Fatelessness

ONE

I didn’t go to school today. Or rather, I did go, but only to ask my class teacher’s permission to take the day off. I also handed him the letter in which, referring to “family reasons,” my father requested that I be excused. He asked what the “family reason” might be. I told him my father had been called up for labor service; after that he didn’t raise a further peep against it.

I didn’t head home but to our shop. Father had said they would wait for me there. He added that I should hurry as well because he might need me. In actual fact, that was partly why he had asked me to be let off school. Or else so that “he might have me there on his last day before being separated from home,” since he said that too, though admittedly some other time. He said it to my mother, as I recall, when he phoned her this morning. Today is a Thursday, as it happens, and on Thursdays and Sundays my afternoons, strictly speaking, belong to my mother. Still, Father informed her: “I can’t let you have young Gyuri today,” and then went on to give that as the reason. Though maybe it wasn’t like that after all. I was rather sleepy this morning on account of last night’s air-raid warning, so perhaps I don’t remember it clearly. I am quite sure, though, that he said it — if not to Mother, then to someone else.

I too spoke a few words to Mother, though I no longer remember what. I think she may have been annoyed with me because I was obliged to be a little short with her, what with Father being there: after all, today it is his wishes I have to consider. When I was about to set off from the house, even my stepmother had a few private words with me in the hall, just between the two of us. She said she hoped that, on what was such a sad day for us, “she could count on my behaving appropriately.” I had no clue what I could say to that, so I said nothing. She may have misinterpreted my silence, however, because she went straight on to say something along the lines that she had no wish to offend my sensibilities with those words of advice, which, she was well aware, were quite unnecessary. She had no doubt that with me being a big boy, now in my fifteenth year, I was quite capable of grasping for myself the gravity of the blow that had been inflicted on us, as she put it. I nodded. I could see she was content to leave it at that. She even moved a hand in my direction, and I half feared that she might perhaps be wanting to hug me. She didn’t do so in the end, just let out a deep sigh, with a long, tremulous release of breath. I noticed her eyes moistening as well. It was awkward. After that, I was allowed to go.

I covered the stretch between school and our shop on foot. It was a clear, balmy morning, considering it was still just early spring. I was about to unbutton myself but then had second thoughts: it was possible that, light as the head breeze was, my coat lapel might flap back and cover up my yellow star, which would not have been in conformity with the regulations. There were by now a few things I had to be more on my guard against. Our cellar timber store is nearby, on a side street. A steep stairway leads down into the gloom. I found my father and stepmother in the office, a glass cage lit up like an aquarium, right at the foot of the steps. Also with them was Mr. Sütő, whom I have known from the time he entered our employment as a bookkeeper and as manager of the other, outdoor lumberyard that he has in fact already purchased from us since then. At least that’s what they say, because Mr. Sütő, given that he is completely aboveboard regarding his race, does not wear a yellow star, so the whole thing is actually just a kind of business dodge, as I understand it, enabling him to look after our property there, and then again so we don’t have to do entirely without an income in the meanwhile.

That had a bit to do with why I greeted him differently from the way I used to do, for after all he has, in a sense, risen to a higher status than us; my father and stepmother too were clearly more deferential toward him. Though he, for his part, sticks all the more stubbornly to addressing my father as “boss” and my stepmother as “my dear lady,” as if nothing had happened, never failing to plant a kiss on her hand while he is at it. He welcomed me as well in his old, jocular tone, oblivious to my yellow star. After that, I stood where I was, by the door, while they picked up where they had left off on my arrival. As I saw it, I must have interrupted them right in the middle of some discussion. I did not understand at first what they were talking about. I even closed my eyes for a second because they were still a bit dazzled from the sunlight up on the street. Meanwhile my father said something, and by the time I opened them, there was Mr. Sütő. Yellowish red light-spots were dancing like bursting pustules all over his round, brownish-skinned features, with the pencil moustache and the tiny gap between his two broad, white front teeth. The next sentence was again spoken by my father, with something about “goods” that “it would be best” if Mr. Sütő “were to take with him right away.” Mr. Sütő had no objection, whereupon my father took out from a desk drawer a small package wrapped in tissue paper and tied up with string. Only then did I see what goods they were actually talking about, since I immediately recognized the package from its flat shape: it contained a box. In the box were our more precious jewels and such; indeed, I rather fancy that it was precisely on my account that they had called them “goods,” lest I recognize them. Mr. Sütő at once thrust it into his briefcase. After that, however, a minor dispute sprang up between them, because Mr. Sütő took out his fountain pen, with the aim of giving my father a “receipt for the goods” no matter what. He dug in his heels for a fair while, even though my father told him “don’t be childish,” and “there’s no need for that sort of thing between the two of us.” I noticed that pleased Mr. Sütő to no end. He said so too: “I’m well aware that you trust me, boss, but in real life there is a right and proper way of doing things.” He even appealed to my stepmother for her assistance: “Isn’t that so, my dear lady?” With a wan smile, though, she merely said something to the effect that she left it entirely up to the men how the matter was best arranged.

The whole thing was beginning to bore me slightly by the time he eventually tucked the fountain pen away after all, at which they started to chew over the matter of the stockroom here, and what they should do with all the planks of wood in it. I heard my father urging the need for haste, before the authorities “might get round to laying their hands on the business,” asking Mr. Sütő to give my stepmother the benefit of his business experience and expertise over this. Turning toward my stepmother, Mr. Sütő at once declared, “It goes without saying, dear madam. We shall be in constant contact in any case over the settling of the accounts.” I think he was speaking about the premises that were now in his hands. After an age, he at last began to take leave. He took a long time over his glum-faced shaking of my father’s hand. He nevertheless ventured that “long speeches have no place at a moment like this,” and so he wished to say just one word of farewell to my father, namely, “See you again soon, boss.” My father replied with a quick, wry smile, “Let’s hope so, Mr. Sütő.” At the same time, my stepmother opened her handbag, pulled out a handkerchief, and straightaway dabbed at her eyes. Strange noises welled up in her throat. There was a hush; the situation was really embarrassing, since I had a feeling that I too ought to do something. But with the whole scene taking me by surprise, nothing sensible occurred to me. I could see that the thing was also making Mr. Sütő uneasy: “My dear lady,” he said, “you mustn’t. Really not.” He looked a tiny bit alarmed. He bowed and virtually fixed his lips to my stepmother’s hand to perform his usual hand-kiss. He then at once scurried for the door, barely giving me time to jump out of his way. He even forgot to say good-bye to me. We could still hear his heavy tread on the stairs for a while once he had gone.

After something of a pause, my father said, “Well then, at least that’s out of the way.” At that, my stepmother, her voice still a bit husky, asked whether it wouldn’t have been better if my father had accepted that receipt from Mr. Sütő all the same. My father, though, replied that a receipt like that had no “practical value” at all, besides which it would be even more hazardous to conceal it than the box itself. He explained to her that now “we have to stake everything on a single card,” which was to have complete confidence in Mr. Sütő, particularly since right now we had no alternative anyway. My stepmother fell quiet at that, and then she remarked that my father might be right, but all the same she would feel safer “with a receipt in her hand.” On the other hand, she was unable to give a satisfactory explanation as to why. At that point, my father urged that they make a start on the job at hand since, as he put it, time was pressing. He wanted to turn the business accounts over to her so that she would be able to find her way around them even in his absence, and so the business need not come to a standstill because he was in a labor camp. In the meantime he exchanged a few fleeting words with me as well. He asked if being let off school had gone smoothly, and so forth. In the end, he told me to sit down and keep quiet until he and my stepmother had done what they had to do with the books.

That, however, took an age. I tried to be patient for a bit, striving to think of Father, and more specifically the fact that he would be going tomorrow and, quite probably, I would not see him for a long time after that; but after a while I grew weary with that notion and then, seeing as how there was nothing else I could do for my father, I began to get bored. Even having to sit around became a drag, so simply for the sake of a change I stood up to take a drink of water from the tap. They said nothing. Later on, I also made my way to the back, between the planks, in order to pee. On returning, I washed my hands at the rusty, tiled sink, then unpacked my morning snack from my school satchel, ate that, and finally took another drink from the tap. They still said nothing. I sat back in my place. After that, I got terribly bored for another absolute age.

It was already noon by the time we got out onto the street. My eyes were again dazzled, this time offended by the light. My father fiddled around a long time with the two gray padlocks— to the point that I had a feeling he was doing it deliberately. He then handed over the keys to my stepmother, given that he would no longer have any use for them. I know that, because he said as much. My stepmother opened her handbag; I feared it was for the handkerchief again, but all she did was tuck the keys away. We then set off in a great hurry. I thought at first we were going home, but no, before that there was still shopping to be done. My stepmother had a rather lengthy list of all the things Father would need in the labor camp. She had already procured some of them yesterday, but now we had to track down the rest. It was a slightly uncomfortable feeling going around with them like that, as a trio, yellow stars on all three of us. The matter is more a source of amusement to me when I am on my own, but together with them it was close to embarrassing. I couldn’t explain why that was, but later on I no longer took any notice of it. All the shops were crowded except the one where we bought the knapsack: there we were the only customers. The air was permeated with the pungent smell of proofed canvas. The shopkeeper, a little old man with sallow skin but gleaming false teeth and an oversleeve on one arm, and his plump wife were extremely cordial. They piled up all sorts of items before us on the counter. I noticed that the shopkeeper called the old lady “Lovey,” and it was always her he sent off to fetch items. As it happens, I know the shop, because it is situated close to where we live, but I had never been inside before. It is actually a sort of sports goods shop, though they sell other merchandise as well. Of late it has even been possible to get their own make of yellow stars there, given that now there was a big shortage of yellow fabric, of course. (As for our own needs, my stepmother had taken care of that in good time.) As best I could make out, it was their innovative twist to have the material stretched over some cardboard base, so that way, of course, it looked more attractive, plus the arms of the stars weren’t cut in such a ludicrously clumsy fashion as some of the homemade ones that were to be seen. I noticed that they themselves had their own wares adorning their chests, but in such a way as to seem that they were only wearing them in order to make them appeal to customers.

By now, though, the old lady was already there with the goods. What had happened before was that the shopkeeper asked if he might inquire whether we were laying in supplies for labor service. My stepmother said yes, we were. The old man nodded disconsolately. He even raised both his wizened, age-blotched hands and let them flop back on the counter in front of him in a gesture of commiseration. It was then that my stepmother mentioned we would need a knapsack and inquired if they had one. The old man hesitated before saying, “For you we have one.” He then called out to his wife, “Fetch one out of the stockroom for the gentleman, Lovey!” The knapsack met with immediate approval, but the shopkeeper sent his wife off again for a few other articles that, in his opinion, my father “can’t do without where he is going.” On the whole, he was very tactful and sympathetic in the way he spoke to us, always doing his best to avoid having to employ the term “labor service.” The stuff he showed us was all utilitarian: a mess tin that could be sealed airtight, a penknife with all sorts of tools that folded into the handle, a belt pouch, and so forth, the sort of things, as he pointed out, that tended to be in demand among those “in similar circumstances.” My stepmother actually bought the penknife for my father. It took my fancy as well. Then after we had procured what we wanted, the shopkeeper called over to his wife, “Till!” The old lady, her plump body crammed into a black dress, squeezed herself with great difficulty between the cash register and an upholstered armchair. The shopkeeper accompanied us all the way to the door. There he said, “he hoped to have the pleasure another time,” then, stooping confidentially toward my father, quietly added, “The way we have in mind, sir, you and I.”

Now, at long last, we were indeed headed for home. We live in a big apartment block near a square where the streetcar stops. We were already on the upper floor when it occurred to my stepmother that she had forgotten to redeem the bread coupon. I had to go back to the baker’s. Only after a spell of queuing was I able to enter the shop. First of all, I had to present myself to the big-busted, blonde wife; she clipped the appropriate segment from the coupon, after which it was the baker’s turn, who weighed out the bread. He did not bother returning my greeting as it is well known in the neighborhood that he could not abide Jews. That was also why the bread he pushed at me was a good half pound short. I have also heard it said this is how more leftovers from the ration stayed in his hands. Somehow, from his angry look and his deft sleight of hand, I suddenly understood why his train of thought would make it impossible to abide Jews, for otherwise he might have had the unpleasant feeling that he was cheating them. As it was, he was acting in accordance with his conviction, his actions guided by the justice of an ideal, though that, I had to admit, might of course be something else entirely.

I rushed home from the baker’s, as I was famished by then, so I was only willing to loiter with Annamarie for a quick word, for just as I was making my way up the stairs, she was skipping down them. She lives on our floor, with the Steiners, whom these days we are in the habit of meeting up with every evening at the Fleischmanns’. A while ago we took little notice of the neighbors, but now it has turned out that we are of the same race, which calls for some exchanging of views of an evening on the matter of our mutual prospects. We two, meanwhile, usually talk about other things, which is how I found out that the Steiners are in fact only her uncle and aunt, since her parents are in the process of divorcing, and because they have not yet managed to reach an agreement concerning her, they decided it was better if she were here rather than with either one of them. Before this, for the same reason, she had been at a boarding school, just as I was some time ago. She too is fourteen years old, or thereabouts. She has a long neck and is already starting to round out under her yellow star. She had likewise been sent off to the baker’s. She wanted to know whether I fancied a game of rummy that afternoon, four-handed, with her and the two sisters. They live on the floor above us. Annamarie is friends with them, but I know them only casually, from seeing them in the outside corridor and in the air-raid shelter. The younger sister looks to be only eleven or twelve years old; the older one, I know from Annamarie, is the same age as her. From time to time, if I happen to be in our room overlooking the courtyard, I quite often see her hurrying along the outside corridor on her way to or from home. I have even come face-to-face with her a couple of times in the street doorway. I supposed this would be a chance to get to know her better: I would have rather liked that. But right then I remembered my father, so I told the girl not today, because Father had been called up. At that, she immediately remembered that she had already heard about the business with my father at home, from her uncle. She said, “Of course.” We fell silent for a short while, after which she asked, “What about tomorrow?” I told her, “The day after, rather.” Even so I immediately added, “Perhaps.”

When I got home, I found my father and stepmother already at the table. While she busied herself with my plate, my stepmother asked if I was hungry. “Ravenous,” I said, on the spur of the moment, not thinking about anything else, since it was the case anyway. She heaped up my plate too, but barely put anything on her own. It was not me but my father who noticed this, and he asked her why. She replied something along the lines that her stomach couldn’t tolerate any food right now, which is when I immediately saw my mistake. True, Father disapproved of her doing that, reasoning that she should not neglect herself now, of all times, when her strength and stamina were most needed. My stepmother made no response, but I heard a noise, and when I looked up I saw what it was: she was crying. It was again highly embarrassing, so I tried to keep my eyes fixed just on my plate. All the same, I noticed the movement as my father reached for her hand. A minute later I could hear they were very quiet, and when I again took a cautious glimpse at them, they were sitting hand in hand, looking intently at one another, the way men and women do. I have never cared for that, and this time too it made me feel awkward. Though the thing is basically quite natural, I suppose, I still don’t like it, I couldn’t say why. It was immediately easier when they started to talk. Mr. Sütő again came up briefly, and of course the box and our other lumberyard; I heard that Father felt reassured to know that at least these were “in good hands,” as he put it. My stepmother shared his relief, though she returned, if only in passing, to the matter of “guarantees,” in that these were based solely on word of honor, and the big question was whether that was sufficient. Father shrugged and replied that there was no longer any guarantee of anything, not just in business but also “in other areas of life.” My stepmother, a sigh breaking from her lips, promptly agreed: she was sorry she had brought the matter up, and she asked my father not to speak that way, not to brood on that sort of thing. But that set him wondering how my stepmother was going to cope with the major burdens that she was going to bear the brunt of, in such difficult times, all alone, without him; my stepmother answered that she was not going to be on her own, since I was here by her side. The two of us, she carried on, would take care of one another until my father was back with us once more. What’s more, turning toward me and cocking her head slightly to one side, she asked me if that was how it would be. She was smiling, yet her lips were trembling as she said it. Yes, it would, I told her. My father too scrutinized me, a fond look in his eye. That somehow got to me, and in order again to do something for his benefit I pushed my plate away. He noticed, and asked why I had done that. I said, “I’m not hungry.” I saw that this pleased him: he stroked my head. At that touch, for the first time today, something choked in my throat too, though it was not tears, more a kind of queasiness. I would have rather my father had no longer been here. It was a truly lousy feeling, but it came over me so distinctly that it was all I could think of, and right then I became totally confused. I would have been quite capable of crying right then, but there wasn’t time for that because the guests arrived.

My stepmother had spoken about them just beforehand: only close family, was how she put it. Seeing my father make a gesture of some kind, she added, “Look, they just want to say good-bye. That’s only natural!” No sooner was that said than the doorbell rang: it was my stepmother’s older sister and their mama. Soon Father’s parents, my grandfather and grandmother, also arrived. We hastened to get grandmother settled on the sofa straightaway, because the thing with her is that even wearing spectacles with bottle-thick lenses she is blind as a bat and just as deaf to boot. For all that, she wants to join in and have a hand in what is going on around her. On these occasions, then, one has one’s work cut out, because one has to constantly yell into her ear what’s happening while also being smart about stopping her joining in, since anything she might do would only throw things into confusion.

My stepmother’s mama arrived wearing a distinctly martial, conical brimmed hat that even had a diagonal feather on the front. She soon took it off, however, which was when her gorgeous, thinning, snow white hair with the straggly bun came into view. She has a narrow, sallow face, enormous dark eyes, and two withered flaps of skin dangling from her neck, which gives her the appearance of a very alert, discerning hunting dog. Her head had a slight continual tremble to it. She was delegated the task of packing up my father’s knapsack since she is handy at those sorts of jobs, and she set to work straightaway, following the list that my stepmother provided her.

That left nothing for my stepmother’s sister to do, however. She is a lot older than my stepmother and doesn’t look like a sibling at all: diminutive, plump, and with a face like an astonished doll. She prattled on endlessly, sobbed, and hugged everyone. I had trouble freeing myself from her springy, powder-scented bosom. When she sat down, all the flesh on her body flopped onto her stumpy thighs. And not to forget my grandpa, he remained standing beside my grandma’s sofa, listening to her grumbles with a patient, impassive expression on his face. To begin with, she was in tears on account of my father, but then after a while her own troubles started to displace that worry to the back of her mind. Her head ached, and she moaned about the rushing and roaring that her high blood pressure produced in her ears. Grandpa was well used to this by now; he didn’t even bother to respond, but neither did he budge from her side throughout. I didn’t hear him speak so much as once, yet whenever I glanced that way I would always see him there, in the same corner, which gradually lapsed into gloom as the afternoon wore on, until just a patch of subdued, yellowish light filtered through onto his bare forehead and the curve of his nose, while the pits of his eyes and the lower part of his face were sunk in shadow. Only from a tiny glint in the eyes could one tell that he was nonetheless following, unnoticed, everything that moved in the room.

On top of that, one of my stepmother’s cousins also came by with her husband. I addressed him as Uncle Willie, since that is his name. He has a slight limp, for which he wears a shoe with a built-up sole on one foot; on the other hand, he has this to thank for the privilege of not having to go off to a labor camp. His head is pear-shaped, broad, bulging, and bald on top, but narrowing at the cheeks and toward the chin. His views are listened to with respect in the family because before setting up a betting shop he had been in journalism. True to form, he at once wanted to pass on some interesting pieces of news that he had learned “from a confidential source” that he characterized as “absolutely reliable.” He seated himself in an armchair, his gammy leg stretched stiffly out in front, and, rubbing his hands together with a dry rasp, informed us that before long “a decisive shift in our position is to be anticipated,” since “secret negotiations” over us had been entered into “between the Germans and the Allied powers, through neutral intermediaries.” The way Uncle Willie explained it, even the Germans “had by now come to recognize that their position on the battlefronts is hopeless.” He was of the opinion that we, “the Jews of Budapest,” were “coming in handy” for them in their efforts “to wring advantages, at our expense, out of the Allies,” who of course would do all they could for us; at which point he mentioned what he regarded as “an important factor,” which he was familiar with from his days as a journalist, and that was what he referred to as “world opinion,” the way he put it being that the latter had been “shocked” by what was happening to us. It was a hard bargain, of course, he went on, and that is precisely what explained the current severity of measures against us; but then these were merely natural consequences of “the bigger game, in which we are actually pawns in an international blackmailing gambit of breath-taking scale”; he also said, however, that, being well aware of “what goes on behind the scenes,” he looked on all this as essentially no more than “a spectacular bluff ” that was designed to drive the price higher, and he asked us to be just a bit patient while “events unfold.” Whereupon Father asked him if any of this might be expected by tomorrow, or was he also to regard his own call-up as “mere bluff,” indeed, should he maybe not even bother going off to the labor camp tomorrow. That rattled Uncle Willie a bit. “Ahem, no, of course not,” he answered. But he did say that he was quite confident my father would soon be back home. “We are now at the twelfth hour,” was how he put it, rubbing his hands all the more. To that he also added, “If I had ever been so sure about any of my tips as I am about this one, I wouldn’t be stone broke now!” He was about to continue but my stepmother and her mama had just finished with the knapsack, and my father got up from his seat to test its weight.

The last person to arrive was my stepmother’s oldest brother, Uncle Lajos. He fulfills some terribly important function in our family, though I’d be hard put to define exactly what that was. He immediately wanted to talk in private with my father. From what I could observe, that irked my father, and though phrasing it very tactfully, he suggested they get it over with quickly. Uncle Lajos then unexpectedly drew me into service. He said he would like “a little word” with me. He hauled me off to a secluded corner of the room and pinned me up against a cupboard, face-to-face with him. He started off by saying that, as I knew, my father would “be leaving us” tomorrow. I said I knew that. Next he wanted to know whether I was going to miss his being here. Though a bit annoyed by the question, I answered, “Naturally.” Feeling this was in some way not quite enough, I immediately supplemented it with, “A lot.” With that he merely nodded profusely for a while, a pained expression on his face.

Next, though, I learned a couple of intriguing and surprising things from him. For instance, that the time of my life that he said was “the happy, carefree years of childhood” had now drawn to a close for me with today’s sadness. No doubt I had not yet considered it like that, he said. I admitted that I hadn’t. All the same, he carried on, no doubt his words did not come as any great surprise to me. They didn’t, I said. He then brought to my attention that with my father’s departure my stepmother would be left without support, and although the family “would keep an eye on us,” from now on I was going to be her mainstay. To be sure, he said, I would be discovering all too soon “what worry and self-denial are.” It was obvious that from now on my lot could not go on as well as it had up till now, and he did not wish to make any secret about that, as he was talking to me “man-to-man.” “You too,” he said, “are now a part of the shared Jewish fate,” and he then went on to elaborate on that, remarking that this fate was one of “unbroken persecution that has lasted for millennia,” which the Jews “have to accept with fortitude and self-sacrificing forbearance,” since God has meted it out to them for their past sins, so for that very reason from Him alone could mercy be expected, but until then He in turn expects of us that, in this grave situation, we all stand our ground on the place He has marked out for us “in accordance with our strengths and abilities.” I, for instance, I was informed, would have to hold my own as head of the family in the future. He inquired whether I sensed the strength and readiness within myself to do that. Though I did not quite follow the train of thought that had led up to this, particularly what he said about the Jews, their sins, and their God, I still grasped somehow what he was driving at. So I said, “Yes.” He seemed contented. Good lad, he said. He always knew I was a clever boy, endowed with “profound feelings and a deep sense of responsibility,” which in the midst of so many afflictions, to some degree, represented a solace for him, as was clear from what he had said. Grasping my chin with his fingers, the uppers of which were covered in tufts of hair and the undersides slightly moist with sweat, he now tipped my face upward, and in a quiet, slightly trembling voice said the following: “Your father is preparing to set off on a long journey. Have you prayed for him?” There was a hint of severity in his gaze, and it may have been this that awakened in me a keen sense of negligence toward my father, because, to be sure, I would never have thought of that of my own accord. Now that he had aroused it within me, however, I suddenly began to feel it as a burden, like some kind of debt, and in order to free myself of that I confessed, “No, I haven’t.” “Come with me,” he said.

I had to accompany him over to the room on the courtyard side. There we prayed, surrounded by a few shabby pieces of furniture that were no longer in use. Uncle Lajos first placed a little, round black cap with a silky sheen on the back of his head at the spot where his thinning gray hair formed a tiny bald patch. I too had to bring along my cap from the hall. Next he produced a black-bound, red-bordered little book from the inner pocket of his jacket and his spectacles from the breast pocket. He then launched into reading out the prayer, while I had to repeat after him the same portion of text he had preceded me with. It went well at first, but I soon began to flag in the effort, and besides, I was a bit put out by not understanding a single word of what we were saying to God, since I had to recite to Him in Hebrew, a language unknown to me. In order somehow to be able to keep up, I was therefore increasingly obliged to watch Uncle Lajos’s lip movements, so in actual fact out of the whole business all that remained with me of what we mumbled was the sight of those moistly wriggling, fleshy lips and the incomprehensible gabble of a foreign tongue. Oh, and a scene that I could see through the window, over Uncle Lajos’s shoulder: right at that moment the older sister from upstairs scurried home along the outside corridor, on the far side of the courtyard, a floor above ours. I think I got a bit mixed up over the text as well. Still, when the prayer had come to an end Uncle Lajos seemed to be pleased, and the expression on his face was such that even I was almost convinced we had really accomplished something in Father’s cause. When it comes down to it, of course, this was certainly better than it had been before with the weight of that nagging sensation.

We returned to the room on the street side. Evening had drawn in. We closed the windows, with the blackout paper stuck over the panes, on the indigo-hued, humid spring evening. That entirely confined us within the room. The hubbub was by now tiring, and the cigarette smoke also started to sting my eyes. I was driven to yawning a lot. My stepmother’s mama set the table. She had brought our supper herself, in her capacious handbag. She had even managed to procure some meat on the black market. She had made a point of relating that earlier, on arrival. My father even promptly paid for it from his leather wallet. We were already eating when, without warning, Uncle Steiner and Uncle Fleischmann also dropped by. They too wanted to take leave of Father. Uncle Steiner launched right away into a “don’t anyone mind us.” He said: “I’m Steiner. Please, don’t get up.” As ever, he was in fraying slippers, his rounded paunch poking out from under his unbuttoned waistcoat, the perennial stub of a foul-smelling cigar in his mouth. He had a big, ruddy head, the childlike parting of the hair giving him a distinctly odd impression. Uncle Fleischmann was utterly unnoticeable beside him, being a diminutive man of immaculate appearance, with white hair, ashen skin, owlish spectacles, and a perpetual slightly worried air on his face. He bowed mutely at Uncle Steiner’s side, wringing his hands as if in apology for Uncle Steiner, or so it seemed, though I’m not sure about that. The two old codgers are inseparable, even though they are forever bickering, because there is no topic on which they can agree. They shook hands in turn with my father. Uncle Steiner even patted him on the back, calling him “Old boy,” and then going on to crack his old quip: “Chin down! Don’t lose our disheartenment!” He also said — and even Uncle Fleischmann nodded furiously along with this — that they would continue to look out for me and the “young lady” (as he called my stepmother). He blinked his button eyes, then pulled my father to his paunch and embraced him. After they had gone everything was drowned by the clatter of cutlery, the hum of conversation, and the fumes of the food and the thick tobacco smoke. By now all that got through to me, separating themselves out from the surrounding fog as it were, were disconnected scraps of some face or gesture, especially the tremulous, bony, yellow head of my stepmother’s mama as she served each plate; the two palms of Uncle Lajos’s hands raised in protest as he refused the meat, since it was pork and his faith forbade it; the pudgy cheeks, lively jaw, and moist eyes of my stepmother’s older sister; then Uncle Willie’s bald cranium unexpectedly looming pinkish in the cone of the light’s rays, and fragments of his latest blithe anatomization; on top of which, I also recollect Uncle Lajos’s solemn words, received in dead silence, in which he invoked God’s assistance in the matter of “our being able, before long, to gather together again at the family table, each and every one of us, in peace and love and good health.” I barely saw anything of my father, and all that I made out of my stepmother was that a great deal of attention and consideration were being paid toward her— almost more than toward my father — and that at one point she complained of a headache, so several of them pressed her as to whether she would like a tablet or a compress, but she didn’t want either. Then again, every now and then, I couldn’t help noticing my grandmother and how much she got in the way, how she had to be guided back to the sofa time and time again, her umpteen complaints, and her blind eyes, which through the thick, steamed-up, tear-smudged lenses of her glasses looked just like two peculiar, perspiring insects. A moment came when everyone got up from the table. The final farewells ensued. My grandmother and grandfather left separately though, somewhat before my stepmother’s family. What stayed with me as maybe the strangest experience of that entire evening was Grandfather’s sole act to draw attention to himself when he pressed his tiny, sharply defined bird’s head for no more than an instant, but really fiercely, almost crazily, to the breast of my father’s jacket. His entire body was racked by a spasm. He then hastened quickly to the door, leading my grandmother by the elbow. Everyone parted to let them through. After that I too was embraced by several people and felt the sticky marks of lips on my face. Finally, there was a sudden hush after all of them left.

Then it was time for me too to say good-bye to Father. Or maybe more for him to say good-bye to me. Hard to say. I don’t even clearly remember the circumstances; my father must have gone outside with the guests, because for a while I was left on my own at the table, covered as it was with the remains of the supper, and I only came to with a start on Father’s return. He was alone. He wanted to say good-bye. There won’t be time for that at dawn tomorrow, as he put it. He too recited much the same sorts of things about my responsibility and my growing up as I had already heard before that afternoon from Uncle Lajos, only without God and not so nicely phrased, and much more briefly. He also mentioned my mother, suggesting that she might try now “to lure me away from home to herself.” I could see that notion troubled him greatly. The two of them had battled for a long time over my custody until the court eventually ruled in my father’s favor, so I found it quite understandable that he would not wish to lose his rights in regard to me now merely as a result of his unfortunate situation. Still, he appealed to my judgment, rather than the law, and to the difference between my stepmother, who had “created a cozy family home” for me, and my mother, who had “deserted” me. I started to prick up my ears at this, because on that particular detail I had heard a different story from my mother: according to her, Father had been at fault. That is why she had felt driven to choose another husband, Uncle “Dini” (or Dénes, to be more correct), who had incidentally gone off just last week, likewise to labor camp. In truth, though, I had never managed to figure out anything more precise, and even this time my father immediately reverted to my stepmother, remarking that I had her to thank for getting out of the boarding school, and that my place “is here, by her side.” He said a lot more about her, and by now I had a shrewd idea why my stepmother was not present for these words: they would no doubt have embarrassed her. They began to be a bit wearisome for me, however. I no longer remember now what I promised Father. The next thing was that, all at once, I found myself enfolded between his arms, his hug catching me off guard and somehow unprepared after all he had said. I don’t know if my tears stemmed from that or simply from exhaustion, or maybe even because, ever since the first exhortation that I had received that morning from my stepmother, I had somehow been preparing all along to shed them unfailingly; whatever the reason, it was nevertheless good that this was indeed what happened, and I sensed that it also gratified Father to see them. After that he sent me off to bed. By then I was dead tired anyway. All the same, I thought, at least we were able to send him off to the labor camp, poor man, with memories of a nice day.