Shooting Star

by David Brierley

They held street classes. Revolution was a desperate school. You were quick or you were dead.

  Uncle Zoltan was brisk: ‘You two lads have done school military training?’

  Istvan and Tibor Bihari both had.

  ‘Then you won’t be frightened by the noises.’

  Neither admitted to nerves.

  ‘The noises are going to be louder, understand that. Not only bangs. Well, you’ve heard the screams already. How old are you, Tibor?’

  ‘Fifteen and a bit.’

  There was a bleakness in Uncle Zoltan’s eyes.

  ‘Fifteen,’ he repeated, ‘and a bit.’

  Istvan saw turmoil in the sharp face, and a hesitation. He could have been remembering what it was like to be that age. Looking more closely at Uncle Zoltan, Istvan put an age to him: he would have been a boy coming to early manhood in the war, when Nazi jackboots crashed through Budapest streets.

  His eyes remained disturbed but now he’d rested both hands on Tibor’s shoulders. For a moment he wasn’t being uncle, he was being father to all these orphans; even a religious Father bestowing his blessing. ‘Well lad, that bit had better be Hungarian. You’re going to do unimaginable things. Don’t think about them. Think of your family, your friends, everything you hold dear. Shut your ears to the rest.’

  ‘Why don’t we just get on with it?’ Lazlo asked.

  Uncle Zoltan straightened up and was furious. He didn’t shout; the anger showed in his eyes and the tautness round his mouth. ‘You’re eager to be a hero? Then run round the corner and die. You won’t have won anything. You’ve been in the army a year and you’re a General already. Let me tell you something: what they’ve drummed into you is useless. Your field exercises, your driving round in tin-cans, they’re nothing now. Your head is stuffed with front lines and armoured divisions and artillery sup-port and tactical air strikes and whatever else they lectured you on, so where are you going to find all that? This is jungle war and different rules apply. Listen, all of you, don’t ever run across their gunsights or they’ll know you’re enemy. If they’re going to see you, walk naturally, walk calmly. Act as if you’re going about your normal daily lives because their brains can’t cope with that. If you’re in a building keep away from the windows; if they see something move in a window they’ll get twitchy and blast the wall down. Do you understand me? Stay alive. There are no dead heroes, there are only dead fools.’

  All this was to the rolling drumbeats of bitter fighting in the city centre. Here, particularly round the corner, the silence was ominous.

  ‘You’ve used rifles?’ This was to the schoolboys again, who nodded, words beyond them. ‘Later maybe. Right now we have to fight without even rifles. Lazlo’s brought us some pears.’ The two laces remained blank. ‘Show them.’

  Lazlo carried out a canvas grip from the doorway. Pears proved to be handgrenades. Instructions were terse. This was the pin. Ten second delay, standard army issue not a daredevil fuse. Overarm lob to land as dead as possible, not bounce along like a ball. Tibor, handed one, cupped it low before him.

  Lazlo said: ‘You hold a grenade down there, you’re going to lose your filaments, know what I mean?’

  The Palomino had a laugh that came through her nose. In an instant Istvan detested them both: for the sneer and the knowing complicity.

  ‘It’s going to be teamwork, like I learnt it.’ Uncle Zoltan didn’t say where or when. ‘The Russkies are doomed. Like dinosaurs, understand me? They have no experience of war like this. They’re looking for recognizable enemies in uniform, men and guns. They can’t adapt to the idea of boys and girls outwitting them. Are you prepared to do it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tibor Bihari’s voice came unexpectedly loud. Perhaps, like Lazlo, he was tired of lectures. Istvan’s assent was more subdued.

  Istvan had never seen eyes that burnt with the intensity of Uncle Zoltan’s. He supposed they were fuelled by some hate, deeper than his own, something he had to match. ‘Crazy times,’ he had said, and that was reflected in his eyes as the children moved to his instructions.

  It was not a game, Uncle Zoltan had stressed, yet it began with a piece of make-believe acted out by the Palomino. She was paler than Istvan had ever seen her and he forgave her heartless laugh as she stepped round the corner first, alone.

  ‘A girl,’ Uncle Zoltan muttered low, it could even be reassuring himself, ‘returning home, nothing in her hands but a loaf of bread. No danger. Walking slowly across their front to the far side of the street, absolutely innocent girl. But you understand they’re boxed up in that tin-can with the lid down, jammed in the street like fools, and they’re sweating more than she is.’

  Istvan wasn’t sure of that.

  Lazlo was. ‘Right, damn right.’

  ‘So...’ Uncle Zoltan announced, and the seconds must have been ticking in his head. ‘So move.’

  Tibor edged round the corner. Istvan had an instant when he swore the others should have gone, the soldier and the experienced leader, but the logic was on the side of boys and girls. Logic was no comfort as he turned the right angle of the building and faced the tank, huge, even at fifty metres. But glory, God was in his heaven and Uncle Zoltan was his prophet. It was exactly as he had prophesied. The turret had swung to follow pale Palomino and was angled towards a doorway she had vanished into across the street, no chance of spotting them. Chocolate cake and ice cream all the way, he exulted, no time to be afraid as they scrambled through the door of the building abreast of the tank. And bitter reaction: what if the door had been locked? We’ll cover you, we’ve got grenades, Uncle Zoltan had said with a loudness that left no room for doubts. What good would grenades have done them, Istvan wondered now, if they couldn’t have got into the building to shelter?

  This was war, Istvan made the harsh and simple equation in his head, and war meant sacrificing the poor bloody infantry. Except that the infantry had marched through safely and lived to die another day.

  Then isolated incidents from the street came back to him. He had the picture clearly in his mind so his eyes must have seen it at the time. Odd, there was a camera up there taking pictures while his whole attention had been on surviving. He saw again the door the Palomino had left open behind her, all according to instructions, so that the tank crew would keep suspicious eyes on it. He saw the domed crew compartment of the tank with the number 343 painted in white and the handgrips on its side. He saw sheets hanging from an upper window and a woman leaning out of another, safe because the tank couldn’t shoot at that angle. He saw more people at the end of the block, a line of them staring at this stranded whale. The tank must have been obeying some daft order to secure the street.

  ‘Well, come on, what are you dreaming about?’

  Once inside, go to the back of the building, Uncle Zoltan had instructed, because that’s where kitchens are. Don’t waste time looking for someone to ask permission; there are no rules any more. It could be on the table, if they had time for breakfast today, or in a cupboard. But move, understand me, otherwise I’ll think you’re sobbing in a corner.

  ‘We don’t want Uncle Zoltan to think we’re scared.’

  ‘It’s not that...’ Istvan began.

  ‘Come on.’

  The kitchen was at the back, deserted. It was in the cupboard, where Uncle Zoltan’s magic powers foretold. Strawberry is best, he’d said, because of the darker colour, but anything will do. It was apricot. Istvan held the jar of jam in both hands as he returned to the front door.

  ‘The cannon’s still pointing across the street,’ Tibor told him.

  The thing is, Uncle Zoltan had said, if the devils are staring at you, you’ll have no chance to sneak up. So you’ve got to move while they are still intent on the Palomino’s door.

  ‘Go on then,’ Tibor urged.

  As he took a deep breath he had a fleeting picture of himself, very vivid, as if taken by some god in the sky: David pitted against Goliath, a schoolboy armed with a jam jar going out to do battle with a Soviet tank.
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br />   Another thing (Uncle Zoltan had stressed so many things) is to be thorough. You’re most at risk at a distance. Once you’re right close to the tank you’re safe so make a really good job of it.

  Afterwards Istvan had scarcely any memory of the short sharp bout of action that followed. The camera in his head had broken. Or the tank loomed so large that it filled the whole of his horizon, leaving no room even for the sky above nor the drab buildings nor Tibor who stole behind, one of Uncle Zoltan’s pears in his hand, as wide-eyed as a boy in a farmer’s orchard.

  Don’t smash it, Uncle Zoltan’s warning, or the glass will cut your hand. Use your fingers.

  Istvan was in the shadow of the tank. It reeked of oil and hot metal. He had to use one hand on a grip-bar to haul himself up and he was actually kneeling now on an armoured sheet that protected one of the tracks. He dipped his fingers in the jar and leaned across to smear the jam on the armoured glass viewing panel. He did it again, lavish with the jam, his mother would have despaired, jam as far as he could reach, jam to the very crusts. He could see nothing through the viewing panel, just bleary darkness.

  And then get out, Uncle Zoltan had told him, run like the wind. For the seasoned fighter knew that each boy would be capable of only one act of courage.

  Istvan didn’t see what happened next. He was aware only of the finishing line at the end of the street and people he thought were cheering though they made no noise his ears could hear. He was sprinting in slow motion, heaving himself forward, a marathon racer rounding the corner into the home straight with no strength in his knees, no chance of winning, no hope of a cup.

  Arms were outstretched. He subsided into brown arms, rubbing against scratchy cloth, comforted with the memory of his father’s brown coat from long ago. The arms held him tight while he fought for breath and heard tinny noises that were both frightening and toy-like, and his shoulders were pummelled, his hair ruffled, and faces crowded in, tears on some and laughter and wild excitement on others. Then he noticed Tibor was also embraced by the crowd, so they’d both got away with it, just like Uncle Zoltan had said, and he felt a flood of warmth for the man. Istvan looked back down the line of the street and it was true. They’d done it, the boys and girls had done it. There was Uncle Zoltan’s arm waving and the flash of the Palomino’s hair and smoke drifting out of the tank and a sad sack slumped half out of the hatch.

  Tibor’s story was disjointed but Istvan was able to put the pieces together.

  ‘You smeared the jam on good and proper and then you ran so fast I thought something had gone wrong. I was standing there with one of U.Z.’s pears with the pin out and I could hear a growly mechanical noise from the tank and I was all set to bolt back inside the building. Then I twigged. The fools had turned the damned wiper on, hadn’t they, smearing jam from side to side all over the viewing panel. Then there were clangs inside and I nipped round to the side. Uncle Zoltan said not to go to the back, ‘cause he couldn’t remember whether the hatch hinged at the front or the rear, so standing at the side was surest. Then more noises like cats fighting in the dustbin and up goes the hatch and I was on my toes like lightning and flipping the pear inside before any damned Russky blocked the hatch. And then I followed your dust down the street.’

  He told it six ways but that was the sum of it.

  To the victors belonged kisses from a jubilant Palomino and a postscript: ‘I was watching from upstairs. Tibor was racing away when this soldier popped up from the turret. He didn’t know anything about the grenade that was rolling round inside. He was just fuming mad about the mess that spoilt their view. He was hauling himself out when the grenade went up. He just collapsed like a balloon with the air out.’

  Uncle Zoltan delivered a muted epitaph. ‘The blast inside the metal cockpit of a tank is devastating. Nobody has a chance.’ Lazlo had nothing to add.

  Crazy times. Uncle Zoltan had pronounced judgement.

  To crazy times belong crazy people. They find the world is suddenly to their liking and they set about carving their names into history.

  None was more crazy than another Tibor, Tibor Kassack. He demonstrated total madness just a block away on Rakoczi Street. He had the eyes of someone who had been brewing coffee all night and debating about Nietzsche and Jung and the evident realism of Kafka. He appeared in a mystery and a swirling cape at Baross Square with three friends bearing crates and searched out a deserted tram that functioned. The tram had been abandoned because of the impossibility of driving down Rakoczi Street with Soviet tanks disputing the right of way. His friends were content to load the crates in the front but declined the offer of coming any further with him.

  ‘We’re going to war,’ Tibor Kassack roared. That was obvious to his friends, who cheered encouragement above the noise of distant gunfire. ‘Who’s for the last rush hour tram to the front line?’

  A dozen men scrambled on board, his mad fever catching. The yellow tram lurched forward.

  There are few opportunities for bravado driving a tram. Tibor Kassack drove at full tilt, banging the bell and yelling: ‘Long live Kossuth! Long live Free Hungary!’ Rakoczi Street is flat for half its length. After Blaha Luga Square it develops the gentlest of inclines towards the Danube. This pleased Tibor Kassack who whooped encouragement: ‘To war, to war!’ The men grouped at his back could see the war approaching. The Soviet tank, straddling the tram lines, had its turret angled to threaten the buildings on one side and possibly there was conflict between driver and gunner about where the greater danger lay. What is certain is that the two juggernauts closed at a terrifying speed and the tank’s cannon only started to swing back too late to fire. By then the tram had shed all its passengers.

  ‘Eternal damnation to the foe.’

  Tibor Kassack roared melodrama to the emptiness behind be-fore tumbling out and fleeing as far as the pavement to throw himself flat.

  The explosion was spectacular as the crates in the front of the tram went up. The tram slewed on its side. The tank jerked to a halt. Its crew were killed by abrupt deceleration, smashing against the inside of the cockpit, their spinal cords snapping.

  As the noise died away a head poked above a cloak on the pavement and sniffed the air.

  ‘Either there is life after death or this is beloved Budapest on a Wednesday.’

  Tibor Kassack looked round for applause.

  He picked himself up and settled his beret over one ear. Whipping off his cloak he gave a vigorous shake to rid it of dust. Heads were watching him now and he swirled the cape to one side.

  ‘I will fight tanks like a matador. Ole!’

  A forest fire gripped the city. One tank knocked out in a back-street, another in a main avenue, these were just pockets of the flames everywhere. Through some telepathy people flocked to defensible positions — railway stations, barracks, factories, university buildings, cinemas — and set up strongholds. They had no contact with each other; there was no organization; there was no master plan. Sometimes — it was what Ilona told herself — you simply acted from the heart or else hated yourself for ever.

  Cars were burnt out. Tram lines were torn up and became barricades. Rifles appeared, though their only effect on tanks was to make the crews batten down the hatches. Makeshift weapons were invented. New techniques were passed on. Students and schoolboys discovered they had learnt surprising skills because of the military training the Russians themselves had insisted on. People hurled petrol bombs which they learnt to call Molotov cocktails. Groups stood at street corners holding axes, picks and cobbles.

  Bodies lay covered in flags or spittle according to their loyalty. Crowds gathered and melted into doorways as Soviet armour hounded along the main streets. And finding no enemy, the tanks shot at shadows flitting across windows or shadows in imagination. Small vicious scenes ended in a scream where an AVO was challenged and an account settled. The regular police had declared for the people, their armouries thrown open, their weapons seized. The army declared for the people. Armbands in red, gree
n and white showed instant allegiance. The enemy were seen at once: the Russians who’d raced in during the night in tanks, and the AVO. Another enemy could be heard.

  The radio station had been an early capture. It was defended by Hungarian tanks and under siege from Muzeum Street by Soviet tanks. But the transmitter in the Buda hills still broadcast, connected by landline, to the Ministry of the Interior. A stream of announcements, warnings and threats was transmitted.

  ‘Bands of fascist reactionaries have launched armed attacks on our public buildings and security forces.’

  ‘Counter-revolutionaries, encouraged by agents of Western capitalism, continue their vicious attacks.’

  ‘Martial law is declared throughout the People’s Democracy. Trouble-makers will be summarily executed by the loyal forces who are protecting our socialist achievements. This order signed by Imre Nagy, Chairman of the Council of Ministers.’

  So Nagy, an honest man surely, had been brought in as Prime Minister. He was to be the reassuring captain on the bridge while down below the sweating Gero and Hegedus heaved more coal in the boilers. Nagy mustn’t be allowed too much popularity though.

  ‘Responding to the treasonous attacks of the counter-revolutionaries, the government has applied under the terms of the Warsaw Pact for the armed assistance of Soviet forces.’

  The politicians tried to stitch together the fabric of their authority. It was torn apart by fury.

  Uncle Zoltan was recovering his breath in a ground floor flat, invited in by a woman who’d witnessed the destruction of the tank. She busied herself with coffee and bread. His little band of four came and went, unable to bear being confined. Despite every-thing that Uncle Zoltan had said, in their eyes the uprising was the most thrilling game in the world.

  Midday. Imre Nagy broadcast. Nothing in his voice or his words suggested a great leader seizing hold of power for the good of his country. It was a speech cluttered with the mumbo-jumbo of the times. ‘A policy of peaceful coexistence’ was reinforced by ‘the principles of proletarian internationalism’ and followed by ‘close fraternal collaboration’. That came all in the first few sentences. Zoltan closed his ears to the rest of the impenetrable jargon.