Goodbye to Budapest

by Margarita Morris

  She changes into some old trousers and a shirt and ties her hair out of the way. Then she opens the door to the living room. She flinches at the sight of the mess. It’s even worse than she remembered. There’s nothing for it but to get stuck in.

  She tackles the books first, smoothing out the crumpled pages and arranging the titles on the bookcase in alphabetical order of the author’s name, just the way her father likes. There are glaring gaps where the English and German titles used to be.

  She turns her attention to the music from the piano stool. As far as she knows, the AVO didn’t take any of the music with them, which is something to be grateful for. Her mother, Eva, loved Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s sonatas – The Moonlight and Appassionata were her favourites – and would sit at the piano for hours filling the apartment with beautiful sounds. As Katalin gathers the sheet music together, she comes across a piece which isn’t piano music. It’s a Mozart aria from The Marriage of Figaro, the Countess’s lament Dove Sono – Where are the beautiful moments of sweetness and pleasure? – and Katalin remembers a time, long ago, when Ilona Novák, wife of her father’s colleague Károly Novák, stood right where Katalin is standing now and sang that aria with her pure, clear voice whilst Eva accompanied her on the piano. It was a long time ago, before the war, and Katalin couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. But now she thinks about it, that must have been the last time the Nováks came here. Why didn’t Ilona come back for her music? Why was it never returned? She leaves it on top of the piano, thinking she can take it with her when she calls on Professor Novák.

  She quickly tidies what’s left of the papers on the desk, then kneels down and picks up the photographs that fell from the photo album. She finds the one of her parents on their honeymoon in Oxford, glad that she didn’t draw Tamás’s attention to it last night. She looks at the smiling couple. Her father has a full head of hair and her mother’s hair is dark and wavy. It turned grey during the war. Her parents were so young when this photograph was taken. Young and full of hope, before the war destroyed so many lives. She props the photo up next to a vase on a side table so that she can look at it. Other photos, she slots back into the album.

  She’s about to put the album away when she spots a photograph that has half slid under the couch. She stoops to pick it up. When she turns it over she gasps. It’s an old photograph of herself and her childhood friend Liesl Weinberg, taken on the occasion of Liesl’s eighth birthday.

  She hasn’t thought of Liesl in a long while because the memory is too painful. She has buried it deep inside her. But seeing the photograph after all these years, she can’t stop the memories flooding back.

  Playing in Liesl’s apartment upstairs where Tibor and his mother now live. Listening to Liesl’s father playing the violin – haunting, sad, slow melodies. Liesl’s grandfather reading a book with strange squiggles that Katalin couldn’t understand. The yellow star that Liesl and her family were forced to wear during the war. The forced move to the ghetto; the deportations by train. And then, in the final months of the war, the shooting of Jews on the banks of the Danube by the fascist Arrow Cross Party, their bodies pushed into the icy waters and carried downstream by the current.

  Katalin is crying hard now. Crying for the friend she lost during the war. Crying for the father who has been arrested. She was too young to save Liesl, but can she save her father?

  *

  ‘Zoltán Dobos! Sándor Maier!’ Csaba Elek is scurrying across the factory floor towards them, a clipboard in his left hand, a pen in his right. He looks like a zealous ferret.

  ‘What does he want now?’ breathes Zoltán, laying down his tools. The Party Secretary has been hanging around all day like a bad smell. It’s already six o’clock and Zoltán is hoping to leave on time for once. He wants to get back to Király Street and see if Katalin Bakos is all right. See if she’s still there, at least.

  ‘A meeting has been called,’ says Csaba Elek, puffing himself up with importance. ‘You two have been selected to attend.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ asks Zoltán, keeping his voice level so as not to betray his frustration. He can sense Sándor’s disappointment. He was planning to go on a date.

  ‘We are setting up a committee to look into productivity levels and ways in which we can increase them in accordance with the Five Year Plan.’ Csaba sounds like he’s parroting a dictum from on high.

  This is the first Zoltán has heard of any such committee, although meetings like this are a regular occurrence. Last month he had to participate in a movement fighting for the care of tools and their repair. A completely pointless activity in Zoltán’s opinion. And as for Comrade Gerő’s Five Year Plan, it has brought nothing but sky-high inflation and food shortages. This is Csaba’s way of punishing him for being the first to stop clapping when Rákosi’s name was mentioned at this morning’s reading. Never mind that he was doing a good deed by helping the old man stay on his feet. Csaba is one of those people who needs to boost his ego by demonstrating his power and authority. Zoltán has come to realise that underneath all the spouting of dogma, Csaba Elek lacks confidence. Still, he can make trouble for people, and right now Zoltán is lucky that his punishment isn’t anything worse. He nods his head and says in his most sincere voice, ‘That sounds like a wonderful idea, Csaba Elek. We’ll be delighted to attend, won’t we Sándor?’

  ‘Ab-so-lute-ly,’ says Sándor, articulating every syllable with exaggerated enthusiasm. Zoltán tries not to laugh. One of these days Sándor is going to go too far.

  Csaba Elek looks momentarily disconcerted. Maybe he was hoping for some opposition from them. It would have given him an excuse to report them.

  ‘Please, lead the way,’ says Zoltán.

  Csaba Elek turns on his heel and almost trots towards the meeting room.

  ‘Prick,’ says Zoltán under his breath. He wouldn’t dare express such opinions to anyone other than Sándor.

  The meeting drags on as Zoltán knew it would. There are a dozen of them there, including Csaba who takes the minutes. Nonsensical suggestions are put forward, such as doing a day’s work each month with materials saved from the previous month. But everyone shows their enthusiasm for these suggestions by nodding their heads vigorously. It’s important to express your support. Zoltán thinks of Márton Bakos and how he was unceremoniously bundled into the black Pobeda last night. He’s sure Professor Bakos hadn’t done anything wrong.

  It’s gone eight o’clock by the time the meeting wraps up. They’ve achieved nothing of any practical use as far as Zoltán can see, but Csaba Elek looks pleased with himself. He’ll go away now and type up the minutes. Tomorrow the decisions of this meeting will become factory policy and everyone will have to work harder.

  ‘Thought we were never going to get out of there,’ says Sándor once they are finally outside. He rushes off in the hope that his date will still be waiting for him in the bar where he should have been two hours ago. Some chance.

  Zoltán catches a tram back to Király Street. By the time he arrives outside her building, the light is off in her apartment. He hopes it’s because she’s gone to bed early, exhausted from being woken up in the middle of the night, and not because she’s disappeared. He climbs the stairs to his own loft apartment, sits down in his reading chair and picks up the book he was reading last night. But for a long time he doesn’t open it. He just gazes out of the window into the darkness.

  *

  When the last customers have left for the night, Feri locks the door of the café and pulls down the shutters. This is his favourite time of day. He sweeps the floor and straightens the tables and chairs, all the while humming along to the gypsy music that continues to play from the radio behind the counter.

  When he has finished tidying up, he pours himself a small glass of Pálinka. Then he switches off the radio and goes to a private room at the back of the café where he has another, secret radio, hidden behind a pile of books.

  He puts the glass on a
small wooden table and sits down in his favourite armchair that he’s had since before the war. It’s the only piece of furniture he managed to save when the building he was living in was hit by German shellfire. This secret radio he acquired after the war. Now, late at night when he has an hour to himself before going to bed, he switches on the radio, which is tuned to the wave-length for Radio Free Europe. He hopes there won’t be too much disturbance on the channel tonight. The Hungarian authorities are always trying to stop people from listening to this US-sponsored station broadcast out of Munich. The Soviets do their best to jam the signal whenever they can. Satisfied that the hiss and crackle of static is not too bad, he settles back with his Pálinka, closes his eyes, and listens to news from beyond the borders of Hungary.

  Hungarians, take up arms against your Soviet oppressors. The United States will support you if you do.

  Feri sips his drink and dreams of a better world. A world where he can listen to whatever radio station he likes without fear of being arrested. Is that too much to ask for?

  Chapter Three

  Early the following morning Tamás Kún arrives for work at the headquarters of the Secret Police on Andrássy Avenue.

  Smartly dressed in his blue uniform and shiny black boots, he mounts the steps with a feeling of pride. The uniform gives him a sense of identity, unlike the faceless masses who queue for the trams in their drab gabardines, berets and headscarves. Factory workers, office workers, whatever. He despises their mundane lives precisely because their fate would have been his if he hadn’t been accepted into the ranks of the AVO. His teachers didn’t think he would amount to much. Well, he’s shown them now. If he felt so inclined he could make up some reason for denouncing every last one of them.

  ‘If your father could see you now,’ his widowed mother said the first time he came home in his new uniform. She gazed fondly at the photograph of his father in his war uniform which has pride of place on the mantelpiece. Growing up, Tamás feared his father’s bullying nature and unpredictable temper, but now he’s the one who wears the uniform and has nothing to fear.

  Instead, people fear him. Like the woman on her way to the shops this morning who stopped on the street corner to let him pass ahead of her. It gives him a sense of power. And goodness knows, he’s never had that before. The taste is sweet.

  The deference shown to him by the woman this morning has boosted his confidence which, admittedly, took a slight knock the other night at the arrest of Márton Bakos. But Tamás was excited to be taking part in an actual arrest, to see at first hand how these things are done. Tamás’s boss is not an easy man to please. Vajda has a habit of barking orders that make you tremble. He was keen to show his boss that he’s a valuable member of the team, someone to be trusted with important tasks.

  At first that snivelling caretaker didn’t want to let them into the building and complained about being woken up in the middle of the night, even though the old man was wearing his day-time clothes. But Vajda intimidated him into letting them in and taking them to the apartment, even insisting that the man stand and watch the arrest, making him complicit. That was his punishment for being obstructive. Tamás took all this in, watching and learning.

  It was all going so well up until the moment they trooped into the apartment. But then he recognised Katalin and his confidence deserted him like a fleeing traitor. He didn’t realise it was her father they were coming to arrest. He and Katalin were at school together, in the same class, although never friends. Tamás didn’t have many friends at school. The other children found him too serious and teased him. He found them childish. If he had been allowed to do his job in peace and get out of there, everything would have been fine. But she had to go and humiliate him. He should have opened the violin case, he should have done his job properly. The case almost certainly contained incriminating documents, otherwise why would she stop him from opening it? If Vajda finds out he capitulated so easily, he’ll have Tamás thrown out of the Secret Police, or worse. He can’t afford to lose this job. He has himself and his mother to support.

  He pushes open the door to the office he shares with half a dozen other low-ranking AVO men. The air is already heavy with the fug of cigarette smoke and male sweat. The windows overlook the inner courtyard which never seems to get any fresh air. Tamás’s desk is squashed in the corner, beside a gunmetal filing cabinet, almost as an afterthought.

  Gábor, the blond officer who carried out such a thorough search of Márton Bakos’s bookcase, is perched on the edge of his window-facing desk, one black-booted foot on a chair, telling a rude joke to his comrades. Gábor is a couple of years older than Tamás and likes to boast about his alleged sexual conquests, although they only have his word for them. He’s the sort of person Tamás would have kept his distance from at school, but he has a grudging respect for him now. Gábor wouldn’t let Katalin walk all over him. He worries that Gábor suspects him of being weak. He’s determined to prove him wrong.

  The laughter breaks off as Tamás walks over to his desk, giving him the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was part of Gábor’s joke.

  ‘Just the man I was waiting for,’ says Gábor, swaggering over towards him. ‘The boss wants to see us.’

  ‘He does?’ Tamás prefers to avoid Vajda first thing in the morning. Vajda is not a morning person. With his thickset neck and sagging jowls that hang off his face like excess lard, he resembles a hippopotamus with a hangover. But he’s the one in charge, the one Tamás must look to for praise and advancement. He follows Gábor down the corridor.

  Vajda is sitting at his big mahogany desk, with a view across Andrássy Avenue, signing documents. Arrest warrants, confessions, top-secret memos. He doesn’t even bother to pretend to read them, just scrawls his signature and adds each one to a growing pile on his desk next to a marble bust of Stalin.

  ‘The arrest of Márton Bakos,’ says Vajda without preamble when the two officers are standing before him, ‘was a good job.’ Usually Vajda likes to take the credit for successful night raids. Tamás wonders, not without a glimmer of hope, if for once Vajda is about to say that Márton Bakos has been convicted on the basis of evidence unearthed by Tamás and Gábor in their search of the living room at the Bakos’s apartment.

  ‘But the girl,’ continues Vajda, ‘strikes me as suspicious.’ He puffs out his cheeks and eyes Gábor and Tamás with narrowed eyes.

  Tamás’s hope is extinguished as effectively as if it had been drowned in the Danube. Has Vajda somehow found out about his failure to open the violin case?

  Vajda turns to Tamás. ‘You didn’t find anything in her room?’

  He forces himself to look Vajda in the eye. ‘No, comrade.’

  ‘And you did a thorough search?’

  ‘I did.’ He feels himself breaking out in a cold sweat. He would never be able to stand the interrogations the prisoners have to endure.

  ‘I’m putting her under surveillance,’ says Vajda. ‘But for now you’re both on cellar duty. Keep on eye on Márton Bakos for me and if he asks about his daughter let me know immediately.’

  ‘Yes, comrade,’ Tamás and Gábor say at the same time.

  As they leave Vajda’s office, Tamás silently breathes a sigh of relief. His secret is safe for now.

  ‘You got the plum job the other night, you lucky bastard,’ says Gábor as they descend into the fetid air of the cellars.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Tamás. He doesn’t like Gábor’s insinuating tone.

  ‘Searching the girl’s bedroom.’ Gábor smirks. ‘I bet you enjoyed yourself going through the bitch’s underwear.’

  ‘I gave the whole room a thorough search, not just her clothes.’ He hopes Gábor doesn’t notice him blushing in the artificial light.

  ‘I’d have given her a good going over if it was me,’ says Gábor, leering. ‘Know what I mean?’

  Tamás never knows how to respond to Gábor’s provocative comments and is glad when they reach the bottom of the stairs.
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br />   He shivers in the cold, damp air. It always takes him a while to acclimatise to the stale smell in the cellars. The two guards who’ve been on duty all night look relieved that their replacements have shown up and they can ascend back to ground level.

  ‘All right,’ says Gábor. ‘You take that corridor, I’ll take this one.’ Gábor has chosen the section with the fewest prisoners in it, the lazy sod.

  Tamás merely nods his agreement. He’s just glad to get away from Gábor and his lewd talk. He adjusts the rifle on his shoulder and starts to patrol the corridor.

  If he’s honest with himself, this is a job he loathes. But someone has to do it. If he proves his worth in this stinking place then maybe Vajda will promote him to bigger and better things, like writing the confessions that the prisoners are forced to sign. He thinks he’d be good at that.

  He bangs open the first spy hole with more force than is strictly necessary and peers into the dingy cell. It gives him a moment’s pleasure to see the occupant of the cell jump like a startled rabbit. The ones who have been here the longest no longer jump at the banging of the spy holes. They’ve grown accustomed to it, or they’re too weak from cold, hunger and tiredness to care anymore. He slams the spy hole shut and makes his way down the corridor, banging the spy holes open and closed. In each cell a wretched prisoner sits shivering. They must be guilty of the most horrendous crimes, otherwise why would the Party arrest them and lock them up in such hideous conditions? This is what Tamás tells himself when he’s doing this godforsaken job.

  He comes to the last cell in the corridor and opens the spy hole. Sitting on the edge of the wooden plank is Márton Bakos. He hasn’t been here long but already the experience has changed him. He’s unshaven and looks as if he hasn’t slept. If Katalin could see her father now, she wouldn’t be so cocksure of herself. But Márton Bakos doesn’t react like the other prisoners. Instead he merely looks at Tamás with a puzzled expression. Maybe the fool doesn’t understand the reason for his arrest. Tamás stares back with the most hateful look he can muster, just like he’s been trained to do. But Márton Bakos doesn’t blink and look away. Tamás is unnerved by this. He slams the spy hole shut with so much force that his hand slips and he grazes his knuckles on the rough wall. Damn and blast. He’s got hours of this to put up with.