Julie Orringer - The InvisibleBridge

It was the first week of April. The fields were still barren and cold, but a haze of green had begun to appear on the shrubs that clustered near the farmhouses; the bare branches of the creek willows had turned a brilliant yellow. He knew that the loveliness of the farm would still be hidden, its yard a disaster of mud, its stunted apple trees bare, its garden empty. He regretted that he couldn’t show it to Klara in the summertime. But when they finally arrived, when they disembarked at the familiar train station and saw the low whitewashed house with its dark thatched roof, the barn and the mill and the millpond where he and Mátyás and Tibor used to sail wooden boats, he thought he had never seen any place more beautiful. Smoke rose from the stone chimney; from the barn came the steady whine of the electric saw. Stacks of fresh-cut lumber had been piled around the yard. In the orchard, the bare apple trees held their branches toward the April sky. He dropped his army duffel in the yard, and, taking Klara’s hand, ran to the front door. He rapped on the windowpane and waited for his mother to come.

A young blond woman opened the door. On her hip was a red-faced infant with a macerated zwieback in its hand. When the woman saw Andras and Mendel in their military coats, her eyebrows lifted in fear.

“Jenő!” she cried. “Come quick!”

A stocky man in overalls came running from the barn. “What’s the matter?” he called. And when he’d reached them, “What’s your business here?”

Andras blinked. The sun had just come out from behind a cloud; it was difficult to focus on the man’s features. “I’m Captain Lévi,” he said. “This is my parents’ house.”

“Was their house,” the man said, with an edge of pride. He narrowed his eyes at Andras. “You don’t look like a military officer.”

“Squad Captain Lévi of Company 112/30,” Andras said, but the man wasn’t looking at Andras anymore. He glanced at Mendel, whose coat was devoid of officers’ bars. Then he turned his eyes upon Klara and raked her with a slow appreciative gaze.

“And you don’t look like a country girl,” he said.

Andras felt the blood rush to his face. “Where are my parents?” he said.

“How should I know?” the man said. “You people wander here and there.”

“Don’t be an ass, Jenő,” the woman said, and then to Andras, “They’re in Debrecen. They sold this place to us a month ago. Didn’t they write you?”

A month. It would have taken that long for a letter to reach Andras at the border. It was probably there now, moldering in the mail room, if they hadn’t burned it for tinder. He tried to look past the woman and into the kitchen; the old kitchen table, the one whose every knot and groove he knew by heart, was still there. The baby turned its head to see what had interested Andras, then began to chew the zwieback again.

“Listen,” the woman said. “Don’t you have family in Debrecen? Can’t someone tell you where your parents are staying?”

“I haven’t been there in years,” Andras said. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ve got work to do,” the man said. “I think you’re finished talking to my wife.”

“And I think you’re finished looking at mine,” Andras said.

But the man reached out at that moment and pinched Klara’s waist, and Klara gasped. Without thinking, Andras put a fist into the man’s gut. The man blew out a breath and stumbled back. His heel hit a rock and he fell backwards into the dense rich mud of the yard. When he tried to get to his feet, he slid forward and fell onto his hands. By that time Andras and Klara and Mendel were running toward the station, their bags flying behind them. Until that moment Andras had never appreciated the advantage of living so close to the train; now he did something he’d seen Mátyás do countless times. He charged toward an open boxcar and swung his bag inside, and he gave Klara a leg up. Then he and Mendel jumped into the car, just as the train began to creak out of the station toward Debrecen. There was just enough time for them to witness the new owner of the lumberyard charging from the house with his shotgun in his hand, calling for his wife to find his goddamned shells.

In the chill of that April afternoon they rode toward Debrecen in the open boxcar, trying to catch their breath. Andras was certain Klara would be horrified, but she was laughing. Her shoes and the hem of her dress were black with mud.

“I’ll never forget the look on his face,” she said. “He didn’t see it coming.”

“Neither did I,” Andras said.

“He deserved worse,” Mendel said. “I would have liked to get a few licks in.”

“I wouldn’t advise you to go back for another try,” Klara said.

Andras sat back against the wall of the boxcar and put an arm around her, and Mendel took a cigarette from the pocket of his overcoat and lay on his side, smoking and laughing to himself. The breeze was so thrilling, the noontime sun so bright, that Andras felt something like triumph. It wasn’t until he looked at Klara again-her eyes serious now, as though to convey a private understanding of what had taken place in that mud-choked yard-that he realized he had just seen the last of his childhood home.

It didn’t take them long to find his parents’ apartment in Debrecen. They stopped at a kosher bakery near the synagogue, and Andras learned from the baker that his mother had just been there to buy matzoh; Passover began on Friday.

Passover. Last year the holiday had come and gone so quickly: a few Orthodox men had staged a seder in the bunkhouse, said the blessings just as if they’d had wine and greens and charoset and matzoh and bitter herbs before them, though all they had was potato soup. He vaguely remembered refusing the bread at dinner a few times, then becoming so weak that he had to start eating it again. He hadn’t bothered to hope that he might be with his parents for Passover this year. But now he led Klara and Mendel down the avenue that led to Simonffy utca, where the baker had said his parents lived. There, in an ancient apartment building with two white goats in the courtyard and a still-leafless vine strung from balcony to balcony, they found his mother scrubbing the tiles of the second-floor veranda. A bucket of hot water steamed beside her; she wore a printed blue kerchief, and her arms were bright pink to the elbow. When she saw Andras and Klara and Mendel, she got to her feet and ran downstairs.

His little mother. She crossed the courtyard in an instant, still nimble, and took Andras in her arms. Her quick dark eyes moved over him; she pressed him to her chest and held him there. After a long while she released him and embraced Klara, calling her kislányom, my daughter. Finally she put her arms around Mendel, who tolerated this with a good-natured side glance at Andras; she knew Mendel from Andras’s school days, and had always treated him as though he were another of her sons.

“You poor boys,” she said. “Look how they’ve used you.”

“We’ll be all right, Anya. We’ve got a two-week furlough.”

“Two weeks!” She shook her head. “After a year and a half, two weeks. But at least you’ll be here for Pesach.”

“And who’s that garden slug living in our house in Konyár?”

His mother put a hand to her mouth. “I hope you didn’t quarrel with him.”

“Quarrel with him?” Andras said. “No! He was delightful. I kissed his hand. We’re friends for life.”

“Oh, dear.”

“He chased us with a shotgun,” Mendel said.

“God, what a terrible man! It pains me to think of him living in that house.”

“I hope you got a good price for the place, at least,” Andras said.

“Your father arranged it all,” his mother said, and sighed. “He said we were lucky to get what we did. We’re comfortable here. There aren’t so many chores. And I still have Kicsi and Noni.” She nodded at the two little dairy goats who stood in their fenced enclosure in the yard.