The Choice Read online

  I see his eyes flicker with something bigger than greed. “Give me the money,” he says. “Keep the bracelet.”

  The doctor comes again the next night to help administer the first dose of penicillin. He stays until Marianne’s fever breaks and she accepts my breast.

  “I knew you’d find a way,” he says.

  By morning, Marianne is well enough to smile. She falls asleep suckling. Béla kisses her forehead, kisses my cheeks.

  * * *

  Marianne is better, but other threats simmer. Béla passes up the minister of agriculture post—“Yesterday’s Nazis become today’s Communists,” he says—and his Opel Adam convertible is driven off the road one day. Béla isn’t hurt, but the driver suffers some minor injuries. Béla goes to his house to bring supplies and good wishes for his recovery. The driver cracks the door but won’t open it all the way. His wife calls from another room. “Don’t let him in,” she says. Béla forces the door open and sees one of his mother’s finest tablecloths on their table.

  He comes home and checks the cabinet where the good linens are stored. Many items are missing. I expect him to be angry, to fire the driver, maybe other employees. He shrugs. “Always use your beautiful things,” he tells me. “You never know when they’ll be gone.”

  I think of my family’s apartment caked in manure, our piano sitting in the coffeehouse down the road, the way the big political moments—power changing hands, borders rewritten—are always personal too. Košice becomes Kassa and then Košice again.

  “I can’t do it anymore,” I tell Béla. “I can’t live with a target on my back. My daughter is not going to lose her parents.”

  “No,” he agrees.

  I think of Aunt Matilda. Magda has received her affidavit and is waiting for a visa. I am on the cusp of suggesting to Béla that we try to follow Magda to America, but then I remember that Magda has been warned that it could take years to get the visa, because even with sponsorship, immigration is subject to quota restrictions. We can’t rely on a years-long process to protect us from the Communists. We need a swifter exit.

  * * *

  On December 31, 1948, Marta and Bandi come to our house to welcome the New Year. They are ardent Zionists. They toast the health of the new state of Israel, drink after drink.

  “We could go there,” Béla says. “We could start a business.”

  It’s not the first time I have pictured myself in Palestine. In high school, I was a Zionist, and Eric and I had imagined living in Palestine together after the war. In the midst of prejudice and uncertainty, we couldn’t stop our classmates from spitting on us, or the Nazis from overtaking our streets, but we could advocate for a future home, we could build a place of safety.

  I can’t tell if I should greet Béla’s suggestion as the fulfillment of my old deferred dream or worry that we are relying on an illusion, an expectation that will lead to disappointment. Israel is such a new state that it has yet to hold its first elections, and it is already at war with its Arab neighbors. Furthermore, there is not yet a Law of Return, the legislation that several years later will grant any Jew, from any country, the ability to immigrate and settle in Israel. We will have to get there illegally, relying on Bricha, the underground organization that helped Jews flee Europe during the war, to arrange our passage on a ship. Bricha is still underground, and still helping people—refugees, the dispossessed, the homeless and stateless—to a new life. But even if we can secure seats on a boat, our plan isn’t a sure bet. Only a year ago, the Exodus, carrying forty-five hundred Jewish immigrants seeking asylum and resettlement in Israel, was sent back to Europe.

  But it is New Year’s Eve. We are hopeful. We feel brave. In the final hours of 1948, our plan for the future takes shape. We will use the Eger fortune to buy all the equipment we need to start a business in Israel. In the following weeks, after much research, Béla will decide that a macaroni factory is the wisest investment, and we will pack a boxcar with all of our belongings, with enough to sustain us through the first years in our new home.

  We Hungarians can’t end a night of drinking without eating sauerkraut soup. Mariska brings steaming bowls of it.

  “Next year in Jerusalem,” we say.

  * * *

  In the coming months, Béla buys the boxcar that will carry the Eger fortune to Italy and then on to Haifa by ship. He buys the essential equipment for the macaroni factory. I see to the packing of the silver, the china with gold initials. I buy clothes for Marianne, enough for the next five years, and sew jewels into the pockets and hems.

  We send the boxcar ahead and plan to follow, as soon as Bricha helps us find a way.

  * * *

  One late winter day when Béla is away on business, a certified letter comes for him from Prague, a letter I sign for, a letter I don’t wait for him to read. Before the war, the letter says, Czechoslovakian citizens who had already immigrated to America were allowed to register any family members still in Europe, under a law that would allow people suffering persecution to apply for visas to come to America without being subject to the quota restrictions that limited the number of people who could find refuge in the United States. Béla’s great-uncle Albert, who had been in Chicago since the early 1900s, had registered the Eger family. We are now one of two Czech families registered before the war invited to seek refuge in America. Béla must report right away to the American consulate in Prague for our documents.

  Our boxcar is already en route to Israel. A new life is already on the horizon. We have already arranged everything. We have already chosen. But my heart races at this news, at this unexpected opportunity. We could go to America like Magda, but without the wait. Béla returns from his trip, and I beg him to go to Prague for the documents. “Just in case,” I urge him. “Just as a precaution.” Grudgingly, he goes. I put the papers in the top drawer of my dresser, with my underwear. Just in case.

  CHAPTER 10

  Flight

  I come home from the park with Marianne on May 19, 1949, and Mariska is weeping.

  “They arrested Mr. Eger!” she whimpers. “He’s gone!”

  For months we have recognized that our days of freedom were numbered. In addition to running Béla off the road the previous year, the Communists have by now seized Béla’s business, confiscated our car, bugged our telephone. Our fortune safe in the boxcar on its way to Israel, we have stayed on, waiting for our travel arrangements from Bricha. We have stayed because we couldn’t imagine leaving yet. And now I risk raising my daughter without her father. I will not accept it. I will not. First I must turn off the worry and fear that gather in me. I must shut off the possibility that Béla is being tortured or that he is already dead. I must become like my mother the morning we were evicted from our apartment and sent to the brick factory. I must become an agent of resourcefulness and hope. I must move like a person who has a plan.

  I give Marianne a bath and eat lunch with her. I put her down for her nap. I am buying myself time to think and making sure she gets all the nourishment and creature comforts she can. Who knows if we will sleep tonight, or where? I am living minute by minute. I don’t know what I will do next, only that I must find a way to get Béla out of jail and to keep our daughter safe. I gather everything that might come of use without arousing suspicion. While Marianne sleeps, I open my dresser drawer and take out the diamond ring Béla had made for me when we married. It’s a beautiful ring—a perfect diamond, round, set in gold—but it has always made me feel self-conscious and so I never wear it. Today I put it on. I put the papers Béla retrieved from the American consulate in Prague inside my dress, flat against my back, held to my body by the belt on my dress. I can’t look like a person who is on the run. I can’t use our bugged phone to call anyone for help. But I can’t bear to leave the house without contacting my sisters. I don’t expect them to be able to help us, but I want them to know we are in distress, that I might not see them again. I call Klara. She picks up the phone and I improvise. I try not to cry, I try not to let
my voice tremble or crack.

  “I’m so happy that you’re coming to visit,” I say. There is no visit planned. I’m speaking in code. I hope she’ll understand. “Marianne has been asking for her Auntie Klarie. Remind me, what time is your train?”

  I hear her begin to correct or question me, then I hear the brief pause as she realizes that I’m trying to tell her something. Train, visit. What will she make of these scant clues? “We arrive this evening,” she says. “I’ll be at the station.” Somehow, tonight, will she meet us on a train? Is this what we have just arranged? Or is our conversation too coded even for us to understand?

  I tuck our passports into my purse and wait for Marianne to wake. She has been toilet-trained since she was nine months old, but when I dress her after her nap she allows me to put a diaper on her, and I fold my gold bracelet into it. I don’t take anything else with me. I can’t look like a person who is fleeing. Everything I say for the rest of the day, for as long as it takes to get us to safety, I will say in that language I find under duress, that way of being that is not authoritarian or domineering but also is not cowering or weak. To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. And to trust that there is enough, that you are enough.

  Oh, but I’m shaking. I leave the house with Marianne in my arms. If I act correctly, I won’t be returning here to the Eger mansion, not today, maybe not ever. We will be on our way, tonight, to make our new home. I keep my voice low-key. I talk to Marianne nonstop. In the twenty months since Marianne’s birth, besides nursing, this has been my success as a mother: I tell my daughter everything. I narrate what we are doing throughout the day. I name the streets and the trees. Words are treasures that I offer her again and again. She can speak in three languages: Hungarian, German, and Slovak. “Kvetina,” she says, pointing at a flower, saying the word in Slovak. From her I relearn what it is to be safe and curious. And in return, this is what I can provide for her—I can’t stave off danger, but I can help her know where she stands and what she’s worth. I keep up the monologue so that there is no room for the voice of fear.

  “Yes, a flower, and look at the oak, all leafed out, and there’s the milk truck. We’ll go see the man at the police station now, it’s a big, big building, like our house, but with long hallways inside …” I talk as though this is an ordinary excursion, as though I can be to her the mother I need for myself.

  The police station is intimidating. When the armed guards usher me into the building, I almost turn away and run. Men in uniforms. Men with guns. I can’t tolerate this expression of authority. It spins me out, unplants me. I lose myself and my direction in the current of their threat. But every minute I wait heightens the danger for Béla. He has already shown that he is not a person who rolls over and complies. And the Communists have already shown that they are intolerant of dissent. To what lengths will they go to teach him a lesson, to extract from him some imagined piece of information, to bend him to their will?

  And what about me? How will I be punished when I reveal my purpose here? I summon the confidence I found the day I bought penicillin from the black market dealer. Then, the biggest risk was that he would say no. I risked more if I didn’t ask for what we needed to save Marianne’s life. Today, asserting myself could lead to retaliation, imprisonment, torture. And yet, not to try, that is a risk too.

  The warden sits on a stool behind a high counter. He is a large man. I am afraid Marianne will observe that he is fat, say it too loudly, and ruin our chances. I make eye contact. I smile. I will treat him not as he is, but as I trust he can be. I will talk to him as though I already have the thing that I want. “Thank you, sir,” I say in Slovak, “thank you very much for giving my daughter back her father.” His forehead creases in confusion. I hold his eyes. I take off my diamond ring. I hold it toward him. “A reunion between a father and a daughter is a beautiful thing,” I continue, twisting the jewel back and forth so that it shines like a star in the dim light. He eyes the diamond and then stares up at me for an interminable moment. Will he call for his superior? Will he pull Marianne from my arms and arrest me too? Or will he seize something good for himself and help me? My chest tightens and my arms ache as he weighs his choices. Finally, he reaches for the ring and slips it into his pocket.

  “Name?” he says.

  “Eger.”

  “Come.”

  He takes me through a door and down some stairs. “We’re going to get Daddy,” I tell Marianne, as though we’re meeting him at the train. It’s a dismal, sad place. And the roles are topsy-turvy. How many of those locked up aren’t criminals at all but the victims of misused power? I haven’t been around prisoners since I was a prisoner myself. I feel ashamed, almost, to be on this side of the bars. And I am terrified that in a moment of arbitrary horror we might be made to switch places.

  Béla is in a cell by himself. He’s wearing his regular clothes—no uniform—and he jumps up from the cot when he sees us, reaching for Marianne’s hands through the bars.

  “Marchuka,” he says. “Do you see my funny little bed?”

  He thinks we are here for a visit. One of his eyes is black. There’s blood on his lip. I see him wearing two faces—the innocent and happy one for Marianne, the quizzical one for me. Why have I brought a child into a prison? Why am I giving Marianne this image that she will always know by heart, even if she can’t call it by its name? I try not to feel defensive. I try to make my eyes tell him he can trust me. And I try to shower him with love, the only thing bigger than fear. I have never loved him more than I do at this moment, when he knows instinctively how to make a game for Marianne, to reduce this bleak and terrifying place into something harmless.

  The warden unlocks the cell. “Five minutes!” he yells loudly. He pats the pocket that holds the diamond ring. And then he retreats down the corridor, his back toward us.

  I tug Béla through the cell door and I don’t breathe until we are on the street again, Béla, Marianne, me. I help Béla wipe the blood off his lip with his dirty handkerchief. We begin walking toward the train station. We don’t have to discuss it. It’s as though we have planned it all, his arrest, our sudden escape. We are making everything up as we go along, but there’s the giddy feeling of moving quickly through deep snow, stepping into leftover footprints, the surprise of finding that the tracks already laid out fit our feet and our speed. It’s as though we have already taken this journey in another life and now we operate on memory. I am glad Béla can carry Marianne. My arms are almost numb.

  The important thing is to get out of the country. To get away from the Communists. To get to the closest place where the Allies have a presence. At the train station I leave Béla and Marianne on a secluded bench and go alone to buy three tickets for Vienna and an armful of sandwiches. Who knows when we will eat again?

  We still have forty-five minutes to wait for the next train. Forty-five more minutes for Béla’s empty cell to be discovered. Of course they will send officers to the train station. The train station is where you go to track down a fugitive, which is what Béla is now. And I’m his accomplice. I count my breaths to keep from trembling. When I rejoin my family, Béla is telling Marianne a funny story about a pigeon that thinks he’s a butterfly. I try not to look at the clock. I sit on the bench, Marianne is in Béla’s lap, I lean against them, try to keep Béla’s face obscured. The minutes tick slowly by. I unwrap a sandwich for Marianne. I try to eat a bite.

  Then an announcement that makes my teeth chatter too violently to eat. “Béla Eger, please report to the information booth,” the announcer drones. It cuts through the static of ticket transactions, of parents reprimanding their children, of separations and goodbyes.

  “Don’t look,” I whisper. “Whatever you do, don’t look up.”

  Béla tickles Marianne, trying to make her laugh. I’m worried they are making too much noise.

  “Béla Eger, come immediately to information,” the announcer
calls. We can hear the urgency mounting.

  At last the westbound train pulls into the station.

  “Get on the train,” I say. “Hide in the bathroom in case they search the train.”

  I try not to look around for the police officers as we hurry to board. Béla runs with Marianne on his shoulders. She shrieks delightedly. We have no luggage, which made sense on the streets, walking here, but now I’m worried that the absence of luggage will arouse suspicion. It will take nearly seven hours to reach Vienna. If we manage to get out of Prešov, there is still the threat that police might board at any stop to search the train. There was no time to procure fake identification. We are who we are.

  We find an empty compartment, and I busy Marianne at the window, counting all the shoes on the platform. After springing Béla from jail, I can hardly tolerate the idea of his being out of my sight. I can’t stand for the danger to continue, to mount. Béla kisses me, he kisses Marianne, and goes to hide in the bathroom. I wait for the train to start moving. If the train can just leave the station, we are an inch closer to freedom, a second closer to Béla’s return.

  The train won’t move. Mama, Mama, I pray. Help us, Mama Help us, Papa.

  The compartment door folds open and a police officer gives us a quick glance before shutting the door. I hear his boots as they move down the aisle, I hear other doors opening and shutting, I hear him shouting Béla’s name. I chatter at Marianne, I sing, I keep her looking out the window. And then I fear that we will see Béla in handcuffs, being pulled from the train. At last I see the conductor lift his stool from the platform and board the train. The car doors close. The train begins to move. Where is Béla? Is he still on the train? Has he managed to escape detection? Or is he on his way back to jail, to a certain beating—or worse? What if every turn of the wheels brings us farther apart, farther from a life we can make together?