The Time of the Uprooted (4 page)

“I’m sorry to say this,” says the guard, imperturbable, someone whose authority is second only to God’s, “but I must see proper identification. Those are the rules. You must understand why we”—who is “we”?—“must insist on those rules in times like these.”

Now the stranger comes to my rescue: “I know this man. I’ll vouch for him. He’s practically one of us.”

I gasp. Is this my guardian angel? Had our paths crossed in Hungary, in an Austrian hostel, in a shelter for refugees in France? Had he, too, been stateless? Had he, too, envied those fortunate enough to have the right papers, to be citizens of a nation that would protect them, while they sought to realize their dreams? Was there some sort of association across frontiers for onetime refugees, as there was for onetime soldiers?

“What is the patient’s name?” the guard asks, still sullen.

“I told you. She’s Hungarian.” I stop to catch my breath and search my memory. “Lili. Lili Rosenkrantz.” That was the name Bolek had mentioned when he gave me the message that had brought me to the hospital.

“I don’t see that name on the list.”

“I know her,” says my savior.

“But I don’t see her name. . . .”

“Don’t worry about it; I’ll see to it. You have your hands full.”

“Oh yes,” says the guard. “It’s not as if I don’t have anything to do.” He glares at me. Would he never cease suspecting me? “This patient, is she a relative?”

How could I answer that? Once again, the stranger comes to my rescue: “Yes, she’s his aunt.”

Now the guard hands me a slip of paper. “Building four, ward three.”

I go along a hall that leads to the courtyard, then to a garden. It’s nice out. A peaceful morning: Spring is arriving with a smile. Doctors come and go. Two male nurses are escorting a restless, babbling patient. His features are drawn; he looks undone, as if he has been howling in silence for so long, he can no longer hear the sounds and murmurs of the world.

I look around for my benefactor. He’s vanished. But he was there at the right time, as if he had lived only to appear at my side when I needed an ally. A helping hand from fate? The cynics are wrong; David Hume and Nikos Kazantzakis are right: Everything that happens in our human universe is mysteriously linked to everything else.

WHY IS THE PAST SUDDENLY WITH ME? AND WHY is my heart beating so? Gamaliel, sitting on a bench in the calm of the garden, is wondering while he waits for his appointment.

. . . A FRIGHTENED LITTLE JEWISH BOY IS CLINGING to the skirt of his distraught mother. It’s dark in the bedroom where they are hidden. “Mama,” whispers the small boy, who is mad about stories, “tell me a story. Tell me anything, even one I know. What matters is hearing your voice, not the story. I want to hear your voice.”

“Not now,” says his mother.

“But when? Tomorrow? But when is tomorrow? Are you sure tomorrow comes after now?”

His mother is weeping softly, very quietly, without tears, so as not to be heard by a suspicious neighbor or a passerby in the night. “Be a good boy, my love. Tomorrow will come; the night won’t last forever.”

The boy is trying to hold back his sobs. “But you . . . you won’t be here tomorrow.”

“I’ll come back, I promise you.”

“When? I want to know when you’re coming back.”

“Soon, my love, very soon, but now you must behave.” He’s willing to behave, but not to be parted from his mother. She strokes his hair, his eyebrows, his lips. “One day, you’ll understand, my precious. The world is a cruel place. It doesn’t want us; it condemns us.”

The boy whispers in his mother’s ear, “But what is the world? Where does it begin?”

“The world is a story.”

“Tell it to me.”

“First you have to discover it.”

“Where is it?”

“In the street,” his mother replies. “In the building across the way. In the passerby who looks at you suspiciously. But always you find the world in people’s hearts. When their hearts are good, the world is beautiful, but when their hearts are bad, the world is poisonous, and then . . .”

The child doesn’t understand the words, but he senses the menace in them. “I don’t care about the world. I don’t care if it loves me. It’s you I want. You’re my world.”

“And you, my child, you’re my life. Without you, the world would be a cold place.”

“I don’t want to live in that world if I can’t be with you.”

She is kissing him desperately while she struggles to explain that wars are always cruel to people, and this war is the worst of all, especially for Jews. “You must understand this, my dearest. Try very hard to understand. I know you’re only eight, but you’re a Jew, and today, when Death is on the lookout for him, a Jew even at eight has to understand like an old man who is three times thirty-three years old. . . . Do you hear me?” He hears, but he still doesn’t understand. She persists: “Together we’re lost, but if we separate, we have a chance.”

He is obstinate: “No, I won’t do it.”

“You won’t?”

“No, I won’t.” He has never said no to his mother. This first time leaves him feeling shame mingled with remorse. He swallows his tears: “You say I don’t understand? You’re the one who doesn’t understand. If you leave me, I’ll die.”

She takes the child’s head between her hands. “You’re so intelligent, my son, my only love. You’re clever beyond your years. But you’re saying things you don’t understand. What shall we do? What can we do in this awful, cruel time?”

A soft sound interrupts their whispered exchange. Petrified, mother and child hold each other without daring to breathe: It’s best to play dead when the enemy approaches. Someone is knocking at the door: several light taps repeated three times. “It’s all right. Relax,” the mother murmurs. “The Lord be praised! It’s Ilonka.”

She opens the door. Her little boy closes his eyes so he won’t have to look at the young woman who is entering. He decides he doesn’t like her voice, though all she has said is an everyday remark: “It’s nasty out, let me tell you.” Nor does he like her scent: too cloying. It’s an effort not to cough or sneeze. His mother says, “Here is my little boy. You’ll take care of him, won’t you? Never will I forget you.” Ilonka replies, but he is too upset over their parting to hear what she says. His mother says again, “Say good evening to Ilonka.” He obeys without opening his eyes.

A long silence follows, until the newcomer says, “Rest easy, dear lady. I’ll look after your son. How handsome he is! And he looks so bright. Already I love him. And I’ll take good care of him, I promise you. This war will be over soon. We’ll all meet again, and we’ll be happy. And we’ll laugh, won’t we? How we’ll laugh!”

They are laughing already, but the boy does not join in. Someone inside him weeps.

And he knows this: It will be a long time before that someone stops weeping.

His mother is making tea. Their visitor has brought cakes and sweets. He cannot swallow anything. His mother tells him to try to sleep. He can’t. He doesn’t want to sleep. The hours pass. “It’s the curfew,” his mother explains. “I can’t go out now.” The two women are chatting. And the little boy is thinking, May the curfew last all day tomorrow, all the days of the week, and all the days of my life. Mama will talk to me in that voice like no other, and I’ll be reassured. I’ll wait for tomorrow without fear, and for Papa also. I’ll wait for him, too. . . .

At dawn, his mother takes his hands between hers as if to warm them and looks deep into his eyes. She wishes she could make him understand how grave this moment is: They might never see each other again. It’s the same anxiety she felt in 1939, when her husband went underground because the Germans had invaded what remained of Czechoslovakia after the Munich agreement. But she cannot find the words, those new and dreadful words that no mother in this world should ever have to say. She settles for simple, practical instruction. She has no choice: Time is running out of patience, and so is Death: “Listen, precious, listen carefully. I’m going away. I have to. I’m not going far, just to a house nearby. A Christian friend is taking me in as . . . as a guest. You’ll stay here with Ilonka. She has a beautiful voice, and she’s so clever. You’ll love that in her; I’m sure you will. She knows a thousand and one tales, and she’ll share them with you. If anyone asks, she’ll tell them you’re her little nephew from Fehérvàros—that’s a village far off in the mountains, a place that no one’s likely to know about. She has a document for you that’s reliable. There’s a new name on it, a Christian name: Péter. There—from now on you’ll be Péter to everyone. You’ll remember that, won’t you?” When he does not answer, she repeats, “Tell me that you’ll remember your new name.”

In his years of exile, growing up far from his mother, he would reflect on the absolute power of such documents. Yes, though the century was in turmoil, demented, it was carefully regulated: Your fate could turn on a single signature. If it was accepted, you could go anywhere you chose to live your life. But if it was rejected, too bad for you: You would be expelled from the land of the living.

“Yes, Mama, I’ll remember, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I don’t like it.”

“What don’t you like?” she asks in a sudden panic.

“That name, Péter. I don’t like it.”

“Why don’t you like it?”

“Because . . .”

“Because of what?”

“Because of Papa . . .”

Once again she is sobbing.

HIS FATHER HAD BEEN ARRESTED SIX MONTHS earlier. Even before the Germans came—that was on a Sunday—the Hungarian regime’s pro-fascist and anti-Semitic policy showed itself in periodic outbursts of cruelty toward Jews, especially toward those fleeing Nazi-ruled Poland. Usually, the Hungarian authorities simply drove the refugees back over the border to Galicia, where the SS were waiting to give them a “warm” reception. The luckiest refugees succeeded in getting in touch with Jewish committees, more or less tolerated by the police, and these committees provided them with false papers. The boy’s father was among these. In 1939, he and his family had been able to leave occupied Czechoslovakia, thanks to the recommendation of a onetime adviser to the father of the country, Thomas Masaryk. They had lived for a time in a small town; then they moved to Budapest. The Jewish community helped the father earn a living by getting him work at one or another of their businesses, and the family was always invited for meals on the Sabbath and holidays. The family spoke Yiddish at home, but the little boy was tutored in Hungarian, and then enrolled in school, where he made Hungarian-speaking friends. His parents would take him strolling in the park on Sabbath afternoons. One day, his father said to him, “Just look at that sun, how arrogant and masterful it is. It makes all creatures here below kneel to him. And yet even the sun must feel contrite and humbled when it has to set every evening. There’s a lesson in that for all of us.”

But the mother said she disagreed: “The sun doesn’t set; it just goes someplace else. And neither you nor we know where that is. The sun goes to reign over other people in other worlds, those in darkness, then to reappear the next morning more glorious than ever.”

The father stopped to kiss his wife’s hand. “You’re magnificent. I’d marry you again any day of the week.”

BY MARCH 1944, LIFE WAS RELATIVELY SETTLED and the future looked promising. Gamaliel’s father belonged to a Jewish resistance network that helped newer refugees. He was in good spirits. The Allies were advancing in Italy, and the Red Army was approaching. The war wouldn’t last much longer; soon Hitler would be on his knees. The good Lord above was watching over His people. Then things fell apart. The Germans took Hungary’s regent, Nicholas Horthy, hostage at Berchtesgaden, where he’d gone to visit the Führer. On the morning of March 19, the radio announced that German troops were entering Hungary to help the nation’s army defend its borders. A new government of pro-Hitler fanatics instituted a reign of terror and hate. And what hate it was: bitter and savage, dominated by death, dedicated to death. Roundups, arrests, humiliation: the Jewish community defenseless. Jews could no longer expect any support from the Christian community. Government employees who before had closed their eyes to the refugees’ activities now proved fearful and powerless. Gamaliel’s father was arrested on the street after being fingered by a neighbor. His documents did not impress the policeman, and at the precinct, the detective on duty did not even look at the identity card he showed him. “I know it’s a fake,” he said. “I can tell that much just by listening to you.” True, the father spoke Hungarian with difficulty. “You’re nothing but a filthy Jew,” the detective continued. “We hate liars, so we teach them a lesson in honesty.”

The father persisted: “But I’m not a Jew; I’m Christian.”

“Then how come you take such pleasure in murdering our beautiful language?”

The boy’s father tried to explain. “I have trouble speaking Hungarian. I came with Czech soldiers from our country. We came with official permission.”

“So, according to these papers of yours, you’re a resident of our fine country,” said the detective in an irritated voice. Then he slapped the father a couple of times and ordered him to drop his pants. “You’re still a Jew. Your God is not our God. It shows on your filthy body, which was born in garbage and carries the plague,” he said with disgust.

“Yes, I’m a Jew, but a Czech Jew. I knew President Masaryk.”

“Really? Tell us where is he now?”

“He’s no longer alive.”

“Well, pretty soon you’re going to join him. Give him our regards, won’t you?”

He was kept in prison and put through brutal bloody interrogations. “Give us the names!” they shouted at him. “Who were your accomplices? Who got you those fake papers? Who got you that apartment in Budapest?” After several endless nights of this, his ordeal was stopped by order of a higher-up who was bribed.

The boy accompanied his mother on her visits to the prison. He would wait sitting quietly on a bench in the park across the street from counterintelligence headquarters. He was terrified by the thought that his mother might never return, and each time she did, he would throw himself into her arms and desperately embrace her. He held back his tears, as she did. “Everything’s all right,” she would always assure him. “Papa wants you to know that.” The child wanted to believe her, but with all his heart he wanted to see his father. If only once a month, once a year!