Woodroe had been given a bicycle to use on his errands. He could now accompany Hildred when there was more than a single basket of articles to fetch. He took quick advantage of the bicycle to ride about, in the countryside, early and late in the day, marveling at the intensity of the green of the Austrian fir trees and the vivid richness of the meticulously cultivated farmland. Soon he discovered the spooky little bridge traversing the Einserkanal waterway to Hungary. He was entranced at the sight of it, a bridge not nearly wide enough for a car, nor sturdy enough. It was a footbridge of rickety boards with waist-high handrails, too high for little children to reach. At first it surprised Woodroe that a passageway, however little, between sovereign countries was irregularly guarded. Well, he remembered, why not think back to the Austro-Hungarian empire? A sole sovereign of the two countries. Both historic countries had received the Soviet armies and both had been under the direct control of Moscow up until the treaty with Austria loosened Soviet braces there. Meanwhile, the Russian military continued in tight control of Hungary. Maybe one day Woodroe would walk over the bridge!
But better to confide that ambition to Hildred. The next day, when Andrew was teaching class and Woodroe was helping her paint the kitchen, he told her of the bridge.
She smiled broadly.
Could he cross over on it?
Yes. “But better if you have a Hungarian guide. I will take you next Saturday. Better not to speak of it to Andrew. We’ll just say we’re going out for a ride. If the weather is good.”
The weather was good, and in midafternoon they had got there by bicycle, a journey of only fifteen minutes, since they had chugged up the hill in between. Circling the hill was easier work but took ten minutes longer.
“Follow me.” Hildred ran her portable stretch of chain around the tree, through the front wheel of her bicycle, and then through Woodrow’s, snapping the lock.
They began the walk across the canal, she leading the way, both holding on to the handrails. He could feel the bridge’s motions inclining to the wind. Looking down on the water, he saw the drift of the forty-meter-wide Einserkanal, several barges lazing their way eastward over the dark blue water. At the far end of the bridge a young couple stood, braced against the wind that funneled up the canal gorge. The man was dressed as a farmer might dress: a leather halter holding up coarse blue trousers; under the halter, a bleached white shirt with an open collar; a sweater of sorts hung over his shoulder.
He was very young, Woodroe observed, probably just into his twenties. His companion was of the same age, except that Teresa, as he would come to know her, was not dressed in farm clothes—her cotton skirt and shirt were studiously clerical in design. Hildred would learn after they began talking that Teresa worked as a clerk at the military unit nearby and today was strolling, after hours, with her cousin Anton, who worked on the farm at the river’s edge.
Hildred quickly informed them that though she was herself a native Hungarian, she was married to an American who worked as a schoolteacher—“that’s better to use than ‘missionary,’” she said in English to Woodroe, whom she introduced. The two Hungarians had never before met an American, and Teresa, her braided blond hair tied around her head, turned eagerly to Woodroe. She was delighted to try out the English she had applied herself so studiously to learn for what seemed years. Had he ever before been in Hungary? Were he and Hildred aware of the great changes that were imminent in Budapest? The great liberal measures being advanced?
Yes, Hildred said, she was well informed about them, “but we have to get our news from the BBC. We can’t get anything from our—your—Budapest radio. Just the same old thing.”
Woodroe spoke to Hildred, keeping private what he said. “I keep ten U.S. one-dollar bills. Could we use one of them to buy them a beer or something?” Hildred agreed, and the invitation was happily accepted.
Two military jeeps were parked outside the little bar up the hill. Approaching it, they passed by stone benches on the green outside a small church of Gothic design, young men and women seated on them, chatting. On one bench a young man listened attentively to a portable radio. Inside the rustic tavern, Teresa beckoned them to a table in the corner. An attendant brought them beer and a nonalcoholic orangeade for Woodroe. Woodroe took a pencil from his shirt pocket and drew on the paper place mat a rough outline of the United States of America.
“Here is New York. Here”—he sketched a north-south line—“is the Mississippi River. There”—he moved his pencil left—“are the Rocky Mountains. They are our Alps.” Hildred supplied the emphasis for the benefit of Anton. “And there”—he smiled broadly with pride—“is the largest saltwater lake in America. I am from . . . there.” He made a pencil dot on the north end of the lake.
They spent two hours together, speaking in German with spurts of Hungarian interpretation done by Hildred. It was after four in the afternoon that Hildred said, “We have to go. Our bicycles,” she explained to Teresa, “are across the bridge, and we are then nine kilometers from Andau.”
“I know how far it is to Andau,” Teresa said sharply. “But maybe there won’t be such a barrier between us after the government of Imre Nagy gets on with our reforms. Maybe one day here, in Hungary, it will be like over there”—she motioned toward the Andau Bridge—“in Austria. After the Soviets—” Hildred raised a cautionary finger to her lips, looking over to the Communist army officers at the other end of the room. Teresa took the warning and finished in a whisper, “After they get out.”
They all swore to meet again, and Hildred wrote down an address. “I’m sorry we can’t tender you an invitation to Andau. Someday soon, perhaps.”
That night Woodroe wrote to Teresa. He had no sense of how long it would take a posted letter to travel from the post office in Andau to the post office in Kapuvar—a distance, as the crow flies, of about ten kilometers, but who knew how many bureaucratic postal leagues away. To his surprise, only four days passed by before he heard back from her. Woodroe didn’t get much mail at Andau. His mother wrote every week, his sister every fortnight, and one or two Salt Lake City classmates occasionally rang in. But on Wednesday, when Woodroe returned from his daily bicycle ride to fetch the newspapers, Andrew handed him, without comment, the letter with the Hungarian postmark.
Woodroe stuck the letter in his pocket, opening it while waiting for his students to file in.
Teresa had replied that she would be happy to see him anytime she was not on duty, her duty hours being from 0800 to 1600. The military base was a mere ten-minute bicycle ride from Kapuvar. “I live in the barn at my cousin Anton’s farm, right by the path going up from the bridge. We passed the barn on the way to the Grodka—the tavern.” She wrote in small block letters, perhaps to take special care that, writing in English, she’d make as few mistakes as possible.
“The telephone at Grodka is 81540. Laszlo is always there and will take messages. It would be so fine to see you again. We must talk about all the things we are interested about. Nobody never guards the bridge, so you can come and you can go when you wish. I am supposing you hear a lot from Vienna, being so close. And I am living only seventy miles from Budapest, where things are very hot, very—heated. A thought. Do you have a light on your bicycle? In case you are returning to Andau after it is night?”
How to handle the matter at the mission?
Woodroe was excited by the letter. He needed to think about it all, but the students were now seated. He assigned them to read six pages from the book on George Washington he had distributed the day before. He would allow them a half hour. Then he would question them.
I have got to see her.
What the . . . hell! Mormons did not use profane language, but the forbidden word did cross his mind. He was speaking to himself, analyzing the question. His duties and obligations to the mission did not commit him to eremitical life when off duty. Whatever the paternalistic, not to say condescending, role of Andrew Goodhart, Woodroe owed him nothing more than dutiful attention to work at the miss
ion. Woodroe Raynor was free to live his own extracurricular life.
He was in any case accustomed to exercising responsibility. He had begun doing that after his father’s death. Woodroe Albert Raynor, at sixteen, was now the man of the house, assuming many of the responsibilities his father had exercised before his long, incapacitating illness. Woodroe could always call on Uncle Woodroe, his mother’s brother, for advice, and did on such matters as insurance payments and the investment of his father’s savings, but all of that was pretty straightforward.
At eighteen, Woodroe had been elected vice president of his high school class. The yearbook editor, under Woodroe’s picture, had written, “Most likely to succeed. Because he looks like Elvis Presley.” Woodroe had liked that. And after all, Elvis was only a couple of years older than he. Woodroe had academic honors, was referred to as a bright and able young man by his father’s friends, and had pleased them all by deferring his Princeton education to serve his Mormon mission.
Yet—he repeated to himself—in his off-hours he was bound only by the responsibilities of his indenture to the church. It would not do to start drinking whiskey, or even coffee or tea, or to smoke cigarettes; or, in the immediate situation, to violate the diplomatic rules of the mission, which forbade alignment with any political movement.
He intended to do none of these forbidden things.
But he did intend to visit that lively, interesting, attractive woman, to spend a little time in her company, and also to learn something from her about Hungarian political developments.
During the break he bicycled to the post office. He used the public telephone, and asked the operator whether she could dial a number in Hungary.
“What number?”
He gave it.
Laszlo answered the phone.
Would he kindly leave a message for . . . Teresa?
“Teresa Molnar?”
“The young lady with Anton. We visited with you on Saturday.”
“Ah, you are the American?”
“Yes. Yes, Herr Laszlo.”
“What is the message?”
“That I will meet her at Grodka tomorrow, at 1730.”
“All right. I will tell her.”
2
NOTWITHSTANDING THE DECLARATION of independence he had made to himself the day before, Woodroe didn’t inform even Hildred, when he set out on his bicycle, where he was headed. She could reasonably suppose that he was taking the train to Vienna again, maybe to hear a concert, or see a museum, have dinner at a coffee shop, perhaps run into other young Americans and discuss the exciting events in Hungary. Woodroe said only that he’d be gone for supper, not to wait up for him.
He measured the time exactly. Leaving on his bicycle at 4:45, he made it, in briskly cool autumn weather, to the Grodka tavern in Kapuvar twenty-three minutes later. Nothing to it, though the hill on the direct route was steep. About the same time required to travel from Salt Lake to Alta to ski, though of course that hike wasn’t done on a bicycle.
He couldn’t be certain that Teresa would be there or for that matter certain that she had got his message, so he put a paperback in his pocket, a novel by John Steinbeck. Arriving at Grodka, he walked up to the bar. Laszlo said yes, he had delivered the message, perhaps Teresa would be coming in soon. He nodded Woodroe to an empty table.
Woodroe had the problem of all faithful Mormons finding themselves in a saloon. How to justify using the space without patronizing the host’s merchandise. His father had often had to meet with customers, or potential customers, at a bar of their choosing, so Woodroe knew as a boy that the mere presence of a Mormon at a saloon was not scandalous. He looked about and ordered the orangeade Hildred had got for him on the first visit. At 5:45 he concluded, disconsolate, that she wasn’t coming. The bar was filling up, the radio at high volume. If he stayed on, pretty soon he’d find himself hogging a scarce table.
But then she arrived, and her blond freshness made him a little giddy as he bounded to his feet and extended his hand. She had on more lipstick than the other day. Her braided hair seemed to have a special sheen. She wasn’t wearing the dry garb of the last time around—instead, a pleated cotton blue skirt and a broad belt with designs in brass. Her gold earrings pierced her ears, and the scent was of the azaleas Woodroe’s mother so painstakingly cultivated. She sat down. Without asking, Laszlo brought her a glass of the local wine.
Immediately they were talking animatedly about the great student procession of the day before in Budapest and of the revolutionary implications of the state police’s firing on the students. “Now—who would know better than me, working right there at Camp Esterhazy?—the military itself is wondering, should they obey central command? Or instead support the students and back Herr Gero, who is now the acting prime minister? Éppen ezen az éjk-szákan”—in her excitement Teresa had lapsed into her native tongue. “This very night”—she collected herself into English—“we will maybe know what is to happen.”
Everyone at Grodka was silent, listening to the radio but with mounting frustration—the broadcaster was clearly bound by the dogmatic overhanging of what had been the Communist government. Every few minutes Laszlo would switch to the BBC, wrestling to understand and relay the highlights. After the second BBC bulletin, Teresa shot up her hand. “Quiet a moment!” There was a responsive silence from the twenty men seated about. “The BBC,” she translated, “reports that the revolutionary government has announced that it will return the land to the peasants!” To Woodroe she said, “Some of that land will go to Anton!”
The radio went back to the Hungarian. Teresa listened for a few minutes, then got up. “We will go to my little house and listen there to the BBC. They are giving the Budapest news every few minutes.”
Woodroe rose too. “How do I pay?”
“Do you have a dollar bill?”
He pulled one out of his wallet. She took it, waved it in sight of Laszlo, and dropped it down on the table. “Come with me.”
They were seated in the room of the old barn with the high ceiling. The fireplace was lit, the room large. The bed with the red-quilted bedspread was tucked away in one corner, the lamp at its side unlit. Diagonally across were the sofa and two armchairs; on one windowless side, a refrigerator and stove and a row of cupboards.
The BBC gave reports every half hour, and Woodroe felt the national jubilation. Every few minutes Teresa would switch to the AM set and bring in the news from Budapest. The announcer seemed refreshingly liberated, she said, giving the news now free of government cant. She would relay what was said sentence by sentence. Watching her lightly freckled face, Woodroe felt the excitement of the historic event, and the electric excitement of her company.
Sometime after eight, she stood up and clicked both radios off.
“We will revolve them, the AM and the shortwave. And listen to the news . . . later. Now we will eat. And drink. To the revolution. . . . Woodroe, why must you not drink wine?”
“It’s against the rules.”
“But Woodroe . . .” The smile was enticing. Bottle in hand, she bent down toward the empty glass on the coffee table, all but baring her breasts to him. “Woodroe, don’t you understand? This is a revolution! We are free now to do anything we wish! And what I wish is you. But first I wish you to drink to me. And to the revolution. And of course, Woodroe, it is much too cold for you to go back to Andau on your bicycle. You will spend the night with me.”
At two in the morning she yanked her blanket away and dug her elbow into his side. “Woodroe! Wake up! The prime minister says the government of Hungary will address all the student grievances! We will have—you will have—one more glass of wine to celebrate.”
Now she yanked the entire bedspread away, laughing.
Woodroe grabbed the blanket and drew it over his waist, lifting himself to his feet.
She was standing naked by the fire, opening a bottle.
All he could think to say was, “Teresa. It is very cold.”
“Come closer
to the fire.”
The fire was roaring now. The BBC kept reporting fresh developments.
Once more she turned the radio off, and beckoned him back to the bed. “Once more, Woodroe. For the revolution.”
She promised that if he slept, she would wake him in time to make his way back to the bridge and his bicycle. Later, kissing her and tightening his jacket against the cold, he set out, reflecting on what he had lost in those few hours, and gained.
3
HE DIDN’T GET AWAY ON FRIDAY as he had hoped. That morning, he had appeared, showered and shaved, in time for breakfast with the Goodharts. When the doorbell rang, Andrew left the room, and Hildred permitted herself a smile, mercifully abbreviated and unquestioning. “I hope you found adequate sleeping quarters in Vienna.”
Woodroe nodded pleasantly and went back to perusing Vienna’s Der Standard, which he could now read without any problem. Andrew returned, sat down with a second cup of bouillon, and told Woodroe that they would be conducting that evening an introductory session for six new students. “I haven’t met them, but I’m told they know not a word of English.” He sighed heavily. “Well, that is what the good Lord sent us here to do, to educate, and care for people.”
“How old are they, Andrew?”
“The youngest applicant is fifteen. The oldest is thirty-five—her mother. The others are boys, teenagers. Like you.”
God! Woodroe thought. I’m still a teenager!
The unscheduled evening session meant no excursion across the bridge that night.
It was hard to believe the news that came over the radio. Imre Nagy appeared to be forming a genuine political government, a coalition of Smallholders, Social Democrats, and National Peasants, as the parties called themselves. At noon Woodroe went to the pay phone, reached Laszlo, and gave word that he would surely be there on Saturday.
Getting It Right Page 2