When Andras and József arrived at the meeting hall to make the last preparations for the show, they found that all had fallen into confusion. The stage sets had been shoved aside so the chief officer of the academy might give the official welcome speech, and in the process, two of the backdrops had been torn and one side of the papier-mâché cave had been crushed. Erdő paced from one end of the stage to the other in panicked dismay, declaring at full volume that the repairs would never be finished in time, while Andras and József and the others rushed to make things right. Andras patched the cave with a bucket of paste and some brown paper; József mended a Roman ruin with a roll of canvas tape. The other men realigned and rehung the second torn backdrop. By the time the dinner hour was over, all was in order. The actors arrived to don their Tatar and Magyar costumes and practice their vocal exercises. They preened and buzzed and mumbled their lines backstage with as much gravity and self-importance as the actors at the Sarah-Bernhardt.

At half past eight the meeting hall filled with officers-in-training. There was a tense festivity in their clamor, a rising thrum of anticipation. Andras found a dim corner of the wings from which he could watch the speeches and the show. He caught a glimpse of the martial glitter of the general’s jacket as he strode up the center aisle and took his seat in the front row of benches. The school’s chief officer mounted the stage and made his address, a rhetorical pas de deux of deference and pomposity, punctuated with gestures that Andras recognized from newsreels of Hitler: the hammerlike fist on the podium, the uptwisting index finger, the conductorial palm. The chief officer’s bluster earned him six seconds of dutiful applause from the officers-in-training. But when General Nagy rose to take the stage, the men got to their feet and roared. He had chosen them, had graced them with the first stop of his eastern tour; when he left them he would go directly to Hitler’s headquarters at Vinnitsa. He raised a hand to thank them, and they sat down again and fell silent with anticipation.

“Soldiers,” he began. “Young men. I won’t make a long speech. I don’t have to tell you that war is a terrible thing. You’re far from home and family, and you’ll go farther still before you return. You’re brave boys, all of you.” Vilmos Nagy had none of the swagger or dramatic fire of the school’s commanding officer; he spoke with the rounded vowels of a Hajdú peasant, gripping the podium with his large red hands. “I’ll speak frankly,” he said. “The Soviets are stronger than we thought. You’re here because we didn’t take Russia in the spring. Many of your comrades have died already. You’re being trained to lead more men into battle. But you are Magyars, boys. You’ve survived a thousand years of battle. No enemy can match you. No foe can defeat you. You slew the Tatars at Pest. You routed eighty thousand Turks at Eger Castle. You were better warriors and better leaders.”

A round of wild cheers broke forth from the officers-in-training; the general waited until the noise had subsided. “Remember,” he said, “you’re fighting for Hungary. For Hungary, and no one else. The Germans may be our allies, but they’re not our masters. Their way is not our way. The Magyars are not an Aryan people. The Germans see us as a benighted nation. We’ve got barbarian blood, wild ideas. We refuse to embrace totalitarianism. We won’t deport our Jews or our Gypsies. We cling to our strange language. We fight to win, not to die.”

Another cheer from the men, this one more tentative. The young officers-in-training had been taught to revere German authority absolutely; they had been taught to speak of Hungary’s all-important and all-powerful ally with unconditional respect.

“Remember what happened this summer on the banks of the Don,” Nagy said. “Our General Jány’s ten divisions were spread over a hundred kilometers between Voronezh and Pavlovsk. With just those ten light divisions, Generalfeldmarschall von Weichs expected us to keep the Russians on the east bank. But you know the story: Our tanks were defenseless against the Soviets’ T-34s. Our arms were outmatched. Our supply chain failed. Our men were dying. So Jány pulled his divisions back and made them take defensive positions. He saw where he stood and made a decision that saved the lives of thousands of men. For this, von Weichs and General Halder accused us of cowardice! Perhaps they would have admired us more if we’d let forty or sixty thousand of our men die, instead of only twenty thousand. Perhaps they would have liked to see us spill every last drop of our barbarian blood.” He paused and looked out across the rows of silent men, seeming to meet their eyes in the dark. “Germany is our ally. Her victory will strengthen us. But never believe that Germany has any other aim besides the survival of the Reich. Our aim is Hungary’s survival-and by that I mean not just the preservation of our sovereignty and our territories, but of our young men’s lives.”

The men had fallen into a rapt silence. No one applauded now; they were all waiting for Nagy to go on. So seldom had they been told the truth, Andras thought, that it had struck them dumb.

“You men have been trained to fight intelligently and minimize our losses,” Nagy continued. “We want to bring you home alive. We won’t need you any less once the war is over.” He paused and gave a deep sigh; his hands were trembling now, as if the effort of delivering the speech had exhausted him. He glanced into the wings of the stage, into the darkness where Andras stood watching. His eyes settled on Andras for a long moment, and then he looked out at the young officers-in-training again. “And one more thing,” he said. “Respect the labor servicemen. They’re getting their hands dirty for you. They’re your brothers in this war. Some officers have chosen to treat them like dogs, but that’s going to change. Be good men, is what I’m saying. Give respect where it’s due.” He bowed his head as if in thought, and then shrugged. “That’s all,” he said. “You’re fine brave soldiers, all of you. I thank you for your work.”

He stepped down from the podium to an accompaniment of somber, bewildered applause. No one seemed to know quite what to think of this new minister of defense; some of the things he’d just said sounded as though they shouldn’t have been uttered in public, and certainly not at an officers’ training school. But there was little opportunity to react. It was time for the play to begin. The Magyars assembled onstage for the first scene, and the work servicemen dragged the Roman ruin into place and lowered a backdrop that depicted a wash of blue sky above the moss-colored hills of Buda. When they hoisted the curtain a flood of light filled the stage, illuminating the martial-looking Hungarians in their painted armor. The Magyar chieftain drew his sword and raised it aloft. Then, just before he could speak his opening line, the air itself seemed to break into a deep keening. The assembly hall reverberated with a rising and falling plaint of grief. Andras knew the sound: It was an air-raid siren. They had all practiced the drill, both here and at the orphanage. But there was no drill planned for this evening, nor was this part of the play. This was the real thing. They were going to be bombed.

All at once the audience got to its feet and began pushing toward the exits. A cluster of officers surrounded General Nagy, who lost his hat in the crush. He clutched at his bare head and glanced around him as his staff hustled him to a side door. The actors fled the stage, dropping their pasteboard weapons, and began to crowd toward a stairway at the back of the hall. Andras and József and the other work servicemen followed the actors down a flight of stairs that led to a shelter beneath the building. The shelter was a honeycomb of concrete rooms linked by low-ceilinged hallways. The men pushed into a dark enclosure at a turn of one of the hallways; more officers-in-training poured into the room after them. Far above, the air-raid sirens wailed.