Mrs. Tuesday's Departure: A Historical Novel of World War Two (2 page)

For years, we had remained remarkably unscathed by the war. Hungary had made a pact with Germany, more to their economic benefit than ours of course. In exchange, lands that had been taken from us during the First World War had been returned and we were mollified.

Then the tide had turned. The Allies on one side and the Russians on the other were finally weakening Germany’s stranglehold on Europe. As the noose tightened, the Germans had become more brutal. Bela told us of rumors that our government was secretly in negotiations with the Allies. As a result, Hitler had ordered his troops to invade Hungary, punishing us like disloyal children.

An uneasy calm fell over the city. It was as if  we were playing a deadly game of hide and seek. People watched one another, no longer sure who to trust. We’d heard what had happened in Poland. Our government seemed more likely to aid the enemy, than us.

Mila brought me back to her.

“Did you ever write poetry?”

“Many years ago,” I smiled, shaking off a bitter memory.

“You haven’t read anything to me lately, are you working on something new?”

“No.” How to explain that watching children being taken away to labor camps, separated from their parents, left me with little motivation to write fanciful stories. To lull innocents? To suggest that the world we had brought them into was fair and just? What use would a work of fantasy be in times of such horror? “There’s no market for children’s books right now,” I said.

“You haven’t stopped writing have you?”

I bowed my head and looked at my empty hands. “I have nothing to say right now.”

“When the war is over? Or when we get to Switzerland. When we are safe, will you write again?”

“Yes, when we are safe.” I leaned over and gently kissed her forehead before blowing out the candle. Mila was my greatest source of inspiration. From our home in Pest, Mila and I’d spent Sundays’ taking the tram to the zoo, or the City Park to rowboats on the pond. How could I write when she was in danger? If I could write anything, it would be a story of her escape to safety. I would attach the four posts of her bed to a hot air balloon and send her sailing through night sky, across the ocean, to safety.

“Nana, what if the German’s arrive before we get to the train?”

I reached over and brushed the hair from her eyes. “I believe we still have a little time.”

Mila turned and looked out the window, she flinched at the sound of distant gunfire.

“We’ll leave before it gets worse,” I promised.

“Do you really think we can?” Mila turned to look at me. “Everyone will want to get on that train. Is there enough room for us?”

“There will be,” I assured her. “We have tickets.”

After saying goodnigh
t
to Mila, I passed the dining room on the way to my study. The door was ajar and I noticed Bela and Ilona whispering to one another. When they saw me, they stopped talking and Ilona turned away flushed with embarrassment as if she’d been caught.

“Is everything ready for the trip tomorrow?” I asked from the doorway.

Ilona pushed by me without making eye contact and quickly left the room.

Bela’s cheeks burning bright from alcohol and indignation, growled, “You sneak around listening to conversations that are none of your business.”

I didn’t reply, only shook my head and continued to my study to drink coffee and write, in keeping with my nightly ritual, but Bela followed.

He was of medium height, a stocky build and a walrus mustache that seemed more fitting with his odious demeanor than his profession. He was crude and unkempt, his clothes always seemed a size too small, buttons strained against the girth of his stomach, his pants were wrinkled and the cuffs worn from age and neglect. I couldn’t imagine what Ilona saw in him.

“Would you like a cup?” I asked, pouring one for myself. With engraved silver tongs, I dropped a cube of sugar into my cup.

“No.” He shook his head, but made no move to approach me. I shrugged my shoulders and carried the cup across the room.

“You have the tickets?” I placed the cup on the table next to my chair, leaned over and picked up the journal and pen that I’d left open on the seat.

“We get them tomorrow, at the train station.”

“At the last minute?”

Looking at Bela’s dull, indignant face, I felt exasperated. He snorted and placed his hands on his hips as if meeting my challenge. Whatever alcohol he’d already consumed this evening magnified his belligerence.

The veins in his throat stood out like ropes. “I gave the man a deposit. I need more money. The tickets are expensive.”

“The despicable get rich by preying on the desperate.” I lowered myself into the chair, not taking my eyes from him.

“And the rich prey on everyone.” Bela sneered. “What do you know of the real world?”

“I want to meet this ticket seller.” I took a sip of coffee and watched his reaction.

He turned away from me and walked toward the window. “You’ll meet him tomorrow.”

“No. Tonight.”

I put down the cup of coffee and took up my journal. I needed to keep my hands moving so that their shaking wouldn’t be evident.

Bela stopped and stared at me, his forehead greasy with sweat.

“That’s not possible.”

I flattened the pages with my fingers. I looked down at the previous day’s entry not seeing the words. “If he wants money badly enough he’ll come.”

He moved closer, stopping in front of my chair, his hands bunched in fists held at his side. He leaned over me. I recoiled from the stink of liquor and his cheap Turkish cigarettes. “And if I can’t find him?”

“I won’t give you the money you need.” I watched the look of surprise, and then fury, contort Bela’s face. Our eyes locked.

Bela stormed ou
t
of the room. I heard him give directions to Ilona. The slamming of the front door shook the walls.

I let out a long breath, closed my eyes and rested my head against the back of the chair. I closed my journal and clasped my hands together. Bela was right. I was ill prepared to handle these matters.

I opened my eyes and stood. On the bookcase, a china box still contained remnants of my husband’s favorite pipe tobacco. The green velvet chair across from my desk was where I would find him in the hours between dinner and bedtime. In the last days, softly snoring, his book closed, his body thin and ravaged by cancer, he seemed to sink into the down-filled cushions. I would come to him, sit on the arm of the chair, he would wake, smile put his arm around my waist and pull me forward for a kiss. He had been twenty years older than me, shocking to my parents when I’d brought him home to meet them.

You’re destined to be a young widow they warned. They were right. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing. My heart ached in gratitude for sharing those moments with him. And in sorrow for our too few years together. I’d become a widow at forty.

I walked to the window. On the sidewalk below, Bela spoke to someone and then lighted a cigarette, blue smoke creating an ugly halo around his head. He crossed the street, stole a glance up at my window, and hurried down the block.

Max had tried on so many occasions to tell me of what he’d experienced in Russia. To teach me, he said, so that I’d be prepared. I’d always shaken him off; secure in the world that we’d created together, believing he would always protect me. In the years since his death, I spent many nights grasping to remember his words.

How had we come so far? My childhood held warm memories of baking sweet walnut rolls with our housekeeper. Of hiding under the heavy wooden kitchen table while Anna, with arms outstretched and eyes closed, counted down from ten to one.

How could I pack a lifetime in a small suitcase? Should I pack the valuable silver, jewelry to sell or barter for housing or food? Do I leave behind the books that I wrote, the journals I kept, the photos, the only real reminders of those I’ve loved, those who are now gone. Do I find room for the tweed jacket that still carries the sweet scent of my husband’s Latakia tobacco? The things that are priceless to my heart carry no currency where we are going.

I walked across the room and turned into the hallway just as Ilona stepped out of Mila’s room and closed the door behind her. She brushed a tear away from her eye and then seeing me, looked stricken. She ran her long thin fingers through her faded red hair and tugged the loose tendrils into her chignon.

“Is Mila asleep?” I asked.

“Almost.”

“She’s worried about tomorrow,” I said turning back toward my study. I paused at the entrance, resting my hand on the doorknob. “I hope you were able to reassure her.”

“How could you do this to Bela?”

I turned to look at my sister. “Do what?”

“Embarrass him like this.” She clutched her arms against her bony chest, as if she were trying to warm herself through the layers of clothes she wore.

I walked back to the window and gazed down at the street. “Max told me what people are capable of.”

“Max isn’t here,” Ilona whined. “Bela will take care of everything.”

“Bela’s not Max.”

“But he’s my husband.” Ilona paced the floor, shoulders hunched, head bent forward like a small bird. “He’s the man in this household so he has to make the decisions.”

“For you, maybe,” I said. “Not for me.”

Ilona walked across the room and grabbed my sleeve. “He’s all I have.”

I placed my hand over hers. “Ilona, sometimes it is better to be alone than to be with someone who...”

Ilona wrenched her hand from my grasp. “I need him.” 

“Your daughter needs you,” I said.

“And she needs a father. If you drive him away, then what will we have?”

“You are all that she needs.”

“I need Bela.”

I grabbed her shoulders, “No, Ilona.”

Her eyes widened as my fingers pressed into her arms and then she tore herself away.

“I can’t do it alone. I need a husband who will care for me.”

“You can take care of yourself.”

“I can’t.” Her narrow features were pulled taut. “I won’t.”

“Do you know that your daughter is afraid Bela will leave here without her?”

Ilona clutched her hands and quickly walked to the other side of the room. “She only complains because you’ve poisoned her against us.”

“Did Bela tell you that?”

“He understands how I’ve been trapped.”

“Trapped?” I asked, startled. “Who has trapped you? Me? Your daughter?”

“Yes,” she screeched. “All of you.”

It often seeme
d
that Ilona and Mila had exchanged roles. Ilona had given birth to Mila at the age of eighteen.  When Mila first arrived, Ilona treated her as an inconvenience that threatened to ruin the shape of her breasts from feeding, or the curve of her hips. As soon as it was possible, Ilona and her husband were out again, staying all night at clubs and casinos. Ilona rationalized it as the only way she could keep him interested. I believe she enjoyed the escape from their responsibility, their child, as much as he did. When her first husband left her for another woman, Ilona blamed Mila. And then quickly found and married Bela.   

“Are we all responsible for your unhappiness?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“No.” I shook my head, not wanting to hear the litany of her complaints.

“Everything was used up on you and Anna,” she cried.

“You were loved by all of us.”

“Not the way you loved each other,” she said. “I know the difference.”

“Ilona,” I sighed. “How many people will you blame for your failures?”

Nevertheless, I acknowledged the truth of her accusations. Ilona had been born ten years after Anna and I. We were little blonde dolls in the eyes of our parents, showered with toys, and responding with a keen intelligence that delighted our parents. Ilona’s birth had been difficult, her infancy marked by colic, her childhood by mischief. Even her auburn frizzy hair underlined her difference. We’d been brought up in the Catholic church, but Ilona had married a Jew, which meant that under the laws instituted by the Nazis, not only was her husband in jeopardy, so was she, and so was Mila.

We turned in unison at the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall toward us. Bela entered my study followed by a young stranger.

“
I’ve brought him
.
”
Bela jerked his thumb back. Behind him stood a young man, perhaps fifteen, cap in hand, nervously twisted like a rag, black hair slicked back, dirty shirt and pants hung loosely from his frame. His eyes gave away his years of bitter experience.

“Where are the tickets that you are selling?”

The boy squared his shoulders and regarded me defiantly. I could only imagine what Bela had told him of me. “I don’t have them.”

“Where are they?”

“I can’t get them until he,” the young boy gestured to Bela, “gives me the money I need.”