by Peter Nadas
The most I could do was turn away very, very slowly.
Almost every morning I saw a man of whom nothing remained but a torso and two arms. He propelled himself among people’s feet, on a board fastened on four rollers. My father wouldn’t have been much older than this person, if he had stayed alive, even if in this condition. The man would roll out of Szófia Street, braking with a hand wrapped in a thick leather glove, and I, when I saw him, could not imagine him as anyone but my father. The sidewalk slopes down sharply in front of the pharmacy. I had no idea where he came from. At this time in the morning, people were hurrying along. He always said the same two sentences. The person he addressed was always a man; he waited for a man.
On this side of the street he could let the board plop down off the sidewalk, but then on the other side someone would have to reach under and lift it onto the sidewalk.
He pushed forward a little, and while he rose and held himself aloft on his fists, he let the board roll out from under him and slip off the curb. With an additional push, he heaved his amputated thighs back onto the board and at the same time braked hard with a gloved hand lest he roll out to the middle of the street.
What remained of him was clean, strong, and orderly. It may not have been because of the physical exertion, but his forehead and neck were soaked with perspiration. From the depths, the handsome face looked up at the pedestrians, his long, straight, deep-brown hair furled out and away from his soaked forehead, and he’d ask if the man would help him back on the sidewalk on the other side.
Not even his emphasis changed.
Please, if you could help me, but only on the other side. An unfortunately disabled veteran thanks you in advance for your help.
Generally, the addressed person would be embarrassed because he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, but the miserable man said not another word. He pushed and raised himself, plopped back down, and braked so fast that anyone seeing him for the first time could not properly follow the order of his precisely planned series of movements.
As he propelled himself across the street, the person he had appealed to would follow resignedly. The four little metal wheels made a terrible racket on the cobblestones.
I saw him often and followed him many times to find out where he went.
Men on two legs were seized by shame and abject terror. A childlike zeal, an incomprehensible shame, was expressed in their faces and comportment. If it hadn’t been the torso of an athlete who had asked them to follow him on their healthy legs, perhaps their backs wouldn’t have slumped like that. Making its own infernal din, the rolling board jounced, rattled, and clattered on the uneven cobblestones.
Cars stopped; sometimes the streetcar did too.
When he reached the other side of the street, the torso leaned forward and his two gloved hands found support on the sidewalk, the strong shoulder muscles tautened, and, as if performing an exercise on parallel bars, he elegantly and easily heaved himself up and held himself in the air.
The other person was then supposed to lift the board and place it on the sidewalk, awaiting the stump.
Everyone understood this; there was no need for words or explanations. Still, men with healthy legs would have liked to do something more demanding of their abilities and adroitness, as though they had to look for something else that might be truly helpful. But the torso asked for nothing more, nothing less, and as it rolled away on the smooth asphalt among the hurrying feet, the two-legged men were left, unsatisfied, with their shame.
I don’t know where he went, or, to be precise, I observed him from a distance and even followed him for a while.
There was also a two-legged, walking third-degree burn. Judging by her clothes, graceful movements, and well-chosen words, she was a young lady. Not a single lock or individual hair curled out from under her giant hat. The folded-down brim somewhat covered her forehead and shaded her face. There was an improbable dent on her brow. As if there had been a rending, a violent crushing or tearing along the seam of the frontal and cranial bones but no sign of external injury. Indeed, only on her dented forehead was the skin unblemished.
Scars, cuts, welts, crudely creased stitches all over her face. No nose, no lips, only a lipless gap, and two dark holes where the nose should be. Usually she wore dark silk clothes that covered every inch of her; she made her neck disappear in tightly wound silk scarves, and if the scarf slipped a bit, one could see that her neck was completely burned too. Probably her entire body was burned. She wore chamois gloves and improbably thick opaque stockings. Her breath wheezed, she spoke from her throat through the hollow of her mouth and she had no other means with which to shape words. Hers weren’t real words, in fact; rather, one understood the meaning from her articulation, from the way she divided her syllables. If we wound up standing together in a line at a store, I pretended I had other pressing business elsewhere. I could not bear her awful wheezing at such short range.
It was as if my eardrums would explode from the pressure of those sound waves, when in fact it was my heart that nearly broke, but I could not admit this to myself because what can a person do with another person’s broken heart.
Others may have been more indifferent or more patient with her, and she probably had become accustomed to this emotionless patience.
But this too could have been determined if she had had a face to reveal it.
Besides, she spoke like the ladies on the boulevard, used to giving orders, who took their maids with them when they did their shopping in the stores and markets.
Have you some Roquefort left? Very well, then let me have some bologna, but slice it thin, please.
No, not from that one, it seems stale. From the other, yes, the fresh one, yes, it’s very kind of you. And please, only a few slices.
I saw her last when the store ran out of bread.
One could not even get into the store; the selling was being done at a table in the doorway.
The curfew had been in effect until eight in the morning, but if one did not join the line at early dawn there was no chance of getting bread. The line was like a long serpent snaking along the sidewalk as far as one could see.
Almost every hour the radio reported that the belligerents had definitely come to an agreement about the terms of a cease-fire, but when the firing stopped in some places, it flared up at others and then spread throughout the city again. This had been going on for three days and very few people had supplies left.
Everyone was lacking something, and therefore everyone was on the move, going somewhere in the city as if the most important thing in the world was to obtain the necessities and to replenish and maintain one’s reserves. As if amassing these reserves was more important than one’s life.
From behind the table set up in the store entrance, the manager was screaming that he had run out of bread and there’d be no further shipments, because on government orders the bakery on Király Street was now working only for the hospitals. Some people screamed back that he should have told them that earlier, to spare them a long wait for nothing. Stay in line only if you want sugar, semolina, flour, or oil, screamed the manager. There’s nothing else, not even salt. And don’t ask him again from the beginning, because he didn’t have yeast or matches either. But at Glázner’s they’re planning to bake all day, and probably everyone can get something there.
The line quickly began to thin out.
On that occasion I saw the burned woman. She had on a short Persian lamb coat, pants, and military boots, and she was explaining something to an older man. We were all on our way to Glázner’s, on Szent István Boulevard.
This sort of thing happened often in those days, and nobody seemed bothered by having to walk to another store. It was not advisable to stay too long in one place anyway. Sometimes one heard, without any official announcement, that something valuable was still available elsewhere in the city, and then an anxious, smaller crowd would start toward a new uncertainty. No one complained. One couldn’t predict anything a
nyway, not even whether things would be safer or more uncertain somewhere else. There was no future; all that we had was the present moment. One surrendered to necessity, which made one anxious, but moving on to other places gave one some safety. At times it turned out that because of fighting on the streets one could not reach the desired destination, not even in roundabout ways; at other times the goal was reached but the store had closed, or had never opened, or perhaps had been blown to bits in the meantime.
Yet, somehow, something worthwhile always presented itself. And driven by the hope of this something, everyone worked out a strategy.
Everyone seemed to know which way to go and which way not to go.
It was no good to detach oneself completely from the crowd, because that kept one from benefiting from the flow of information, yet too many people all together was also dangerous. Everything was in constant flux. One shuttled back and forth between swelling and thinning groups. It was no easier during the day than in the dark, foggy dawn. Early dawn already had a wintry edge, though an autumnal smell remained. It appeared as if everyone followed their own noses, yet everyone watched closely where others were heading; maybe they knew something. And because of this strange feeling, which in peacetime usually divides a populace, people bunched together. Of course, this was not so good either. Because one guessed that maybe no one knew more or better than the others, were only talking through their hats, and it would be best to continue on alone. For a short time one might be armed with some actual information, or at least knew that others had a different view on the same permanent uncertainty yet were talking nonsense. But alone, one could not decide, for example, whether to cross a square or playground or to try a completely different route.
And the places where the fighting seemed to persist were not necessarily the most dangerous places. If bullets were being fired at a steady height, and if we could see where they were coming from and where they were going, then we’d bend down, duck behind a fence, cling to an upturned streetcar, wait out the pause between two bursts of firing and then run across, bent over, exactly as others had before us. As if there were always others one could follow.
Of course there were stray bullets too.
As if there was always someone, a first one, who had already tried it. But then, when almost everyone had made it across, that’s when the stray bullet might hit someone. Either the person who was shot was left there, or others crawled back and yanked him to cover.
And that meant that a person no one knew was wounded or dead on the spot.
Milk was not to be found anywhere in Budapest. One woman’s milk can took a direct hit. It happened during the day, with weak sunshine filtering through the light autumn fog. The woman had been running across the street toward us from the opposite direction. A few of us were still waiting for the chance to get out of the bullets’ range, and everyone’s faces were contorted, mouths open and eyes narrowed to slits. As if everybody were saying two sentences simultaneously. Do it now. Made it again. When bullets hit her milk can, the woman stopped, incredulous and shocked. Like a mask, her face remained with that expression on it as milk poured out of the can in two separate streams. This told us that somewhere there must still be some milk; somewhere milk was being distributed. Or had been. As if the spilling milk were more important. She did not topple over, only lowered herself on one knee and in her fury knocked the can to the ground, knocked it three or four times, not letting go of the handle. Other people were screaming, more and more of them, but they were late with their screaming.
Then victorious silence.
A dead square, a mute intersection where, ominously, nothing moved.
Closed gates, rolled-down shutters.
Whether it was light or dark, you could not scratch this silence with the noise of your steps. At its depth, something was being prepared. Something was in the air.
This sort of frozen dawn waited for us that day near West Station; not a light anywhere, not behind the windows or above the streets, no movement, no noise. It was cold, foggy, which we felt mainly on our skin and in our noses. We couldn’t see or hear anything. No, not in that direction, that’s for sure. Maybe cats or rats feel things this way. We were still far from the square; we could just barely differentiate between the gloomy sky and the bullet-riddled towers of the station. We had marched to this point like a group of high-spirited noisy tourists. Now it was clear we must be silent and give the square a wide berth. Quickly receding footsteps could then be heard, their echo bouncing back from the surrounding buildings.
Even cats and rats know which way they should go.
From here, it seemed that the upper section of Podmaniczky Street was open.
Others turned there too, because it was the only sensible option. Not together; we walked separately. You said to yourself, somehow I’ll make it to Bajcsy-Zsilinsky Road, and you didn’t ask what would happen then. I saw the picture of Kálmán Street before me, where in peacetime the trolleybuses ran; that’s where I had to get to. Figuring probabilities or weighing possibilities was valid only one step at a time. I wasn’t interested in knowing how I’d get to Kálmán Street.
Only the next step, always.
Never before or after did I feel how deeply the city lived in me. Some need would specify a place, and right away I’d see my situation as if under a magnifying glass. I’d know and see what was where, what sort of corner, stone, recess, or hiding place I could count on, what sort of danger I might expect. Like an animal that knows every trail. Now I must get to Kálmán Street and from there continue without going anywhere near the Parliament or the Defense Ministry. Alkotmány Street was a big question mark because it was so wide, and an even bigger question was how I would reach the other side of Szent István Boulevard. But right now, Kálmán Street was under the magnifying glass, and I didn’t ask what would happen once I made it there. Either something expected would happen or something unexpected, or maybe nothing.
During the day there was always rifle fire somewhere; shooting went on everywhere—close by, far away, much farther away. But only shooting in the street that one chanced to be in meant direct, immediate danger.
When that happened, you were really trapped, and you could only try to find a way out. But of course your success could not be predicted.
As I walked along, somebody asked me what was happening. Bread at Glázner’s, I replied. The street had just started to breathe a sigh of relief. A few buildings had their gates open; insurgents carrying things were going in and coming out. Lights were on in some of the upstairs apartments. The foliage was still rich and full of color; the light made the entire street seem as if the fighting was dying down. The streets looked like this whenever people had a chance to breathe sighs of relief, but nobody knew how long the respite would last. The boy who asked me his hurried question must have been the son of the super. I thought so, anyway, because out of a lit window above us, a woman called down to him.
Pistike, will they turn on the water soon?
He was carrying a long ammo box on his shoulder.
Fuck it, man, you can’t get through here, the boy said to me with obvious goodwill, and he did not answer the woman.
Can’t you see what’s going on?
I did see, of course I did, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he despised me for not joining him. As if he were trying to tell me that I was nothing but a stupid civilian who understood nothing of what was going on. It wasn’t hard to acquire weapons. I could have asked him for almost anything. I had also seen them more than once handing them out from trucks.
It wasn’t fear that held me back, and I can’t say I had anything against the shooting. On the contrary, I approved. I couldn’t imagine it being otherwise. It was just. And where there is shooting there are dead bodies. But I was the one somehow who had to get bread and everything else, for the members of my family had escaped into helplessness. I found their fear truly disgusting.
We’ve already turned it on, madam. Please, go ahead an
d try it, please do, Pisti called to the upper floor.
I moved on. One didn’t think of saying good-bye to someone whom one had just spoken to. By the time I reached the intersection I found out from someone else that the Russians had pulled back to Szent István Basilica. And they had cannons. But the railway station remained in rebel hands. That’s where there was free passage to the other side. Only one didn’t know when the whole thing might start all over again.
There was a photo store at the corner, and in front of its bombed-out display window a familiar group was gathering again, or at least among the people coming together I could see familiar faces. Broken glass crunched under our feet. Someone should have made a move, should have decided to go in a definite direction toward a specific destination, but no one did. This one knew something, that one had different information, maybe we should do this or maybe we should do that. An interminable discussion was under way. Everybody was talking, but that wasn’t very interesting. What was good about the whole thing was that in this strange neighborhood one could see familiar faces. Somebody from your own street, your own district. People were looking at one another in the dark, explaining things, pointing at things. Some people were quiet, only listened, and the ones who first lost patience were mainly from this group.
This was not good.
I had to think hard about whom I wanted to follow or join. Any way you looked at it, it wasn’t good, but almost any situation had a chance of turning up something good, and once in a while you could gain a real advantage. In the end, everybody was waiting for his turn, but nobody wanted to be first.
Only a single damaged lamp was giving light above the street. The trolley’s overhead wire had slammed into its cable, the shade had been twisted under the weight and the glass broken, but the bulb was intact. Dead bodies lay among the piles of cobblestones the rebels had used as improvised antitank obstacles. At the corner of Kálmán Street smoke was swirling from a burned-out tank. From a distance it looked as if it were steaming. Maybe it had been trying to go around the piles of cobblestone when it caught on fire. It had run up onto the sidewalk and hit a tree; the crown of the tree had fallen on it, and branches and the tank were burned to a crisp together. The blackened branches stuck out of the tank like horns. Only one wall of the collapsed newsstand was intact. In the darkness the foggy air was leafing through white pages. Nothing else was alive. Occasionally the piles of these white, two-day-old newspapers rose and slipped sideways a little.