Kingdom of Shadows

his shotgun. Go. Move. “Yes, yes,” the driver said, this time in Russian. He shoved the gear lever forward, and, after a moment, it engaged. He gave Morath an inquisitive look. Morath nodded.

They drove away slowly, into the street behind the station. A police car was idling at the corner, both doors open. Morath could hear the train moving out of the station-the engineer at last come to his senses. A black sedan came flying past and, tires squealing, cut in front of them, then slowed down. A hand came out of the driver’s window and beckoned them forward. The sedan accelerated and, at the next street, turned sharply and sped away.

They were quickly out of Bistrita, the road narrowed, turned to dirt, wound past a few dilapidated farms and villages, then climbed into the Transylvanian forest. At sunset, despite the cold iron on his wrists and ankles, Morath slept. Then woke in darkness. Out the window, a field painted in frost and moonlight. The old man was bent over the wheel, squinting to see the road.

“Where are we?” Morath said.

From the old man, an eloquent shrug. He took a scrap of brown paper from atop the dashboard and handed it to Morath. A crosshatch of lines, drawn in blunt pencil, with notes in Cyrillic script scrawled along the margin. “So, where we are?”

Morath had to laugh.

The old man joined him. Maybe they would find their way, maybe not, so life went.

The truck worked its way up a long hill, the wheels slipping in the frozen ruts, the old man restlessly shifting gears. “Like tractor,” he said. In the distance, Morath saw a dull glow that appeared and disappeared through the trees. This turned out to be, a few minutes later, a low stone building at the junction of two ancient roads, its windows lit by oil lamps. An inn, a wooden sign hung on chains above the door.

The old man smiled in triumph, let the truck roll to a stop in the cobblestone yard, and honked the horn. This produced two barking mastiffs, galloping back and forth in the headlights, and an innkeeper wearing a leather apron, a blazing pitch-pine torch held high in one hand. “You are welcome in this house,” he said, in formal Hungarian.

A deliberate man, round and genial. He took Morath to the stable, set the torch in a bracket, and, with hammer and chisel, broke the shackles and took them off. As he worked, his face grew sorrowful. “So my grandfather,” he explained, repositioning the chain atop an anvil. “And his.”

When he was done he led Morath to the kitchen, sat him in front of the fire, and served him a large glass of beer and a thick slice of fried cornmeal. When Morath had eaten, he was shown to a room off the kitchen, where he fell dead asleep.

When he woke, the truck was gone. The innkeeper gave him an old jacket and a peaked cap, and, later that morning, he sat next to a farmer on a wagon and entered Hungarian territory by crossing a hayfield.

Morath had always liked the Novembers of Paris. It rained, but the bistros were warm, the Seine dark, the lamps gold, the season’s love affairs new and exciting. The 1938 November began well enough, tout Paris ecstatic that it wouldn’t have to go to war. But then, Kristallnacht, on the night of 9 November, and in the shimmering tons of shattered Jewish glass could be read, more clearly than anybody liked, what was coming. Still, it wasn’t coming here. Let Hitler and Stalin rip each other’s throats out, went that week’s thinking, we’ll go up to Normandy for the weekend.

Morath arranged to meet his uncle at some cuisine grand-mere hole-in-the-wall out in Clichy. He’d spent ten days in Budapest, collecting money, listening to poor Szubl’s misadventures with the redheaded chorus girl he’d met at the nightclub. Then the two of them had hidden the cash in a cello and taken the night express back to Paris. For the moment, Morath was a man with well over two million pengo in his closet.

It was obvious to Morath that Count Polanyi had gotten an early start on lunch. Trying to sit down, he lurched into the neighboring table, very nearly causing a soup accident and drawing a sharp glance from the grand-mere. “It seems the gods are after me today,” he said, in a gust of cognac fumes.

It wasn’t the gods. The pouches beneath his eyes had grown alarmingly and darkened.

Polanyi peered at the chalked menu on the blackboard. “Andouillette,” he said.

“I hear you’ve been away,” Morath said.

“Yes, once again I’m a man with a house in the country, what’s left of it.” On 2 November, the Vienna Commission-Hitler-had awarded Hungary, in return for supporting Germany during the Sudeten crisis, the Magyar districts of southern Czechoslovakia. Twelve thousand square miles, a million people, the new border running from Pozsony/Bratislava all the way east to Ruthenia.

The waiter arrived with a carafe of wine and a plate of snails.

“Uncle Janos?”

“Yes?”

“How much do you know about what happened to me in Roumania?”

From Polanyi’s expression it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. “You had difficulties. It was seen to.”

“And that’s that.”

“Nicholas, don’t be cross with me. Basically, you were lucky. Had I left the country two weeks earlier you might have been gone for good.”

“But, somehow, you heard about it.”

Polanyi shrugged.

“Did you hear that Sombor appeared? At the Bistrita police station?”

His uncle raised an eyebrow, speared a snail on the third try and ate it, dripping garlic butter on the table. “Mmm? What’d he want?”

“Me.”

“Did he get you?”

“No.”

“So where’s the problem?”

“Perhaps Sombor is a problem.”

“Sombor is Sombor.”

“He acted like he owned the world.”

“He does.”

“Was he responsible for what happened to me?”

“Now that’s an interesting idea. What would you do if he was?”

“What would you suggest?”

“Kill him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Kill him, Nicholas, or don’t ruin my lunch. Choose one.”

Morath poured himself a glass of wine and lit a Chesterfield. “And the people who rescued me?”

“Tres cher, Nicholas.”

“Who shall I thank for it?”

“Somebody owed me a favor. Now I owe him one.”

“Russian? German?”

“Eskimo! My dear nephew, if you’re going to be inquisitive and difficult about this …”

“Forgive me. Of course I’m grateful.”

“Can I have the last snail? That grateful?”

“At least that.”

Polanyi jammed the tiny fork into the snail and frowned as he worked it free of its shell. Then, for a moment, he looked very sad. “I’m just an old, fat Hungarian man, Nicholas. I can’t save the world. I’d like to, but I can’t.”

The last days of November, Morath pulled his overcoat tight and hurried through the streets of the Marais to the Cafe Madine. It was, Morath thought, frozen in time. Empty, as before, in the cold morning light, a cat asleep on the counter, the patron with his spectacles down on his nose.

The patron, Morath suspected, remembered him. Morath ordered a cafe au lait