Train to Budapest (10 page)

Amara smiles. ‘Was it really the cobbler who did it?’ she asks tenderly, remembering her father Amintore.

‘An uneducated but remarkably ingenious cobbler.’ There is something tender and happy in the voice of the man with the

‘Who told you this story?’

‘It’s an old legend. It’s more important to know how to tell stories than to know how to use your fists my mother used to say, and I know now she was right.’ He smiles with his lips together. His laugh is restrained and vigilant, the laugh of a man who has learned always to keep himself under control, both in joy and in pain.

An anonymous room, shabby little brown leatherette armchairs, a glass-topped table with some dog-eared magazines whose pages look as if they have been constantly turned by bored hands. A big dirty window. A cage-like structure with inside it a woman in uniform, her face soporific and gloomy. Why are police stations all over the world so similar, shabby and anonymous, never welcoming?

They have to wait, not because there’s a queue, but because various officials haven’t yet arrived. This the sleepy-looking official explains, indicating the little leatherette armchairs whose cushions carry the imprint of the backs and bottoms of all those who have passed hours waiting for a passport or a certificate or power of attorney.

Finally a door opens and it’s their turn. The man of the gazelles talks quietly, in sophisticated and perhaps rather literary Polish. The police officer fixes him with a blank look but is nonetheless politely serious and attentive. Hans repeats what Amara has told him: ‘This lady, an Italian from Florence called Maria Amara Sironi, is trying to trace a childhood friend of hers, a certain Emanuele Orenstein. We know that at one time he was living in Italy, but in 1939 the family returned to Vienna to live in a large building they owned on Schulerstrasse. In 1941 they were ejected from their apartment and sent to the Łódź ghetto. Early in 1943 something happened that Emanuele did not have time to enter in his diary. We don’t know what it was, but we can imagine. He must have been loaded onto a train to Auschwitz, or so it seems. After 1942, all Jews in the Łódź ghetto were sent to Auschwitz. No more has been heard of him.’

‘How do you know all this, Dr Wilkowsky?’ asks the policeman, perhaps growing a little more interested in the story, seduced by Hans’s beautiful voice.

‘The Signora Maria Amara Sironi here present had letters from
Vienna and later from the Łódź ghetto before Emanuele vanished. His last letters are in the form of a diary written in pencil in a black exercise book hidden in a hole and discovered after the war. A simple schoolbook with pages ruled in squares for doing sums, which some charitable person, perhaps even Emanuele Orenstein himself, posted to this lady at an address written inside it. We presume he was deported to a concentration camp. The nearest was Auschwitz, so he probably ended up there. But although Signora Sironi has been to the camp and examined the archives, she could not find his name.’

‘And how do you think I can help you after thirteen years?’

‘At Auschwitz they told her that some of the camp documents have been transferred to police archives here. We would like permission to study them.’

‘Water under the bridge, Signora Sironi. The dead are dead; let sleeping dogs lie – you know the proverb?’ translates Hans reluctantly.

‘Out of more than a million Jews deported to Auschwitz, six thousand survived to be liberated. Emanuele could have been among them.’

‘They disposed of the children immediately. Please remind your Italian friend of that. It is unlikely any child survived.’

‘But Emanuele was fifteen and seemed older than his years, and he was strong too, used to running and climbing trees. They may have kept him alive to work.’

‘All things are possible. But unlikely.’

‘Do you really have these documents? The lady is not only here to look for this boy. She also has to write articles for her newspaper. May we show you her press card?’

‘Don’t bother. I know nothing,’ answers the policeman in an undertone, immediately translated by Hans who in this instance shows himself an excellent interpreter. Amara feels the policeman is lying. Why would he not want her to poke her nose into the archives of the SS? Were there secrets the authorities preferred not to reveal to the inquisitive? Or was it that they couldn’t accept her as a journalist, only as a woman looking for a man, or rather a child, who vanished many years ago?

‘Don’t you think if he’s alive he would have got in touch with you?’ asks the policeman in broken German.

‘That’s what the man with the gazelles believes too,’ says Amara and hastily corrects herself, ‘that’s what Dr Hans Wilkowsky also believes. If he were alive, he would have got in touch. But I believe he could be alive, but may not have tried to get in touch with me. He was a proud boy. And then … he may have assumed I’m married, as in fact I was, and that I wouldn’t want to see him. He was discreet. But I really do think he could be alive and holding back and keeping silent.’

‘He says go back to Auschwitz and take a closer look,’ translates Hans quickly. ‘Sometimes they changed their names. Or, he says, you could go to Vienna. You could find their house. And who knows, there might even be some trace of him in the ghetto at Łódź. There’s nothing here to help you.’

The police officer is dismissing them. He pronounces the last words on his feet, leaning on his desk with both hands and smiling impatiently. All they can do is go.

‘We should never have come near the
milicja
!’ says Hans seriously, ‘now we’ll be followed.’

‘But if we’d been spies we’d hardly have gone to them, would we? Try to be logical.’

‘Logic has nothing to do with the way they do things.’

‘But are we being logical?’

‘We think we are. But we’re just taking action. And being stupid. You by insisting on hunting for someone who vanished in ’43. And I by encouraging you.’

‘I never asked you to.’

‘I know. But Amara, you don’t understand what the cold war is. Above all it is a climate of mutual suspicion. Logic is irrelevant. What do you want to do now?’

‘Let’s start by taking shelter. It’s begun raining again.’

The man with the gazelles and the young Italian woman whose name is the opposite of sweet walk quickly, looking for a café. But they can’t find one. Hans points to some steps leading to a revolving glass door. They go up them and enter the Hotel Kazimierz. Not a soul in sight. An enormous hall, that must have known better days, welcomes them to its icy shadows. Long billiard tables are hidden under white cloths. Weak lamps hang from a high ceiling. Carpets perhaps soft and elegant in the thirties but now stained reveal their history. In one corner is an enormous piano
with an abandoned air. Beyond an arch are some small round tables with egg-coloured cloths and small artificial gardenias with dusty corollas in melancholy little vases.

They sit down at a corner table and order beers. The hotel has no wine or aperitifs. Only beer and coffee. Would they like something to eat? Amara indicates no. But Hans nods. Perhaps he has had no breakfast. What would he like? The ancient waiter, dubious pinkish hair combed across his bald skull, bends over Hans as if using his hands to try and hide the brownish marks on an apron that has not been clean for a very long time. Hans asks what there is to eat. Scrambled eggs. Bread and butter. Will that do? Fine.

Not long after they have settled at their table someone sits down at the piano that dominates the area beyond the arch. Two surprisingly light and delicate hands play the theme from
The Third
Man
, a film that has been filling cinemas all over the world.

For a moment Amara sees again the desolate streets of Vienna. The sensual footsteps of Alida Valli. Did she wear a raincoat and a hat?

‘Who directed
The Third Man
?’

‘Carol Reed,’ replies Hans confidently.

‘Do you like the cinema?’

‘I often go to see films.’

‘And who was the lead actor?’

‘Orson Welles, I think.’

‘And she was Alida Valli, wasn’t she?’

But Hans seems disinclined to discuss the film. He concentrates on his glass of frothy beer and says quietly: ‘Let’s think, Amara.’

‘Let’s think.’

‘You’re still determined to find your Emanuele? How old would he be now?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘And you’re certain you want to find him, dead or alive?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I’ll help you.’

‘No need. I can manage on my own.’

‘And what about the languages? Do you know Polish?’

‘No.’

‘And Czech?’

‘No.’

‘I think you need me.’

‘But I warn you, I’m not going to fall in love with you. And gratitude won’t make me feel obliged to sleep with you.’

‘Is that what I’ve been asking?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you think I might be genuinely interested too?’

‘Why?’

‘Because everything to do with the Nazis disturbs me. Because by now I’ve learned enough to be seized by curiosity: I want to find out whether your Emanuele is alive or dead. This is a chance to understand a bit more about what happened to the few who survived. If you’ll let me follow you, I’ll help. And in return all I want is your friendship. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘But how will you manage financially? Travel, hotels?’

‘I have some money saved. But what about your daughter Agnes and little Hans waiting for you in Poznań?’

‘My daughter is no longer alone as I thought. She’s found a companion, a Party member I frankly dislike. But at least she’s got someone. They have a slightly larger house, and something to live on.’

13

Amara returns to the modest hotel named after the famous castle that dominates the city: the Hotel Wawel on Karmelicka Street. The young porter with red hair is sitting with his head resting on folded arms, sleeping or meditating. Amara asks for her key. He lifts his head and smiles sleepily. His face is extremely beautiful. Luminous blue eyes. A small freckled nose, a shapely mouth. A delight to look at, Amara thinks, taking the key the boy holds out to her. She goes towards the lift with a sense of peace. Can beauty give peace? Can beauty, in the very moment when you limit yourself to the pleasure of seeing, put you in harmony with the world?

Reflecting on beauty, Amara gets into the lift, presses the third-floor button and leans on the lift wall, closing her eyes. Can there be justice in beauty, or do those two truths oppose each other, each exclusive of the other? Is not beauty also equilibrium, the harmony of reason? Isn’t disinterested intelligence a form of beauty? And does not thought, when generous and just, become beauty?

Her room is at the far end of a corridor of threadbare wall-to-wall carpeting. She struggles to turn the heavy key in the lock. Her room is small and smells of smoke. There is an iron bedstead against the wall, an unnecessarily high bedside locker of discoloured wood, a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and a handbasin with a rusty mirror over it. The bathroom is across the corridor, some twenty metres from the bedroom. Best go there at once so as not to have to come out again in her nightdress. The doors of the wardrobe in which she puts her jacket and bag are nearly off their hinges and squeak in a sinister way. Not easy to think about beauty in such unfriendly surroundings.

The bathroom is tiled in red and yellow; a strange contrast with the insipid brown of her room. The toilet has no seat. She has to balance delicately so as not to touch the bowl that goodness knows how many guests must have used. Amara is a bit squeamish even
after living through a war in which she suffered all kinds of discomforts. She remembers the house in the mountains of Tuscany where they spent a few months as evacuees. A peasants’ home; its rooms oozed moisture, the beds were very high and the lavatory was outside in the yard, a stinking enclosure used by at least twenty people. You were pestered by flies by day and by ravenous mosquitoes at night. Back in Rifredi where Amintore had to return to his work as a shoemaker, they had suffered hunger, and would spend all day looking for something to put into their mouths. Often she had ventured near the hospital dump, knowing that frequently whole bags of boiled potatoes left by the patients were thrown out. She would take them home to be boiled a second time and they would eat them greedily. Just like Pinocchio with the pear skins. Before the war she hadn’t dared go anywhere near the hospital dump; the mere sight of those bloodstained pieces of gauze mixed with scraps of food had disgusted her. But you could not be fastidious and pernickety when you were really hungry. She would rummage among the high piles of refuse in her rubber boots, among broken glass syringes, medicine bottles, dirty gauze and greasy rags, without so much as holding her nose.

Now sleep fogs her thoughts even though, once in bed, she can’t get to sleep: what is she doing in a cheap hotel in this unfamiliar country? Is it really so important for her to find Emanuele? Thirteen years since he disappeared. Why go on struggling to find someone when she no longer knows anything about him? She could meet him in the street and not recognise him, have him before her eyes and not know it. And this man who seems so attached to her? Could that be just a trap for … for what? You’re getting much too suspicious, Amara, she tells herself, half asleep, searching in her memory for the face of the man with the gazelles on his chest. His body will always now be tied to that image even though she has not since seen him wearing the jumper with gazelles running across it.

When she wakes next morning, she spends a few minutes trying to remember where she is. Her mind has emerged fresh from a vivid dream in which she has seen Emanuele up in their usual leafy tree in the garden of Villa Lorenzi, picking cherries. The bitter scent of wild fruit brushed delicately against her nostrils. She remembers spending a long time watching him climb the trunk
with his grazed knees and then, agile as a monkey, move from one branch to another. Watching him she felt again the sensation she had known as a little girl. Not so much passion as a blessedly secure sense of unity. He was part of her and she was part of him. They did not need to speak to understand one another. They knew they would go on belonging to one another. They were in no hurry to make love. It was as if they were afraid of becoming adults too quickly with no chance to go back. Though they did kiss, lips locked together, rolling in each other’s arms in a field. Or sitting up in the cherry tree, with leaves whisking their cheeks and threading their hair.