Profound sadness

I am reading Don DeLillo's Falling Man, a novel about the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Centre. I don't enjoy it, I am afraid. I find it confusing, the sense of the tragedy trivialized by personal issues I am not engaged by it, But somehow, reading it, I thought of Emil Holtzl, an old friend of the family. Jancsi (Johnny) and Rozsi (Rose) Deutsch shared their villa in Mathasfold with Emil. Emil was Rozsi's partner. He was not her husband. He was also Jancsi's friend. Their beautiful villa was not far from my grandparents' summer house, and we used to visit them. I have a memory of sitting on their terrace on a hot summer afternoon, the adults playing cards, we children having a lemonade, or more likely our drink of choice, a raspberry syrup. Although it was afternoon, the hosts were wearing pyjamas, silk pyjamas. This to me seemed like ultimate decadence. The Deutschs' had a menswear store, the finest menswear store in Budapest, and one of the best in the whole of Europe. Their distinguished customers included the Prince of Wales when he visited Budapest in the 1930s. The shop was located in the Vaci Street, one of the most elegant shopping street anywhere. It spoke of the elegance, the refinement, the special culture, the love of fine things that defined the Hungarian capital in the years between the war, years when gathering dark clouds were obscured by unfounded hope and optimism. My father could see the threats that most people ignored and he wanted to get away, leave the beautiful life behind for a less worrying peaceful existence. Preparing for emigration, both my father and my mother tried to acquire skills they could use wherever they moved. They were not good at reading the signs. My father trained as a pastry cook and learned to make exquisite mouth-watering pastry in preparation for moving to New Zealand where a sultana scone or a lemington was the acme of offerings in pastry shops; my mother learned bespoke shirt making, creating the shirts the Pince of Wales would have been proud to wear, a skill no one would have appreciated in a country where men wore mass manufactured ill fitting suits and shirts. She was trained in the Deutsch exclusive menswear salon. Jancsi, Rozsi and Emil were family friends. They must also have had some very influential friends, because when Jews were rounded up, confined to the ghetto or marched off to concentration camps the three of them stayed behind and sheltered somewhere in Budapest. One day, during a bombing raid the building they were in was hit by a bomb. The building collapsed. Jancsi, Rozsi and Emil were in the air raid shelter when the wall collapsed, burying Jancsi and Rozsi, and killing them. Emil somehow survived. Physically he survived, but mentally he never got over the tragedy. He mourned Rozsi day and night, wherever he went. He would walk into a room and spread gloom. In a city where everybody had someone to mourn, where tragedy stalked all, Emil stood out as the most profound mourner. The survivors sought to make a new life, get over their grief, but Emil haunted them like a ghost of those who perished. I don't imagine that anyone but I remembers Jancsi, Rozsi, Emil, and their lovely place in Matyasfold, or their exclusive store. That world  disappeared for ever. Only EmIl, the profoundly sad mourner stayed with me in my memory.