Talking in his deadpan way, Béla makes the story sound funnier than it is, and those sitting nearby can’t help themselves from laughing. He’s attracted quite an audience.
After that a few more men volunteer their tales of midnight arrests, absurd allegations and cruel injustices.
‘I am a respected scientist in my field,’ says one. ‘I was arrested on my way to a conference in Czechoslovakia. They said I was planning to escape to West Germany and from there to America. But I would never leave my family behind in Hungary.’
‘I was a lawyer and they arrested me for fascist crimes I never committed. They confiscated my library of books. They are ignorant swine, the whole lot of them.’
‘I was a meteorologist,’ says one man who introduces himself as Horváth. He’s quietly spoken, with round, wire-rimmed glasses that give him a studious look. ‘When I forecast a cold wind blowing in from the east, dispersing the milder weather from the west, I was accused of being anti-Russian.’
‘Don’t you know they never have bad weather in Russia?’ quips a voice. ‘The sun shines out of Stalin’s arse.’ This rouses a chorus of raucous laughter.
Márton notices a young man who is listening avidly to the conversation, but not joining in. His eyes flit from one speaker to another, wide with disbelief. He looks no more than nineteen or twenty. He should be at university studying, thinks Márton, or out enjoying himself with friends.
‘What about you, lad?’ he asks, drawing him into the conversation.
The young man blushes as all those sitting nearby turn to look at him. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, honestly.’
‘Neither did the rest of us,’ says Béla.
The young man stares at his feet and says in a voice that’s barely audible, ‘I was in the tavern with some friends. They were singing forbidden songs. I wasn’t joining in though. I’d gone outside to see the barman’s daughter, Hanna.’
‘Bit of a looker, was she?’ asks a voice.
‘Shut up you oaf,’ says Béla. ‘Let the boy speak.’
‘The others all got off with a warning for singing banned songs. But I think the barman made out I was the ringleader because he found me kissing his daughter.’
‘Bad luck, son,’ says Béla. ‘What’s your name?’
‘András.’
‘You stick with us, lad. We’ll be all right if we stick together.’
The lorry judders to a halt. They can’t have gone that far. The engine is switched off and an expectant silence falls over the prisoners.
They hear the bolt being slid back, then the doors are wrenched open and everyone is ordered out. Márton looks around trying to work out where they are, then he hears men muttering the name Kistarcsa. It’s a small town some fifteen or so miles east of Budapest and the site of a concentration camp during the war.
The men are shepherded into a long, white-painted building and then taken to a narrow room with bunk beds crammed along the walls. The windows have been painted over with whitewash, casting the room in a permanent gloom.
Béla throws himself down on the nearest bunk bed. ‘Wake me up if anything happens.’ Within seconds he’s snoring softly. Horváth, the meteorologist and predictor of easterly winds, takes the bunk above Béla’s. Márton and András take the next pair of beds.
In the fading light, Márton lies on the lower bunk, thinking of Katalin. It’s possible that he’ll never see her again. Up above he can hear András sobbing quietly.
*
It’s already growing dark when Katalin makes her way home after a day at work. Piroska Benke has kept the staff late on a bureaucratic form-filling exercise. No doubt Zoltán will also have been kept late at the factory, attending one of Csaba Elek’s interminable meetings. A steady rain is falling, the water collecting in the gutters at the side of the road. People hurry past, heads down, not looking.
Since she spoke to Tamás and gave him the note for her father, she has heard nothing. Sometimes she worries that she may have put her father into more danger by trying to make contact. That’s if Tamás actually handed it over. Maybe he just destroyed it.
As she approaches her building, a figure steps out of a doorway. It’s a man, muffled up against the cold and wet. He has a thick scarf around his neck, covering the bottom half of his face. She doesn’t think he’s anything to do with her, until he puts out a hand to stop her. She looks around in alarm, expecting to see a black Pobeda car crawling along the street, but there is none.
‘Katalin.’
She jumps at the mention of her name. She knows that voice.
The man lowers the scarf a fraction. ‘It’s me, Tamás.’
‘My God, Tamás. What are you doing here? You frightened the life out of me.’
‘I have news.’
‘About Papa?’
He nods and looks over his shoulder, his eyes darting up and down the street.
She can’t believe it. She’s wanted to hear something for so long, and now she feels nervous about what Tamás might tell her. ‘Come inside,’ she says. ‘Out of the rain.’
‘No, I can’t stay. I just wanted to tell you that father has been sent to a labour camp.’
Katalin balks at the news, imagining all sorts of horrors. ‘Where? In Hungary? He hasn’t been sent to the Soviet Union has he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What was the charge?’
Tamás shrugs. ‘Does it matter?’
‘But what was his sentence? Five years? Ten years? Fifteen?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know that either.’
Katalin clutches at her throat, the rain streaming down her face. She wants to prise information out of Tamás, but she believes him when he says he doesn’t know any details. He starts to move away from her, clearly keen to leave.
‘Wait,’ she says, putting out a hand to draw him back. ‘Why have you come to tell me this?’
He hesitates, biting his lower lip, then he says, ‘Your father is a good man.’
Then he pulls the scarf back over his mouth and hurries away.
Katalin watches him go. He’s the last contact with Papa and now he’s gone.
*
They’re in a state of limbo. It seems that Kistarcsa is merely an internment camp and not their final destination, but no one knows how long they will stay here or where they will be sent afterwards. Márton and the other men spend their days cooped up in the gloom of the dormitory with its whitewashed windows, talking. At least they’re no longer being held in solitary cells. Speculation about their future is rife. Will it be the gulags of Siberia where they will freeze to death in the harsh winter? Horváth, the meteorologist, has them all worried with the news that winter temperatures in Irkutsk can fall as low as fifty below freezing. Béla makes a joke out of it, but Márton notices the fear in András’s eyes whenever the gulags are mentioned. He draws the boy aside and chats to him about other things – physics and chemistry are mutual subjects of interest. Márton doesn’t want to think about the gulags either.
Márton appreciates the company of the other men. For the most part they are educated – intellectuals and skilled professionals. He has come to realise that the Party doesn’t like people who think too much. He feels a special bond with Béla and Horváth, and a fatherly concern for András.
But there are thirty of them crammed into the airless dormitory so it’s not surprising that sometimes tensions run high. There’s always someone who snores too loudly, someone who farts, someone who grinds their teeth at night. Then there are the nightmares that wake them up in the dead of night: the indignities and tortures suffered at the hands of the AVO, the terrors and fears, the memories of loved ones and the hopelessness of their situations. Frayed nerves and lack of sleep lead to stresses that threaten to escalate into violence. Béla has stepped in on more than one occasion. He does so now when voices are raised at the far end of the dormitory. Miklós, a former factory foreman, is arguing with his neighbour.
‘Hey, fellers, take
it easy.’ With his calm but authoritative manner, Béla has assumed the role of group leader. Every group needs a leader, it seems, and he’s their man.
‘Who put you in charge?’ asks Miklós, turning on him. The dormitory falls silent and holds its collective breath.
‘No one,’ says Béla. ‘If you don’t like it, say so. We can take a vote on it. I’m all in favour of democracy. I’m just trying to keep the peace around here.’
No one stands up for Miklós. After a moment, Béla walks away and lies down on his bunk. Miklós returns to his own bunk and sits fuming.
It’s the inactivity, thinks Márton, and the boredom. We’re all going quietly stir-crazy stuck here.
He seeks out András and they pick up a conversation they’ve been having about the solar system. It helps to pass the time, although it reminds Márton of everything he’s left behind.
*
After two weeks stuck at Kistarcsa – it feels more like two months – the guards wake them early one day and order everyone outside to the yard. Márton estimates there must be hundreds of men here. Some of them have been here much longer than his own intake, their hair grown long, their faces resigned.
‘What’s going on?’ asks András. ‘Are they taking us somewhere?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Márton.
‘I don’t want to go to Siberia. I’ll throw myself from the train.’
‘Now, now,’ says Béla. ‘Just stay calm.’
The guards load them into trucks and they are driven to Kistarcsa train station. The train waiting on the platform has ten windowless freight cars, a couple of passenger cars up front and a locomotive belching clouds of black smoke. The men huddle on the platform, surrounded by armed AVO guards.
Márton thinks of the transportation of Jews during the war and his skin prickles with icy fear. The Jews never came home. He can see from the looks on their faces that Béla and Horváth are having the same morbid thoughts. He tries not to let his own fear show for András’s sake, but the boy is already ashen with terror.
The officer in charge gives the order and the guards herd the prisoners into the freight cars like cattle, cramming as many as they can into each compartment. The car smells of disinfectant, but there’s a lingering odour of blood, urine and vomit that has impregnated the wooden floor and walls. When the doors close, it’s dark inside. There is no room to sit.
There’s a grinding of metal on metal, and the train starts to lumber out of the station. Márton presses his eye up against a crack in the wooden slats and watches as Kistarcsa slides away.
The train picks up speed and then trundles along for an hour or so. Speculation about their destination mounts as they head east. It looks as if their worst fears are coming true. It’s the Siberian gulags after all. They’ll never see their beloved Hungary again. Márton regrets not asking Tamás to take a message to Katalin, but it’s too late now.
Suddenly the train grinds to a halt. They haven’t gone that far, must still be inside Hungary’s borders.
‘Where are we?’ asks András. ‘Are we getting out?’
‘Let me take a look,’ says Béla. He turns around in the cramped space and presses his eye up between the wooden slats. ‘Can’t see a whole lot, but I reckon we’re in Hatvan.’
Hatvan is a small town some thirty miles east of Budapest. What now? Silence falls on the carriage as they listen for sounds of movement outside on the platform. Anything that will give them a clue as to what’s going on. But no doors open and no one leaves the train. The AVO guards remain in their carriage up front, no doubt sitting with their feet up and smoking cigarettes.
‘I wish they’d get a bloody move on,’ says Miklós. ‘Never could stand hanging around like this.’
‘Cool it,’ says Béla. ‘We’ll get where we’re going soon enough and then you’ll wish we hadn’t arrived.’
Suddenly the train jolts forwards. Everyone starts to talk at once.
‘Quiet,’ says Béla, holding up a finger. The voices drop. ‘Listen.’
Márton can’t hear anything except the clicking of points as the train crosses the tracks.
‘We’re changing onto a branch line,’ says Béla, speaking with the authority of someone who knows these kind of things. ‘We’re not going to the Soviet Union after all.’
‘Well thank God for that,’ says Horváth.
‘Where are we going then?’ asks András.
‘I reckon we’re heading into the Mátra Mountains,’ says Béla. ‘Time for a bit of shut-eye.’ He leans against the corner of the carriage, folds his arms and lets his head drop forwards. Márton envies him his ability to fall asleep, wherever they are.
Lulled by the rhythm of the train, Márton closes his eyes and recalls images of the Mátra Mountains in his mind’s eye. The name is enough to take him back to his childhood. It’s a beautiful and ancient landscape. He has happy memories of trekking through the wooded hillsides and vineyards with his father, the distant peaks blue in the hazy summer sun, the smell of pine resin, birdsong in the air. But in the winter the mountains are cold and covered in snow. He almost wishes they were going to Siberia after all. Whatever is waiting for them in the mountains, it won’t be good. He doesn’t want his childhood memories to be sullied.
He must have nodded off because he’s jerked awake when the train comes to a halt. Béla is already peering through the slats.
Doors slam, booted feet tramp and voices shout orders. It sounds as if there’s a small army out there to greet them. This is it then, thinks Márton. This is our destination, wherever we are.
The door clangs open and a cool, evening light floods the carriage.
‘Out. Now!’ shouts an AVO officer.
The men shuffle off the train. They are stiff from standing so long in a cramped space. As he clambers down, Márton blinks in the light of the setting sun and looks around him. They are on a small station platform. The air is heavy with the scents of late autumn. A sign on the side of a one-storey building informs him that they are in Recsk. He doesn’t know the place. From the look of the small, dilapidated station building, it’s nothing more than a village. A nondescript sort of place quietly minding its own business until the government decided to set up a labour camp on its doorstep. He wonders what the villagers make of all this. If they’ve got any sense, they keep out of the way.
The prisoners crowd onto the platform which is barely big enough to contain them all. A hundred or more armed AVO men and soldiers point their submachine guns at them, just in case anyone thinks of making a run for it. No one does.
A lieutenant pushes his way through the armed guards and stands there scowling at the raggedy group of prisoners. He goes up to an old man and pushes him in the chest so that he nearly falls over. His neighbours catch him just in time and prop him up. ‘What’s the use of that?’ shouts the lieutenant, pointing at the old man. ‘I need workers here, not geriatrics.’
The old man coughs and straightens himself up, obviously keen to prove that he can stand without help. Márton has doubts about how long the poor fellow is going to last out here.
‘Right, get going,’ shouts the lieutenant. ‘You’re not here to enjoy the scenery.’
The guards leap into action and start to order everyone towards the exit, knocking them into line with the butts of their weapons. There are no lorries to transport them. They are to walk to the camp, it seems.
Márton falls into step alongside Béla, András and Horváth. They are near the front. Behind them the line stretches back further and further as the old and infirm struggle to keep up. They can hear the guards shouting abuse at the slow coaches. As if they’ve all had the same thought, those at the front of the line slow their pace so that the stragglers have a chance to catch up. They’re going to have to stick together in this place.
As the path climbs out of the village, Márton notes that the landscape is just as beautiful as he remembered it. The distant hills resemble a Japanese painting in shades of blue and green.
The leaves on the trees are coppery yellow and fiery red. If he dies out here, at least he’ll have returned to his childhood roots.
They turn a corner and he comes face to face with a sight that destroys his memories in one blast. The lush forest has been ravaged. Trees that had stood for centuries have been cut down to create a huge quarry in the mountainside, an ugly scar on the face of the earth. When Márton looks down he sees that the grey-blue andesite rock is dotted with drops of scarlet.
Chapter Eight
The wind whips through Márton’s torn shirt, cooling the sweat on his emaciated body. They’ve been given old army uniforms to wear, full of holes. With an aching back and stiff shoulders, he bends to pick up the rear handles of the stretcher loaded to breaking point with rock hewn from the mountainside. With a similar effort, Béla lifts the front of the stretcher. Together they make their precarious way down the steep slope, their feet sliding on bits of loose gravel.
Márton’s hands are raw with blisters. He needs to watch they don’t turn septic, but there’s no soap to wash with, never mind medical supplies. He’s wrapped them in rags for now. As they descend, he does his best to keep up with Béla’s longer stride. They can’t afford to drop their load, or the guard will beat them for slacking. Their job is to carry the rock down the mountainside to the breakers working at the bottom. Where the ancient forest used to stand is now a stone quarry.
‘Idiots,’ muttered Béla to Márton on their first day at the quarry. ‘Look at that slope. It’s too steep. There’ll be a landslide one day, you mark my words.’
Márton suspects Béla is right. Béla has an instinct for things like this, plus he’s a trained engineer.
They’ve been here for two weeks, but it feels more like a lifetime. There are hundreds in the camp, but Márton has been put into barracks with the men he was with at Kistarcsa. Béla, Horváth and András are his family now.
He has learned from long-standing inhabitants of the camp that they will not be allowed to write to their families or receive any letters or parcels. It’s a devastating blow. He feels as if he’s been exiled from his life, his previous existence erased. The men here are nobodies. Individual identity is obliterated in the dirty old army uniforms they are forced to wear. Not that his suit and shirt were in any fit state to be worn, but they were the last remnants of his old life. Sometimes he dreams that he can’t remember who he is anymore. He wakes from those dreams in a cold sweat and it takes him a moment to orientate himself. Then he hears the snores and nighttime mutterings of the other men in the dormitory, and a black despair washes over him. If it weren’t for the companionship of the others, he dreads to think what he might have done to himself by now.
Goodbye to Budapest Page 11