Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

“All right, Parisi,” Mendel said, and pulled the blanket down. “Enough sulking.” Parisi: It was Mendel’s nickname for him; he was envious of Andras’s time in France, and had wanted to hear about it in detail-particularly about evenings at József’s, and the backstage drama of the Sarah-Bernhardt, and the romantic exploits of Andras’s friends.

“Leave me alone,” Andras said.

“I can’t. I need your help.”

Andras sat up in bed. “Look at me,” he said, holding out his arms. Clusters of blood-violets bloomed beneath the skin. “I’m sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Do I look like a person who can be of help to anyone?”

“You’re the squad captain,” Mendel said. “It’s your duty.”

“I don’t want to be squad captain anymore.”

“I’m afraid that’s not up to you, Parisi.”

Andras sighed. “What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?”

“I want you to illustrate the newspaper.” He dropped his typed pages onto Andras’s lap. “Nothing fancy. None of your art-school nonsense. Just some crude drawings. I’ve left space for you around the articles.” He deposited a modest cache of pencils into Andras’s hand, some of them colored.

Andras couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen colored pencils. These were sharp and clean and unbroken, a small revelation in the smoky dark of the bunkhouse.

“Where did you get these?” he asked.

“Stole them from the office.”

Andras pushed himself up onto his elbows. “What do you call that rag of yours?”

“The Snow Goose.”

“All right. I’ll take a look. Now leave me alone.”

In addition to news of the war, The Snow Goose had weather reports (Monday: Snow. Tuesday: Snow. Wednesday: Snow.); a fashion column (Report from a Fashion Show at Dawn: The dreaming labor workers lined up in handsome suits of coarse blanket, this winter’s most stylish fabric. Mangold Béla Kolos, Budapest’s premier fashion dictator, predicts that this picturesque style will spread throughout Hungary in no time); a sports page (The Golden Youth of Transylvania love the sporting life. Yesterday at 5:00 a.m., the woods were full of youth disporting themselves at today’s most popular amusements: wheelbarrow-pushing, snow-shoveling, and tree-felling); an advice column (Dear Miss Coco: I’m a twenty-year-old woman. Will it hurt my reputation if I spend the night in the officers’ quarters? Love, Virgin. Dear Virgin: Your question is too general. Please describe your plans in detail so I can give an appropriate reply. Love, Miss Coco); travel ads (Bored? Want a change of scene? Try our deluxe tour of rural Ukraine!); and in honor of Andras, an article about a feat of architecture (Engineering Marvel! Paris-trained architect-engineer Andras Lévi has designed an invisible bridge. The materials are remarkably lightweight and it can be constructed in almost no time. It is undetectable by enemy forces. Tests suggest that the design of the bridge may still need some refinement; a battalion of the Hungarian Army mysteriously plunged into a chasm while crossing. Some argue, however, that the bridge has already attained its perfect form). And then there was the pièce de résistance, the Ten Commandments à la Munkaszolgálat:

1. IF THOU MAKEST A GRAVE MISTAKE, THOU SHALT NOT TELL. THOU SHALT LET OTHERS TAKE THE BLAME FOR THEE.

2. THOU SHALT NOT SHARPEN THINE OWN SAW. LEAVE THE SHARPENING TO WHOMSOEVER MAY USE IT NEXT.

3. THOU SHALT NOT BOTHER TO WASH THYSELF. THY WORKMATES STINKETH ANYWAY.

4. WHEN THOU STANDEST IN LINE FOR LUNCH, THOU SHALT ELBOW TO THE FRONT. OTHERWISE THOU GETTEST NOT THE SINGLE POTATO IN THE SOUP.

5. ON THE WAY TO WORK, THOU SHALT DISAPPEAR. LET THE FOREMAN FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO REPLACE THEE.

6. IF THOU COVETEST THY NEIGHBOR’S THINGS, KEEPEST THINE OWN COUNSEL. IF THOU DOST NOT, THY NEIGHBOR’S THINGS MAY DISAPPEAR BEFORE THOU CANST STEAL THEM.

7. IF THY WORKMATE IS NAÏVE, THOU SHALT BORROW EVERYTHING FROM HIM AND NEGLECT TO RETURN IT.

8. WHEN THOU COMEST IN FROM THE NIGHT WATCH, THOU SHALT MAKE A GREAT NOISE. WHY SHOULDST THOU LET OTHERS SLEEP WHILST THOU WAKEST?

9. IF THOU FALLEST ILL, THOU SHALT LIE ABED AS LONG AS THOU CANST. IF THY MATES SUFFER FROM OVERWORK THEREFORE, THEY MAY GAIN THE PRIVILEGE OF ILLNESS TOO.

10. FOLLOW THESE RULES THAT THOU MAYST HAVE TIME TO PREACH CONSIDERATION.

Grudgingly at first, and then with growing enjoyment, Andras illustrated The Snow Goose. For the weather report he drew a series of boxes, each more thickly swarmed with snowflakes. For the fashion column he drew a likeness of Mendel himself, his hair raked upright, his torso swathed toga-style in a ragged gray blanket. On the sports page, three perspiring labor servicemen dragged gravel wagons up a steep hill. The advice column sported a sketch of the saucy, bespectacled Coco, her legs long and bare, a pencil held to her lips. The travel ad for Ukraine showed a beach umbrella planted in the blowing snow. The architecture piece called for an image of the architect pointing proudly at an empty gorge. And the Ten Commandments required only the background sketch of two stone tablets. When he’d finished, he held the work at arm’s length and squinted at the drawings. They were the lowest grade of caricature, rendered in haste while the artist lay in bed. But Mendel was right: They suited The Snow Goose perfectly.

That single copy of the newspaper made its way through the hands of two hundred men, who could soon be heard quoting the Fourth Commandment in the soup line or speculating wistfully about vacations to Ukraine. Andras couldn’t keep from feeling a certain proprietary satisfaction, a sensation he hadn’t experienced in months. Once it was determined that the illustrator who signed himself Parisi was actually Squad Captain Lévi, men began to approach him to ask for drawings. The most frequent request was for a nude version of Coco. He drew her on the lid of a man’s wooden footlocker, and then in the lining of someone else’s cap, and then on a letter to someone’s younger brother, holding a sign that said Hi, Sugar! The drawing of Mendel spawned another fad, this one for likenesses; men would line up to have Andras draw their portraits. He wasn’t a very good portraitist, but the men didn’t seem to care. The roughness of the lines, the charcoal haze around a subject’s eyes or chin, captured the essential uncertainty of their lives in the Munkaszolgálat. Mendel Horovitz, too, began receiving requests: He became a kind of professional letter-writer, penning expressions of love and regret and longing that would slip into the turbulent stream of the military mail service, and might or might not reach the wives and brothers and children for whom they were intended.

When the first issue of The Snow Goose finally disintegrated, Mendel wrote a new one and Andras illustrated it again. Emboldened by the popularity of the earlier edition, they brought their newspaper directly to the office, where there was a mimeograph machine. They offered the company secretary fifteen pengő as a bribe. At the risk of punishment and loss of position the company secretary printed ten copies, which were quickly subsumed into the ranks of the 112/30th. A third issue of thirty copies followed. As the men read and laughed over the paper, Andras began to feel as if he had awakened from a long, drugged sleep. He was surprised he’d been so weak, so willing to allow his mind to be overtaken by miserable thoughts and then hollowed to nothingness. Now he was drawing every day. They were absurd little sketches, to be sure, but they oxygenated him, made the effort of breathing seem worthwhile.

Then, on a raw, wet day in March, Andras and Mendel were summoned to the office of the company commander. The summons came from Major Kálozi’s first lieutenant, a scowling, boarlike man by the unfortunate name of Grimasz. At dinnertime he approached Andras and Mendel in the assembly ground and knocked their mess tins from their hands. He held a crumpled copy of the most recent Snow Goose, which contained a love poem from a certain Lieutenant G to a certain Major K, and made other insinuations as to the nature of the relationship between them. Lieutenant Grimasz’s face burned red; his neck seemed to have swollen to twice its normal size. He crushed the paper in his blocky fist. The other men took a step back from Andras and Mendel, who were left to absorb the full force of Grimasz’s glare.