THAT EVENING, when he returned home to the apartment on Nefelejcs utca, he told Klara nothing of what had passed between him and her brother; nor did he mention that he had seen Novak. He said only that he’d been on a long walk around the city, that he had been thinking about what he might do when he returned from the service. He knew she’d taken note of his anxious distraction, but she didn’t ask him to explain his mood. The fact that he was going back to Bánhida the next day must have seemed explanation enough. They ate a quiet dinner in the kitchen, their chairs close together at the little table. Afterward, in the sitting room, they listened to Sibelius on the phonograph and watched the fire burning in the grate. Andras wore a flannel robe Klara had bought for him, and a pair of lambswool slippers. He couldn’t have imagined a setting more replete with comfort, but soon he’d be gone and Klara would be alone again to face whatever might come. The more comfortable he felt, the more contented and drowsy Klara looked as she lay back against the sofa cushions, the more painful it was to imagine what lay on the other side. György was right, he thought, to have protected Klara from the knowledge of what had happened. Her tranquility seemed worth his own dishonesty. She was utterly serene as she spoke of the changes pregnancy had brought about in her body, and of the comfort of being able to talk to her mother about them. She was tender with Andras, physically affectionate; she wanted to make love, and he was happy for the distraction. But when they were in bed, her body surprising in its new balance, he had to turn his face away. He was afraid she would sense he was keeping something from her, and would demand to know what it was.
Once he was back at Bánhida he was spared that danger, at least. He had never been so glad to have to do heavy work. He could numb his mind with the endless loading of brown coal into dusty carts, the endless pulling and pushing of the carts along the tracks. He could stun his limbs with calisthenics in the evening lineup, could submit to the drudgery of chores—the cleaning of barracks, the cutting of firewood, the hauling away of kitchen garbage—in the hope that the exhaustion would allow him to fall asleep at once, before his mind opened its kit bag of worries and began to display them in graphic detail, one after the next. Even if he managed to avoid that grim parade, he was at the mercy of his dreams. In the one that recurred most frequently, he would come upon Ilana lying in the hospital in a place that wasn’t quite Paris but wasn’t Budapest either, on the brink of death; then it wasn’t Ilana but Klara, and he knew he had to give his blood to her, but he couldn’t figure out how to transfer it from his own veins into hers. He stood at her bedside with a scalpel in his hand, and she lay in bed pale and terrified, and he thought he must first press the scalpel to his wrist and then think of a solution. Night after night he woke in the dark among the coughs and snores of his squad-mates, certain that Klara had died and that he had done nothing to save her. His sole consolation was that his term of service would end on December fifteenth, two weeks before she was due. He knew that it was foolish to pin all his hopes on that release date when the Munkaszolgálat showed so little respect for the promises it had made to its conscripts; he tried to remember the hard lessons of disappointment he’d learned in his first year of service. But the date was all he had, and he held on to it like a talisman. December fifteenth, December fifteenth: He said it under his breath as he worked, as if the repetition might hasten its arrival.
One morning when he was feeling particularly desperate, he went to the prayer service before work. A group of men met in an empty storage building every day at dawn; some of them had tiny dog-eared prayer books, and there was a miniature Torah from which they read on Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbos. Inside his tallis, Andras found himself thinking not of the prayers, but, as often happened when he performed any religious observance, of his parents. When he’d written to tell them Klara was pregnant, his father had written back to say they’d make a trip to Budapest at once. Andras had been skeptical. His parents hated to travel. They hated the noise and expense and crowds, and they hated the crush of Budapest. But a few weeks later they had gone to visit Klara and had stayed for three days. Andras’s mother had promised to come back before the baby was born and to stay as long as Klara needed her.
She must have known it would be a comfort to Andras. She was expert at comforting him, at making him feel safe; she had done it unfailingly all through his childhood. During the silent Amidah, what came to him was a memory from Konyár: For his sixth birthday he’d been given a wind-up tin circus train with little tin animals rattling behind the bars of their carriages. You could open the carriages to take out the elephants and lions and bears, who could then be made to perform in a circus ring you’d drawn in the dust. The toy had come from Budapest in a red cardboard box. It so exceeded any Konyár child’s imagining of a toy that it made Andras the subject of jealous rage among his classmates—most notably the two blond boys who chased him home from school one afternoon, trying to catch him and take the train away. He ran with the red cardboard box clutched against his chest, ran toward the figure of his mother, whom he could see up ahead in the yard: She was beating rugs on wooden racks at the edge of the orchard. She turned at the sound of the boys’ approaching footsteps. By that time Andras couldn’t have been three meters away. But before he could reach her, his foot caught on an apple-tree root and he flew forward, the red box leaving his hands in a rising arc as he threw out his hands to catch himself. In one graceful motion his mother dropped her rug-beating baton and caught the box. The footsteps of Andras’s pursuers came to a halt. Andras raised his head to see his mother tuck the train box under one arm and pick up her rug-beater in the other hand. She didn’t make a move, just stood there with the tool upraised. It was a stout branch with a sort of flat round basket fixed to one end. She took a single step toward the two blond boys. Though Andras knew his mother to be a gentle person—she had never struck any of her sons—her posture seemed to suggest that she was ready to beat Andras’s attackers with just as much fervor as she had employed in beating her rugs. Andras got up in time to see the blond boys fleeing up the road, their bare feet raising clouds of dust. His mother handed him the red box and suggested that he keep the train at home for a while. Andras had entered the house with the sense that his mother was a superhuman creature, ready to fly to his aid in moments of peril. The feeling had faded soon enough; not long afterward he’d left for school in Debrecen, where his mother couldn’t protect him. But the incident had left a deep imprint upon him. He could feel his mother’s power now as if it were all happening again: The red cardboard box of his life was flying through the air, and his mother had stretched out her hands to catch it.
When he wasn’t consumed with thoughts of Klara, he was thinking about his brothers. The mail distribution center had become a source of constant dread. Every time he passed it he imagined receiving a telegram that brought terrible news about Mátyás’s fate. There had been no word since his deployment to the east, and György’s efforts to help him had met with frustration. György had sent a series of letters to high Munkaszolgálat officials, but had been told that no one could bother with a problem of this scale when there was a war to be fought. If he wanted to arrange Mátyás’s exemption from service he would have to contact the boy’s battalion commander in Belgorod. Further inquiry revealed that Mátyás’s battalion had finished its service in Belgorod and had been sent farther east; now the battalion command headquarters was situated somewhere near Rostov-on-Don. György sent a barrage of telegrams to the commander but heard nothing for weeks. Then he received a brief handwritten note from a battalion secretary, who informed him that Mátyás’s company had slipped into the whiteout of the Russian winter. They had registered their location via wireless a few weeks earlier, but their communication lines had since been broken and their whereabouts could not be determined now with any certainty.
So this was what he had to picture: his brother Mátyás somewhere far away in the snow, the tether to his battalion command center severed, his company drifting with its army group toward deeper cold and danger. What was he eating? What was he wearing? Where was he sleeping? How could Andras lie in a bunk at night and eat bread every morning when his brother was lost in Ukraine? Did Mátyás imagine that Andras hadn’t tried to help him, or that György Hász had refused? Who was responsible for Mátyás’s current peril? Was it Edith Novak, who had spilled Klara’s secret? Was it Klara’s long-ago attackers? Was it Andras himself, whose connection to Klara had made the price of his brother’s freedom so high? Was it Miklós Horthy, whose desire to restore Hungary’s territories had drawn him into the war, or Hitler, whose madness had driven him into Russia? How many other men besides Mátyás found themselves in extremis that winter, and how many more would die before the war was over?
It was some comfort to know that Tibor, at least, remained far from the front lines. His letters continued to drift in from Transylvania according to the whims of the military postal service. Three weeks would go by without a word, then a clutch of five letters would come, then a single postcard the next day, and then nothing for two weeks. During his time in the Carpathians, the tone of Tibor’s writing had devolved from its casual banter to a stricken monotone: Dear Andras, another day of bridge-building. I miss Ilana terribly. Worry about her every minute. Plenty of disaster here: Today my workmate Roszenzweig broke his arm. A complex open fracture. I have no splints or casting materials or antibiotics, of course. Had to set the fracture with strip of planking from the barracks floor. Or, Eight servicemen down with pneumonia last week. Three died. How it grieves me to think of it! I know I could have kept them hydrated if I hadn’t been sent out with the road crew. And another letter, in its entirety: Dear Andráska, I can’t sleep. Ilana is in her 21st week now. Last time the miscarriage occurred in the 22nd. Andras wished he could write to Tibor about what he’d learned in Budapest, but he didn’t want to compound Tibor’s fears with his own. He wasn’t alone in his anxiety, though; every week a pair of ivory-colored envelopes arrived from Benczúr utca with words of reassurance. One would be from György—No news, no new threats. All goes on as before—and the other would carry Klara’s mother’s seal—Dear Andras, know that we are all thinking of you and wishing you a speedy return. How Klara misses you, dear boy! And how happy it will make her when you come home. The doctor believes her to be getting on quite well. Once she sent Andras a small package, the contents of which had evidently been so attractive that nothing remained in the box except her note: Andráska, here are a few sweets for you. If you like them, I’ll send more. Andras had brought the box back to the barracks to show it to Mendel, who had roared with laughter and suggested they display it on a shelf as an icon of life at Bánhida. It was a comfort, too, to have Mendel there; they would finish their terms of service together and would travel back to Budapest on the same train. At least that was what they planned, marking off the boxes on their hand-drawn calendar as the days grew colder and the distant hills faded to winter brown.
But on the twenty-fifth of November, a day whose gray blankness yielded in the evening to a confetti storm of snow, there was a telegram from György waiting for Andras at the central office. He tore it open with shaking hands and read that Klara had given birth the previous night, five weeks before her due date. They had a son, but he was very ill. Andras must come home at once.
It was a long time before he could move or speak. Other work servicemen tried to shuffle him aside to get to the counter; was he going to stand there all day? He made his way to the door of the office and staggered out into the snow. The lights of the camp had been lit early that evening. They formed a brilliant halo around the quadrangle, broken only by a brace of brighter, taller lights on either side of the administrative offices. Andras moved toward that bracket of lights as if toward a portal through which he might be conducted to Budapest. He had a son, but he was very ill. A son. A boy. His boy, and Klara’s. Fifty kilometers away. Two hours by train.
The guards who usually flanked the door had gone to supper. Andras went in unhindered. He passed by offices with electric heaters, telephones, mimeograph machines. He didn’t know where Major Barna’s office was, but he felt his way into the heart of the building, following the architectural lines of force. There, where he would have placed the major’s office if he had designed this building, was the major’s office. But its door was locked. Barna, too, had gone to supper. Andras went back outside into the blowing snow.
Everyone knew where the officers’ mess hall was. It was the only place at Bánhida from which the smell of real food issued. No thin broth, no hard bread there; instead they ate chicken and potatoes and mushroom soup, veal paprikás, stuffed cabbage, all of it with white bread. Servicemen who had been assigned to deliver coal or remove garbage from the officers’ mess hall had to suffer the aromas of those dishes. No serviceman, except those who waited on the officers, could enter the mess hall; it was guarded by soldiers with guns. But Andras approached the building without fear. He had a son. The first flush of his joy had mingled with the physical need to protect this child, to interpose his own body between him and whatever might do him harm. And Klara: If their child was dangerously ill, she needed him too. Guards with guns were of no consequence. The only thing that mattered was that he get out of Bánhida.
The guards at the door were not ones he recognized; they must have been fresh from Budapest. That was to Andras’s advantage. He approached the door and addressed himself to the shorter and stockier guard, a fellow who looked as though the smells of meat and roasted peppers were a torment to him.
“Telegram for Major Barna,” Andras said, raising the blue envelope in one hand.
The guard squinted at him in the glow of the electric lights. Snow swirled between them. “Where’s the adjutant?” he asked.
“He’s at dinner, too, sir,” Andras said. “Kovács at the communications center ordered me to bring it myself.”
“Leave it with me,” the guard said. “I’ll see he gets it.”
“I was ordered to deliver it in person and wait for a reply.”
The short stocky guard glanced at his counterpart, a bullish young soldier half asleep at his post. Then he beckoned Andras closer and bent his head to him. “What do you really want?” he asked. “Work servicemen don’t deliver telegrams to camp commanders. I may be new here, but I’m not an idiot.” He held Andras’s gaze steady with his own, and Andras’s instinct was to answer truthfully.
“My wife just gave birth five weeks early,” he said. “The baby’s sick. I have to get home. I want to ask for a special leave.”
The guard laughed. “In the middle of dinner? You must be crazy.”
“It can’t wait,” Andras said. “I’ve got to get home now.”
The guard seemed to consider what might be done. He looked over his shoulder into the mess hall, and then at the bullish young soldier again. “Hey, Mohács,” he said. “Cover guard duty for a minute, will you? I have to take this fellow inside.”
The bullish man shrugged, made a grunt of assent, and sank back almost immediately into his half-conscious state.
“All right,” said the first soldier. “Come in. I’ll have to pat you down.”
Andras, speechless with gratitude, followed the soldier into the vestibule and submitted to a search. When the guard had determined that Andras was not carrying a weapon, he put a hand on his arm and said, “Come with me. And don’t speak to anyone, understand?”
Andras nodded, and they stepped into the clamor of the officers’ dining room. The long tables were arranged in rows, the officers seated according to rank. Barna dined with his lieutenants at a raised table overlooking the others. At his side was a high-ranked officer Andras had never seen before, a compact silver-haired man in a coat bright with braid, his shoulders bristling with decorations. He had a fine steely beard in an antiquated style, and a gold-rimmed monocle. He looked like an old general from the Great War.
“Who is that?” Andras asked the guard.
“No idea,” the guard said. “They don’t tell us anything. But it looks like you’ve picked a good night to make your début in dinner theater.” He led Andras to another soldier who stood at attention near the head table, and he bent his head to that soldier’s ear and said a few words. The soldier nodded and went to an adjutant who was sitting at one of the tables close to the front. He bent to the adjutant and spoke, and the adjutant raised his head from his dinner and regarded Andras with an expression of wonderment and pity. Slowly he got up from his bench and went to the head table, where he saluted Major Barna and repeated the message, glancing back over his shoulder at Andras. Barna’s brows drew together and his mouth hardened into a white line. He put down his fork and knife and got to his feet. The men fell silent. The splendid elderly officer glanced up in inquiry.
Barna drew himself to his full height. “Where is this Lévi?” he said.
Andras had never heard his name sound so much like a curse. He struggled to keep his shoulders straight as he answered, “Here I am, sir.”
“Step forward, Lévi,” said the major.
It was the second time Barna had given him that command. He remembered well what had happened the first time. He took a few steps forward and dropped his gaze to the floor.
“You see, sir,” Barna said, addressing the decorated gentleman beside him. “This is why we can’t be too careful about the liberties we give our laborers. Do you see this cockroach?” He indicated Andras with his hand. “I’ve disciplined him before. He dared to be insolent to me on an earlier occasion. And here he is again.”
“What was the earlier occasion?” the general said—with, Andras thought, a hint of mockery, almost as though it might please him to hear of someone’s insolence to Barna.
But Barna didn’t seem to catch the note. “It was when he first arrived,” he said, and narrowed his eyes at Andras. “Did you think I’d forgotten, Lévi? I had to strip him of his rank.” Barna smiled at the elder officer. “He tried to cling to it, so I punished him.”
“Why was he stripped of rank?”
“Because he’d misplaced his foreskin,” Barna said.
The room broke out in laugher, but the general frowned at his dinner plate. Barna didn’t seem to notice that either. “Now he’s come to us with an important request,” he went on. “Why don’t you step forward and state your business, Lévi?”
Andras took a step forward. He refused to be cowed by Barna, though his pulse pounded deafeningly in his temples. He held the telegram in his clenched hand. “Request permission for special family leave, sir,” he said.
“What’s so urgent?” Barna said. “Does your wife need a fuck?”
More laughter from the men.
“You can be sure that problem will take care of itself,” Barna said. “It always does.”
“With your permission, sir,” Andras began again, his voice tight with rage.
“What’s that in your hand, Lévi? Adjutant, bring me that piece of paper.”
The adjutant approached Andras and took the telegram from his hand. Andras had never felt such profound humiliation or fury. He stood no more than eight feet from Barna; in another moment he might have his hands around the major’s throat. The thought was some consolation as he watched Barna scan the telegram. Barna raised his eyebrows in bemused surprise.
“What do you know?” he said to the assembled men. “Mrs. Lévi just had a kid. Lévi is a father.”
Applause from the men, along with whistles and cheers.
“But the baby’s very sick. Come home at once. That sounds bad.”
Andras fought the impulse to run at Barna. He bit his lip and fixed his eyes again on the floor. What he did not want was to be shot.
“Well, there’s no use giving you a special leave now, is there?” Barna said. “If the boy’s really that sick, you can just go home when he’s dead.”
A dense silence filled Andras’s ears like the rushing of a train. Barna looked around the room, his hands on the table; the men seemed to understand that he wanted them to laugh again, and there was a swell of uncomfortable laughter.
“You’re dismissed, Lévi,” Barna said. “I’d like to enjoy my coffee now.”
Before anyone could move, the elderly general brought his hand down against the table. “This is a disgrace,” he said, getting to his feet, his voice graveled with anger. He turned a thick-browed scowl on Barna. “You are a disgrace.”
Barna gave a crooked smile, as if this were all part of the joke.
“Don’t you smirk at me, Major,” the general said. “Apologize to this serviceman at once.”
Barna hesitated a moment, then nodded at the guard who’d brought Andras in. “Remove that clod of dirt from my sight.”
“Did you mishear me?” the general said. “I ordered you to apologize.”
Barna’s eyes darted from Andras to the general to the officers at their tables. “We’re done with this, sir,” he said, in an undertone that Andras was close enough to hear.
“You’re not done, Major,” the general said. “Get down off this platform and apologize to that man.”
“You heard what I said.”
The men sat in silence, watching. Barna stood still for a long time, seeming to wage an inner battle; his color changed from red to purple to white. The general stood beside him with his arms crossed over his chest. There was no way for him to disobey. The elder man held unquestionable military superiority. Barna stepped down off the dais and marched toward Andras. He paused in front of him, and, with a medicine-swallowing grimace, extended a hand. Andras sent the general a look of gratitude and took Barna’s hand. But no sooner had his own hand touched Barna’s than Barna spat in his face and slapped him with the hand Andras had touched. Without another word, the major made his way through the rows of tables and went out into the night. Andras drew a sleeve across his face, numb with pain.
The general remained at the center of the dais, looking down upon the officers on their benches. Everything had come to a standstill: The servicemen who waited on the officers had paused at the edges of the room with dirty plates in their hands; the cook had ceased to bang the pots in the kitchen; the officers were silent, their tin forks and spoons laid beside their plates.
“The Royal Hungarian Army is dishonored by what has happened here,” the general said. “When I entered the army, my first commanding officer was a Jew. He was a brave man who lost his life at Lemberg in the service of his country. Whatever Hungary is now, it’s not the country he died to defend.” He picked up the crumpled telegram form and handed it down to Andras. Then he threw his napkin onto the table and commanded the young guard to bring Andras to his quarters at once.
General Martón was quartered in the largest and most comfortable set of rooms at Bánhida, which meant that he had a bedroom and a sitting room, if the cold and uninviting cubicle in which Andras found himself could have been called a sitting room; it contained nothing but a table with an ashtray and a pair of rough wooden chairs so narrow and straight-backed as to discourage all but the briefest sitting. Electric lights blazed. The fireplace was dark. An assistant was packing the general’s things in the adjacent room. As Andras stood near the door, waiting to hear what the general would say, the general gave orders for his car to be brought around.
“I won’t stay at this place another night,” he told a frightened-looking secretary who hovered near his side. “My inspection of this camp is complete, as far as I’m concerned. Send word to Major Barna to tell him I’ve gone.”
“Yes, sir,” the secretary said.
“And go to the office and get this man’s dossier,” he said. “Be quick about it.”
“Yes, sir,” the secretary said, and hurried out.
The general turned to Andras. “Tell me, now,” he said. “How much time is left in your army service?”
“Two weeks, sir,” Andras said.
“Two weeks. And in relation to the time you’ve already spent in the service, do you consider two weeks to be a long time?”
“Under the circumstances, sir, it’s an eternity.”
“What would you say, then, to getting out of this hellhole altogether?”
“I’m not sure I understand you, sir.”
“I’m going to arrange for your discharge from Bánhida,” the general said. “You’ve served here long enough. I can’t guarantee you won’t be called up again, particularly not with matters as uncertain as they are. But I can get you to Budapest tonight. You can ride in my car. I’m going there at once. I was sent to conduct a detailed inspection of Barna’s establishment here, as he’s being considered for promotion, but I’ve already seen as much as I care to see.” He took a box of cigarettes from his breast pocket and tapped one out, then put it away again as if he didn’t have the heart to smoke it. “The gall of that man,” he said. “He’s unfit to lead a donkey, let alone a labor battalion. It’s not the Jews that are the problem, it’s men like him. Who do you think got us into this mess? At war with Russia and Britain at once! What do you think will come of that?”
Andras couldn’t bring himself to consider the question. There was another issue that seemed, at that moment, to be of even greater magnitude. “Do I understand you, sir?” he asked. “Am I to leave for Budapest tonight?”
The general gave a brisk nod. “You’d better pack your things. We’ll leave in half an hour.”
At the barracks there was general incredulity, and then, when Andras had related the story, raucous cheering. Mendel kissed Andras on both cheeks, promising to come to the apartment on Nefelejcs utca as soon as he returned to Budapest. When the half hour had passed, everyone came out to see the black car pull up and the driver help Andras lift his duffel bag into the sloping trunk. When was the last time anyone had helped one of them, the workers, lift a heavy object? When was the last time any of them had ridden in a car? The men clustered near the barracks steps, the wind lifting the lapels of their shabby coats, and Andras felt a stab of guilt to think of leaving them. He stood before Mendel and placed a hand on his arm.
“I wish you were coming,” he said.
“It’s only two more weeks,” Mendel said.
“What will you do about The Biting Fly?”
Mendel smiled. “Maybe it’s time to shut down the operation. The flies are all dead anyway.”
“Two weeks, then,” Andras said, and squeezed Mendel’s shoulder.
“Good luck, Parisi.”
“Let’s go,” the driver called. “The general’s waiting.”
Andras climbed into the front seat and shut the door. The motor roared, and they drove off to the officers’ quarters. When they arrived, it became clear that there had been some further argument between Barna and the general; Barna could be seen pacing furiously inside the general’s quarters as the general emerged with his traveling bag. The driver threw the general’s bag into the trunk and the general slid into the backseat without a word.
Before Andras could grasp the idea that he was truly leaving, that he would never have to return to the sulfurous coal pits of Bánhida again, the car had pulled through the gate and onto the road. All through that long dark drive, the only sounds were the purring of the engine and the susurrus of tires on snow. As the headlights cut through endless flocks of snowflakes, Andras thought again of that New Year’s Day when he and Klara had gone to the Square Barye to watch the sun rise over the chilly Seine. That long-ago January morning, he would never have believed that he would someday be the father of Klara’s child, that he would someday be flying through the night in a Hungarian Army limousine to see their newborn son. He remembered the Schubert piece Klara had played for him one winter evening, Der Erlkönig, about a father carrying his sick child on horseback through the night while the elf-king followed them, trying to get his hands on the child. He remembered the father’s desperation, the son’s inexorable slide toward death. He had always envisioned the chase taking place on a night like this. His hands grew cold in the heat of the car. He turned around to see what lay behind them. All he could see was the general snoring softly in the backseat, and, through the small oval of rear-window glass, a swarm of snowflakes lit up red in the taillights.
It took them an hour and a half to get to Gróf Apponyi Albert Hospital. When the car pulled to a stop, the general awoke and cleared his throat. He settled his hat onto his head and straightened his decorated jacket.
“All right, now,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“You don’t mean to come inside with me, sir,” Andras said.
“I mean to finish what I started. Give the driver your address and he’ll leave your things with the caretaker there.”
Andras gave the driver the address on Nefelejcs utca. The driver jumped out to open the door for the general, and the general waited until Andras had joined him on the curb. He turned and marched into the hospital with Andras at his side.
At the night attendant’s desk, a narrow-shouldered man with an eye patch sat with his feet propped on a metal garbage can, reading a Hungarian translation of Mein Kampf. When he looked up to see the general approaching, he dropped the book and got to his feet. His good eye shifted between Andras and the general; he seemed baffled by the sight of this decorated leader of the Hungarian Army in the company of a gaunt, shabby work serviceman. He stammered an inquiry as to how he might serve the general.
“This man needs to see his wife and son,” the general said.
The attendant glanced away down the hall, as if it might yield some form of help or enlightenment. The hall remained empty. The attendant twisted his hands. “Visiting hours are between four and six, sir,” he said.
“This man is visiting now,” the general said. “His surname is Lévi.”
The attendant paged through a logbook on his desk. “Mrs. Lévi is on the third floor,” he said. “Maternity ward. But sir, I’m not supposed to let anyone upstairs. I’ll be fired.”
The general took a name card from a leather case. “If anyone gives you trouble, tell them to discuss the situation with me.”
“Yes, sir,” the attendant said, and sank back down into his chair.
The general turned to Andras with another name card. “If there’s anything else I can do, send word to me.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Andras said.
“Be a good father to your son,” the general said, and put a hand on Andras’s shoulder. “May he live to see a more enlightened age than our own.” He held Andras’s gaze a moment longer, then turned and made his way out into the snow. The door closed behind him with a breath of cold air.
The attendant stared after the general in amazement. “How’d you make a friend like that?” he asked Andras.
“Luck, I suppose,” Andras said. “It runs in my family.”
“Well, go on,” said the attendant, cocking a thumb toward the stairway. “If anyone asks who let you in, it wasn’t me.”
Andras raced up the staircase to the third floor, then followed signs to Klara’s ward. There, in the semidark of the hospital night, new mothers lay in a double row of beds with bassinets at their feet. Some of the bassinets held swaddled babies; other babies nursed, or drowsed in their mothers’ arms. But where was Klara? Where was her bed, and which of these children was his son? He ran the row twice before he saw her: Klara Lévi, his wife, pale and damp-haired, her mouth swollen, her eyes ringed in dark shadow, lying in a dead sleep in the glow of a green-shaded light. He crept closer, his heart hammering, to see what she held in her arms. But when he reached the bedside he saw that it was an empty blanket, nothing more. The bassinet at the foot of her bed was empty too.
The ground seemed to fall away beneath him. So he had come too late despite everything. The world held no possibility for happiness; his life and Klara’s were a ruin of grief. He covered his mouth, afraid he’d cry aloud. Someone laid a cool hand on his arm; he turned to see a nurse in a white apron.
“How did you get in?” she asked, more perplexed than angry. “Is this your wife?”
“The child,” he said, in a whisper. “Where is he?”
The nurse drew her eyebrows together. “Are you the father?”
Andras nodded mutely.
The nurse beckoned him into the hall, toward a bright-lit room filled with padded tables, infant scales, cloth diapers, feeding bottles and nipples. Two nurses stood at the tables, changing babies’ diapers.
“Krisztina,” said the nurse. “Show Mr. Lévi his son.”
The nurse at the changing table held up a tiny pink froglet, naked except for a blue cotton hat and white socks, a bandage covering its umbilicus. As Andras watched, the baby raised a fist to its open mouth and extended its petal of a tongue.
“Great God,” Andras said. “My son.”
“Two kilos,” the nurse said. “Not bad for a baby born so early. He has a bit of a lung infection, poor thing, but he’s doing better than he was at first.”
“Oh, my God. Let me look at him.”
“You can hold him if you like,” the one called Krisztina said. She pinned the baby’s diaper, wrapped him in a blanket, and set him in Andras’s arms. Andras didn’t dare breathe. The baby seemed to weigh almost nothing. Its eyes were closed, its skin translucent, its hair a dark whorl on its head. Here was his son, his son. He was this person’s father. He put his cheek to the curve of the baby’s head.
“You can take him back to your wife,” Krisztina said. “As long as you’re here in the middle of the night, you might as well be of use.”
Andras nodded, unable to move or speak. In his arms he held what seemed the sum of his existence. The baby wrestled its blankets, opened its mouth, and pronounced a strong one-note cry.
“He’s hungry,” the nurse said. “You’d better take him to her.”
And so, for the first time, he answered his son’s need: He brought him down the ward to Klara’s bed. At the sound of the baby’s next cry, Klara opened her eyes and pushed herself up onto her elbows. Andras bent over her and put their son into her arms.
“Andráska,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “Am I dreaming?”
He bent to kiss her. He was shaking so hard he had to sit down on the bed. He embraced them both at once, Klara and the baby, holding them as close as he dared.
“How can it be?” she said. “How did you get here?”
He pulled back just far enough to look at her. “A general gave me a ride in his car.”
“Don’t tease me, darling! I’ve just had a cesarean.”
“I’m perfectly serious. I’ll tell you the story sometime.”
“I had a terrible fear that something had happened to you,” she said.
“There’s nothing to fear now,” he said, and stroked her damp hair.
“Look at this boy,” she said. “Our little son.” She pulled the blanket lower so he could see the baby’s face, his curled hands, his delicate wrists.
“Our son.” He shook his head, still unable to believe it. “I’ve seen him. He was au naturel when I came in.”
The baby turned his face toward Klara’s breast and opened his mouth against her nightgown. She unbuttoned the gown and settled him in to nurse, stroking his featherlike hair. “He looks just like you,” she said, and her eyes filled again.
“Életem.” My life. “Five weeks early! You must have been terrified.”
“My mother was with me. She brought me to the hospital herself. And now to have you here, too, even if just for a short time!”
“I’m finished with Bánhida,” he said. “My service is over.” He could hardly believe it himself, but it had happened. Nothing could make him go back. “I’m home with you now,” he told her. And slowly that truth came to seem real to him as he and Klara sat on her bed at Gróf Apponyi Albert Hospital, laughing and crying over the sleek downy head of their little son.