Читать книгу The Trap - Ludovic Bruckstein - Страница 5

THE TRAP

1

The train crawled eastward, snaking along, black and sleepy. Inside the crowded goods wagon, with his knees to his mouth, Ernst listened to the monotonous clack-clack-clacking of the wheel beneath him. ‘Halt! Stoi! – Halt! Stoi! – Halt! Stoi!’ the wheel seemed to say. And the steel of the other wheels in the other three corners of the wagon made muffled reply: ‘Halt! Stoi!’ Stop! Stop! Stop!…

The train did not stop. Except rarely, on sidings, in deserted stations. And the doors did not open.

The war was over. ‘What joy!’ said Ernst to himself, sardonically. His anger had since evaporated. What else could he do except be angry, or not be angry? He could change nothing. Absolutely nothing… The lump in his throat had dissolved and now he felt like laughing. Yes, he felt like laughing, nothing less!… The wheels of the train clacked. He sank into a torpor. Inside the crowded goods wagon: the monotonous breathing of some sixty people, sitting like parcels on the plank floor, with their knees to their mouths. And a sour, stale stench of sweat. Among them was that very same young man in black uniform, a uniform now shabby, without epaulettes, without tabs. Or was he mistaken?… Nonetheless, the slicked chestnut hair was the same, the delicate profile was the same, the razor sharp nose, the greenish eyes were the same. He was yet to utter a word, but if he had opened his mouth, Ernst would have recognised that strident voice of his:

‘Halt! Stop!’

At the time Ernst had worn a yellow star sewn on his back. And on his chest. At first he had been furious, outraged. And then depressed. Why that stigma? Merely because a man was of a different nation? Of different ethnic origins, as they put it… When timid, frightened creatures began to appear on the street, with yellow stars on their chests and backs, it became somehow comical.

From above, from the crests of the surrounding mountains, you could see the town in the valley, like an island between the waters of the Tisza and the Iza: the town of Sighet, not a very large town, but an important one, the county administrative seat; indeed, it had a courthouse and a large prison, five Christian churches: Catholic, Uniat, Orthodox, Reformed and Russian Orthodox; a few Protestant prayer and meeting houses; five synagogues and around thirty Jewish prayer houses; a large hospital with many wards; a mental asylum; six primary schools; four lyceums; a large café that served Turkish coffee and tea in the front salon and which had rooms for billiards and cards at the back; a hotel with twenty rooms on the upper storey, pretentiously named The Crown; two small cake shops on the Corso, which was the main street; a brothel at the edge of town, which was named the Jardin for some unknown reason, since there was no garden nearby, but only a yard at the back, rank with weeds; and a Palace of Culture in the select district, which, with its four turrets and massive wrought iron gate, imitated a mediaeval castle, in the late, grandiloquent style of the Austro-Hungarian Empire… It was from in front of the wrought iron gate that the strident command had rung out:

‘Halt! Stop!’

The train came to a sudden stop, its brakes screeching. Through the bars of the small window could be seen a patch of bluish sky. Inside, in the semi-darkness, the crowded, monotonously breathing bodies were barely distinguishable. From up ahead the locomotive gave a protracted whistle, and then the train set in motion, its metal creaking once more…

It had been Saturday and Ernst was hurrying to get home in time for lunch. He was determined to avoid tedious reproaches. All week he would eat sporadically, where and when he could, as his time allowed or his stomach demanded, but on Saturdays all the members of the family had to take their turn washing their hands in fresh water drawn from the well in the yard, they had to sit around the table, festively laid with a white damask cloth and gleaming crockery of glass and porcelain, all of them had to sit down together. His parents and the family tradition allowed no one to be late. And so Ernst was hurrying to get home in time for lunch, when all of a sudden he heard behind him a strident voice, like a military order:

‘Halt!’

Ernst stopped. It was as if he could feel eyes boring into his back, into the spot where his yellow star was sewn. He turned around. The greenish eyes now lingered on the yellow star fixed to his chest, on the left, above his heart. In front of the wide-open wrought iron gate of the Palace of Culture, which Ernst had been passing, there stood a tall, brown-haired young man with a thin, razor-sharp nose, with small, greenish eyes, wearing a clean, immaculately tailored black uniform and highly polished boots.

‘Komm’her! Komm’her! Come here!’

And since Ernst gazed at him rooted to the spot, bewildered by that rigid black apparition, by that cold, cutting voice – nobody had ever spoken to him in such a voice – and because he was in doubt as to whether he was really the person being spoken to, the officer yelled: ‘Ja, ja! Du, herein! Yes, yes! I’m talking to you! In here! In here!’ And he pointed his arm at the vaulted entrance of the palace.

In that moment of surprise and confusion, Ernst did not realise that with that curt, cutting shout, that ‘Halt!’, that gesture inviting him inside the tall vaulted entrance of the Palace of Culture, the war had finally arrived in that quiet, peaceful little town hidden away in a valley of the Maramureș Mountains. He did not realise his life had entered a strange circle, a hallucinatory ring dance, which no sooner did it end but it would begin again in the same place and with the same curt, cutting shout, but spoken in a different tongue…

Indeed, till that shouted ‘Halt!’ the wind of war had blown but lightly, over the radio airwaves that brought news of battles and advances and retreats in faraway, unfamiliar places, news of the unknown dead and wounded; some men, young and very young, were conscripted and forced to meet the war somewhere faraway, at the front or behind the front; but in the little town life went on in the time-honoured fashion, monotonously, with the minor bustle of working days, with the stagnant tranquillity of holidays, as if nothing at all were happening in the world…

‘Ja, ja! Du, herein! In here!’

Bewildered by this tone of voice, without it even crossing his mind to ask a question or to object, Ernst went through the massive wrought iron gate of the palace. Inside the spacious entrance, a soldier in a green-grey uniform took him and showed him where he was to stand ‘to attention’ and then ‘at ease.’

Outside the strident orders of the young officer in the black uniform could still be heard: ‘Halt! Herein!’ and other people from the town now appeared, whom the solider made stand next to Ernst in a perfectly straight line.

For example, in the cool, vaulted lobby of the Palace of Culture there now appeared Yehiel Pasternak, the grocer from the corner of Slatina Street, a thin, gangly man, whose hair and beard were as yellow as straw, a man of around fifty years, whose fat wife and four children, also as blond as straw, were waiting for him at home for the Sabbath meal. The soldier in the greenish-grey uniform pointed the muzzle of his carbine at the place next to Ernst and ordered:

‘Attention! At ease!’

‘Yes, yes, Herr Offitzeer, I understand!’ said Yehiel Pasternak to the soldier in a very civil voice, elevating him in rank out of fear, and stood on the precise spot indicated, as rigid as stone pillar.

‘Halt! Herein!’ came the officer’s voice from outside. And a lad of around fifteen appeared, wearing a round black felt hat, from which poked two long curly sideburns. The lad looked around with curious blue eyes, evidently amused at what was happening to him on the holy Sabbath.

‘Halt! Herein!’

And Josef Birnberg made his appearance, the owner of Forestiera L.L.C., which is to say, Limited Liability Company. Birnberg had a timber factory, forests, warehouses for firewood, lumber and railway ties, and a barrel factory. He was said to be the richest man in the town, but you could never know with those big timber merchants, because today they were as rich as a Korah and tomorrow they would suffer a resounding krach1, going from boom to bust, and the whole business would come toppling down like a house of cards… A tall, imposing man with a pointy black goatee chased with strands of silver, Josef Birnberg took his place in the line, next to the cheder2 boy with the curly sideburns and the round felt hat, answering the soldier’s order in perfect German and with a perfect knowledge of German military ranks, from when he had been a sub-lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army, K.u.K. Regiment, which is to say Kaiserliche und Königliche Infanterie-Regiment Nummer 77, which had earned renown in the world war of 1914-18:

‘Jawohl, Gefreite! Yes, corporal!’

‘Ich bin SS-Unterscharführer,’ the soldier disdainfully corrected him.

Josef Birnberg looked at him in silent fear. Yes, it seemed that things had changed since then… And not only the names of the ranks, but also the tone of voice, the bearing, and who knows what else…

‘Halt! Herein!’ came the harsh voice from outside.

And Rahmil-Melamed appeared, the cheder teacher from the school for small children, who ate on weekdays at the parents’ houses and on the Sabbath ate lunch at the house of Mr Josef Birnberg himself; the teacher appeared in his Sabbath kaftan, which was black, clean, patched in numerous places by his wife Sara, but so neatly worked that you could barely see where the patches were.

‘Halt! Enter!’

And in the lobby of the Palace of Culture appeared Simon Meirovici, the poor tailor, ginger, stooped, short-sighted, who sat on the bench at the back in synagogue and rather than praying cavilled about the ‘respectables’ who sat by the east wall of the synagogue. After him came Zainvel, the porter in the fruit and vegetable market; then Meilach, the carter from the hay mart; then Natan Eisenguss, who owned the haberdashery and ‘modes’ shop in the centre of town. And so, around thirty souls of every kind had been rounded up: schoolboys, students on holiday, like Ernst, elderly men, thin and fat, fathers whose wives and children were waiting for them at home, not suspecting a thing. All these men found themselves herded into the lobby of the Palace of Culture, beneath the tall vaulted ceiling, which was painted with an ordinary blue sky, at whose edges hovered white, innocent cherubs. They were all wearing their Sabbath best, they were all Jews, all pale and frightened, and all wore the yellow star stitched to their chests and backs…

Some two weeks previously, when the order came for the Jews to stitch the yellow star to their clothes, a wave of indignation and anger washed over the community. Some said that the star should not be worn: ‘We shouldn’t let ourselves be humiliated.’ Others said that the yellow star should be worn ‘dafka’, deliberately, with pride even: ‘We should show them that they can’t humiliate us… ’ But life had to go on, you had to go outside, for a loaf of bread, about your daily business, for a breath of air, and the order was categorical: ‘Those who disobey will be arrested on the spot and prosecuted with the full severity of the law.’ And so the second opinion prevailed and the town’s Jews began to wear the yellow star, with greater or lesser pride… Moreover, the oldest and wisest of the community, with a wisdom probably springing from the ages, even found words of consolation. If a gezeirah had to come – an evil commandment against the Jews – then let Him Above prevent the worst, they said. In any case, many Jews, particularly the religious ones, themselves wore clothes that set them apart – caftans, round felt hats, or a kind of hat with fur in the corners, called a streiml – or cropped their hair short and had long curly side whiskers and untrimmed beards, to distinguish them from the other nations: ‘One more distinguishing mark hardly matters, we openly declare ourselves Jews, after all, from father to son, and nobody wishes to hide… ’ How easily a man accustoms himself to everything! Even to his own humiliation…

To Ernst, a student who had been abroad, the law seemed not only humiliating, not only insulting, but also stupid and ridiculous. It was a small town and everybody knew everybody else, and for a fact, everybody knew who was a Jew. And who was a Romanian. And who was a Hungarian. And who was a Ukrainian. And who was a Zipser German3. And who was a Gypsy. Nobody tried to hide what he was. The law was quite simply idiotic. If a person knows you, what is the point of his making you wear a sign to say you are who you are? And if a person doesn’t know you, what is it to him what race you are? Ernst also put these questions to his friend, Dr Klaus Daoben, the judge, who was descended from the Zipser Germans that settled in Maramureș centuries ago: a tall, muscular, suntanned man, with a round, smoothly shaven face, large head and cropped pate, a mountaineer, with whom Ernst went hiking in the Maramureș Carpathians. He put the questions to him in a bitterly joking way, but his friend did not catch the joke and answered very seriously that his duty was to judge not the laws, but only people who broke the laws, or to preside over cases filed by plaintiffs… But if the law demanded a distinguishing mark for Jews, why should it not demand a different mark for all the other races? Each with his own star or cross… Ernst even put this to Judge Daoben, as a bitter joke, for if that was how things stood, and the Jews were marked with a yellow star, then it would be only right for Hungarians to wear a green star, their favourite colour, on their chests and backs, and for Romanians to wear a blue star, and for Zipser Germans – Dr Daoben’s ethnic group – to wear a black star on their chests and backs, and Ukrainians a pink star, the colour of the ribbons in their maidens’ hair, and so on and so forth… And why shouldn’t people also be marked according to their religion? They should wear armbands, since armbands were then very fashionable, each with a sign or symbol. Christians, a cross. Jews, the Star of David. Atheists, nothing. Which is to say, a zero… But in fact there were lots of Christian denominations and sects without a cross. The Reformed Church, for example. There were no crosses in their churches. So, let each have a letter on his armband. Catholics would have a C. Reformists an R. Baptists a B. Lutherans an L. Anabaptists an A. The Seventh-Day Adventists, who observe the Sabbath rather than Sunday, would wear an S. Jehovah’s Witnesses a W, Pentecostalists a P, and so on. Every letter of the alphabet could be employed… Maybe people should also be marked according to their occupation? Barbers would have a B, for example, Merchants an M, teachers a T, doctors a D, pickpockets a PP, and so on. That way, we would know who we were dealing with at once glance. And we would treat everybody the way he deserves. Let justice be imparted equally to all… But Dr Daoben, the judge, did not laugh. He did not even smile. Probably he did not get the joke, because he replied very gravely, very seriously, that he, Judge Daoben, was required to impart justice only to those who came to court to demand it, that is, only to those who filed an official complaint, through the legal channels and with all the necessary rubber stamps…

A rigid, honest, humourless German, that judge… Yes, yes, let each bear the stigma… But in fact, it seemed that was the way things were headed. Europe was in the midst of the age of distinguishing marks, of insignia and armbands. In Germany, swastika armbands; in Italy armbands with the fasces; armbands for youths inscribed with ‘Youth’; armbands for women inscribed ‘Women’… Before long, there would even be a demand for armbands that simply said ‘Human’ – how many people would wear such an armband?

2

All of a sudden, on their way home from synagogue or after a stroll around town, the thirty men with yellow stars on their chests and backs had found themselves in the lobby of the Palace of Culture, prisoners of the SS soldiers. What did they want from them? Why had they rounded them up? Where were they going to take them? This was what they were asking themselves in their minds.

‘How can I get out of this trap?’ wondered Ernst, looking around him. At every door and window in the lobby was stationed a soldier in grey, holding carbines at the ready. So, there he was, a prisoner of the SS, all of a sudden, without having done anything.

The shouts of ‘Halt! Herein!’ had ceased outside. The young officer in the black uniform entered the lobby and looked over that strange troop, that assembly of individuals tall and short, young and old, fat and thin, wearing elegant German suits or comical Ost-Europeische caftans. He paced up and down the line two or three times, visibly amused, with an ironic smile on his lips. He then came to a stop in front of the line, with his hands on his hips and his sharp elbows jutting outwards, and said in a voice unusually gentle, almost honeyed:

‘Meine Herrschaften! Gentlemen! I have invited you here on important business for our empire, our German Reich. The quicker and the better you finish the task, the quicker you will be free. For, work alone makes man free… ’

He gave a signal, two guards holding rifles stationed themselves in front of them, and the officer left.

The men in the line began to wait. What important task would they have to perform? And for the German Reich no less… And how long would it take? They asked themselves fearfully. Then, they began to calm down. In the end, the officer had not spoken rudely. On the contrary, he might even be said to have spoken politely to them. ‘Meine Herrschaften,’ he had said. My gentlemen! Very höflich, very polite… And he had said they would be free.

They waited there, each in the same place, each standing on one of the thirty-by-thirty-centimetre, square, grey and white flagstones that covered the hall like a huge chessboard, they waited an hour, they waited two hours, three hours, the guards were changed a number of times in the meantime, men in uniform went up and down the stairs, nobody told them anything.

Ernst lost his cool:

‘Why are you keeping us here pointlessly like this?’ he asked one of the soldiers, addressing him in perfect German with a slight Viennese accent.

The soldier said nothing.

‘What is the task we have to perform? Why doesn’t anybody tell us anything?’ he asked the other soldier.

He might as well have been talking to the wall.

The soldiers on guard, wearing grey-green uniforms, were changed every hour, while the men stood and waited in the same place, in a perfect line, shifting their weight from one leg to another or to both legs. The soles of their feet ached. Their bodies had become heavy, unbearably heavy. They were burning with the desire to flex their joints, to stretch out on the cold hard flagstones of the palace lobby. Their faces, which had been pale and frightened at first, had turned red with impotent fury, and then yellow, puffy from pointless waiting.

In the afternoon, at around four, they suddenly heard the rumble of large engines. Heavily laden trucks came to a stop in front of the gates of the Palace of Culture. In that instant the SS officer in the black uniform also appeared, screaming as if out of his mind:

‘Los! Los! Move! Unload the trucks!’

There was not a trace of meine Herrschaften or Höfligkeit4 in his screams! His reedy, strident voice was like a whip cracking over the backs of beasts of burden. The thirty, in their best clothes, exhausted from waiting, set about unloading iron bedsteads and straw mattresses from the trucks and then carried them up the stairs to the first floor. A billet for Waffen-SS soldiers in transit through the town was being readied there. A long line of heavy trucks, hundreds of iron bedsteads, and as many straw mattresses…

‘Quickly! Quickly! Schneller! Verflucht noch einmal! Get a move on! The sooner you finish, the sooner you will be free!’ yelled the officer.

And the men ran down the stairs, and then laboured back up, hauling the iron bedsteads and straw mattresses.

Up, down! Up, down! Their legs were breaking, their shoulders were aching, their clothes were tearing. They no longer felt how heavy were the iron bedsteads, they no longer felt how light and baggy were the straw mattresses, they felt only exhaustion and humiliation.

‘Quickly! Quickly!’

They did not even notice when it grew dark. The lights came on. The large windows of the Palace of Culture were lit as if for a celebration, like when the town hall or a sports club or a benevolent society held a festive concert or a tea dance or a masked ball. Now, however, a strange ball indeed was being held in that fussy provincial palace, the windows were lit up festively, in stark contrast to the surrounding streets, which were plunged in darkness, and behind whose fences and dark windows waited pale folk with tearful eyes.

The news had quickly spread through the town. The streets around the building were empty. Nobody dared to set foot there. But in the nearby lanes and streets, behind the windows and fences from which it was possible to see the palace, people had gathered to wait. The parents, wives, children of those ambushed stood and waited. They watched anxiously: perhaps some familiar outline might appear at a window, perhaps somebody might manage to give a sign, perhaps some news as to what was happening within might arrive.

That day, many people in town did not eat their Sabbath lunch, nor their third, shaleshudes5 meal, nor the supper to bid Queen Sabbath farewell. Imperceptibly, the Sabbath, when fasting is strictly forbidden, unless it coincides with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, became a long, silent, sad, fearful fast…

It was long after nightfall when the men finished furnishing the billet for the troops due to pass through the town. One by one they emerged through the wrought iron gates of the Palace of Culture, their heads bowed, their best clothes torn and dusty, humiliated and exhausted. The first to emerge was Rahmil-Melamed, the teacher to small children, his Sabbath caftan, so beautifully patched by the hand of his wife Sara, now in tatters. All the people from the dark side streets rushed up to him, asking what had been going on and what had happened to the others. Then Yehiel Pasternak appeared, the grocer whose hair and beard were as yellow as straw, and he was bent in two at the hips. Then came Mr Iosef Birnberg, the proprietor of Forestiera Ltd., his clothes and dignity as a former officer of a Kaiserliche und Königliche Infantry Regiment now completely rumpled. Next to slip through the palace gates were Zainvel, who worked as a porter in the fruit and vegetable market, and the cheder boy with his curly side whiskers, sucking his bleeding finger, and Natan Eisenguss, who owned a shop for ladies’ modes, and Simon Meirovici, the poor tailor and patcher. They slipped through the gates without a word of complaint, they hurried away, without looking back, heading for their homes, along with those who had been waiting for them outside, all of them breathing sighs of relief and thanking the Lord Above that they had got off so lightly.

At the time, they thought they had got off lightly…

3

But only twenty-nine of the thirty Jews emerged from the gates of the palace, heads bowed, humiliated and exhausted, and went home. One alone, Ernst, remained inside much longer. His father, mother, elder brothers and sisters-in-law waited despairingly on a dark side street, from where the wrought iron gate of the Palace of Culture and festively lit windows were visible. That light, which in days gone by used to be accompanied by orchestra music, the sounds of balls, parties, merriment, clinking glasses, the rhythms of the dance, now seemed cold and ironic. It poured from the building to the accompaniment of opaque silence and spread over the street in long swaths. Why didn’t Ernst come out already? Why didn’t they let him go? Might he have defied them? He was so disobedient. And irascible. And reckless. Being the youngest son, he had always been the most spoiled. Might he have believed that he could do what he liked there too? Or that he could refuse to do what he was ordered? What could they be doing to him in there, now that he was alone with them? His old father, with his white hair and side whiskers à la Franz Josef, trembling with annoyance, and next to him his tall mother, as thin as a plank, and behind them the two elder brothers and two docile daughters-in-law, stood in the dark alley, gazing fixedly at the illuminated building. It was as if they had turned to stone. They felt neither weariness nor the passing time.

Ernst’s parents’ concern was not unfounded. After the men had finished arranging the iron bedsteads and straw mattresses, and twenty-nine of them had been released, the SS officer, who from the very start had singled him out, perhaps because of his clenched jaw and the scowl of his green eyes as he worked, asked Ernst, without any reason, but from a certain intuition: ‘What is your name?’

The young officer, with his immaculate black uniform, had not asked anybody else that question, and his interest did not bode well.

‘Ernst… Ernst Blumenthal is my name.’

It was plain that the officer was unpleasantly surprised.

‘Ernst? Ernst?’ he muttered. Such first names when applied to ‘that lot’ quite simply infuriated him. Abraham, Isaak, Yakov, yes! Chaim, Shmil, even better! Israel, highly appropriate! But Ernst? Completely out of line! Barefaced cheek! And what was more, his surname was Blumenthal… Which is to say, ‘Flower Vale.’ Beautiful German surnames like that being used by Ost-Juden, by those non-Aryan Orientals, offended his aesthetic sense, nothing less. It was the same as calling a mangy, bearded billy-goat a thoroughbred stallion… The blood rose to his head, but he controlled himself and asked, almost politely:

‘What is your occupation?’

‘I’m a student.’

Quite simply exasperating. An Ernst. And a Blumenthal. And a student to boot.

‘What are you studying?’

‘Architecture.’

The officer in the black uniform was seething. His small green eyes were giving off sparks. His chiselled features looked even sharper.

‘Where are you a student?’

‘In Vienna. I have broken off my studies temporarily, because of the… the situation.’

He had been about to say ‘because of the Anschluss between Austria and the German Reich,’ but stopped himself in time.

The officer’s face turned red. This was the very limit! An Ernst, and a Blumenthal, and an architectural student, in Vienna no less. He felt like shooting him on the spot with his revolver. But he controlled himself and after a few moments said in an ironically urbane voice:

‘It means we are colleagues. I am a student too, of art history, in Berlin. I too have broken off my studies, temporarily, because of the situation… And since you, colleague, are so terribly knowledgeable about architecture, I shall give you the opportunity to do something for this secession style palace, à la Franz Josef, which Zarathustra alone knows why the Austro-Hungarian Emperor had built in this stinking little town! You will clean all the dirt and straw you have left on these stairs.’

The lobby of the palace was magnificent. Broad white steps of marbled stone led to the two upper floors. The steps were edged with strips of bronze. It was true: the steps were strewn with bits of straw that had fallen out of the mattresses.

‘What are you looking for, colleague?’ the officer asked, sarcastically.

‘A broom.’

‘Oh, no! That would be blasphemy! This is a delicate task. It must be done by hand.’

Ernst gazed at him for a long moment. He could not believe his ears. What? Why was he suggesting such a thing? To collect that straw, bit by bit, with his bare hands. The means had no connection with the end… Cleanliness and order… The only object was to humiliate him. He stood where he was for a few moments. The officer made a gesture with his hand. Ernst looked in amazement at that delicate white hand, with its long fingers, like a pianist’s, which quivered tensely next to the handle of the revolver. He stooped and clenching his jaws, he began to collect the straw from the steps.

The officer left. He returned about an hour later.

‘I have finished,’ Ernst said. ‘Can I go now?’

‘You have not finished!’ replied the officer with restrained fury, scrutinising the steps. He pointed to an inch-long bit of straw wedged in a crack between two steps.

Ernst picked up the bit of straw and set about examining the steps from top to bottom. The officer went away again. He returned about two hours later.

‘I’ve finished!’ said Ernst.

‘I will tell you when you have finished and if you have finished, colleague!’ All of a sudden he switched to a disdainful plural: ‘You lot should learn once and for all how to work properly! And you should stop being liars, the lot of you!’

The officer inspected the steps of the palace once again, all the way up to the second floor, and pointed to an almost invisible bit of straw, lodged in an indentation of the wrought iron bannister.

The officer left. Ernst went on searching. He felt as if his shame and impotent rage would suffocate him. Maybe he would keep him there all night. Maybe he would keep him there for days, weeks. He would always be able to find a bit of straw hidden somewhere. And even without finding any more straw, he could keep him there as long as he liked. He was completely in his hands. In those delicate white hands, with their long fingers, like a pianist’s, the hands of that student of art history from Berlin…

It was almost midnight when the young officer in the black uniform came back, his face puffy, his eyes glistening with drink. Ernst sensed his presence, but did not look at him and did not say a word.

‘Well, now you can leave!’ shouted the officer, sarcastically. ‘But don’t think you have finished, colleague! We shall meet again… ’

Ernst did not understand those words. What did he mean? Why would they meet again? Was it an idle threat, or did he know something?

But not even the officer realised how prophetic his words would turn out to be. He did not know that they would indeed meet again, but in a completely different situation, in circumstances so strange, so absurd, that no sane mind could ever have imagined them…

4

It was almost midnight when Ernst Blumenthal emerged through the wrought iron gates of the Palace of Culture, in the secession style à la Franz Josef. As soon as his elderly father, with his grizzled side whiskers, also à la Franz Josef, espied him, trembling with emotion, he breathed a sigh of relief, as did his mother, tall and thin as a plank, his two elder brothers, and the two docile daughters-in-law. Praise be to God! Praise be to Him, that he had got off so lightly!

But Ernst did not breathe a sigh of relief for having got off so lightly. In the first place because ‘so lightly’ was not very lightly at all, and in the second place because he did not believe he had ‘got off’… In the days and nights that followed, he had no peace of mind. He kept thinking about what had happened, he went over it all in his mind, striving to find a meaning to it.

How then had things unfolded? A young foreign officer, a stranger from another land, from another world, had arrived in the centre of town and in broad daylight sequestered thirty citizens of that town, who had been walking down the street minding their own business, and no authority had taken action, there was no authority with which one might lodge a complaint… And what if one did make a complaint? And what if the authority did decide to take action? What action might it take? What it meant was that the collection of bits of straw with one’s bare hands was not over… It meant that although he had been set free at midnight, he was not free. All of them were prisoners: Ernst, the town’s citizens, the authorities, the enforcers of the law, the law itself… But people did not realise it. They walked down the street, they breathed, they went about their business, as if nothing were happening. Those who had been sequestered rejoiced at having been released, others rejoiced at the fact that nothing had happened to them. They were all rejoicing.

Ernst felt like laughing out loud.

Rumours began to circulate around town. Young men were being called up to serve in the army. Even those who had already done their national service received orders to enlist. The Jews who were enlisted were not given rifles. They were untrustworthy. Nor were they given uniforms, because they were unworthy of the Magyar Királyi Honvéd, which is to say the Royal Hungarian Army, the army of a kingdom without a king, where reigned a kind of Admiral Regent, without a fleet and without a sea, an admiral who liked always to be photographed riding a white horse. An equestrian navy.

They were not worthy to wear a uniform or to bear arms. On the other hand, the Jews who were enlisted received yellow armbands, to be worn on their left arms, and a pick or a shovel. That did not bode well. Armbands, and yellow to boot. The Jews had new impressions and old memories, very old memories, to do with the colour yellow… It was rumoured that the young men, wearing their own clothes from home, but now with yellow armbands, and carrying picks or shovels over their shoulders, were to serve in labour brigades.

Not long after the rumours, those slips of paper did indeed begin to arrive, call-up papers, printed SAS in bold letters. Who knows what those letters meant? Maybe ‘Eagle,’ maybe ‘Lightning.’ They meant you had to pack your suitcase and quickly enlist. You didn’t have time to think about it. And those slips of paper were followed by yet more rumours, that the labour battalions were being sent over the border, to the front. They said that some of them had gone all the way to the Don Bend. And there they dug trenches, built shelters, lugged shells to the front line. Some were sent to clear minefields with their bare hands. Clearing them was only a manner of speaking. In fact, those soldiers without weapons and without uniforms, dressed in their civilian clothes, with yellow armbands, were forced to run across the minefields so that the mines would explode under them… But people said a lot of things. How could you know where the truth ended and the lies began?

Ernst did not want to wait to be called up. Why should he wait? And what awaited him? That officer in the immaculate black uniform had predicted that they would meet again. Ernst had no desire whatever to lay eyes on him again. That day of toil, or rather humiliation, under his command, had been an excellent lesson. They were under occupation. The town had become a prison with invisible walls, and he had to escape from those walls. He had to leave for a time, to disappear into the mountains. He knew the mountain paths; he knew many hiding places. He had hiked the length and breadth of those mountains. He knew houses where hospitable mountain folk lived; he knew sheepfolds where the shepherds made cheese and told stories around the fire at night.

One evening, after a meal eaten in tense silence, Ernst told his parents that he intended to go up into the mountains for a while, to take a long excursion. His mother began to weep softly. What else could she do? Mrs Bertha Blumenthal was a tall, thin woman, a frightened woman. When she had cause for joy, she wept, because she was frightened of the evil eye, and when she suffered a misfortune, she wept for fear that she had fallen victim to the evil eye. Ernst’s elder brothers, Nathan and Matthias, tried to persuade him to stay at home, and the two docile daughters-in-law nodded. ‘Stay at home,’ the brothers advised, ‘don’t part from the family.’ Which was absurd, to say the least, because if the order came for him to enlist, he would have to part from the family anyway. Only his father said nothing. Ever since the day when Ernst had been sequestered in the Palace of Culture, his father had been worried. He knew his youngest son. He was not like his elder brothers. They were settled, disciplined, prudent. If some authority, it didn’t matter which authority, or somebody in uniform, it didn’t matter which uniform, had ordered them to pick up bits of straw from a flight of stairs, they would have done so without a murmur, they had a well-honed instinct for survival, they would have striven not to draw attention to themselves. But Ernst was irascible by nature, unruly, he was quick to lose his temper. It was a miracle that that officer had not hit him over the head with one of those iron bedsteads, God forbid! That would have been all they needed!

His mother wept, his brothers talked, his sisters-in-law nodded docilely, his father was silent. Ernst’s mind was made up.

Ernst was a taciturn young man. He spoke sparingly and did not feel the need to justify his decisions. He was a stubborn young man, with a prominent, clenched jaw, middling in height, sturdy. His bronzed face was angular, as if whittled from hard oak. He wore his hair cropped short and combed back, so that it bristled like a coarse brush. He was a sportsman, a mountaineer. He knew all the Carpathian hills and mountains that surrounded the town. He knew the peaks and the valleys, the crags and the caves, each by its name. He knew the paths and the trails. He loved the mountains and was convinced that the time had come for them to repay his love by protecting him.

His mother lamented: Who would take care of him there, alone in the forest? Who would cook for him? Who would wash his clothes? Who would darn his socks? Ernst’s brothers tried to calm her; his father was silent. Ernst laughed softly at his mother’s ridiculous questions and tried to soothe her. A man isn’t alone up there in the mountains. In any event, he’s no more alone than in the middle of the most crowded city… True, there are no taps with hot or cold water, but there are springs and brooks of pure, clear water. And there are houses with shingled and thatched roofs in which to shelter, dotted over the hills and along the valleys. He knew those wooden houses well. In Vienna he had written a dissertation on the architecture of the peasant houses of Maramureș, which had drawn the favourable attention of his professors.

Up in the mountains there were sheepfolds with taciturn shepherds, sheep peacefully grazing, small, sturdy, thick-furred sheepdogs guarding against the wolves. Over the summer he would be able to survive very well, under a roof of leaves, with maize porridge and milk and whey and cold spring water. He would find shelter by a sheepfold or in the house of welcoming folk. Perhaps, Ernst thought to himself, he would seek shelter in the house of Simion Vlașin, on Agrișul Hill, who kept a milk cow, hens and geese, and who in winter chopped cartloads of firewood to sell in the town below. Often, when he went on excursions, Ernst would stop off in Simion Vlașin’s yard to rest from the tiring climb, on the porch, where he would drink a cup of frothing milk fresh from the cow. In the vast space of the mountains, where people were so sparse and lived so far from one another, they felt closer to one another than people in the town, who lived cramped together in their housing blocks. There, hospitality was a powerful, unwritten rule: if you are a stranger, the mountain man does not ask you who you are, where you are from, where you are going, when you turn up at his gate, but invites you into his house, to his table, and regales you with whatever he has: an unleavened loaf, a cup of milk, a chunk of sheep’s cheese. But no, he would not go to stay with Simion Vlașin, who had a hard life, with six children and a seventh on the way. Naturally, wherever he stayed, he would pay for his lodging, but at Vlașin’s house there was little room and many children’s mouths, which, unwittingly, might let slip an unguarded word and give away his hiding place.

Somewhat higher up the hill, about three kilometres from Simion Vlașin’s homestead, was the house of Ionu Stan, known as ‘Son of the Trustworthy One,’ after his late father, who was an industrious and wise peasant, also called Ionu Stan, but whom folk had nicknamed ‘The Trustworthy One,’ because all his life he had been a man in whom trust was placed, in other words, he was a forest warden. A small man, with an unruly beard and a face covered with scratches and scars, made by branches and thorns, with fierce, glowering eyes, he roamed the forest with an old flintlock, longer than him, scaring off poachers, but turning a blind eye when some poor man cut himself a cartload of deadwood to burn in his stove or hunted a rabbit without a licence from the Compossessoratus. His son, Ionu Stan, Son of the Trustworthy One, had, astonishingly, inherited not only the exact same appearance, but also the position, flintlock, gentle nature and wisdom of his father.

Yes, thought Ernst, he would take shelter in his homestead for a few weeks, for a month or two, until the storm passed. It couldn’t last long. After Stalingrad, the Germans were constantly ‘falling back to previously prepared positions, causing the Russian hordes heavy losses,’ as the newspapers put it. And in the spring of that year, 1944, the ‘hordes’ had reached the eastern flanks of the Maramureș Carpathians, beyond Iașina, which is to say, the border of the sub-Carpathian region of the then Hungary, where they had halted, turning their offensive southward, in the direction of Jassy. And the Red Army waited there, over the Carpathians, for many months, until Maramureș, which at the time belonged to Hungary, became Judenfrei, cleansed of Jews…

But Ernst Blumenthal did not know what was to happen in the spring of 1944, he knew only that he should not wait to be enlisted in a forced labour battalion or to have another encounter with young officers who studied art history in Berlin, but rather he should hide, vanish into the mountains he loved and whose turn had come to grant him protection.

Ernst was not superstitious, but it seemed to him that he saw it as a sign from Above, or from Destiny, whatever you choose to call it, when Ionu Son of the Trustworthy One came to his house that very same Friday morning. Friday was the day when Ionu came to market to sell his eggs and sheep’s cheese. Beforehand he paid visits to people he knew, selling them his wares, and then he went to the market to sell what was left over and to buy salt and gas, as they called lamp oil in Maramureș. Ernst took him aside and told him that he was going to come to Agriș, on a lengthier excursion than usual. Ionu blinked his small eyes, which were as dark as peppercorns. He understood very well what Ernst meant. Ernst gave him some money and asked him to buy him some peasant clothes, which should not be too worn: a pair of frieze trousers, a thick homespun shirt, a jerkin, a straw hat with an ostrich feather, of the kind young men wore in the Iza Valley, and a knapsack, of the kind worn slung over one shoulder, with a pouch in front and one behind. And not to say anything to anybody.

The peasant blinked his small, dark peppercorn eyes and by that evening Ernst had a pouch containing the items in his room.

In the Blumenthal household, that Saturday was sad and oppressive. Ernst’s mother sighed, his brothers paced restlessly from room to room, and his old father, with his rosy face framed by grizzled hair and bushy side whiskers à la Franz Josef, stubbornly kept his eyes fastened on a book, without seeing the letters, but only the black of their rows. And all were silent. There was nothing more to be said. On Sunday morning, at the crack of dawn, through the door of the Blumenthal house a peasant slipped outside into the street, a short, sturdy young man, with a bronzed, angular face, as if whittled from oak, and with a jutting jawbone. He was dressed in a coat and trousers of thick frieze and had a knapsack slung over his left shoulder. He turned down the lane that led to Mill Park, which lay at the bottom of Solovan Hill.

The streets were deserted. Silence. The air was fresh and cool. Ernst took a deep breath. He had got off to a good start, a very good start, even. There was nobody out and about at that hour to see him, and even if somebody had seen him, that person would not have seen Ernst Blumenthal, erstwhile student of architecture in Vienna, candidate for a forced labour battalion and mine clearing at the front, but rather a Maramureș peasant, wearing peasant shoes and a straw hat with an ostrich feather, who was on his way to Solovan Hill.

All of a sudden, he felt like laughing. Good God, how many ridiculous mistakes could a man make! First of all, he oughtn’t to have set off on a Sunday of all days. What peasant travels from the town to the village on a Sunday? On Sunday, the peasants of Maramureș, wearing their best clothes, stay in the village, they sit on the benches in front of their houses, or in the road in front of the mayor’s office or the church, and they chat about what is happening in the village and in the town, in the land and in the world. And what peasant carries a heavy knapsack on his back on a Sunday? In the end, if anybody had been curious enough to see what was in that double knapsack, he would have been astounded and prompted to make the sign of the cross: what kind of peasant went around with a toothbrush and tubes of toothpaste in his knapsack? Not to mention novels, the fifth volume of an architectural treatise, sketchbooks and coloured pencils. And a large pair of binoculars… A peasant with binoculars!

But the streets were deserted, all was quiet, and the air was fresh and cool. There was no other soul to be seen, no sound to be heard, not even the sound of Ernst’s footsteps, since he trod on the pillows of leather soles. He walked down a number of side streets, then down the street that led to Morii Park, flanked by lindens and horse chestnuts, and came to the River Iza, which flowed yellow and sluggish at the bottom of Solovan Hill. He climbed the narrow wooden bridge, a cart’s width wide, with the thought of crossing quickly and then vanishing among the paths that wound between the briars and trees, leading up the hill. But reaching the middle of the wooden bridge, he suddenly came to a stop, taking fright. At the other end of the bridge, by the spring of clear water that poured through a small wooden trough at the bottom of Solovan Hill, and which was called Pintea’s Spring, Ernst espied a military tent of dirty khaki. The barrel of a gun poked through the flap of the tent. Ernst stood stock still, as if rooted to the spot. The round steel eye of the gun barrel gazed at him motionlessly. Ernst stood still, as if hypnotised by the gaze. Alone there on the wooden bridge, he was obviously the perfect target in the sights of the carbine. Just one detonation, and his entire journey, barely begun, would be over. There, at the gateway to the town…

Ernst looked into the barrel of the gun. The gun looked back at him, motionless. Yes, it was not moving. Ernst came to his senses. His mind began to work feverishly. It meant that neither was the man behind the gun moving. He plucked up courage, gripped the haft of the hunting knife inside his pocket, and slowly, softly resumed crossing the bridge. In his leather moccasins he trod as if on cotton wool. He made no sound. He moved closer and closer toward the barrel of the carbine. He reached the tent and cast a glance through the flaps. Within, the soldier on guard was lying on the ground, fast asleep, his head resting on the rifle butt. He was a reservist, quite old, in a rumpled and patched honvéd uniform, albeit buttoned up to the neck in regulation fashion. The pointed military cap, with a rosette, was pulled down tightly over the sweating head, and from beneath it, at the temples, poked bristles of grey hair. The face was bony, heavy jawed, deeply furrowed, sunburnt. The face of a peasant from the Panonian steppe.

The man suddenly moved his head and began to breathe like a bellows. Ernst quickly went around the tent and climbed the hill. After reaching the top, by winding paths and shortcuts, he stopped to catch his breath.

From there, in the clear morning air, he could see the town below, with its red roofs of tile or sheet metal coated with red lead, and its white roofs of galvanised zinc. Amid the roofs soared the spires of the churches, the fortress-like turrets of the Palace of Culture, and the bastions of the so-called Redoubt, where the town’s cinema was housed and on whose upper floor the Military Club held balls, and where on Sundays and national holidays the military band played rousing marches. From the top of Solovan Hill could also be seen the town’s two-storey buildings (there were no three-storey buildings): the boys’ lyceum, the teachers’ college, the intricate tracery of the façade of the girl’s gymnasium school, and the old, drab prefecture and town hall. Also visible were the four large synagogues, but the dozens of houses of prayer, scattered all over town, alongside the ordinary houses, could not be made out. Spreading from the edge of town could be seen the Bulgarians’ gardens, with their perfectly rectangular vegetable patches, in every shade of green, and the peasants’ maize fields, flanked by rows of sunflowers, and the swift Tisza and the yellow, sluggish Iza, which enclosed the town, making it an island. Below him, at the bottom of Solovan Hill he could see the dirty green of the khaki canvas tent, in which the soldier was fast asleep, his head resting on the stock of his rifle. That poor soldier was sleeping peacefully, without any inkling of the danger he had been in. If he had stopped him and asked for his papers, Ernst would have jumped on him and stabbed him in the belly with his knife. What else could he have done?

But would he really have done it? And if he had tried to make a run for it, would the soldier really have shot him? He would have shot him without a doubt. He had his orders, after all.

But what was that dirty green khaki canvas tent doing there anyway? What was that peasant from somewhere in the distant Hortobágy, from the Hungarian steppe, doing there in that mountain landscape, pointing a gun at the town? They had obviously posted sentinels at all the exits from the town. So quickly have the prison walls closed in on us, thought Ernst. But only on us? The war had reached the border. Wasn’t the soldier’s rifle pointed threateningly at all the town’s citizens? Wouldn’t anybody at all be ordered to halt?

Just yesterday, the prison was a big as the whole country. You couldn’t enter or leave unsupervised. Now, the town was a prison, surrounded by invisible walls and guarded by soldiers. And tomorrow? What would tomorrow bring? The streets and then the houses would become prisons. And the walls would close in more and more narrowly, and every person would be a prison unto himself. And a prison guard unto himself…

That evening Ernst arrived at the house of Ionu, Son of the Trustworthy One, over Argriș Hill. He had travelled by hidden paths, he had climbed the hills by steep shortcuts, untrodden by Sunday excursionists, whom you saw strolling along the winding paths, pausing from time to time to admire the landscape from the foot of Solovan Hill or sitting in a circle on the grass in the glades, peacefully eating sandwiches, drinking steaming coffee from thermos flasks, and avidly inhaling the pure air, as if performing a ritual. A sacred ritual: the inhalation of pure mountain air.

Ernst emerged from the fir trees and on the smooth, gentle slope of the hill saw the house of Ionu Stan, known as Son of the Trustworthy One. The house was made of oak beams and had a tapering shingle roof, blackened by age and wood smoke. The house did not have a chimney, and in winter, the smoke from the stove rose into the attic and seeped out through the shingles. The whole roof used to smoke, like a huge tobacco pipe, laid on a snow-white tablecloth.

But it was not winter now and no smoke seeped through the roof. In the dusk all the surroundings were deep green, apart from the house, blackened by time and soot, and the narrow path that led to it, which was clayey yellow in the fading light.

Suddenly, a large sheepdog, with a round, stocky body covered in thick white fur, rushed furiously from the yard towards the approaching stranger. Ernst did not take fright. He sat down on the ground and there he remained, motionless. The dog circled him a few times and then stopped in front of him, growling contentedly. Ernst knew the dog. And the dog knew him. A few years previously, when he had approached the house for the first time, the dog had rushed out furiously, like a white cannonball. That time he had taken fright. He had been about to run away or to defend himself with his mountaineer’s cane. But Ionu Son of the Trustworthy One had shouted to him from the porch, telling him to sit down on the grass where he was and not to move. Ernst had sat down on the ground and waited, stock-still. The dog had circled him a few times, looking at him with its small red eyes. Ernst had then slowly stood up and the dog had escorted him at a distance of a few paces into its master’s yard.

5

Back then things always took the same course when he stopped off at Agriș Hill on a day trip. He would sit down with his fellow wayfarers on the bench on the veranda to drink a jug of fresh milk, to sample a slice of new cheese, and to chat with Ionu, who, although he lived up in the mountains, without a radio, without newspapers, was surprisingly well informed about what went on in the rest of the country and in foreign parts.

Back then it was pleasant, the days were serene, and he used to be greeted with: ‘Welcome, young sir!’ and on leaving they would bid him: ‘Farewell, young sir!’ It was tranquil and pleasing aromas wafted on the pure air.

But now it was completely different. He had arrived in the house of Ionu Stan, Son of the Trustworthy One, as a kind of clandestine tenant, on an unlimited stay, paying for his board and lodgings. Disguised to look like one of them, although he was not one of them, but rather a young sir from town, dressed in peasant’s frieze trousers and hemp smock, with rustic moccasins and a straw hat adorned with an ostrich feather, garb he wore quite awkwardly.

They all felt embarrassed. Ernst tried to strike up a conversation with Ionu:

‘It was hot today.’

‘Hot.’

‘But the weather is getting cooler.’

‘It’s getting cooler.’

The host’s three children, the eldest daughter, Eudochia, who was old enough to marry, and the two younger ones, Andilina, who was fourteen, and Ionuț, the little lad of six, gazed at the familiar stranger, who had visited their house many times but who now had come dressed in peasant garb. He would have to give them an explanation… In the meantime, it had grown dark and Ileana, the forester’s wife, a strong woman a head taller than her husband, had lit the oil lamp. The flames sputtered, casting shadows over the whitewashed walls of the house, they roared high, like monsters, and then docilely quieted down, while the wick desperately sucked in air. The lamp began to crackle, the flame settled, casting a yellow light on their faces.

Ileana had completed four years of schooling there in the mountains, at the primary school in the hamlet of Sihei, at the foot of Agriș Hill, after which she had lived for a few years in the town, in the house of Father Ion Bîrcea. The priest’s wife, Adriana, in order to help her husband and increase his rather modest income, had set up a carpet-weaving workshop in their yard. Ileana and other girls from the country worked on traditional Maramureș carpets in the workshop. A clever, playful woman, with a certain amount of town education and with the wisdom instilled in her at home, Ileana was the first to find the right tone to dissipate the awkwardness:

‘In these parts, young sir, we call to each other from the neighbouring hilltops by name, like this: Gheo–, Pa–, Ste– . How should we call you? Er–?’

They all laughed and the ice melted.

‘You oughtn’t to call me at all!’ said Ernst gravely. ‘You know very well that I’m here, but in fact I’m not here… ’

Ileana took the cauldron from the large stove, which occupied around a quarter of the room.

‘Take a seat at the table, young sir.’

The cauldron of maize porridge crackled and smoked. They all sat down around the table. None of the dishes from the great Sacher Restaurant in central Vienna was as tasty as that maize porridge and whey.

No doubt about it: clothes don’t make the man, but rather they conceal him. He was still a young sir from the town. True, his face was sunburned, but his hands were those of a town dweller, with slender, nervous fingers. All of a sudden, Ileana, the forester’s wife, burst out laughing. She looked intently at the hands of their new lodger. It was only now that Ernst noticed that he had forgotten to take off his gold signet ring, embossed with his monogram. A peasant with a gold signet ring? Such a thing was unheard of in the mountains of Maramureș, even if you walked their length and breadth…

They all made merry around the table.

After supper, Ileana urged her husband – Ionu was a man slow to react – to make up a bed for the ‘young sir.’ Which is to say, to make up the only bed in the house: the others slept in the main room – Ionu, Ileana and their eldest daughter Eudochia on the chests that lined the three walls, and the two youngest, Andilina and Ion, on the shelf behind the stove.

Ionu had bought the only bed in the house a long while ago, without planning to do so beforehand, at the big fair in Sighet: he had liked the light pinewood, stained light brown, and above all he had liked the two white doves carved on the tall headboard, on whose beaks rested a large red heart. Sweating and triumphant, Ionu had carted the bed back from the fair. The whole family had liked it, but when night fell, nobody had wanted to sleep in it. Ileana and Ionu himself, along with their daughter Eudochia, preferred the chests in the main room, and neither of the two youngest children had wanted to abandon the large, warm stove behind which they slept. And so the beautiful bed with the red heart and white doves had remained unused, in the narrow chamber next to the main room.

The hosts were overjoyed to have the opportunity to provide the young sir from town with town-like accommodation.

But nor did Ernst feel at ease in the large bed in the small chamber. Perhaps because the straw mattress was too hard, packed too tightly, or perhaps because of the feather duvet, which was stuffed not only with down, but with whole feathers, which pricked him through the cloth. Or perhaps because with the coming of night a shadow of fear also descended, thickening the darkness.

Nor did the host, Ionu Stan Son of the Trustworthy One sleep peacefully that night. Ernst could hear him tossing and turning and then going out onto the veranda to breathe some fresh air. Or perhaps he went out merely to gaze at the stars? Or perhaps a fine coating of fear had settled on his soul too?

Towards morning, Ernst, exhausted, drifted off and finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. He was awoken by the rays of the already risen sun, which poured down warmly over the cool uplands.

Although his hosts had left a basin and a mug of water for him on a stool in the corner of the room, Ernst did not wash inside the house. He took his towel and a fragment of soap and went down to the stream in the valley. The water was cold, invigorating. Ernst rinsed with a little water and then rubbed his chest and back with the towel. His skin reddened and he felt well. He went into the house to eat breakfast. A flat loaf of maize bread, fresh from the oven, was waiting for him, and cottage cheese and a mug of milk. The family had long since eaten and gone off to do their chores. The children had gone down to the school in Sihei. Ionu, before going to guard the woods, was busy in the barn, where he kept a cow, after which he would muck out the hencoops.

Ernst went into the barn and called Ionu into the house, because he wished to speak to him and Ileana.

They sat down at the table and Ernst told them that there was no point, nor was it proper, that he stay in the house. Relatives and friends of the family would come to visit and ask all kinds of questions. People are curious by nature: ‘Who’s that man? Where’s he from?’ ‘A relative.’ ‘What kind of relative? How come I’ve never seen him before?’… No, he would spend the day outside, in the forest, and he would come to the house to eat when he was hungry. He would come inside only when he was sure there were no visitors there. And in the evening, he would cross the fence by the stile at the back of the house and sleep in the hayloft of the barn. The children shouldn’t tell anybody he was staying there. They were old enough to understand.

His hosts remained silent. It was obvious they were in a quandary.

‘I like to sleep in haylofts. That’s what I do when I’m hiking,’ said Ernst.

Ionu Stan remained silent for a long time. He was somewhat embarrassed, but ultimately satisfied with the proposal. After a time, he said:

‘If you think it will be better that way –’

And Ileana added: ‘Yes, yes, if that’s the way the gentleman wants it.’

Ernst went outside and found himself in the vastness of the Agriș Valley, surrounded by forests. He was free. For the first time in his life, Ernst was free in the truest sense of the word. He had nothing to do, no business to attend to. He did not feel any need to read a book. He did not wish to look through the newspapers or to arrange a date with a girl. He did not have to be home at set times to eat meals with his family. He did not have to work on the designs for some house or villa, to fray his nerves because of some irascible, snobbish patron or because of some rival young architect cleverer than him. This was what had happened three months previously, when he had designed a villa, but the patron had opted for the plans drawn up by another architect, because he had put a completely pointless and unsightly turret above the front door. But it was precisely that turret that had delighted the patron, who had accepted the design, compensating Ernst with a niggardly sum for the hours of work he had invested.

No, there was nothing to fray Ernst’s nerves up here. He was free and he felt like gambolling through that vast space, gambolling, running like a thoroughbred dog released from its master’s leash. He felt like rolling down that immense valley, which was as round as a cauldron, rolling down to the bottom, where stood a solitary, lightning-blasted tree, and then, thanks to the momentum he would gain, rolling up the other side and back down again.

He had an unquenchable thirst to walk. He reached the lightning-blasted tree. It was a large, magnificent oak, which had been struck many years ago. Since then, it had stood majestic, powerful, its thick roots and black leafless branches infinitely confronting Time. The tree had not rotted. It had a large hollow, the inside of which was scorched. The soot had in time hardened and gleamed like ebony.

All around that broad valley, over the hills that rose from its rim, there were groves of oak trees at the edges of the forests of tall firs. Higher up, the vegetation thinned, and stunted pines dotted the mountaintops.

The whole of that realm of silence now belonged to Ernst Blumenthal. But like every realm of that kind, it also had an egress to the land of people and cares… At the top of Solovan Hill there was an old wooden watchtower, which had once served as a lookout post for spotting fires. From the tower it was possible to see the town of Sighet in the valley, clasped between two rivers: the Tisza and the Iza.

Ernst looked down at the town. Viewed from up there, it looked as small as a toy, and the people were small too, as they went about their petty business.

The town’s age-old tranquillity was not to last for long. The time was mid-April, in the year 1944. Ernst lay in the grass, among the trees, his hiding place by the lookout post on Solovan Hill, and gazed at an anthill. Each ant was working assiduously, carrying heavy weights: seeds, all kinds of crumbs. They moved rapidly back and forth, without bumping into each other, without traffic accidents, without workplace accidents. It was something admirable and wholly incomprehensible.

All of a sudden, as if in a dream, he seemed to hear strange sounds from the town in the valley below: weeping and wailing, sighs, yes, even the sighs reached up into the mountains, wafting ever higher. Ernst quickly climbed the watchtower and looked through his binoculars at that other anthill. A human anthill. Along the town’s streets, motley columns of people, carrying heavy suitcases, pillows, quilts, some of them pushing handcarts, were all heading in the same direction, towards the western edge of the town, where there were a brickworks and the poorest residential quarter.

What did it mean? What was happening down there? Ernst wondered in alarm. He would ask Ionu Stan to go into town straightaway and find out what was happening.

Ionu took his knapsack with the two canisters – the house had almost run out of lamp oil and matches – and went into town. He returned that evening and the news he brought was not at all encouraging. The Blumenthals’ house was shut up, the door sealed by the town hall. And all the Jews had been taken to the tanners’ quarter and the brickworks. It was not possible to enter the quarter because a barbed wired fence had been erected and gendarmes with cockerel feathers in their caps guarded the entrances.

Ernst chanced to discover more a few days later. He was coming down Meia Hill when he spotted a group of excursionists climbing his way. He knew where they would stop for a picnic and so he concealed himself in some undergrowth. The excursionists came closer and Ernst was amazed to see his old acquaintances, the group in whose company he had used to go on outings.

Dr Daoben, the tall, bony, suntanned judge, was climbing the hill, alongside his wife, a strong, muscular, taciturn woman, who always let her husband put forth his opinions without interrupting him. Behind them, puffing and panting, came lawyer and notary public Zeleznay. Short, plump, he leaned on a hunting cane, which, when thrust in the earth, also served as a seat. He was accompanied by his wife, a garrulous, anxious woman, who was always worried about her husband’s health, fearful lest he be struck by a bout of apoplexy. At every step she begged him to stop and take a breather. They lived next door to the Blumenthals; a plank fence separated their back yards. The two couples were attended by Pritko, who obligingly ran back and forth between them.

This Pritko – nobody knew his first name, and if Pritko was his first name, then nobody knew his surname – was a kind of town idiot, who accompanied excursionists of every walk in life, from the highest to the lowest. He was a bachelor, always rather unwashed, rather longhaired, rather unshaven. He used to talk about big subjects, such as the creation of the world, whether God existed, what would happen at the end of the world. It was said that he had once studied chemistry at university, but because of an unrequited love, he had ended up in the Sighet Mental Hospital, which after a time had discharged him with the assessment ‘placid, not a danger to society.’ At home, rather than a cat or a dog, he kept two snakes: a large python in a chest with lots of air holes, and a smaller, non-venomous snake from the Solovan Mountains.

Ernst hid among the trees at the edge of the clearing where the excursionists sat down on the soft grass. Mrs Zeleznay, the notary public’s wife, laid a white tablecloth on the grass, on which the picnickers placed loaves of bread, cheeses, pastrami and the other good things they had brought from home. Pritko lit a fire, over which he placed a griddle for the trout he had skilfully caught with his bare hands in the clear stream in the valley they had crossed.

Judge Rudolf Daoben continued the conversation he had begun:

‘Whatever you might say, colleague Zeleznay, there has never been such an avalanche of laws. They’re not allowed to hold public office, to work as functionaries in town or village halls. Not even the most rundown village in the back of beyond is allowed to have a Jewish secretary or night watchman now. And then, a few days later, yet another new law: professionals – physicians, lawyers, engineers, dentists – are no longer allowed to practice their professions. Then the yellow star law, then the law restricting the food they are allowed to consume, the elegantly named ‘law to limit the supply of foodstuffs to the Jews.’ Then the law forbidding the Jews to keep shops or restaurants, to own factories, workshops or farms. We cannot keep pace with all these laws and regulations, and quite simply, we cannot see any point to them. But now, all these laws have in effect been abolished by the imprisonment of all the Jews in a ghetto. We have examined the text of these laws and have come to the conclusion that in the final instance they remove the right to work from this category of citizen. And removal of the right to work means nothing less than removal of the right to life –’

‘Oh, it’s hardly that serious,’ muttered notary public Zeleznay. ‘They have tidy sums of money, which they’ve accumulated over the years.’

‘What does money matter in the face of eternity?’ said Pritko, unexpectedly.

‘Some have money, others don’t,’ continued the judge. ‘The majority have nothing. They lived hand to mouth. I know them from cases brought before the court. And those that do have money will spend it all sooner or later, if they are not able to work.’

‘It’s their own fault,’ said the notary public, eating a chunk of bread topped by a thick slice of toasted bacon fat. ‘They were too stuck-up, showing off their wealth.’

Mrs Zelaznay, the notary public’s wife, interjected: ‘Their women walked around dolled up with jewellery and dresses ordered from Vienna and Paris. Just the other Saturday, one of Blumenthal’s daughters-in-law went for a stroll with her husband wearing a cherry-red Chinese silk dress, with flounces and a gilt belt. She looked frightful!’

‘Not at all. I think it suited her,’ said Mrs Daoben. ‘But anyway, I assure you, Mrs Zeleznay, she doesn’t wear dresses from Vienna or Paris, but has them made by the same seamstress I go to. My seamstress is not at all expensive, I can give you her address, if you like.’

‘But they’re as stubborn as mules,’ said the notary public. ‘Before they were taken to the ghetto, I spoke to my good neighbour Mr Blumenthal and offered to buy his house and garden, since they were going to be confiscated anyway, and who knows who will get his hands on them. He adamantly refused!’

‘And when he returned, you would have given him back the property?’

‘When he returned? How could he return? Is that why they were removed from their houses, so that they could return? Don’t be so naïve, Dr Daoben. They will be taken somewhere… How should I know where? Maybe to Palestine… ’

‘Everything that happens is because of the stars!’ interrupted Pritko. ‘The position of the stars dictates the Jews’ being taken to the ghetto, our excursion, the catching and eating of trout, Blumenthal’s daughter-in-law’s Chinese silk dress, everything, everything. Nothing is taken away from anybody, nothing is given to anybody. Nobody deserves anything and nobody is guilty of anything… ’

The others laughed. Judge Daoben gave his rather ironic assent: ‘Bravo, Pritko! Perhaps you are right… Ultimately I really do think you are right. It seems to me that the stars now say that it is time for us to go home.’

The women cleared away the meal and the company set off down the valley, towards the town.

Ernst emerged from the bushes, devastated. His parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, the whole family was shut up in the ghetto, while he roamed free in the mountains. And that neighbour of theirs, the honourable notary public Mr Zeleznay… so jovial, always smiling whenever he spoke to his father, and there he was, attempting to lay hands on the family home. The Blumenthal family could be packed off to Palestine or the devil knows where, as far as he was concerned. These were the neighbours they had lived next to for so many years? What kind of world was this? How had things deteriorated like this in the space of just a few months? Ernst could find no answer. Could the answer be in the stars, as that madman Pritko said?