Tel Aviv, 2005
At the top of the stairs, she knocks, and recognises the man who opens the door. It’s the one who leaned over the balcony earlier that day, and told her that Moshe would soon be home.
‘You talking to Moshe, yes?’ Shmuel booms, a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip. She can hear music playing inside his flat. It sounds ethnic, and reminds her of the rhythmic melodies the musicians played when she and Jansci were in the café in Budapest. It’s a pleasant memory, although it feels far away.
The stale smell of thousands of cigarettes smoked in this room over decades has seeped into the walls and ceilings, and left tea-coloured stains. Shmuel tamps his cigarette in a metal ashtray overflowing with butts, and scurries to a battered old radio in a walnut case. ‘Bartók,’ he says as he switches it off. ‘Hungarian music. Very good.’ He scans her face. ‘Why you here?’
Using simple language and speaking slowly in the hope that he can understand what she is saying, she explains that she had heard that he was rescued by Miklós Nagy. ‘I came so you could tell me whatever you can remember about that train journey,’ she says.
Lighting another cigarette, he says, ‘Long time ago. Too long. Old story.’
‘But it’s such an important story,’ she says and looks straight into his eyes with a candid expression that she hopes will convince him. ‘The whole world should know about it, especially as some people still regard him as a collaborator.’
As soon as he hears the word, he bristles. ‘Collaborator? Fucking lie!’ he shouts, and immediately apologises for his language. ‘Nagy Miklós hero. Best man in Hungary. He save my mother and he save me. He save more than thousand Jewish peoples. This is collaborator?’
He has now worked himself up into a fury and occasionally sprays saliva as he talks. ‘Judge, idiot. Say Mr Nagy collaborator. Never collaborator. Lawyer also liar. Says he will call me to talk in court for Mr Nagy, but he not call. Never.’
She tries to untangle the diatribe. ‘So you offered to give evidence in court but they didn’t call you?’
‘Yes, I say this.’
‘You must have been upset that you didn’t have the chance to tell the District Court judge about your experience. That might have influenced his decision. That’s why it’s so important to tell the truth about him now, isn’t it?’
He looks at her suspiciously. ‘How you know about me?’
‘From Moshe,’ she says, and immediately realises her faux pas.
‘Moshe say you about me?’ he shouts, and leaps to his feet, looming over her, his face distorted with rage. ‘Fucking mamser.’
Annika is in a panic. She knows why he is so furious, but it’s too late. All she can do now is back-pedal.
‘He said he was grateful to you because you made him understand that Miklós Nagy was a hero. He said that if I wanted to find out more about him, I should ask you, because you knew the truth,’ she says quickly.
He sits down again and she heaves a sigh of relief. Having seen this demonstration of his erratic temperament and the ferocity with which he defends his rescuer, she can imagine him picking up a weapon to bash the man who killed Miklós Nagy.
To calm him down, she tells him that Miklós Nagy saved her grandmother.
‘Why you not ask grandmother about Nagy Miklós?’
There’s no way she will tell him that Marika refuses to talk about the man he venerates. ‘She’s old, she can’t remember things,’ she says, and to mollify him, she adds, ‘Because it’s such an important story, I want to find out as much as possible about him from people he rescued.’
Her approach works. He leans back in his large armchair and lights another cigarette from the stub of the one he’s been smoking.
‘Yes, we all old now. I old also. Soon no peoples left to tell stories.’
With an ease that surprises her, he starts reminiscing, and sixty years melt away as he describes life in his provincial town near the Romanian border when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944. ‘Some peoples believe Germans that they go to other town for work, they go into German trains, but my father, he not trust Germans. Peoples going on trains. Never coming back. Then, miracle.’ He claps his big hands. ‘Nagy Miklós. He brave man. He argues with Nazi monster Eichmann — you know who is Eichmann? Nagy Miklós comes to Kolostór to save Jewish peoples.’
Shmuel stops talking and leans towards Annika, wagging his finger at her for emphasis. ‘Look, we not family, we not friends, we not rabbis. We nothing. But Nagy Miklós sees mother sick, very poor. He saves us. We go on special train.’ A beatific expression comes over his face as though he were speaking about a saint.
He describes the train journey that seemed to go on forever. ‘Some peoples they think we to Auschwitz going, but my mother say, Nagy Miklós, he not sending us to Auschwitz. Then we in Bergen-Belsen, waiting. Terrible camp. Peoples angry, why we here? We die here? But mother always say, trust Mr Nagy. He doing what he promise. And one day he fixing everything and we to Switzerland going,’ he says with a euphoric smile.
‘Do you remember any of the people on the train?’ she asks.
He spreads his hands. ‘So long time ago. How I can remembering? You say grandmother was on train. Grandmother name?’
‘Marika Horvath.’
He stares at her. ‘Horvath Marika?’
With growing excitement, she says, ‘So you remember her?’
His eyes light up. ‘All people knowing Horvath Marika. Special woman.’
Annika smiles at the compliment. She has seen the photograph, and knows how lovely her grandmother was in 1945.
‘What do you remember about her?’ she asks.
He rubs his stubbled chin, muttering to himself as he tries to recall details. After a long pause, he says, ‘Very kind lady, she with children playing. Also, she vomiting.’
‘So she was ill on the journey?’
‘Other womans talking about her. Not good things.’
‘Talking about her? Why? Do you know what they said?’
He pauses again. Then he says, ‘Horvath Marika not Horvath Marika.’
Was he having trouble expressing his thoughts, or was he being enigmatic? ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘Before, not Horvath. Horvath name for train.’
She wonders if he has become confused and mixed her up with someone else. After all these years, it wouldn’t be surprising, but she can’t dismiss the disquieting impression that he sounds very sure of his facts. So why did the other women say nasty things about her? Was it because she was ill, or because she had changed her name?
‘Are you saying that she changed her name for the train journey?’
His eyes are boring into her face as if he is weighing something up, struggling with something, and even though she is still convinced that he has confused her with someone else, his silence unsettles her. ‘Do you know why she did that?’
Before replying, Shmuel exhales a thick column of dark smoke which makes her cough. ‘Sorry, I not speaking English good,’ he says,
She supposes that he is about to admit that he has made a mistake, but he says, ‘Nagy Miklós change Horvath Marika name for train.’
She knows that people often falsified details on documents during the war. He must have had a reason for changing her grandmother’s name, although she can’t imagine what it could have been. It was intriguing to discover that the grandmother she has always known as Marika Horvath might once have had a different name.
Shmuel is still looking at her with a peculiar expression, and in between puffs of his noxious cigarette, he is saying something that doesn’t make sense. Even when he repeats it, she still can’t grasp what he means. Perhaps it’s his accent, or his limited English. Then he says it again, very slowly and this time she gets it, and her heart is thumping so fast she feels it will jump out of her chest.
‘On train, Horvath Marika. In Budapest, Weisz Ilonka.’