Kingdom of Shadows

bleeding, then poured a small glass of plum brandy and sat down in his favorite chair, where, with his glasses folded up and held gently in one hand, he died.

Morath went to his sister’s house for dinner. A new villa, also in the Third District but up in the newly elegant quarter known as Rose Hill. His sister, in a low-cut dress and red felt boots with tiny mirrors on them-oh, Cara-gave him a sexy hug and a warm kiss on the lips. “I’m so happy to see you, Nicholas. I am.” She didn’t let him go until a maid came into the room.

This was not new. She was three years older than Morath. When he was nine and she was twelve, she liked to comb his hair, would slip into his bed during a scary thunderstorm, would always know when he was melancholy and be tender to him.

“Teresa,” he said. “My only love.” They both laughed.

Morath looked around. There was too much furniture in the Duchazy house, much too expensive and much too new. How his sister could have married that idiot Duchazy was beyond him. They had three children, including a ten-year-old Nicholas-the absolute image of that idiot Duchazy.

Still, Teresa had married him, and her days of worrying about money were long over. The Duchazy family owned flour mills-thirty years earlier there’d been more mills in Budapest than in any other city in the world. Morath’s mother, who disliked Duchazy even more than he did, would refer to him in private as “the miller.”

Not the typical miller. He strode toward Morath and embraced him. He was a sinewy man with uncomfortably stiff posture, a pencil mustache, and strange, pale-green eyes. Well then, how was Paris? Still in the advertising business? Still a bachelor? What a life! The children were brought out, shown off, and put away. Duchazy poured brandies and had the fire lit.

The conversation wandered here and there. The Duchazy family was not exactly nyilas but close enough. Teresa warned him with a glance, more than once, when he was headed into a sensitive area. By the end of the second brandy, Duchazy had thrown a second log on the fire, which blazed merrily in a newly installed surround of yellow tile.

“Janos Polanyi thinks Mother ought to leave Budapest,” Morath said.

“Why is that?” Duchazy was annoyed.

“War,” Morath said.

Teresa shrugged. “She won’t go.”

“Maybe if you two considered it, she might.”

“But we won’t,” Duchazy said. “We’re patriots. Besides, I think it’s going to go on this way for a long time.” He meant diplomacy, marches, street fighting-the sort of thing they’d seen in the Sudetenland. “Hitler means to dominate the Balkans,” he continued. “Someone’s going to, it might as well be him. And he wants it quiet in Hungary and south of here-that’s the granary, and the oil fields. I don’t think the British dare to fight him, but, if it comes to that, he’ll need the wheat and the oil. Anyhow, if we’re smart, we’ll stay in his good graces, because the borders are going to start moving.”

“They already are,” Teresa said.

That was true. Hungary, having supported the occupation of the Sudetenland, was to be rewarded with the return of some of its northern territory, especially in lower Slovakia, where the population was eighty-five percent Magyar.

“Laszlo’s brother is fighting up in Ruthenia,” Teresa said.

Morath found this puzzling. Duchazy gave his wife the look that meant you’ve been indiscreet.

“Really?” Morath said.

Duchazy shrugged. “Nothing’s secret around here.” He meant, Morath thought, the house, Budapest, the nation itself.

“In Ruthenia?”

“Near Uzhorod. We’re in it with the Poles. They have irregulars, in the north, and we have the Rongyos Garda.” The Ragged Guard.

“What’s that?”

“Arrow Cross men, the street-corner boys and what have you, led by a few army officers in civilian clothing. They’re fighting the Sich, the Ukrainian militia. The next thing is, local Hungarians demand an end to the instability, and we send in the regular army. This used to be Hungary, after all, why should it belong to the Czechs?”

Jackals, Morath thought. Now that the prey was down they’d tear off a piece for themselves.

“The world’s changing,” Duchazy said. His eyes sparkled. “And about time.”

Dinner was exceptional. Deviled carp with onions, cabbage stuffed with ground pork, and a Medoc from the Duchazy estates near Eger.

After dinner, Teresa left the men to themselves, and Morath and Duchazy sat by the fire. Cigars were lit, and for a time they smoked in companionable silence. “One thing I did want to ask you,” Duchazy said.

“Yes?”

“A few of us have gotten together to support Szalassy. Can I put you down for a contribution?” Szalassy was one of the leaders of the Arrow Cross.

“Thank you for asking, but not right now,” Morath said.

“Mmm. Oh well, I promised some people I’d ask.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Do you ever see Colonel Sombor, at the legation?”

“I’m hardly ever there.”

“Oh. He asked for you. I thought maybe you were friends.”

Tuesday. In the late afternoon, Morath took a trolley to the Kobanya district, where factory walls rose high above the track on both sides of the street. There was a smoky haze, as evening came on, and a light rain dappled the surface of the river. A young woman sat across from him, she had the liquid radiance of some Hungarian girls and long hair that blew across her face as the trolley went around a curve. She swept it back with one hand and glanced at Morath. The trolley stopped in front of a brewery, and the girl got off in a crowd of workmen. Some of them knew her, called her by name, and one of them gave her a hand down from the high step.

The slaughterhouse was at the next stop, where a metal sign bolted to the brickwork said GERSOVICZY. When Morath got off the trolley, the air was like ammonia and made his eyes water. It was a long way to the entrance that led to the office, past loading docks with open doors where he could see red carcasses hung on hooks and butchers in leather aprons. One of them rested a sledgehammer in the sawdust, the iron head beaten flat at both ends, while he took a minute to smoke a cigarette.

“The office?”

“Upstairs. Just keep going till you see the river.”

In the Gersoviczy brothers’ office there was a desk with a telephone and an adding machine, an ancient safe in one corner, a clothes tree behind the door. The brothers were waiting for him. They wore black homburgs and heavy suits and silver ties, and they had the long sidelocks and beards of Orthodox Jews. On the wall was a Hebrew calendar with a picture of a rabbi blowing a ram’s horn. Across the top it said, in Hungarian, Gersoviczy Brothers Wish You a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

A soot-blackened window looked out over the Danube, lights twinkling on a hill above the far bank. The brothers, both smoking oval cigarettes, peered at Morath through the gloom of the unlit office.

“You are Morath Uhr?” He used the traditional form of address, Morath Sir.

“Yes. Count Polanyi’s nephew.”

“Please do sit down. I’m sorry we cannot offer you anything.”

Morath and the older brother, his beard streaked with silver, took the two wooden swivel chairs, as the younger brother leaned on the edge of the desk. “I am Szimon Gersoviczy,” he said. “And this is Herschel.” The older brother gave him a stiff nod.

Szimon spoke heavily accented Hungarian. “We’re Polish,” he explained. “From Tarnopol, twenty years ago. Then we came down here. Half of Galicia came here, a hundred years ago. We came for the same reason, to get away from the pogroms, to get a little opportunity. And it worked out like that. So, we stayed, and we Magyarized the name. It used to be just Gersovicz.”

The older brother finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in a tin ashtray. “Your uncle came to us for help,