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By the end of the month an almost imperceptible shift had taken place among the ranks of the 79/6th. A few of the men seemed to be paying a different kind of attention to what went on each day in the inspection shed. In small huddled groups they watched the soldiers rushing to unload crates of food and clothing stamped with the KMOF logo. They followed the movement of the boxes from the train to the covered trucks, then watched the trucks depart through the rail-yard gates. Andras and Mendel, who had attained a certain status thanks to their role as publishers of The Crooked Rail, began to approach the groups and speak to a few of the men. In lowered voices they pointed out how little time the soldiers had to move the goods; a few small adjustments on the part of the laborers might delay the siphoning just long enough to get a few more bandages, a few more crates of overcoats, sent to the men at the front.
By the next week, almost u
On Sundays, when Andras was free from Szentendre Yard, he and Klara went to lunch at the house on Benczúr utca, which had been stripped by now of all but its most essential furnishings. As they dined in the garden at a long table spread with white linen, Andras had the sense that he had fallen into a different life altogether. He didn’t understand how it was possible that he could have spent Saturday loading sacks of flour and crates of weapons into boxcars, and was now spending Sunday drinking sweet Tokaji wine and eating filets of Balatoni fogas in lemon sauce. József Hász would sometimes show up at these Sunday family di
It was a testament to József’s egotism that he considered himself worth his family’s sacrifices. His own luxuries were undiminished. In his large bright flat in Buda, he lived among gleanings from the family home: antique rugs and furniture and crystal he’d removed before the slow, steady drain had begun. Andras had seen the flat once, a few months after the baby had been born, when they’d gone for an evening visit. József had provided them with a di
On Sunday afternoons at Benczúr utca, when József and his Zsófia joined the group at the table, what he generally had to talk about was how dull it was in Budapest during the warmer months-how much nicer it would have been at Lake Balaton, and what they’d be doing that very moment if they were there. He and Zsófia would start in on some memory from when they were children-how her brother had sailed them far out into the lake in a leaking boat, how they’d gotten sick from eating unripe melons, how József had tried to ride Zsófia’s pony and had been thrown off into a blackberry bramble-and Zsófia would laugh, and the elder Mrs. Hász would smile and nod, remembering it all, and György and his wife would exchange a look, because it was the summer house that had kept József out of the labor service, after all.
One Sunday in early June, they arrived to find József’s usual bench unoccupied. For Andras, the prospect of an afternoon without him was a relief. Tibor and Ilana had arrived some time earlier, and Ilana played in the grass with young Ádám while Tibor sat beside them on a wicker chaise longue, fixing the bent brim of Ilana’s sun hat. Andras fell into a chair beside his brother. It was a hot and cloudless day, one of a series; the new grass had gone limp for want of rain. The week at Szentendre had been an unusually grueling one, bearable only because Andras knew that on Sunday he’d be sitting in this shady garden, drinking cold soda water flavored with raspberry syrup. Klara sat down on the grass with Ilana, holding Tamás on her lap. The babies stared at each other in their usual ma
“Where’s your son today?” Tibor asked Elza Hász.
“In the study with his father.”
Andras caught a note of tension in her voice, and he emerged from his torpor to watch her closely as she handed the glasses of soda around. The past five years had aged her. Her dark hair, still cut fashionably short, was shot with silver now; the faint lines beside her eyes had grown deeper. She had lost weight since he’d last seen her-whether from worry or from undereating, he didn’t know. He wondered with some anxiety what György and József might be discussing in the study. He could hear their voices coming through the open windows-György’s low, grave tones, József’s higher notes of indignation. A few minutes later József burst through the French doors and crossed the terra-cotta paving stones of the patio, then strode over the lawn toward his mother, who had seated herself in a low garden chair. When he reached her, he gave her a look so charged with fury that she got to her feet.