The Travellers

by Ann Swinfen

  She wished that it was not so dark. She could see nothing of the city but strings of lights defining the edges of the road, and the chiaroscuro of traffic travelling both ways. The driver had switched on the radio and a man’s voice spoke continuously. It sounded monotonous, with little music in the speech. She wondered whether Hungarian always sounded so flat.

  ‘What is he saying?’ she asked Sofia, who was sitting beside her mesmerised, staring past the driver at the light glowing on the radio.

  Sofia smiled. ‘Forgive me. It is so strange to me, you see, to hear my language spoken again.’

  ‘Is it something interesting?’

  Sofia’s smiled broadened.

  ‘It is the football results.’

  * * *

  Kate was so tired when they reached their hotel room that she fell into bed without even inspecting the night-time view from their window. Waking the next morning, deeply rested but indolent, she saw that Sofia was already sitting up in her bed reading.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Kate, stretching luxuriously. She crossed to the window and drew back the curtains to catch her first sight of Budapest. To her delight there was a small balcony beyond the french windows and there, seven storeys below, was the Danube. It was only eight o’clock, but already traffic was busy on the river. Elegant cruise ships and huge lumbering barges were moving in both directions. Pleasure cruisers of every kind were moored along the bank below, and on one she could see a girl in a bright red skirt washing down the deck with a bucket and mop.

  Across the river the cliffs of Buda rose high above the flat plain of Pest, here where their hotel stood. To the right these were crowned by the castle and by a spire she thought might be the Mátyás Church. To the left the statue of a woman holding aloft a plume in both hands dominated the skyline, while below her the statue of St Gellért, who first converted the heathen Magyars and was martyred for his pains, marked the steep slope where he was rolled down the cliff in a spiked barrel. Overhead the sky was clear and blue, but there was a faint haze over the river which reminded Kate of the haar lying over the Dun. Along the promenade below people were hurrying to work, and trams clanked up and down between the promenade and the river.

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ she cried. ‘Have you seen the view?’

  ‘I peeped round the curtain while you were still asleep,’ said Sofia. ‘Shall we go down to breakfast?’

  They breakfasted outside on the terrace above the promenade. Here they had a closer view of the yellow and white trams which moved with great deliberation along the riverside track, stopping frequently. The sides of the trams carried advertising, like buses at home – familiar names like Old Spice, Air France and Burger King. (Burger King? thought Kate. Oh, dear.) There were a few local promotions as well, but on the whole it was the names of big non-Hungarian companies which passed before the eyes of those strolling on the promenade.

  Breakfast was excellent. There were the usual cereals and cooked breakfasts that could be found in any western European hotel, but what struck Kate were the pyramids and silver dishes of gleaming fruit, piled up lavishly – strawberries, blackberries, bananas, four kinds of melon, sliced oranges, grapefruit, peaches, grapes, apples, every kind of fruit imaginable. Greedily she piled her plate full and sat in the sun nibbling at it and watching the first river cruises of the day getting under way. She wondered whether the same abundance of food existed for the ordinary Hungarian.

  As they were sitting over the last of their breakfast, Kate took out of her pocket the handful of small coins she had been given the evening before at the airport and examined them.

  ‘This is pretty, isn’t it?’ she said, holding up the gold-coloured five-forint piece. ‘Is that a heron, do you suppose?’

  Sofia took the coin and turned it over in the palm of her hand. ‘Yes. We’ll see many herons in western Hungary. My part of the country is famous for them.’

  ‘Would you like to look for your musical instrument shop first today?’ Kate asked.

  ‘No, no. Today we must do as all the tourists do and go to Castle Hill. It is obligatory to see the Mátyás Church and the Fishermen’s Bastion. We can decide whether we want to look inside the castle. It is not very old.’

  ‘Shall we take a taxi?’

  ‘Certainly not. You see how close the Chain Bridge is? Just there? We walk across that and take the funicular from Clark Adam Ter to the top of the cliff.’ Her face clouded suddenly. ‘I hope the funicular is still there. It was a great treat when I was a child.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Kate hastened to reassure her. ‘I’ve seen it in the guidebook.’ She popped the last piece of Galia melon in her mouth and savoured its cool sweetness against the roof of her mouth. A tall man walking along the promenade just below their table caught her eye.

  ‘Hungary may be short of hard currency,’ she said, ‘but people look healthy and well dressed. And there are plenty of private cars – you can see them whizzing along on the other side of the river.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sofia, her eyes following the same man, who was dressed in a neat grey suit like any London businessman and carrying a smart leather briefcase. He was followed by two teenagers of indeterminate sex with close-cropped heads, wearing jeans and outsize T-shirts. They were speaking Hungarian, so they were certainly not tourists. They wandered past with their arms twined around each other and their hands tucked into each other’s hip pockets. Already Sofia was finding Budapest disorientating. Partly so familiar with its main landmarks from her girlhood, and partly as alien as another planet. ‘Yes, they look quite prosperous. Certainly as prosperous as England. We must keep our eyes open and see if there are any beggars.’

  ‘Heavens!’ cried Kate. ‘What is that noise?’

  A terrible monotonous twanging sound had started up, a little further along the promenade. Just past a lady displaying her embroidered tablecloths for sale, and a youth setting out a table covered with postcards, sat an old man with a stringed instrument on his lap, from which he was producing the most unmusical cacophony Kate had ever heard from a street musician.

  ‘A zither player,’ said Sofia. ‘I suspect that he is tone deaf.’

  ‘I think I prefer beggars,’ said Kate.

  * * *

  The apartment block looked much as it must have done a hundred years ago, István thought, but shabbier. This was the address he had found on the letter sent to his father early in 1945, and like this whole row of houses it had escaped serious damage during the battle for possession of Budapest, although there was a row of bullet holes like a dotted line underscoring one of the first-floor windows. Those had been made by a machine-gun, not artillery, he thought, and might even be a relic of the 1956 uprising and not the second world war.

  Originally these fine houses overlooking the Danube would have been occupied by middle-class professional families during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the early twentieth century they had been divided into large flats – one or at most two on each floor. Then during the communist regime many had been subdivided, and he had no idea whether the flat he was seeking would be one of these. Anna’s discreet enquiries had quickly revealed that a Ferenc Kalla did still live at the same address. It might be a coincidence – the name was not unusual. This might be a son or some other relative, but if so at least that would be a point of contact with the man who had rescued his father from the ice of the Danube, nursed him back to health and sent him home.

  The building had been painted – many years ago – a warm cinnamon, which had bleached in the sun, not unpleasingly, so that it looked like faded autumn leaves. In places some of the stucco had fallen off, revealing brick beneath, but the original finish was designed to look like stone. There was elaborate plaster scrollwork outlining every window, once painted white but now weathered to cream, and the front door was protected by a wrought-iron grille depicting dolphins and mermaids intertwined with wave-like scrolls. Perhaps the original owner of the building had been a merchant trading on the Danube
in the days of the Hapsburg Empire. On either side of the doorway voluptuous caryatids supported a monumental lintel. István tapped one of these figures on the foot with his fingernail. They were carved from real stone, a sure sign of wealth.

  Now, however, there were ugly wires trailing across the façade of the building, some looping up to a telephone pole on the other side of the pavement, some disappearing underground. These must be electric cables. The insulation was cracked and dangerous-looking. Although the weather had been hot and dry now for weeks, there were green stains down one corner of the building where the plumbing was defective. In other words, it was a typical example of a fine old Pest building – architecturally superb, but desperately in need of expensive renovation.

  On the right of the door was a mismatched array of doorbells, most of which had metal holders for cards next to them. The cards were handwritten or typed, some ancient, faded and water-stained, others more recent. Next to the bell numbered 7, a neatly typed card read kalla ferenc.

  István hesitated before ringing. The old doubts assailed him again – did he really want to stir up that long-dead past? His childhood had been haunted by nightmares, and during the last few weeks, since Magdolna had discovered the tin box, they had returned to plague him again. If he went ahead now he was allowing a breach to open up in his carefully constructed defences. Moreover, had he the right to arrive, unannounced, at the home of this old man – supposing it was indeed his father’s rescuer – and inflict the same terrible memories on him? Many people in Hungary wanted nothing so much as to put their past behind them, either because it was too painful to live with, or because reminders of it might cast a blight over the changed persona they had subsequently assumed. For all he knew, Ferenc Kalla might have been a dedicated communist in the days of the partisans. Many of those who had fought against the Nazis had welcomed the Russians with open arms. During the Stalinist regime some had flourished and risen to positions of great power and influence, while others had been purged. Some who had been communists had recanted only within recent years with the downfall of the Soviet Union. Kalla might belong to any of these groups. Or he might just be a frail old man who wanted to be left alone.

  With his hand already raised to the bell, István wondered whether he should telephone first. It was only a step to the Marriott Hotel, back past the Petöfi statue and the curious London bus someone had set up serving Douwe Egbert coffee. There would be public telephones in the hotel lobby. He could ring from there. When he had passed the terrace of the hotel a few moments before he had seen the guests breakfasting, a mixed group of Hungarian and foreign businessmen interspersed with the tourists who were beginning to find their way back to Budapest.

  Even while he was thinking of finding a telephone, he heard footsteps coming down the stairs inside the building. Feeling foolish, and not wanting to be caught standing like this, hesitating in front of the door, he pressed the bell for flat number 7. A young woman, smartly dressed and clearly on her way to work, came out of the building and smiled at him as she let the heavy door swing closed behind her. As she walked away, her high heels tapping on the pavement, the intercom box crackled and a faint voice said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Kalla? This is Dr István Rudnay from Sopron. I wonder if I might speak to you?’

  István had decided in advance that he would simply introduce himself as a doctor from Sopron – his professional status normally allayed any suspicions from strangers. He would wait until he had sized up Ferenc Kalla before he introduced his father’s name.

  ‘Come up,’ said the voice on the intercom, and there was a loud click as the bolt on the door was released.

  István pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway, cool after the street outside, where another day of soaring temperatures was already building up. An elegant curved stone staircase with wrought-iron balustrades led to the upper floors. He counted off the flats as he ascended. Number 7 was on the third floor, overlooking the Danube. He thought of Ferenc and his friends struggling up these stairs with his father’s inert body on that bitter day in December, Ferenc’s clothes dripping and freezing, blood from his father’s wounds staining the pale stone of the stairs.

  Before he reached it, the door of flat number 7 opened. As he drew nearer and his eyes grew more accustomed to the dim light in the hallway, he felt partly relieved and partly disappointed. A stocky, vigorous, middle-aged man was holding the door open to him. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses, and his thick dark hair was just beginning to show a faint sprinkling of grey.

  ‘Mr Kalla?’ said István, holding out his hand, ‘Good morning. It’s kind of you to see me. I am István Rudnay.’

  The man took his hand, shook it and drew him into the flat. He was staring intently, disconcertingly, at István, still holding him by the hand.

  ‘It’s uncanny,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Forgive me.’ He released István’s hand at last, but continued to stare. ‘I could have believed, for a moment there... Rudnay, did you say? You cannot be... You must be... Juliska’s boy?’

  * * *

  As the funicular clanked almost vertically up the cliff face, carrying them from the level of the river to the top of Castle Hill in Buda, Kate looked eagerly out of the grubby windows at the widening panorama of Pest in front of and below her on the far side of the Danube. Away to the right she could see their hotel. In two places the track of the funicular was crossed by decorative cast-iron bridges carrying the footpath which wandered through the trees on either side. Eighty forints each for the ride seemed a small price to pay for such a treat. About 50p, she reckoned. Sofia, beside her, was gazing about with all the eagerness she must have felt when she was brought here as a child by her parents. The other passengers were a mix of foreign tourists and locals. Kate supposed the people of Budapest must use the funicular all the time to avoid the climb up the long winding road around the houses that dotted the wooded slope up to the top of the hill.

  ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it,’ she said as they clambered out at the high-level stop. ‘I can see why you adored it as a child. Now which way? Oh, look, there is another Turul bird.’

  Sofia set off purposefully to the right, towards the spire of the Mátyás Church, which they could see above the trees. There was a promenade along the cliff edge, and looking out over the tops of horse chestnut trees growing lower down the slope they could see the parliament building further upriver, and the wooded outline of Margaret Island, blurred a little by the lingering mist. The chestnuts were covered with pale green, unripe conkers, and amongst them were a few Spanish chestnuts with their much smaller, spikier nuts. The berries on the rowans were already bright orange. The promenade widened out into a pretty paved area, where a woman selling her embroideries had taken refuge from the heat under a huge willow. She proffered her work diffidently, and Kate wondered how many women had been forced to start selling in the streets since capitalism had come to the country. The tablecloths and blouses were covered with beautiful work, but there was no indication of prices and she felt daunted by the thought of bargaining. It would seem, somehow, as though you were trying to devalue the woman’s skill. Sofia was striding on ahead as she lingered, but then a group of prosperous-looking Japanese tourists stopped to admire the embroidery and Kate felt she could slip away without being offensive.

  Tom had always ridiculed this shyness and vulnerability she displayed when confronted by street pedlars.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Kate,’ he would say in irritation. ‘They’re all just con-artists, trying to sell you something made in Korea – at a one thousand per cent profit.’

  But Kate knew, she knew, that the woman had spent hours during the winter months labouring over the exquisite stitchery, and she felt something like shame as she turned and hurried after Sofia.

  It was when they were admiring the Trinity column – set up to give thanks for the end of the plague early in the eighteenth century – that Sofia gave a sudden start and looked for the first time shocked and diso
rientated. She had been prepared for modern hotels beside the Danube, and the heavy traffic on the main roads, but not for changes here, in the very heart of ancient Buda.

  ‘What is that!’ she cried.

  Next to the Mátyás Church, with its delicate pale stone and its charmingly comic roof covered with tawny ceramic tiles, stood something in vulgar plate glass, which seemed to have half devoured a much more ancient building, parts of which extended from the fatal grasp of the modern structure like the thrashing limbs of a victim at the moment of being swallowed by a shark.

  ‘My God!’ said Kate. ‘Just a minute.’ She riffled through her guidebook. ‘It’s the Hilton Hotel,’ she said in a subdued voice. ‘Built in 1976, incorporating parts of the mediaeval monastery and eighteenth-century seminary.’

  ‘How could they?’ said Sofia. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I know the Turks turned the Mátyás Church into a mosque when they ruled us, but to let that desecration be built, less than twenty years ago...’

  ‘I suppose they thought it would bring the tourists, and they needed Western currency. It says here that it is famous for the way it reflects the church in its multiple windows.’

  ‘There is a moral in that, I’m afraid.’

  Kate fanned herself with the guidebook. ‘I’m going to treat us to an ice. Look, they’re only 40 forints! Then we’ll give some money to that nice old man playing the hurdy-gurdy over there and inspect the Fishermen’s Bastion, which looks as though it has come straight from the set of a Walt Disney film.’

  ‘You are insulting,’ said Sofia, ‘one of the patriotic monuments of my country, built at the height of nineteenth-century taste.’ She studied the sign on the ice-cream stall. ‘Hmm. Pistachio and vanilla for me, please.’