The Green Elephant by Giorgio Pressburger & Nicola Pressburger

Author:Giorgio Pressburger & Nicola Pressburger [Pressburger, Giorgio & Pressburger, Nicola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

VII

One Sunday, while the city still bore the scars of the siege, its disembowelled streets and rows of crumbling houses, the companions met again around the table. Shermann the printer held tightly on to one of the few objects he had managed to save from his house, a lucky pack of cards, with its pumpkins, its hearts, its acorns, its leaves and the face of William Tell.

They looked at each other in wonder. It was the first time they had got together to talk in six years of war, persecution and death. Each of them had his own store of strange experiences, agonizing episodes and funny memories to recount from the terrible period they had lived through, and which was already beginning to recede into the past. Each one had discovered the secret of his own salvation, embodied in the fact that they were all there, sitting at that table, talking about it.

Miska Grün, the Russian with the overflowing intestines, spoke with the air of someone who had won out in the end. Yes, the gold had been useful as he had foreseen. Two heavy bracelets slipped into the hands of a guard had been enough to save him from deportation. A crucifix and chain had persuaded his neighbour, a devout Catholic, to put him up for a time. As the war entered its bloodiest stage, the price of each favour increased. In the end a hot meal would cost you a gold ring. But he had saved enough gold to save himself. And enough to start a new life and take up some business, he confided, and immediately regretted telling them.

Eugenio didn’t know what to do with his insurance policies. The companies would not pay out on damages caused by the war–such events were too imponderable, they declared in letters sent out to their policyholders, and too serious for them to contemplate insuring against. And moreover, how could he have begun to calculate the value of the damages, the months of suffering, the thumps on the head from the Nazis at the racecourse, the loss of his job? Could he have had an indemnity against the loss of his little printing press, blown to bits in an explosion? The metal letters, normally so carefully arranged in their cases, had flown in a thousand directions, forming words in the air that no man could understand. Yes, the press did have a value that could be calculated, but the insurance did not cover against war damage.

The most disappointed of all was Tibor. He had put all his hopes in their printing business. Having spent the best years of his youth in the stone quarries of Transylvania, how was he now to begin life again aged nearly thirty?

One place at the card table was empty. Béla Weiss, the taxi driver, had lost his game. His body lay in a common grave at Auschwitz, while his soul, according to Jewish legend, was taking its first steps on the long journey beyond the earth,

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