Mrs. Tuesday's Departure: A Historical Novel of World War Two (11 page)

“As you know sir, most of our soldiers have been sent to the front, we’ve been severely understaffed.”

“Your name?” Deszo demanded.

The front door downstairs slammed and there was a clamor of footsteps on the stairs. “Elek!”

The young
soldier
leaned into the stairwell and yelled. “Up here.”

“Have you found the Jews?”

Deszo waved him off and yelled down, “You’re too late
soldier
, we had the last lot of Jews shipped out a week ago.”

After Deszo left
,
I went back to my study and found it empty. My heart was pounding as I walked to Mila’s bedroom. The light in her room was off and as I opened the door, a sliver of light from the hall slid across her bed and outlined her sleeping face. When I opened Anna’s door, I saw her sitting at her vanity. She screwed the lid off a jar of cold cream and scooped a dollop into the palm of her hand. She looked at me through the mirror and smiled. “Come in.”

“Quite a day,” I said, sitting on the edge of her bed. I couldn’t decide whether or not to tell her about the soldier’s visit. I would not tell her about Deszo’s kiss.

Anna began to apply the cream to her face like a thick frosting. “It was a nice surprise to have you show up after my lecture.”

I shivered as if feeling the cold cream touching my own face. “Anna, you shouldn’t have been there.”

Her hand stopped in mid-stroke and she looked at me through the mirror. “Of course I should!” She picked up a sponge and began to roughly wipe the cold cream off her face. “I have lectures to give.”

“No you don’t. You don’t work there anymore.”

Her eyebrow arched and she smirked. “Natalie, don’t be foolish. I have tenure, they can’t fire me!”

I folded my hands in my lap and our eyes met in the mirror’s reflection. As Anna tilted her head to the right, I unconsciously did the same. To others, we still looked identical, but I could see tiny furrows around her eyes and forehead and a slight tick at the corner of her lips. Her illness had begun to separate us in looks as it had in our relationship. It was pointless to argue. On the other hand, I couldn’t allow her to instigate a replay of this morning. “Anna, you haven’t been a member of the teaching staff at the university in over a year. You were asked to retire.”

She leaned toward the mirror and began to vigorously wipe the remnants of the white cream from her forehead and chin. “Well perhaps I took a sabbatical for a year, but I’m ready to return now. It’s clear that I’m still very popular with the students.”

“You gave an anti-war speech this morning, not a lecture on poetry.”

“We are in a war, Natalie.” She shook her head. “Really. You accuse me of losing my mind. Someone has to speak out.”

My cheeks flushed in anger. “Since your memory serves you so well, do you remember that we are hiding Mila? The police will be keeping an eye on you now...which means that they will be watching where you live. Here. Where we’re trying to hide Mila!”

“Ilona will come back for Mila, won’t she?”

“When the war is over,” I guessed.

“Natalie, are you surprised that she left Mila behind?”

I turned and looked at her bedroom door to make sure that it was closed. “No, I’m not surprised. I’d hoped for a different outcome. Somehow, I believed that if we made it to the train, Ilona would have been shamed into taking Mila.”

“How could a mother choose her husband over her own daughter?” Anna’s question was rhetorical, but still unanswerable. She shook her head. “Mila must be heartbroken.”

“Angry,” I replied.

“Ilona not only put Mila in danger, but us as well.”

Anna had always treated Ilona with disdain. I believe it began in childhood. Anna always wanted to be our father’s princess, the sun around which we all orbited in pale comparison. In school, we competed to see who could get the better grades, Anna always rushing home to show her stellar reports first.

“Look Papa! I scored the highest in the class!”

She would climb into Father’s lap, waving her grade card. As she received his kisses, she would look over at me and smile. It was not a pleasant smile. It was triumphant. Father would look up and say, “And what about you, Natalie? Did you come in second?”

My heart sank at those words, but I nodded and held out my card.

“Good!” he exclaimed. “I have the two smartest girls in Budapest!” He would then hold out his arm and I would walk forward to be embraced in a hug that he meant to be large enough for both of us. My father’s love was enormous, enough for twins, for a wife he loved more than his own life, for a younger daughter. But sometimes, I wished those arms held only one.

It was durin
g
this time, we were just a few years older than Mila is now, that we began to write. We both started out as poets. My father loved Petofi and Szebo; he claimed poets were the heroes of Hungary. We obliged his admiration by trying to become the best of what he loved. At first, it was innocent fun. We were too young, too dependent upon one another to allow anything to completely estrange us. At night before bed, we gave theatrical performances from our books of poetry and giggled over the love sonnets. We took turns reading our own poetry to our parents. Mother always praised our work. Papa would smile and then give us a commentary on what needed to be improved.

When Ilona showed the least sign of joining our competition for Father’s attention, Anna made fun of her efforts, quashing the young ego as it tried to blossom. She succeeded all too well. Ilona’s grades dropped as ours continued to rise. Soon she began skipping school, notes came from her teachers complaining about her absences, her lack of attention, her preoccupation with boys rather than study. Mother and Father tried to help her, but she construed their concern as further evidence of their disappointment in her. Years later, I too would feel the weight of Anna’s scorn.

We were at university together. We were both students in the literature department, both honing our skills as poets. The university sponsored an annual poetry competition. Anna and I entered. We worked for weeks, separately, on a portfolio of poems to submit. Though we shared a room, we each jealously guarded our work, each claiming that we didn’t want to influence the other. The truth was that neither one of us wanted to reveal the special work that we felt might be copied.

Our father’s face beamed as he told Mother how he bragged to his colleagues that he had not one but two daughters in the famous contest. We beamed because he did.

The weeks we had to endure, waiting for the announcement of the results were torture. We fought more than usual. Our sibling rivalry took an ominous turn toward real spite. Finally, the night arrived.

To underscore the notoriety that came with the grand prize, the university held the ceremony in the National Opera House. Anna and I dressed in black silk gowns, trimmed in inky velvet, purchased for us by our father, who insisted that we wear matching dresses to show our solidarity. I put my dress on first. Anna, as she was tonight, sat at the dressing table, doing her make-up.

“Now that the competition is over,” she said leaning toward the mirror to apply her eyeliner, “tell me what you chose as your theme.”

I looked at her reflection and saw my own in the background. I hesitated, “family things.”

She looked at me through the mirror, her smile faded and her hand dropped to the table. “Not very sophisticated, was it?” She took up her pencil again and leaned forward. “You know Father believes the great poets are brave enough to speak out about freedom and the future of the nation.”

I knew then the theme she had chosen. The self-assured smile that returned to her lips gave the evidence and her verdict. She would win and I would lose. I bit my lip and looked down at the floor to hide my disappointment. “I’ll wait for you in the living room,” I said, wanting to leave the room before I gave in to tears.

Anna and I were silent in the car to the opera. Papa joked that we were more nervous than he’d ever seen us. He said this was clearly a sign that we’d both done our best work. In the theatre, Anna and I sat together, Father sat next to Anna, and Mother next to him. My seat on the end of the row enabled me to watch the contestants make their walk down to the stage where they received their prize. Deszo was also there that evening. As my date, though he sat further back.

“And the first runner-up prize
goes to Anna Lucas.” The crowd applauded loudly, my father jumped to his feet and beamed. Only I noticed the look of disappointment on my sister’s face. When she turned to face our father, her face radiated what I knew was a phony smile. I watched her embrace my father, receive his kisses on her cheeks, and then walk up to the stage to receive her prize.

“The grand prize in poetry goes to,” the audience held
their
breath, “Natalie Lucas for her cycle of poems entitled, “My Father’s Smile.”

My heart skipped, my father lifted me by the shoulders and kissed me. I was over come by the thunderous applause as I made my way toward the stage. As I received my prize I turned to my sister and saw the rage that filled her eyes.

She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “First you take the man that I love and then you take my prize. I will never forgive you.”

But she did in time. I gave up poetry after that contest. And I gave up Deszo.

Once again, twent
y
years later, we entered into a test of wills.

“Anna, you can’t go back to the university.”

She sighed and turned her back on me. “Natalie, how can we be so different?”

“Anna, do you realize that the Germans have arrived? The Arrow Cross were at our door this evening!”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Anna leaned forward, blocking the light from the lamp that sat on the edge of her vanity. As she turned her face from one side to the other, the shadow passed across her face. I shivered reflexively. She leaned back and frowned at her reflection. “I must support the students who are speaking out.”

I shot to my feet and grabbed Anna by the shoulders. “And when they come to arrest you, they’ll take Mila as well!”

Anna stared at me through the mirror and then tilted her head to one side, resting it against my arm. “She will be better off in one of the safe houses as Deszo suggested.”

My grip on her shoulders tightened. “I want her here with me.”

“That’s selfish.”

“You’d rather she go to live with strangers?” I released her shoulders and stared at her reflection in the mirror. “You think he has all the answers.”

“Don’t be coy, Natalie.” Anna’s smile turned down at the corners in a smirk. “I noticed the way you were eyeing Deszo tonight. It’s shameful really, with Max only dead a year.”

I glared at her and hissed, “Max has been dead for five years, Anna.”

A confused look crossed her face and then she quickly regained her composure. Her hands went from one jar to another, tightening down the lids. “How’s the book you’re working on?”

“The only book that I’m currently working on is the editing of your journals.”

“I find inspiration rather than excuses in the war,” Anna sniffed. “I’ve decided to begin a new cycle of poems. Back to our discussion of Deszo, I hope that you will not use my position at the university to try to see him, as you did today. It’s too obvious.”

I reminded myself again that Anna’s dementia skewed her logic. Though it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain my loyalty. Even in her former years of lucidity, her affair had made her possessive and jealous, ironic since she was the in the position of mistress rather than wife.  Her bizarre patterns of thought, and the behavior that followed were too great a threat. “My only interest in Deszo is in his ability to help us hide Mila,” I replied.

“Really, I find your timing suspicious.” Anna rolled her shoulders and then lifted her hands to her hair, taking out the pins and tousling it. “He’s leaving his wife.”

I woke t
o
the smell of coffee. There was a light rap on my door and Mila came in carrying a tray. I pushed myself up in bed.

“Good morning!”

I smiled as she leaned over and kissed my cheek.

“Anna said that you were tired and needed to rest.”

“What’s Anna doing now?”

“She’s in the kitchen writing. She says that she’s working on a new poem.”

I took a bite of my toast and sighed. Anna was writing. I suppose I should feel thankful that she was doing that rather than giving lectures at the university.

“And you?” I asked.

Mila blushed.

“What?” I persisted.

“Anna is teaching me to write poetry!”

My eyebrows arched in surprise. Mila longed to learn the mechanics of poetry. She'd been rebuffed in each previous approach to Anna. Anna considered poetry an art form discovered, not taught. She was also very careful to limit her role as a teacher to the hours at the university. At home, she considered her time her own. She saw no students and usually holed up in her bedroom at a small desk where she worked in solitude.