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