Gratitude by Joseph Kertes Page A

gripped the arms of the chair.
    Paul moved quickly. Holmstrom flinched. Paul reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a small photograph of himself. He’d removed it surgically with a razor from his own Hungarian documents. He handed it to Holmstrom. “I’d like to be your first Swedish convert,” he said and took a deep breath.
    The two men both looked again at the dagger, and for the first time Paul wondered whether it might be put to use.
    “I know you’re an accomplished man, Mr. Beck, but I do not have the authority to grant you Swedish citizenship.”
    “Oh, you have the authority. What I’m asking is, are you willing to do it?”
    Holmstrom thought for far too long. He glanced at the dagger, then took a walk around the spacious office, over the silk Persian carpet behind the desk.
    “There will be no real Hungarian authority in power soon, as you yourself said, Mr. Holmstrom. If you’re here to make yourselves helpful in any way, this way would be marvellous. And the idea came from one of your own prominent citizens.”
    “I’d have to speak to the ambassador,” Holmstrom said.
    “My father and brother have gone silent. They may be dead, but they may not. I’m not asking you to rescue them. I’m asking you to give me the means to do so. I’ll go to Szeged myself.”
    “Then you’ll be passing battalions of Germans coming this way.”
    “Yes, but I’ll be passing them as a Swede. And I speak their language, as do you.”
    “We’ll be implicated,” Holmstrom said. “This embassy will be implicated very quickly.”
    Paul got to his feet, and Holmstrom paused on his own side of the desk. “If I’m caught,” Paul said, “I’ll say I stole the papers, which you and I are going to forge tonight. If you don’t issue them to me, I’ll forge them myself, one way or another. But this way I’m less likely to be caught because the forgery will be more convincing.”
    “So you’re giving me no choice.”
    “Do I have a choice in what is going on in my country, my home, my office, my courtroom?”
    “What I’m going to do,” Holmstrom said, “is leave the building right now and not return until tomorrow. You do whatever it is you have to do. I’ll tell the guard to leave you alone. I’ve never seen or met you.”
    Holmstrom’s eyes fell on the cabinets to one side, and Paul understood. After he watched the man go, Paul got quickly to work.
    When he left, he took extra blank papers and an embosser, marked by Sweden’s three crowns.

    BY THE TIME Paul got home, he felt like a beggar and a thief. Rozsi was giving a piano lesson when he walked into the parlour, so Paul took a seat and waited until it was over. He heard nothing. He could not have said, on pain of death, whether the young pianist had played Chopin or just scales. The boy of no more than ten then embraced Rozsi.
    Rozsi asked if Paul had eaten and told him that Magda had made a nice meatloaf for them, but Paul shook his head. He could see that the table had been set for the two of them, so he sat nevertheless at his place in the dining room and poured some brandy into a snifter.
    “I did what you asked me to,” Rozsi said. “I called that friend of yours at the paper who knows Zoli, and he said that Zoli was staying with him. He said something terrible has happened, so I took the liberty of inviting Zoli over right away. I hope he comes.”
    Paul didn’t react. He just took a breathy sip of his brandy and set the glass down. He said, “Getting your hair right and smelling delicious won’t be the point from here on in. We won’t need to create a drama for ourselves. Life will supply plenty for us.”
    “What are you talking about now?” Rozsi said. “I don’t create drama. Oh—” she added, but didn’t go on.
    He merely looked at her.
    “Please don’t be cruel,” she said. “You can leave that to others now.” She looked as if she was getting set to cry and pulled extra hard on a curl.
    “You’re right,” Paul