Unravelled (3 page)

Up until that point, I had tried to be a big girl. I wanted to prove to my parents that even though I had a momentary lapse when I found out that I couldn't give my report, that I could shoulder the burdens of wartime just as good as any adult. I wanted to be a "little soldier", like my uncle called my older cousins in Debrecen. I longed to be like them, with my head held high and without a complaint on my lips. I had only taken that vow the day before, mouthing the words into my bedroom mirror and making a promise to myself, but I was already dissolved into tears looking into Kiraly's eyes. I knelt down to him and put my arms around his fluffy neck and buried my wet face into his fur.

"I'll miss you, boy," I sniffed, running my hands over his lithe body once again. "We'll see you soon."

I looked up to Hajna and saw that she was also in a rare moment of sensitivity, tears falling down her face and making little raindrops onto her tan coat. She looked at me, her teeth over her lips and sniffling loudly.

"I'll wear this coat," she whispered to my father and buried her face in his chest.

"Good girl."

It seemed to take us an endless amount of time to get to The Ghetto and receive our housing assignment. The walk in the sullen parade hadn't been that far, but it was the business of queuing up and receiving our housing assignment that seemed to take years. Papa held us close as we stood in line, our identity papers in our fists, ready to show at any moment. Hungarian officers especially assigned to the business of dealing with the "Jewish problem", stood around us like menacing trees in a dark forest. For the most part, their faces were stern, cold. They held guns in front of them, strapped across the front of their bodies the way some of the Jewish women had secured their babies to their chests with a tattered, stained cloth. 

"Why do they have guns?" I asked my mother as we moved forward in our line for what seemed like the one hundred and fifth time. We were inching ever closer to our fate, step by step, the sun now high over our heads, its yellow beams extended like a child asking for a hug. 

"Because they're soldiers," she answered, fanning herself.  It wasn't a particularly hot day, but my mother often became ill from being in the sun too long. When we went to the Tisza during the summer, or to Balaton for a special treat, she'd often wear big sunglasses, a kerchief and bring a big back umbrella to shield herself. Although it embarrassed us children, she claimed she needed it because the mere feeling of the sun made her feel ill. Sometimes she'd get incredible pains in her elbows and knees,  and there were times a rash appeared across the bridge of her nose appeared that resembled a butterfly. The doctors had no idea what was wrong with her. Even my father had tried to figure it out on his own, but to no avail. For two years, when I was much younger, Papa spent much of his free time devoted to figuring out my mother's condition, taking her to the lab to draw vials of her blood almost daily. He kept meticulous diaries of her symptoms, took her in for X-rays and even tried to look at samples of her skin through a microscope. He came up short, nothing for this mystery. She was just sickly.

As a soldier passed down our line, I grabbed my mother's gloved hand instinctively, my heart thudding in my ears. He walked slowly, his heels pounding on the pavement, his gun cradled in front of him. His piercing brown eyes surveyed all of us as we stood in line, shifting our weight from one leg to the other impatiently. His face radiated pure hate, but I couldn't imagine he would try and do anything to his fellow Hungarians. After all, we were his people, too.

"Sir?" My father spat as the soldier passed us in line, the heels of his boots radiating authority against the pavement.

"Yes?" the man turned on his heel and faced my father. He was a good head shorter than my Papa, but he kept an air of distance and brusqueness as he locked eyes with him. The expression on his face made up for anything he lacked in height.

"My wife often doesn't feel well in the sun. Can she maybe sit down over there, under the eves?" He pointed to the sidewalk across from us that had ample shelter from the sun.

The officer didn't flinch for a solid five or six seconds, as if he hadn't even heard my father's request. Then, without warning, he burst out laughing as if he had just heard the funniest, most amusing joke in the world. His jaw dropped, revealing his teeth and several gold crowns sparkled in the afternoon sun.

"Please, Jew. Don't make me laugh," he smirked. He moved his hand up toward my father's face, as if he were going to slap him. I held my breath until I could feel my face turning red. The soldier released his muscles and put his arm back to his side. "She can sit down when she gets to her new apartment."

My Mama had become as white as a ghost, her face twisted in a grimace and the butterfly-looking rash appearing ever-so-slightly over the bridge of her nose. We endured the never-ending line, and finally made our way to the front where a small man with glasses stamped our identity cards and gave us a slip of paper with our housing assignment.

Exhausted and in pain from having waited so long in the afternoon sun, my mother wanted nothing more than to plop down right away, sleep threatening to take over her body. So, Lujza, Hajna and I were faced with the task of helping Papa move our possessions and the wagon up to the third floor apartment building.

When Papa opened the door to the apartment for the first time, we breathed a small sigh of relief. The apartment wasn't beautiful, like our home, but it was livable. There weren't grand archways, spotless hardwood floors or a telephone in the corner. A thin layer of dust coated the kitchen table and stove, and although it was much smaller than our old home, it wasn't too cramped and I could see all of us calculating the space in our heads and deciding how we could make do for the rest of the war. It would only be a couple of months, as my Papa kept assuring us. Only temporary.

The apartment itself had just one bedroom, the entrance of the apartment at the kitchen, unlike our home that had its entrance into the foyer (with three marble statues of Roman gods and an always-on-the-brink-of-death fern). As one walked through the kitchen toward the white, wooden door opposite, there was a room that looked like a living room, with a small white coach (complete with a large stain in the middle). Just off the living room stood another room, furnished with two metal beds that sat naked, furnished only with blue striped mattresses (that would need to be beaten clean), without any sheets to clothe them.

"We can move a bed into the living room," father began dictating his orders, reminding me of a captain on a ship in the middle of a storm, keeping things calm so that his crew could perform their tasks. "And the girls can sleep there at night and we'll sleep in the bedroom. Girls, we don't have Agata and Emilia to help us anymore, so you're going to have to be grown ups, okay? You're going to help your Mama with the washing and cleaning and cooking."

We nodded slowly as we continued to survey the rooms, Hajna so in shock by the change that she had all but forgotten about how much she hated her tan coat that she left it on for much longer than she had anticipated.

Mama slumped over and wiped her forehead, forcing herself to stand up straight by holding onto the doorframe, her knuckles turning white. She stood up on her swollen feet and immediately asked us to get to work, stretching her muscles so she could scrub and clean with us. Although our mother rarely felt well enough to clean the home, she still lived by the motto "A clean home is a happy home," and wanted to carry it through to The Ghetto, even through her pain, swelling and rash. We changed into dresses that weren't as nice as the ones we had worn for the move and started scrubbing the floors and walls with improvised cleaning solution Papa made from some hand soap and water. Even Papa pitched in as the five of us got down on our hands and knees and scrubbed with every fiber of our beings, with the little energy we had left. Most of it had been sucked away from hours on our feet, waiting and waiting.

When we were almost ready to stop for the evening and start cooking a meal, a swift knock came at the door. Papa had warned us not to open the door while we were here, and that he would do it. If he, for some reason, wasn't home, we were to pretend we weren't home either and become deathly quiet until the person left. If we had to, we would even hide behind the doors or scurry to the other room.

Papa walked nervously to the brown, wooden door and slowly turned the knob with his dirt-laden hands. The way he laid his hand on the knob so slowly reminded me of a character in a mystery movie. The door squeaked on its hinges as Papa opened it wide enough to see who the offending party was. 

The door swung open to reveal a band of exhausted and hungry looking peasants, dressed in Orthodox Jewish attire, complete with prayer shawls and curls. A mother, her arms weighed down with packages and face covered in sweat, stood looking exhausted. Two little boys, with their Chassidic curls, leaned against their parents, the apples of their cheeks red from their journey.

"Hello?" My father greeted them as a question.

"We're the Goldbergs. I'm Zvi, my wife, Chava, our children Daniel and Samuel," he nodded, as if that explained their appearance on our new doorstep.

"Are you our neighbors?" Hajna asked without hesitation, our mother quietly pulling her back as she started to walk toward the weary group, her slippered feet scuffing across the floor.

"No," the father, Zvi, shook his head. "We live here."

"No, no, no," my father shook his head. "This is where we were assigned. The family Stern David."

Zvi Goldberg licked his finger and rubbed a dirty hand through his Chassidic curls, took a deep breath and fumbled through his pockets to find the papers. His wife and children looked on, burdened by the heavy loads on their backs, all of their life's possessions. They had no doubt come from one of the villages outside of Szeged, trudging along without the luxury of a wagon, all but collapsing under the weight of their bundles. Beads of sweat had formed all over Chaya Goldberg's face, as if she had been caught in a rainstorm on the way here. As Zvi Goldberg fumbled, I saw my mother catch Chaya's eyes and smile, to which Chaya shyly smiled back, like a teenager in the school corridor catching the eye of a popular, much more stylish girl.

"Ah ha! Here it is," Zvi Goldberg exclaimed, running his free hand through his wiry, bushy black beard. "You see? The same address as your family. Maybe there is a mistake?"

My father rested his tired body on the doorframe, his shirt yellowing with sweat stains. His eyes looked not only sad, but as if there were buried behind a deep valley of wrinkles. Compared to my grandfather in Debrecen, my father always looked youthful and spry, with a smooth face compared to the deep creases that had taken over my grandfather's. Nagyapa, my grandfather, had always been hunched over, as long as I could remember him. He shuffled around his apartment in slippered feet, a testament to his arthritis, and used a cane to make his way.  Sometimes he waved the black wooden stick in the air to make a point or when he was arguing with grandmother, Nagymama. He would make exaggerated jabbing motions with it, as if he were hitting the words he wanted to emphasize. To me, he had been old his entire life. And now, looking at my own father, I saw the very beginnings of a transformation into an old man. Wrinkles that hadn't been there the day before suddenly speckled his face making him look, to me, almost as old as Nagyapa. The way he stood speaking to Zvi Goldberg, his body slumped over and supported by the doorframe, made him resemble his father even more.

As Papa wiped his forehead and took a shaky, labored breath, a Hungarian guard shuffled by, his rifle close to his chest. The Hungarian officer walked as though he was being lead by his giant nose, sticking it into each Jewish household to make sure they were complying with the orders set forth from his superiors.

"Excuse me, sir?" Zvi Goldberg asked, kicking one of his packs every so slightly so that it emitted a cloud of dust "This family and my family have been assigned the same apartment."

The soldier stared back at him blankly, unmoved, as if he had just uttered a fact everyone knew, like the sky was blue or the earth was round. Several moments passed before the guard opened his pink mouth to speak.

"So, what is the problem?"

"We were assigned to the same apartment," Zvi Goldberg repeated, pointing at the assignment paper with such force I feared he would poke a hole right through the thin paper.

"So what? What did you Jews expect? A vacation at the expense of the government? If it says the same apartment, then you are living in the same apartment."

"You'll try and squeeze nine people in these three rooms?" my mother asked, her now hoarse and exhausted voice piercing through the room like a frog's croak.

"You Jews," the soldier sighed, as if we were kindergarten children demanding candy right before dinner. "You're such complainers. And always wanting more and more and more. Consider yourselves lucky. Next door, they have thirteen people in an apartment the same size."

My father looked to my mother, their eyes speaking an entire dialogue of helplessness and anger without so much of a word exchanged between them. I nestled my head in my mother's chest and then turned my neck to survey the Goldbergs, our new roommates, and I could see the same look transpiring between Zvi and Chaya Goldberg. It was a look I would always remember, but not fully understand until I had my own children.

"Well, then," my father turned to Zvi Goldberg, breaking the silent conversation with my mother. "Welcome, roommates."