Searching for Wallenberg (13 page)

Gyorgi, the son, ushered them into a study, explaining, using Russian and body gestures, that they should take it easy, and asked specifically what Manny wanted to ask his father. He cited the Soviet and Moscow atmosphere in the forties, and perhaps a few questions about Wallenberg, the KGB …

Gyorgi shook his head, told Natasha he could not ask about the latter two subjects—the old man would throw them out—and said to wait; Father was finishing lunch with Mother. He went to the adjoining room to see them, and perhaps pacify them.

In the book-lined study, maybe nine by fourteen feet, Natasha and Manny stood and waited. He looked about at the bookshelves, the large glass-top desk, the numerous small photos on the shelves and desk. Voices came from the other room. On the wall bookshelf, he was startled to see a few books in Yiddish, and focused on the nineteenth-century novel by Mendele, which he had read decades ago in his old Hebrew school in Brownsville. He glanced through it, trying to recall his Yiddish reading. So this Daniel got around. Next, Manny saw a small photograph of a Soviet officer, handsome and vital. Was this the Daniel Pagliansky that was in the next room? He had an inclination to slip it into his pocket, as evidence of the meeting … On the desk, he viewed other old photos, the mother and father and small son in the playground … other military and personal photos … That youthful Daniel had been rugged, good-looking, energetic.

The door opened from the adjoining room, and Gyorgi, escorting in a very old man, introducing his father, who proceeded slowly. The father sat down opposite Manny, in the guest chair, while he sat in his, at the son’s gesture. He was blind in one eye, his white hair was thin as a baby’s, the bones of his face were pushing forward from the taut covering of skin, and his visage was the mask of Death.

“Why did you come here?!” he suddenly proclaimed in loud English, “after we had told her on the phone not to come!” He pounded the desk with his frail hand, shouting now. “Why do you Americans think you can come wherever you want, whether you are invited or not?!”

Manny was shocked, by the English, by the declarations, by the death mask.

“Well, it was my last opportunity to see you, as I am leaving very soon,” he said, surprisingly calm. “And to try to chat with you.”

The old man looked at him savagely, and turned to his son for the full translation—even though he may have understood the words—who in turn waited to hear from Natasha.

On an impulse, Manny said quietly, “You see, even though I am trained as a historian, I am writing a novel, and I wanted to get the atmosphere of the old days in Moscow, during the war years.”

The old man eyed Manny skeptically, from beneath bushy eyebrows, and waited for the translators to finish their transaction.

He waited a moment, considering Manny, who faced him squarely; he believed the old man was asking him to face his frightening face without flinching or turning away. Fair enough. Finally he said, in Russian, “The climate was special, despite the danger. We were all united against the Nazi threat.” He paused and added, “It was a great time in Russia.”

Manny took in that Stalinist accolade, and cautioned himself about approaching the two taboo subjects. “And you were studying at the time—what? Where?”

His hands had moved to the table, and one began to fidget, tremble. Parkinson’s? He offered, “Of course, I studied, at the gymnasium. Poetry. Mathematics. Architecture. Excellent school in those days. I am a trained architect, as is my wife.”

“I see,” Manny said, nodding, exhaling, and remembering Wallenberg’s desires and training in the field of architecture.

“So you studied poetry too in the gymnasium?”

“Yes, of course. Especially German poetry I read, and enjoyed.”

“Your German was fluent then?”

Manny waited for the translations to go through.

“Of course, one had to learn a language well. German was my second language, after English.”

So that was how he and Raoul conversed, in German. “Oh, you studied English that early?”

Pagliansky sneered at him. “Soviet education demanded high standards. Not like these days. I studied English in the first school.”

Manny paused in appreciation, staring at him; his rage had receded as he had entered into the conversation. Manny got up and found the Mendele book and brought it to the desk. “I read this in my Hebrew school in Brooklyn, a Sholem Aleichem Bund school. It was good.”

The old man looked at him with new interest. “You can read Yiddish?”

“Well, I did then, but probably not now. But Mendele was pretty good, as I recall.”

He nodded, and continued in English, “In Brooklyn? You came from there? I used to read the writers from Brooklyn from the 1930s—Michael Gold, Daniel Fuchs.”

Manny stared at this amazing, ghostly bag of bones, who was startling him with his memory, his education, his precision.

“Why?”

“To learn the idiom, of course. Reading those novels was the easiest way to obtain the idiom.”

No wonder they had picked this fellow for Raoul! he thought. A multipurpose brilliant talent.

“I didn’t know they had Bund schools over there,” Pagliansky murmured in Russian to his son. “So you are Jewish yourself?”

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “Like yourself.”

He shrugged. “Religion played no part in our education, you understand.”

“I understand. I am not religious either.”

“So tell me,” he said in Russian, “what sort of book are you writing?”

“A novel.”

“Fiction?”

“Yes, fiction.”

Pagliansky nodded, half dismissing it, he thought, half relieved.

“But you have written histories before this?”

“Yes. Would you like to see one?”

“Why not?” he said in English, before speaking in Russian to his son, who then said to him, “Father is tired. He should go rest now. You must leave.”

Manny stood up as the old man did, and put out his hand; he put out his limp one. He was very small. Age had shrunk him to less than five feet. “Thank you, I enjoyed our chat.”

He nodded, and they went into the adjoining hallway, where their coats were hung on a clothes tree. The son Gyorgi handed the coats to them, and as Manny was getting his on, the old man suddenly spit out something in Russian.

“What did he say?”

The son smiled sheepishly, while Natasha raised her eyes. “Fuck off!” Gyorgi added in Russian, apologetically. “He says that to me quite frequently too, so please don’t take it too personally. His mind …”

Manny didn’t know how to take it, but thought it half-comical, half-serious.

“If you can bring a book next time, that would be good,” said Gyorgi.

“Next time?” Manny repeated low. But he was leaving the next day …

As they turned, the old man again offered his fierce cry of fuck off! (in Russian). Nashasha smiled as they shook Gyorgi’s hand and thanked him. He told Natasha to call him in the next day or two.

Outside the apartment, walking down the large renovated staircase, Natasha said, “Quite a meeting. You may have to stay on a few days now …”

Several hours later, they returned to Memorial House, and indeed were able to catch their friendly mentor, Nikita Petrov. They told him of their lucky meeting with Pagliansky.

“What? Are you sure it was him? No one has been able to see him from the West, at all, ever. In 1991 the KGB called him in, here in Moscow, and tried to put questions to him about that period, without judging him, and he said, ‘I remember nothing.’ And that was it; they never bothered with him again. And a few years ago, Guy von Dardel, Wallenberg’s half brother, came from Switzerland to meet him, but Paglainsky never opened the door. So this is quite extraordinary. Did he tell you anything of value?”

“Nothing direct, but indirectly it was of great value, I believe.”

“He even agreed to see us again,” said Natasha. “But the professor is scheduled to leave in a day.”

“Well, maybe you should think about it? …”

“Yes, maybe I should.” Manny considered his great good luck and asked, “Do you think he also did actually torture Wallenberg? Or participate?”

Nikita shook his head. “No, no. The KGB had professional medical persons who were trained specifically in torture; they knew all the methods and devices. They were a separate branch from the regular interrogators like Daniel.”

“I see,” Manny said, comforted somewhat, as he looked at one of those dissident meeting posters from post-Stalinist days on a bulletin board.

“You must write up your interview; it is a first,” Nikita urged.

Walking back to Pushkinskaya with Natasha, he felt a certain quiet glow at their small victory, which Nikita had verified. “You did well,” he told her.

“You mean we did well,” she replied, “Will it be of real use for your work?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said, “but when I think it over, and maybe start to figure it out, I will let you know.”

They reached the black marble statue of Pushkin, surrounded by people waiting for friends. He thought it best to walk alone to his hotel, to gather and digest the information unto himself. He explained this to Natasha, and she said, “I will call Gyorgy in a few hours and see how the father reacted afterward, and when he might be free again to see you. Then you can make up your own mind about leaving tomorrow afternoon or not.”

“Thanks, and you’ve been super.” He pecked her on her cheeks, and departed in the cool air, down their Fifth Avenue, Tverskaya. Stores sparkled with all sorts of expensive goods, along with Nite Flite, the infamous Swedish nightclub. Russian consumers were on the march, shopping, walking, chatting. He came upon the huge store of the nineteenth-century merchant Eliseevsky, which Natasha had cited; he entered, trying to clear his head, and picked up an item or two. It was an elegant shop of two large rooms, and carried an array of gourmet groceries, from cheeses to pastas to croissants, and fancy vodkas under lock and key (some $200 per bottle), with ceilings like those in a cathedral and the high stained-glass windows. Nearly destroyed in World War II, and languishing in Stalin’s days, Eliseevsky’s had been renovated in the past decade. He moseyed about, found fresh bread, and investigated the huge array of vodkas, including expensive ones in a locked glass case, settling for a small bottle for ten bucks, and went on his way.

Soon, he was back in his hotel room, sitting at the small desk and taking notes on his extraordinary meeting. Had it really happened? (It was a little like the ghost of Wallenberg appearing in his New Hampshire study.) He was glad for the witnesses, the son, and his translator. He pondered how Daniel had actually interrogated Raoul, with what instruments of persuasion, and with what results?

The phone rang, and Natasha said, “The father was very angry, it seems, that he spoke with us at all. And Gyorgy says it will probably be best to wait a week before seeing him again. He will calm down and forget it all anyway; he is very old, you know, eighty-eight next weekend. In fact, they are having a birthday party for him.”

He took that in. “Sure, I understand. So, why don’t you come over for a coffee in the late morning and we can finish up our conversation and plans for the future? My taxi is picking me up at 2:30.”

They arranged the time, he made a note to take out enough cash to pay Natasha, and he returned to his notes and thoughts. So the old boy was going to be eighty-eight? A well-rounded figure. Too bad he wouldn’t be around for the birthday, as a few of the invited guests might be interesting people! (Maybe he could bring him a token from Memorial House?)

He flicked on the TV, found CNN, listened to more dreadful news about Baghdad, and tried to tunnel back into that Lybianka Prison cell in late June and July 1945. He was sorry now that he hadn’t snatched that small photo of the KGB Daniel; he had many others. That youthful Russian officer’s face haunted him, in a montage superimposed over that savage death mask he had just encountered.
Had he been present at the final stage, the execution?

How far flung was this puzzle? he wondered, stepping into one of those un-American showers, with the hot and cold positions reversed and no shower curtains. How deeply into a strange middle of the case was he plunging? He knew he was getting a long way away from that graduate thesis and his early clues.

Back in Budapest, he went to his favorite library, the law library of Eötvös Loránd University downtown, and sat at a small desk in an empty wood-paneled room. He opened his charged laptop, and waited for all operating systems to kick in. Shifting from his historian role to the growing, more fragile, role of imaginative scenewriter, he felt stronger just now, armed with the evidence of the recent interview. His challenge was how to turn that recent preternaturally real hour into the distant faraway hours of the powerfully imagined? He proceeded:

Lybianka Prison; late June 1945. The interrogation room, approximately fourteen by sixteen feet. The thick walls and floor were made of cement blocks whitewashed over; a rectangular wooden table and three chairs were set in the center. The lighting: an overhead bare bulb and a pair of bright strobe lights off to the side.

Raoul was brought in by two Soviet guards, and sat down; a glass of water was at his place. He was wearing a prisoner’s uniform, and his regular dark visage was now pale.