Upon the Head of the Goat (11 page)

I walked in and Lujza saw me immediately. Excusing herself from a fashionably dressed woman who was trying on a gray Persian lamb coat, she came over, bent down to my level, and asked quietly, “Is anything wrong?”

“Mother is outside,” I answered, “and wants to talk to you.”

“I'll have to ask my supervisor for permission to leave the store. You go back outside and wait with your mother.”

She came out a few minutes later, wearing her pony coat unbuttoned. Mother whispered to her and showed her the telegram with the notes she had made. Lujza kissed Mother's cheek and said, “I'll be at your house between eight and eight-thirty this evening.” She went back inside, and Mother and I walked to the shoe store.

“You stay here, outside; I'm going in to see Mr. Kovacs,” Mother said to me. I peered between the shoes in the window display as Mother followed Mr. Kovacs around, trying to talk to him. The two people in the store were staring at her. I saw her remove her headscarf and adjust her hair with her hand. She cornered him at the door to the stockroom. I could see his impatience as he listened to her; finally he went into the stockroom and came back a few minutes later with a piece of paper, which he handed to her. She stuffed it deep into her coat pocket and took her leave by nodding to the staring customers.

Once outside, she took out the paper and carefully unfolded it. “Twenty pengö! He knows that I can't even buy a one-way ticket with this.”

Next we stopped at Dr. Feher's office and sat down in the waiting room with his patients. One of them turned to Mother and asked what was the matter with her.

“It is my little girl,” she said, indicating me with a nod of her head, “she has very bad cramps. I think it is her appendix.” I doubled over to illustrate the pain of the cramps.

When Dr. Feher opened the door leading into his examining room, Mother jumped up. “It is an emergency! You must look at this child right away!” He led us into his examining room and closed the door. Mother pulled out the telegram and handed it to him. As he read it, she said over and over, “I must go. I must leave tomorrow.” When he finished, he looked over at her and she took out the twenty pengö. “This is what Mr. Kovacs gave me. I had to beg for our money. Can you imagine? What a world we are living in! I'm so ashamed that I had to come to you.”

Dr. Feher took out a few bills from his pocket, then went over to the bookshelf behind his desk, took down a book, opened the front cover, and removed the bills that were there. He came back to Mother and handed her the money.

“Here, you'll give it back when you can.” Then he poured some medicine into a small bottle and wrapped it up. “One teaspoon every four hours. Good luck.” He opened the door and we went again through the waiting room, Mother holding the small bottle of medicine in her hand.

Lujza arrived at eight-thirty accompanied by two strangers, a man about Father's age and a younger woman about Lilli's age. Lujza introduced them as “the artists.” “They will need a place to work,” she said to Mother, who led them into the salon. The young woman removed the plush table cover from the round table, folded it up, and carefully put it down on a nearby chair. Both of them took from their pockets an assortment of ink bottles, pens, papers, stamps, scissors, and erasers, which they placed in the center of the round table. Then they sat down, ready to work. Lujza rummaged through a box of old photographs that Mother had taken out of the wardrobe. They were still working when Iboya and I went to sleep.

“What are they doing all this time?” I whispered to Iboya in the darkness.

“Making Mother a passport. In case she is stopped.”

“Why does it take so long?”

“It has to be perfect. She will be passing through German-held territory.”

“Do you think it will work?”

“They do it all the time for the Zionists.”

The next day I hardly recognized Mother when she left to take the afternoon train to Poland. With a heavy black shawl covering her head and shoulders, she looked like a peasant woman. Below the shawl hung a heavy cotton skirt, and on her feet were old leather boots like those the peasant women of Komjaty wore. Over her arm she carried a market basket. Iboya kept Sandor and Joli in the kitchen so that they would not see Mother leave. When I came back from bolting the gate after her, I asked Iboya where Mother had found the clothes she was wearing.

“At Mrs. Silverman's,” Iboya answered.

“What did Mother put in the basket?”

“Food. All trayf. She even had bacon-grease sandwiches. I wonder where she got them,” Iboya mused.

“Will she eat them?” I asked in surprise.

“I suppose she'll do everything she has to do to be accepted as a peasant woman.”

“If any of the neighbors saw her leaving the house, I'm sure they thought she was someone from Komjaty,” I said.

That night before we went to bed, Iboya and I double-bolted the door. Once we were in bed, we talked late into the night. Lujza stopped by the next evening to see if we were all right. “If she does not come back by tomorrow afternoon, one of you come to the store and let me know,” she said. Iboya and I were prepared for a second long night of staying awake, when, a little before midnight, there was a tap on the window over our bed. We both jumped up in fright, not daring to pull up the shade. But then we heard Mother's voice through the glass, “Iboya, Piri, open the door.”

We ran out in our nightshirts and asked, “Who is it?” to be sure it really was Mother's voice we had heard before we unbolted the door. She answered us in an impatient tone, and we quickly opened the door. We expected to see Manci, too, but the only thing Mother had with her was her empty market basket. Once we were all back in the kitchen, she collapsed into a kitchen chair, her body sagging in exhaustion. Iboya rekindled the dying fire in the kitchen stove and put up some tea. Mother kept rubbing her numbed fingers until they uncurled. Then, removing her boots, she went to work on her toes.

“It was freezing on that train, and it is much colder in Poland than it is here. Nobody has any firewood. Everybody is freezing. They hardly have anything to eat and they can't think about anything else—just firewood and food. My problem could soarcely interest them. Maybe if I had brought some extra food and firewood with me in a suitcase, they would have been more interested; my money couldn't buy them what they needed.” She stopped rubbing her toes and sat up.

Iboya handed her Father's large mug filled with steaming tea into which she had poured a little rum from the special bottle kept for guests. Mother took a few quick sips and then rested the mug on her knees. Her face relaxed as the tea warmed her, and the heavy shawl slid from her shoulders as her chest heaved. “And nothing was accomplished!” she said.

“You did not find them?” Iboya asked.

“No, I was too late. They left that morning. I should have left the same night I got the message. I might have found them.”

“But how could you?” Iboya interrupted. “You needed papers and the money.”

“I also wanted the medicine from Dr. Feher,” Mother added. “But what good was any of it? Manci is sick, and I left the money and the medicine in the hands of strangers. Who knows if they will even bother to look for Lilli. Well, they did put me up for the night and took me back to the train in the morning. They risked their lives just for that. So I guess they earned the money. And they did keep Lilli, Lajos, and that poor, unfortunate, innocent child. They surely took a big chance on that. They could have gotten themselves into plenty of trouble harboring deportees. At first they believed they were just political refugees. That alone was taking a chance, but even after they found that Lilli and Lajos were Jews, they still kept them another night. But Manci's cough got worse and they were afraid that someone would hear her. I guess I can't blame them. They live in constant fear. The pro-German Poles are everywhere and walk into houses unannounced. They said they admired my courage.”

Mother drew a deep breath and continued, “I slept with one eye open and my boots on. And then a friend of their son, in uniform, stopped in just before they took me to the train. They introduced me as a relative visiting from Slovakia. But the way he looked me over, I know he didn't believe them. I was afraid to move, afraid that I would give myself away, like poor Lilli. I want you girls to listen to this so that you'll remember it. They managed with some money that Lajos gave them to get a fresh egg for poor Manci. Lilli cracked the egg on the edge of the bowl and carefully pulled the shell apart to examine the yolk for blood spots. She poured it from one half shell to the other before scrambling it, never realizing that only a Jewish woman does that. And there they stood—that old Polish couple—watching her, and they realized that they were harboring a Jewish family. The man told them that they would have to leave immediately. Only Lajos' pleading and Lilli's emptying her pockets, no doubt, made the couple consent to their staying one extra night. I saw the garnet earrings in the woman's ears when I arrived, that's how I knew I was in the right house.” Mother glanced in my direction. So that was where my earrings had gone, I realized with a pang. “They promised to look for Lilli and Lajos after I left. The whole country is a caravan of soldiers and refugees.”

“How will they find Lilli?” I asked.

“I don't know. If it were only Lilli and Lajos, I'd worry less. But with a sick child on their hands, God only knows!” Mother went on talking in the same rambling way until she fell asleep in her chair.

When I came home from school the next day, Mother was working in the kitchen and Mrs. Gerber was there, sitting and listening as Mother told her of her trip. I went over to the little ones who were playing quietly in their corner and, offering to read them a story from one of my books, took them into the bedroom. I couldn't bear to hear again about Mother's failure to find Lilli. Mrs. Gerber left at dusk; by then Iboya had come in, and we all went back into the kitchen to help with supper preparations. Just as we finished eating, someone knocked at the door. I opened it to admit a worried-looking Lujza. She came in quickly, saw that Mother was there, handed me her coat, and looking relieved, said to Mother, “Good. I hoped that you were home. And what happened? Did you find Lilli? Is Manci here?”

Mother began to clear the table. “Sit down,” she said to Lujza, “and I'll make you some tea. I was going to send Piri over to the store this afternoon to tell you I was back, but Mrs. Gerber was here, and I forgot. I'm sorry. I know that you were worried. But the trip was a big failure.”

Lujza sat down and so did Mother as Iboya and I continued to clean up. Mother began again to tell the story of her trip, and Lujza sat silently during the recital, nodding from time to time. Finally, Mother stopped talking, but she was in tears.

“You did the best you could, Rise,” said Lujza softly. “And maybe the Polish couple did go to look for Lilli; they would know far better than you where to look.”

“I know, I know,” said Mother. “That is why I did not try to go any farther. After all, I have other children to think about, too.”

“Well,” Lujza repeated, “you did the best you could. We all did.”

We didn't hear anything about Lilli for several weeks. Then, one afternoon in late February, Mother received a written message telling her that Mrs. Kertes' son Miklos was home on leave and wanted to see her. That evening after dinner, Mother left Iboya with the children and took me with her to the Kerteses' house. Miklos' wife, Mari, a tall, thin, cold-looking woman, answered our ring. She showed us into the salon and then left the room, returning a few minutes later with Miklos. He came over to Mother, who stood up, and he kissed her hand. Mother sat down again and Miklos remained standing, pacing up and back, as he spoke. He told Mother that he had seen Lilli at a train station in Poland a few days ago; he had been getting ready to board his train when he heard someone call his name, and he recognized Lilli's voice. They had after all, as he said, grown up together. She broke out of the line she was in and started to run toward him, but was stopped by a guard and forced to go back.

“They were also waiting for transport,” Miklos said. “These trains don't stop. Everybody is on the move. Night and day. They even load people into freight trains.”

“Was she alone?” Mother interrupted.

“No, there was a man with her. And she kept yelling to me, ‘Tell my mother you saw us, tell my mother you saw us.'”

“And the child. Was there a child with them?” Mother's voice became tense.

“Yes.” Miklos nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, the man was holding a child. I saw them again as our train moved past them. I did not see the man's face, but he was standing next to Lilli, and he was holding a child, a girl.”

Mother tried to ask Miklos a question about what else he had seen in Poland, but Mari interrupted the conversation at that point to say that she felt Miklos had spoken enough.

“He has been traveling for days and is very tired. I think you'd better go now.”

We stood up, and Mother thanked Miklos for bringing her Lilli's message. As Mari walked us to the door, she told Mother that Miklos had been on the Russian front and had seen some dreadful things.

“That is where my husband last wrote from,” Mother said.

“I hope you get him back home,” Mari replied, “and please don't tell anyone that you have been here.”

On the walk back to our house Mother repeated to herself several times, “The child is alive; she is alive.” But words failed to affect her spirits. Her face remained ashen, her voice low and heavy with sadness.

14

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1942, after months of probing and letter writing, Mother and Mrs. Gerber received letters telling them that Father's troop was in a Russian prison camp. However, no word came from either of the men. Mrs. Gerber and Mother spent more and more time trying to cheer each other up, using any excuse for a break in their worried existence.