The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
They rode out past the apartment blocks of central Pest, out into an industrial suburb where textile factories and machine works exhaled gray smoke into a mackerel sky. Military supply trucks rumbled down the streets, their beds stacked with steel tubes and I-beams, concrete flume sections and cinderblocks and giant parabolas of iron like leviathan ribs. They got off the streetcar at the end of the line and walked out past an ancient madhouse and a wool-washing plant, past three blocks of crumbling tenements, to a small side street called Frangepan koz, where a cluster of cottages seemed to have survived from the days when Angyalfold had been pastureland and vineyard; from behind the houses came the chatter and musk of goats. Number 18 was a plaster-and-timber cottage with a steep wood-shingled roof and flaking shutters. The window frames were peeling, the door scuffed and toothy along its edge. Winter remnants of ivy traced an unreadable map across the facade. As Andras and Tibor crossed the garden, a high gate at the side of the house opened to let forth a little green cart pulled by two strong white wethers with curving horns. The cart was packed with milk cans and crates of cheese. At the gate stood a tiny woman with a hazel switch in her hand. She wore an embroidered skirt and peasant boots, and her deep-set eyes were hard and bright as polished stones.
She gave Andras a look so penetrating it seemed to touch the back of his skull.
"Does someone with the initial K live here?" he asked her.
"The initial K?" She must have been eighty, but she stood straight-backed against the wind. "Why do you want to know?"
Andras glanced at the ticket scrap on which the woman at the cafe had written the address. "This is 18 Frangepan koz, isn't it?"
"What do you want with K?"
"A friend sent us here."
"What
friend?"
"A woman with two little girls."
"You're Jewish," the old woman said; it was an observation, not a question. And something changed in her features as she said it, a certain softening of the lines around her eyes, an almost imperceptible relaxation of the shoulders.
"That's right," Andras said. "We're Jewish."
"And brothers. He's the elder." She pointed her hazel stick at Tibor.
They both nodded.
The woman lowered her stick and scrutinized Tibor as if she were trying to see beneath his skin. "You're just back from the Munkaszolgalat," she said.
"Yes."
She reached into a basket for a paper-wrapped round of cheese and pressed it into his hand. When he protested, she gave him another.
"K is my grandson," she said. "Miklos Klein. He's a good boy, but he's not a magician. I can't promise he can help you. Talk to him if you like, though. Go to the door.
My husband will let you in." She closed and locked the gates of the yard behind her; then she touched the wethers on their backs with the hazel wand, and they tossed their white heads and pulled the cart into the street.
As soon as she had gone, a clutch of goats came up to the gate and bleated at Andras and Tibor. The goats seemed to expect some kind of gift. Andras showed them his empty pockets, but they wouldn't back away. They wanted to butt their heads against Andras's and Tibor's hands. The kids wanted a sniff at their shoes. At the far end of the yard a stable had been converted into a goat house, sheltered from the wind and piled with new hay. Four does stood feeding at a tin trough, their coats glossy and thick.
"Not a bad place to be a goat," Andras said. "Even in the middle of winter."
"A better place to be a goat than a man," Tibor said, glancing toward the factory chimneys in the near distance.
But Andras thought he wouldn't mind living farther from the city center someday.
Not, preferably, in the shadow of a textile factory, but maybe in a place where they could have a house, a yard big enough for goats and chickens and a few fruit trees. He wanted to come back with his notebook and drawing tools and study the construction of this cottage, the layout of these grounds. It was the first time in months he'd had the desire to do an architectural drawing. As he followed his brother up the walk he experienced a strange sensation in his chest, a feeling of rising, as if his lungs were filled with yeast.
When Tibor knocked on the door, a dust of yellow paint drifted down like pollen.
There were shuffling footsteps from inside; the door opened to reveal a tiny dried man with two uplifted wings of gray hair. He wore a white undershirt and a dressing gown of faded crimson wool. From behind him came a strain of scratchy Bartok and the smell of pancakes.
"Mr. Klein?" Tibor said.
"The
same."
"Does Miklos Klein live here?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Tibor and Andras Levi. We were told to come see him. Your wife said he was at home."
The man opened the door and beckoned them into a small bright room with a red-painted concrete floor. On a table near the window, the remains of breakfast lay beside a crisply folded newspaper. "Wait here," the elder Klein said. He went to the end of a brief hallway decorated with portraits of men and women in antique-looking costumes, the men in military uniform, the women in the cinch-waisted gowns of the previous century.
A door opened and closed at the end of the hall. On the wall, a cuckoo clock struck the hour and the cuckoo sang eleven times. A collection of photographs on a side table showed a bright-eyed boy of six or seven holding the hands of a beautiful dark-haired young woman and a melancholy, intelligent-looking man; there were photographs of the three of them at the beach, on bicycles, in a park, on the steps of a synagogue. The collection conveyed the sense of a shrine or a memorial.
After a few minutes the door opened at the end of the hall, and the elder Klein shuffled toward them and beckoned with one hand. "Please," he said. "This way."
Andras followed his brother down the hall, past the portraits of the military men and tight-laced women. At the door, the old man stepped aside to let them in, then retreated to the sitting room.
The doorway was a portal to another world still. On one side was the universe they had just left, where breakfast things lay on a wooden table in a shaft of sun, and the bleating of goats floated in from the yard, and a dozen photographs suggested what had vanished; on the other side, in this room, were what looked like the accoutrements of a spy operation. The walls were plastered with pin-studded maps of Europe and the Mediterranean, with intricate flowcharts and newspaper clippings and photographs of men and women working the dry soil in desert settlements. On the desk, wedged between towering stacks of official-looking documents, stood a brace of typewriters, one with a Hungarian keyboard and the other with a Hebrew one. An Orion radio whined and crackled on a low table, and a quartet of clocks beside it showed the time in Constanta, Istanbul, Cairo, and Jerusalem. Papers and dossiers rose in waist-high columns all around the room, crowding the desk, the bed, every centimeter of windowsill and table. At the center of it all stood a pale young person in a moth-eaten sweater, his short black hair like a ragged crown, his eyes raw and red as if from drink or grief. He looked to be about Andras's age, and was unmistakably the little boy from the photographs, grown into this haggard young man. He pulled out the desk chair, moved a stack of dossiers onto the floor, and sat down to face the brothers.
"It's all over," he said by way of greeting. "I'm not doing it anymore."
"We were told you could help us," Tibor said.
"Who told you that?"
"A woman with two little girls. Initial B. She heard me talking to my brother at a cafe."
"Talking to your brother about what?"
"About getting out of Hungary," Tibor said. "One way or another."
"First of all," Klein said, pointing a narrow finger at Tibor, "you shouldn't have been talking to your brother about a thing like that at a cafe, where anyone could hear you. Secondly, I should strangle that woman, whoever she is, for giving you my address!
Initial B? Two little girls?" He put his fingers to his forehead and seemed to think.
"Is that what you do?" Andras said. "Arrange emigrations?"
"Used to," Klein said. "Not anymore."
"Then what's all this stuff?"
"Ongoing projects," Klein said. "But I'm not accepting new work."
"We've got to leave the country," Tibor said. "I've just been in the Delvidek.
They're killing Hungarian Jews there. It won't be long before they come for us. We understand you can help us get out."
"You
don't understand," Klein said. "It's impossible now. Look at this." He produced a clipping from a Romanian newspaper. "This happened just a few weeks ago.
This ship left Constanta in December. The Struma. Seven hundred and sixty-nine passengers, all Romanian Jews. They were told they'd get Palestinian entry visas once the ship reached Turkey. But the ship was a wreck. Literally. Its engine was salvaged from the bottom of the Danube. And there were no entry visas. It was all a scam. Maybe at one time they'd've gotten in without visas--the British used to allow some paperless immigrations. Not anymore! Britain wouldn't take the boat. They wouldn't take anyone, not even the children. A Turkish coast guard ship towed it into the Black Sea. No fuel, no water, no food for the passengers. Left it there. What do you think happened? It was torpedoed. Boom. End of story. They think it was the Soviets who did it."
Andras and Tibor sat silent, taking it in. Seven hundred and sixty-nine lives--a ship full of Jewish men, women, and children. An explosion in the night--how it must have sounded, how it must have felt from a berth deep inside the ship: the shock and quake of it, the sudden panic. And then the inrush of dark water.
"But what about Magdolna Bruner's brother?" Tibor asked. "How did you get him out?"
"Things were different then," Klein said. "I got people out along the Danube.
Smuggled them out on cargo barges and riverboats. We had contacts in Palestine. We had help from the Palestine Office here. I got a lot of people out, a hundred and sixty-eight of them. If I were smart, I'd have gone, too. But my grandparents were all alone. They couldn't make a trip like that, and I couldn't leave them. I thought I might be of more use here. But I won't do it anymore, so you might as well go home."
"But this a disaster for Palestine, this Struma," Andras said. "They'll have to loosen the immigration restrictions now."
"I don't know what'll happen," Klein said. "They have a new colonial secretary now, a man called Cranborne. He's supposed to be more liberal-minded. But I don't know if he can convince the Foreign Office to relax its quotas. Even if he could, it's far too dangerous now."
"If it's a matter of money, we'll come up with it," Tibor said.
Andras gave his brother a sharp glance. Where did Tibor expect them to get the money? But Tibor wouldn't look at him. He kept his eyes fixed on Klein, who ran his hands through his electrified hair and leaned forward toward them.
"It's not the money," Klein said. "It's just that it's a mad thing to try."
"It might be madder to stay," Tibor said.
"Budapest is still one of the safest places for Jews in Europe," Klein said.
"Budapest lives in the shadow of Berlin."
Klein pushed back his chair and got up to pace his square of floor. "The horrible thing is that I know you're right. We're mad to feel any sense of security here. If you've been in the labor service, you know that well enough. But I can't take the lives of two young men into my hands. Not now."
"It's not just us," Tibor said. "It's our wives, too. And a couple of babies. And our younger brother, once he returns from Ukraine. And our parents in Debrecen. We all need to get out."
"You're crazy!" Klein said. "Plain crazy. I can't smuggle babies down the Danube while the country's at war. I can't be responsible for elderly parents. I refuse to discuss this. I'm sorry. You both seem like good men. Maybe we'll meet in happier times and have a drink together." He went to the door and opened it onto the hallway.
Tibor didn't move. He scanned the stacks of papers, the typewriters, the radio, the dossier-smothered furniture, as if they might offer a different answer. But it was Andras who spoke.
"Shalhevet Rosen," he said. "Have you heard that name?"
"No."
"She's in Palestine, working to get Jews out of Europe. She's the wife of a friend of mine from school."
"Well, maybe she can help you. I wish you luck."
"Maybe you've had some correspondence with her."
"Not that I recall."
"Maybe she can help get us visas."
"A visa means nothing," Klein said. "You've still got to get there."
Tibor glanced around the room again. He gave Klein a penetrating look. "This is what you do," he said. "Do you mean to say you're finished now?"
"I won't send people to another Struma," Klein said. "You can understand that.
And I have to look out for my grandparents. If I get caught and thrown in jail, they'll be all alone."
Tibor paused at the door, his hat in his hands. "You'll change your mind," he said.
"I hope not."
"Let us leave our address, at least."
"I'm telling you, it's no use. Goodbye, gentlemen. Farewell. Adieu." He ushered them into the dim hallway and retreated into his room, latching the door behind him.
In the main room Andras and Tibor found the breakfast things cleared away and the elder Klein installed on the sofa, newspaper in hand. When he became aware of them standing before him, he lowered the paper and said, "Well?"
"Well," Tibor said. "We'll be going now. Please tell your wife we appreciate her kindness." He raised one of the paper-wrapped rounds of goat cheese.
"One of her best," Klein-the-elder said. "She must have taken a shine to you. She doesn't give those away lightly."
"She gave me two," Tibor said, and smiled.
"Ah! Now you're making me jealous."
"Maybe she can prevail upon your grandson to help us. I'm afraid he turned us away without much hope."
"Miklos is a moody boy," the elder Klein said. "His work is difficult. He changes his mind about it daily. Does he know how to reach you?"
Tibor took a small blunt pencil from his breast pocket and asked Klein's grandfather for a piece of paper, apologizing for the fact that he didn't have a name card.
He wrote his address on the scrap and left it on the breakfast table.
"There it is," Tibor said. "In case he changes his mind."
Klein's grandfather made a noise of assent. From the yard, the raised voices of goats made a pessimistic counterpoint. The wind clattered the shutters against the house, a sound directly from Andras's deepest childhood. He had the feeling of having stepped out of the flow of time--as if he and Tibor, when they passed through the doorway of this house, would reenter a different Budapest altogether, one in which the cars had been replaced by carriages, the electric streetlights by gaslights, the women's knee-length skirts by ankle-length ones, the metro system erased, the news of war expunged from the pages of the Pesti Naplo. The twentieth century cut clean away from the tissue of time like an act of divine surgery.
But when they opened the outer door it was all still there: the trucks rumbling along the broad cross-street at the end of the block, the towering smokestacks of the textile plant, the film advertisements plastered along a plywood construction wall. He and his brother walked in silence back toward the streetcar line and caught a near-empty train back toward the city center. It took them down Karpat utca, with its machine-repair shops, then over the bridge behind Nyugati Station, and finally to Andrassy ut, where they got off and headed toward home. But when they reached the corner of Harsfa utca, Tibor turned. Hands in his pockets, he walked the block to the gray stone building where they'd lived before Andras had gone to Paris. On the third floor were their windows, now uncurtained and dark. A row of broken flowerpots stood on the balcony; an empty bird feeder hung from the rail. Tibor looked up at the balcony,
"Can you blame me?" he said. "Do you understand why I want to get out?"
"I understand," Andras said.
"Think about what I told you at the cafe. That happened here in Hungary. Now think what must be happening in Germany and Poland. You wouldn't believe the things I've heard. People are being starved and crowded to death in ghettoes. People are being shot by the thousands. Horthy can't hold it off forever. And the Allies don't care about the Jews, not enough to make a difference on the ground. We have to take care of ourselves."
"But what's the use, if we die doing it?"
"If we have visas, we'll have some measure of protection. Write to Shalhevet. See if there's anything her organization can do."
"It'll take a long time. Months, maybe, just to exchange a few letters."
"Then you'd better start now," Tibor said.