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. e 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 ĕnest 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 ĕre 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.