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28 Going Home
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163 28 Going Home The bombing was continuous. The buzzing of the airplanes never stopped, nor did the constant explosions. “Come under my coat,” I screamed at my parents when I heard that buzz. I became convinced, and it was their opinion too, that I had survived the blast that morning because of the coats I had pulled over my head and body. From now on, I believed that this was the only way to survive in the basement as well. Just to calm me down, I think, my mother hid with me under the blankets during the bombing most of the time. But my father was not always willing to do so. When he did, however , I was relieved. Although shaken by the blasts, crying, and pressing his hand, I felt better when he was there. Pulling our coats and blankets over our heads, he would sometimes lie with me for hours, telling stories from his childhood, which I loved to listen to. He spoke of Pali and Lulu, their father and mother, and the life they lived in Temesvár (but he rarely spoke of Bandi, the older brother, whom he adored and who had committed suicide). He also told me about the chamber music they played at home, and about the pieces he would like to play with me, about the pieces he loved, and about the pieces we would perform as soon as we went home. In fact, he promised me in the shelter on Kisfaludy Street that we would have weekly sessions of chamber music—not yet knowing that Lulu as well as Pali had been killed in the Holocaust and that, woefully missing them, he would be unable to play music for many years. In addition, he told me about his life during World War I, when he fought on the front as an eighteen-year-old and had been badly When the Danube R an Red 164 wounded. Then he prayed with me to his mother, who, he said, saved him when he had been shot in the head in that war and had lain unconscious on the ground for almost an hour. Found by his comrades, he was taken immediately to the rear lines, and from there to a hospital. And she saved him again, he said, when he had his head surgery to remove a bullet from a place near his brain, an operation in which most people usually died. Now again, he prayed aloud to her, to help us, to save us, to let us live again. And he also promised me repeatedly, that one day we would get out of this basement, away from this nightmare, and “we’ll live as human beings must, with our heads held up high rather than lowered.” Poor Father! I have been able to live my life as a free person; but he? Never. For the moment, however, I was consumed by the fear of the ongoing bombardment. Ever since the moment of that brutal lightning, I shuddered whenever the bombs fell. Yet there was no doubt that I was better off than before, when I had been alone. I knew that. But Iván lived still apart from us, and this was the cause of my parents’ constant worry. Indeed, they could not find a solution to the problem at this point of the siege. Because of the constant shelling and bombing of the city, people were not permitted to walk on the streets. Nor were private vehicles allowed on the roads. In short, my parents did not know how to get Iván away from the house on Abonyi Street. Nor could they, of course, communicate with him or with Erzsi. Yet they spoke of him constantly. They were terribly worried about the hostile environment he would suddenly have to face if the apartment became uninhabitable and he would be forced to move to the shelter, as we were now on Kisfaludy Street. He would obviously be recognized by some of the tenants of the apartment house, who, in turn, might denounce him to the police, while in the “White Cross Hospital,” everybody was Jewish and everybody was hiding, including “the leadership” and “our guards.” After hours of consideration , my father decided that despite all the weighty counterarguments , he would bribe and send one of the real “Nyilas,” who acted as if [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-30 09:19 GMT) Going Home 165 they were guarding our...