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8 Pali
- Syracuse University Press
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45 8 Pali The year 1941 expired; 1942 stepped into its place. We listened to the BBC every day. Iván and my father followed the war on the map, and they were very optimistic. “There can be no doubt,” said my father, “the Russians are winning on the Eastern front, and soon the Americans will land in France or Italy.” I can still hear my mother’s whisper to Erzsi: “Perhaps it won’t last forever? Perhaps we’ll survive despite everything? Perhaps it won’t get much worse before it gets better?” Then, suddenly, our world was shaken by an event that has forever impaired our lives: the draft of Pali into labor service on the front. In the fall of 1942, my father fell ill. Nothing terribly complicated, just an inflammation of the kidneys, but he was bedridden for a while. Pali came to visit him, undertaking a four-hour train trip from Békés to Budapest. He was always worried about my father. But now he seemed to be even more concerned. And this was no coincidence. They had lost their mother when my father was sixteen and Pali seven years old. Three years later, their older brother committed suicide (for reasons that we have never known). Living with a sense of tragedy and death, Pali and my father grew enormously close to one another as children, and they remained close and loving brothers throughout their lives. Graduating from law school, Pali wanted to be near my father, so he moved to Békés, a town seven miles from Békéscsaba. He opened his own law firm there. The pair spent much time together, discussing books, politics, and family, playing chamber music, enjoying their lives and each other. Pali When the Danube R an Red 46 visited us at least twice a week. Often we lit up every room in the house, just for him to see from afar that we were at home, waiting for him. He and my father adored their sister, Lulu, too, a highly intelligent woman; she had dark hair, big brown eyes, and a beautiful face. She was a pianist who lived in Sopron, a town near the Austrian border. The siblings always found occasions to visit one another. Then, suddenly, Lulu’s husband, Béla, died in his late thirties of an untreated kidney disease , leaving his wife and two young sons behind. Soon after, my paternal grandfather died, a loss that shook Pali to the core. Afterward, he became even more concerned about my father. Hearing now that he was sick, Pali mounted the train early in the morning just to see him for a few hours—for he wanted to go back the same day, he said. I met him at noon when I came home from school, throwing myself into his arms. I had not seen him for a long time! “Please stay,” I begged him. No, he could not stay, he said, smiling vaguely. He just wanted to see my father and us for a short while. Now that he had done so and understood that everything was OK, he wanted to leave and finish the work he had to complete for a client by the end of the week. “Bye-bye, old boy,” he hugged my father. “I hope to see you soon.” But he never saw him again. For in the pocket of Pali’s striped, gray trousers hid his death sentence: his draft card, which, as his wife, Margit, told us later, he “wouldn’t want to discuss with Laci” (my father), because he did not want to “harm” or “upset” him. This was a decision for which he and all of us had to pay a horrific price. It was October 1942. After visiting my father and taking the train home, Pali knew that he had to appear next morning at the barracks that the draft card had specified, and he knew that from there, he would be taken to the front. As we learned much later, during his stay at our house in Budapest, his wife, Margit, was washing, ironing, packing, and baking to prepare his backpack for the journey. Nine months pregnant, she had a hard day, not only because she had to think through her life, which would now have to go on without her husband, probably for a long, long time (she did not [54.92.155.93] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:43...