For Fanni Gyarmati Radnoti
"And as for you, young man, what mode of death awaits you?"
--Miklos Radnoti, "A Mountain Garden"
Fanni Radnoti was an ordinary woman
who lived in cataclysmic times.
She rose above those times
faced down the destruction.
When she married Miklos,
a poet,
an anti-fascist,
a Jew
she knew it wouldn't be easy
but she was young, in love, and not afraid.
Miklos, his work censored by the fascists,
drafted into a labor brigade,
built railroad tracks in Serbia.
Far from home he worked the days and wrote the nights
until, in late September of '44
the army marched them back,
three thousand Hungarian workers
through the Central European snows.
Twenty two made it as far as Abda in November
ill, worn out and stumbling.
The hospitals were over-full and wouldn't take them.
The corporals in charge of the twenty two
had to get back to their unit.
In the spirit of the times the corporals simply
took them to the woods
shot them,
buried them in hasty graves.
Two years later, when the winter let go its grip on the earth
Fanni and some friends
went to Abda, to the place pointed out to them.
The trees rose all around, filtering the Spring sunshine
keeping a chill in the air.
But the woods were not silent, despite the gruesome work;
birdsongs, wind in leaves
accompanied the muted sound of shovels
moving damp earth,
life going on in the presence of death.
They dug gently,
lovingly through the dirt.
When they'd brought the dead all to light
Fanni walked among them, from face to ruined face,
afraid she would not know him, Miklos,
whose hands had known her skin so well.
But she did know him,
despite the bone showing through flesh.
When her fingers touched
the damp cloth of his rotted coat
a wild grief rose up in her
gripped and rocked her
and almost threw her down beside him,
but she had a mission,
and she clung to that
as she could no longer cling to him.
Solemnly she ran her hands through those dank pockets
until she found it,
his last notebook of poems.
Tenderly, as if touching his living skin
she opened the moldered leaves and read:
I once believed in miracles--now though
I forget their dates...Above me bombers go...
I was just admiring your eyes' blue in the sky,
But clouds came and a plane up there flew by
With bombs longing to fall. A prisoner,
I live despite them. All I have hopes for
I've thought out, yet I'll find my way to you,
For I have walked the soul's full length for you--
then closed the book,
her fingers white upon its spine.
As she followed the wagon back
to rebury the murdered with respect
she clutched that little book
as if she held her own life in her hand.
Miklos had to die
as so many did in those years,
but Fanni had to do the harder thing,
to stay alive with just a musty notebook
to hold against her breast through the long night
to remember a love that she made to transcend death.
It was she who was brave
beyond all boundaries.
When she plunged that shovel into the earth
she raised a banner
placed her own body against
complicity and silence.
Her action,
her love that is a commitment to the world
as well as the beloved,
to bearing witness,
to fighting down the darkness,
her love triumphs over death
over evil.