“Listen, boys,” he said. “Szolomon tells me what goes on in that company of yours. Kozma’s a beast of a man. It’s abominable. Let me know what I can do for you. Anything. Do you need food? Clothes? Do you have enough blankets?”
Andras could hardly begin to answer. What did the 79/6th need? Everything. Morphine, penicillin, bandages, food, blankets, overcoats, boots and woolen underthings and trousers and a week’s worth of sleep. “Medical supplies,” he managed to say. “Any kind. And vitamin tablets. And blankets. We’re grateful for anything.”
But József had another thought. “You can send letters, can’t you?” he said. “You can let our families know we’re safe.”
Erdő nodded slowly.
“And you can get mail for us, too, if they send it to your attention.”
“I can, yes. But it’s a dangerous matter. What you’re suggesting goes against regulations, of course, and everything’s censored. You’ll have to be sure your family understands that. The wrong kind of letter might compromise us all.”
“We’ll make them understand,” József said. And then, “Can you get us pens and ink? And some kind of writing paper?”
“Of course. That’s easy enough.”
“If we bring the letters tomorrow, can you send them by the next day’s post?”
Erdő gave another stern and somber nod. “I can, boys,” he said. “I will.”
That night, as the guard named Lukás marched Andras and József back to the orphanage along with the others who’d been requisitioned to work on The Tatars in Hungary, Andras found himself forced to admit that József’s idea had been a good one. It made him dizzy to imagine what he might write to Klara that night. By now you know why I didn’t return home the day before our journey: I was kidnapped along with the rest of my company and sent to Ukraine. Since we’ve been here we’ve been starved, beaten, made sick with work, allowed to die of illness, killed outright. Mendel Horovitz is dead. He died blindfolded and naked before a firing squad, in part thanks to your nephew. As for myself, I can scarcely tell if I’m dead or alive. None of that could be written, of course; the truth would never pass the censors. But he could beg Klara to go to Palestine-he could find a way to get that into the letter, however coded the message might be. He even dared to hope she might be in Palestine already-that a reply from Elza Hász might bring the news that Klara and Tamás had gone down the Danube with Tibor and Ilana and Ádám, had crossed the Black Sea and passed through the Bosporus just as they’d planned, had taken up a life in Palestine where she and Tamás were safe from the war, relatively speaking. If he had known he would be posted to Ukraine, he would have begged her to go. He would have asked her to weigh her life and Tamás’s against his own, and would have made her see what she had to do. But he hadn’t been there to persuade her. Instead he had been deported, and the uncertainty of his situation would have argued for her to stay-her love for him a snare, a trap, but not the kind likely to keep her alive.
Dear K, he wrote that night. Your nephew and I send greetings from the town of T. I write with the hope that this letter will not reach you in Budapest, that you will have already departed for the country. If you have postponed that trip, I beg you not to delay longer for my sake. You must go at once if the opportunity arises. I am well, but would be better if I knew you were proceeding with our plans. And then the terrible news: Our friend M.H., I must tell you, was forced to depart a month ago for Lachaise. A reference to the cemetery in Paris. Would she understand? I feel as you might imagine. I miss you and Tamás terribly and think of you day and night. Will write again as soon as possible. With love, your A.
He folded the letter and hid it in the inner pocket of his jacket, and the next day he put it into Erdő’s hands. There was no way to know when or whether or how it might find its way to Klara, but the thought that it might do so eventually was the first consolation he’d had in recent memory.
If Andras was surprised when the young officers-in-training, his set-building crew, accepted his direction with respectful deference, the surprise faded quickly. After a few weeks of evening duty at the officers’ training school, it came to seem ordinary to walk among them as a kind of foreman, checking their adherence to his plans. Between them there was little consciousness of difference and little formality. The officers-in-training and the work servicemen called each other by their first names, then by diminutives-Sanyi, Józska, Bandi. They weren’t allowed to eat together in the officers’ mess hall, but often the crew went to the back door of the kitchen at dinnertime and brought back food for all of them. They ate on the stage, cross-legged amid the construction projects and half-painted backdrops. Andras and József, locked in a wordless struggle, nonetheless gained weight and got the sets built. They waited for answers to their letters, hoping each time Erdő entered the officers’ meeting hall that he would call them into his office and pull a smudged envelope from his breast pocket. But the weeks dragged on and no response came. Erdő told them to be patient; the mail service was notoriously slow, and even slower when the correspondence had to cross borders.
As the performance of The Tatars in Hungary drew nearer and still no response arrived, Andras grew half mad with worry. He was sure that Klara and György and Elza had been arrested and thrown in jail, that Tamás had been left in the care of strangers. Klara would be tried and convicted and killed. And he was trapped here in Ukraine, where he could do nothing, nothing; and once the play was finished he would lose his connection to Erdő, and with it the possibility of sending or receiving word from home.
On the twenty-ninth of October, the new Hungarian minister of defense arrived in Turka. There was to be an official procession through the village. All the companies in the vicinity were to be present. That morning, Major Kozma marched the men of the 79/6th to the central square of the village and commanded them to stand at attention along its western side. They had been ordered to wash and mend their torn uniforms in preparation for General Vilmos Nagy’s visit; thread and patches had been provided. They had done what they could, but still they looked like scarecrows. Roadwork had destroyed their jackets and trousers. They had managed to cadge a few pieces of civilian clothing from the Ukrainian black-market ragmen, but they couldn’t replace their torn uniforms with new ones; the army no longer supplied clothing for labor servicemen. Andras had observed the degeneration of his own uniform during his time at the officers’ training school. His jacket and trousers had come to look more and more like a vagrant’s costume alongside the young officers’ starched khakis.
At the head of a company of scrubbed-looking officer-trainees on the opposite side of the square, Andras could make out Erdő’s erect posture and winking monocle. His buttons flashed gold fire in the morning light. This was high drama for him, all of it. He was satisfied with the work Andras and József had done. When they’d displayed the finished sets and backdrops just before the dress rehearsal, he’d been so enthusiastic in his praise that he had burst a capillary in his left eye. The dress rehearsal itself had been perfect except for a few forgotten lines, but all had been rectified now, all had been polished to a military sheen. The sets, the costumes, even a grand curtain of red-and-gold-painted canvas, waited in readiness for the general’s arrival. The play would make its debut that night.
The general’s motorcade was preceded by the officer-trainees’ marching band: a few desperately earnest trumpeters, a phlegmatic trombonist, a fat flautist, a red-faced drummer. Behind them came a pair of armored trucks flying the Hungarian flag, then a string of military policemen on motorcycles, and finally General Vilmos Nagybaczoni Nagy in an open car, a glossy black Lada with white-rimmed tires. The general was younger than Andras had expected, not yet gray, still inhabiting a vigorous middle age. His uniform bristled with decorations of every shape and color, including the turquoise-and-gold cross that represented the Honvédség’s highest award for bravery in combat. Riding beside him was a younger man in a less resplendent uniform, apparently an adjutant or secretary. Every few moments the general would look away from the ranks of men to whisper something in the young officer’s ear, and the young officer would scribble furiously on a stenographer’s pad. The general’s gaze seemed to linger over the companies of work servicemen in particular. Andras didn’t dare look at him directly, but felt Nagy’s eyes passing over him as the motorcade rolled by. The general bent his head and spoke to the adjutant, and the young man took notes. After the motorcade had made its turn around the square, the band stepped out of its way and the cars roared off in the direction of the officers’ training school.