Lázár

In the spring of 1940, Edmund Pontiller, a Benedictine priest, arrives at the family’s country manor. The locals are superstitious about the nearby forest, but Pontiller defies their warnings and explores it armed only with a notebook and a Bible. Pista immediately dislikes the new chaplain for several reasons: He forces Pista to attend chapel, he expresses a vivid love for life and nature that Pista can no longer feel, and he is beloved by everyone else, including Lilly, Lajos, and even Pista’s younger sister, Eva.

Convinced that Pontiller’s cheerful demeanor is a mask hiding a darker truth, Pista begins to spy on him relentlessly. At the same time, Pista’s nightmares about Charlie Chaplin return. In the dreams, Chaplin strips off his costume and makeup, only to reveal another mask underneath, reinforcing Pista’s sense of loss regarding his time with Matilda. One night, while hiding in an adjacent guest room, Pista hears through the wall a coarse, scratchy German voice speaking with Pontiller that he has never heard before.

Lajos’s experience of the war is dominated by obsessively reading newspapers in an attempt to understand Hitler, whom he fears as he once feared his father. He develops an aversion to fiction and poetry, believing it’s wrong to seek distraction from the grim reality of the world. This, he believes, is a lesson learned from watching his own father descend into alcoholism to escape the truth.

On November 20, 1940, the day Hungary officially joins the Axis powers by signing the Tripartite Pact, Lajos finds a book of poetry on his desk. Exhausted and dejected, he reads a short verse about a summer evening. The poem unexpectedly moves him to tears for the first time in years, evoking a deep sense of loss for his mother and a past world that now feels like a “sunken city.”

The narrative summarizes the years from 1941 to 1944. On June 27, 1941, the Soviet Union declares war on Hungary. Soviet troops go on to commit atrocities on the Eastern Front. Pista continues to fixate on Matilda and spies on Pontiller. After the catastrophic Axis defeat at Stalingrad, Admiral Horthy’s government seeks to exit the war. As the situation deteriorates, the Lázárs’ car is confiscated. In March 1944, German forces invade Hungary and install a collaborationist government. Lajos is assigned to administrative duties as the new regime begins the systematic deportation of the country’s Jewish population.

In early July 1944, Lajos stands on a street in Pécs and watches as 3,500 Jews are marched from the ghetto to trains bound for the Auschwitz extermination camp. He’s tormented by guilt, reflecting on his own role in organizing their earlier confinement and his cowardice in failing to help them, even as he shelters the anti-Nazi priest, Pontiller. Lajos feels that he’s complicit in their fate, serving a regime he inwardly despises. As the procession passes, he desperately hopes that one of the men will see in his eyes that he’s different, but no one looks up. The sight of a woman in the crowd reminds him of his sister, Ilona, who escaped with her family to the United States.

The Gestapo arrive at the manor house. After being informed by a servant, Lajos suspects that he knows their purpose. He instructs the servant to fetch Pontiller, warning the priest against any attempt to escape. The two officers find Pontiller in his room with a suitcase packed, seemingly expecting them. The lanky officer switches on the radio and hears a strange, rasping voice. Pontiller states matter-of-factly that it’s a Swiss broadcaster and mentions a British one too, prompting the officer to bellow at him. The officers then lead Pontiller away. Before being forced into the car, Pontiller thanks the family and gives them his blessing.

By December 1944, with Soviet troops advancing on Pécs, the Lázárs decide to flee west. On December 8, they set out on two horse-drawn carts with minimal provisions. During the cold and silent journey, Eva becomes fascinated by a young woman pushing a perambulator. The trek is halted when the woman’s child freezes to death in the perambulator. The woman collapses in grief and is taken onto another cart, leaving the perambulator behind in the snow. That evening, the Lázárs reach the estate of their aristocratic friends, the Feketes. Lajos and Count Fekete decide they need a larger cart and ride to the hunting lodge to retrieve one, leaving Pista in charge of protecting the women and children.

During the night, a young Russian soldier awakens Pista at gunpoint. He and Eva are taken to the drawing room, where Lilly and Countess Fekete are being held captive by other soldiers. The Russian officer, who speaks a heavily accented German, announces that his men desire a woman since they have “not seen their wives for a very long time” (174). As a sign of his humanity and as an example of how the Russians are more civilized than the Germans, he allows the two aristocratic women to decide which of the women in the household will be assaulted by the Soviet troops. After the two women confer, the countess returns with a terrified young maid. The officer and his men then rape the girl in turn in an adjoining room. When they’re finished, Lilly enters to comfort the whimpering maid.

On December 23, Lajos vents his fury and shame by violently chopping down a Christmas tree. The holiday is bleak, with the entire family, except for Eva, consumed by guilt. Lajos is haunted by the memory of the Jews being marched away, Lilly recalls the whimpering of the assaulted maid, and Pista feels anger at his own inaction. It is revealed that, after the soldiers’ rampage, the soldiers set off for the hunting lodge to shoot Count Fekete and Lajos but were ordered to the front lines near Budapest instead. Why Pista survived the entire incident remains a mystery, though he believes that it must have been the officer’s decision not to shoot him. The family has moved back to the manor, expecting the Russians to seize it. They have cared for the traumatized maid, who accepted a ruby ring without emotion. After a silent Christmas Eve dinner, Lajos observes Lilly crying alone. Later, he joins her in bed and, upon seeing her in the moonlight, is reminded of her younger self. He questions if they still love each other but finds solace in the moment, holding her as snow falls outside, covering everything.

Three months after the battle for Budapest ended, the city remains in ruins from the brutal Soviet conquest. Concurrently, Edmund Pontiller is brought to a guillotine in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison. He’s disappointed that his death will be a plain, efficient execution by guillotine rather than a glorious public martyrdom. As he awaits his fate, he reflects on his lonely life of resistance, feeling like he never truly connected with people but believing that “he had been right and would ultimately be seen, notwithstanding his death, as a victor” (180). In his final moments, while being strapped to the machine, he thinks of Eva and the Vermeer art book he hid under his mattress for her, hoping she found it. As the execution commences, he closes his eyes and sees his entire life flash before him, bringing to mind the work of his favorite author, Marcel Proust.

In mid-June, Lajos and Pista travel to their home in a ruined, postwar Budapest. While their official purpose is to repair their damaged house, Pista’s primary motivation is to find Matilda, the girl he kissed six years earlier and whose memory has stayed with him ever since. The devastated city constantly reminds him of her, but he’s tormented by the acute fear that she may have kissed someone else during the war. After discovering that their house is damaged but not plundered, Lajos and Pista are invited for a drink by a neighbor. As they drink schnapps, the neighbor recounts the atrocities committed by the ultranationalist, antisemitic Arrow Cross organization, describing how they shot thousands of Jews and let the bodies fall into the Danube. He tells them of a priest, Father Kun, who was an Arrow Cross leader and would order the killings “[i]n the name of Jesus Christ” (184). The story causes Pista to silently reflect on his own father’s unspoken wartime role for the first time. Lajos abruptly ends the conversation, and they leave.

Pista travels into the war-ravaged city, feeling anxious about his reunion with Matilda after six years. He reflects on how much the world has changed and wanders the ruined streets until he finds her former apartment building. A woman there informs him that the Telkes family has moved and directs him to their former housekeeper, Dora. After spending the day accidently getting drunk while waiting for the meeting, Pista visits Dora, who recounts Matilda’s sadness after he left. Dora then reveals a fact that Pista never knew: Matilda and her family were Jewish. She explains that, as conditions for Jews worsened during the war, the family’s assets were seized, and they eventually took refuge in the greenhouse of the Swiss ambassador, Carl Lutz. Dora delivers the final, destructive news that, on New Year’s Eve, Arrow Cross soldiers stormed the greenhouse and shot all three of the Telkeses dead. Stunned by the revelation of Matilda’s fate, Pista leaves, wanders into a dark park, and collapses onto a bench, crying and vomiting.