Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

But then there was the other great-uncle, the one who had died. He’d had a wife, and his son would have been her father’s age now. They had all died in the war. Her grandparents almost never talked about them, and when they did, they spoke in lowered voices. All that was left of that uncle was a photograph taken when he was twenty years old. He was handsome, with a strong jaw and heavy dark hair, and he wore a pair of silver-framed glasses. He didn’t look like someone who expected to die. He looked like he was supposed to live to be a white-haired old man like his brothers.

Instead there was just that photograph. And their last name, a memorial.

She wanted to hear the whole story: what that brother had been like as a boy, what he’d been good at in school, what he’d wanted to do with his life, where he’d lived, who he’d loved, how he’d died. If her own brother died, she would tell her granddaughter everything about him. If her granddaughter asked.

Maybe that was the problem: She hadn’t asked. Or maybe even now they didn’t want to talk about it. But she would ask, next time she went to visit. It seemed right that they should tell her, now that she was thirteen. She wasn’t a child anymore. She was old enough now to know.

Any Case

It could have happened.

It had to happen.

It happened earlier. Later.

Closer. Farther away.

It happened, but not to you.

You survived because you were first.

You survived because you were last.

Because alone. Because the others.

Because on the left. Because on the right.

Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.

Because a shadow fell.

Luckily there was a forest.

Luckily there were no trees.

Luckily a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,

a frame, a turn, an inch, a second.

Luckily a straw was floating on the water.

Thanks to, thus, in spite of, and yet.

What would have happened if a hand, a leg,

One step, a hair away?

So you are here? Straight from that moment still suspended?

The net’s mesh was tight, but you? through the mesh?

I can’t stop wondering at it, can’t be silent enough.

Listen,

How quickly your heart is beating in me.

– Wislawa Szymborska

translated from the Polish by Grazyna Drabik and Sharon Olds

Deepest gratitude to everyone who helped bring this novel to its final state. The National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library provided invaluable gifts of time and freedom. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, the library of the École Spéciale d’Architecture, the Budapest Holocaust Memorial Center, and the National Jewish Museum of Budapest gave me access to artifacts and documents that made the history tangible. Zsuzsa Toronyi of the National Hungarian Jewish Archives in Budapest led me to the Munkaszolgálat newspapers, and Gábor Nagy was a subtle and insightful translator. CUNY professor emeritus Randolph Braham documented the Hungarian Holocaust in his career-long study of the subject, and particularly in The Politics of Genocide, which was an infallible guide; on a snowy day in February he met with me to answer questions of geography and Hungarian military ranking. The USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education provided many hours of videotaped interviews. Killian O’Sullivan gave detailed architectural advice. Professor Brian Porter at the University of Michigan offered insight into twentieth-century Central European politics and history. Kenneth Turan answered my Yiddish questions. Alice Hudson at the New York Public Library unearthed wartime maps of Budapest and Paris. Professor Edgar Rosenberg at Cornell led me to Gerald Schwab’s The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan.

Jordan Pavlin at Knopf offered unflagging patience, encouragement, and the most sensitive and painstaking editing. Kimberly Witherspoon championed this project from the beginning. Sonny Mehta gave me the great gift of his confidence. Mary Mount edited the novel from a European perspective. My copy editor, Kate Norris, went far beyond the call of duty. Leslie Levine responded with calm grace to every query.

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman were dazzlingly generous readers, editors, and friends. Brian Seibert lent me his sharp editorial eye, guidance on matters of dance, and courage when my own flagged. Daniel Orringer was a tireless source of medical detail, and Amy Orringer was an excellent travel partner and a fearless, nonjudgmental early reader. Carl and Linda Orringer gave their love, support, and unwavering belief in this project. Tom Tibor sent his meticulously researched writings about our family’s experience. Judy Brodt shared her memories and her knowledge of Jewish observance. Tibor Schenk described his wartime experiences at Bór and led me to Munkaszolgálat websites. Christa Parravani walked into a ruin with me to take photographs.

Above all, this book owes its existence to my grandparents Andrew and Irene Tibor, and to my great uncle and aunt Alfred and Susan Tibor. Deepest gratitude for your patience, belief, and generosity. To my uncle Alfred, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, narrate our family’s stories, and read the draft so carefully. To my grandmother, Anyu, most profound thanks: you read and edited with a poet’s artistry, a dressmaker’s exactitude, and a mother’s sensitivity. The insight you provided could have come from nowhere else.

My husband, Ryan Harty, read this novel countless times, and offered his incomparably acute editorial insight, his deep understanding of character, and his flawless ear for language. At every stage he made me feel that finishing the book was possible and necessary. No words of thanks can ever be enough.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Continuum International Publishing Group: The poem “D’Anne qui luy jecta de la Neige ” from Les Epigrammes by Clément Marot (London: Athlone Press, 1970). Reprinted by permission of Continuum International Publishing Group.

New Directions Publishing Corp., Hamish Hamilton, and Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co.: “It is,” from Unrecounted by W. G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hamburger, copyright © 2004 by The Estate of W. G. Sebald. Copyright © 2003 by Carl Hanser Verlag Müchen. Translation copyright © 2004 by Michael Hamburger. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp., Hamish Hamilton, and Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co.

Julie Orringer is the author of the award-winning short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, which was a New York Times Notable Book. She is the winner of The Paris Review’s Discovery Prize and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the writer Ryan Harty.