Gratitude by Joseph Kertes Page B

brother.
    “We’re at greater risk this way,” Istvan said to Marta. “And who’s all of us? Do you mean you, me and Dr. Benes?”
    “No, actually.” She went silent, then said, “I meant you, me and Smetana.”
    “Well, Smetana we can risk,” he said and chuckled.
    She neither responded nor laughed with him. “It’s been tough in this dark hole for you,” she finally said, “but my freedom is as much a prison as yours, only bigger.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said to Marta, and then she left him without saying good night.
    The next evening it turned dark while Istvan read The Three Musketeers . He felt his own helplessness battering at his chest as he waited for Marta, his one ear cocked always for Marta, but she did not return home.

Five
    Budapest – March 22, 1944
    PAUL BECK COULD NOT REACH his father or brother in Szeged, nor could he learn anything of what might have befallen them. The news services had gone silent, and Paul could not even find reliable sources, like his friend Zoltan Mak. Where had he got to, all of a sudden? Rozsi seemed as worried about the young man she’d just met as she was about their own family. She called the Csillag and asked where Zoli had got to and learned he had not been in for a couple of days.
    The authorities couldn’t be trusted. They had deprived him of his career and rights and could no longer be depended upon for answers, let alone help. But Paul clung to hope. He thought often of Wallenberg, how confident the man had seemed. He decided to visit the Swedish embassy on the other side of the river in Buda. He took a taxi to Minerva Street on Gellert Hill and asked the driver to wait. He climbed the stairs toward the three gold crowns of Sweden, which graced the arched white entrance.
    Above the building on the northeast slope of the hill stood the bronze statue of Saint Gellert flanked by Grecian columns. Paul paused to take a look in the evening light. Gellert had brought Christianity to Hungary from Venice in the eleventh century at the behest of Hungary’s King Stephen, but when Stephen died, some Hungarians, who still preferred their pagan gods to the solitary one, stuffed Gellert into a spiked barrel and rolled him down the hill into the Danube.
    The embassy was still open, but a couple of secretaries and assistants were leaving just as Paul walked in. He made his way along the pink marble floor toward the receptionist’s desk. It was a good minute before the woman looked up at Paul.
    “I’d like to see the ambassador, if I may,” Paul said in German.
    “The ambassador is not here,” the woman said. She spoke German, too, but not comfortably. She had dark features and looked more like a Gypsy than a Swede. In fact, Paul looked more like a Swede than she did, with her red curly hair and dark green eyes.
    Paul asked in Hungarian, “Is the chargé here, then?” She didn’t respond, so he added, “I’m a lawyer. My father is the mayor of Szeged. Is he here, the chargé?”
    She nodded yes, but said in an accented Hungarian, “He’s busy at the moment. If you take a seat, I’ll tell him you’re here to see him.”
    The woman looked familiar to Paul somehow. She reminded him of someone from his youth. The woman went into an inner office but soon returned, and now it seemed she recognized something about Paul, too. She looked too long at him before turning away. He kept staring.
    Paul had once met a young Gypsy woman who’d haunted his dreams for years. Ruth, she was called. She’d had the same green eyes. Exactly. When Paul was fourteen and his brother not yet twelve, their uncle Bela, Aunt Etel’s husband, whom they were visiting in the big city, one summer evening made off with the boys to a place on Aldas Street out in Rozsadomb. It was a dingy building he took them to, at the end of a narrow lane. Paul asked where they were going, and Bela told him, “Never mind,” as he paid the cab driver and then winked at him. Bela pushed the boys in through