Lidia stared at Malkiel as if he were out of his mind. “You’re looking for what?”

“A woman.”

“And if I understand you correctly, I won’t fill the bill?”

“You always misunderstand me.”

“Your riddles are getting on my nerves, Mr. Rosenbaum!”

“Don’t be angry, Lidia. Please.”

He seemed so worried and miserable that the young interpreter softened. “I’m not angry. Only jealous.”

“It’s my loss, not yours. The woman I’m looking for is old. She must be about seventy.”

They were sitting on their usual bench in the park. Late afternoon on a pleasant day. The park was swarming with people. The sun, white and cold in the transparent air, was setting lazily.

“And what’s your dream girl’s name?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know.”

Lidia slapped her knees. “I have to hand it to you! Has it never occurred to you that there may be several old women in this city whose names you don’t know?”

Of course she was right. He should have asked his father for more details. The Nyilas was called Zoltan. Was that his first name or his last name? Elhanan had never specified, and would he remember now?

“Let me explain, Lidia.” He told her about the partisans and the Red Army. The liberation. Itzik the Long and his thirst for vengeance. The rape.

Her face betrayed horror and disgust. How could she have reproached him? “A question,” she said, and cleared her throat.

“Yes?”

“What would you have done in your father’s place?”

Malkiel had asked himself that question many times. He had tried to imagine himself in the room, standing over the two thrashing bodies. Would he have flung himself on his best friend to save him from himself? Would he have called for help? “I just don’t know.”

A couple sat down on a nearby bench. The man whispered in his companion’s ear. Malkiel wondered, Do I exist for them?

The sun was truly setting now, and the sky over the mountains darkened and seemed menacing. The air was cooler. Cold.

“It’s hopeless,” Lidia said. She explained so calmly that Malkiel was annoyed. “There were plenty of raped women around here. Everybody knows about it, but nobody talks about it. Don’t give me that look, Reporter. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You didn’t know that our liberators, the Russian soldiers, raped every woman they could get their hands on? Beautiful and homely, large and small, skinny and fat, innocent schoolgirls and shriveled-up grandmothers: they all went through it. That was life. The rules of the game. All’s fair in love and war. The ransom, the warrior’s reward, the conqueror’s right to possess the conquered—call it whatever you like. Sometimes I suspect that my aunts, their friends, my own mother … They never talk about it. None of them will ever talk about the first days and nights of the liberation. It’s an enormous act of collective repression.

And you really believe you’ll find the one your father saw on the floor, being tortured by his comrade in arms?”

Malkiel did not answer. She was right. It was hopeless. “I didn’t think hard about it,” he said in low tones, upset. “I know how stupid that is, but I can’t help it. All I know is that it was only here, and I’m not even sure exactly when, that the real reason for my trip became clear to me.”

Lidia teased him dryly: “A sudden revelation?”

“Sure, why not? I suddenly realized that I had to find that woman. See her, talk to her, hear her voice, see her eyes and her lips and her hands. I have to find her. I have to, Lidia.”

Night had fallen. Malkiel could not see her features. A solitary stroller crossed the park and went to drown his sorrows God knows where.

“One question,” Lidia said. “Suppose she’s dead.”

Again she was right.

“Would you regret your visit here?”

“No,” Malkiel said. And after a moment, “I’m glad our paths crossed.” Malkiel meant it. He liked her very much, this interpreter full of charm and information. If he had not met Tamar, who knows?

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go to work. The woman in question was a widow, and her husband was a Nyilas. He was called Zoltan. Unfortunately, there were plenty of Nyilas in our lovely garden spot under the Hungarian occupation.”

“And Zoltan?”

“A common enough name.”

“Famous for his cruelty. The terror of the ghetto. Excited by Jewish blood …”

Lidia listened carefully and asked some pointed questions. She had him repeat this incident and sharpen that detail. When he was finished she stood up. “All right, then. I’ll see if I can be useful. After all, I know a lot of people. Maybe some of the oldest will remember. If so, we’ll have a chance of finding her.”

She said “we,” Malkiel thought as he, too, stood up. A good sign. Another sleepless night. Should he spend it with the gravedigger and his blind companion? Maybe one of them could answer the questions: why had his father sent him to this city? To see the widow? For some other reason?

Malkiel almost lost his temper next morning when they shook hands in the hotel lobby. “Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?”

“Any luck?”

“Oh, luck; luck is a vague word.”

“Have you learned anything?”

“Have I learned anything? Maybe.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Calm down, my friend, calm down. You’re in a country that requires iron self-control.”

He took a deep breath to get hold of himself.

“Let’s go have breakfast together,” she said. “In peace and quiet, all right? That’s a condition. Otherwise I’m through with you. I refuse to let you spoil my morning with your impatience.”

Malkiel would have liked to tell her what he thought of her, but that would have been counterproductive. And what was the meaning of her game? Maybe police surveillance had tightened around them. “This hotel isn’t famous for breakfast,” he said, forcing himself to be amiable. “But I have some good American Nescafé. Will you do me the honor of sharing it with me?”

“But of course, kind sir.”

By now used to Malkiel’s generous tips, the waiter brought them fresh bread, butter, eggs and cheese. Lidia ate with good appetite. Had her woman’s self-respect been wounded? Was she seeking revenge? She chatted about anything but the raped widow. The political economy under this regime, the Communist educational system, international current events as seen by Romanian commentators, literary analyses of the national folklore, funny stories about not so funny love affairs—for over an hour Malkiel played the game, never interrupting or betraying the slightest restlessness. And then with calculated nonchalance Lidia drew a folded sheet of paper from her handbag. “The whole works,” she said. “Name, address, personal data.”

Malkiel almost shouted, “Give it to me!” But he restrained himself. He stared at the folded sheet as if his life depended on it.

“Take it,” Lidia said.

He grabbed it, and stroked it for a moment before unfolding it.

“Will you translate for me?”

“Elena. Calinescu. Linden Street, number fifty-two. Lives with her daughter and son-in-law. There’s a granddaughter too.”

Malkiel tried to keep calm, or at least not to show his anxiety. “She’s alive,” he said.

“And you are going to meet her,” Lidia said.

“When?”

“Right away.”

Without admitting it, Malkiel was somehow afraid to stand before this woman who had haunted his father for so long. What if she hurled reproaches at him? What if she screamed her hatred in his face?

Lidia asked, “Shall we go?”

Outside, it was drizzling. The city was sinister; its colors seemed less friendly, and the trees, in yellow leaf now, more depressing.

It was a silent, disturbing walk of ten minutes to a handsome little two-story house. Lidia rang for the second floor. The door opened a crack. Lidia spoke a few words in Romanian; someone answered. Lidia argued. The door closed. Lidia pursued the argument vigorously. The door opened again. Lidia and Malkiel entered. A disheveled girl led them to the living room. So, Malkiel thought, they have living rooms under the Communists. He wondered which Jewish family the house had once belonged to.

“Good morning, miss,” a voice quavered. “Good morning, sir.” It was a sickly voice, and barely audible. A distinguished-looking woman was standing before them, her head tilted toward her left shoulder. “What can I do for you?”

Malkiel inspected her: short, slight, dressed in black, her features delicate and sad. Was she in mourning? Hollow wrinkled cheeks. Heavy lips and eyelids. “Lidia,” he said, “would you be good enough to explain … but carefully … kindly.”

Lidia explained.

As the old woman listened, or seemed to listen, her head drooped more and more toward her shoulder.

The girl brought them glasses of mineral water. Lidia broke off to take a sip.

“What have you told her?”

“Nothing yet. A few words about you. That you’re a reporter, that you live in the United States, that your father once lived here.”

“Nothing else?”

“That’s all so far.”

The old woman was watching him, and waiting. Where should he begin? “Ask her to excuse us for imposing on her.”

The old woman gave a barely perceptible nod. She picked up a glass of water and squeezed it with both hands.

“And forgive us for opening old wounds—I hope they’re long since healed.” The old woman’s gaze was penetrating and added to Malkiel’s anxiety. “Ask her if she understands what we’re talking about.”

Yes, she understood.

“Ask if she can recall the day of the liberation.”

Lidia translated. The old woman stiffened. She raised her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t remember it.” Was there defiance in this voice, weakened by the years?

“Ask her if she’d consider trying.”

Lidia translated. The old woman, still stiff and proud, answered that she was old, she had lived too many years, too many seasons, too many tragedies. No, she did not recall that day. Besides, it was all so long ago.

“Insist, Lidia. It’s important.” Again Lidia translated.

“To whom?” asked the old woman.

“To me,” Malkiel said.

“I don’t know you. And anyway at my age the things that may be important to you aren’t important to me.”

Lidia translated, turning from one to the other.

“Tell her not to be afraid, Lidia.”

“I’m not afraid,” the old woman said.

“Then why refuse to help me?”

“I don’t know you. So I fail to see how I can help you.”

“By remembering the day of—”

“I’ve forgotten so many things, so many things,” said the old woman. She dragged a chair closer and sat down. From then on Malkiel saw her only in profile. “So many things,” she repeated wearily. “Luckily I’ve managed to forget them. God in His mercy has helped me erase them from my memory. You’re still young, sir. You can’t understand the virtues of forgetfulness. How could we go on if we remembered everything?”

Lidia translated in a neutral, professional voice.

“I’m not asking you to remember everything,” Malkiel said. “Let’s limit it to one day. The day of the liberation.”

“It was wartime, sir. So many things happen in wartime.”

“What sort of things?”

“Evil things, things that hurt us. Terrible things. Is there anything in war that isn’t terrible?”

“Please tell me more precisely what you mean.”

The old woman could not. She was very sorry. She was too tired and too old to pierce the mists that enveloped her memory. She was sorry, but he must understand that.…

“Forgive me, madam, but do you remember your husband?” Here we go, Malkiel thought, tense.

“What a question! Of course I remember my husband,” the old woman said. “How could I forget him? He’s right here in the next room. In bed with a bad cold.”

Then she had remarried? Lidia had not mentioned that. Unless he had misunderstood her. He had fixed on the one fact that she was still alive. “Children?”

“Three. All married. Two live far away. We have seven grandchildren. Maria lives here with her husband and their daughter.”

Three children, Malkiel thought. “How old is your eldest child?”

“It’s a daughter, Silvia.”

“How old is she?”

“Why do you want to know that? What do you care about my children’s ages?”

“I promise to explain, madam.”

“Well, let’s see. I married my husband when I was … when I was twenty-five, maybe a little younger. Silvia? Thirty-eight, if I’m not mistaken.”

Malkiel did some quick arithmetic and sighed with relief. No, Itzik the Long had no descendants in Romania. Yet how many times had it happened to how many others? “And your first husband, madam? Do you remember him?”

She stiffened again. Painful memories froze her bony face. Her silence became opaque. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair.

“He was an important man, wasn’t he? A Nyilas officer. Zoltan—remember his name? Remember his uniform? His weapons? His whip? Have you really forgotten him? He detested Jews and hunted them down. Did you know that? He stalked them and beat them and tortured them. Isn’t that true, madam—your husband killed Jews?”

In cutting, staccato tones Malkiel struck blow after blow. To hurt her? To rouse her from her torpor, to stir her up. But she, head high and gaze hard, sat mute.

Malkiel said, “Lidia, tell her I am not here to accuse her of anything, and even less to torture her, but …”

“But?” Lidia echoed.

“To understand. And that’s the truth. I came to see her so I could understand my father better.”

“What? In slashing at this poor woman you think you can help your father?”

“No, Lidia, it’s not that. It’s too late for my father.”

“Is he dead?”

“No, he’s still alive. Yes, my father is alive. But … never mind. I’ll explain it some other time. Just believe me for now: Madame Calinescu’s answers are extremely important to me.”

The old woman seemed to have sensed the meaning of this exchange. She brought her hands forward and set them on her knees, and bit her lips before speaking again. “Tell him he’s right. My first husband was a bad man. He liked to do evil, and he hurt me often.”

“You? Why?”

“I used to beg him to break with his Nyilas friends. I wanted him to change. I wanted to live with a husband and not a hangman.”

They had been married six or seven months before the liberation. He was the son of a friend of her father’s. It was an arranged marriage, of course. She was young, very young, barely out of her adolescence. She dreamed of a Prince Charming. Her father said, “I’ve found your Prince Charming. He’s a Nyilas, but that will pass.” The man was called Zoltan. The girls liked him in his glittering uniform. “How could I doubt his character, his nobility of spirit? I was naive and stupid.” He was a handsome fellow, sensual, vain, and he treated people with contempt. Yes, he beat his victims. Yes, he hated them, Jews most of all. Yes, he went to the ghetto to “clean it out,” as he said. When he came back he radiated triumph. And she, his wife? While he was gone she stayed home with her many servants. Locked in her room, the shutters closed, she wept. “What are you crying about?” he asked. “You need everybody to be your victim,” she answered. Then he whipped her. And she stopped weeping.

“Yes. How could I have forgotten my first husband?” the old woman said.

Actually, she could have escaped, gone home to her parents and told them, “Zoltan is a monster. I don’t love him and he doesn’t love me.” Or, “We love each other at night, when we’re alone in bed. But we’re never really alone. His victims are always there; I can hear them groaning.” Or again, “Yes, we still love each other sometimes, we love each other with a twisted love, a cursed love.” Yes, she should have, she should have.

Malkiel could not help sympathizing. How can anyone go through life in a constant state of remorse? Why hadn’t she left her jailer husband? Or fought back against the growing horror? She should have understood that such a refusal could have saved her—a refusal that ran with and not against life’s grain, which transforms a handful of dust into a human being. Now it is too late.

Malkiel understood why she would want to forget. The days of the ghetto, and the humiliation of a people. Days of tenderness, too. Days when she loved her monster of a husband, when she sulked without him, when she embraced him and sought to mingle his breath with her own. She wanted to erase those images—what could be more natural? Had Malkiel any right to impose them upon her? An inner voice said, “Stop. Leave this poor woman alone. She’s suffered enough, she has a right to rest, even if she can find it only in forgetting.” But he knew he had to go on with his quest. Why? Pure instinct; he knew he had to.

“Your first husband, madam. Do you remember his death?”

Yes, she remembered. They came to inform her one afternoon in spring. She was in her garden. An officer stood before her, solemn and somber. Erect and respectful. “Be strong, madam,” he said. “In the name of the minister of war and the commander in chief of the army, I must bring you sad news.” She heard only the first words, “Be strong,” and she guessed the rest. Wild thoughts tumbled in her mind. “He will never hurt anyone again.” “I will never be humiliated again.” “I am a widow. I am not yet twenty and already I am a widow.” And then? Then she must have fainted. Who killed her husband? She hardly knew now. Yes, she knew. Partisans. Jewish partisans. They lived in the forests and the mountains. Young people, who had escaped from the local ghetto, and other ghettos. “I saw his corpse. It was unrecognizable. I remember it. I said to myself, ‘It is the dead who killed him. It is his own victims who punished him.’ I remember because my parents were there. They told me that during the funeral services I kept saying one word over and over: ‘Punishment, punishment.’ The Russians moved in a few days or a few weeks later.”

Lidia interrupted. “She’s telling the truth. I got confirmation. She wasn’t touched after the liberation. They said her conduct had been irreproachable.”

Malkiel tried to imagine her young. She must have been beautiful. Fine features. Innocence itself. He tried to imagine her as victim. Victim of Itzik the Long. Screaming. Begging for pity.

It was still raining outside. A bird flew suddenly into his field of vision and seemed to be carrying shreds of cloud on its wings.

“As a young widow,” Lidia went on, “she spent several weeks in a clinic not far from here. For mental disorders.”

Of course, Malkiel thought.

“Of course,” Lidia said. “Her husband’s death. The shame of having been a Nyilas torturer’s wife. The wild turmoil at the liberation.”

Malkiel stepped closer to the old woman. He needed to look directly into her face. He gazed into her eyes. He saw nothing. There was no expression in her eyes. “Lidia, ask her if she sees me. If she doesn’t see me, ask her what she does see.”

The old woman did not answer the question. Lidia repeated it. Still she did not answer. She’s tired, Malkiel decided.

“I’m tired,” the old woman said. “These memories are a great weight.”

Malkiel was not happy as an investigator. An inquisitor? All evidence points to this woman having also been a victim. Why add to her suffering by forcing her to relive the past? The same voice told him that this was enough. And again he did not heed it.

“Try to forgive me, madam,” he said, leaning forward. “It will be painful, but I have no choice. My motives are honorable.”

“Everybody says that,” Lidia put in. “You can always find honorable reasons for inflicting pain.”

Malkiel chose not to reply. “I am going to tell you about the worst day of your life. You are terrified. You have hidden in the cellar with an aunt. Do you remember?”

The old woman straightened her head. A deeper layer of shadow veiled her eyes. She placed her right hand on her breast and seemed to be measuring her own heartbeat, perhaps trying to quiet it.

“The Red Army is attacking, and the Germans and Hungarians have fallen back to new positions in a few buildings. Not for long. Resistance is useless and they know it. The battle lasts from dawn till midafternoon. From your shelter you can hear the sounds of war: tanks, shells, soldiers drunk on violence, bearers of death.… Suddenly you catch your breath. Somebody’s broken down your door. An armed man is in the house. You can’t see him, but you can hear him. He searches the house, opens the closets, inspects the rooms, knocks on the walls, opens the cellar door, stumbles on your aunt, who cries out in horror, flings her aside and runs down the cellar stairs pointing his rifle; and sees you. He’s tall and slim and agile, and he’s full of cold anger. He orders you up the stairs. You obey. He shoves you into a room and shuts the door. He turns to you and glares at you with hatred, and then he talks to you in a language you don’t understand. Yiddish. Do you remember, madam?”

The old woman was panting, and stared at him now as if he were the man who had raped her. She pressed her hands to her temples. Was she trying to suppress some image rising irresistibly from the depths of memory? “No, sir, I do not remember.”

Malkiel did not believe her, and harshly told her so.

“Stop it,” Lidia said. “Can’t you see she’s suffering? Why do you make her suffer?”

“I did nothing to her,” Malkiel said stubbornly. “Someone else made her suffer, not me. I’m part of her present, not her past.”

“But you’re making her suffer in the present,” Lidia said.

“No. She’s remembering pain from long ago. It’s not the same.”

“I don’t remember,” the old woman said tonelessly.

“The man barks an order: you don’t understand. He explains in gestures. You still don’t understand. Then with his rifle in his left hand he strips you with his right hand: tears off your blouse, your skirt; you’re half naked. He drops his trousers.” Malkiel was talking fast, without realizing it, much faster than usual.

Lidia cried, “That’s enough! What kind of man are you?”

Malkiel could not stop. He would press this interrogation to the end and beyond. “You’re lying on the floor in the dirt and the man is on top of you, crushing you, suffocating you, his breath makes you sick, he glares into your eyes, you fight him just as you fight the hysteria that might free you, and then you stop fighting, and suddenly …”

The old woman was absolutely motionless now. Reliving the shame, she seemed vanquished by shame.

“Suddenly a man appears. He’s out of breath. He sees you before he recognizes your attacker. And you see him. You don’t speak to him, but he understands you. You don’t plead with him, but he comes to the rescue, or at least tries to. He calls out to your tormentor, in Yiddish also, and talks sense to him; but the other is deaf. He begs him not to be bestial; he raises his voice and cries out that what he is doing is cruel, immoral, inhuman; he shouts at the top of his lungs, but it does no good. And then he weeps, this new man. He sobs. Your eyes meet. You remember, madam?”

And in a hard, insistent tone: “That man, that unexpected knight who wanted to save you—do you remember him, Madame Calinescu?”

The old lady came out of her silence as an invalid comes out of illness: weakened but lucid. She seemed to have aged ten years in ten minutes. She opened her mouth, she started to speak, and suddenly it was Malkiel who panicked. He thought he knew, he did know what the old lady was going to tell him. She was going to reveal the hideous and abject face of her knight. “Ha! You see him as a noble creature, rushing to the rescue of a poor helpless woman. You are quite naive, sir. In war all men are beasts. All they want is to hurt people, to humble them, to possess them. Let me tell you what your knight did, that savior of yours whose heart was so pure: he waited for his friend to finish and then took his place. And you thought … You make me laugh, sir.” That was what the old lady was going to tell him. To take revenge because he had troubled her peace? To see that truth prevailed? But then what sense was there in this quest? Where was hope? Was redemption still possible? A secret voice, the same inner voice, whispered to him, Go now, tear yourself away from this place, open the door and go and never come back! And as before, he paid no attention. Besides, his panic was baseless. The old lady would act out no such scenario. The knight’s glory would remain bright and reassuring.

But the old lady’s anger was nevertheless violent. “By what right do you reopen my wounds?” she asked slowly and distinctly. “Who authorized you to rifle my memory? Why do you force me to see myself again soiled, bruised, dishonored in my flesh as in my soul? What have I ever done to you? Haven’t I suffered enough? I prayed God to let me forget, and God heard me; I finally buried my memories. And wiped out the traces of that day that was blacker than night. I finally forgot the ugly leers, the hands, the sounds that tied me to that man. Why must you undo what God has done? By what right do you come to transform His divine compassion into human malediction?”

She did not raise her voice; she contained her anger, but her fury brought back her somber gaze. Stricken by remorse, Malkiel said nothing. She’s right, he thought. How can I tell her she’s wrong?

“I forgive you,” the old lady went on. “A man’s character always shows in his face, and I know that you are not cruel. You wanted to show regret, and pity? That is no concern of mine. Since you were in my house, I listened to you. Since you looked at me, I spoke to you. And now please leave me. I need rest.”

Malkiel bowed in thanks. He signaled to Lidia that it was time to leave. And yet he knew that he must ask one last question: “The man who tried to help you—do you think of him from time to time?”

“Thanks to him I believe from time to time that not all men are evil. I believe that he was honest and a man of charity. But in my need to forget it all, I finally forgot him, too.”

She rose to show her visitors out. As she shook hands with Malkiel she said, “That man of courage and humanity, I see him at times, as if behind a smoke screen. An illuminated shadow, so to speak. But I saw many shadows that day, and in the days that followed.”

Malkiel held her hand in his own. “I hope you won’t be too angry with me, Madame Calinescu. Thanks to you I’ve learned something useful and perhaps essential: forgetting is also part of the mystery. You need to forget, and I understand. I must resist forgetting, so try to understand me, too.”

For the first time she attempted a smile. Malkiel was affected by that more than by her words: “I could lie, but I don’t want to. The truth is that I don’t understand you. Aren’t you too young to learn someone else’s past in addition to your own? A little while ago I wondered if the man was perhaps you. But of course that’s impossible. You were not even born then.”

“It was my father,” Malkiel said gently.

The old woman swayed, shuddered. Fearing she would collapse, Malkiel put his arms around her and went on just as gently: “My father was the man who tried to save You, not the other one.”

Relief softened Elena Calinescu’s face. Little by little she grew calm. She gazed at him for some time before murmuring, “Then will you allow an old woman to thank you? And to kiss you?” She kissed his forehead. “Thank you for coming.” She kissed him again. “And thank your father.”

Malkiel embraced her and then, on the verge of tears, left without a word. Lidia followed him. They went downstairs without speaking. In the street Lidia turned to him. “Will you allow an interpreter, not so young anymore, to kiss you, too?” She kissed him on the mouth. And Malkiel saw his father again, who had never known love here in the city of his birth; no woman here had ever sealed his lips with hers.

It was time to go back.