The Invisible Bridge (66 page)

Andras nodded mutely.

The nurse beckoned him into the hall, toward a bright-lit room filled with padded tables, infant scales, cloth diapers, feeding bottles and nipples. Two nurses stood at the tables, changing babies' diapers.

"Krisztina," said the nurse. "Show Mr. Levi his son."

The nurse at the changing table held up a tiny pink froglet, naked except for a blue cotton hat and white socks, a bandage covering its umbilicus. As Andras watched, the baby raised a fist to its open mouth and extended its petal of a tongue.

"Great God," Andras said. "My son."

"Two kilos," the nurse said. "Not bad for a baby born so early. He has a bit of a lung infection, poor thing, but he's doing better than he was at first."

"Oh, my God. Let me look at him."

"You can hold him if you like," the one called Krisztina said. She pinned the baby's diaper, wrapped him in a blanket, and set him in Andras's arms. Andras didn't dare breathe. The baby seemed to weigh almost nothing. Its eyes were closed, its skin translucent, its hair a dark whorl on its head. Here was his son, his son. He was this person's father. He put his cheek to the curve of the baby's head.

"You can take him back to your wife," Krisztina said. "As long as you're here in the middle of the night, you might as well be of use."

Andras nodded, unable to move or speak. In his arms he held what seemed the sum of his existence. The baby wrestled its blankets, opened its mouth, and pronounced a strong one-note cry.

"He's hungry," the nurse said. "You'd better take him to her."

And so, for the first time, he answered his son's need: He brought him down the ward to Klara's bed. At the sound of the baby's next cry, Klara opened her eyes and pushed herself up onto her elbows. Andras bent over her and put their son into her arms.

"Andraska," she said, her eyes filling with tears. "Am I dreaming?"

He bent to kiss her. He was shaking so hard he had to sit down on the bed. He embraced them both at once, Klara and the baby, holding them as close as he dared.

"How can it be?" she said. "How did you get here?"

He pulled back just far enough to look at her. "A general gave me a ride in his car."

"Don't tease me, darling! I've just had a cesarean."

"I'm perfectly serious. I'll tell you the story sometime."

"I had a terrible fear that something had happened to you," she said.

"There's nothing to fear now," he said, and stroked her damp hair.

"Look at this boy," she said. "Our little son." She pulled the blanket lower so he could see the baby's face, his curled hands, his delicate wrists.

"Our son." He shook his head, still unable to believe it. "I've seen him. He was au naturel when I came in."

The baby turned his face toward Klara's breast and opened his mouth against her nightgown. She unbuttoned the gown and settled him in to nurse, stroking his featherlike hair. "He looks just like you," she said, and her eyes filled again.

"Eletem." My life
. "Five weeks early! You must have been terrified."

"My mother was with me. She brought me to the hospital herself. And now to have you here, too, even if just for a short time!"

"I'm finished with Banhida," he said. "My service is over." He could hardly believe it himself, but it had happened. Nothing could make him go back. "I'm home with you now," he told her. And slowly that truth came to seem real to him as he and Klara sat on her bed at Grof Apponyi Albert Hospital, laughing and crying over the sleek downy head of their little son.

THEY NAMED THE BABY after Klara's father. The first weeks of his life were a blue haze to Andras: There were ten days in the hospital, during which the baby lost weight, fought his lung infection, nearly died, and recovered again; there was the homecoming to their apartment on Nefelejcs utca, which seemed not really to be their home at all, stuffed as it was with flowers and gifts and guests who had come to see the baby; there was Klara's mother, unfailingly solicitous but incapable of doing anything practical to help, as her own babies had been tended entirely by nurses; there was Andras's mother, who knew how to tend to the baby's needs, but who also felt it important to show Klara the
correct
way to pin a diaper or elicit a baby's eructation; there was Ilana, now seven months pregnant, cooking endless Italian meals for Andras and Klara and their well-wishers; there was Mendel Horovitz, liberated from the Munkaszolgalat, sitting in the kitchen until the middle of the night, sipping vodka and inviting Andras to describe in detail the vicissitudes of new parenthood; and then there was the plain relentless work of caring for a newborn child: the feedings every two hours, the diaper changes, the brief and broken sleep, the moments of incredulous joy and bottomless fear. Every time the baby cried it seemed to Andras he might never stop, that his crying would exhaust him and make him sick again. But Klara, who had already raised a child, understood that the baby was crying because he had a simple need, and she knew she could determine the need and meet it. Soon the baby would stop crying; the house would fall into a state of delicate peace. Andras and Klara would sit together and look at the baby, their Tamas, admiring the eyebrows that were like hers, the mouth that was like his, the chin with its dimple like Elisabet's.

Through those dreamlike days he was aware of little else beside the ebb and flow of Tamas Levi's needs. The war seemed far away and irrelevant, the Munkaszolgalat a bad dream. But on the night of the seventh of December, the eve of Tamas's bris, Andras's father brought the news that the Japanese had bombed an American naval base in Hawaii. Pearl Harbor: The name conjured a tranquil image, pale gray sky above an expanse of nacreous water. But the attack had been a bloodbath. The Japanese had badly damaged or destroyed four U.S. battleships and nearly two hundred planes, and had killed more than twenty-four hundred men and wounded twelve hundred others. Andras knew that the States would declare war on Japan now, closing the ring of the war around the earth. And in fact the declaration came the next morning as Tamas Levi entered the covenant of circumcision. Three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and then Hungary declared war on the Western Allies.

As Andras stood at the bedroom window that night, listening to a volley of voices from Bethlen Gabor ter, he found himself considering what the new declaration of war might mean for his little family, and for his brothers and his parents and Mendel Horovitz. The city might be bombed. What had become scarce would get scarcer. More troops would be called, more labor servicemen deployed. He had just told Klara that he was home for good, but how long would this spell of freedom last? The KMOF wouldn't care that he was just now beginning to recover the health and strength he'd lost during his months in the Munkaszolgalat. They would use him as they'd used him all along, as a simple tool in a war whose aim was to destroy him. But they didn't have him yet, he thought: Not yet. For the moment he was here at home, in this quiet bedroom with his sleeping wife and child. He could look for work, could begin to support Klara and the baby. And he could give something to Gyorgy Hasz, some small part of the vast sum he was paying each month to keep Klara out of the hands of the authorities. He had hoped he might approach Mendel Horovitz's editor at the
Evening Courier
and speak to him about a position in layout or illustration, but Mendel had left the
Courier
when he'd been conscripted; his old job had long since been filled, and the editor himself had been fired and called into the Munkaszolgalat. Since his return, Mendel had been pounding the pavement every day with his portfolio of clips. In the afternoons he could be found at the Cafe Europa at Hunyadi ter, a cup of black coffee before him, a notebook open on the table. Well, Andras would go to Hunyadi ter the next day and approach Mendel with a proposition: the two of them might present themselves at the office of Frigyes Eppler, Andras's former editor at
Past and Future
, and ask to be hired jointly as writer and illustrator. Frigyes Eppler now worked at the
Magyar Jewish Journal
. The paper's offices were located on Wesselenyi utca, a few blocks from the Cafe Europa.

At three o'clock the next afternoon, Andras walked through the gilt-scrolled doors of the cafe to find Mendel at the usual table with the usual notebook before him. He sat down across from his friend, ordered a cup of black coffee, and stated the proposition.

Mendel pulled the
V
of his mouth into a narrow point. "It
would
have to be the
Magyar Jewish Journal,"
he said.

"What's wrong with the
Journal?"

"Have you read it lately?"

"I've been the full-time servant of Tamas and Klara Levi lately."

"It's been dishing up a steady diet of assimilationist drivel. Apparently, we've just got to put our faith in the Christian aristocrats in the government and all will be well.

We're supposed to keep saluting the flag and singing the anthem, just as though the anti-Jewish laws didn't exist. Be Magyar first and Jewish second."

"Well, we're safer if the government considers us Magyar first."

"But the government doesn't consider us Magyar! I don't have to tell you that.

You've just done your time in the Munkaszolgalat. The government considers us Jews, plain and simple."

"At least they consider us necessary."

"For how much longer?" Mendel said. "We can't work for that paper, Parisi. We should look for work at one of the left-wing rags."

"I don't have connections at any of those places. And I don't have time to spare.

I've got to start supporting this son of mine before I'm conscripted again."

"What makes you think Eppler would consider taking us both?"

"He knows good work when he sees it. Once he reads you, he'll want to hire you."

Mendel gave a half laugh. "The
Jewish Journal!"
he said. "You're going to drag me down there and get me a job, aren't you."

"Frigyes Eppler's no conservative, or at least he wasn't when I knew him.
Past
and Future
was a Zionist operation if ever there was one. Every issue carried some romantic piece about Palestine and the adventures of emigration. And you might remember their lead story from May of '36. It concerned a certain record-breaking sprinter who wasn't to be allowed on the Hungarian Olympic team because he was a Jew.

Eppler was the one who pushed that story. If he's at the
Jewish Journal
now, it must be because he means to stir things up."

"Oh, for God's sake," Mendel said. "All right. We'll talk to the man." He closed his notebook and paid his bill, and they went off together toward Wesselenyi utca.

On the editorial floor of the
Journal
they found Frigyes Eppler embroiled in a shouting match with the managing editor inside the managing editor's glassed-in office; through the windows that looked upon the newsroom, the two men could be seen carving a series of emphases into the air as they argued. Since Andras had last seen his former editor, Eppler had gone entirely bald and had adopted a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He was round-shouldered and heavyset; his shirttails were apt to fly free of his trousers, and his tie often showed the mark of a hasty lunch. He never seemed to be able to find his hat or his keys or his cigarette case. But in his editorial work he missed no detail.
Past and
Future
had won international awards every year Frigyes Eppler had edited it. His greatest triumph had been his placement of the young men and women who had worked for him; his efforts on Andras's behalf were among the many generous acts he undertook to promote the careers of his writers and copy editors and graphic artists. He had shown no surprise when Andras had been offered a place at the Ecole Speciale. As he had told Andras then, his aim had always been to hire people who would quit for better work before he had a chance to fire them.

Andras couldn't make out the content of the argument with the managing editor, but it was clear that Eppler was losing. His gestures increased in size, his shouts in volume, as the altercation went on; the managing editor, though wearing a look of triumph, backed toward the door of his own office as if he meant to flee as soon as his victory was complete. At last the door flew open and the managing editor stepped onto the newsroom floor. He called an order to his secretary, trundled off down the length of the room, and escaped into the stairwell as if he were afraid Eppler might chase him. The fuming and defeated Eppler stood alone the empty office, polishing his scalp with both hands. Andras waved in greeting.

"What is it now?" Eppler said, not looking at Andras; then, recognizing him, he gave a cry and clapped his hands to his chest as if to keep his heart from falling out.

"Levi!" he shouted. "Andras Levi! What in God's name are you doing here?"

"I'm here to see you, Eppler-ur."

"How long has it been now? A hundred years? A thousand? But I'd have recognized that face anywhere. What are you wasting your time at these days?"

"Not enough," Andras said. "That's the problem."

"Well, I hope you haven't come here looking for a job. I sent you off into the world long ago. Aren't you an architect by now?"

Andras shook his head. "I've just finished a two-year spell in the Munkaszolgalat.

This tall fellow is a childhood friend and company-mate of mine, Mendel Horovitz."

Mendel gave a slight bow and touched his hat in greeting, and Frigyes Eppler looked him up and down. "Horovitz," he said. "I've seen your picture somewhere."

"Mendel holds the Hungarian record in the hundred-meter dash," Andras said.

"That's right! Wasn't there some scandal about you a number of years back?"

"Scandal?" Mendel showed his wry grin. "Don't I wish."

"They wouldn't allow him on the Hungarian Olympic team in '36," Andras said.

"There was a piece about it in
Past and Future
. You edited it yourself."