The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
Every Munkaszolgalat commander, as Andras had learned by now, possessed his own special array of neuroses, his own set of axes to grind. One way to survive in a labor camp was to determine what might elicit the commander's anger and to shape one's own behavior to avoid it. But Kozma's triggers were delicate and mysterious, his moods volatile, the roots of his neuroses hidden in darkness. What made him so cruel to Lieutenant Horvath? What made him kick his gray wolfhound? Where and how had he gotten the scar that bisected his face? No one knew, not even the guards. Kozma's anger, once evoked, could not be turned aside. Nor was it reserved for men like Andras and Mendel who received special privileges. Any form of weakness drew his attention. A man who showed signs of fatigue might be beaten, or tortured: made to stand at attention with full buckets of water in his outstretched arms, or perform calisthenics after the workday was finished, or sleep outside in the rain. By mid-September the men began to die, despite the still-mild weather and the attentions of Tolnay, the company medic. One of the older men contracted a lung infection that devolved into fatal pneumonia; another succumbed to heart failure at work. Bouts of dysentery came and went, sometimes taking a man with them. Injuries often went untreated; even a shallow cut might lead to blood poisoning or result in the loss of a limb. Tolnay made frequent and alarming reports to Kozma, but a man had to be near death before Kozma would send him to the Munkaszolgalat infirmary in the village.
Nights at the orphanage held unpredictable terrors. At two o'clock in the morning Kozma might wake all the men and command them to stand at attention until dawn; the guards would beat them if they fell asleep or dropped to their knees. Other nights, when Kozma and Horvath drank with their fellow officers in their quarters, four of the labor servicemen might be called to come before them and play a horrible game: two of the men would have to sit on the others' shoulders and try to wrestle each other to the ground.
Kozma would beat them with his riding crop if the fighting wasn't fierce enough. The game ended only when one of the men had been knocked unconscious.
But Kozma's cruelest form of torture, and the one he exercised most frequently, was the withholding of rations. He seemed to love knowing that his men were hungry, that he alone controlled their food supply; he seemed to enjoy the fact that they were at his mercy and desperate to have what he alone could give them. If it hadn't been for the extra food Andras and Mendel brought back secretly from their surveying trips, the 79/6th might have starved outright. As it was, the younger men among them were always ravenous. Even the full ration wouldn't have been enough to replace the energy they lost at work. They didn't understand how the other labor companies in Turka could have withstood the hunger for months on end; what was keeping them alive? They began to ask, up and down the lines of servicemen who worked along the road, what one did to keep from starving. Soon the news came back that there was a thriving black market in the village, and that all kinds of provisions were available if the men had something to trade. It seemed a bitter irony that a company of men who'd been sent away because of their officers' black-market dealings would now be forced to buy from the black market themselves, but the fact was that no other alternative existed.
One night in the bunk room, the men of the 79/6th pooled a few valuables--two watches, some paper money, a silver cigarette lighter, a pocketknife with an inlaid ebony handle--and held a hushed conference to decide who would risk the trip to the village.
The perils were well known. How many times had Horvath reminded them that unaccompanied labor servicemen would be shot? The Ivory Tower, acting as moderator, began by laying out a set of parameters for their decision: No one who was sick would be allowed to go, and no one older than forty or younger than twenty. No one who had had to play Kozma's horrible game that week, and no one who had recently been subjected to exposure in the courtyard. No one who had children at home. No one who was married.
The men looked around at each other, trying to determine who was left.
"I'm still eligible," Mendel said. "Anyone else?"
"I'm up," said a man called Goldfarb, a sturdy shock-haired redhead whose nose looked to have been broken in a series of fights dating back to early boyhood. He was a pastry chef from the Sixth District of Budapest, a favorite among them.
"Is that all?" asked the Ivory Tower.
Andras knew who else had survived the elimination: Jozsef Hasz. But Jozsef was edging toward the door of the bunk room as if he meant to slip away. Just before he could duck through, the Ivory Tower called him.
"How about you, Hasz?"
"I believe I'm getting a fever," Jozsef said.
The men of the 79/6th, who had been subjected to Jozsef's complaints ever since his conscription three months earlier, had little patience for his excuses now. A few of them pulled him back into the room and stood him at the middle of their circle. A tense silence ensued, and Jozsef must have grasped his situation quickly: No one would mind seeing him risk his skin for the benefit of the group. Too often it was his shirking that brought Kozma's anger down upon the rest of them. He seemed to shrink into himself, his shoulders curling.
"I'm no good at sneaking around in the woods," he said. "I'm as obvious as day."
"It's time you started pulling your weight," said Zilber, the electrician who worked with them at the officers' training school. "You don't hear Horovitz complaining, and he's been scrounging extra food for the rest of us for weeks now."
"Why would he complain?" Jozsef said. "He's been walking the countryside with Szolomon while the rest of us shovel asphalt."
"You'll remember what happened to Szolomon's last assistant," the electrician said. "I wouldn't take that job if it came with a private room and a pair of melon-titted farm girls."
A number of men voiced their willingness to take Mendel's job under those circumstances. Mendel assured them that the job carried no such benefits. But Jozsef Hasz wasn't laughing; he was scanning the circle, his expression shading toward panic as he failed to find an ally. Andras watched with a pang of sympathy--and, he had to admit, a certain guilty satisfaction. Here was Hasz learning once again that he was not exempt from the forces that shaped the lives of mortal men. In this orphanage in Ukraine, no one cared whose heir he was or what he owned, nor were they impressed by his dark good looks or his side-leaning smile. They were hungry; they needed someone to go to town for food; he fit their parameters. In another moment he would have to capitulate.
But Jozsef Hasz disliked being cornered, above all else. In a cool and reasonable tone that masked his panic, he said, "You can't possibly choose me over Horovitz."
"And why is that?" the electrician said.
"If it weren't for him, you wouldn't be here."
Zilber laughed, and others joined in. "I suppose he put us on the train himself!"
Zilber said. "I suppose he started the war."
"No, but he did publish that newspaper full of articles about the black market. He let Varsadi know that we all knew what was going on."
Andras couldn't believe what was happening, what he was hearing. Among the men there was a moment of vibrating silence, then a rumble of discussion. The Ivory Tower called for order. "Quiet, all of you," he whispered. "If the guards overhear us, this project is through."
"You understand me," Jozsef said, looking around at the men in the dim light. "If it weren't for the paper, Varsadi might not have lost his head." He glanced at Andras, but didn't call attention to his role as illustrator; he must have been offering that omission as a form of thanks for Andras's advice.
"That's pure idiocy," the electrician said. "No one shipped us off because of The Crooked Rail. We were all slowing down the operation, for the sake of the poor buggers in postings like the one we're in now. Maybe that's why Varsadi got scared of being found out." But a few of the men had begun to whisper to each other and look at Mendel, then at Andras. Mendel lowered his eyes in shame; Jozsef Hasz had only given voice to what he already felt.
Jozsef, sensing a shift in the sentim
"That's enough, Hasz," Andras said, stepping toward him.
"What's the matter, Uncle?" Jozsef said, staring a threat back at Andras. "I'm just telling them what you told me."
"What
did he want?" one of the men asked.
"According to Levi here, he wanted all the originals and printing plates of The Crooked Rail. He was desperate enough to turn a gun on our co-editors. I'm sure we can all understand, given the circumstances, why Horovitz berayed the editor at the Jewish Journal who'd been helping him print the paper. In any case, half an hour later we were all being loaded onto the train."
The men stared at Mendel, who would not refute a word Jozsef had said. Andras wanted nothing more than to fly at Jozsef and knock him to the barracks floor; all that stopped him was the knowledge that a fight would bring the guards.
"Listen, men," the Ivory Tower said. "This isn't about The Crooked Rail, and it's not a trial. We didn't come here to decide who's responsible for our being sent off. We're hungry and there's food to be got if someone's willing to get it. Perhaps we'd have been better off drawing straws."
A rumbling from the men, a shaking of heads: They weren't going to leave the matter to chance now.
"Let me go to the village on my own," Mendel said, his eyes set on the Ivory Tower's. "I'm fast, you know. If I go alone I'll be there and back in no time."
The Ivory Tower protested. There were fifty men in their squad, all of them hungry; the hope was that the load of black-market goods would be too much for one person to carry.
The rest of the men looked at Goldfarb, at Jozsef Hasz, and finally at Andras.
Andras and Mendel were understood to be a team; what they did, they did together. A sense of expectation seemed to collect in the dim light of the bunkroom. Andras met Mendel's eyes, ready to volunteer, but Mendel gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Hold out.
Another long silent moment passed before anyone spoke. Jozsef stood with his arms crossed over his chest, confident that his argument would have the desired result.
And finally it was Goldfarb who stepped forward. "I'll go," he said. "It won't be the last time we have to do this. Next time we'll send Levi and Hasz, or whoever else we're in the mood to blame."
The 79/6th let out its breath. A decision had been reached: Horovitz and Goldfarb would make the trip. Much time had been wasted already; the night was slipping away, and the men had to depart at once. Mendel and his partner loaded the pooled valuables into their trouser pockets, wrapped themselves against the cold, and crept out into the dark. And the 79/6th climbed into its bunks to wait--all except Andras Levi and Jozsef Hasz, who could be heard conducting a hushed argument in the latrine. Before Jozsef could climb into his bunk, Andras had caught him by the collar and dragged him into the washroom with its tiny commodes, its line of child-sized sinks. He pushed Jozsef against the wall and twisted his collar until he was struggling for breath.
"Stop it," Jozsef gasped. "Let me go."
"I'll stop when I'm ready to stop, you self-serving little worm!"
"I didn't say anything that wasn't true," Jozsef said, and wrenched Andras's hand from his collar. "You published that rag with Horovitz. You're just as much to blame as he is. I could have made a point of that, but I didn't."
"What do you want me to do? Say thanks? Kiss your filthy hand?"
"I don't care what you do. You can go to hell, Uncle."
"You were right the other night," Andras said. "You're not cut out for labor camp.
It's going to kill you, and I hope it won't take long."
"I'm not so sure about that," Jozsef said, cutting Andras his tilted smile. "After all, I'm in here now instead of out in the woods."
And finally Andras did what he'd been longing to do for months: He pulled back his fist and hit Jozsef square across the face, hard enough to send him to the floor. Jozsef knelt on the concrete, holding his jaw with one hand, and spat blood into a metal drain.
Andras rubbed his bruised knuckles. He expected to feel the familiar shock of remorse that always tempered his hatred for Jozsef, but the shock failed to arrive. All he felt now was hunger and exhaustion and the desire to hit Jozsef again, just as hard as the first time.
With some effort he left Jozsef on the bathroom floor and went back to his bunk to wait for Mendel.
It was three miles to the village through the woods in the dark; Andras figured it might take them an hour to get there. Once they arrived they'd have to find their contact and negotiate the trade--all the while avoiding the night patrols who would shoot them on sight. If they did find their contact, and if the contact was willing to trade, and if he had anything worth trading for, it might be another hour before they could return; they might not be back until just before reveille. He lay awake picturing the two men making their way through the woods, Mendel's long legs covering ground quickly, Goldfarb half running to keep up. It was a clear night, cold enough to make the men's breath visible before them. The moon and stars were out; there would be light even in the forest. A wind would rile the fallen leaves and hide their trail. Mendel and Goldfarb would see the glow of the village from far off, would navigate through the trees toward that amber wash in the sky. They might be halfway there by now.
But then Andras began to hear a frenzied barking from the woods behind the orphanage. He knew the sound; they all did. It was Major Kozma's ill-tempered dog, the gray wolfhound they hated and who hated them. A din of shouting rose from the woods.
The men half fell out of their beds and rushed to the windows. The woods were full of the swinging beams of flashlights, the sound of branches snapping; unintelligible shouts drew closer and resolved into a stream of abusive Hungarian. Dark shadows struggled toward the light, flashed into momentary view, and disappeared before anyone could identify them. Men's forms approached the orphanage wall and pushed through its gates. Five minutes later, Kozma himself was shouting all the men out of the bunk room and commanding them to file into the courtyard.
They stumbled outside bareheaded and coatless in the cold. The moon was bright enough to make midnight seem like day; the men's shadows fell sharp against the brick wall of the yard. In the northwest corner there was a commotion of guards, the growl of a dog, a struggle, shouts of pain. Kozma commanded the men to stand at attention and keep their eyes on him. He climbed onto a little schoolroom chair so he could see them all.
Andras and Jozsef stood close to the front. It was cold in the courtyard, the wind a skate blade across the back of Andras's neck. Kozma barked a command; two guards marched Laszlo Goldfarb and Mendel Horovitz out of their corner. They were both covered in bleeding scratches, as though they had stumbled through a tangle of briars. The left leg of Goldfarb's pants was torn away below the knee. In the hard moonlight they could see the marks of the dog's teeth on his shin. Mendel held an arm against his chest. His blood-streaked face was contracted in pain, and on his right foot he dragged a small animal trap.
The steel teeth had gone through his boot.
"Look what Erzsi turned up in the woods tonight," Kozma said, petting the dog so roughly it whimpered. "Lieutenant Horvath was kind enough to go out and see what all the commotion was about, and he came across these two fine specimens in a culvert. Not what we thought we'd catch in our trap, was it, Erzsi?" He scoured the dog's back with his gloved hand. Then he commanded Mendel and Goldfarb to strip to their skins.
When Goldfarb made a noise of protest, Lieutenant Horvath silenced him with a blow from the butt of his pistol. The two men struggled out of their clothes, Horvath shouting at them all the while; Mendel couldn't remove his right pant leg around his boot and the trap, so he stood with his trousers at his feet until Horvath cut the pants off with his knife. Once they were naked, t
Kozma ordered one of the guards to blindfold the two men with their own shirts. The guard was someone who had become familiar to Andras, a former plumber's assistant named Lukas, who escorted them to the officers' school every evening and slipped them cigarettes whenever he could. His expression, too, was incredulous and fearful. But he covered the men's eyes as he had been commanded. Goldfarb put a hand under the blindfold to loosen it a bit. Andras couldn't bear to look at Mendel's lowered head, his shaking arms. He dropped his gaze to Mendel's feet, but then there was the trap, its teeth penetrating Mendel's boot. Goldfarb was shoeless; he had crossed his feet to keep them warm. The quiet of the courtyard hummed with the men's breathing.