ship whose smoke and guns would soon appear on the horizon. They said Aquitania, usually called Ship Beautiful, was a sardine can because of the need to escape from the war to end all wars.

  The voyage gave Bela time to think of girls with rosy cheeks and multicolored skirts at holiday festivals. Especially Nina Zolotarev, whose photograph was in his luggage. Instead of fingering his aunt’s gray hair in his vest pocket, he imagined fingering Nina’s golden hair and recalled the time he’d felt her breasts against his chest as they kissed in the barn when he took her inside to show her the photograph of the China Clipper. Their goodbye kiss at the back door to the cottage where she lived with her parents and seven brothers and sisters. He’d kissed other girls goodbye, but none was like the kiss he and Nina Zolotarev shared.

  The final goodbye was at the Uzhgorod train station. His mother’s tears washed her face. His father joked about a cache of food hidden from Stalin’s troops and the huge feast they’d have once he was gone. Bela had been able to hold back his tears. But now, having thought of Nina, and recalling his hurried goodbyes, he was overcome with guilt. Others left behind and he was in America. At the Uzhgorod station his mother said although Nina Zolotarev’s mother was Jewish—her maiden name Weizman—villagers agreed to secrecy. On a wooden bench waiting for the train to Youngstown, Bela wished Nina were with him and felt a tear run down his cheek.

  Behind him, facing the opposite direction, two women spoke.

  “So, tell me, do you really think she’s dead?”

  “I’ll tell you exactly what I think. They’ll declare her death official and bury her so they can get on with their war. Men don’t want Amelia Earhart messing with their planes, or their plans. Men run the newspapers and radio. They can kill and bury her whenever they want.”

  “So, you think she’s alive?”

  “Could be, but what difference would it make to all the so-called leaders? FDR and Chamberlain, but especially those goose eggs Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. They get boys jumping up and down and nobody gives a hoot about Amelia.”

  “I saw Mussolini in the newsreel. They call him il Duce. Ladies in the theater were swooning over him.”

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  “Of course I am, Kiddo.”

  Both women laughed.

  Bela wondered about the meaning of giving a hoot, then smelled cigarette smoke. He turned and saw both had lit up. It was unusual to see wo
men smoke. He stared until the younger one glanced his way. She had blonde hair and a red hat. When she smiled he knew his face was as red as her hat. He turned about and recalled the heat of a bus that had passed close during his walk to the station. He was alive, in America waiting for a train.

  Not far from Grand Central Station, where tracks emerged from tunnels and crossed a switching yard, two men wearing coveralls and carrying suitcases entered a work shack. Each placed his suitcase on a worn workbench. One suitcase black, the other brown. One man short and stocky with an unlit cigar in his mouth, the other tall with a moustache. They took off gloves and put them on the bench. The tall man lit a cigarette while the other relit his cigar. When not blowing smoke, their mouths steamed in the unheated shack.

  The tall man glanced out the single frosted window. “How’re your boys doing?”

  “Not so good,” said the stocky man. “Flu got Sammy.”

  “How’s the other boy? What’s his name?”

  “He’s named after me.”

  “Sally Big Shoes?”

  The stocky man pulled a revolver from inside his coveralls and took aim. “Don’t get smart, Hebe! His name’s Salvatore!”

  The tall man raised his hands. “Take it easy.”

  The stocky man kept the revolver aimed. “You’re the one asked. So I’ll ask you something. How’re your niggers in Detroit?”

  The tall man lowered his hands, smoothed his moustache. “All right, let’s get on with it.”

  The stocky man put his revolver away. “Good. We finish and get the hell out of here.”

  Each took out a key, unlocked clasps on his suitcase, and opened it. They switched positions and inspected the case the other had brought. The tall man prodded newspaper-wrapped bricks inside the black suitcase. He tore off a small corner of newspaper, pushed a finger inside, and tasted off-white powder clinging to his finger. The stocky man flipped through stacks of bills tied with string inside the brown suitcase.