The Invisible Bridge (81 page)

When Goldfarb made a noise of protest, Lieutenant Horvath silenced him with a blow from the butt of his pistol. The two men struggled out of their clothes, Horvath shouting at them all the while; Mendel couldn't remove his right pant leg around his boot and the trap, so he stood with his trousers at his feet until Horvath cut the pants off with his knife. Once they were naked, the men huddled against the wall and shivered violently, their hands crossed over their groins. Goldfarb looked out toward the rest of his comrades in a kind of stupefied daze, as if the lines of men were part of an incomprehensible show he'd been commanded to watch. Mendel met Andras's eye for a single agonizing moment and gave a wink. The gesture was meant to reassure, Andras knew, but it clenched his insides in pain: That naked and bleeding man was
Mendel Horovitz
, his childhood friend and co-editor, not some clever simulacrum devised as another Munkaszolgalat torture.

Kozma ordered one of the guards to blindfold the two men with their own shirts. The guard was someone who had become familiar to Andras, a former plumber's assistant named Lukas, who escorted them to the officers' school every evening and slipped them cigarettes whenever he could. His expression, too, was incredulous and fearful. But he covered the men's eyes as he had been commanded. Goldfarb put a hand under the blindfold to loosen it a bit. Andras couldn't bear to look at Mendel's lowered head, his shaking arms. He dropped his gaze to Mendel's feet, but then there was the trap, its teeth penetrating Mendel's boot. Goldfarb was shoeless; he had crossed his feet to keep them warm. The quiet of the courtyard hummed with the men's breathing.

For a long time nothing happened--long enough to make Andras believe that this cold naked humiliation was to be the sum of the punishment. Soon, Mendel and Goldfarb would be allowed to dress and report to Tolnay, the medical officer, who would see to their wounds. But then something happened that Andras could not at once understand: A line of five guards marched into the space that separated the ranks of the 79/6th from the shivering men against the wall. The guards filled that space as if in protection, as if their function were to shield Mendel and Goldfarb's nakedness from the eyes of their comrades. Kozma gave a command, and the guards braced rifles against their shoulders and leveled them at the blindfolded men. A murmur of disbelief from the lines; a wild rage of protest in Andras's chest. Then the sound of rifles being cocked.

From Kozma, a single word:
Fire
.

An explosion of gunpowder rocketed through the yard, reverberated against the stone walls and poured up into the sky. Beyond a haze of smoke, Mendel Horovitz and Laszlo Goldfarb had slumped against the wall.

Andras pressed his fists against his eyes. The noise of the explosions seemed to go on and on inside his head. The two men who had been standing a moment before now sat on the ground, their knees folded against their chests. They sat still and white, no longer shivering; they sat without the slightest movement, their heads bent close together as though in secret conference.

"Deserters," Kozma said, once the smoke had cleared. "Thieves. Their pockets were full of pretty things. Now you've been warned against following their example.

Desertion is treason. The penalty is death." He got down from his little chair, turned, and marched into the orphanage with his dog at his heels and Lieutenant Horvath close behind.

As soon as the door had closed, Andras ran to Mendel at the wall, knelt beside him, put a hand to his neck, his chest. No drumbeat of life; nothing. In the courtyard, silence. Not even the guards made a move. The Ivory Tower stepped forward and bent to Laszlo Goldfarb; no one stopped him. Then he got up and spoke quietly to the guard called Lukas. When he'd finished speaking, Lukas gave a nod and went to the corner of the yard. He removed a key ring from his belt and unlocked the wooden shed that held the shovels. The Ivory Tower took out a shovel and began to dig a hole near the courtyard wall. Andras watched through the haze of a nightmare, saw other men join the Ivory Tower at that incomprehensible task. Jozsef stood in open-mouthed silence until someone prodded him in the back; then he, too, took up a shovel and began to dig. Someone else must have helped Andras to his feet. He found himself stumbling toward the shed, taking the shovel Lukas handed him, bending beside Jozsef. As if in a dream, he angled the shovel toward the earth and jammed it in with all his strength. The earth was hard, compacted; the jolt of the blade radiated up the handle and into his bones. Under his breath he began to murmur a series of words in Hebrew:
You deliver us from the snare of
the fowler and the pestilence of destruction, cover us with your pinions, protect us from
the plague that stalks indarkness and the disease that wastes at noon. You are our
protection. No evil will befall us. The angels guard us on our way, carrying us in their
hands
. He knew the words came from the Ninety-first Psalm, the one recited at funerals.

He knew he was digging a grave. But he could not make himself believe that the body beside the wall belonged to Mendel Horovitz, could not believe that this man he'd loved since boyhood had been killed. He could not grasp that stunning absolute. He could not breathe, could not think. In his head, the Ninety-first Psalm, the flash and crack of gunshots, the sound of shovels against cold earth.

THE MEN WERE BURIED at daybreak. There was no time for shivah, no time even to wash the bodies. Kozma considered it a kindness that he had let the 79/6th bury its fallen comrades. In compensation for that kindness, he withheld their soup rations for the rest of the week. The days passed in a kind of shocked silence, a vibrating disbelief. It was terrible enough to see older men worked to death, or dying of illness; it was another thing altogether to see young men shot. Jozsef Hasz seemed to react with the deepest shock of all, as though it were new information that any action of his, any exercise of his will, might have disastrous consequences for another human being. After that first week, during which he ate little and slept less, he stunned the company by volunteering for Mendel's position as the surveyor's second assistant. By now the position was believed to be cursed; no one else would touch it. But Jozsef seemed to consider it a kind of penance.

On the surveying runs he made himself Andras's servant. If there was heavy equipment to carry, he carried it. He gathered wood, built the cooking fires, surrendered his share of any food the surveyor gleaned. The surveyor, who had heard the story of what had happened to Mendel Horovitz and Laszlo Goldfarb, accepted Jozsef's servitude with quiet gravity. What had taken place was yet another of the Munkaszolgalat atrocities, playing out its second act now in the emotional torture of this inexperienced young man. But Andras, two decades younger than the surveyor and still capable of being stunned by human selfishness and cruelty, refused to forgive Jozsef, refused even to look at him.

Every time he passed through Andras's field of vision, the same ribbon of thoughts would unspool in Andras's mind. Why had it been Mendel and not Jozsef? Why not Jozsef in the woods that night, Jozsef's foot in a trap? Why could they not trade places still? Why not Jozsef, now, irrevocably gone? Andras had thought he'd tasted frustration and futility; he thought he'd been an intimate of grief. But what he felt now was sharper than any frustration, any grief, he'd ever known before. It seemed to refer not only to Mendel but to Andras too; it was not only the horror of Mendel's death, the undeniable fact of Mendel's being gone, but also the knowledge that Andras himself and all the 79/6th had entered another level of hell, that their lives were worthless to their commanding officers, that it was likely Andras would never see his wife and son again. Jozsef had done this, too, had brought Andras to this dangerous state of hopelessness. He found he could inhabit that place and still feel a burning anger at Jozsef for bringing him there. When a surveying assignment led Andras and Jozsef near a stretch of mined earth, he found himself wishing to see Jozsef subsumed in a deafening blast of fire. It seemed no worse than he deserved. Twice that year--once in Budapest, once in Ukraine--Jozsef had betrayed Andras at excruciating cost. The fact that Jozsef was connected by blood to Klara, the person Andras loved most in the world, was another agony; if he could have erased Jozsef from Klara's memory, erased him from the Hasz family altogether, he would have done it in an instant. But Jozsef stubbornly refused to be erased. He refused to trip a land mine. He hovered at the edge of Andras's vision, a reminder that what had happened was not an illusion and would not change.

Evenings at the officers' training school brought no relief. Andras and Jozsef were meant to be partners there too, Andras the set designer and Jozsef the artistic director.

The play, Kisfaludy's
The Tatars in Hungary
, was more than familiar to Andras; he'd studied it ad nauseam at his village school in Konyar. A strict schoolmaster had lodged the history soundly in his brain: Before Kisfaludy was a playwright, he'd been a soldier in the Napoleonic wars. When he came home from battle he wanted to bring his experience to the stage, but the recent wars seemed too fresh; instead he fixed his gaze on Hungary's distant past. Andras had written a long essay on Kisfaludy for his graduation from primary school. Now here he was, designing sets for
The Tatars in Hungary
at an officers' training school in Ukraine in the midst of a world war, and his design partner was a man responsible, in some measure, for Mendel Horovitz's death. But there was no time to dwell on that slice of irreality. Captain Erdo, the director of the project, was operating under a great urgency. The new minister of defense was soon to pay a visit to the officers' training school; the play would make its debut in his honor.

On a Thursday evening early in October, Andras and Jozsef found themselves standing at attention in the cavernous meeting hall of the officers' training school while Erdo reviewed their plans. The captain was a tall barrel-chested man with a corona of whitening hair cut close to the scalp. He cultivated a goatee and affected a monocle, but his air of self-mockery suggested it was all a farce, a costume: He considered himself ridiculous and wanted everyone else to be in on the joke. As he critiqued the plans, he spoke as if he were three or four people instead of just one. Instead of these painted trees, he said, might not a few real trees be brought in to suggest woods? Was that impractical?

Terribly impractical! Real trees? Who had the time or inclination to dig up trees? But wasn't it important to achieve an air of realism? Of course. Real trees, then; real trees.

Real tents, too, might be used for the encampment. That was a fine idea. There were plenty of tents around, they wouldn't cost a thing. This large-as-life cave meant to be constructed from chicken wire and papier-mache, could it be built in two pieces to make it easier to move? Of course it could, if it were designed properly, and that was why he'd engaged Jozsef and Andras, wasn't it? Everything had to be designed and carried out with the utmost professionalism. He didn't have an enormous budget, but the school wanted to make a good impression upon the new minister of defense. He told Andras and Jozsef to make a list of building materials: wood, chicken wire, newspaper, canvas, whatever it was they needed. Then, leaning closer, he began to speak in a different tone.

"Listen, boys," he said. "Szolomon tells me what goes on in that company of yours. Kozma's a beast of a man. It's abominable. Let me know what I can do for you.

Anything. Do you need food? Clothes? Do you have enough blankets?"

Andras could hardly begin to answer. What did the 79/6th need? Everything.

Morphine, penicillin, bandages, food, blankets, overcoats, boots and woolen underthings and trousers and a week's worth of sleep. "Medical supplies," he managed to say. "Any kind. And vitamin tablets. And blankets. We're grateful for anything."

But Jozsef had another thought. "You can send letters, can't you?" he said. "You can let our families know we're safe."

Erdo nodded slowly.

"And you can get mail for us, too, if they send it to your attention."

"I can, yes. But it's a dangerous matter. What you're suggesting goes against regulations, of course, and everything's censored. You'll have to be sure your family understands that. The wrong kind of letter might compromise us all."

"We'll make them understand," Jozsef said. And then, "Can you get us pens and ink? And some kind of writing paper?"

"Of course. That's easy enough."

"If we bring the letters tomorrow, can you send them by the next day's post?"

Erdo gave another stern and somber nod. "I can, boys," he said. "I will."

That night, as the guard named Lukas marched Andras and Jozsef back to the orphanage along with the others who'd been requisitioned to work on
The Tatars in
Hungary
, Andras found himself forced to admit that Jozsef's idea had been a good one. It made him dizzy to imagine what he might write to Klara that night.
By now you know
why I didn't return home the day before our journey: I was kidnapped along with the rest
of my company and sent to Ukraine. Since we've been here we've been starved, beaten,
made sick with work, allowed to die of illness, killed outright. Mendel Horovitz is dead.

He died blindfolded and naked before a firing squad, in part thanks to your nephew. As
for myself, I can scarcely tell if I'm dead or alive
. None of that could be written, of course; the truth would never pass the censors. But he could beg Klara to go to Palestine-

-he could find a way to get that into the letter, however coded the message might be. He even dared to hope she might be in Palestine already--that a reply from Elza Hasz might bring the news that Klara and Tamas had gone down the Danube with Tibor and Ilana and Adam, had crossed the Black Sea and passed through the Bosporus just as they'd planned, had taken up a life in Palestine where she and Tamas were safe from the war, relatively speaking. If he had known he would be posted to Ukraine, he would have begged her to go. He would have asked her to weigh her life and Tamas's against his own, and would have made her see what she had to do. But he hadn't been there to persuade her. Instead he had been deported, and the uncertainty of his situation would have argued for her to stay--her love for him a snare, a trap, but not the kind likely to keep her alive.