Gratitude (35 page)

“Meat?” Lili said. She took another half-step in. The shelves and china cabinet in the room were filled with ruby glass: goblets, dessert plates, a great fruit platter with a pinwheel pattern cut into the red, a crystal bell. It was like a ruby glass emporium.

The morning sun burst through the window, lighting up the glass like blossoms. Two ruby vases stood guard over the upright piano.

“Do you want me to play something?” the young man said.

“Yes, you do that, Hermann,” his mother said. Her look went blank again. Then: “Play a Chopin Polonaise for the lovely girl.”

“Should I play Bela Bartok, or how about Erik Satie?” he asked her while he kept his eyes on Lili. “A
gymnopédie
?”

“No,” his mother said imperiously. “Chopin or nothing—all right, Chopin or—what was that lovely Dvorak you were tinkling with the other day?”

“It was Sibelius, that’s what.”

They all gazed at the piano as if to ask if it remembered. The vases stood over it like jars of blood.

“Why didn’t the other girl take your father’s old chair, son—
your
chair now?” the woman asked. Lili glanced around to see what chair she meant. Maybe the red one, wine red. She held on tightly to the parcel for Simon. “Did she not leave the tobacco?” the woman asked. “I smoked some, that I can tell you.”

Lili looked at Hermann, who breathed quickly and smiled awkwardly. “I have to be going,” she said. “I have to catch a train.”

“You can’t just yet.” He took a step toward the entrance. “You shouldn’t.”

Lili paused. The imposing odour of the cabbage filled the room. “Have some cabbage rolls with us,” the woman said.

“So early in the morning?” Lili asked. She didn’t know why she would say such a thing. Good food was welcome whenever you could get it. She said, “I mean, how did you manage cabbage rolls so early—I mean, the meat?” Lili shook her head as if to shake away her confusion.

The woman got to her feet. She was not much taller than when she’d been sitting. What a tall son she had. Lili felt surrounded. “Pigeon,” the woman said. She took a single step. They were like chess pieces, the three of them, taking one step at a time this way and that, hesitating, then moving again. The woman said, “Hermann trapped a pigeon out back yesterday morning. He’s done that quite a few days, and you can enjoy some more if you stay.” Lili thought of the other girl, the one who’d brought the tobacco, or was it the cabbage? Hermann’s mother said, “We have quite a sack of rice, and we acquired cabbage. We ground up some pigeon flesh so we could have cabbage rolls. They’re surprisingly tasty.”

“I’m going to have to go,” said Lili. Her stomach was turning, not because of the pigeon but because her hosts were making her feel ill at ease. She didn’t know who they were—didn’t know what anyone was capable of these days.

Was Hermann a butcher, a guard somewhere, a glass merchant? Had his shop closed down, and all the glass merchandise been moved to their house? She began to back out, and no one moved. She could feel the cooler air of the vestibule behind her. When she made it to the door, she clutched the handle, and no one came. She heard the piano. Rachmaninoff, she was sure. Klari must have played a recording of it for her one evening. Hadn’t she heard it at Klari’s? Dr. Beck had so many records.

No one came to stop her. Her foot bumped against something by the door, a soft lump—she looked down—a sack. “
Magyar Posta
,” it read in gold letters across it. Hermann was a mailman.

Just as Lili turned to leave, the short woman appeared before her in the half-darkness. She’d put a charcoal-grey wool scarf over her head and ears—for when the door opened, Lili guessed. She could still hear the Rachmaninoff, the feeling swelling.

The woman held up a crystal butter dish with a ruby glass dome beneath which lay a cabbage roll. It looked like a small beached whale. “Take it with you,” the woman was saying. She held out the butter dish with one hand and pulled the scarf tight with her other. Lili took hold of the dish with its dark scarlet dome. “Take it.” The woman smiled broadly as Lili did so. “Wait,” she said. Out of her apron pocket, the woman pulled a packet of Turkish tobacco, labelled
Sophia
, and some cigarette papers. “Take these, too,” she said. “You never know.” Lili stuffed the tobacco and papers into her deep coat pocket. There was a pause in the Rachmaninoff but no other sound.

Lili stumbled out the door and into the world again. She proceeded for a moment down the street, looking all around her for the danger Hermann had warned her about, or for another line of deportees, but the boulevard was deserted. Lili remembered what time it was, still very early for anything other than early trains but not too early to turn off the city’s gas lamps. She ducked under an awning as the winter sky brightened. What was she to do with this lovely ruby dish, which lit up her white hand and wrist like a jewel? She tiptoed further into the entrance of what turned out to be a small bookshop, one she remembered roaming through with Simon soon after she got to Budapest. He had bought her a little volume of the poems of Petofi and afterward read a couple of them to her each night. Lili remembered the sound of the words, lofty and romantic, even though she could not comprehend all of the old Hungarian.

The shop was closed, naturally, and Lili turned her back to the door and set her sack down gently. She opened the red hood of her dish, picked up the cabbage roll with her fingers and ate. The plump little meal was more delicious than she’d imagined it could be—it was still quite warm—and the morsel was gone in a minute.

Lili took out a handkerchief, monogrammed with the letters “KB,” Klari Beck, dabbed at her mouth before wiping the dish as clean as she could make it, retraced the few steps to the doorway she had just departed and set the dish back down gently on the step.

She then turned up Andrassy Street again and headed northeast toward Keleti Station. She moved along furtively, worrying still about Hermann’s warning. She felt exposed as she stole up the street, felt she could be nabbed in an instant and, like Zoli, made to join a line going the opposite way, or worse, shot instantly. She had her story ready. She was rushing off to visit an ailing aunt on the frontier with Romania, hence the fur sleeping bag and the tobacco for her equally ailing uncle. She hadn’t seen them for two years, she would say, and this was her last chance. She’d say her uncle was the pastor at the Church of St. Margaret, and she’d mention him by name, Father Ambrus. The priest had told her to do this, any time she needed. It would be a “benevolent lie,” he said.

Lili felt better after she’d scuttled into the City Park past the imposing Museum of Fine Arts on the left and the Palace of Art on the right. Heroes’ Square awaited her. It was wide open and made her feel exposed. She dashed for cover toward the monument of the fierce Rydwan, god of war, aboard his chariot pulled by two powerful steeds. Rydwan was pointing the way, but had he lost his way now, here, in Hungary? The proud country had backed Hitler, and now Hitler had turned on Hungarians. She remembered the spring day she’d got here, the Gypsy trio, the blind girl soliciting, the strange things she said. Where would her family find her, even if they wanted to?

Lili could see the fierce statue of the great Arpad, leader of the Magyars, wearing his battledress, his head crowned by a knife blade, a lightning rod, aimed at the heavens. She saw King Ludwig I, his monument completed just a decade and a half before, to remind Hungarians their rulers had led them to the promised land. Were they small men, Ludwig and Arpad, that their monuments had to be so immense? How big was Hitler? How about Stalin? She’d heard that Napoleon was a small man. Did Ludwig and Arpad face in the direction Rydwan had inspired them to face? If you lined up the warriors of the world, horse to chariot to horse, across the planet, would they be pointed in the right direction?

Lili moved on. The Museum of Architecture was not far ahead, housed in the Vajdahunyad Castle, and the zoo, a small one, not the one she’d visited with Maria and her brother. She wanted to walk straight past them, out past the City Park toward Keleti Station.

Winter clouds had begun to crowd the sky and a cool wind blew. She spotted a small group of uniformed men up ahead. They might easily have been zookeepers or tram conductors, for all she knew, but she didn’t want to find out, so she turned right. She would duck into Jak Chapel if she had to, if she could, and worship dutifully if she needed to.

She made it all the way to Jak Chapel and beyond, but if she continued now she would be leaving the park altogether. She stepped behind a monument she had not noticed before. It was the Statue of Anonymous, a poet, the plaque said, a life-sized bronze of a calm, ghostly figure seated on a bench, either man or woman, she couldn’t tell, holding a bound manuscript in one hand and a primitive stylus in the other. The face of Anonymous was buried inside a deep hood, and like a mole the poet looked out of the darkness into the light of the park, the face barely discernible.

Lili heard steps coming toward her from the street and crouched behind the monument, her heart racing. She seemed to be hiding everywhere, she realized, skulking about like a criminal. Maybe Anonymous was the best person to be, off to the side of the City Park, looking downward, staring at the foot of Vajdahunyad Castle, neither Ludwig nor Arpad, and not Rydwan either. This was the benefit of being Anonymous, Lili decided: your face receded into the darkness behind the folds of your hood, your sex receded. You withstood sun and snow and the comings and goings of monks and killers who had long forgotten you were sitting here—because the minute you became Arpad, the minute you loomed large, you’d better get set to lead; the minute you became a blond Jewish girl who had fled to Budapest, you’d better get set to hide. Better Anonymous than Arpad—you could sit and watch—but either way better bronze than flesh.

Someone crept up behind her. “Who are you?” the voice said. She turned to find what looked like a priest, a monk possibly.

“I’m…” Lili said, straightening out.

“Are you all right?” the priest said. “Are you cold?”

She nodded.

“Come,” the man said. He was heading for the chapel. “Come, you’ll catch your death. I can give you some tea with honey and a little biscuit. Come, you’ll feel better.”

Lili heard the church bell toll eight times. The city would be getting up and out now—friends, enemies, oppressors, collaborators. And those who would always surprise you, like this gentle soul. For the second time that morning, on the way to a train that didn’t leave until five minutes to ten, Klari had told her, Lili stepped into an unknown building to accept the protection of a stranger.

At the doorway to the chapel stood two laughing creatures, boars possibly, or mythic beasts, with all their teeth showing. But instead of taking her through the front, the robed man led Lili around to the rear of the church and made the turn toward the rectory. Inside, he removed his cloak, hung it up, lit a gas stove and filled a cast-iron kettle with water. He did not ask her any other questions, and she felt relieved not to have to make up answers. She guessed the man knew that’s what she would do if pressed. He made her tea, set out a few biscuits, a bowl of honey and a yellow apple. Added to the cabbage roll, this was more breakfast than she’d had in months, and more than, in good times, she would have accepted voluntarily.

The priest lit a lamp with a tortoiseshell shade, which gave off a warm glow. He plucked at the shoulders of his brown robe to adjust the way it hung. He had a baby face and generous brown eyes. He could not have been more than a half-dozen years older than Lili. And then he looked up, and Lili realized he was slightly wall-eyed and might have been ashamed of the defect. As his eyes settled on her, she checked beside her to see what else he might be looking at. He was watching her enjoy her tea—of that she was confident—and she smiled appreciatively at him. And then he turned his back to her, opened the lid of a hatbox phonograph, selected a record and switched it on to play. Lili expected Bach or vespers of some kind but heard instead “In the Mood.”

“It’s a new record,” he said, smiling, clapping his hands once, then dropping them to his side. “It’s by Glenn Miller, an American, with his American Forces Band.”

It might have been the same record Dr. Beck had brought for Rozsi. The robed man then turned to depart, to get the chapel in order, she supposed. “Stay as long as you like,” he said before closing the door and leaving her on her own.

And here she was, with her breakfast and record. Why did everyone want to play music for her? Was she expected to get up and dance around the room? Maybe just smile. She could do that easily enough.

For a moment, she imagined the wall-eyed priest calling the authorities while she ate, drank and listened, but her feeling about the man contradicted the thought. She got quite comfortable and warm before deciding it was time to go. She wrapped the remaining biscuits in another handkerchief Klari had given her and tucked them into her bag. She’d save these for Simon. She wasn’t sure what was to come next. She didn’t know whether she was to receive benediction. She didn’t even know what benediction was or if one could receive it on a Wednesday.

She turned to the phonograph as it played its jaunty tune. Was it polite to leave before the song was done? There was a desk to one side, and she thought of leaving a note of thanks, but she didn’t want to disturb any important church papers.

She gulped down her tea and used her spoon to clean the honey from the small bowl before getting up. She gazed expectantly at the chapel door one last time. She watched Glenn Miller whirl on the turntable and then left.

Lili made it the rest of the way to Keleti Station easily now. The sky was heaped with cloud and a cool wind whipped at her face. She was grateful she had a scarf and gloves, which Klari had given her. There were many people out and about by now, but instead of worrying Lili, the traffic made it easier for her to disappear among the throngs. People paid little attention to her. Not even a dog she saw paused to look at her.