‘They turned your room upside down, I warn you,’ adds Frau Morgan brusquely, heading for the stairs.
‘Never mind. I’ll sort that out.’
‘I’ve done it already. I just left a few papers on the floor because I wasn’t sure where to put them.’
‘I have no secrets, Frau Morgan. There’s nothing hidden in my room.’
‘But they don’t believe that. If only you know how many questions they asked me. And then they accused me of civil disobedience for taking two hours to report your name to the police.’
‘It’s the cold war, Frau Morgan.’
‘If I was you, I’d be furious. And they took away a packet of letters.’
‘They’ll find it very difficult to decipher them, and they’ll discover they’re only letters from my father, written down by Sister Adele. And from my husband Luca Spiga, who wants us to start living together again. Not very interesting, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t like the police and I don’t want them in my house, Frau Sironi. I’m very sorry but I must ask you to pack your bags. I don’t want them suspecting me. I have a boarding-house to run, you understand, and my good name to protect.’
‘As soon as my visas for Kraków and Budapest come through I’ll be on my way. I promise. But please can I stay two more days? You won’t see the police again, they’ll be too busy trying to decipher all those letters written in Italian. Just two days, all right? Then I’ll go.’
Frau Morgan half-closes her eyes, thinking things over. Her lips grow stiff and thin. She is clearly torn between sympathy for the young Italian who has always paid so promptly for her room, and fear of the police and what the neighbours may say when they realise she is herself being investigated. Then she bows her head in a less than enthusiastic gesture of assent.
31
The library should open at nine but today things are not as they should be. The doors are closed, and even when Amara and the man with the gazelles knock, nobody answers. They sit down on the steps that lead up to the great door decorated with historical scenes, and share a bunch of September grapes.
He is wearing a green shirt and beneath its gaudy collar the sweater with the running gazelles can be seen. She has on a light-blue raincoat and pink beret that give her the look of a high-school student.
They stand in silence watching the people pass. There’s still a lot of poverty around. Many people are wrapped in heavy patched coats, either too long or too short, with sweaters in dark colours so as not to show the dirt. Anyway, who has access to hot water? And soap is too expensive. Tired early-morning faces, resentful from having slept badly and too briefly, and knowing they must now face an exhausting and humiliating day. The young run; they have cheap clothes and second-hand army boots. The old move slowly in long handmade scarves and synthetic cloth caps.
‘How can this man and his gazelles make a living just by leading young brides to the altar as if they were his daughters, playing at being their father?’ asks Amara, pointing at the herd of gazelles running in orderly procession towards the future.
Hans turns his suntanned face towards her. The light-brown lock of hair slips over his brow. He screws up his ash-grey eyes with the patient gesture of one who must explain the inexplicable.
‘The house I live in is my own, my grandfather left it to me. I give music lessons, like my father. To his pupils. I inherited them with the house’ — when he smiles he takes on the malicious look of a child embarrassed by having to talk to others and planning to distract their attention with cunning little stratagems — ‘with that and the weddings I get by.’
‘I’m lucky too. I write for a provincial paper. It doesn’t have masses of readers but the few it does have think about what they read. They pay me on the nail. And I can write what I like.’
‘Do you keep a diary?’
‘No.’
‘I do.’
‘Will you let me read it one day?’
‘Maybe.’
Looking up Amara sees an elderly man advancing on them: he is extremely thin with long legs. His violet-coloured jacket hangs from his shoulders, his black trousers are covered with stains and he has two folders under his arm. He climbs the steps slowly. His trousers are too short. They ride up at each step exposing thin ankles lined with thick blue veins that stand out in relief, his two long broad feet confined in rubber sandals. His fine, modest face is surrounded by white hair, balding yet also thick, that forms a halo round his skeletal head. He is like a tired, perplexed Old Testament prophet laboriously climbing the steps to paradise, but not worried about getting there quickly.
Amara and the man with the gazelles get up and follow him up the steps. Finding his keys, he pushes open the great dark wooden door; they follow him in.
The spacious entrance hall smells of mould.
‘Sir and madam would like?’
‘Can we visit the library?’
‘It opens at ten.’
‘It says nine outside.’
‘I arrive at ten. The secretary comes when she feels like it. She’s supposed to be here at nine but at the moment she’s off work.’
‘Well, it’s nearly ten. Can we come in?’
‘Write your names here. Show me your papers. Leave your umbrellas and bags, if you have any.’
The old man sits down exhausted after pushing towards them a large exercise book with scuffed pages.
It’s a venerable local library with tall windows, long worm-eaten tables and uniform wooden chairs, though some have broken backs and stuffing coming out of their seats in tufts.
Amara and Hans go to the catalogue. Not much on the concentration camps, as if there could be nothing to say about facts so near in time and so inexplicable. On the other hand, not even the library’s readers seem anxious to know more. The books standing upright side by side seem never to have been touched, opened or consulted. They are chilly to the touch and their pages uncut. Undoubtedly there are more documents to be found in the libraries of the camps.
Amara reads their titles, pulls out a volume or two, puts them back in their places. More than anything, they are historical explanations. Few accounts by witnesses. Few novels or stories of the camps.
She sees Hans crouched on the floor, deep in what looks like a new volume.
‘What are you reading?’
‘Witness accounts of the siege of Stalingrad.’
Amara too crouches down and tries to read by pushing her head over his shoulder. It is clear the book was printed quite recently on wartime paper, coarse and fragile, and it is shabby.
‘Dear Magda, Miraculously I’m still alive, I can’t think how,’ translates Hans aloud into refined and precise Italian. ‘All my mates are dead. The Russians surrounded us and began firing from all sides. I lost my shoes, but I took a pair from a soldier who died at my side. Out of the five hundred Hungarians with me, only three are still alive. I never saw such fierce crossfire. I was hit too. I fell and lost consciousness. I thought I was dead but then, with the coming of night and silence, I found I was still alive, still breathing. But I couldn’t move. I must be completely shattered, I thought, even if I couldn’t feel any pain. Then I realised that though still alive I was crushed under two dead bodies. I didn’t even know where my companions had gone. Then I found them by chance, behind a group of Finns and Romanians pulling a cart full of wounded. I don’t know if you’ll ever get this letter. It’ll be best if I bring it to you myself in my pocket if I manage to get home, if we manage to overcome the Russians who are wearing us down. Or it may reach you with my corpse, though that’s not likely since no one collects the dead here. There’s no time to bury them. The wounded are barely rescued, and even then often die in the field hospitals because there are no more dressings or medicines, or even doctors: they are dead too. Goodbye darling sister, I really hope to see you again not in paradise but in our own lovely Budapest, your brother Oskar Horvath.’