One morning later that week, the men woke to find the courtyard of the orphanage blurred in a gray-white nimbus of snow. The clouds seemed intent upon giving up their contents all at once, the flakes speeding to earth in acorn-sized clusters. Here was the winter they’d dreaded, making its unambiguous entrance; the temperature had dropped twenty degrees overnight. At lineup, snow swarmed into their ears and mouths and noses. It found its way into the crevices between their overcoats and neck wraps, worked itself in through the grommets of their boots. Major Bálint took his place at the front of the assembly yard and announced with regret that the men had been removed from their duties at the officers’ training school and assigned to snow removal. The guards unlocked the shed and handed the men their tools-the same pointed spades they’d used for road-building, not the curved rectangular blades that would have suited the job-and marched them out toward the village to begin their winter work.
That afternoon, when Szolomon found Andras and József among the snow-removal teams, he delivered the news that he’d been posted to a mapping office in Voronezh, and would depart on a military train that afternoon. He wished them a safe passage through the winter, said a blessing over their heads, and stuffed their pockets with long-unseen varieties of food-tins of meat and sardines, jars of pickled herring, bags of walnuts, dense rye biscuits. Then, without a word of goodbye, their reticent patron and protector hurried down the road and disappeared behind a veil of snow.
All week the temperature fell and fell, far below zero. Andras’s back burned with the work; his hands wept with new blisters. Nothing he had done in the Munkaszolgálat was as hard as clearing that snow, day after day, as the cold deepened. But it was impossible to give up hope when there was always a chance that a letter might arrive from Budapest. Every time they went to clear snow from the roads at the officers’ training school, Andras and József looked for Captain Erdő; whenever he had mail for them he found a way to slip it into their pockets. At the beginning of December a letter came from György Hász: The family fortunes had dwindled further still, and György, Elza, and the elder Mrs. Hász had been obliged to abandon the high-ceilinged flat on Andrássy út and move in with Klara. But they must not worry. K was safe. Everyone was fine. They must concern themselves only with their own survival.
Klara’s next missive brought the news that Tibor had been called back to the Munkaszolgálat and sent to the Eastern Front. Ilana and Ádám had come to live on Nefelejcs utca along with everyone else. Now the seven of them were getting by on the money that had been intended for the trip to Palestine, which Klara’s lawyer forwarded in small increments each month. Andras tried to imagine it: the bright rooms of the apartment filled with all the things the Hász family had brought from Andrássy út, the remaining rugs and armoires and bric-a-brac of their princely estate; Elza Hász, a mourning dove in a morning dress, her wings folded at her sides; Klara and Ilana trying to keep the babies clean and calm and fed in the midst of a crowd; Klara’s mother stoic and silent in her corner; the constant smell of potatoes and paprika; the flat blond light of Budapest in winter, falling indifferently through the tall windows. Absent from the letter was any mention of Mátyás, of whom Andras thought constantly as blizzards abraded the hills and fields of Ukraine.
In mid-December a note came from József’s mother: György had been admitted to the hospital with a burning pain in his chest and a high fever. The diagnosis was an infection of the pericardium, the membrane that surrounded the heart. His doctor wanted him to be treated with colchicine, pericardiocentesis, and three weeks of rest on a cardiac ward. The cost of this medical disaster, nearly five thousand pengő, threatened to unhouse them all; Klara was trying to arrange to have her lawyer send the money.
József was downcast and silent all day after he’d received the letter. That night at the orphanage he didn’t get into bed at the ordinary hour. Instead he stood at the window and stared down into the snowy depths of the courtyard, a coarse blanket wrapped around him like a dressing gown.
Andras rolled over on his bunk and propped himself up on an elbow. “What is it?” he said. “Your father?”
József gave a nod. “He hates to be sick,” he said. “Hates to be a burden to anyone. He’s miserable if he has to miss a day of work.” He pulled the blanket closer and looked down into the courtyard. “Meanwhile I’ve done nothing at all with my life. Nothing of use to anyone, certainly not my parents. Never had a job. Never even been in love, or been loved by anyone. Not by any of those girls in Paris. No one in Budapest, either. Not even Zsófia, who was pregnant with my child.”
“Zsófia’s pregnant?” Andras said.
“Not anymore. Last spring. She got rid of it somehow. She didn’t want it any more than I did, that was how little she cared for me.” He released a long breath. “I can’t imagine you’d have any sympathy for me, Andras. But it’s a hard thing to have to see oneself clearly all of a sudden. You must understand what I mean.”
Andras said he believed he did.
“I know you don’t think much of my paintings,” József said. “I could see it when you came by last year, the time you and Klara brought the baby to my flat.”
“On the contrary, I thought the new work was good. I told Klara as much.”
“What if I were to try to contact my art dealer in Budapest?” József said, turning to Andras. “Have him sell something? I never considered the new pieces to be finished, but a collector might think otherwise. I might ask Papp to see what he can get for those nine big pieces.”
“You’d sell your unfinished work?”
“I can’t imagine what else I can do,” József said, turning from the window. For a moment the curve of his forehead and the dark wing of his hair were like Klara’s, and Andras experienced an unwelcome jolt of affection for him. He lay back in bed and stared at the dark plane of the ceiling.
“The pieces I saw were good,” he told József. “They didn’t seem unfinished. They might fetch a high price. But it might not be necessary to sell them. Klara may be able to get the money sent from Vienna.”
“And what if she can?” József said. “Do you think they won’t need more money for something else next month? What if one of the children gets sick, or my grandmother? What if it’s something that can’t wait for Klara to contact her lawyer?” The question hovered in the air for a long moment while they both considered that frightening possibility.
“What can I tell you?” Andras said. “I think it’s a fine idea. If I had work to sell right now, I’d sell it.”
“Give me your pen,” József said. “I’ll write my mother. Then I’ll write to Papp.”
Andras felt around in his knapsack for his pen and the last precious bottle of India ink left over from their set-design supplies. Using the windowsill as a desk and the moonlight as a lamp, József began to write. But a moment later he spoke again into the dark.
“I’ve never given my father a single thing,” he said. “Not one thing.”
“He’ll know what it means for you to sell those paintings.”
“What if he dies before my mother gets this letter?”
“Then at least your mother will know what you meant to do,” Andras said. “And Klara will know too.”
The next morning they woke and cleared snow, and the day after that they cleared snow, and the following day they encountered Captain Erdő as he was marching his trainees along the road, and József managed to slip the letters into his hand. Every day after that they cleared snow and cleared snow, until, on the twentieth of December, Major Bálint announced that they were to pack their things and clean the orphanage from top to bottom; their unit was to move east the following day.