Gratitude: A Novel by Joseph Kertes

Author:Joseph Kertes [Kertes, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9781429968690
Google: rrDDUFYf6hYC
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-10-13T16:54:38+00:00

Nineteen

Budapest – September 1, 1944

SIMON HAD BEGUN TO FEEL as useless as he was helpless. He had never returned to work after he was injured, and no one came looking for him, even though letters found their way to the Becks. He couldn’t go foraging for food with Lili, or Rozsi, who was becoming more daring and insistent lately. Paul wouldn’t have him on the campaigns with Wallenberg, because Simon wasn’t convincing as a Swede. He couldn’t write a great poem to Lili, though he certainly tried, and it wasn’t enough that he could recite poems to her, though that did impress her. He couldn’t invent anything, though he certainly tried that, too: he made drawings for a streamlined version of the innards of a butane lighter; he tried to concoct a mixture for an adhesive to be used by airplane manufacturers that would be strong enough to withstand high air pressure, but he couldn’t find the chemical ingredients to try out his hypothesis; he designed a disposable stomach for times of plenty, so chubby people could gorge themselves in cafés on meat and bread and cakes and then toss the full stomach in the bin on the way out; he tried to find a cure for something, anything at all, but couldn’t, even though, for a week, he pestered his father with questions about how various parts of the body worked. Why did the body attack itself with its green, cancerous army? he needed to know. What was giving the orders, and why? How could the orders be intercepted? Was surgically removing the conquerors as well as the conquered the way to go? If the heart was sending out the green soldiers, why couldn’t some kind of filter be installed to stop them, or a ditch to trip them up? If it was the brain that was to blame, why couldn’t it be sat down and persuaded to desist?

Simon began formulating a theory of evolution based on a group of humans confined to an office for ten thousand years. He made drawings. In the first set, the people had become as translucent as jellyfish and were vegetarian, sucking the ivy off the building’s walls and then the leaves from the potted plants, which had overtaken the top floor. Some were boxlike, and some had heads that craned over and took the shape of desk lamps. Some were flat as floors and striated, to suggest the grain of hardwood. In the next set of drawings, the humans were entirely transparent. Really, all one could see were the offices as they were now, with the occasional indentation apparent in a pillow and in the cushion of a desk chair, where people appeared to be lying and sitting.

Little news streamed into the safe house on Ulloi Street, except what arrived second-hand from Paul or Zoli or, occasionally, Lili. Sometimes the lack of news suited Simon fine. He was content to cocoon himself with his family and with the nuns. He allowed himself to feel immune for hours at a time, sometimes days.

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