Read Searching for Wallenberg Online
Authors: Alan Lelchuk
Searching for Wallenberg (10 page)
“Oh, he’s a good guy, and when he has work, I really learn things. And earn some money. We put up two trusses a few weeks back, and that was good. He says he has a whole timber-frame house scheduled for this May, so I look forward to that.”
“Don’t shortchange the school work, when you’re so close to finishing.”
Oh, I won’t Professor G., I won’t.”
“How about your thesis? What do you want to do?”
“I think an oral history of the family. You know, with my grandfather still alive, I can gather some good stories. Real or imagined.” He winked. “And the prof is very keen on the idea.”
“Sounds good.”
“And what about you? When are you going to head out west again and visit the res?”
“First I have to go the other direction, to East Europe, and then maybe later on, maybe in the late summer or September, I can make it out there.”
“Well, do it when I’m around.”
“Will do. Meanwhile, keep up the good work!” He patted John’s arm. “But for now, we should head back. I have a meeting.”
“Oh, yeah. I got you a little something.”
“What? Why? I told you, there’s never a need for that.”
Jack gestured with his head, and handed Manny a small stiff package wrapped in a brown paper bag.
Carefully Manny took it, slipped out the inside packet and unwrapped an item tucked into bubble wrap. Using his penknife, he slit the masking tape, felt inside, and pulled out a license plate. Baffled, Gellerman shook his head.
Jack pointed to the face, and Manny read, “AY 152” beneath the “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire state motto! Manny was dumbfounded. Jack gestured to something else, and Manny discovered a framed photo of a 1940s blue Studebaker. Wallenberg’s old car and license plate!
Manny broke into a smile, took Jack into his arms and hugged him, and nodded, “Are you kidding?! How’d you do this, how’d you find out?”
“You know I’ve been getting trained in research, sir. Grad school. You have a good trip to Hungary, but maybe leave this at home, right?”
“Right.”
“Too bad Mr. Wallenberg never made it out to the Southwest, huh?”
Manny got up. “He wanted to, actually, according to a note in his notebook. And his professor had also suggested it. To study the Frank Lloyd Wright project and the different local architecture.”
Jack stood too. “Well, you’ll have to be his surrogate.”
Manny smiled at the thought. “Hey, Jack, maybe we should buy an old Studebaker on eBay, attach the plate, and cruise around?”
Jack lit up at that.
Before leaving for Budapest, Manny alerted a few friends there, found a small hotel in Pest, and took some notes for his conference talk in Moscow. He armed himself like a schoolboy, with separate notebooks, small soft-sided ones, one blue and the other orange, for each city. (One of his favorite things was visiting a local stationary store.) Researching, he wrote down three to four names to look up in Moscow, just in case he got lucky, and arranged for a translator through a Moscow State colleague. He then took a long walk through the small college town of Hanover, winding through its neat streets and orderly lawns, in preparation for East Europe. On the Internet he had ordered a new cello score for his son, an old Berenreiter Bach edition. Always, he left him with a small present, and would return with another one. He surprised his son now with a photograph of the youthful Feuerman, cut out from a music text, to paste alongside his others inside his cello case, where he kept his private gallery of Cellist Gods, just as Manny had kept baseball cards of the Brooklyn Dodgers in an old scrapbook.
“Dad, where’d you find these? On eBay?”
“My secret! Now take care of Mom, and I’ll see you in about three weeks, okay?”
“Okay. Though I am sorry you are leaving me here,” he shook his head, as though being left in a ravine.
“Yeah, it’s a tough life.”
Manny hugged the little charmer, who hugged back as hard as he could.
Inside the plane, in the first hour when he was still alert enough, he read over sections of Angela’s thesis, and read closely one long footnote:
“It is perhaps the case that Wallenberg got involved in the Jewish situation in the first place because of an affair the nobleman may have had with a young Jewess in Budapest whose parents he had placed in his safe houses. This affair was kept secret for several obvious reasons: protection for the young woman, and fear for his own diplomatic position. It is also a strong possibility that he kept quiet in Lybianka Prison because of fear of further endangering the young woman and the child she was bearing of Raoul. This could explain much about the mysteries surrounding RW. [Manny noted, “Kept quiet? About what?”]
Now what evidence do I base these suppositions on? First and foremost, on the statement in December 2005, of Zsuzsanna Frank (Wallenberg), a vibrant woman in her late fifties currently living in Budapest, who claimed, to this writer, that she is the grown-up child of that affair and eventual marriage between her mother, Klara Frank, and RW. To substantiate this declaration, Ms. Frank produced for me a series of documents and some photographs, including a birth certificate copy, original safe house passes of her parents, a sheaf of personal letters (some smuggled from Moscow) between RW and her mother, an old photograph of RW in Sweden as a boy, and other old items. When I questioned why Ms. Frank suddenly would acknowledge this important past, she claims she was never asked by anyone else …
I came upon this curious “missing” lady in the first place through the good guidance of my professor, E. Gellerman, who first mentioned the rumor of her existence. On my research trip to Budapest, I was scoping out the Jewish community, asking if anyone was still around who might remember RW, some old witnesses, and came across a middle-aged woman in the old Yiddish restaurant, Hannah’s, who claimed she knew his daughter, and she lived not far away, in the old ghetto. She accompanied me to the street, off Wychensky, and there, after waiting a few hours, I met Zsuzsa Frank Wallenberg. A gray-eyed, intelligent woman with reasonable English, she invited me in, and in her modest living room, asked me some questions and then proceeded to talk and answer my queries. To my astonishment, she made no bones about the familial connection, but rather was surprised that no one had come looking for her before. “The world seems very interested still in the whereabouts of my dead father,” she put in awkwardly, “but doesn’t seem to care too much about his living daughter.”
“Sir, what drink would you like?” the airline hostess asked, breaking his focus.
Manny took a ginger ale, scribbled some notes on the thesis, and wrote other notes regarding the important news about the self-declared Hungarian daughter. He settled back in with his reading and music. No, it would be impossible now to try to concentrate on the project, what with a child crying and the plane’s hectic activity taking over. That was all right, he figured, gazing out at the high lofty clouds below, a floating comforter of white down. His future ground had been laid in that buried footnote of possibility and conjecture. Get to the bottom of that and he’d maybe have something. Something original. The jet seemed hardly to be moving, but levitating, stopped in an illusion of cloud stillness. His hour of homework was over; the rest would be on the ground. Illusions there too, he figured. Well, he had chased many of those before; he was an old pro at that.
Thoughts of Budapest soon turned into streets of Budapest, which, by contrast, reinforced the truths of the little town in New Hampshire: its piety, provincialism, Puritanism. How sexless those little towns in America were, with no bordellos allowed, only repressive sublimation and illicit affairs, and torrents of gossip. So boring, so corny too. You purchased your safe and tame streets at the high price of noisy interest, thrilling variety, rich vulgarity. Here, this East European city was a kind of battered Paris, filled with old bridges, potholed streets, eroded trees, stunning women. And living scars from World War II: shrapnel holes still decorated the walls of Pest buildings. Is that how Kovacs got the idea, decades ago, to open his television show with a make-believe machine gun spraying holes across the brick walls of the set? In other words, transferring his Hungarian youth into his scary black comedy?
He found the phone number of Zsuzsanna W., and she asked to meet in a coffee shop on Dob utca, in the old ghetto district. Inside Freuhlich’s, a small coffee and pastry shop of two rooms, he found a seat at a formica table and waited. Presently, he was joined by a broad-shouldered woman in her fifties with long dark hair, fine smooth skin, a prominent nose. She was handsome in a fatigued way. Dressed simply in a beige cardigan sweater and brown slacks, she introduced herself, put out her hand, and advised him, in accented English, to have the vegetable salad: “They do that well here.” He accepted; she ordered at the counter and returned to their small round table in the second room.
He really didn’t know what to say, so he began by explaining the nature of his responsibility as Angie’s thesis director, and that he wanted to confirm some of the facts in her thesis. “But also, I want to learn more about the subject for myself,” he explained. She responded, in fairly good English, that she had heard much about him from that “appealing young student,” but still it was “surprising” that he should journey all the way here to see her, Zsuzsanna. “So far for so little,” she offered, and he was surprised by the deft phrase. Uncertain how to proceed, he asked if she lived in the neighborhood, and she said yes. The food was brought, two cold salads, a beer for him, a coffee for her.
“What is it actually you’ve come over for, Professor Gellerman?”
“Well, to be frank, to meet you, to see …”
“If I exist?” she smiled. “Yes?”
“Well, yes. That.”
She held out her hands and turned them. “What do you think?”
He paused. “They look real, and maybe you play the piano.” He smiled. “So, yes, I think you do exist.”
“Good. We are in agreement about this.”
He took a bite, following her, and it was surprisingly tasty.
“And also, for what else you have made the journey?”
“Well, to see if … if you are who my student claims you are.”
“Or, who I claim I am?” Her look was an unblinking stare. “You mean, am I related to Mr. Wallenberg?”
“Yes, to put it simply.”
She took another bite, using both utensils, and offered, “I believe I am. I have always been told so, and thought so. My mother was his lover and wife, though discreet, secret.” Again, no smile, just a look of interest in the gray-green eyes, and in the firm chin jutted forward slightly, a touch of defiance. “I remember my father well, or vivid, I think you say, the little I saw him.”
The cold salad was filled with small potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and had a lively sauce. “Where did you learn your good English, if I may ask?”
“Oh, it is not so good really, not anymore.” The face softened now. “I learned it in the schools, of course, but then I went to Michigan for nearly a year, remembering my father’s love of the place as a youth.” She wiped her mouth and nodded. “I agree with his estimate very much.”
Her words brought me up short; she had studied the biography well! And learned her part in the script perfectly.
“Yes, Ann Arbor is very nice. Perhaps you’ll return one day?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I stay here now, and enjoy my daughter, and my friends. Budapest is always melancholic, of course, but it is always … full of intrigue too.”
He made small talk with her, seeking to earn her trust, while noticing the observant Jewish folk coming and going. Now and then he glanced at her face, observing the fine angles, the high forehead, semi-almond eyes, the pale complexion. Did he see a resemblance to RW in that nose, forehead, eyes? Hard to tell, really; he only had old newspaper and magazine photographs to go on.
“By the way,” he said, inspired by these thoughts, “do you have any old photographs I might see? Out of curiosity.”
She restrained her laugh, and set down her coffee. “I am sure, ‘out of curiosity.’ Let me think about it. Where are you staying? Do you have a phone?”
He explained where and gave her the number from the hotel card.
“You should try the Café Central; it’s not far from you and it’s very pleasant.”
In the next twenty-four hours he walked about the city, finding the busy noisy streets and small shops altogether agreeable, despite the semi-grubby streets and ill-maintained buildings. It reminded him of his home turf, Brooklyn, in the late forties and fifties. Would he hear from her again, or was the mystery lady too cagey, too shrewd not to keep herself elusive? Keeping her invented identity alive for herself and maybe for grad students alone? Oh, well. He’d give her a little more time for the fantasy to unfold.
He remembered her suggestion, found the Central Café, took his morning coffee and a thick cheese omelet for lunch. The café was a pair of large rooms, high-ceilinged and darkly wooded, with two crystal chandeliers and a formidable literary history recorded on the inside of the menu. The waiters wore formal black outfits and served with obvious pride; he especially liked one who spoke English and was a David Niven look-alike. Over a second cup of superb coffee, he read the
International Herald Tribune
, and wondered just how far the full fantasy extended? (And, where might it lead? …)
That night, after three hours of sitting inside waiting for the lady to call, and making his own call to Moscow to check on his translator there—she had located several persons of interest, including an aged KGB interrogator!—he again walked the streets, alive with pedestrians, tourists, trams, buses, and ambled all the way across the old-fashioned Liberty Bridge, admiring the green ironwork and the view of the auspicious Hotel Gellért coming closer on the Buda side. In the evening glow, the choppy Danube curved up and around the bend, and reflected the shimmering lights from the castle area and the newer hotels. The darkening sky started to blink with stars, and he thought how memorializing if a new constellation were to be named for RW. The late April weather was cool, but wafts of spring were blowing. A soft landscape with little trace of the area’s dark history. Later, back in his room, no message beeped on his message machine. Well, maybe it was time to leave?