She wouldn’t want to know more than required by common courtesy.
If the name Erna Demén means anything to you, said the woman of festive appearance and contagious smile with her deep, rasping voice. The belt on her surprisingly slim waist was fiery red; her name was Margit Huber, though among themselves the women called her Médi.
Oh but it does, cried Mária Szapáry, surprised. If we are speaking of the same secondhand junk dealer.
Your memory is rather selective as to her human qualities, noted the woman in the silk dress, who, though no shorter than the other two, was ethereal, slight, delicate, all nervous tendons and fine long muscles.
They all laughed.
Sometimes one is too vulnerable out of self-interest, en fait, came Szapáry’s contrite reply.
Supposedly, Irma as a little girl was often their guest. In their manor house in Jászhanta or some such place.
Yes, the Deméns did have a place like that as far as I know, Szapáry replied wryly.
But your family had no contact with them.
There was a brief silence. This your family was a topic that they, for lack of a shared background, could not touch. Or rather, that caused certain difficulties, created unspoken tensions among them.
I don’t think there was an opportunity, replied Szapáry in a tone that forbade more inquiry.
Irmuska would stay with them only a few days, added Margit Huber quickly, to take the edge off the embarrassment.
The question was indeed improper; how could they have had any contact with a Jewish landowner.
At least that was Erna’s story, that they really knew each other. Still, Margit Huber did not want to force the issue.
You must have been puzzled by such an unexpected telephone call, interjected the woman in the silk dress, hoping to clarify the situation. She’d quickly seen that their hostess was furious.
Her transparently blue eyes grew dark, she strained her thick neck, on her aggressively white skin red splotches appeared.
For god’s sake, what on earth are we talking about anyway, she thundered. I don’t understand anything, and now she blushed from her neck to her forehead. I have the feeling you’re being incoherent on purpose.
What we’re talking about is that Erna had a daughter who was taken away in October 1944, said the friend with the rasping voice in the softest possible tone. I guess during the same days when they took you away too. And the girl never turned up.
I see. I didn’t know about that, forgive me. I seem to remember she had a son in Switzerland.
The clattering and puffing of the tugboat on the river could be heard coming closer and closer.
For a few long seconds she sensed in her eardrums, in her loins, and in her throat that it wasn’t just some clattering and puffing she was hearing, but a steady, unavoidable throbbing. All her self-discipline was inadequate; she could not bear them — these unexpected blows. Just when she thought it was going to be a nice summer evening. In truth, she was surrounded and could resist no longer, she’d be swallowed up for good. This insane throbbing was nothing but a new yet long-familiar warning.
She was a first-year student at the faculty of arts, had her hair in braids, wore knee socks, continued Margit Huber, her raspy voice easily rising over the dreadful din of the tugboat, as if only she, with her smile, could trek safely across this difficult terrain.
Erna thought it was important to mention the braids and knee-socks, but I can’t tell you why, I really can’t. I myself knew nothing of all this. What can I tell you: the last time I saw them must have been in ’thirty-eight, when I came back here from Berlin. And even then it was only for a few minutes. Yes, her daughter refused to cut off her braids even after finishing school. She was a deeply devout soul, preferred to wear pleated skirts with her middy blouse.
She was arrested along with four others for some insignificant matter about organizing a few people, some childish thing, and she was taken to the Majestic.
She wanted to sound casual when mentioning this Majestic because she knew that Mária Szapáry too, after her arrest in 1944, had been taken to this Gestapo villa on Sváb Mountain.
Through the boarded-up window of her cell, she heard the cogwheel train when it stopped at the Művész Road station and then moved on. On the second day, judging by the sounds, she figured out where she was. Margit Huber waited a moment, watching, mesmerized, the features of their hostess. She had been beaten there, in the Majestic, several times. But she said nothing. Filled with indifferent anticipation, her lips trembling uncooperatively, she raised her strong eyebrows.
A week later, they took them to Berlin, as Erna Demén tells it, straight to Alexanderplatz. They wanted to make a big deal of the whole thing. Until Berlin, there were others, but afterward there was only one eyewitness, she continued, according to whom Erna’s daughter was sent off in a transport to Ravensbrück. They left no stone unturned. Dr. Lehr, of course, had connections with everybody, including the Nazis.
That’s the girl’s story in a nutshell.
But now there’s new information, said the woman in the silk dress, taking over the story, that the girl and Irmus were together, allegedly, in the Helmbrecht death march.
Oh, no.
Yes.
It must be a misunderstanding, or a fatal error.
And now all three of them realized it would be important to come up with some plan before Irma Szemző arrived. Whether they should burden her with this news, or should wait, perhaps slowly preparing her for the task that for humanitarian reasons could not be avoided, or should hold their peace. Mária Szapáry turned stubborn; not only was the matter not that urgent, but she did not even understand it. As if saying both yes and no, she swayed her large head, consolidating her stubborn silence.
Whenever conversation strayed to such topics, she’d keep quiet. Immediately after the siege of Budapest, they had giggled together about the most absurd things. But as the years passed, although nothing changed she found it harder and harder to talk about old issues; no matter whether some receded and some she forgot, she couldn’t do it. Her throat, her nose, perhaps the mucous membrane on the roof of her mouth preserved the stench of carrion. Her mind filled only with things one could not possibly speak about in a normal voice.
The sled with the ropes, whatever happened to the sled which they’d used to move the frozen Russian corpses. And she had never told anyone — except Médi, once — that she had raised her reflex camera above her head, hadn’t even leaned over the terrace railing, had clung to the wall sheathed in smooth cream-colored sheets of artificial stone so that nobody would see her, and had taken pictures for three consecutive days.
The pictures included ones of the dry pool of Szent István Park into which people were herded, and the yellow-tiled roadway on which the different groups were led away. What occurred to her now was that perhaps she had seen a girl with braids in the cellar of the Majestic, even though she’d seen no girl there with or without braids. I did not see her. I only saw the crudely whitewashed brick wall in the corridor. As though she had to keep apologizing. She’d never developed the negative, but kept them in the false-bottom drawer of the huge warped, buckling baroque escritoire.
She could not fathom what this miserable Démen woman could possibly want to know about these events, what she was so curious about. What would she do with her knowledge if she gained any, how would she gain. Why should she be helped. But one could not say this out loud, and because she knew she couldn’t say anything, not even to these friends, she could once again smell the sweet fragrance of the petunias. She said nothing about the sweet stench of carrion. And she also remained silent about how every year she compulsively planted, nurtured, and watered her flowers, but then at the end ripped them out of the dirt by their roots.