Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

Hanna read a lot and her husband Tadeusz teased her for liking modern novels. He himself was a musician of great distinction who for ‘major historical reasons’, in his own words, had failed even before beginning his career as an orchestral conductor. At most he was occasionally allowed to conduct an orchestra of young students at the Vienna Academy. But one morning while they were rehearsing the alarm sounded. He continued conducting as if it was nothing; there were far too many alarms, and in his candid opinion the people who controlled the sirens overdid things. Perplexed, the musicians looked at each other and went on playing. But when they heard hissing sounds followed by explosions, they grabbed their instruments and headed for the shelters. Tadeusz was left alone — well, not entirely alone, because the principal violin stayed with him, a very tall young man with curls on his collar and clear, smiling eyes. They began discussing music: ‘My father has always remembered that morning and that conversation. He says he never talked with more passion, more freedom or more joy with any of his musicians. They scarcely noticed that a bomb had destroyed half the building. But the hall of the Academy had miraculously survived and they had gone on talking about music until someone came in, injured and covered with dust, searching for refuge in the only part of the building that was still intact. Some other musicians were carried in on stretchers, and the entrance hall of the Academy rapidly became an improvised hospital with stretcher-bearers running from one side to the other. The wounded were settled on the floor on the red padded carpets that served for sound insulation during rehearsals, while the dead were piled in the corridor next to the area where the violins, double basses, horns and flutes were stored. Nearly all the musicians who had taken refuge underground were injured. Two were dead: the pianist, a father of three small children, and the timpanist, a sturdy athletic young man whose muscles and ready smile had been envied by all. The others were lying there on the floor, one with a broken arm, one with shattered legs, one with bleeding ears, moaning quietly in childish voices. The conductor, Tadeusz, and the principal violin, Ferenc Bruman, became instant nurses, helping to strip off the orchestra’s clothes and holding them while their injuries were disinfected and bandaged, and helping them to swallow pills administered by medical students who had run over from the nearby School of Medicine after the explosion and collapse of the shelter. These were mere boys who applied to the letter what they had learned from books in their first months at the School: that splints were needed for broken bones, alcohol for wounds that must first be cleaned with soap and water, and stitches made with needle and suture thread for superficial wounds. But where could they find splints and needles and thread for sutures?

Hans is so engrossed in his story that he doesn’t notice the door behind them beginning to open. Amara jumps up, terrified. Hans goes on talking about his father the conductor and his mother Hanna who died of want in Treblinka concentration camp in 1944. Meanwhile a long head with sparse grey hair looks out and watches them, eyes wide with surprise.

‘Who are you?’

At last Hans is aware of the man. He leaps up and gives an automatic military salute, for no apparent reason clicking his heels and lifting his hand to the peak of his cap.

‘We’re looking for Peter Orenstein.’

‘I am he. What do you want?’

The man doesn’t ask them in. On the contrary, he closes the door behind himself, and looks suspiciously at them. His eyes are puffy and his eyelids wrinkled, and he has one cheek disfigured by a deep hole as if someone has excavated it with a knife; his mouth is drawn tight by mean lips that barely cover little false teeth.

‘What do you want from Peter Orenstein?’

‘The lady you see beside me,’ starts the man with the gazelles in his usual formal manner, putting himself at something of a disadvantage, ‘is an Italian lady, a Signora Maria Amara Sironi, and she has come to Vienna to look for traces of a childhood friend, called Orenstein like yourself.’

‘Emanuele Orenstein,’ adds Amara, looking the man straight in the eye as if to emphasise that they haven’t come to swindle or rob him, but only to find out what they can from someone who might be a relative. But Peter Orenstein seems not to understand. Perhaps he has been asleep. He rolls up his eyes and knits his brows crossly.

‘I know no Emanuele Orenstein,’ he says finally, trying to control a shrill voice that tends to pepper what he says with nervous little cries.

‘Very well, we’ve obviously made a mistake. I’m sorry. Please forgive us for disturbing you.’

‘But why are you trying to find this Emanuele Orenstein?’ says the man, who no longer seems so anxious to get rid of them. Has he grown curious?

‘He was a childhood friend. We used to play together.’

‘Where?’ asks the man, screwing up his eyes.

‘In Florence, Via Alderotti; does Villa Lorenzi mean anything to you?’

‘Come in.’

The man pulls out his keys and opens the door again. Who knows what made him change his mind? He seems more trusting now. He stands aside and welcomes them in. Indoors, there’s a smell of horses. All the windows are fast shut. The house is dark and full of dark heavy furniture. As if made for a larger house then brought here and pushed against the walls so as not to take up too much room. Two faded yellow velvet curtains hang from the high windows of the sitting room, the only light things in that dark house. The sofas may once have been yellow too, but they are now grey and stained.

‘Come in, please sit down,’ says the man in a conciliatory voice, going into the kitchen to find something to drink. He comes back balancing a bottle of liqueur and three mismatched glasses on a small tray.

‘Well, what happened to this Emanuele Orenstein?’ says the man, pouring sticky liqueur into the glasses. Goodness knows how long since that bottle was last touched; its glass neck is encrusted with deposits of whitish sugar.

‘In 1939 the Orenstein family decided to return to Vienna. This is what Signora Sironi finds difficult to understand and it makes no sense to me either. There is no logic in what they did. Letters reached Amara from Vienna. She can show you one if you like. She always carries them with her. First the Orensteins lived in a large house they owned, on Schulerstrasse. Then they were thrown out and taken to the ghetto in Łódź together with other Jewish families. A few more letters reached Signora Sironi from the ghetto; the post still seems to have been working to begin with. Then nothing. But after the war she was sent an exercise book containing other letters written in the ghetto when Emanuele still had a pencil but no more envelopes or money for stamps.’

‘Why not let the lady speak for herself?’ says Peter Orenstein crossly.

‘Her German is not very good. I’m here to help her.’

‘I understand Italian.’

The man fixes his gaze on Amara, smiling mysteriously. The story seems to interest him.

‘The lady suspects Emanuele Orenstein must have been transported to Auschwitz because many of those who were in the Łódź ghetto ended up there,’ persists the man with the gazelles with a regretful smile.

‘And has she been to Auschwitz to check the registers?’

‘Yes, I’ve been there. But I didn’t find anything.’

‘And you think he might still be alive?’

‘Possibly. I hope so.’

‘Another drop of gentian liqueur? I made it myself.’

Amara says, no, thank you. It’s too sweet for her. And there’s something stale about it that she doesn’t like. Now the man behaves strangely, rubbing his hands together and opening his eyes wide. He fills his own glass, gulps the liqueur down and pours some more. He licks up the last drops, hanging his tongue out of his mouth like a dog. He obviously knows something, but what?