It’s amazing to see her mother so youthful and unscarred; she had had her personal misfortunes—her third marriage over in less than a year, the affair with the painter that was a long tragic story. But when she is asked how she managed, her face turns blank, she shrugs: “I never went to register; I don’t know, I never read the notices. Most of my friends were not Jewish, it was no problem. When the bombardment began—I suppose it’s because I’m so neurotic,” she says cheerfully, “it didn’t bother me. I slept like a bear.”
Her mother is surprised that Sophie arrives from America like a poor relative—one suitcase with some cotton dresses and underwear, an old raincoat and not a single item with chic. “A young girl of eighteen!” she repeats with incomprehension and then apologizes to her dressmaker for her daughter’s shapeless, tasteless cotton dress. She left in such a hurry, she didn’t have time to shop in America. Yes, it’s her daughter from America, her beautiful daughter. She wants the nicest silk or chiffon. There is none in all of Budapest. Not even the black market. But this rayon is almost like silk.
“Budapest has changed,” Kamilla sighs. It was another life now with the new wage and working laws that favored the working class. “The plebes, the proletariats fill the restaurants,” she complained. The Russian soldiers, it would appear from Kamilla’s account, hadn’t washed for some time; many of them were unfamiliar with modern plumbing, drank from the toilet bowl, unscrewed the faucets fancying it was silver, didn’t know the use of toilet paper—but the burden of her complaint was the theft of the best fur coats, some ten she was saving for her daughter; the Russians left her three. And her journals—some thirty-eight volumes she had kept for twenty years—stolen. Of what possible use could they be to the Russians!
“You’re here for only ten days. I would like to keep you all to myself and hear about everything—everything, your life, your feelings, your dreams, your father, etc., etc. But I promised the family, Omama of course. I said you weren’t arriving till the day after tomorrow or we would have had to rush to her from the airport. You will have to visit Omama and Uncle Benji and Aunt Lea and Mitzi and her husband—they have a baby, you know. My family isn’t a problem. My brother Emil will drop in for a few minutes, just wants to see you. I haven’t seen Jani or Marta—you know about my poor brother Fritz—the Nazis shot him, he provoked them; it was completely unnecessary, he was such a crazy man. But I have a very nice surprise for you. Do you remember the little boy you used to play with when he lived on Pasaréti út, Peter?” Of course she remembers. “Well, he has grown into a fine young man. We met maybe twice in the past six years. And can you imagine, the day after I received the cable that you were coming, I met him by chance at the ballet. I told him you were coming in four days; he walked me home and I showed him your photograph. He was enchanted—neither of us could believe it of course, that it’s the little girl we knew, or that we’d see the young lady with the long hair and the Mona Lisa smile. (Really, my dear, nobody would guess that you’re American except for your figure—is it really fashionable to be so slender? I mean if you’re not a movie star or a model—do the men find it attractive?) Peter asked if he could take you out, so I said he must ask you. I invited him for tea Thursday after you visit the family and you decide.”
• •
For Uncle Benji, a physician, times have improved: the sick receive care and medication regardless of income. Of course, if the Russians withhold penicillin...“When you left, Budapest was Eastern Europe. Now it’s Western Russia. Nothing has changed.”
Uncle Benji jokes and talks about his niece from America as if she were part of a dream and in the tone appropriate for a little niece he joked with years ago in Budapest. “Did the American young lady think about her Uncle Benji in Budapest?” What should one say to Uncle Benji, who has come back from Buchenwald an old man? Should one mention dead members of the family? Those who died on their way to Auschwitz? They question her greedily about America, about her father’s house in Garfield, like little children who don’t know what to do with answers. They just want to go on saying, “Incredible, incredible—can you imagine?”
“When will we see you again!” Aunt Lea exclaims with emotion. “I’ll visit you in America, what will you say to that?” Uncle Benji laughs and pursues his fantasy. “We don’t know what will happen to us,” Aunt Lea sighs.
Cousin Mitzi greets her in a fancy pink negligee. She doesn’t fit into any of her dresses since the baby and everything is brought into the perspective of Mitzi’s good-humored, sexy vulgarity. She is blond, glamorous and gay; her tiny apartment has the look of an expensive boudoir: everything carpeted, curtained,
