Goodbye to Budapest

by Margarita Morris

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  And there you have it, thinks Márton. How can he prove that he hasn’t done something if the AVO are determined to argue that he must have done it?

  ‘You will spend another night typing your life story,’ says Vajda with menace. ‘And this time I advise you to think more carefully about what you write.’

  *

  Katalin’s neighbour Petra Nadas has invited her upstairs for a slice of Tibor’s leftover birthday cake.

  ‘Sorry there’s not much,’ says Petra, passing her a small piece of chocolate sponge with a strawberry jam filling. ‘Tibor’s already eaten most of it himself. You wouldn’t believe how much a growing boy eats.’ She sighs and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘He’s at his friend Géza’s house so we should have half an hour of peace and quiet before he gets home.’

  She clears piles of sewing and mending off the two armchairs so they can sit down.

  ‘This is delicious,’ says Katalin, taking a bite of the cake. The ingredients must have cost Petra a small fortune. ‘Did he enjoy his birthday?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Petra, licking crumbs off her fingers. ‘But now that he’s eleven he’s going to be even more of a handful. I can just see it.’

  ‘He’s a good kid though,’ says Katalin.

  Petra smiles indulgently. ‘Yes, but his head is so full of wild ideas.’

  Katalin looks down at her plate as she recalls the headmaster’s words. We can’t allow subversive ideas to spread in a school environment.

  She glances around the room. It’s sparsely furnished with a couple of worn armchairs, a table on which sits Petra’s sewing machine, and an old dresser for plates. A single framed photograph of Petra’s late husband sits on the mantelpiece in his uniform before he went off to war. There are no books and there’s no radio. Tibor isn’t getting his ideas from Voice of America, that’s for sure.

  ‘Tibor was very sorry to hear about your father,’ says Petra.

  ‘That’s kind of him. I didn’t know he knew Papa.’

  ‘He’s always liked Márton,’ continues Petra. ‘Ever since Márton gave him those comics.’

  ‘What comics?’ asks Katalin, confused.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew.’ She shifts in her chair. ‘Your father had them from a friend of his in England – American comics they are – and Márton gave them to Tibor because he thought he’d enjoy them. They’re in English of course, but Márton translated them for him. Tibor likes the pictures though. Especially the ones about a man who is so strong he can lift cars and jump vast distances. Let me show you.’

  She disappears and comes back with half a dozen magazines featuring a man engaged in extraordinary feats of strength and bravery. The main character wears a tight-fitting blue outfit with a red letter ‘S’ emblazoned on his muscular chest. A red cape billows out behind him. The images are dynamic and skillfully drawn, depicting a world full of excitement and adventure. A world of heroes, so different to the fearful one they inhabit. It’s obvious why these comics would appeal to an eleven-year-old boy. This is clearly where Tibor gets his wild ideas. But what is harmless fun for an American child would be viewed as subversive by the Hungarian authorities. Márton took a terrible risk giving these comics to Tibor. If the AVO found them, Petra would be arrested and Tibor would be sent to a state-run orphanage. Such a place doesn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘He must keep these hidden,’ Katalin says, passing the comics back to Petra. ‘You wouldn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands.’

  Petra bites her lip, nodding. ‘I know. But there’s so little to entertain a child with. What can you do?’

  *

  Clack, clack, clack. The prisoner hits the typewriter keys with a rhythmic monotony. Tamás can see that Márton Bakos is dog-tired. His head keeps lolling on his shoulders, his eyes are bloodshot and puffy, and his fingers are trembling with cold and exhaustion. This is the third night running that he’s been made to stay up and type his life story, and he hasn’t been allowed to sleep properly during the day. Tamás wouldn’t be able to stand it himself, he knows that much.

  Last night Gábor stood guard whilst Márton Bakos typed. ‘You’ll have to prod the bastard every five minutes,’ Gábor advised him this morning. ‘It’s the only way to keep him going. Lazy sod.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tamás. ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t stop.’

  Gábor grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll make a decent AVO officer out of you yet.’

  For the last two hours Tamás has been carrying out his orders dutifully, prodding Márton in the small of the back with his rifle butt every time it looks like he’s going to fall asleep. But, really, what’s the point? The chap can hardly keep his eyes open. And the clacking of the typewriter is getting on Tamás’s nerves. Half an hour of peace and quiet would do them both good. But can he take the risk?

  It’s two in the morning. He’s got another couple of hours of this to go before he can take the prisoner back to his cell.

  Márton’s head lolls forward once more.

  Sod it, think Tamás. Instead of jabbing Márton in the back with his rifle, he puts a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Shut your eyes for half an hour. But don’t tell anyone or we’ll both be in trouble.’

  Márton regards him with bleary eyes. Then he leans forward and rests his head on his folded arms. Within seconds he’s snoring gently.

  For a moment, Tamás frets. What is he doing? If his boss were to come along now, he’d be fired on the spot. Or worse, he’d be arrested and questioned as a traitor. But Vajda went home to his comfortable bed hours ago. All right for some, thinks Tamás.

  It’s eerily quiet now the typewriter has fallen silent. Tamás stands by the door and listens.

  After half an hour he hears footsteps in the corridor.

  ‘Wake up,’ he hisses, shaking Márton by the shoulders.

  Márton groans and opens his eyes.

  ‘Start typing!’

  Dutifully he starts plucking at the keys and the footsteps pass by. Tamás breathes a sigh of relief. He also feels a sense of power. It’s up to him if and when Márton Bakos sleeps. Márton is in his debt.

  *

  What to wear? She can’t wear the cream blouse because she’s worn it all week to school and it needs washing, and the navy one is missing a button but she doesn’t have any navy thread in her sewing box. But then Katalin feels a stab of guilt. Her father has been gone for days and didn’t take any spare clothes with him. He’ll still be wearing the suit and shirt he went in if they haven’t given him anything else. She would take him a change of clothes if they would let her see him, but from what she’s heard of the regime at 60 Andrássy Avenue, she knows that’s impossible.

  She takes a green blouse from its hanger and puts it on. The cuffs are a little frayed, but that doesn’t matter. It’s only lunch, she tells herself. It’s not as if they’re going to the Café New York or anything.

  But what about her hair? Should she put it up or keep it down? She tries pinning it up, they way her mother used to. It makes her look older, more sophisticated, but the pins refuse to stay in place and slide out after a minute or two. Frustrated, she gives up and pulls a brush through her unruly locks.

  A quick ring on the doorbell makes her jump. She can’t hear it now without being reminded of that night the AVO arrested her father. But this ring was light to the touch and only lasted a second, almost apologetic. She opens the door and finds Zoltán on the landing, wearing the same trench coat he had on when she first saw him, his beret set at a crooked angle. He has a book in his hands.

  ‘I finished it last night,’ he says, holding out Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

  As she takes the book from him her fingers brush against his and she feels a tingling down her spine. ‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asks.

  ‘Very much.’ He gives her a quizzical smile and she realises that she should invite him in.

  ‘Sorry, com
e in. I just need to put my shoes on. I won’t be a minute.’

  His tall frame seems to fill the narrow hallway and Katalin becomes conscious of the tight space and their proximity to one another. Suddenly she can’t remember where she left her shoes.

  She drops the book on the sofa in the living room, then hunts for her shoes which seem to have miraculously vanished since she took them off last night.

  ‘Are you looking for these?’ asks Zoltán, holding up a pair of brown shoes.

  Katalin blushes. ‘Thank you.’ She slides her feet into them and then they’re ready to go.

  As they walk down the stairs József is sweeping the hallway. Zoltán greets him with a cheery hello which József acknowledges with a grunt. Katalin can feel the caretaker’s eyes on her as they leave the building.

  They catch a tram to the outskirts of the City Park. Zoltán says he knows a place that serves cheap food in plentiful quantities.

  The restaurant is unfussy with plain white table clothes and only one option on the menu – a spicy meat stew. It’s the first hot meal Katalin has eaten since her father was arrested. As she spears a chunk of beef on her fork, she wonders if it’s wrong to be enjoying herself when he is probably being held in some dank cell on a starvation diet. The guilt must show on her face because Zoltán says, ‘You have to look after yourself. One day your father will come home and he won’t want to find you wasted away.’

  ‘Do you really think they’ll let him?’ she asks. It’s the question she hasn’t dared put to herself.

  ‘It’s too soon to give up hope.’

  She knows he’s right, but she still feels guilty.

  Zoltán asks her about her work at the school and is understanding when she complains about Piroska Benke, the school secretary. He tells her about his factory and does an hilarious impersonation of the Party secretary, Csaba Elek, reading aloud from the Party newspaper. Katalin starts to relax.

  After they’ve eaten, Zoltán suggests a walk in the park and she readily agrees. It’s a fine day, one of the last good days they’ll have before winter sets in, and the park is busy with people making the most of the opportunity. Zoltán offers his arm, and she falls into step with him, enjoying the sunshine. A football rolls into their path and he kicks it back to a group of boys who are playing on the grass. She can almost believe she lives in a normal country.

  But then they come across Stalin.

  He’s impossible to miss. The giant bronze statue towers over them, glinting in the late afternoon sun, reminding Katalin that life is far from normal. She looks up at Stalin’s head with its scrolls of wavy bronze hair, but the statue appears to lurch against the scudding clouds and she has to look away, feeling dizzy.

  She’s always found the scale of this statue difficult to comprehend. The dictator’s knee-high boots alone are six feet or more. He is posing as an orator with one hand across his chest as if he is about to impart words of wisdom. The base of the massive limestone plinth is decorated with relief sculptures of grateful Hungarians paying homage to their overlord and master. Thank you for liberating us from Nazi Germany. Thank you for showing us the true path to happiness and prosperity. Thank you for being such a wise and omnipotent leader.

  This is the man who gave Rákosi lessons in how to be a tyrant. The AVO is fashioned on the Soviet model for a Secret Police. Stalin has assumed the magnitude of a mythical deity, his place assured for all eternity. What would it take to topple such a god? The idea alone is heretical.

  Katalin shivers as the sun disappears behind a cloud, and Zoltán offers to take her home.

  They stop outside the entrance to her building and it seems only natural to invite him in for a coffee, despite what the caretaker may think if he’s hanging around.

  She invites Zoltán to make himself comfortable in the living room whilst she flusters around in the kitchen, rinsing out two mugs. She didn’t do the washing up this morning because she spent so much time trying to decide what to wear. And to be honest, she’s let things go a bit since her father’s arrest. She just doesn’t have the energy any more. She forgot to ask Zoltán how he takes his coffee. She’s nearly out of sugar. She sniffs the cream and hastily pours it down the sink.

  ‘Just black for me. No sugar.’

  She spins around to find him leaning against the door frame, a faint smile playing about his lips. How long has he been standing there watching her?

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I can do black coffee.’ She fills two mugs and passes one to him. She’s conscious of the general clutter in the kitchen and the smell of sour cream in the sink.

  In the living room she has tidied up the mess left by the AVO but she’s still aware of a lingering sense of their presence, a smell she hasn’t been able to eradicate. When she’s got time she’s going to polish all the surfaces with beeswax.

  Zoltán wanders over to the piano, lifts the lid and plays a few notes with his left hand. ‘Do you play?’

  ‘Very badly,’ she says. ‘My mother was the pianist in the family.’

  ‘Is this her?’ He’s noticed the photograph of her parents which is still propped on the side table where she left it.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It was taken when they were on their honeymoon in England. What about your family? Are your parents still alive?’ He’s only told her about his current life, nothing about where he came from.

  ‘They died in the war,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘They were originally from Transylvania. But after the Treaty of Trianon the borders were redrawn and their part of Hungary became Romanian. They crossed the border to live in what was left of Hungary, leaving their families behind. I never knew my grandparents.’ He puts the photograph of Katalin’s parents back on the side table. Then he looks at her with an expression full of heartfelt emotion. ‘I would like to live in a world without borders.’

  ‘So would I.’

  He holds out his arms to her and Katalin falls into them without hesitation. As her lips meet his, she feels hope for the future.

  Chapter Six

  For seven long nights Márton types his life story. He doesn’t think there is anything new to say, but with each retelling more and more details come back to him: catching trout in the river with his father as a child, foraging for mushrooms in the forest, his mother’s stews, the thrill of arriving in Budapest as a student, lectures in Oxford. And then years later, meeting his future wife at a party, taking her out to the Café New York on her birthday, the siege of Budapest and the devastating news that his wife had been caught in the crossfire between the Germans and the Soviets. Of Katalin he tries to write as little as possible. He doesn’t want her mixed up in all this trouble.

  He hasn’t been taken to Vajda yet to have his words thrown back at him.

  He barely sleeps all week. If Gábor is supervising one of the typing sessions then there is no mercy. He has to keep typing, no matter how tired he is. If he starts to nod off, which he does frequently, Gábor jabs him in the back with his rifle butt. But if Tamás is on duty, he lets Márton have half an hour’s kip here and there. Márton understands that being the one to set the rules bolsters the boy’s fragile ego, but he isn’t complaining. Sleep is sleep and he’ll grab whatever scraps are offered to him. He repays Tamás by typing extra hard when he’s awake. It seems only fair.

  He spends his days in his cell, most of the time not allowed to even sit or lie down. He has developed the ability to sleep on his feet. The banging of the spy holes and the screams of other prisoners punctuate his dreams.

  He is swaying on the balls of his feet, eyes closed. He anticipates that any minute now the cell door will open and he’ll be taken back to the typewriter room. He doesn’t know what else he can tell them. At least he is permitted to sit whilst typing.

  Footsteps in the corridor. The bolt slides across. He braces himself for another night of wordsmithing. The door opens and his heart sinks at the sight of Gábor. He was hoping for Tamás. He stumbles out into th
e corridor, so tired he can barely see where he’s going. No matter. He could find his way to the typewriter room blindfolded if he had to. But at the turn in the corridor Gábor jabs him in the back and says, ‘This way.’

  He is taken to Vajda’s office.

  Vajda is sitting behind his desk with his hands resting on his belly which appears to have grown even bigger since Márton last saw him. Márton on the other hand is growing thinner by the day. He’s still wearing the same suit he was wearing when they brought him in but the trousers are getting loose around the waist. If he’d worn a belt they would have taken it off him.

  ‘Sit!’ Vajda points at the familiar wooden chair.

  Márton collapses onto the chair. He expects to see piles of paper on Vajda’s desk – his output from a solid week of mindless typing. But apart from the telephone, the interrogation lamp and the bust of Stalin, the desk is quite bare. If Vajda produces those dozens of pages and starts screwing them up into balls Márton thinks he might just lose it. How far could he throw Stalin’s bust in his fragile state?

  But Vajda opens a drawer in his desk and pulls out a single sheet of typed paper. He also takes a fountain pen from the drawer and unscrews the lid.

  ‘This is your confession.’ He slides the sheet of paper across the desk towards Márton. ‘You are required to sign here.’ He points at the bottom of the page with a stubby index finger.

  ‘My confession?’ Despite his exhaustion, Márton is not aware that he has confessed to anything, although he has been falsely accused of spying.

  ‘Yes, your confession. Now sign it.’

  ‘May I read what I am being asked to sign?’ They’ve done their best to bring him to a point of near physical collapse, but he still has a shred of dignity inside him. Even Vajda can’t expect him to sign a document without reading it first.

  Vajda harrumphs as if Márton’s request is quite out of order, but he makes no formal objection. Márton leans forward, picks up the piece of paper and reads the opening line.