Night Skies
Part Three - Budapest
Two days later Tünde and Greta arrived at Keleti train station in Budapest. It was the city’s busiest train station, and rather grand in its proportions, yet there was about it a stubbornly rural air. The morning was mild and damp. It smelt of dust and pálinka, garlic and hay. She sat and waited for a taxi. Greta was mercifully quiet. In amongst the undifferentiated grey flannel suits were the Gypsies with their wild moustaches and broad-brimmed black felt hats. Then there were the Székely women from Transylvania hawking their straw hats and embroideries. They wore wide, heavily-pleated skirts, aprons and beaded necklaces. Their elaborate, quaint costumes excited pity, and irredentist fantasies. She watched the women and listened to their heavily accented Hungarian. They came from distant, proud villages that had been stranded over the border in Romania in 1920. Villages surrounded by the grandeur of the Carpathian mountains, where bears roamed freely and isolation had stopped time. But they did not think of the capital as their Jerusalem. To them it was a corrupt, dirty, cosmopolitan sprawl, swarming with Communists and run by Germans and Jews. One of the women jerked an embroidery at Tünde. It was a wall hanging. On it a pair of winged angels were holding a map of Greater Hungary. Below that were the words:
I believe in one God.
I believe in one Motherland.
I believe in one Divine eternal truth.
I believe in Hungary’s resurrection. Amen.
As far as the eye could see, from every lamp post, the tricolour flapped importantly. Hungary was cobbling together its empire once more. Tünde had read about the 1st Vienna Award granted earlier that month from Czechoslovakian lands. Parts of Romania would follow in 1940, and of Yugoslavia in 1941. Hungary had entered a Faustian pact with Hitler. Hitler would give the Magyars back their empire piece-by-piece, and in exchange the Magyars would become model Nazis.
In spite of feeling rigid with hunger and exhaustion Tünde liked hearing the obscure, ornate sounds of Hungarian again. The occasional motor car spluttered by, or a tram, but more often than not came the clattering of hooves on cobblestones followed by acrid, steaming piles of horse shit. Everything seemed smaller and slower and shabbier than in Berlin. When at last a taxi came she collapsed onto the back seat with a great sigh. She hadn’t been home since her honeymoon in early ’37. She bit back her tears. She could not arrive at her mother’s undone with grief. She kissed Greta’s soft, blonde curls. Her mother hadn’t yet seen her only grandchild, but Tünde wasn’t sure how enthusiastic she’d be. She rummaged around inside her travel bag to make sure she had the almond paste for her mother - a widow and a retired pastry chef – as Tünde knew she would not delay in asking for it.
The first thing Tünde’s mother said when she saw her was, “Has the German divorced you already?”
“Not to my knowledge,” she replied, and stepping into the tiny apartment she handed Greta to her mother and said, “Have you got any eggs?”
The four egg salami and cheese omelette filled her with such rapture that she almost did not mind her mother’s disapproving questions.
“So where is that husband of yours?”
“Oh, Hansi, he’s in Berlin, working.”
“Working, but not making a penny! You should have listened to me and studied stenography. They’re always looking for good stenographers right here in Budapest. If I hadn’t carried you in my own belly, I’d swear you weren’t my child! Just like your father you are, may he rest in peace...” And here she crossed herself, sighed and carried on, “…always art, art, art. I’ll never understand why you had to go to Berlin in the first place when…”
“Because I won the scholarship mama. I needed to see the world.”
“Hah!” She shrugged her shoulders as if all the world were nothing more to her than old bread dressed up as French toast. “And what are you really doing here? You’ve not come to visit your mother I’ll warrant that.”
“I came to see someone in Budapest on gallery business. It’s just for a few days. Leo couldn’t come himself so he sent me.”
“If you’re only planning to stay a few days, what on earth are all those suitcases for?”
Tünde wiped her mouth and sat back. “Thank you mama, that was delicious.” She looked at her mother now and saw that she was older and a little stouter, but still she seemed so vital, so strong. She had worked every day of her life since she was 13 and even now she continued to work, baking biscuits and cakes for cafes all over the city. On every available surface in the immaculately kept apartment were trays of walnut meringues and jam biscuits cooling. Above the bed that by day served as a couch was an embroidered wall hanging of inter-twined tulips and roses in the national colours, and beside that a Catholic calendar turned to today’s date: November 23, 1938. She was a woman who did not live with doubt. Hers was a world of absolutes and certainties. Tünde no longer despised her for this, but instinctively she knew that there was no room in her mother’s mind for the shipwreck that her life had become.
“The suitcases are filled with Hansi’s paintings. I’ve come to sell them.”
“Who needs art at a time like this?” She shook her head. Then she stretched out her thick arms and took Greta. “This child is skin and bone. I’m going to make her some semolina. And now off with you, you need a good wash.”
After her bath she left Greta with her mother and went out to buy cigarettes. She smoked rarely, but when she did it was with single-minded passion. She found a bench in a small park nearby and sat and smoked. She smoked until her throat burned. She felt like a novice boxer who’s just taken their first real pounding in the ring. She was bruised and bloodied, but her veins were pumped full of adrenalin. When she thought of the sale, and only of the sale, she got up, walked to the post office, telephoned the Hotel Gellért and asked for Elza Waldburg.
“Fräulein Waldburg?” the operator said, sounding confused. “Do you mean Gräfin von und zu Waldburg-Althofen?”
“Yes, that’s who I mean.”
It didn’t matter that the Austrian aristocracy had officially been dissolved for almost 20 years. People everywhere still craved the glamour of the aristocrats as they did sweets and wine.
“Ahhh, Frau König, I’ve been expecting your call,” said Elza Waldburg.
How unhurried, how delicate and silvery was her voice.
“And your timing is excellent Frau König because I must soon be in Vienna for my cousin’s debutante ball. The only way we could possibly meet is tomorrow evening. Would that suit you?”
Need she ask?
“Oh, I’m so glad. I was worried I’d miss you,” said Elza Waldburg, without the slightest trace of worry in her silvery voice. “And will you have something nice to show me?” she asked.
Tünde looked down at her chipped nails and smiled. Leo’s words came to her: “Anticipation is an aphrodisiac.” So she said as little as possible.
“My friend, István Horthy, will be joining us. He’s invited us up to the residence,” said Elza Waldburg. “He’s taken a sudden interest in my collection since the Vienna Award. He wants to make sure I don’t buy anything too degenerate.” Then she laughed softly. Her laughter tinkled like a tiny silver bell in a doll’s house. “He’s a darling,” she murmured, “but he doesn’t know the first thing about art.”
After her phone call with Elza Waldburg, Tünde was even more nervous than before. She hadn’t been expecting István Horthy to be there and she couldn’t tell what his presence would mean for the sale, but what she did know was that she could not afford to turn up at the Horthy residence looking desperate. She needed nail polish and lipstick, and maybe some hair dye too. But first, she had to see if Max Muller had sent her any news about Hansi. She forced herself over to the telegram counter and waited.
On the following day, at eight o’clock in the evening, she stepped out into the street clutching her travel bag. The night was grey and damp but she had no money for a taxi, so she took a tram across town, got off at the corner of Andrassy Avenue and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Street and waited. Elza Waldburg had insisted on sending a car for her, so Tünde had lied about her address. The trip had been harrowing as every step of the way she’d worried about rain and worried about the paintings, and that her vernissage shoes would get wet and that her hair combs would slip out of place in the wind. At precisely a quarter to nine, a glittering black Maybach pulled up and a liveried driver jumped out to open the door for her. She was so light-headed with relief she thought she would faint. She sat inside the car and wrapped her arms around the bag of paintings, as if it were a sentient being, trembling with life. But she could not help noticing that the car seat was deeper and plusher than any she’d ever sat in before. Poor Hansi would have hated it, she thought. In spite of her brittle nerves she sat back, looked out the window and smiled a little to herself. She, Tünde König, was sitting in the very seat where His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary had once sat.
The Horthy residence was not very far from the city centre and soon she was in Buda and just a single bridge away. The Danube narrowed and curved along the Saint Gellért Embankment and the amber lights of the city glowed softly across the moving river like sequins on a ball gown. No sooner had they passed Elizabeth Bridge, they began the slow, winding ascent to what had for centuries been the home of Hungary’s lords and masters. She thought of Leo, of how he stood when he was showing a client a painting. Always back just a little, with his hands in his pockets, but leaning in towards the art work, so that he looked both relaxed and attentive. Relaxed because he knew the painting was quality, and attentive because before a client parted with the sum he had asked, he would need to assure them that what they were experiencing as they looked at the painting was indeed awe.
The car stopped by a low stone wall with a single unadorned door. A sombre-faced butler in tails and white gloves stood waiting. He stepped forward and opened the car door for Tünde. Then he silently ushered her in over the threshold, down a cold, stone corridor lit by wall lamps and smelling faintly of winter apples. They passed through one more door, she thought she heard the clarinet, then the butler parted a heavy set of velvet curtains and she was inside the Horthy residence. Or rather, she was inside the basement of the Horthy residence. It was, however, a rather grand basement, as it was István Horthy’s very own playground. It was well lit and furnished with Persian rugs and mismatched armchairs and standing lamps, bookshelves, occasional tables and a quaint but very efficient pot belly stove covered in glazed green tiles. In the centre of this affectedly casual setting was a model aeroplane the size of the Maybach. Beside it was a long wooden table, and on it sat a sparkling new Edison gramophone surrounded by tall, messy piles of records. A young man in a dinner suit was looking through them. When the butler announced her he turned around and before Tünde could stop herself she gasped. The young man walked towards her and smiled. He was used to people looking at him that way. The resemblance to his famous father was uncanny. He stopped before her, bent slightly from his narrow waist and clicked his heels together. “Horthy István. Welcome. Please come in.”
Tünde stuck out her hand but wondered if she should have curtsied instead. It was not so very warm in the basement, but she was sweating. She tried as discretely as possible to dry the palm of her hand on her dress. The butler took her coat and asked if she wished him to take her bag too.
“Oh no János, we’ll be needing that,” came a voice from across the room, followed by the tinkling, silvery laughter that belonged so entirely to Elza Waldburg. The butler nodded morosely.
“That will be all for tonight János, thank you.” István Horthy said.
Then the butler vanished silently into the night, his coat tails whooshing ever so softly as he turned to go.
Elza Waldburg was lounging in an armchair by one of the aeroplane wings. Her long fine legs were crossed. In one hand she held a Manhattan, the other she extended up to Tünde.
“Frau König, I’m so delighted you could make it,” she purred.
She wore a peach chiffon and cashmere dress by Schiaparelli, sapphires she’d inherited from her maternal grandmother, silk stockings from Paris and handmade shoes from Milan. She wore her fair, wavy tresses loose and they floated down her back white and soft as foam from the sea. Tünde felt ugly, bulky and grasping in Elza Waldburg’s exquisite presence.
“May I offer you a cocktail?” Horthy junior asked.
Tünde looked over at the butler’s tray opposite the gramophone. It was full of oddly-shaped bottles filled with colourful magic potions and cut glass decanters and crystal glasses in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes. A sterling silver cocktail shaker took pride of place. It was engraved with the coat of arms of the noble house of Horthy. A drink would be just the thing, she thought, but only one. Any more and she could get weepy, and no one wants to buy art, or anything else for that matter, from a frowzy woman with streaky mascara.
“Yes thanks, I’ll have what you’re having,” she said, with far more pluck than she actually felt.
Tünde perched on the armchair beside Elza Waldburg and sipped her drink cautiously. It was delicious. She would gladly have had a dozen.
“István,” Elza said, “won’t you join us?”
“Oh, yes, of course I will,” he answered, sticking his head around from behind an enormous wooden tool box. “My apologies Elza, Frau König, but I just need a moment… You see, it’s an Arado Ar68 fighter plane from 1934, it’s a prototype and it’s not a bad old thing I suppose, but its propellers are rather unpredictable, a bit like a beautiful woman,” he said, grinning at Elza and then ducking his head back down.
Elza looked over at Tünde, rolled her dazzling blue eyes and said, “Oh, he’ll be hours.”
There could be no question of looking at the paintings until he’d done with his tinkering.
“How’s the cocktail?” Elza asked.
“It’s very nice. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything quite like it.”
“István gets his whiskey sent over from America. He worked in Detroit for a year. He’s crazy about the place.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Oh, I’m simply dying to see what you’ve got for me! And I am glad István sent that butler away. These walls have ears I tell you. ”
Elza looked over at István and then lowering her voice she said, “How is dear Leo?”
“He’s as well as can be expected. He’s trying to get out of Germany with his family.”
Elza nodded and watched István playing with his toy plane. She was unsure where her new lover’s sympathies lay so she thought it prudent to be discreet.
“And how is your husband?” Elza asked, offering her a cigarette. “Is he still able to paint?”
“He does what he can,” she said vaguely.
“And was he able to keep his teaching position?”
She shook her head.
“I’m terribly sorry to hear it,” Elza said.
Elza Waldburg’s perfunctory inquiries seemed more cruel than polite. She must have known that Hansi had lost his teaching position, along with all of the other Modernists in Germany, just as she must have known that all of the Jewish art dealers had been shut down. So why all the questions? To gage the full extent of Tünde’s desperation. But, she reminded herself, Elza Waldburg was also desperate to buy. The best Modern art was either crossing the Atlantic to America, or was being systematically stolen by the Nazis. Or, being bought up by Peggy Guggenheim. Peggy Guggenheim was Elza Waldburg’s rival. Elza was in fact known as “The Catholic Peggy Guggenheim”. It was a running joke among the dealers. The reality though was that Elza did not have Peggy Guggenheim’s money, nobody did. But what she did have was connections to the oldest European families. She’d proven very resourceful in coming up with funds, or failing that, with buyers. It was even rumoured that she had helped some of the Modernists escape to America. She was a daring woman, thought Tünde, no doubt about it. Anyone still buying Modern art in Europe in 1938 had to be. Daring, but vain too. All collectors were inherently vain, irrespective of what they collected. Vanity fuelled their acquisitive natures. To them their collections were an extension of themselves, the embodiment of their culture and sophistication. The hermit collector who acquires anonymously and shuts those treasures away was the stuff of fiction. Every collector, sooner or later, wants the eminence of their collection recognised.
Tünde watched Elza as Elza watched István. He was lowering the needle onto a record.
“I hope that’s not Billie Holiday,” Elza called out gaily, “she’s so gloomy!”
“Oh, so you don’t want gloomy,” he said, “well alright then, I’ve got something so catchy for you darling that you won’t be able to sleep tonight.” He looked at her meaningfully as he changed the record and then he came over to join them.
The record crackled expectantly. There came a few short bars of piano, and then a clarinet burst into the room, piercingly clear and fresh, with all the vertical energy of an American skyscraper. Horthy junior immediately began tapping his well-shined shoes and snapping his fingers. Tünde noticed that he wore a signet ring on both pinkies, for István Horthy was born of nobility twice over. Now a woman’s voice came, full-throated and confident.
“That’s Martha Tilton,” he said, pointing towards the door as if she’d just walked in the room. “What a voice, what a songbird! My friend Árpi Esterházy just got back from America. He bought me this record in New York. It’s Benny Goodman.”
“Is that German she’s singing in darling?”
“Yes, if you can believe it. Listen.”
Bei mir bist du schayn,
Please let me explain,
Bei mir bist du schayn means that you’re grand…
“Funny, isn’t it? And hilarious pronunciation, but that’s the Yanks for you. Árpi says the Magyars in America don’t even speak their mother tongue any more. It’s just English all the way once they get there. And did you know that in January this year Benny Goodman actually performed on stage with a bunch of negroes at Carnegie Hall? Can you believe it?! Jews and negroes performing together for the cream of New York. And a sold out show too. Those Yanks, they go too far! Do you like the song Elza?”
“I do indeed, I think it’s grand,” she said with her silvery laugh.
“Would you listen to that clarinet! Allow me to mix you ladies another cocktail.”
Elza handed him her glass. Tünde tried to refuse but to no avail. When Horthy junior was over at the drinks tray Elza said, “He likes it when I’ve got a few cocktails in me,” and winked at Tünde, who didn’t consider herself a prude but was a little shocked by Elza’s remark. It must have shown on her face, although she hadn’t intended it, because Elza laughed and said, “The more drinks he fixes me, and the more he fixes for himself, the better for us both, believe me.”
Horthy junior handed round the cocktails and said, “I’ve just got to hear that tune again!”
When he came back it was with outstretched arms to Elza.
“Dance with me drága,” he said.
She laughed and stood up.
“Excuse us please Frau König,” he said.
The music was infectious and joyous. They danced on the rug between his toys. They were both tall and slim and elegant, but whereas she moved well, if unenthusiastically, he was enthusiasm itself. His legs moved in one direction, his head and arms in another. What he lacked in coordination he made up for in energy. He twirled Elza round and round till her skirts flew up and her garter buckles winked at him. He roared with laughter. He dipped her backwards and kissed her loudly on the mouth. What a show off, thought Tünde scornfully, and how disrespectful. Hansi had always been a gentleman on the dance floor. Hansi had rhythm, he knew how to move in time to a beat. But the music was so exuberant, the cocktail so delicious, that her thoughts were directed in ways she could not fully control. She dreamt of Hansi, she dreamt of America. She dreamt of being freed from dread. Horthy junior was twirling Elza round like a spinning top and laughing. The hem of her dress grazed the edge of the plane. Elza tried to ease him away from it, but Horthy István did not follow, he led. He led, and shimmied, and shook from side-to-side and twirled Elza round some more. He liked seeing her beautiful thighs. He wanted to touch her. He pulled her in tightly towards him, stepping backwards as he did so. But he’d misjudged the distance to the edge of his plane and he tripped over backwards, taking a wing down with him. Elza bent down quickly and tried to pull him up, but he pushed her hand away, jumped up, dusted off his trousers and straightened his hair. His high cheekbones flamed red. He turned and surveyed the damage to his plane.
“Dammit!” he shouted.
Then he stormed over to the gramophone and pulled the needle on Benny Goodman. He took off his dinner jacket, threw it to the ground and looked down into his tool box with a scowl. Elza walked over to him and gently touched his shoulder. He seemed to then remember that he was not alone. “My apologies, Elza, Frau König. Please excuse my shirtsleeves, but I really must attend to this now.” Then he knelt down and began rifling noisily through his tool box. Elza grabbed a chair and sat down beside him. “Just don’t move is all I ask,” he said rather curtly.
Tünde turned away from them and gasped for air. This did not bode well for the sale, not at all! Her head spun. A vile wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm her. She tried to take a deep steadying breath but her entire body was trembling. If the sale was lost she had nothing. No Hansi. No home. No money. But still she could not collapse in front of these people, these strangers. If there was any hope left of selling Hansi’s paintings tonight it did not just depend on the spoilt child’s whims, it depended on her. She stood up, grabbed her handbag, slipped off her shoes and tip-toed away from the circle of light. When she was surrounded entirely by the darkness Tünde howled silently. She let the hot tears come, could not stop them. Let them wet her cheeks, let them fill her ears, let them pool in the dark, bony spaces where necks and shoulders couple.
Yesterday afternoon at the post office a telegram from Max Muller had been waiting for her. She’d tried to take it and walk away from the counter, she’d wanted desperately to be alone in that moment, but her knees had buckled and she couldn’t move. She tore open the telegram with such violence that it ripped in two. She pushed the two halves together. The words stretched to infinity.
Hansi gone. Condolences Max.
She’d stumbled out into the street. She didn’t recognise anything. She thought she was still in Berlin. She thought she would faint, or collapse, something, anything to just stop time. She couldn’t believe that the world wheeled on around her same as it had when she’d walked into the post office only minutes ago. Was it really only minutes ago? No, it wasn’t. It was already a lifetime ago. It was in another life when she and Hansi had been in love. When she was Tunde König, wife of Hansi König the celebrated German artist, the reviled degenerate, the melancholy house painter. All around her people came and went. The sun shone on. Time trickled forward, blind, indifferent, impervious to everything except its own relentless beat. In her mind a single thought began to form, slowly and heavily, like fusing bricks. She had to see Hansi’s last painting again.
At dusk she walked towards the Danube, rocking Hansi’s painting in her arms. She looked straight ahead so that the people as they passed her appeared to be no more than darkening streaks of colour. Ash grey – charcoal – black. She counted her footsteps as she went, mouthing the numbers silently. November air streamed out of her frantic lips. The counting numbed her mind, kept thought at a small remove. But the dread was impossible to contain. It seeped in through her skin like an oil spill suffocating life in its wake. She counted. She walked on. Out to the Danube she went.
Dusk was waning as she arrived at the river. Electric lights blazed through the windows overlooking the Danube. The streetlights spluttered to life. And above, the night sky slowly gathered brilliant momentum. A set of stairs cut into the stone embankment took her down to the silty, lapping water. She breathed in its peculiar mix of dirt and eternity. She un-cradled Hansi’s painting and looked at it once more. beneath fear liberty awaits. She did not feel there was anything beneath her own fear only more fear still. But then she had always lacked Hansi’s faith. Freed from the anarchic violence of Kristallnacht the painting no longer seemed grotesque to her. But she could never love it as she did his others. This painting would forever be a poisonous reproach to her. It would forever accuse her of not having saved Hansi on Kristallnacht. Of having slept instead of barring his way. Of not stopping him from going out into the burning streets with his hard, bright, suicidal idealism. She pushed the canvas to her face and kissed Hansi one last time. She looked again at the otherworldly dragonflies hitched to the rounded bellies of the vowels. Their cross-hatched wings flapped in the riverwind. She knelt and gently laid the painting down in the water. She watched it float south in the twilight. Down to Szeged it would go, across the murky borders of Yugoslavia and Romania and out to the Black Sea. Hansi’s final work had never been destined for a gallery wall. It had to become one with the eternal waters. Such was its spirit. She whispered her final goodbye to Hansi.
“Tün-de!” She thought Elza Waldburg was calling her name. Her heart pounded violently in her chest. She held her breath, but all she could hear were the sounds of hammering. Of nails being forced into wood. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. István Horthy was repairing his plane. Her cheeks were thick with wet kohl. She set to re-applying her mask. Now she was certain Elza was calling her name. She stopped breathing and listened. “Tün-de! Where have you got to? We’re simply dying to see your paintings!” The wing had been repaired! Elza was letting her know that the sale had been salvaged. Hope lingered. She had sixteen of Hansi’s paintings to sell. That was a lot of good art, maybe even enough to get her and Greta to America. She just needed this one sale. She followed the smells of varnish and glue, whiskey and tobacco, and Chanel No. 5. She listened again. She heard the clarinet, she heard Elza’s silvery laugh. She heard the sweet pulse of life thrumming in the air. Tünde stretched her arms out, felt the bliss of it, felt its muscular, blind contours, and her entire being was electrified by the animal urge to live. ◊
Night Skies, part three, was first published in
Evening Street Review 22, Autumn 2019