György Konrád

Departure and Return

Excerpts

...

A staff sergeant at the gendarmerie worded the permit and knocked it out on a typewriter with his large hands. It took some time to match the information on the birth records and police registration papers, and integrate that into the text of the gendarmerie permit. Rifles on a stand in the corner, hats with cock-feathers on the hat stand, the smell of boots, an old desk, a green table lamp, an inking pad, separate permits for each of us four, all in all eight thumps with the seal. At the other table, a corporal was eating bacon, and looked at me. "So you're leaving?" "Yes we are."
The staff sergeant handed me the four sheets of paper. He had worked hard on them and he was satisfied with himself, and with me because I smiled at him deferentially. He wished me a pleasant trip, for which I thanked him. The papers fit into the inner pocket of my linen suit jacket. Once out on the street, I immediately knew that I had something in my pocket that other Jews did not. The town leadership had given its blessing to our departure.

We took a powder, was the saying then. Uncle Andor laid out his plan to us with grim self-assuredness: we were to hide in the workshop they called a glove factory, three streets over. We couldn't take much there with us, as the Arrow Cross was making patrols and we had to be inconspicuous. We could sleep on the cutting table and wash up back at the basin in the toilet. We couldn't turn on the lights, but if the sun was shining, enough light came into the basement room to read by at midday. We didn't hear any shooting outside, so hoped the worst would not come. By the second day certain comforts made their absence felt in the dark workshop, particularly for Uncle Andor, who noticed in the morning that he had left his shaving brush at home. A painful loss. Though you could rub up a little rudimentary lather with the tip of your finger after wetting and applying a little soap, neither this operation, nor its result, would be aesthetically satisfactory. Uncle Andor felt it was inadvisable to return home yet (though it was not St Bartholomew's night), but nonetheless, he must get the shaving brush.
It really would have been slightly comical if Uncle Andor just ambled out of the hiding place, went home three streets over, then upon returning carefully locked from inside the iron-grilled gate that opened on the street. As long as he was going for the shaving brush, why not have the whole family just go home and wait for whatever came, or even look for a better hiding place? The simplest solution in Uncle Andor's eyes (after excluding the miserable options of brushless shaving and not shaving at all) was for me to be the one to fetch the brush.
I set off. Soldiers with armbands were standing at the gate of the third building down. It was drizzling, and perhaps they really didn't know what their job was supposed to be. They called me over.
"Hey kid, come here. Aren't you a Jew?"
"Why would I be?," I asked.
"Well, you could be," they said.
"I could," said I.
"Well, aren't you?"
"Why would I be?" I asked, returning to my original question.
"Hey, that's the way Jews talk."
"Are you a Jew?," I asked.
"Why would I be?", he asked.
"Because you know how they talk."
"Come on, drop your pants." I didn't move. We stared at each other. "How about it then?"
"It's raining."
"All right. Get going." He and I both knew the score. That soldier simply didn't feel like killing me.
From there to the apartment, nothing in particular happened. When I got there, the elderly ladies asked me excitedly where the family had spent the night. I no longer remember what I came up with-something about being guests somewhere -but they got a peek of me slipping the shaving brush into my pocket from the shelf below the bathroom mirror. "You came for that?," asked one of the ladies.
"Well then, good-bye," I said.
On the corner, I saw Arrow Cross men coming up Hollán utca at a run. I took a quick turn off to the left, hoping to get back to my family via a detour onto Pozsonyi út. But I didn't figure that they would be making parallel runs, and in large numbers, and that they would not only be coming down Pozsonyi út in a line that spanned the entire street, but also from behind-from the Szent István körút-in a chain to sweep up everyone in the street. In those days it was not hard to find Jews at midday in that part of town, the Újlipótváros. Those they detained were sent to the brick works in Óbuda, and from there they could be sent off on foot marching westward. There were still a few spots for packing them off onto railroad cars.
A few weeks would still need to pass for them to adopt the simplified procedure of fencing in an area and shooting people into the Danube. There was a thin man in glasses wearing a white armband who was trying to explain something about his exceptional status, since he had once risked his life in fighting against the Commune. The Arrow Cross man was silent for a moment, then spit a cigarette butt into his face and led him off to the side. People stood in line to have their papers checked. It wasn't enough to have a document with an official seal; you had to answer questions.
I picked out a man in a leather coat and hat who had flipped its visor up, putting people through test questions, hands on his hips. There were still two in line before me. I slipped down on hands and knees and crawled off right by his brown hunting boots. There was an enormous racket going on, and he couldn't really see what was happening off to the side amid that press. I was careful to just amble home, going around the block. I peeked around to make sure no one was around so I could knock on the workshop door unnoticed.
"So you're back?," asked Uncle Andor, kindly patting my head. He then had a shave, not skimping on cologne, then paced up and down stroking his chin. The lunch hour was approaching. Uncle Andor said that this was not a good hiding place, so one by one everyone should return to where he had been staying. As for my sister Éva and me, we should go over to Andor's place for lunch after four. Until then we should wait over there "at that woman's"-meaning Aunt Zsófi. He liked to speak disparagingly of her. But when we went over to 9 Hollán utca at four o'clock and rang the bell, the only one to answer the door was the same elderly lady who noticed my little manoeuver with the shaving brush that morning. When I asked where the family was, she said that my uncle, his wife, and their two children had left with their luggage. Where she did not know.
My sister Éva and I stood around in the vestibule, at a loss what to do. It took a little time for us to grasp that our relatives had left for a hiding place-meaning that uncle Andor had procured them false papers, with which they would register as a Christian family of Transylvanian refugees under a new name, and stay with acquaintances who undertook this for money. We went back there the next day and the following one, but there was no news of our relatives.

The Jews were still being deported to Auschwitz from Újpest and Kispest, outer districts of Budapest, as late as the summer. They could have come into the city on foot or by tram, but they followed orders and went to the railroad station. Those among them who were Communists, Zionists, and resisters, and the bolder ones generally, got hold of false papers and went into hiding. Middle-class people more resigned, and perhaps more fearful, tried to ride out the most dangerous times in safe houses. These safe houses were inhabited by the better-off and more secular Jews who had managed to contact one of the neutral diplomatic missions. The poorer, orthodox Jews, with their black beards and hats, and wives in shawls, and sons with sidelocks, and daughters with big eyes, went to the ghetto. That was really their place, where their congregation was, and the greatest concentration of synagogues; both they and the neutral diplomats must have felt this. It was open season in the ghetto: drunken Arrow Cross men went in and shot at will.
Swiss letters of protection-Schutzpässe-were distributed in an operation organized by that country's consul, Carl Lutz. His name is mentioned less often than that of Raoul Wallenberg, though Lutz saved as many people as his Swedish colleague. So we moved to 49 Pozsonyi út, into the protection of the Helvetic Confederation, a building where my greatest respect went to three or four young men hiding out in the cellar. People whispered that they were resisters, who had defected from the military. There were perhaps eighty of us living in a three-room apartment on the fourth floor. At night we would stack up any furniture that could not be slept on. Not everyone got a bed or mattress, but everyone had at least a rug to sleep on. The four of us boys slept on mattresses on the floor by the window, behind a pile of furniture. It was like an ongoing house party. I wasn't bored much, and there was always someone to talk to. For two hours every morning, we could leave the building, five children hanging on to a beautiful young woman. Aunt Zsófi protected us, as perhaps we did her. Whoever asked for her papers was astounded. "Are these kids all yours?" This closeness diminished as time passed and some of those in the house moved down to hiding places, while others were taken away during spur-of-the-moment raids and shot into the Danube.

In the street below still Germans were shouting. The Russians were getting very close, but the Arrow Cross was still doing away with Jews and Christian defectors in the neighborhood. This verb-"do away with"-was on every public poster, and it meant kill on the spot, and leave the body there. You could hear weapons popping off down in the street. By this time, documents meant nothing at all. All that had meaning was drunkenness, and fear, and the sympathy or antipathy of any given moment. The men in armbands with guns in their hands had plenty of people to shoot, though they had begun to sense that they couldn't execute every single Jew. They probably had trouble getting into the mood for man-hunting every day. Filling the Danube, where the ice was now breaking up, with old ladies and little girls, was an ornamental art whose charm was only intermittent. Even these defenceless people, of whom they could have killed as many as they felt like-even these expressed, if nothing else, at least the gentlest resistance in their eyes, reinforced by the gaze of passersby, who watched the quiet winter coats being led down to the riverbank with some degree of empathy. Of course you needed to make time for other things too, like drinking and getting warm. It must have occurred to some of the men with armbands that, if the Russians were already at the outskirts of the city-and with plenty of artillery too, judging from the unending din-then they would hardly stop there, but would move all the way into the centre of town. If they occupied the entire city, then the Arrow Cross people could expect anything but a decoration. This was not a pleasant thought for them. The mood for murder flared up and flagged by turns.
It was more dangerous to shoot at Russians, but the Jews were fish in a barrel. Life is a matter of luck, and death bad luck. You can do something for yourself, but not much, and sometimes pride keeps you from doing even that much. Several people were taken from the apartment the previous night. From the next room, by chance, and not from ours.

I watch the Germans. Can they really think that they will drive back the Russians, just five streets down? They are intelligent, except for knowing what you are supposed to do and what you aren't. The Arrow Cross, on the other hand, are just the bottom of the barrel, the ones who flunked in class. Their only talent is for torturing cats. A child has to grow up to understand just how undeveloped adults are. A fourteen-year-old kid with a gun accompanied unarmed people down to the bank of the Danube. Instead of taking the gun from his hand, they went where he ordered them. Most victims just call it fate, a thing that should cause fear in them, and stir them to self-defense before the threat, be it sleet falling on their garden or death at the hands of another. But domestic animals get used to having their companions cut down around them, and so do people. You just can't feel outrage and empathy every half hour. We stand out on the roof terrace, hearing the occasional rumble of shots from nearby streets. Someone (armed) checks someone else's papers (unarmed). The one doesn't like the other's face, or his papers, and stands him at the wall and shoots him dead. Those taken down to the Danube have to stand in a row, their faces to the river. Their shots come from behind.
On the corner outside of 49 Pozsonyi út stood a barricade of cobblestones from the street. Dr Erdős had been pulled out of the building, together with other older Jewish men, to move stones; the younger ones had long been taken away. Six stones high and four deep: such a wall was impenetrable. The T-34 tanks that had made it all the way from Stalingrad would certainly be stopped dead here.
From the entrance door of the building, we children watched as the old men, bent over in the cold, picked at the stones with pokers and hammers, trying to separate the span-thick blocks, stuck together with pitch, then lifted them in their laps and carried them over to the roadblock. Young men in knee boots, black pants and green shirts watched over the work and hurried the old men on. One of them had a whip decorated like a hansom cab driver's that he cracked on the old Jews' necks. There is no denying they could have worked with more intensity.
It was probably that very fellow with the whip who outraged an older gentleman from the next building, where Christians lived. Sometimes old men stick together, even if it means crossing denominational boundaries. In any case the old gentleman got out his shotgun from somewhere, and hit and wounded the young whip-cracker. The Arrow Cross men thought that one of the Jews had taken the shot, and started shooting around blindly. The twenty barricade builders ran for cover and fell. Dr Erdős himself made for the main door of the building with quickened steps, though not rushing so much that he would draw suspicion. I was the only one still standing in the doorway; the other children and the doorkeeper, an even older Jew, had dashed up the steps upon hearing the shots.
I opened the boarded-up entrance door. Dr Erdős hopped inside. I wanted to shut it quickly and lock it before the tall young man with an armband pursuing him could push his way in. The two of us, a child and an old man, pushed from the inside, but our besieger, maybe 25 years old, managed to get a running start and push us back enough to get the tip of his boot in the crack. The game was his. He stood before us with a pistol in his hand.
He was taller than Dr Erdős, and his lip was quivering from wounded pride. These Jews slam the door in my face, just like that? A little smile-the smile of the vanquished-flashed over Dr Erdős' face. The young man held the pistol to Erdős' face and fired a shot into his temple. Dr Kálmán Erdős fell, and his blood flowed over the muddy, imitation pink marble stone. Now the young man in uniform took aim at my forehead. I looked at him more in amazement than in fear. He lowered his pistol and headed out the door.

By this time, the trams were delivering ammunition boxes ever more desperately to the frontline-that is, four or five streets down. Courageous women would leave the building and still get bread from somewhere or other. That day we moved to the inner room to sleep, since the outer one, hit by a bomb blast, no longer had a window. We did not stay in bed, but crouched by the window instead, where we could watch the fighting. By the light of the Stalin-candles whizzing up into the sky, we saw a couple of war newsreel scenes, but in all their fullness, unbounded by any frame. A tank rumbled through the barricade, sweeping aside the basalt blocks, with other tanks and infantry in its wake. On the night of January 17-18, 1945, we watched the German soldiers, who had been on their bellies with machine guns behind the stone-piles, make a dash for the park. The fighting moved on towards Szent István körút.
So I watched the historical turning point (liberation for me, defeat for others) with my own eyes in the early dawn on January 18, 1945. A few young ladies, teachers, fashion designers and dancers hummed the Internationale, excited. We sang a German song about Flórián Geier. Aunt Magda, a tall, strawberry-blonde eurhythmics dancer, taught us these. She was a Communist, and said that we should be that too, because that was the only party in the underground. All the others were collaborating with the government. At four o'clock on that morning, we gave ourselves over to the state of liberation.
Later on, Aunt Magdi lost her enthusiasm, and tried to escape over the border in 1949, wearing the same ski boots in which she had spent the winter of the siege. The border guards shot at her, and one of the bullets found its mark. She died in the hospital.

Nineteen forty-five, January 18th: at ten in the morning I stepped out the front gate of 49 Pozsonyi út. Two Russian soldiers stood on the pavement in their torn coats, a little dirty, more indifferent and flagging than cordial. People spoke to them. They did not understand, but nodded. It was obvious that they were not much concerned with us. The two soldiers asked whether Hitler was there in the building. I had no particular information suggesting that Hitler was living with Budapest Jews in a house under Swiss protection on Pozsonyi út. Then they asked about Szálasi, head of the Arrow Cross: no, he wasn't living in our building either. After a moment we caught on that "Hitler" meant Germans and "Szálasi" meant Arrow Cross. They were fairly simple boys. They went down into the shelter with a flashlight, grasping the barrels of their submachine guns, prodded the people to stand up, and shone their light into every nook. Among the group were some deserters in civilian dress, whom they let be. The Russians were not particularly concerned with the fact that Jews were living in the building; if you tried to explain to them that you were a Jew, thereby expecting to get some kindness out of them, you didn't get far. But they were friendly enough to us boys, and we got used to their poking around in the basement looking for Hitler. There was a man down there who spoke Slovak, and could understand them a little. He immediately offered himself as an interpreter, and as the Russians went through the passageway, newly opened with a pickaxe, to the shelter next door, this Slovak-speaking Jew started barking out instructions like some newly-appointed commander in civilian clothes, selected from the ranks of the blanket-clad. Once he had conquered his final vestige of hesitation, he bade farewell to his family and ran off after the Russians.
The soldiers broke into a shop and drank a large bottle of Chat Noir cologne. They reached for it confidently, as if familiar with the brand. It was very likely the closest thing to liquor there. We flocked after them too, soldiers in civvies, locals-Jews and gentiles alike. Some resourcefully took knapsacks along.
I looted a harmonica that I later traded to Rebenyák for a bag of sugar cubes.
We could leave the building, whose neutral status had protected us, though it had not been enough to keep the other half of its residents alive. The yellow star came down from the front entrance; it now lay on a snow heap in front of the building. I was stepping from the house as a free man for the first time. I was perhaps also leaving my childhood, the years when prohibitions of all sorts hemmed me in. A few markings in Cyrillic script appeared on the sides of buildings. The shooting and bombing was over, and it was safe to come out of the cellar. There were still the occasional stray shots, but now it was the Germans shooting from the Buda bank. An entire burst of machine-gun fire would shower the street, and I learned just how flat I could press myself against a wall.

If, during unusual times, you act according to the notions born in normal ones, then you owe the Devil a trip. This requires a train ticket. The news in the line in front of the bakery, which the Dravidas had also heard, was that tickets were only available at the Rákosrendező station, a good couple of hours on foot from the centre of the city. It was a long trip, with Russian and Romanian soldiers everywhere. At times I was a bit afraid. My sister couldn't come with me, as the city was dangerous for young girls. I had no gloves, and tried to protect my hands from the cold with a hair net, who knows why. I held myself in some esteem with the thought that I was now truly hungry, and truly cold. But this long walk kept me looking, there being plenty to wonder at.
These were now second-echelon troops; the front line had already moved on from Budapest toward Vienna. Standing around on their trucks, these young men had collected all kinds of clothes, with skirts on over their pants to keep warm, and women's turbans on their heads. They were a wild bunch, making derisive remarks from the truck. We didn't understand them, but they always had a good laugh. When they urinated from the trucks, they enjoyed seeing the women turn their heads, and of course then they waved their cocks with even more gusto. One of them jumped down from the vehicle and offered a woman a square loaf of black bread, cut in half. The woman stepped back, but the soldier sidled up to her, stuffed it into her pocket, and left. The woman trembled. I took a kind of reserved interest in these round-headed boys, wondering at their parades of rags, their horsing around, and their sudden impulses. This all seemed to come naturally to them, but struck me as strange.
They didn't lack a sense of humor. Watching the rouge-lipped Romanian officers in white gloves swinging their cameras like proper gentlemen, they hunch-ed over and laughed up their sleeves like village girls looking at polished city ladies. There were those soldiers who, with a machine gun, escorted men to do a little work, just over to the neighbouring town, or country, or continent, on out past the Urals-Davay, davay! They were promised a bumazhka-identity papers-and adult men obediently walked out of town, to the Tisza, there to continue by rail to concentration camps and the distant cold, in order to get, in the unknown distance, what they really had no need of: those stamped papers. A mirage.
The number of escapees per thousand was quite small, among Jewish and gentile Hungarians alike. Many more could have escaped than actually did, and many more could have stayed alive. As for their escorts, those freshly-arrived soldiers could be ruthless, indifferent, or humane. They were unfathomable, not susceptible to understanding. They were not quite as natty, disciplined, or angular in their movements as the Germans, but less soldierly and more relaxed. They were not so regular or predictable: one would give gifts to the locals, and another would rob them. It could also happen that the same man did both. There was no particular need to fear that the Germans would rape the women, but these others could unbutton their trousers with ease. These soldiers did not kill on principle, and even if they were glum when spooning out their mess tins, they also were happy to smile at someone, just like that, for nothing. It was easy to know what they would like more than anything: a warm room with a woman and something to eat. They would pull down the moon for the woman who would give them that. Davay, little moon, davay!

...

Translated by Jim Tucker

György Konrád
is a novelist and essayist, whose latest book is A közép tágulása (The Widening Middle) The above was excerpted from Elutazás és hazatérés (Departure and Return), Budapest, Noran, 2002, the first volume of a memoir in progress.