‘I don’t believe he’s trying to tell us anything. More likely trying to hide something from us, Hans. But what?’
‘I wish I could discuss it with my father. He has an extraordinary eye for people and never gets things wrong.’
‘Your father’s still alive?’
‘Seventy-six, but like a young man. He lives in Budapest. I’d like you to meet him. A wise, lucid man. He chops the firewood for his stove every day.’
‘Did he never marry again after your mother’s death?’
‘He lived a couple of years with a girl my age. But she got bored and left him. Now he lives on his own. No, to be honest, with a friend, the principal violin of the Budapest Academy orchestra, Ferenc Bruman, the one I’ve just been telling you about, remember? The man who was saved with him the time they talked about music on the day of the great bombing raid on Vienna. The afternoon the Academy collapsed and they survived unscathed while everyone else was killed or wounded. Now he teaches music and earns enough to buy his daily food and fill his evening pipe. They’re like a married couple, him and Ferenc, they quarrel a lot but get on well enough. They’ve had a small flat assigned to them in Budapest, right in the centre, near the Corvin cinema, in Magdolna utca. I’d love to introduce you to them both: Ferenc, an excellent violinist, and Tadeusz, a man of great talent, generous and cultured. I’d really like you to meet them. After the raid they’d survived by talking about music they disappeared, then met again a few years after the war. Ferenc was playing the violin in the street. My father could no longer find an orchestra to take him on as its conductor, so he started teaching. They decided to set up house together. First with the girl I was telling you about, Odette. She was a bit on the plump side but had a pretty face and they both liked her. Best of all she was cheerful, with a sort of open, childlike cheerfulness that did the two old men good. I’m not exactly sure but I think she probably shared her favours between them. In return they let her have a fine room and a huge bed with a flowered chintz cover, bought her a rather bald rabbit fur, lit a stove every day to keep her warm and made sure she didn’t go short of food. She thanked them by doing the ironing and looking after the housework. Ferenc did the cooking and my father chopped the wood. I think it was a good life for all three. I hardly ever went to see them, but when I did I found them cheerful, active and full of ideas. My father got it into his head to teach Odette opera. He said she had a good voice and got her to practice every day. In my opinion she couldn’t sing in tune, but it was lovely to see them doing things together; they played together and she sang. Naturally the piano was aborted before it could even be born. Odette got bored with vocal exercises, found a young man who wanted to marry her and disappeared one morning without a word.’
‘And the two men have stayed together?’
‘They’ve gone on in the same way, but without the domestic cheerfulness that had made for such a happy atmosphere; they are perhaps quieter and more peaceful now. They’ve learned to buy non-iron shirts and fast foods. My father still chops wood and Ferenc still looks after the kitchen. Most recently they’ve bought a motorcycle with a sidecar and go roaring about the place, all kitted out in goggles and airmen’s helmets.’
30
Amara is still sleeping when Frau Morgan climbs the stairs and calls: ‘A phone call for you, Frau Sironi.’ Amara puts on her slippers and goes downstairs yawning. The telephone on the wall is cleaned every morning with huge wads of cotton wool steeped in alcohol by the hard-working Frau Morgan. Amara recognises the voice at once. Hans, the man with the gazelles. In her mind that’s how she sees him, as though the gazelles are stamped on his chest and, even without his sweater, are leaping and running towards the future. Hans tells her breathlessly he has just read in the paper about an archive discovered in an underground SS shelter near the camp at Auschwitz. Why not go and study these new lists? They contain a large number of names, written up by hand complete with days of arrival and everything.
‘We have to go there, Amara. I’ll go and buy tickets. I’ll pass by to pick up your passport for the visas towards ten, okay?’
Amara says yes. She turns to see Frau Morgan with a cup of coffee especially for her. By now she has developed a taste for their investigations and addresses her lodger in a conspiratorial tone.
‘News, Frau Sironi?’
Amara would like to tell her about the man passing himself off as Emanuele but who doesn’t resemble him in the least and is in any case much too old. But she makes no mention of that meeting which still seems unreal. Instead she tells her about the new lists discovered in the SS shelter and of the trip they are going to make to Poland as soon as they have the necessary visas.
But the police are getting suspicious. What are these two up to going backwards and forwards between Vienna and Kraków? They are interrogated separately. Amara has to spend hours and hours waiting on a bench while they interrogate Hans, then it is her turn to face the usual questions to which she replies wearily, trying not to let it get on her nerves too much. But the police hold all possible or imaginable cards in their hands. Since the two are not commercial travellers, no one can understand why they are constantly asking permission to cross the border. Amara being a journalist doesn’t make things any better. What does she want to write? What is the ideological line of her paper? Et cetera, et cetera.
‘Come back in two days.’
‘But in two days we’ll have lost our train reservation.’
‘You can make another.’ Amara tries to explain that she has been sent by an independent Italian newspaper to write about the countries of Eastern Europe. She pulls out permits, her journalist’s card, her passport. But the police are inflexible.
‘Come back in two days.’
For Hans it’s even worse. What is he really after, this half-Jewish, half-Hungarian, half-Austrian man, half journalist and half not, half music teacher and half student, wanting permission to travel to Poland? Does he not understand that we’re in the middle of a full-scale cold war? That the border is closed? That urgent, important reasons are needed for anyone to be allowed to travel? That the reasons they are giving seem to make no sense? That rubber-stamps and visas issued by the government of Austria are not valid for Poland, or even for Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the countries they want to pass through in order to reach Kraków? The fact that his mother was Hungarian and died in a Nazi concentration camp is irrelevant. So is the fact that his father is a musician living in Budapest. How can it possibly be of any interest to the frontier administration that the young lady is travelling with him — and is she married or not? — if married, where is her husband? Or is she separated? And where does she want to go?
There is simply no end to the questions, and every time a new official appears they have to start again at the beginning. Hours and days pass like this. They spend the first night with the police, sitting on a bench. At about four in the morning a kind and very young policeman, moved by pity, brings them hot tea and a blanket. At nine the interrogation begins again. Then, at one, an officer in a torn uniform tells Amara she can go back to the pension, but that the man, Hans Wilkowsky, must stay with the police.