Iván Sándor - Legacy

The major leans back as he extinguishes the flames of the match with a delicate flick of the wrist.

At whose reception did that meeting take place?

Gizi is well aware what is hanging on her answer.

Herr Gerhart Feine was throwing a delightful party at the German Embassy. I had already had the pleasure of meeting him earlier.

Gizi knows from Gertrud Lutz that Feine is no longer in Budapest. She also knows that, although Feine had been in close communication with Carl Lutz and Friedrich Born, he had easy access to the Gestapo. She also knows that Born had left Budapest in recent days in order to report in person.

The Gestapo major is also aware that Born is not in the city.

Who can confirm all these things, madam?

It would be simplest, Herr Major, if you were to put in a telephone call to my friend, Frau Gertrud Lutz, the Vice-Consul’s wife, at the Swiss Embassy.

The major is in a tricky position. Not only does he have precise details of Lutz’s activities, he is also in possession of a copy of the secret declaration in which Feine, on behalf of the Reich’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, guarantees Lutz inviolability in return for the assistance he had provided before in Palestine.

He dials the embassy’s number and asks for Gertrud Lutz.

She even knows that the Lutzes happen not to be spending that night in their own home because the way to Buda was no longer safe in the dark, Gizi will tell Mother later. He turned away when he spoke into the receiver, so I didn’t hear what he asked; when he put the telephone down he made a sign to the two detectives that I could go.

The Gestapo men accompanied Gizi up to the lobby. Lounging on the leather couches are callow young men with Arrow Cross armbands and submachine guns. At the exit two men saluted them as if they had been in uniform. Gizi blows them a kiss, crosses the road and stands outside the cinema, looking at Kálmán Latabár in the photographs. She hitches up her Red Cross armband and sets off down Lajos Kossuth Street towards the Danube.

Mrs Manntz lives in the basement of number 74 Amerikai Road; two rooms and a kitchen. They can’t stay at my place, says Auntie Linnert. Vespi also saw them come over.

Auntie Linnert mutters something to her. Fine, says Mrs Manntz, but only up to 7.30 in the evening, you know, Helmut comes out of the hospital at eight o’clock.

When your husband gets home from the front he’s going to shoot your Helmut dead, Mrs Linnert says.

Mrs Manntz’s husband is a carpenter. He’s been gone a year on the Eastern Front. Since May Major Dr Baron Helmut von Friedenburg, deputy commandant of the hospital opposite, has been spend ing his nights with Mrs Manntz. She was born in the Jászság, is tall, and she wiggles her hips when she walks. In the mornings she works as a cleaner at the hospital; in the evenings she waits for the major. If István gets back home Helmut will shoot him first, she says.

God Almighty! You’re such a tramp, Hel, says Mrs Linnert. She sounds as though there were a touch of envy in her voice. Have you got any potatoes? Mrs Manntz asks her as she is departing. Just enough for what we need … Come over if it’s onions you’re after …

It’s six o’clock, and I’m arranging the things in my knapsack. Mrs Manntz sees the seashell. Yours, is it? I don’t tell her I got it from the Róberts’ place. She likes it a lot; she’d give me a can of preserved meat for it, even two …

In any case you’re not going to need it any more.

I won’t give it to you, I say.

Vera asks me to turn away because she wants to change her knickers.

I don’t wait till 7.30. Vera does not understand where we’re setting off for. The streets are dark. German guards are on sentry duty at a machine-gun post in front of the hospital. The rain does not bother me; I am glad I can hold Vera’s hand.

Gyarmat Street, Kolumbusz Street, Thököly Road. A number 44 tram with the blue-painted light bulb inside the carriages draws near with two Party functionaries on the rear platform. They look at us when the carriage rattles by beside us.

Father’s paper-processing workshop was off the courtyard of 41 Francia Road. In front of the hut of József Rübner’s timber shop it springs to mind that it was here that Dr Ernő Fogas, in his first lieutenant’s uniform, saluted my father on that day when he first went out on the street wearing a yellow star on his coat.

The window of the caretaker’s flat is beside the gate. It is opened at the third knock. I can hear Mrs Ulbert calling out behind her for her husband.

Mr Ulbert is a postman. They are fond of us, I say to Vera; my parents did a lot to help them, and they did a lot to help my parents. He cautiously comes out to meet us. To his question I say that I don’t know what has happened to my parents. We’d like to lie doggo in Father’s workshop, but I have no keys with me. He goes to fetch a wrench and hammer; he uses the wrench to hold the padlock and then hits it. The ringing carries a long way in the night. The lock gives at the seventh or eighth blow.

In the workshop is a small machine with which texts can be printed on paper bags; at its back a paper cutter. A partition wall separated the adhesive binder from the office. In the middle there is a big trestle table with benches around it. The gumming shop has no window, so we can turn the light on. During the summer Father hid two trunks among the bales of paper; in these I find warm clothes and behind them there are blankets.

We make a bed on the gumming table. We don’t have any supper as we are not hungry. We lie down on the table, embracing each other under the blankets.

A mouse scurries in the corner.

Vera is able to sleep even with my hugging her. We are in our underwear; I ease my underpants down. With one hand under her back, I grope with the other under the front of Vera’s knickers. She gives no sign of having woken up.

There must be more than one mouse in the corner; it seems that it is their noise which wakes Vera with a start, and she is now alarmed to see what I am doing with my hand. I switch on the light. I find a broom and beat about with it in the corner. Vera watches from above, pretending she has not noticed she is not wearing knickers. I scramble back beside her. Did you scare them away? Yes. That’s good, she says and slowly lies back down.

Between her thighs it is like a split plum, except its pulp is pink and not green; around it fluff with a golden shimmer. I prop myself on my left elbow; the places in which I had been kicked that morning are aching. Arousal lifts my abdomen on to her thigh, with her skin caressing my skin. That scares both of us rigid. I turn on to my side and cover my groin with my hand; I would be ashamed if she were to see what has happened to me. I pull her knickers back up. Her look now is like the one at the piano when she was mimicking Karády. I try to kiss her. Her eyes are full of tears; she quickly turns her back on me. I tuck her up and switch off the light. A short while later she is pressing her backside into my lap and quietly snoring as if she were asleep. I don’t know what she might be feeling; she tells me twenty years later.

I dream about crossing the stairwell and ringing the first doorbell. I ring the bell once but hear six hammer blows. I ring the bell once at each, and after each ring I hear the six hammer blows resound. The doors are immediately locked, but in the second it takes I recognize the faces that have been seen so many times. I don’t understand how Auntie Linnert and Mrs Manntz could have ended up in one of the apartments, and I can see from the looks they give me that they, for their part, don’t understand how I come to be standing before their door. The spyholes in the doors are quickly shut, but I can nevertheless still see into the apartments. Everyone woke up to the rings on the doors, now everyone goes back to bed. Everyone is sleeping on the same sort of trestle table as Vera and me; mice scurry round each of the tables.