The InvisibleBridge

PART FOUR. The InvisibleBridge

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. Subcarpathía

IN JANUARY OF 1940, Labor Service Company 112/30 of the Hungarian Army was stationed in Carpatho-Ruthenia, somewhere between the towns of Jalová and Stakčin, not far from the Cirocha River. This was the territory Hungary had a

On the flimsiest of pretexts-SS men dressed as Polish soldiers had faked an attack on a German radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz-Hitler sent a million and a half troops and two thousand tanks across the Polish border. The Budapest daily carried photographs of Polish horsemen riding with swords and lances against German panzer divisions. The next day’s paper showed a battlefield littered with dismembered horses and the remnants of ancient armor; gri

He brought the news to Mátyás at the lingerie shop on Váci utca where he was arranging a new display window. A group of correctly dressed middle-aged ladies watched from the sidewalk as Mátyás draped a line of dress forms with a series of progressively smaller underthings, a chaste burlesque captured in time. When Andras rapped on the glass, Mátyás raised a finger to signal his brother to wait; he finished pi

“I’ve got a couple more wire girls to dress,” he said. “Why don’t you join me? You can give me the news while I’m pi

They went into the shop and entered the display window through the elf-sized door. “What do you think?” Mátyás said, turning to a narrowwaisted dress form. “The pink chemise or the blue?” It was his practice to trim his windows during business hours; he found it drew a steady stream of customers demanding to buy the very things he was installing.

“The blue,” Andras said, and then, “Can you guess where I’ll be in three weeks?”

“Not Paris, I’d imagine.”

“ Ruthenia, with my labor company.”

Mátyás shook his head. “If I were you, I’d run right now. Hop a train back to Paris and beg political asylum. Say you refuse to go into service for a country that takes gifts of land from the Nazis.” He sank a pin into the strap of the blue chemise.

“I can’t become a fugitive. I’m engaged to be married. And the French borders are closed now, anyway.”

“Then go somewhere else. Belgium. Switzerland. You said yourself that Klara’s not safe here. Take her with you.”

“Ride the rails like vagrants, both of us?”

“Why not? It’s a lot better than being shipped off to Ruthenia.” But then he straightened from his work and regarded Andras for a long moment, his expression darkening. “You’ve really got to go, don’t you.”

“I can’t see any way around it. The first deployment’s only six months.”

“And then you’ll have a stingy furlough, and then you’ll be sent back for another six months. And then you’ll have to do that twice more.” Mátyás crossed his arms. “I still think you should run.”

“I wish I could, believe me.”

“Klara’s not going to be too happy about any of this.”

“I know. I’m on my way to see her now. She’s expecting me at her mother’s.”

Mátyás cuffed him on the shoulder for luck and held the little door open so he could slip through. He stepped down into the shop and went out through the bigger doors, waving to Mátyás through the glass as he made his way past the women who had gathered to watch. He could scarcely believe it was nearing October and he wasn’t on his way back to school; in recent days he’d found himself combing the Pesti Napló obsessively for news of Paris. Today’s papers had shown a crush at the railway stations as sixteen thousand children were evacuated to the countryside. If he and Klara had remained in France, perhaps they would have left the city too; or perhaps they would have chosen to stay, bracing themselves for whatever was to come. Instead here he was in Budapest, walking along Andrássy út toward the Városliget, toward the tree-shadowed avenues of Klara’s childhood. It had come to seem almost ordinary now to spend an afternoon at the house on Benczúr utca, though only a month had passed since they had first arrived in Budapest. At that time they’d been so uncertain about Klara’s situation that they’d been afraid even to go to the house; they’d taken a room under Andras’s name at a tiny out-of-the-way hotel on Cukor utca, and decided that the best course of action would be to warn Klara’s mother of her fugitive daughter’s presence in Budapest before Klara herself appeared at the house. The next afternoon he’d gone to Benczúr utca and presented himself to the housemaid as a friend of József’s. She had shown him into the same pink-and-gold-upholstered sitting room where he’d passed an uncomfortable hour on the day of his departure for Paris. The younger and elder Mrs. Hász were engaged in a card game at a gilt table by the window, and József was draped over a salmon-colored chair with a book in his lap. When he saw Andras in the doorway, József peeled himself from the chair and delivered the expected jovial greetings, the expected expressions of regret that Andras, too, had been forced to return to Budapest. The younger Mrs. Hász offered a polite nod, the elder a smile of welcome and recognition. But something about Andras’s look must have caught Klara’s mother’s attention, because a moment later she laid her fan of cards on the table and got to her feet.