Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

As if to remind them of their powerlessness, all the Jewish workers now had to wear distinguishing armbands, ugly canary-yellow tubes of fabric that slid over their sleeves. Klara had had to sew these for Andras before he reported for duty. Even Jews who had long ago converted to Christianity had to wear armbands, though theirs were white. The bands were mandatory at all times. Even when the weather turned unseasonably hot, the sun reflecting off the crushed rock of the rail yard as though from a million mirrors, and the laborers stripped off their shirts-even then, they had to wear the armbands over their bare arms. The first time Andras had been told to retrieve his band from his discarded shirt, he had stared at the guard in disbelief.

“You’re just as much a Jew with your shirt off as you are with it on,” the man had said, and he waited for Andras to put on the armband before he turned away.

The commander at Szentendre was a man called Varsádi, a tall paunchy flatlander with an even temper and a taste for leisure. Varsádi’s chief vices were mild ones: his pipe, his flask, his sweet tooth. He was a constant smoker and a happy drunk. He left the matter of discipline to his men, who were less forgiving, less easily distracted by a fine tin of Egyptian tobacco or a smoky Scotch. Varsádi himself liked to sit in the shade of the administrative office, which stood on a low artificial hill overlooking the river, and watch the proceedings of his rail yard while he entertained visiting commanders from other companies or enjoyed his share of the goods that had been intended for the front. Andras knew to be grateful that he was not a Barna nor even a Kálozi, but the sight of Varsádi with his heels on a wooden crate, his arms crossed over his chest in contentment, a lemniscate of smoke drifting from his pipe, was its own special brand of torture.

By the end of their first week, Andras and Mendel had begun to discuss the newspaper they might publish at Szentendre Yard-The Crooked Rail, it would be called. “À la Mode at Szentendre,” Mendel had extemporized to Andras one morning on the bus, indicating the band on his arm. “The color yellow, ever popular for spring, has surged to the leading edge of fashion.” Andras laughed, and Mendel took out his little notebook and began to write. The trendsetting young men of the 79/6th have made a bold statement in buttercup, he read aloud a few minutes later: Accessorize! The au courant favor a trim band of ten centimeters worn about the bicep, in an Egyptian twill suitable for all occasions. Next week: Our fashion correspondent investigates a new rage for nakedness among soldiers on the Eastern Front.

“Not bad,” Andras said.

“The Yard’s an easy target. I’m surprised they don’t have a paper already.”

“I’m not,” Andras said. “The other men seem half asleep.”

“That’s just it. Every day they’re watching these army stooges steal bread from the men on the front, and they take it all as a matter of course!”

“Only because they’re not being starved to death themselves.”

“Well, let’s wake them up,” Mendel said. “Let’s get them a little angry about what’s going on. First we’ll make them laugh in the usual manner. Then, later, we’ll slide in a piece or two about what it’s like in a real camp. Especially if you’re short on food or missing an overcoat. Maybe we’ll inspire them to slow down the operation a little. If we all drag our feet in the loading, the soldiers won’t have as much time to unload. The trains still have to roll out on time, you know.”

“But how to do it without risking our necks?”

“Maybe we don’t have to hide the paper from Varsádi and the guards. If the coating’s sweet enough, they’ll never taste what’s in the pill. We’ll praise Szentendre to the skies in comparison to the other hellholes we’ve been in, and both sides will hear what we want them to hear.”

Andras agreed, and that was where it began. The Crooked Rail would be a more elaborate operation than the previous two papers; their residence in Budapest would give them access to a typewriter, a drafting table, an array of supplies. The journey to and from Szentendre would provide time for two daily editorial meetings. They would begin slowly, filling the first issues with nothing but jokes. There would be the usual fabricated news, the usual sports, fashion, and weather; there would be a special arts section complete with event reviews. This week the Szentendre Ballet debuted “Boxcar,” Mendel wrote for the first issue, a brilliant ensemble piece choreographed by Varsádi Varsádius, Budapest’s enfant terrible of dance. A certain element of repetition was offset by a delightful variability in the ages and physiques of the dancers. And then there would be a new feature called “Ask Hitler.” On their second Monday at Szentendre, Mendel presented Andras with a typescript:

D EAR H ITLER: Please explain your plan for the progress of the war in the East. With affection, S OLDIER

D EAR S OLDIER: I’m so pleased you asked! My plan is to build a large meat-grinder in the vicinity of Leningrad, fill it with young men, and crank the handle as fast as I can. With double affection, H ITLER

D EAR H ITLER: How do you propose to fight the British fleet in the Mediterranean? Yours most sincerely, P OPEYE

D EAR P OPEYE: First of all, I’m a fan! I forgive you for being American. I hope you’ll pay us a visit in the Reich when this nasty business is all over. Secondly, here is my plan: Fire my admirals until I find one who’ll take orders from a Führer who’s never been to sea. With admiration, H ITLER

D EAR H ITLER: What is your position on Hungary? Yours, M. H ORTHY

D EAR H ORTHY: Missionary, though at times I favor the croupade, just for variation. Love, H ITLER

“Maybe we should speak to Frigyes Eppler,” Andras said, once he’d read the piece. “Maybe he’d let us print this paper on the Journal’s press. I’d hate to subject a piece of work as fine as this to the mimeograph.”

“You flatter me, Parisi,” Mendel said. “But do you think he’d go for it?”

“We can ask,” Andras said. “I don’t think he’d begrudge us a little ink and paper.”

“Make your illustrations,” Mendel said. “That can only help our case.”

Andras did, spending a sleepless night at the drafting table. He made an elaborate heading for the paper, two empty boxcars flanking a title stencilled in Gothic script. The fashion section carried a drawing of a young dandy in full Munkaszolgálat uniform, his armband radiating light. The dance review showed a line of laborers, fat and slender, young and old, struggling to hold crates of ammunition aloft. For the Hitler section, austerity and gravity seemed the best approach; Andras made a detailed pencil drawing of the Führer from an old edition of the Pesti Napló. At two in the morning Klara woke to feed Tamás, who had not yet learned to sleep through the night. After she’d put him to bed again, she came out to the sitting room and went to Andras, pressing her body against his back.

“What are you doing up so late?” she said. “Won’t you come to bed?”

“I’m almost finished. I’ll be in soon.”

She leaned over the drafting table to look at what he’d taped to its tilted plane. “The Crooked Rail,” she read. “What is that? Another newspaper?”

“The best one we’ve made so far.”

“You can’t be serious, Andras! Think of what happened in Transylvania.”

“I have,” he said. “This isn’t Transylvania. Varsádi’s not Kálozi.”

“Varsádi, Kálozi. It’s all the same. Those men have your life in their hands. Isn’t it bad enough you had to be called again? ‘Ask Hitler’?”

“The situation’s different at Szentendre,” he said. “The command structure hardly deserves the name. We’re not even going to publish underground.”