“Does that surprise you, old man?”
Andras pulled his papers from his jacket pocket. “My visa’s still good for another three weeks.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But it’s no good unless you’re taking summer classes. Next term doesn’t count anymore, apparently. You’d better go to the consulate before someone asks for your papers. As far as the authorities are concerned, you’re here illegally now.”
“But that’s impossible. It doesn’t make sense.”
József shrugged. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”
“I can’t go to Budapest now,” Andras said.
“Truth to tell, I’m almost looking forward to it,” József said. “I’ll have a soak at the Szécsenyi baths, take a coffee at the Gerbeaud, see a few of the boys from gimnázium. Maybe go to the house at Lake Balaton for a while. Then I’ll do what I have to do at the passport office, and I’ll be back by the start of fall term-if there is a fall term, of course, which depends in part on the whims of Herr Hitler.”
Andras collapsed against the cab seat, trying to take in what he’d just heard. Ordinarily he might have welcomed the excuse to go home for a few weeks; after all, he hadn’t seen his parents or Mátyás in two years. But he was supposed to get married; it was supposed to happen while Tibor was still in Paris. He was supposed to move his things to the rue de Sévigné. And then there was the problem of Hitler and Danzig. This was no time to get on a train to Budapest, no time to cross the continent, no time for his visa to be in question. In any case, how could he afford to travel? The cost of a two-way ticket would consume what he’d managed to set aside for Klara’s ring and for tuition in the fall. He didn’t have the savings Tibor had; he hadn’t worked for six years before going to school. He felt suddenly ill, and had to roll down the cab window and turn his face toward the breeze.
“I should have spoken to you sooner,” József said. “We might have traveled together.”
“It’s my fault,” Andras said. “I haven’t been eager to see you since I got blind drunk in your bedroom.”
“Never feel ashamed,” József said. “Not with me. Not for that reason.” And then he turned to Tibor. “What about you?” he said. “How’s medical school? Was it Switzerland?”
“Italy.”
“Of course. So you’re nearly a doctor now.”
“Not quite nearly.”
“And what brings you to town?”
“That’s a long story,” Tibor said. “The short version is something like this: I’m courting someone who was recently married to a friend of Andras’s. I’m glad you’re leaving town before you can make me say more about it.”
József laughed. “That’s grand,” he said. “I wish I had time for the long version.”
They had reached the station, and the driver got out to untie the bags from the roof. József opened his wallet and counted out money. Andras and Tibor slid out after him and helped him carry the bags inside.
“I suppose you’d better go,” Andras said, once they’d consigned the luggage to a porter. “You’ll miss your train.”
“Listen,” József said. “If you do make it to Budapest, look me up. We’ll have a drink. I’ll introduce you to some girls I know.”
“Monsieur Hász, the playboy,” Tibor said.
“Don’t forget it,” József said, and winked. Then he slung his chestnut-colored satchel over his shoulder and loped off into the crowded station.
Before a week had passed, Andras would be obliged to return to the Gare du Nord with his own suitcases, his own satchel. But all he knew, as he and Tibor began the long walk to the rue de Sévigné that evening, was that he had to go to the consulate and explain that he must be granted legal visitor status. Only until the end of the month-only as long as it would take to get a marriage license and wed his bride. Once they were married, wouldn’t he have a claim to French citizenship? Couldn’t he come and go, then, as he wished?
At Klara’s, all the lights were burning and the women were cloistered in the bedroom. Ilana came out to tell Andras he was not to go in; the dressmaker was there, and behind Klara’s door there were secret preparations regarding her wedding gown.
Andras made a noise of dismay. He and Tibor went to the front room and sat down on either side of the sofa, where Tibor pulled his own papers from his trouser pocket and scrutinized the visa.
“Mine’s good until next January,” he said. “And I’ve been enrolled in summer study, though I’m afraid I won’t pass the course I’ve just abandoned.”
“But you’re enrolled. You ought to be all right.”
“But what about you? What will you do?”
“I’ll go to the consulate,” Andras said. “Then I’ll go to the Mairie. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’ve got to have valid papers before we can get a marriage license.”
From the bedroom came a trio of exclamations, a crescendo of laughter. Tibor folded his papers again and set them on the table. “What’ll you tell her?”
“Nothing yet,” he said. “I don’t want her to worry.”
“We’ll go to the consulate tomorrow,” Tibor said. “If you explain the problem, maybe they’ll grant you an extension. And if they give you trouble, watch out.” He held up his fists in a threatening manner. But his hands were as elegant as a pianist’s, long and lean; his knuckles had the polished look of river stones, and his tendons fanned like the delicate bones of a bird’s wing.
“God help us all,” Andras said, and managed a smile.
The Hungarian Consulate was located not far from the German Embassy, where Ernst vom Rath had met his assassin. At first glance the building might have made an expatriate long for home; its façade was inlaid with mosaics depicting scenes from Budapest and the countryside. But the artist had an uncanny knack for ugliness: his humans seemed to suffer from anemia and bloating, his landscapes from a failure of perspective just noticeable enough to evoke vague nausea in the viewer. Andras had had no appetite for breakfast, in any case; he’d hardly slept the night before. Somehow he’d made it through the previous evening without mentioning the situation to Klara, but she suspected something was wrong. After dinner, as Andras and Tibor were preparing to leave for the Latin Quarter, she’d stopped him in the passageway and asked if he were having misgivings about the wedding.
“Not at all,” he said. “Just the opposite. I’m anxious for it to happen.”
“So am I,” she said, and put her arms around him in the shadowy hall. He’d kissed her, but his mind hadn’t been present. He was thinking about what had troubled him most since the cab ride that afternoon: not the prospect of resistance at the consulate, nor the problem of how he might afford a ticket home, but the fact that the young man rushing to the station had been József Hász, who had always seemed miraculously exempt from the difficulties of ordinary life-József Hász, packed off to Budapest for the sake of a stamp on a document.
The next day at the consulate, a red-haired matron with a Hajdú accent told Andras that his visa had expired when his classes had ended at the beginning of the summer, and that he’d been staying in France illegally for a month and a half; he must leave the country at once if he didn’t want to be arrested. He was given a copy of a form letter stating that he would be permitted to reenter Hungary. That seemed like an unnecessary measure; he was a Hungarian citizen, after all. But he was too upset to consider it for long. He needed to know what to do once he got to Budapest, how to return to Paris as soon as possible. Tibor, who had come along as promised, kept his hands in his pockets and asked polite questions when Andras might have demanded and shouted and raised arguments. Through Tibor’s gentle inquiries, they learned that if Andras carried a letter from the school stating that he was a registered student, and that his scholarship would be renewed in the fall, he ought to be able to get another two-year visa once he was back in Budapest. Any faculty member at the school could write the letter; it was valid as long as it appeared on the school’s letterhead and carried the school’s official seal. Tibor was effusive in his thanks, and the red-haired woman went so far as to say she regretted the inconvenience. But her small watery eyes were impassive as she stamped a red ÉRVÉNYTELEN across Andras’s visa. Expired. Invalid. He had to leave at once. There was no use going to the Mairie to apply for a marriage license; he could be arrested if he showed his expired documents there. The train ticket would exhaust his savings, but he had no choice. He could begin to save again when he returned.