No word from his Munkaszolgalat company since last November. Now it was April. In Ukraine the steady cold would have just begun to relent. Soon it would become possible to bury the winter's dead.

He had left Klara with the baby, the rest of the mail in a jumble on his desk. He would go and see if he could help her; it would only make him feel worse to sit at the edge of the fountain and consider all the things he could not know. He climbed the stairs and opened the apartment door, listening for the baby's lifted voice. But a film of silence had settled over the rooms. The kettle had ceased to bubble on the stove. The baby's bathwater stood cold in its little tin tub, still awaiting the addition of the hot. The baby's towel lay folded on the kitchen table, his jacket and pants beside it.

Andras heard the baby make a noise, a brief two-note plaint; the sound came from the sitting room. He entered to find Klara on the sofa with the baby in her arms. An opened letter lay on the low table before her. She raised her eyes to Andras.

"What is it?" he said. "What's happened?"

"You've been called again," she said. "You've been called back to work duty."

He scrutinized the letter, an abbreviated rectangle of thin white paper stamped with the insignia of the KMOF. He was to report to the Budapest Munkaszolgalat Office two mornings hence; he would be assigned to a new battalion and company, and given orders for six months of labor service.

"This can't be," he said. "I can't leave you again, not with the baby."

"But what can we do?"

"I still have General Marton's card. I'll go to his office. Maybe he can help us."

The baby twisted in Klara's arms and made another sound of protest. "Look at him," she said. "Naked as a newborn. I forgot all about his bath. He must be freezing."

She got up and brought him into the kitchen, holding him against her. She emptied the kettle into his little tub and stirred the water with her hand.

"I'll go tomorrow morning," Andras said. "I'll see what can be done."

"Yes," she said, and lowered the baby into the tub. She laid him back against her arm and rubbed soap into the fine brown fluff of his hair. "And if he can't help, I'll write to my solicitor in Paris. Maybe it's time to sell the building."

"No," Andras said. "I won't have you do it."

"I won't have you go back to the service," she said. She wouldn't look at him, but her voice was low and determined. "You know what goes on there now. They're sending men to clean up minefields on the front. They're starving them to death."

"I survived it for two years. I can survive it for six more months."

"Things were different before."

"I won't let you sell the building."

"What do I care for the building?" she cried. The baby looked at her, startled.

"I'll speak to Marton," Andras said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"And Shalhevet?" she said. "What did she write?"

"She knows some people in the Ministry of Immigration. She'll try to make a case for our being granted visas."

The baby kicked an arc of water into Klara's hair, and she let out a sad laugh.

"Maybe we should pray," she said, and covered her eyes with one hand as if she were reciting the Shema. He wanted to believe that someone could be watching in pity and horror, someone who could change things if he chose. He wanted to believe that men were not in charge. But at the center of his sternum he felt a cold certainty that told him otherwise. He believed in God, yes, the God of his fathers, the one to whom he'd prayed in Konyar and Debrecen and Paris and in the work service, but that God, the One, was not One who intervened in the way they needed someone to intervene just then. He had designed the cosmos and thrown its doors open to man, and man had moved in and begun a life there. But God could no more step inside and rearrange that life than an architect could rearrange the lives of a building's inhabitants. The world was their place now. They would use it in their fashion, live or die by their own actions. He touched Klara's hand and she opened her eyes.

General Marton's powers, though considerable, could not exempt Andras from work service. They could not even get his service postponed. But they prevented his being posted to the Eastern Front, and they won the same reprieve for Mendel Horovitz, who had been called at the same time. Andras and Mendel were assigned to Company 79/6 of the Budapest Labor Service Battalion. The company had been put to work in a rail yard so close to Budapest that the men who lived in the city could sleep at home rather than in barracks at the work site. Every morning Andras rose at four o'clock and drank his coffee in the dark kitchen, by the light of the stove; he slung his pack over his shoulder, took the tin pail of food Klara had prepared for him the night before, and slipped out into the predawn chill to meet Mendel. Now, instead of reporting to the offices of the Magyar Jewish Journal Magyar Jewish Journal, they walked all the way to the river and crossed the Szechenyi Bridge, where the stone lions lay on their pedestals and the Romany women in black head scarves and cloaks slept with their arms around their thin-limbed children. In that blue hour a mist hovered above the surface of the Danube, rolling up from the braided currents of the water. Sometimes a barge would slide past, its low flat hull parting the vapor, and they might glimpse the bargeman's wife standing at a glowing brazier and tending a pot of coffee. On the other side of the river they would take the tram to Obuda, where they could get the bus that would take them to Szentendre. The bus ran along the river, and they liked to sit on the Danube side and watch the boats glide south. Often they would pass the time in silence; the subject most on their minds could not be discussed in public. Andras had received the news from Shalhevet that the Immigration Office had responded favorably to her first inquiries, and that the process was moving along more quickly than expected. There was reason to hope that they might have papers in hand by midsummer. But what then? He didn't know whether or not he should dare to hope Klein might help them, or how much it would cost to make the journey, or how many visas Shalhevet could muster. And though spring had arrived in full force now, there was still no word from Matyas. Gyorgy's most recent inquiries had proved fruitless. It seemed impossible to think of leaving Hungary while his brother was lost in Ukraine, perhaps dead, perhaps taken prisoner by the Soviets. But now that spring had come, Matyas could materialize any day. It wasn't beyond reason to hope that in three or six months they might all emigrate together. A year from now, Andras and his brothers might be going off to work in an orange grove in Palestine, perhaps at one of the kibbutzim Rosen had described, Degania or Ein Harod. Or they might be fighting for the British--Mendel had heard that there was a battalion of soldiers that had been formed from members of the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine.

When the bus reached Szentendre, they climbed down with the other men--their workmates who had boarded at Obuda or Romaifurdo or Csillaghegy--and walked the half mile to the train-loading yard. The first trucks pulled in at seven o'clock. The drivers would roll up the tarps to reveal corded cubes of blankets, crates of potatoes, bolts of military canvas, cases of ammunition, or whatever else it was that they happened to be shipping to the front that day. Andras and Mendel and their workmates had to move the goods from the trucks to the boxcars that waited on the tracks, doors yawning wide in the growing light. When they had finished loading one car, they would move on to another and another. But the operation wasn't as simple as it looked. The cars, once filled, were not sealed; they were left open to roll into a shed where they would be inspected. At least that was what Andras and Mendel had been told when the foreman had set them to work: After the cars were loaded, they would be inspected by a corps of specially trained soldiers. If anything was missing, the work servicemen would be held responsible and punished. Only when every item had been tallied would the trains be sealed and sent to the front.

The inspectors came and went in covered trucks. Soldiers drove the trucks directly into the inspection shed and parked them beside the train. Through the broad rectangular doors, Andras could see the soldiers moving quickly between the train and the trucks. The inspectors didn't bother to conceal what was going on; they oversaw the operation with the confidence of their privileged place in the chain of command.

Overcoats, blankets, potatoes, cans of beans, guns: Every day, a tithe of it drifted from the boxcars to the trucks. When the soldiers had finished with one boxcar, the inspectors would seal it and the train would roll forward so the soldiers could get to work on the next. They had to work fast for the trains to run on time; the railway schedule made no allowance for black-market siphoning. Once the soldiers had done their work, the inspectors would declare the trainload complete and sign the paperwork. Then they would send the train off to the front. The covered trucks would roll out, the siphoned goods would slide into the black market, and the inspectors would share the proceeds among themselves. It was a tidy and profitable business. In their shed, the inspectors smoked expensive cigars and compared gold pocket watches and played cards for piles of pengo. The guards must have been getting their share of the profits, too--at lunchtime, instead of standing in line at the mess tent, they drank beer and grilled strings of Debrecen sausages, smoked Mirjam cigarettes, and paid the work servicemen to polish their new-looking boots.

Andras knew what the skimming would mean to the soldiers and laborers on the front. There would be too few blankets to go around, too few potatoes in the soup.

Someone might not get new boots when his old boots fell apart. The work servicemen would be the hardest hit: They'd be forced to write promissory notes for hundreds of pengo to buy the most basic supplies. Later, when the guards and officers went home on furlough, they would present the notes to the servicemen's families, threatening that the men would be killed if their wives or mothers didn't produce the money. But the labor servicemen at Szentendre Yard seemed to regard the practice as a matter of course. What could any of them have done to stop it? Day after day they loaded the trains and the soldiers unloaded them.

As if to remind them of their powerlessness, all the Jewish workers now had to wear distinguishing armbands, ugly canary-yellow tubes of fabric that slid over their sleeves. Klara had had to sew these for Andras before he reported for duty. Even Jews who had long ago converted to Christianity had to wear armbands, though theirs were white. The bands were mandatory at all times. Even when the weather turned unseasonably hot, the sun reflecting off the crushed rock of the rail yard as though from a million mirrors, and the laborers stripped off their shirts--even then, they had to wear the armbands over their bare arms. The first time Andras had been told to retrieve his band from his discarded shirt, he had stared at the guard in disbelief.

"You're just as much a Jew with your shirt off as you are with it on," the man had said, and he waited for Andras to put on the armband before he turned away.

The commander at Szentendre was a man called Varsadi, a tall paunchy flatlander with an even temper and a taste for leisure. Varsadi's chief vices were mild ones: his pipe, his flask, his sweet tooth. He was a constant smoker and a happy drunk. He left the matter of discipline to his men, who were less forgiving, less easily distracted by a fine tin of Egyptian tobacco or a smoky Scotch. Varsadi himself liked to sit in the shade of the administrative office, which stood on a low artificial hill overlooking the river, and watch the proceedings of his rail yard while he entertained visiting commanders from other companies or enjoyed his share of the goods that had been intended for the front. Andras knew to be grateful that he was not a Barna nor even a Kalozi, but the sight of Varsadi with his heels on a wooden crate, his arms crossed over his chest in contentment, a lemniscate of smoke drifting from his pipe, was its own special brand of torture.

By the end of their first week, Andras and Mendel had begun to discuss the newspaper they might publish at Szentendre Yard-- The Crooked Rail The Crooked Rail, it would be called.

"A la Mode at Szentendre," Mendel had extemporized to Andras one morning on the bus, indicating the band on his arm. "The color yellow, ever popular for spring, has surged to the leading edge of fashion." Andras laughed, and Mendel took out his little notebook and began to write. The trendsetting young men of the 79/6th have made a bold statement The trendsetting young men of the 79/6th have made a bold statement in buttercup, he read aloud a few minutes later: Accessorize! The Accessorize! The au courant au courant favor a trim favor a trim band of ten centimeters worn about the bicep, in an Egyptian twill suitable for all occasions. Next week: Our fashion correspondent investigates a new rage for nakedness among soldiers on the Eastern Front.

"Not bad," Andras said.

"The Yard's an easy target. I'm surprised they don't have a paper already."

"I'm not," Andras said. "The other men seem half asleep."

"That's just it. Every day they're watching these army stooges steal bread from the men on the front, and they take it all as a matter of course!"

"Only because they're not being starved to death themselves." not being starved to death themselves."

"Well, let's wake them up," Mendel said. "Let's get them a little angry about what's going on. First we'll make them laugh in the usual manner. Then, later, we'll slide in a piece or two about what it's like in a real camp. Especially if you're short on food or missing an overcoat. Maybe we'll inspire them to slow down the operation a little. If we all drag our feet in the loading, the soldiers won't have as much time to unload. The trains still have to roll out on time, you know."

"But how to do it without risking our necks?"

"Maybe we don't have to hide the paper from Varsadi and the guards. If the coating's sweet enough, they'll never taste what's in the pill. We'll praise Szentendre to the skies in comparison to the other hellholes we've been in, and both sides will hear what we want them to hear."

Andras agreed, and that was where it began. The Crooked Rail The Crooked Rail would be a more would be a more elaborate operation than the previous two papers; their residence in Budapest would give them access to a typewriter, a drafting table, an array of supplies. The journey to and from Szentendre would provide time for two daily editorial meetings. They would begin slowly, filling the first issues with nothing but jokes. There would be the usual fabricated news, the usual sports, fashion, and weather; there would be a special arts section complete with event reviews. This week the Szentendre Ballet debuted "Boxcar," This week the Szentendre Ballet debuted "Boxcar," Mendel Mendel wrote for the first issue, a brilliant ensemble piece choreographed by Varsadi Varsadius, a brilliant ensemble piece choreographed by Varsadi Varsadius, Budapest's enfant terrible enfant terrible of dance. A certain element of repetition was offset by a of dance. A certain element of repetition was offset by a delightful variability in the ages and physiques of the dancers. And then there would be a new feature called "Ask Hitler." On their second Monday at Szentendre, Mendel presented Andras with a typescript: DEAR HITLER: Please explain your plan for the progress of the war in the East. With affection, SOLDIERDEAR SOLDIER: I'm so pleased you asked! My plan is to build a large meat-grinder in the vicinity of Leningrad, fill it with young men, and crank the handle as fast as I can. With double affection, HITLERDEAR HITLER: How do you propose to fight the British fleet in the Mediterranean? Yours most sincerely, POPEYEDEAR POPEYE: First of all, I'm a fan! I forgive you for being American. I hope you'll pay us a visit in the Reich when this nasty business is all over. Secondly, here is my plan: Fire my admirals until I find one who'll take orders from a Fuhrer who's never been to sea. With admiration, HITLERDEAR HITLER: What is your position on Hungary? Yours, M. HORTHYDEAR HORTHY: Missionary, though at times I favor the croupade, just for variation. Love, HITLER "Maybe we should speak to Frigyes Eppler," Andras said, once he'd read the piece. "Maybe he'd let us print this paper on the Journal's Journal's press. I'd hate to subject a piece press. I'd hate to subject a piece of work as fine as this to the mimeograph."

"You flatter me, Parisi," Mendel said. "But do you think he'd go for it?"

"We can ask," Andras said. "I don't think he'd begrudge us a little ink and paper."

"Make your illustrations," Mendel said. "That can only help our case."

Andras did, spending a sleepless night at the drafting table. He made an elaborate heading for the paper, two empty boxcars flanking a title stencilled in Gothic script. The fashion section carried a drawing of a young dandy in full Munkaszolgalat uniform, his armband radiating light. The dance review showed a line of laborers, fat and slender, young and old, struggling to hold crates of ammunition aloft. For the Hitler section, austerity and gravity seemed the best approach; Andras made a detailed pencil drawing of the Fuhrer from an old edition of the Pesti Naplo Pesti Naplo. At two in the morning Klara woke to feed Tamas, who had not yet learned to sleep through the night. After she'd put him to bed again, she came out to the sitting room and went to Andras, pressing her body against his back.

"What are you doing up so late?" she said. "Won't you come to bed?"

"I'm almost finished. I'll be in soon."

She leaned over the drafting table to look at what he'd taped to its tilted plane.

"The Crooked Rail," she read. "What is that? Another newspaper?" she read. "What is that? Another newspaper?"

"The best one we've made so far."

"You can't be serious, Andras! Think of what happened in Transylvania."

"I have," he said. "This isn't Transylvania. Varsadi's not Kalozi."

"Varsadi, Kalozi. It's all the same. Those men have your life in their hands. Isn't it bad enough you had to be called again? 'Ask Hitler'?"

"The situation's different at Szentendre," he said. "The command structure hardly deserves the name. We're not even going to publish underground."

"How will you not publish underground? Do you plan to offer Varsadi a subscription?"

"As soon as we've got the first issue printed."

She shook her head. "You can't do this," she said. "It's too dangerous."

"I know the risks," he said. "Perhaps even better than you do. This paper's not just fun and games, Klara. We want to make the men think about what's going on at Szentendre. We're shorting our brothers on the front every day. In my case, perhaps literally."

"And what makes you think Varsadi won't object?"

"He's a sybarite and a fond old fool. The paper will praise his leadership. He won't see anything past that. He's got no loyalty to anything but his own pleasures. I'd be surprised if he had any politics at all."

"And what if you're mistaken?"

"Then we'll stop publishing." He stood and put his arms around her, but she kept her back erect, her eyes on his own.

"I can't stand the thought of anything happening to you," she said.

"I'm a husband and a father," he said, following the ridge of her spine with his palm. "I'll stop immediately if I think there's any real danger."

At that moment Tamas began to cry again, and Klara drew herself away and went to soothe him. Andras stayed up all night to finish the work. Klara would come to understand his reasons, Andras felt, even those he hadn't voiced aloud--those that were more personal, and concerned the difference between feeling at the mercy of one's fate and, to some small degree, the master of it.

That evening, Saturday night, he knew Eppler would be at the offices of the Journal, wrangling with the final edits of Sunday's edition. After dinner he and Mendel took their pages to the newspaper's offices and made their plea. They wanted permission to typeset and print a hundred copies of the paper each week. They would come in after hours and use the outdated handpress that the Journal Journal retained strictly for emergencies. retained strictly for emergencies.

"You want me to make you a gift of the paper and ink?" Eppler said.

"Think of it as the Magyar Jewish Journal's Magyar Jewish Journal's contribution to the welfare of forced contribution to the welfare of forced laborers," Mendel said.

"What about my welfare?" Eppler said. "My managing editor does nothing but grouse about finances as it is. What will he say when supplies begin to disappear?"

"Just tell him you're suffering from war shortages."

"We're already suffering from war shortages!"

"Do it for Parisi," Mendel said. "The mimeograph blurs his drawings terribly."

Eppler regarded Andras's illustrations through the shallow refraction of his hornrimmed glasses. "That's not a bad Hitler," he said. "I should have made better use of you when you were working for me."

"You'll make good use of me when I work for you again," Andras said.

"If you let us print The Crooked Rail The Crooked Rail, Parisi will swear to work for you when he's done with the Munkaszolgalat," Mendel said.

"I hope he'll get himself back to school once he's done with the Munkaszolgalat."

"I'll need to have some way to pay tuition," Andras said.

Eppler blew a stuttering breath, took out a large pocket handkerchief and wiped his brow, then glanced at the clock on the wall. "I've got to get back to work," he said.

"You can print fifty copies of your rag, and no more. Monday nights. Don't let anyone catch you at it."

"We kiss your hand, Eppler-ur," Mendel said. "You're a good man."

"I'm a bitter and disillusioned man," Eppler said. "But I like the idea that one of our presses might print a true word about the state we're in."

When Andras and Mendel presented Major Varsadi with the inaugural copy of The Crooked Rail, he gratified them by laughing so hard he was forced to remove his pocket handkerchief and wipe his eyes. He praised them for knowing how to make light of their situation, and opined that the other men might have something to learn from their attitude. The right state of mind, he said, pointing the burning tip of his cigar at them to make his point, could lighten any load. That night Andras brought home to Klara the news that they'd gotten permission to publish The Crooked Rail The Crooked Rail, and she gave him her reluctant blessing. The next day he and Mendel distributed fifty copies of the first issue, which spread as quickly and were consumed with as much relish as the first issues of The The Snow Goose and and The Biting Fly The Biting Fly. Before long Varsadi began the practice of reading the paper aloud to the Munkaszolgalat officers who paid lunchtime visits to Szentendre Yard; Andras and Mendel could hear their laughter drifting down from the artificial hill where they took their long lunches.

Everyone at Szentendre wanted to make an appearance in the paper, even the foremen and guards who had seemed so stern in comparison to Varsadi. Their own squad foreman, Farago, a mercurial man who liked to whistle American show tunes but had a habit of kicking his men from behind when his temper ran short, began to wink at Andras and Mendel in a companionate manner as they worked. To gratify him and avert his kicks, they wrote a piece entitled "Songbird of Szentendre," a music review in which they praised his ability to reproduce any Broadway melody down to the thirty-second note.

Their third week at the camp provided another fortuitous subject: The rail yard received a vast and mysterious shipment of ladies' underthings, and the men had gotten them half loaded onto a train before anyone thought to wonder why the soldiers at the front might need a hundred and forty gross of reinforced German brassieres. The inspectors, giddy with the prospect of the black-market demand for those garments, appropriated three squads of labor servicemen to get the German brassieres off the train and into the covered trucks; at midday, the lunch break devolved into a fashion show of the latest support garments from the Reich. Labor servicemen and guards alike paraded in the stiff-cupped brassieres, pausing in front of Andras so he might capture their likenesses. Though the rest of the afternoon was consumed with a harder variant of labor--a half-dozen truckloads of small munitions arrived and had to be transferred to the trains--Andras scarcely felt the strain in his back or the shipping-crate splinters in his hands. He was considering the set of fashion drawings he might make-- Berlin Chic angles into Berlin Chic angles into Budapest! --and calculating how long it might be before he and Mendel began to shift the --and calculating how long it might be before he and Mendel began to shift the paper toward their aim. As it turned out, the following week's shipments provided the ideal material. For three days the supply trucks contained nothing but medical supplies, as if to stanch a great flow of blood in the east. As the soldiers transferred crates of morphine and suture to the black-market trucks, Andras thought of Tibor's letters from his last company posting-- No splints or casting materials or antibiotics, of course No splints or casting materials or antibiotics, of course--and began to roll out a new section in his mind. "Complaints from the Front" it would be called, a series of letters from Munkaszolgalat conscripts in various states of illness and hunger and exposure, to which a representative of the KMOF would reply with admonitions to buck up and accept the hardships of war: Who did these whimpering fairies think they were? They should act like men, goddamn it, and consider that their suffering served the Magyar cause. Andras introduced the idea to Mendel that evening on the bus, and they mounted the series the following week, in a small box that ran on the back page.

By the end of the month an almost imperceptible shift had taken place among the ranks of the 79/6th. A few of the men seemed to be paying a different kind of attention to what went on each day in the inspection shed. In small huddled groups they watched the soldiers rushing to unload crates of food and clothing stamped with the KMOF logo.

They followed the movement of the boxes from the train to the covered trucks, then watched the trucks depart through the rail-yard gates. Andras and Mendel, who had attained a certain status thanks to their role as publishers of The Crooked Rail The Crooked Rail, began to approach the groups and speak to a few of the men. In lowered voices they pointed out how little time the soldiers had to move the goods; a few small adjustments on the part of the laborers might delay the siphoning just long enough to get a few more bandages, a few more crates of overcoats, sent to the men at the front.

By the next week, almost unnoticeably, the 79/6th had begun to drag its feet as it loaded goods onto the boxcars. The change happened slowly enough and subtly enough that the foremen failed to notice a general trend. But Andras and Mendel could see it.

They watched with a kind of quiet triumph, and compared their impressions in whispered conferences on the bus. All indications suggested that the small shift they'd hoped for had come to pass. Their conversations with the other men confirmed it. There was no way to know, of course, whether the change would make a difference to the men at the front, but it was something, at least: a tiny act of protest, a sole unit of drag inside the vast machine that was the Labor Service. The following week, when they brought the news to Frigyes Eppler at the Journal Journal, he clapped them on the shoulders, offered them shots of rye from the bottle in his office, and took credit for the whole thing.

On Sundays, when Andras was free from Szentendre Yard, he and Klara went to lunch at the house on Benczur utca, which had been stripped by now of all but its most essential furnishings. As they dined in the garden at a long table spread with white linen, Andras had the sense that he had fallen into a different life altogether. He didn't understand how it was possible that he could have spent Saturday loading sacks of flour and crates of weapons into boxcars, and was now spending Sunday drinking sweet Tokaji wine and eating filets of Balatoni fogas in lemon sauce. Jozsef Hasz would sometimes show up at these Sunday family dinners, often with his girlfriend, the lank-limbed daughter of a real-estate magnate. Zsofia was her name. They had been childhood friends, playmates at Lake Balaton, where their families had owned neighboring summer houses.

The two of them would sit on a bench in a corner of the garden and smoke thin dark cigarettes, their heads bent close together as they talked. Gyorgy Hasz detested smoking.

He would have sent Jozsef to smoke in the street if the girl hadn't been with him. As it was, he pretended not to see them with their cigarettes. It was one of many pretenses that complicated the afternoons they spent at Benczur utca. Sometimes it was difficult to keep track, so numerous were they. There was the pretense that Andras hadn't spent the rest of the week loading freight cars at Szentendre while Jozsef painted at his atelier in Buda; the pretense that Klara's long exile in France had never occurred; the pretense that she was safe now, and that the purpose of the gradual but steady disappearance of the family's paintings and rugs and ornaments, of the younger Mrs. Hasz's jewelry and all but the most necessary servants, of the car and its driver, the piano and its gilded stool, the priceless old books and the inlaid furniture, was not to keep Klara out of the hands of the authorities but to keep Jozsef out of the Munkaszolgalat.

It was a testament to Jozsef's egotism that he considered himself worth his family's sacrifices. His own luxuries were undiminished. In his large bright flat in Buda, he lived among gleanings from the family home: antique rugs and furniture and crystal he'd removed before the slow, steady drain had begun. Andras had seen the flat once, a few months after the baby had been born, when they'd gone for an evening visit. Jozsef had provided them with a dinner ordered from Gundel, the famous old restaurant in the city park; he'd held the baby on his knee while Andras and Klara ate roasted game hens and white asparagus salad and a mushroom galette. He praised the shape of his baby cousin's head and hands and declared that he looked exactly like his mother. Jozsef's manner toward Andras was breezy and careless, though it had never quite lost the edge of resentment it had acquired when Andras had delivered the news of his relationship with Klara. It was Jozsef's habit to mask any social discomfort with humor; Andras was Uncle Andras now, as often as Jozsef could find occasion to say his name. After dinner he took Andras and Klara into the north-facing room he used as his studio, where large canvases were propped against the walls. Four of his previous works had been sold recently, he said; through a family connection he'd begun working with Moric Papp, the Vaci utca dealer who supplied Hungary's elite with contemporary art. Andras noted with chagrin that Jozsef's work had improved considerably since his student days in Paris. His collage paintings--nets of dark color thrown against backgrounds of fine-ground black gravel and scraps of old road signs and pieces of railroad track--might be called good, might even be seen as evocative of the uncertainty and terror into which Europe had plunged. When Andras praised the work, Jozsef responded as though accepting what was due to him. It had taken all of Andras's effort to remain civil through the evening.

On Sunday afternoons at Benczur utca, when Jozsef and his Zsofia joined the group at the table, what he generally had to talk about was how dull it was in Budapest during the warmer months--how much nicer it would have been at Lake Balaton, and what they'd be doing that very moment if they were there. He and Zsofia would start in on some memory from when they were children--how her brother had sailed them far out into the lake in a leaking boat, how they'd gotten sick from eating unripe melons, how Jozsef had tried to ride Zsofia's pony and had been thrown off into a blackberry bramble-and Zsofia would laugh, and the elder Mrs. Hasz would smile and nod, remembering it all, and Gyorgy and his wife would exchange a look, because it was the summer house that had kept Jozsef out of the labor service, after all.

One Sunday in early June, they arrived to find Jozsef's usual bench unoccupied.

For Andras, the prospect of an afternoon without him was a relief. Tibor and Ilana had arrived some time earlier, and Ilana played in the grass with young Adam while Tibor sat beside them on a wicker chaise longue, fixing the bent brim of Ilana's sun hat. Andras fell into a chair beside his brother. It was a hot and cloudless day, one of a series; the new grass had gone limp for want of rain. The week at Szentendre had been an unusually grueling one, bearable only because Andras knew that on Sunday he'd be sitting in this shady garden, drinking cold soda water flavored with raspberry syrup. Klara sat down on the grass with Ilana, holding Tamas on her lap. The babies stared at each other in their usual manner, as if astonished at the revelation that another baby existed in the world.

The younger Mrs. Hasz emerged from the house with a bottle of seltzer, a miniature pitcher of ruby-colored syrup, and half a dozen glasses. Andras sighed and closed his eyes, waiting for a glass of raspberry soda to materialize on the low table beside him.