Shooting Star

by David Brierley

  That unmarked police car was part of the trouble; why this demonstration was here, why she was here. That car-load of four men in their hats with pulled-down brims wasn’t right, wasn’t necessary in a well-ordered society. Well then, it occurred to her disconcertingly as they crossed the Chain Bridge, if it was necessary then what did it say about the society? She peered down at the Danube, as brown and thick as toffee. In one class a teacher had talked of logic and mysterious concepts called syllogisms. Syllogisms hadn’t been thought of by Marx or Lenin so had assumed less importance to her at the time. But she had identified a syllogism now. Syllogisms were very definitely a part of growing up, an uncomfortable part.

  As the long procession reached the Buda side of the river it wheeled to the north. The crowd grew at every corner. People leaned out of windows. At one point they passed soldiers, boys with conscript haircuts, who waved. The air was full of talk, hope, even optimism. A student asked Ilona if she carried leaflets in her satchel. She was surprised to notice she still had it. Dancing shoes and schoolbooks, she told him. Still at school? He looked quite sharply at her. What school? She told him. Welcome to Free Hungary, he said. He never once used the term comrade, though it was supposed to be compulsory.

  At length the flood of people reached another square, filled it, overflowed wherever there was space, washed into every surrounding street, lapped all round the massive, red bulk of the Foreign Ministry with its flotilla of radio masts on the roof. A ripple of anger passed through the crowd.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They have forbidden the meeting, said it can’t take place.’

  ‘But it can take place, it is taking place. Who said this?’

  ‘Someone heard it on the radio.’

  ‘The radio tells nothing but lies. Who announced this?’

  ‘Hegedus.’

  ‘Who is Hegedus?’

  Hegedus was Prime Minister, Hegedus was a nobody, when Hegedus sat in a chair it stayed empty.

  ‘Tell me, friends, who is this Hegedus?’

  When the man asked it a second time there were smiles.

  ‘What did he say?’ a boy beside Ilona asked.

  ‘He just said: Who is this Hegedus?’ Ilona told him. It was enough to put delight on his face. Today they were more powerful than Hegedus, they could feel it.

  Someone else called out: ‘Hegedus warned that the police had orders to fire on any crowd.’

  Around Ilona there was silence for a stretch. Shooting was not a joke. People searched their neighbours’ faces, then other faces, faces on every side, people jamming the square, thousands, tens of thousands, a hundred thousand people. Ilona sensed the strength of their feeling: there were not enough police in all Budapest to fire on this crowd.

  ‘They can’t shoot,’ the boy beside her said.

  ‘No, they can’t,’ agreed Ilona.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Ilona. What’s yours?’

  ‘Tibor.’ He added more loudly because on this day he wanted it to be known that he was here: ‘I am Tibor Bihari.’

  They found space enough to clasp hands in a brief greeting. He was still a boy, Ilona decided, though he must be her age. His ears were too big and he sported hair that hadn’t finally decided which way to lie. His wrists were thin and he had a city paleness to his face. He was by turns shy and bold in his voice. He hadn’t started to shave and a thin dark line shadowed his upper lip.

  People pressed in on every side. Ilona had glimpses of student leaders speaking in the centre of the square where the statue of Bem stood. They had chosen their statues well that day for Bem was another favourite, a General (albeit a Polish one) who had fought for Hungarian independence. Ilona knew the date — everything in Europe seemed to have happened in 1848 — because she had been taught that at school. Also that the struggle had been unsuccessful. Today Bern played his part in a new drama. Like a great actor his arm pointed imperiously to the glorious future ahead, as Petöfi’s had done. On his head he wore a hat with a fine flourishing plume; it seemed to match the oratory of the student leaders she couldn’t hear.

  ‘What is he saying?’ Ilona asked about an intense and angry speaker.

  Tibor Bihari didn’t know and asked the man in front who asked someone else in turn. The answer came back down the line, though whether it was the speaker’s demands or the gist of some leaflet, Ilona had no means of knowing. At any rate it was thrilling in its audacity.

  ‘There must be free elections,’ the man in front said.

  As if that wasn’t enough he listened and hastened to pass back the next titbit.

  ‘There must be free speech.’

  ‘Like we’ve got today,’ Tibor Bihari blurted out. There was a chorus of agreement.

  ‘There must be no political prisoners.’

  This was greeted with silence. No one wanted to speak of the prisons and interrogation headquarters. For the good of the people, tens of thousands of people were taken to the cells. They were questioned about their activities, their friendships and their thoughts. Sometimes it was necessary to correct their thoughts, correct them quite severely. When Ilona had first become aware of the term ‘political prisoner’ a few months, previously, it had seemed a mysterious part of that alien adult world she was approaching. Today she found herself in the adult world and the idea of correcting people’s thoughts was grotesque.

  ‘The Soviet troops must get out of Hungary!’ The man said this with great emphasis and it brought a cheer so that for a moment people turned to stare, asking what he’d said.

  ‘The Soviet troops must go home,’ a dozen voices repeated and Ilona felt herself at the centre of emotional fervour. No one had uttered such heresy for a decade.

  ‘Why are you looking like that?’ Tibor asked.

  ‘How am I looking?’ Ilona wanted to know.

  Tibor was uncertain in his reply, finding it difficult to interpret a stranger’s expressions. He tried: ‘Worried?’

  Ilona hesitated before answering. She must make sense of her emotions on this stupendous day. She must understand and remember everything. If she was worried it wasn’t for herself but for the people, who were developing a power, an energy all of their own. Also, she was excited, feeling a stirring in strange parts of her body. And she made a quite extraordinary parallel in her mind: remember this excitement I am experiencing, remember it on my wedding night, for it must be the same. Certainly she felt confused, for in half a day her beliefs were shown to be childish and were being overthrown and she was lost until something solid took their place. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to grow up but knew she was powerless to prevent the changes around her and inside her. Tibor was too new to be a confidant so she simply told him:

  ‘Maybe I’m worried because of the crowd and the shouting and all the flags waving.’

  ‘We can leave if you like.’

  ‘Leave?’ Ilona was shocked, ‘We must show courage. We are Hungarians, aren’t we? We must stay with our people. We are part of the struggle.’

  There was a rumour at school that Istvan Ketesc had been seen kissing Anna Szepesi. No one knew whose malicious tongue started it but that scarcely mattered. It satisfied the first requirement of a rumour: it was only slightly discreditable. And the second: it earned a gratifying giggle.

  Others, more acute, maintained it was the other way round and that Anna had been kissing Istvan. That was also untrue but certainly more likely. She tended to turn aside from other girls when Istvan passed, had once asked his help with trigonometry and on this Tuesday afternoon actually pursued him through the school gates.

  ‘Where are you going in such a rush?’ She ran a few steps to catch him up.

  ‘Haven’t you heard the rumour?’ Istvan asked.

  Anna had never been known to blush but she thought it proper to drop her eyes. ‘You mustn’t pay any attention to that. Anyway, do you mind so much, Istvan?’

  His brain was too preoccupied to interpret this code and the words tumbled
out: ‘The whole city is in an uproar. We sit in our damned school learning damned history while they’re making it out there.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He hunched round, feeling pestered by her. When she was near he was overtaken by a sense of unease. Other boys said she had sex appeal and he supposed they were right. She had a way of standing close so that she gave off an infinite number of small vibrations. She would take a deeper breath, her blouse would move in mysterious ways, and a boy’s eyes would falter. She was doing that now. Also she had raised her eyes again and was gazing in Istvan’s face and doing that damned disconcerting thing of shifting her focus from one of his eyes to the other. What did she expect to find, what was so special about each eye, why check them separately?

  Her face was tilted up to his and there were interminable seconds — at least two or three — while he gathered his thoughts. His answer was to be very formal, it was to use official language. Something along the lines of: The university students have finally staged their protest, and workers and intellectuals are joining them. But in the silence between them they each became aware of the great wall of sound from the city centre.

  Still she hadn’t let his eyes go as she put her question: ‘What’s that?’

  He was astounded. How could she be unaware of the ferment that had bubbled in the city for the past week or more? Surely the upheaval, the slogans, the heat of argument couldn’t have passed her by. There’d been some talk of setting up an action committee in the school. Today there’d even been empty seats in the classroom. But Anna seemed so self-centred. In Istvan’s harsh judgement it was because she was a girl and well aware of the disturbing effect she had on boys.

  Suddenly she swung round towards the distant roar and said: ‘Is this it? Have they gone on the streets? Is it beginning?’

  ‘You’ve heard about the protests then?’

  ‘Of course, stupid. Do you think I’ve got nothing but boys on my mind?’

  She gave a shake of her head. In looks she was strikingly different from most other Hungarians. Her skin was brown and her long hair was as blonde as a beach. Some schoolday nicknames are given out of cruelty, or as a joke. Mostly it is kids endowing each other with superior characters while their own are still developing. So for her brown skin and wild eye and mane of fair hair everyone knew her as the Palomino. The same boys who discussed her sex appeal also agreed they would like to break her in.

  The sun was dipping behind Castle Hill on the other side of the Danube. Budapest has a long dusk and once the sun has sunk out of sight it feels much colder. It could have been the chill in the air that prompted Anna to link her arm through Istvan’s. He put it down to a new-found sense of comradeship.

  ‘Well come on then,’ the Palomino urged. ‘We’re missing all the excitement.’

  They’d crowded over Margit Bridge from the student protest meeting. They’d slipped away from offices and shops. They’d come from schools and universities. They’d abandoned the tram queues in Marx Square. They’d turned aside from the trudge back to the bald blocks of workers’ flats in the northern suburbs. They’d arrived from factories all over the city. They’d filled Lajos Kossuth Square, and that was a much more impressive feat than filling Bem Square. They’d filled it from end to end, they swarmed round the statue of the great nationalist hero Kossuth, they pressed right up to the chain that ran the length of the Parliament building. No one stepped over the chain. There was a line of figures, half in shadow, against the wall of Parliament and around the corner were two good truckloads of reinforcements. These were secret police, the Allamvedelmi Hivatal, but the old initials of AVO had stuck. Some AVO wore plain clothes and rode in unmarked cars; these ones were in Russian-style uniforms with blue lapels and black boots; they carried automatic weapons. Nobody chose to go near them. It was something other than simple fear; people felt towards the AVO the hate and loathing that is usually reserved for rats.

  Lights blazed from the upper windows of the Parliament building. Lights glowed all round the square. In the faces of the crowd, too, light shone. Several wore rosettes of green, white and red ribbons pinned to their coats.

  ‘Where did you buy your rosette?’ Istvan asked.

  ‘You can’t buy these, you must make them,’ came the reply in a voice of full cream milk. The man’s words lodged in Istvan’s brain; it was an evening of overwhelming emotion when anything could be taken as a symbol. The man could as well have said: You can’t buy a Free Hungary, you must fight for it.

  Istvan, with Anna in tow, eeled into the thick of the crowd. No one questioned why they had all gathered here nor what they achieved by it. Well we’re here, Istvan told himself, so now what happens? For a time, while they milled among the people, he had no answer to the question. Then he decided: We can’t do any-thing, only they can, and we react. The they were in the long building on one side of the square guarded by the rats with their shifty eyes.

  Those lights in Parliament, people asked, what’s going on? Who’s there? The Politburo is in session was one rumour. Someone is resigning.

  ‘Who?’ That was the Palomino, a swathe of blonde hair swinging as she twisted her head.

  ‘Antal Apro.’

  ‘Lazlo Piros.’

  No one knew. Everyone knew. There were half a dozen hopeful candidates for the jump into the waters of oblivion.

  ‘Maybe it’s Hegedus.’

  Her hand gripped Istvan’s upper arm now. He was aware of the tightness and her excitement. It ran through her fingers and into his body. She was exultant that the Prime Minister himself might fall. Her face was alight. She could have been in the Colosseum and one of the gladiators tripped. The name Hegedus even had a Roman ring to it. Bring-on-the-lions was in her eyes.

  There was uglier talk.

  ‘The AVO have orders to shoot to kill.’

  ‘They’re everywhere.’

  ‘They’ve blocked Akademia Street.’

  ‘That’s where they’ve got their rat-hole.’

  ‘The rats wouldn’t dare shoot.’

  ‘Those bastards would do anything.’

  Anna turned on Istvan. ‘You’re quiet,’ she said. ‘You were the one who wanted to come. Isn’t it amazing? Don’t you want to shout? Don’t you feel free?’

  He could only nod. The words wouldn’t come. He wanted to run or jump or cry or hug. Here he could only shuffle among the crowd. The adrenalin demanded action.

  A voice piped above the crowd: ‘Why don’t they broadcast our demands? Let them broadcast the nine demands.’

  Brandishing a leaflet, someone else shouted: ‘Fifteen demands. We demand the right to free speech. We demand the right to publish without censorship...’

  The demands were repeated in a roar.

  ‘Sixteen demands,’ came a fresh bellow, the people’s appetite growing with freedom. ‘We demand Imre Nagy as leader.’

  That was echoed everywhere.

  ‘We want Nagy.’

  ‘We want Nagy.’

  The Palomino was jammed tight against Istvan crying out at the top of her voice: ‘We want Nagy.’ Between each chant she grinned at him. There was an unaccustomed smell in the air and Istvan supposed it was freedom. Freedom drifted all over this crowd. Freedom smelled of sweat and sex. The day had been for manifestoes and serious talk. Now it was dark and there was the exhilaration of doing the forbidden.

  ‘We want Nagy.’

  Surprisingly, they got Nagy. He came out on a balcony of the Parliament building and faced a wave of cheering. He stood un-certainly, a pudgy figure with mournful moustaches, and made vague gestures with his hands. You couldn’t tell whether he wanted to quieten the crowd or acknowledge their cheers. That was what his critics (though there was none in the square that night) said: that he gave the impression of always being in two minds. The people adored him and as a resolute communist that should have given him succour. They trusted in his honesty as they did no other conceivable leader; as premier in 1953 he had not let
them down, except in being defeated by the Stone Age men of the party. Out of power he was still the people’s darling.

  Until suddenly they were booing.

  This was much more impressive than the demonstration in Bern Square. Ilona felt it at once. That had been a crowd. This was a nation. The protest meeting had grown up.

  You couldn’t number the people. The whole city might have come on a pilgrimage. There was no anger in the people but a sort of fever. Man is a warm-blooded creature; crowded together men become hot-blooded creatures. Ilona observed this for the first time.

  Still people came, packing into the square, pushing Ilona and Tibor Bihari forward. Now she was by the statue of Kossuth. It struck her that all statues in Budapest had an arm raised to show the way to the glorious future. Only, Kossuth urged people to march in a different direction from Petöfi and Bem. That was of no account. Surely the first need of any revolution was movement, to overcome leaden tradition and people’s set ways. Start people moving, let’s argue about the destination when we’ve passed the first roadblock. That’s a clever idea, she thought, and then: But is it true?

  Before she could ask Tibor’s opinion, cheering swept through the crowd. Their chant had drawn the reluctant Nagy from the mysteries inside the Parliament building. There were shadows at Nagy’s back, as aides will hover behind a General, or warders press near the shoulders of a prisoner. At length Nagy was persuaded to say a few words in his homely country accent. It would be generous to call it a speech. Ilona had never listened to a politician speak, not really listened. She understood Nagy to say that the country faced grave problems and must solve them. But he hardly got to say even that.

  ‘Comrades...’ he began.