The Invisible Bridge (74 page)

They would try. And so Klara had written to her solicitor, directing him to forward the proceeds of the sale to his agents in Vienna and Budapest.

At the house in Frangepan koz, where time stood still and the very sunlight filtering down through the high clouds seemed antique, they found the milk goats bleating in their yard and pulling at a stack of sweet hay. Seven-month-old Tamas stared in fascination. He looked at Klara as though to ask if he should be alarmed. When he saw she was smiling, he turned again to the goats and pointed a finger.

"Our sons are city boys," Tibor said. "By the time I was his age, I'd seen a thousand goats."

"Perhaps they won't be city boys for long," Klara said.

They turned away from the goats and walked the stone path to the door. Tibor knocked, and Klein's grandmother answered, her white hair hidden under a kerchief, her dress covered with a red-embroidered apron. From the kitchen came the smell of stuffed cabbage. Andras, exhausted from the week's work, became suddenly and ravenously hungry. Klein's grandmother beckoned them into the bright sitting room, where the elder Mr. Klein sat in an armchair with his feet soaking in a tin basin. He wore the same faded crimson robe he'd worn when Andras and Tibor had last visited; his hair stood up in the same winged style, as if his head meant to take flight. A haze of tea-scented steam wreathed his legs. He raised a hand in greeting.

"My husband's bunions are bothering him," his wife said. "Otherwise he would get up to welcome you."

"I welcome you," the old man said, and made a polite half bow. "Please sit."

Mrs. Klein went off down the portrait-lined hall to get her grandson. None of them sat, despite the elder Klein's invitation. Instead they waited in a close-shouldered group, glancing around at the room's ancient furniture and its profusion of photographs.

Andras saw Klara's eyes move over the images of the little family--the boy that must have been the child Klein, the beautiful and mysterious woman, the sad-eyed man--and he felt again as though the house contained the ghost of some long-ago loss. Klara must have sensed it too; she drew Tamas closer and passed her thumb across his mouth, as if removing an invisible film of milk.

Klein followed his grandmother back down the hall and into the sitting room. She ducked into the kitchen; he came forward, blinking in the afternoon light. Andras had to wonder how long it had been since he'd last emerged from his den of dossiers and maps and radios. His eyes were dark-shadowed, his hair stiff for want of washing. He wore a cotton undershirt and a pair of ink-stained trousers. His feet were bare. He needed a shave. He scrutinized the group of them and shook his head.

"No," he said. "No, I tell you. Not a chance."

"Let me make some tea while you're talking," Klein's grandmother called.

"No tea," he called back to her. "We're not talking. They're leaving. Do you understand?" But they could hear a kitchen cabinet open and close, and water rolling into the metallic hollow of a teapot.

Klein raised his hands toward the ceiling.

"Be civil," the elder Klein said to his grandson. "They've come all this way."

"What you're asking is impossible," Klein said, speaking to Andras and Tibor.

"Impossible, and illegal. You could all end up in jail, or dead."

"We've considered that," Klara said, her tone demanding that he look at her. "We still want to go."

"Impossible!" he repeated.

"But this is what you do," Andras said. "You've done it before. We can pay you.

We've got the money, or we'll have it soon."

"Lower your voice," Klein said. "The windows are open. You don't know who might be listening."

Andras lowered his voice. "Our situation has become urgent," he said. "We want you to arrange our transport, and then we want to get the rest of our family out."

Klein sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. "Get someone else to help you," he said.

"Why should they get someone else?" his grandfather said. "You're the best."

Klein made a sound of frustration in his throat. His grandmother, having finished her preparations in the kitchen, wheeled a little tea cart into the room, parked it beside the sofa, and began to fill ancient-looking Herend cups.

"If you don't help them, they
will
try someone else," she said, with a note of quiet reproach. She cocked her head, pausing in her tea-pouring to scrutinize Klara, as if the future were written upon the dotted swiss of her dress. "They'll go to Pal Behrenbohm, and he'll turn them away. They'll go to Szaszon. They'll go to Blum. And if
that
fails, they'll go to Janos Speitzer. And you know what will happen then." She handed the cups around, offering sugar and cream, and poured a final cup for herself.

Klein looked from his grandmother to Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana and the babies. He wiped his palms against his undershirt. He was one man against all of them.

He raised his hands in defeat. "It's your funeral," he said.

"Please sit and drink your tea," Klein's grandmother said. "And Miklos, you need not use that morbid language."

They took their places around the table and drank the strange smoky tea she'd prepared for them. It tasted like wood fires burning, and it made Andras think of fall. In lowered voices they talked about the details: how Klein would arrange transport down the Danube with a friend who owned a barge, and how the families would be secreted away in two ingeniously built compartments in the cargo area, and how drugged milk must be prepared for the babies so they wouldn't cry, and how they would need to bring emergency food enough for two weeks' travel, because a trip that ordinarily took a few days might take much longer in wartime. Klein would have to make inquiries about ships leaving from Romania, and where and how they might gain passage aboard one of them.

It might take a month or two to arrange the journey, if all went well. He, Klein, was not a swindler, not like Janos Speitzer. He would not book passage for them upon an unsound boat, nor tell them to bring less food than was needed so they would have to buy more from his friends at cruel prices. He would not place them in care of a crew that would steal their luggage or prevent them from going ashore to a doctor if they needed one. Nor would he make false promises about the safety or success of the trip. It might fail at any point. They had to understand that.

When Klein had finished, he sat back against the sofa and scratched his chest through his undershirt. "That's how it works," he concluded. "A hard, risky trip. No guarantees."

Klara moved forward in her chair and placed her cup on the little table. "No guarantees," she repeated. "But at least we'll have a chance."

"I'm not going to speculate about your chances," Klein said. "But if you still want to engage my services, I'm willing to do the work."

They exchanged a look--Andras and Klara, Tibor and Ilana. They were ready.

This was what they'd hoped for. "By all means," Tibor said. "We'll take whatever risks we have to take."

The men shook hands and arranged to meet again in a week. Klein bowed to the women and retreated back down the hallway, where they heard the door of his room open and close. Andras imagined him taking a new manila folder from a box and inscribing their family name upon its tab. The thought filled him with sudden panic. So many files.

Stacks and stacks of them, all over the bed and desk and bureau. What had happened to those people? How many of them had made it to Palestine?

The next evening Klara went to her brother to ask his forgiveness. She and Andras walked together to the house on Benczur utca, pushing the baby in his carriage. In Gyorgy's study, Klara took her brother's hands in her own and asked that he excuse her, that he understand how surprised she'd been and how incapable, at that moment, of appreciating what he'd done. She hated the thought that he'd already lost so much of his estate. She had authorized the sale of her property in Paris, she told him, and would begin to repay her debt to him as soon as she had access to the money.

"You're in no debt to me," Gyorgy said. "What's mine is yours. Most of what I had came from our father's estate, in any case. And it'll do little good for you to put money into my hands now. Our extortionists will only find a way to take it."

"But what can I do?" she said, on the verge of tears. "How can I repay you?"

"You can forgive me for operating on your behalf without your knowledge. And perhaps you can convince your husband to forgive me for requiring that he keep the secret from you."

"I do, of course," Klara said; and Andras said he did as well. Everyone agreed that Gyorgy had acted in Klara's best interest, and Gyorgy expressed the hope that his son would seek Klara and Andras's forgiveness too. But as he said it, his voice faltered and broke.

"What is it?" Klara said. "What's happened?"

"He's received another call-up notice," Gyorgy said. "This time he'll have to go.

There's nothing more we can do about it. We've offered a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the house, but it's not the money they want. They want to make an example of young men like Jozsef."

"Oh, Gyorgy," Klara said.

Andras found himself speechless. He could no more imagine Jozsef Hasz in the Munkaszolgalat than he could imagine Miklos Horthy himself showing up one morning on the bus from Obuda to Szentendre, a tattered coat on his back, a lunch pail in his hand.

His first sensation was one of satisfaction. Why shouldn't Jozsef have to serve, when he, Andras, had already served for two years and was serving still? But Gyorgy's pained expression brought him back to himself. Whatever else Jozsef was, he was Gyorgy's child.

"I haven't done a very good job of raising my son," Gyorgy said, turning his gaze toward the window. "I gave him everything he wanted, and tried to keep him from anything that would hurt him. But I gave him too much. I protected him too much. He's come to believe that the world should present itself at his feet. He's been living in comfort in Buda while other men serve in his place. Now he'll have to get by on his strength and his wits, like everyone else. I hope he's got enough of both."

"Perhaps he can be assigned to one of the companies close to home," Andras said.

"That won't be up to him," Gyorgy said. "They'll put him where they want to."

"I can write to General Marton."

"You don't owe Jozsef anything," Gyorgy said.

"He helped me in Paris. More than once."

Gyorgy nodded slowly. "He can be generous when he wants to be."

"Andras will write to the general," Klara said. "And then maybe Jozsef will come to Palestine, with the rest of us."

"To Palestine?" Gyorgy said. "You're not going to Palestine."

"Yes," Klara said. "We have no other choice."

"But, darling, there's no way to get to Palestine."

Klara explained about Klein. Gyorgy's eyes grew stern as she spoke.

"Don't you understand?" he said. "This is why I paid the Ministry of Justice. This is why I sold the paintings and the rugs and the furniture. This is why I'm selling the house! To keep you from taking a foolish risk like this."

"It would be foolish to throw away what we have left," Klara said.

Gyorgy turned to Andras. "Please tell me you haven't agreed to this wild scheme."

"My brother witnessed the massacre in the Delvidek. He thinks it could happen here, and worse."

Gyorgy sank back in his chair, his face drained of blood. From outside came the drumbeat and brass of a military band; they must have been marching up Andrassy ut to Heroes' Square. "What about us?" he said, faintly. "What's going to happen once they discover you're gone? Who do you think they'll question? Who'll get the blame for spiriting you away?"

"You must join us in Palestine," Klara said.

He shook his head. "Impossible. I'm too old to begin a new life."

"What choice do you have?" she said. "They've taken away your position, your fortune, your home. Now they're taking your son."

"You're dreaming," he said.

"I wish you'd talk to Elza about it. By the end of the year they'll call you to the labor service too. Elza and Mother will be left all alone."

He touched the edge of his blotter with his thumbs. A stack of documents lay before him, thick sheaves of ivory legal paper. "Do you see this?" he said, pushing at the papers. "These are the documents assigning possession of the house to the new owner."

"Who is it?" Klara asked.

"The son of the minister of justice. His wife has just given birth to their sixth child, I understand."

"God help us," Klara said. "The house will be a shambles."

"Where will you live?" Andras said.

"I've found lodgings for us in a building at the head of Andrassy ut--it's really quite grand, or it was at one time. According to these papers, we're allowed to take whatever furniture remains." He swept an arm around the denuded room.

"Please speak to Elza," Klara said.

"Six children in this house," he said, and sighed. "What a disaster."

General Marton's reaction was quick and sympathetic, but he lacked range: His solution was to secure Jozsef a place in the 79/6th. When the news arrived, Andras felt as though he were being punished personally. Here was retribution for the moment of satisfaction he'd experienced when he'd first heard that Jozsef had been called. Now, every morning, Jozsef was there at the Obuda bus stop, looking like an officer in his too-clean uniform and his unbroken military cap. He was assigned to Andras and Mendel's work group and made to load boxcars like the rest of the conscripts. Through the first week of it he glared at Andras every chance he got, as if this were all his fault, as if Andras himself were responsible for the blisters on Jozsef's feet and hands, the ache in his back, the peeling sunburn. He was roundly abused by the work foreman for his softness, his sloth; when he protested, Farago kicked him to the ground and spat in his face. After that, he did his work without a word.

June turned into July and a dry spell ended. Every afternoon the sky broke open to drop sweet-tasting rain onto the tedium of Szentendre Yard. The yellow bricks of the rail yard buildings darkened to dun. On the hills across the river, the trees that had stood immobile in the dust now shook out their leaves and tossed their limbs in the wind.