Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

“We need an Aladár !” said Sándor Csillag (Stern).

“An Aladár ?” Nándor Csillag (Stern) was puzzled.

“Are you deaf? Aladár ! A front man! Got it?”

Anti Kolozsvári became the family’s Aladár. Anti Kolozsvári was a well-known freeloader and sponger in the coffeehouses of Pécs. Nándor Csillag regularly supplied him with small sums, which in his notebook he put under the heading “Antimatter Tax.” Anti Kolozsvári had drunk himself out of a job in journalism and was not sober even as he officially and formally-for an increased fee-took over the ownership of the shoe shop and the restaurant. In the document that effected the transfer there were even two spelling mistakes in the signature of the beneficiary, but it bothered no one that in the document he recorded his name as Antall Kolosvári.

The Germans had overrun Poland when Nándor Csillag began to wonder whether what awaited them was in fact as serious as Ilse’s disturbed mind. The possibility of emigrating did crop up, but the family could not agree on a destination. Nándor Csillag voted for Switzerland, Tonchi for the United States, while Sándor Csillag chose Australia, because of the kangaroos. Ilona and her parents preferred Canada, where two younger brothers of Manfred Goldbaum were already well established.

This was the only topic to which Ilse made a contribution. “ Germany! Deutschland!” she repeated.

“Come now… Hitler is the very reason that we have to emigrate!”

“Not Hitler! Germany!” responded Ilse, impatiently. She was one of the few in Europe who had yet to acknowledge the existence of the Führer.

They went on talking until most of the family had been deported, chiefly by train. As Ilse passed under the double iron gates surmounted by the slogan ARBEIT MACHT FREI she had a fit more severe and frightening than ever before. Her two young sons, painfully gripping her hands, were kicked away from her side. Ilse was about to throw herself after them like a lioness after her cubs. When she was trodden into the mud, she lashed out repeatedly, screaming something in German. The two guards bashed her brains out with the stocks of their rifles, oblivious of the fact that Ilse was reciting a Heine poem, studied in the fourth form of German primary schools, describing the glories of the autumn landscape. (While it is true that that particular textbook had been, together with Heine and many other poets, withdrawn by 1936, the two soldiers must certainly have attended school before that date.)

Nándor Csillag saw none of this, having been separated from his family earlier. He was fortunate. He ended up in Canada. The sorter brigade in the camp was called Canada, because the name, which originally referred to the untold riches they found as sorters, came to symbolize survival. Those who were in Canada sorted out the rags and scraps that remained of those who had been gassed to death: gold teeth, rings, eyeglasses, and other valuables that could be rescued for the benefit of the Third Reich from rubbish that was otherwise destroyed. Their primary acts of quiet sabotage involved secretly smuggling out anything that looked remotely valuable and flushing it down the toilets.

The Canadians watched with profound sympathy as the work brigades came and went. They were ghosts supporting each other as they struggled down the middle of the road, their little food bowls dangling from their string belts. The work brigades were frisked every day, any remaining bits and pieces reaching the depot or the litter-burner via the Canadians.

Some time after Nándor Csillag there came to Canada a quiet man with a large Adam’s apple. From the time he was assigned to a place next to Nándor Csillag he delivered himself of only one sentence: “Tivadar Fleisch, tradesman of Kiskunhalas, at your service.”

They had several weeks to wait for his next utterance. This consisted of the word “Look!”

He had come across an egg-shaped fob-watch in one of the jackets matted into filth. It showed the day, the month, and even the year. It was accurate, with a firm tick that harked back to the good old days before the war.

“Gold?” asked someone.

Without a word Nándor Csillag took it from Tivadar Fleisch’s hand. He looked at it for a long time, raising it to his eyes; his vision had worsened a lot in recent times.

“Recognize it?” asked Tivadar Fleisch.

Nándor Csillag nodded. Seeing his tears, they asked no further questions; the Canadians understood everything. Nándor Csillag clutched the timepiece, the back with its carved curlicues conjuring up the past. The indentations must have been felt in this way by his father, grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and all the way back to Kornél Csillag/Sternovszky. He knew that the pocket watch had been presented to his future father-in-law on the night of his stag party. So poor Uncle Manfred, the Beremend trouser king, had…

May his dear soul rest in peace. Him the Arbeit had indeed made frei.

Nándor Csillag hesitated only for a few minutes, then, burying the watch in his pocket respectfully, asked to be excused. He mumbled a few Hungarian prayers, and the only one he knew in Hebrew, then consigned the watch to the latrine. Baruch ata Adonai.

At Christmas the prisoners’ theater organized a lively evening. Nándor Csillag was asked to perform something that gave him pleasure. He demurred, pleading that he could no longer sing.

“Does it matter whether you can or not?” said the organizer. “I’m going to dance, after all…” and he made a dismissive gesture with his hand. He was called Béla Lajtai and had been the ballet master at the Prague Opera. He was now the most skeletal person in the entire barracks. By comparison Nándor Csillag seemed almost fat, even though he had lost half his body weight.

“Well, then, let’s set about rehearsing!”

In the evenings, bent double, he tensed himself against the barrack walls in the brace position, which he had not employed for so long. His diaphragm exercises involved little disturbance of others, but to do his scales he went out into the yard, thinking his fellows would not tolerate the noise. But no sooner had he begun than his fellow prisoners crowded around, hungry for the sound of music. He never could resist an audience: he did not need asking twice, and he sang for them from his former repertoire. His sob-filled tenor voice soared high above the darkness shrouding the camp, vibrating along the barracks, so that many of the thousands locked up were able to hear it. Here and there came sounds of clapping.

I’m a success, at last, he thought. If the great Caruso heard me now, perhaps he would offer a few words of praise.

For the show he made himself a makeshift clown’s outfit from a torn bedsheet, drawing the big buttons on it with a branch he had burned at the end. “Laugh, clown, laugh!” he sang for the audience of twelve nationalities in Hungarian, and at the end of the aria, sank to his knees, weeping. The thunderous applause would not stop but he could not acknowledge it. He had a sudden bout of fever and slipped out of consciousness. In the morning he could not rise from his bunk, even after repeated kicks from the Schenführer. He was shivering, his eyes had turned heavenwards, his skin came out in blotches.

Tivadar Fleisch helped him out to the Appel Platz. They were both ordered to go over to the line by the fence inching its way to the side building. They reached the anteroom of the showers. Tivadar Fleisch helped Nándor Csillag off with his clothes, lined up his shabby shoes neatly by the wall. When they were fighting for their lives under the roses of the showers, Tivadar Fleisch spoke again. “Mother, my dear mother!” He can speak when he wants to, thought Nándor Csillag. His own mother he remembered, then his children. Of Balázs he knew that he was in labor service somewhere in Russia. Ilse perhaps in the women’s camp. Endre and Tamás though…