Page 45 of In Just a Year
Harugh!
Oh, he didn’t sound so good anymore. His airways must have been obstructed.
Esther continued mumbling apologies as if it had been her fault that the old man had choked in his greed to devour the strudel.
He cramped and hunched forward. Pretending to be a panicked servant girl, Esther fluttered excitedly around Nagy. “What shall I do?” Oh he is choking!” she cried out.
Raphi bent down in front of Nagy feigning interest to catch his gaze. “Are you quite alright?”
Of course, he wasn’t. And he wasn’t in any state to answer.
Nagy turned a deeper shade of purple and Raphi slid his hand in his vest pocket and in less than the blink of an eye he put his hand on Nagy’s shoulder, pretending to offer support. Between his long fingers of a pianist, he had the folded paper. Esther took it quickly. It was damp, but not too wet. Raphi winked at her behind Nagy’s back. She had to go. The ink had bleed.
Raphi gave Nagy one hard blow on the back. Esther heard bones crack, and Nagy coughed.
The redness dissipated from his face and he straightened. He cleared his throat and looked at Esther, but Raphi signaled with his head that she should go.
As Esther approached the stairs, she heard Raphi say, “Have some coffee now, Mr. Nagy. It’ll soothe your throat.”
Esther unfolded the paper while she climbed the stairs.
“Did you get it?” Chawa rose from the settee when Esther walked into the drawing room. “Here’s a pencil and paper. Copy it quickly.”
Esther tried to copy the odd shapes but they were unlike any letters she knew. The commentary in cursive on the side was illegible entirely. She could barely make out a few German words.
Heart racing, she persevered, but to no avail. “It’s illegible,” she said in a panic when Chawa looked over her shoulder.
“We need to iron it.”
“What? The paper?”
“It’ll stop the ink from bleeding.”
Chawa took the paper and a clean sheet from the stack she’d given Esther. “Come with me.”
In the kitchen, a maid was pressing some crisp white linens.
“Tanya, I need this for a moment. Please take a break,” Chawa commanded.
The maid set the hot iron aside and left.
Chawa took a hot coal from the fireplace with the long tongs and put it inside the iron. Then she carefully laid the wet paper face down on the clean paper, took one of the white linens and laid it atop. With the aptitude of a woman who’d done this a thousand times, she held the papers in place by pressing the cloth down and then drove the iron over it.
A slight hiss accompanied a rising wave of steam.
“Here.” Chawa peeled the flattened white cloth off the paper.
Esther was astonished to see the wet piece was now dry and the creases from the folds had gone. Chawa lifted the paper off the clean sheet she’d laid underneath and Esther gasped.
A mirror image, faint but still legible, of the original was now pressed onto the paper.
“It’s a copy!”
“Mama, could Mr. Nagy take some strudel home?” Raphi called up the stairs. “He’s about to leave.” His tone was telling; those who knew him could detect the false note.
“Let me wrap it right up, darling!” Chawa used a singsong voice.
“You know what to do,” she whispered to Esther and left.
