Mrs. Tuesday's Departure: A Historical Novel of World War Two (9 page)

There was
a
knock
on the door. Deszo entered. He stopped when Anna turned around, as if not sure of her reaction to seeing him.

Anna merely blinked and then smiled. “Hello darling! Have you come to take me to dinner?”

To my surprise, Deszo smiled and said, “Yes, I have.”

Anna swept from the chair into Deszo’s arms. As he held her, he looked over her shoulder at me and smiled sadly. Releasing her, he held her at arm’s length and said, “Now, since Natalie is here, it would be rude if we didn’t invite her along.”

“Of course,” Anna cried looking back at me with a jubilant smile. “Natalie, call Max and ask him if he can join us.”

I coughed and shook my head. “Max isn’t available. It will just have to be the three of us.”

I approached Deszo with a questioning look, “Is everything settled now?”

He nodded toward Anna who had gone back to the desk to gather her coat. “Actually, her salvation was a matter of politics. Since she was neither Jewish, nor a Communist, they quickly lost interest. Good for her, too bad for the students who were.”

“We’re lucky you were here,” I said.

Deszo smiled bitterly, “You won’t be so lucky next time, Natalie. If she shows up again they’ll take her away. The Arrow Cross will be ruthless now that the Germans have arrived. They’re not only rounding up the Jews, but anyone else who tries to speak out against their plans.”

When we entere
d
the outer office, the police were gone. The Dean stood in the center of the room nervously stroking his beard.

“Thank you,” I said, grasping his hand. “Thank you for your help.”

He looked over to where Anna stood wrapping her scarf around her neck, humming a melody as she tucked the ends into her coat. “Natalie, your sister was a great poet.”

“Is,” I countered.

“No, not anymore,” he said, shaking his head. “In different times, her outburst would have been regarded as the eccentricity of a brilliant but wounded mind. But now, she is a danger.”

“I know,” I nodded sadly.

“Not just to herself.” He looked from me to Deszo. “But to others, to the University. I won’t defend her next time.”

I looked into his eyes, but he turned his head, releasing my grip on his hand. “She’s no longer welcome here.” He walked to his office and closed the door.

When we lef
t
the building, I was surprised to see that it had started to snow. The walkway that bisected the park leading to the street was dusted with white, muffling the sounds of the city. Bare tree branches caught snowflakes in their outstretched arms and slowed their descent to earth. I felt cut off from the rest of world, safe in this winter landscape. The scene could have been any one of many happy memories of the three of us leaving the university to meet Max for dinner. How many evenings had Anna and I walked on either side of Deszo, our arms linked through his, laughing at the double takes we’d get as people looked from me to Anna, noticing our identical faces and the proud way Deszo escorted us, as if we both belonged to him. I suppose in some way, he really believed that. Max would meet us outside the restaurant; I’d break from Deszo’s grip and rush to kiss my true love. We’d tuck into a table and spend the next three hours drinking wine, sharing the day’s events. At the end of the meal, Deszo would light a cigarette, Max his pipe, Anna and I would lean toward one another and begin to whisper. Then the evening would continue at a café for coffee and desert. How happy we’d all been. Our lives were successful and out futures bright. In this moment, I would have traded places with Anna, would have stayed in the window to the past with the longing for all that was now gone.

Deszo and I walked on either side of Anna, each of us holding her elbows. Anna chattered happily, leaning her head back to catch snowflakes on her face. I followed her upward gaze and then turned to look back at the window where she’d sat with her hand pressed against the glass like a child.

At the edg
e
of the park, we saw the crowd waiting for the tram. We joined them, stamping our feet against the cold that seeped through the soles of our leather shoes. We stood with our backs to the biting wind. After fifteen minutes, it was clear that the tram had stopped running or would be impossibly full by the time it reached us.

“I need to get home to Mila,” I said to Deszo.

“Isn’t Ilona there with her?”

“No, she left with Bela, yesterday.”

Deszo looked startled then angry. “She left Mila.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” I brushed the snow from Anna’s shoulders and pulled her collar closed around her scarf. “But she’s my responsibility now, I have to get home.”

“We’ll have to walk,” he said.

We started down the sidewalk, Anna still between us, oblivious to her surroundings. At the corner we turned up a side street, saw a commotion of blaring horns, and blocked traffic. In the middle of the street, a delivery truck had apparently broken down and blocked the cars behind it. As we passed the truck, we saw a German
soldier
standing on the running boards of a military car bearing Nazi flags, waving a gun, screaming at the driver of the truck. Suddenly the German fired his gun into the air and I struggled to hold onto Anna as she shrieked and pulled from my grasp.

Screams pierced the air as the blast from the gun amplified and echoed against the walls. All around us, people fell to the ground or ran, taking cover in doorways. Next to me, a child cried out as her mother grabbed her hand and pulled into a store.

The German, encouraged by the mayhem, shouted, “Run rabbits!” as he shot off round after round from his pistol. Ducking, I threw Anna forward, pushing her over the bodies that lay in our path.

“Are you crazy? Where are you going?” Deszo grabbed me and shoved us against a wall, covering us with his body.

Struggling against his weight on my shoulder, I tried in vain to regain my feet. “We have to get out of here.”

The sulfur smoke of gunfire mixed with the exhaust fumes from the stalled traffic created a stifling cloud between the apartment buildings that crouched on either side of the narrow street. Beneath me, Anna moaned and I moved to take the weight off her arm.

I looked over my shoulder and watched the German stop abruptly as a senior officer got out of the car and started yelling at him. The first
soldier
, saluted and then holstering his gun, walked over to the driver of the truck. Yelling and gesturing toward a couple of men on the sidewalk, he orchestrated the moving of the truck onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

Brushing his soiled hands down the length of his coat the German stalked back to his coat swearing as he got into the car and slammed the door. In a moment, his car had disappeared down the street.

“
Is this wha
t
we can expect from the occupation?” I asked Deszo, as I helped Anna to her feet.

Deszo held his left shoulder with his right hand, slowly rotating it, while looking across the street to the abandoned truck. “This was a mere pleasantry. They know they are losing the war, so they are desperate. Be glad you’re not a Jew.”

Anna stepped over to Deszo, began massaging his shoulder, and said the words that I had been thinking. “Mila is a Jew. What will happen to her?”

De
s
zo shrugged off Anna’s hand and then linked his arms in both of ours. He steered us up the street and we made our way home without further conversation.

Mila opened the front door to our apartment as soon as I put the key into the lock. She was surprised to see Deszo, but took his coat without question. I told Deszo to wait for me in my study and I followed Anna down the hall telling her to wash up. Mila was standing in the hall when I left Anna’s room. She followed me into the kitchen and sat at the table while I began to prepare our dinner.

“What happened?” Taking the small knife and potato from my shaking hands, she began to quickly peel its skin onto the tabletop. She kept her head bowed, but with a swipe of her arm, wiped a tear onto her sleeve.

“Mila I’m sorry I had to leave you alone. I had to go to Anna. She was in a great deal of trouble.”

Mila made no reply, but shook off my hands and took up her task with the potato. I clasped my hands together and watched her butcher one potato after another as the tears streamed down her face. I felt helpless beneath her silent recrimination. Abandoned not once but twice-in two days. I couldn’t help it. I had to help my sister. She was all I had left of my family.

I realized that in the flurry of events, I had not found a moment to sit with her and try to explain why her mother had left her at the train station. Did she feel betrayed by me as well? I reached for Mila, wanting to pull her to my chest. As my hands reached her shoulders, she jerked away as if scalded by my touch. Her face filled with anger, her jaw taut with unspoken accusations.

Then her hands stopped and she looked up at me. “They were here.”

“Who?” My heart tightened.

“The Nazis.”

“Here? In this apartment?”

“In the building.” She stood up, walked to the counter, and retrieved a piece of paper. “They knocked on the door, but I didn’t answer. Then they shoved it under the door and said that they would be back.”

I took the piece of paper from her hands, my eyes slid down the page before I was able to make sense of the words. It was a notice requiring all Jews to report to the local police precinct for registration.

“But why would they come here? The apartment is registered in my family’s name.”

“Miss Szep said they slid one under every door in the building.”

Miss Szep was an elderly spinster who lived alone below us. She rarely came out of her apartment, except to complain about Bela’s drunken tirades. “When did you speak with her?”

“After the Nazi’s left, she came to the door. She said that she was alone.”

“Still, I wish you wouldn’t have answered the door. No one should know that you are here.”

“She saw Bela and Mom leave without us yesterday and then when she saw us return without them, she said she figured out why.”

Miss Szep spen
t
hours watching the street below
,
and therefore the comings and goings of everyone in the building
,
from her front window. At times, the only reminder that any one lived in her apartment was the flutter of a curtain if you happened to look up as you approached the building from the street.  Most of the time there was little sign of her, with the exception of the smell of delicious poppy seed rolls baking in her oven, the product sometimes ending up as an anonymous gift propped against our front door.

“Still, she knows that you’re here,” I said. “What if they question her?”

“She said that she will tell the truth,” Mila said.

I gasped. “No!”

“She will tell the soldiers she saw me leave with my parents. That the only people living in this apartment are two sisters, both good Catholics.”

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. Miss Szep was at least eighty. She’d known my parents, my husband, and before the arrival of Bela and Ilona, she’d been a frequent guest in our home. Could she be trusted? Who else had seen Mila return with us? I thought of Mrs. Nyugati. There were too many like her, people who wouldn’t hesitate to give Mila away if it meant gaining their own advantage with the enemy.

Mila looked up and I turned to see Deszo standing in the doorway. “Have I interrupted?”

“No, sit down,” I smiled. “I’m sorry I left you alone in the study. Anna must have decided to take a bath.”

“Actually, she’s in the study reading.” He took a seat across from me. “She seems to think we’ve spent the day together, which I suppose is correct in a way. Anyway, she’s reading a book of her poems. I hope not preparing for another lecture.”

“God, no,” I sighed. “I’ll have to explain the situation to her again. And then keep an eye on her.”

Mila looked at me for an explanation. I raised my eyebrows and rolled my eyes. Deszo chuckled. “You know if it hadn’t been so dangerous, it would have been funny.”

“If she’d confined her lecture to poetry instead of politics, yes.” I said taking up Mila’s task of peeling the potatoes.

“So what are we going to do about you?” Deszo nodded toward Mila.

“I’m going to stay here.”

“I don’t think it’s safe,” Deszo said.

I quickly told Deszo of Mila’s experience with the Germans and showed him the notice. Then I told him about Jozef and the safe houses.

Deszo held the notice in his hands, shaking his head. “They’re moving more quickly than I’d imagined. This Jozef is right about the safe houses, though I’m not sure I would trust someone who had tried to rob your house. The Swedish and Swiss consulates are issuing documents for safe passage in an effort to bring the Jews under their protection.”