Chapter | 22

I never spent much time in doctors’ offices, because I had a doctor at home, and no matter what was wrong, my dad would usually tell me that I would get better, and I always did. I guess he instilled in me a sense that complaining was self-indulgent and weak—that I should suck it up and be strong when faced with sickness or adversity. Mom was nurturing—completely the opposite of Dad. If any of us was ever sick, Mom was there with hot tea, soup, comforting words. But I must have more of Dad’s genes because I tend to hold things in just like he does—or at least I try.

The hematologist’s office in this university medical center is a depressing place. People seem defeated and scared. Shoulders are hunched over months-old magazines that have been paged through so many times they’re creased like an old man’s face. People look fearfully toward the door every time the nurse opens it to call for the next patient—as though she’s the escort to an underworld from which there’s no escape.

Once my grandfather has been called, and I’m left alone to wait for him, I become one of the healthy attending people. But most of the healthy attending people accompany the patients behind the door—husbands and wives who will share in the pain of their mates. I feel like I get more than my fair share of glances from the others after my grandpa gets up—as if they’re feeding off my youth and good health. As if I remind them of what they once were before whatever it was that brought them to this sad place. But that might just be my imagination and have more to do with my own insecurities about being here with Grandpa. I want him to be anywhere else but here—even safely back in Venezuela before I knew him in a way that made me care so much.

Lyla is the perfect antidote to this waiting room, and she’s been texting me for the past ten minutes. Faster than I can type a reply, she out-texts me two to one. She’s on a high, in a love fog over some boy she’s met at the beach. I know more about him in ten minutes than his parents probably learned in his lifetime. But I can’t bring myself to tell her about Jake. It still seems so new and fragile and I want to protect it. I’m not even sure where it’s going after this morning. He’ll be leaving for football camp in a few days and that will give us both a week away from each other. A week when he’ll be too busy to think about me during the day and too tired to think about me at night. I, on the other hand, will be thinking about him night and day. And even as I think about him now, a text arrives, interrupting Lyla’s nonstop stream.

Jake:

What are you wearing?

Me:

Ha ha. I’m sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for my grandpa.

Jake:

Can’t blame me for fantasizing. He okay?

Me:

Ya, I think so.

We make plans to get together tomorrow night. He’s leaving in two days for football camp.

I’m the only one left in the waiting room by the time Grandpa comes out. I’ve been here for over two hours and have read every magazine on the messy table in front of me—even Field and Stream. Lyla moved on to other things long ago. I even tried to text Chad but got no response.

Grandpa says the biopsy didn’t really hurt, but the site is tender, and he’s limping a little. I know what kind of traffic we’re facing this time of day heading out of San Francisco. We talk it over and decide it would be best to have dinner here and go home once the traffic dies down. It’s easy to pick a place—we both love Chinese food and we’re not too far from Chinatown.

“Did the doctor tell you when you’ll get the results?”

“He says he will call your father. He knows I visit only for a short time.”

I haven’t thought about Grandpa as visiting for a short time or leaving soon—I’ve already incorporated him into my life. He plumps up my family which used to be bigger and now feels precariously small.

“How long, Grandpa . . . before you leave?”

“I have my ticket only for one week. I go back on Tuesday, unless . . . unless . . .”

__________

I drive into the parking garage and spiral down further and further until I finally find an open space. It’s dark and stuffy down here, like a dungeon. We cram into a tiny elevator where we’re wedged shoulder to shoulder—or shoulder to hip in the case of the young boy by my side. His mother puts a reassuring hand on the side of his head and he dips instinctively toward her. It makes me think of the photo where my grandpa leans protectively into little Vili. The clipped, sharp sounds of Mandarin pass back and forth between a white-haired man and his tiny, stooped wife who stand behind me. The elevator shudders and lurches as it makes its way out of this pit of darkness. My grandpa looks over at me and shrugs, a half-smile on his face. If an earthquake is in my future, I only hope it waits until the elevator doors open above the ground.

Out in the street it’s like we’ve entered a new country—China! We walk through narrow alleys and wide roads. Like a river, there’s a flow of humans moving along the sidewalks. Everyone looks like they have someplace to get to and not very much time to get there. We pass by little shops with jade figurines, delicate porcelain tea cups, and silk robes enticingly displayed in the windows. Naked ducks hang upside down under pink heating lamps in a marketplace where buckets full of gray fish slap against each other inside their cylindrical prison walls.

A man with translucent skin partially covered by patches of wispy white whiskers shuffles along. His eyes are blue with blindness, but his progress forward is steady and sure. Pedestrians approaching him from behind peel away on either side of him, creating a perpetual halo of cement around him. He stops as if to take a breath, and with great effort, he brings a ball of phlegm from his throat into his mouth where he shoots it in the direction of the gutter, narrowly missing a passerby. I glance at a pair of embroidered, black velvet flats in the window of one store for just a few seconds too long. Grandpa follows my gaze and insists that we go inside the store to buy them.

These streets are hilly and difficult to navigate. I worry about Grandpa who looks pale and tired. His limp is becoming more pronounced.

“This looks like a good place,” I suggest just because we happen to be standing right in front of it. “Shall we go in?”

The restaurant is small and there is no pretense of décor or ambience. Formica tables, stained yellow over the years, are functional, as are the blue molded-plastic chairs. The table is badly out of balance, so I fold up a napkin and slide it under the wobbling leg. A surly waiter walks by, and without so much as a backward look, he sets down two laminated menus. He comes back only minutes later for our order, which, fortunately, we’re prepared to give. A jumbo-sized plastic bottle of soda adorns every table. The waiter opens ours and pours out two glasses which we haven’t requested but nevertheless pick up to drink.

I pull the wooden chopsticks from their paper sleeve and force them apart until they snap into two separate sticks. Grandpa carefully unfolds his paper napkin and tucks it into the top of his shirt.

“What happened to the gypsy boys after they put a curse on your family? Did you ever see them after that?” The look on his face makes me quickly add, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I tell you the story, Kicsi.” I decide not to protest his use of this endearment anymore. It might sting momentarily but it must bring him some comfort or he wouldn’t revert to it. “I tell you because it’s more important for you to remember than for me to forget.” As if something else is bothering him, he looks down at his hands that are folded and resting on the table. “And because I never tell your mother when she ask.” He speaks in a voice that is barely audible above the clatter of dishes in the kitchen.

And now I know that Grandpa has given me permission to finish Mom’s journal.

__________

Things went downhill quickly after that day, Grandpa said. The Jewish population in Grandpa’s village was about twenty percent, and new regulations required them to wear a large yellow star sewed onto their clothing when they went out in public. Grandpa said he hadn’t felt any different from the other children in the village until then, even though most of them were Christians. They had played together and gone to the same school. They worshipped separately, but that felt natural—as natural as when boys and girls separated for various activities. But soon the yellow star felt like a scalding brand which seared the skin on his chest, and he felt ashamed for being different without even knowing why.

One day Hungarian soldiers showed up in town and when they left, my great-grandfather, Jeno, left with them. Just like that . . . no time for goodbyes or to settle any affairs, just time enough to pack a small bag with a few clothes and all the food his wife could get her hands on. Other Jewish fathers, husbands, and older brothers left with him. They were going to work for the state, they were told. They were going to be part of the war effort.

When he took his seat in the back of a large military truck, he looked around anxiously for his wife and sons. As the convoy pulled out of the village, he waved and called out for them to obey their mother and take care of each other. He would write to them when he got a chance. He would be back soon. A million kisses.

Did he know this was the last time they would lay eyes on each other? Probably not, he admitted. We never know what our future holds, and even though we all know that death is a certainty, we persevere in the face of it, mock it, and live in denial of it—the human condition is what they call that.

With husbands and fathers gone, households struggled to carry on. Jeno was a mover. He owned a horse and carriage, and he moved people from house to house and village to village. He relied on the strength of his back and his sturdy horse. His boys were only just beginning to be old enough to be useful in the business. But now with their father gone, Bela and his mother attempted to carry on. My grandfather at ten years old pitched in as well. The two younger brothers did what they could.

Christian friends and neighbors, with whom they had lived harmoniously, were sympathetic at first, but as time went on, they began to withdraw—perhaps fearing for their own safety, should they be accused of helping the Jews; perhaps they were beginning to believe the hateful propaganda that spread its vile tentacles into the poisoned Hungarian earth. Regardless of the reason, business dwindled to almost nothing and Helen was nearing the end of her family’s resources, having sold anything of value long ago.

Two people who did not turn their backs on Helen and the boys were the Barnas. An older, childless couple, they often paid young Gyuri, my grandpa, to do chores around their property. They raised chickens and kept a milk cow, so Gyuri was usually sent home with a small cloth bundle into which Agnes Barna tied up eggs and cheese. Having no children of their own, the Barnas showered my grandpa with affection and attention. Agnes frequently sat with him at the kitchen table going over his schoolwork, giving him the one-on-one attention it was impossible to get in a family of four boys.

Sometime in the early months of 1944, Jeno sent the postcard that would rest in my hands seventy years later. There had been other cards from him before he reached Buchenwald, but this was the one fate would select to survive.

T.S. Eliot said that April was the cruelest month, but in Hungary in 1944 that distinction belonged to May. The deportation of the Jewish population would begin on the 15th day of that month, and in the next three months, even though it was clear that Germany was losing the war, nearly half a million Hungarian Jews would systematically be deported and murdered. Winston Churchill would later call the persecution and deportation of the Hungarian Jews the “greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world.”

But in the weeks leading up to it, my grandpa still had to go about the business of being a ten-year-old boy. Sometimes, even in those desperate days, that meant disobeying your mother, who didn’t have the benefit of a husband to back her up in matters of disciplining four free-spirited young boys. That sometimes meant playing when you should be working. And sometimes it meant being out after dark when you were supposed to be in bed.

On one particular day, it meant sneaking off to the Barnas when you were supposed to be at home writing another unanswered letter to your father who hadn’t been heard from in months. Grandpa was hungry and there were always good things to eat at the Barnas. He would bring something home for his mother and brothers like he always did, and Helen would soon forget that she was ever angry at his disobedience. Anyhow, she never really got angry anymore—she seemed to be slowly giving up. The truth was, if the Barnas had the time for Gyuri, she was grateful because she was running out of reserves of time and inner strength.

But on this particular day that should have been a lovely spring day in the Hungarian countryside, the soldiers came for the Jewish families that were still left in Gyuri’s village. For Helen, Bela, Miklos, and Vili, they would begin their journey on this day, first by truck, then by train, to the camp on the outskirts of the Polish town, Oświęcim—an extermination camp that the Nazis called Auschwitz, and whose name would soon become synonymous with Evil itself.

Weeks later, when Agnes Barna slipped into my grandpa’s vacant family home, she found the postcard from Jeno still lying on the kitchen table. Perhaps in her haste Helen left it behind, although Grandpa never doubted she purposely left it for him. And right next to the postcard, on the rough wooden table, was the picture of four smiling brothers taken on that perfectly ordinary day in a different time and a different world that would never again be the same.

. . . a million kisses . . .