On a Thursday evening early in October, Andras and József found themselves standing at attention in the cavernous meeting hall of the officers’ training school while Erdő 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-mâché, 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 József 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 József 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 József had another thought. “You can send letters, can’t you?” he said. “You can let our families know we’re safe.”
Erdő 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,” József 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?”
Erdő gave another stern and somber nod. “I can, boys,” he said. “I will.”
That night, as the guard named Lukás marched Andras and József 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 József’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 Hász might bring the news that Klara and Tamás had gone down the Danube with Tibor and Ilana and Ádám, 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 Tamás 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 Tamás’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.
Dear K, he wrote that night. Your nephew and I send greetings from the town of T. I write with the hope that this letter will not reach you in Budapest, that you will have already departed for the country. If you have postponed that trip, I beg you not to delay longer for my sake. You must go at once if the opportunity arises. I am well, but would be better if I knew you were proceeding with our plans. And then the terrible news: Our friend M.H., I must tell you, was forced to depart a month ago for Lachaise. A reference to the cemetery in Paris. Would she understand? I feel as you might imagine. I miss you and Tamás terribly and think of you day and night. Will write again as soon as possible. With love, your A.
He folded the letter and hid it in the inner pocket of his jacket, and the next day he put it into Erdő’s hands. There was no way to know when or whether or how it might find its way to Klara, but the thought that it might do so eventually was the first consolation he’d had in recent memory.
If Andras was surprised when the young officers-in-training, his set-building crew, accepted his direction with respectful deference, the surprise faded quickly. After a few weeks of evening duty at the officers’ training school, it came to seem ordinary to walk among them as a kind of foreman, checking their adherence to his plans. Between them there was little consciousness of difference and little formality. The officers-in-training and the work servicemen called each other by their first names, then by diminutives-Sanyi, Józska, Bandi. They weren’t allowed to eat together in the officers’ mess hall, but often the crew went to the back door of the kitchen at dinnertime and brought back food for all of them. They ate on the stage, cross-legged amid the construction projects and half-painted backdrops. Andras and József, locked in a wordless struggle, nonetheless gained weight and got the sets built. They waited for answers to their letters, hoping each time Erdő entered the officers’ meeting hall that he would call them into his office and pull a smudged envelope from his breast pocket. But the weeks dragged on and no response came. Erdő told them to be patient; the mail service was notoriously slow, and even slower when the correspondence had to cross borders.
As the performance of The Tatars in Hungary drew nearer and still no response arrived, Andras grew half mad with worry. He was sure that Klara and György and Elza had been arrested and thrown in jail, that Tamás had been left in the care of strangers. Klara would be tried and convicted and killed. And he was trapped here in Ukraine, where he could do nothing, nothing; and once the play was finished he would lose his connection to Erdő, and with it the possibility of sending or receiving word from home.