Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

At the house in Frangepán köz, where time stood still and the very sunlight filtering down through the high clouds seemed antique, they found the milk goats bleating in their yard and pulling at a stack of sweet hay. Seven-month-old Tamás stared in fascination. He looked at Klara as though to ask if he should be alarmed. When he saw she was smiling, he turned again to the goats and pointed a finger.

“Our sons are city boys,” Tibor said. “By the time I was his age, I’d seen a thousand goats.”

“Perhaps they won’t be city boys for long,” Klara said.

They turned away from the goats and walked the stone path to the door. Tibor knocked, and Klein’s grandmother answered, her white hair hidden under a kerchief, her dress covered with a red-embroidered apron. From the kitchen came the smell of stuffed cabbage. Andras, exhausted from the week’s work, became suddenly and ravenously hungry. Klein’s grandmother beckoned them into the bright sitting room, where the elder Mr. Klein sat in an armchair with his feet soaking in a tin basin. He wore the same faded crimson robe he’d worn when Andras and Tibor had last visited; his hair stood up in the same winged style, as if his head meant to take flight. A haze of tea-scented steam wreathed his legs. He raised a hand in greeting.

“My husband’s bunions are bothering him,” his wife said. “Otherwise he would get up to welcome you.”

“I welcome you,” the old man said, and made a polite half bow. “Please sit.”

Mrs. Klein went off down the portrait-lined hall to get her grandson. None of them sat, despite the elder Klein’s invitation. Instead they waited in a close-shouldered group, glancing around at the room’s ancient furniture and its profusion of photographs. Andras saw Klara’s eyes move over the images of the little family-the boy that must have been the child Klein, the beautiful and mysterious woman, the sad-eyed man-and he felt again as though the house contained the ghost of some long-ago loss. Klara must have sensed it too; she drew Tamás closer and passed her thumb across his mouth, as if removing an invisible film of milk.

Klein followed his grandmother back down the hall and into the sitting room. She ducked into the kitchen; he came forward, blinking in the afternoon light. Andras had to wonder how long it had been since he’d last emerged from his den of dossiers and maps and radios. His eyes were dark-shadowed, his hair stiff for want of washing. He wore a cotton undershirt and a pair of ink-stained trousers. His feet were bare. He needed a shave. He scrutinized the group of them and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, I tell you. Not a chance.”

“Let me make some tea while you’re talking,” Klein’s grandmother called.

“No tea,” he called back to her. “We’re not talking. They’re leaving. Do you understand?” But they could hear a kitchen cabinet open and close, and water rolling into the metallic hollow of a teapot.

Klein raised his hands toward the ceiling.

“Be civil,” the elder Klein said to his grandson. “They’ve come all this way.”

“What you’re asking is impossible,” Klein said, speaking to Andras and Tibor. “Impossible, and illegal. You could all end up in jail, or dead.”

“We’ve considered that,” Klara said, her tone demanding that he look at her. “We still want to go.”

“Impossible!” he repeated.

“But this is what you do,” Andras said. “You’ve done it before. We can pay you. We’ve got the money, or we’ll have it soon.”

“Lower your voice,” Klein said. “The windows are open. You don’t know who might be listening.”

Andras lowered his voice. “Our situation has become urgent,” he said. “We want you to arrange our transport, and then we want to get the rest of our family out.”

Klein sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. “Get someone else to help you,” he said.

“Why should they get someone else?” his grandfather said. “You’re the best.”

Klein made a sound of frustration in his throat. His grandmother, having finished her preparations in the kitchen, wheeled a little tea cart into the room, parked it beside the sofa, and began to fill ancient-looking Herend cups.

“If you don’t help them, they will try someone else,” she said, with a note of quiet reproach. She cocked her head, pausing in her tea-pouring to scrutinize Klara, as if the future were written upon the dotted swiss of her dress. “They’ll go to Pál Behrenbohm, and he’ll turn them away. They’ll go to Szászon. They’ll go to Blum. And if that fails, they’ll go to János Speitzer. And you know what will happen then.” She handed the cups around, offering sugar and cream, and poured a final cup for herself.

Klein looked from his grandmother to Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana and the babies. He wiped his palms against his undershirt. He was one man against all of them. He raised his hands in defeat. “It’s your funeral,” he said.

“Please sit and drink your tea,” Klein’s grandmother said. “And Miklós, you need not use that morbid language.”

They took their places around the table and drank the strange smoky tea she’d prepared for them. It tasted like wood fires burning, and it made Andras think of fall. In lowered voices they talked about the details: how Klein would arrange transport down the Danube with a friend who owned a barge, and how the families would be secreted away in two ingeniously built compartments in the cargo area, and how drugged milk must be prepared for the babies so they wouldn’t cry, and how they would need to bring emergency food enough for two weeks’ travel, because a trip that ordinarily took a few days might take much longer in wartime. Klein would have to make inquiries about ships leaving from Romania, and where and how they might gain passage aboard one of them. It might take a month or two to arrange the journey, if all went well. He, Klein, was not a swindler, not like János Speitzer. He would not book passage for them upon an unsound boat, nor tell them to bring less food than was needed so they would have to buy more from his friends at cruel prices. He would not place them in care of a crew that would steal their luggage or prevent them from going ashore to a doctor if they needed one. Nor would he make false promises about the safety or success of the trip. It might fail at any point. They had to understand that.

When Klein had finished, he sat back against the sofa and scratched his chest through his undershirt. “That’s how it works,” he concluded. “A hard, risky trip. No guarantees.”

Klara moved forward in her chair and placed her cup on the little table. “No guarantees,” she repeated. “But at least we’ll have a chance.”

“I’m not going to speculate about your chances,” Klein said. “But if you still want to engage my services, I’m willing to do the work.”

They exchanged a look-Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana. They were ready. This was what they’d hoped for. “By all means,” Tibor said. “We’ll take whatever risks we have to take.”

The men shook hands and arranged to meet again in a week. Klein bowed to the women and retreated back down the hallway, where they heard the door of his room open and close. Andras imagined him taking a new manila folder from a box and inscribing their family name upon its tab. The thought filled him with sudden panic. So many files. Stacks and stacks of them, all over the bed and desk and bureau. What had happened to those people? How many of them had made it to Palestine?

The next evening Klara went to her brother to ask his forgiveness. She and Andras walked together to the house on Benczúr utca, pushing the baby in his carriage. In György’s study, Klara took her brother’s hands in her own and asked that he excuse her, that he understand how surprised she’d been and how incapable, at that moment, of appreciating what he’d done. She hated the thought that he’d already lost so much of his estate. She had authorized the sale of her property in Paris, she told him, and would begin to repay her debt to him as soon as she had access to the money.