‘But how did you come to be a librarian?’
‘I spent so much time in the village library that I became everybody’s friend and when the old librarian died I asked if I could take his place. I was satisfied with very little and was good with the archives. They accepted me. They could see I was a serious worker and after a few years I was transferred to Vienna to restore this old library which had been bombed.’
‘I’d like a copy of your book,’ says Hans who has brought the book with him and is turning it in his hands.
‘I’ll make you a present of it. I’m sorry I can’t offer you an armchair so you can read more comfortably. The city has been almost entirely rebuilt but libraries are last on the list; what does it matter if part of the building is in a state of collapse, if there is no room for any more books or if there is no heating? Not many people want to read when they have to spend their days trying to find a little coal, or something to put into their mouths. And the few who do come in never stay precisely because it is so cold and we are short of chairs.’
Finally, half-closing his eyes, he asks them in a humble voice as if afraid of being indiscreet, what they are looking for in Vienna.
Hans explains. Horvath looks at them in wonder.
‘It’s extraordinary, this fidelity to memory,’ he says with a mixture of admiration and disquiet. ‘I realise it’s difficult … even if the Nazis did keep registers, in the end they destroyed them all. Or nearly all of them. You say some new ones have been found?’
‘It seems so.’
‘Then why have the allies not appropriated them?’
‘That’s just what we want to find out. We’re waiting for our visas.’
‘You’ll have to wait a long time. Unless I come with you. I need to look for some books in Kraków. It’s easier for a librarian to get a visa for a short trip to look for books. You can come with me.’
Amara looks at him apprehensively. How to curb his enthusiasm? And how can such a journey by a Hungarian, an Austrian and an Italian to the kingdom of the dead be organised?
‘You’ll see, I can be useful to you,’ he says, with a smile on his lips that suddenly makes him young and beautiful.
‘But … and the library? Who will look after it while you’re away?’
‘It’s time the secretary came back to work. She’s already been off for months on maternity leave. I’ll put everything in her hands and take a few days off. I haven’t had a holiday for years.’
34
Such a strange trio. Horvath, Hans and Amara, on the train to Kraków. But at the last moment they decide to go via Hungary. Hans has written to tell his father he would like to pay him a visit. And his father has answered happily that he’s looking forward to it. And Horvath would like to put a flower on his sister’s grave and see if anything is left of the house where he lived as a child.
At Hegyeshalom, at the border, the engine shuts down completely. It will be a long wait, which was predictable. Many get out to look for a coffee at the bar which has already been stripped bare by the previous train; it has nothing left to offer except little bags of camomile from the Ukraine, loose powdered sweets that look as if they have been sitting in their glass jar since before the war, and Russian cigarettes, the ‘papiroskas’ the soldiers despise partly because they are Russian but also because they consist almost entirely of paper, and what little tobacco there is in them stinks of sawdust.