Three stairs at a time. There’d been a Molotov cocktail on top of the tank and screams from inside it but this was different.
Zoltan raced outside, the staccato of seconds in his brain, grabbed the Hungarian under his shoulders and dragged. The gunfire had made goulash soup of his belly. Never mind the man’s screams that Zoltan was making the pain worse. There was far worse only seconds away in the burning time bomb. He went backwards through the battered blue door, closing his mind to the shrieks pleading with him to stop, in the name of God to stop. Through a right-angle passage to the rear of the building. The key was in the lock. He had to lay the man flat to open the door. Outside, ranged against the wall like so many dustbins, were the seven of them.
‘I need help.’
Their faces lined up towards him. No other move. His voice had sounded a terrible warning and no one came forward.
‘Damn you, who’s going to help? Lazlo.’
It was the soldier who came, not daring to disobey his new commander.
‘Hurry with him.’
It was urgent because the hungry roar of the flames was punctuated by the rattle of the tank’s ammunition. The explosion of the fuel tanks could come at any moment, rocking half the street. They carried him as far as they could, laying him in the stables. He screamed all the time. Lazlo no longer felt his conscript soldier’s superiority. The screaming man was like his sergeant had said, his eyes licking in a lascivious line down the recruits: ‘When you powderpuffs are going to die, this is how you’ll know it: you’ll scream for a shit, a fuck, your mother and your God. In that order. A soldier’s priorities, in life and death.’ The sergeant had relished their shock; recruits always looked at him like that. It was necessary they hated their sergeant.
Tibor Kassack was the first to follow into the stable. His foot grated on the stone and Zoltan turned. The cloak hung in loose folds. He loomed, a black vulture. The Palomino pressed close behind him. Then all the rest gathered in a slow chorus. The screams had dissolved into bubbles.
It was almost night in the stable. What light there was came in flickers, reflections of the flames daubed on the walls of the passageway, showing a white face on the ground that jerked and shuddered. Istvan fancied there was a tremor from that face that reached out to touch them, uniting them in a secret.
Zoltan straightened and went outside. They had the wisdom not to follow. No one moved, no one knew how long for.
When Zoltan returned he said, as if that had been what he had gone to inspect: ‘The buildings haven’t caught fire. I don’t know why the tank didn’t go up. They must have used up most of their fuel and ammunition.’
He went to the dead man. Lazlo, without any command, helped move the body against the back wall.
‘He deserves respect. His body should be covered.’
Tibor Kassack didn’t volunteer his cloak. A decaying piece of canvas was found and did for a shroud.
‘Now we should get some sleep.’
No one liked the idea of spending the dark hours with the corpse. But no one said they must go. They lay on the stones, shivering, the boys close together, the Palomino curling against Tibor Kassack.
For a long time Zoltan squatted in the door. Istvan saw him light one cigarette from the stub of the last, a brief orange glow on his skin, the eye hollowed and lost. The final mourner in the cemetery is always the loneliest, and Zoltan mourned.
A last spurt from the tank flared on the bricks of the passage-way. Voices echoed. ‘What happened? Who got it? Were they all killed?’ It was one tank out of a thousand in the city. The voices went away.
It was only one corpse out of hundreds in the city but it would spend the night here with them. Zoltan stretched his body across the entrance with the loyalty of a guard dog. Like a memory his body accepted the cold stones. There’d been cellars like this, worse.
‘God help us!’ Lazlo, voicing the soldier’s fourth cry, woke them into pandemonium.
‘Rats,’ he bellowed. ‘Rats all over the body.’
There was no telling if the rats were more than a nightmare.
The scramble of shoes and strange angry curses from Lazlo drowned any other sound. The pitch black dissolved into a frightening half-light as Tibor Kassack and Zoltan struck matches. Shadows swayed on the walls and danced like living things on the humped canvas.
With the matches snuffed out Zoltan said: ‘We’ll take an hour’s guard each by the body. I’ll go first. We’ll have no rats in here. They’re all outside.’
They settled. No one could sleep after the interruption. The city was awake too, the distant thump of guns.
Tibor Kassack broke their silence: ‘I heard there was a regular battle going on down at the Kilian Barracks. I’d like to get down there.’
Zoltan heaved round. ‘What for? What do you want? Bands and crowds and a killing ground for a hero?’ He brought his edgy anger under control. ‘There are eight of us and we’ve got two tanks already. Tomorrow another two. If every eight people got two tanks, there’d be none left in the whole of Russia. Lazlo!’
‘Yes?’ They sensed him sit up straight. ‘Yes sir?’
‘Your oath.’
‘Through Fire and Water with the People.’
‘Matyas!’
‘Through Fire and Water with the People.’
‘Istvan!’
Amazed, Istvan realized Zoltan knew exactly the order they lay on the stones.
‘Through Fire and Water with the People.’
Tibor Bihari, Ferenc, Tibor Kassack and the Palomino were bound in the oath as they had been in the secret of the unknown man’s death.
There are wars that can be covered from the bar of a heroically situated hotel. For this purpose the bar of the Astoria would have been perfect. It was the war that was awkward. For the Astoria changed hands three times in as many days.
It stood at the major road junction of the inner city. Here the streets all changed their names: Rakoczi Street led east to Keleti Station, but where it continued west to the river it became Kossuth Street. Muzeum Avenue ran south, a block away from the radio building; while going north the boulevard swelled into Tanacs Avenue.
So the dozen Russian tanks strategically placed at the crossroads found themselves facing in four different directions. A single tank is awesome in its relentless machinery and firepower; a dozen tanks pointing their guns in all directions convey an overwhelming impression of being at bay.
Half of one wall of the Astoria Hotel had been brought down by artillery fire. All its windows were shattered and glass glittered on the pavement like snow in the sun. Inside the hotel a Soviet command post had been established but they were not destined to stay long and would be uncomfortable while they were there. The kitchen staff had slipped away through a back door. Before going, and the whisper raised the day’s only smile, they had left a large pot of coffee by the stove and spiked it with Epsom salts.
‘They should offer some to the tank crews,’ a voice cried out, ‘that’ll get them running.’ This was thought hugely funny. Since the last war the vaunted Budapester wit had fallen on hard times.
The streets had filled early that morning. Some people, the ones with purple bruises under their eyes, had never lain down to sleep. Zoltan and his group had merged into a larger crowd. They watched the Astoria, and waited. What are we waiting for, Istvan wondered. Waiting for the crowd to grow, he supposed was the answer, because crowds developed a madness that forgot to be frightened of tanks.
Impatient, eager for a healthy schoolboy romp, Istvan filled the slow minutes with detail. The tanks, for he had an uninterrupted view of them from the front rank of watchers, had no military precision. They were like hastily-parked cars. Their tracks ran over four large wheels plus a power wheel at the back to drive the track and a smaller wheel at the front — the idling wheel, Lazlo called it. Somehow they crammed in a crew of four. The T34s were the worst — Lazlo’s fervent opinion — absolute hell, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, which would e
xplain why they’d opened their hatches, security or not, storm warning or not. Certainly it wasn’t the weather that threatened to storm; it was a brilliant day. There had been a frost in the night and it lingered in corners the sun didn’t reach. Like a disease, was Istvan’s opinion. His sharp eye noted it all: the brightness of ribbons and rosettes; the scrape marks on the cobbles from the tanks; how Zoltan stood with his feet apart and his hands gripped behind him like a regular soldier at ease; the way the sun caught a low roof so that the tiles lay in shiny rows. Those glittering tiles, he knew precisely what they reminded him of: the brownish scales of the live carp that crowded the big tank in the central market.
Towards mid-morning the mood of the city changed. The autumn sun might have had something to do with it. The fact that there had been no shooting outside the Astoria for hours also contributed. The crowd had swollen and taken a more jaunty attitude towards the Russians. Children of no more than seven or eight had been brought by their parents — as if it were a day’s outing to the zoo — and they darted out and raced back in mock alarm in case the tanks bit.
In Istvan’s wholly reasonable view it was like the relationship of a class with a new master. The Hungarians were probing, seeing where the line was drawn by their new masters, and now were gaining in boldness.
Flushed with this idea, Istvan missed the very earliest of the sounds. Suddenly the singing from along Muzeum Avenue swelled and a procession of a couple of hundred filled the street and advanced on the tanks. There were moments of uncertainty, guns even swung round, while the procession marched and sang. Did the Russians recognize the Hungarian national anthem? No order was given to shoot.
‘We’re marching to Kossuth Square. There’s a demonstration in front of Parliament.’
The tanks loomed very large before the procession now, near enough for someone to call out in Russian with a Budapest lilt: ‘Long live peace! Long live the Russian people! Long live freedom!’
The tanks’ guns kept silent.
‘Come with us to Kossuth Square!’
The Russian commanding officer — a major, Istvan decided, on no evidence — was in the first tank to be engulfed. He was a small man with a hook of a nose and a dark scowl, furious at the marchers, perhaps furious at himself for not giving the order to fire. Now it was too late. The crowd was everywhere, surging round the tanks, jamming flags into them, seducing the crews with cigarettes. Russian faces wore exaggerated expressions like the beginners’ class at drama school: vast surprise, suspicion, delight. The major was yelling at people to stop clambering all over his tank. A girl handed him a small flag and smacked a kiss on his cheek and was rewarded with a shove in the chest.
Someone was shouting above the confusion: ‘Come to the mass demonstration. Show solidarity with the Hungarian working class in its rightful struggle against oppression.’ These fine phrases were translated into Russian. To Istvan, who had never met a live Russian until now, this sounded exactly how the Russians thought and spoke. His Russian textbook about workers in the Sverdlovsk tractor factory had them exchange greetings very like that.
Some of the tank crews were actively cheering the slogans. Not the major. His face had blackened.
‘Lead the way in friendship, dear Major,’ a new voice urged him.
‘Nyet.’
‘Well, let your tanks come with us.’
This new voice belonged to Tibor Kassack, urging the major in Russian and relishing the limelight. Istvan had the translation of his taunts afterwards.
‘Nyet, nyet, nyet.’
‘Are all Russians like you? All virgins? Always saying no?’ The major didn’t blush. It would be his blood pressure mounting into the red danger area.
‘I’ve got it,’ announced Tibor Kassack. ‘You are from the Virgin Lands, from Siberia. You’re a Siberyak, a cold man.’
‘You’re a fool. I’m from Georgia.’
‘From Georgia.’ Tibor Kassack translated for everyone’s benefit: ‘The fellow boasts he’s from the thieves’ kitchen, from Georgia. Joe Stalin was a brave son of Georgia.’
What the Soviet major had decreed no longer mattered. Four of the Russian tanks were moving now, laden with women and children like carnival floats. There was cheering and singing, the crowd good-humoured because the Russians weren’t fighting but joining them. They swept in a slow current along Tanacs Avenue, turned down to the river, along the embankment, to the vast demonstration that stood outside Parliament.
In all innocence they gathered there.
At first sight of the tanks turning the corner the crowd heaved aside. But the tanks were decked for a festival, flags flying, women singing. It was nothing like the chanting of the condemned in the last war on their way to the death camps. These sang in hope. Two nights and a long day had brought them to this sudden belief: that the Russian soldiers, faced with ordinary Hungarian people, had no stomach for any orders to shoot.
No one counted numbers. They stretched to all sides of Lajos Kossuth Square. Almost no arms were on show. There was still fighting elsewhere in the city. Not here.
‘This is a peaceful demonstration,’ a man growled. He had the lined forehead and the toughened red cheeks of someone who faced blast furnaces. ‘A peaceful demonstration of strength.’
‘Peace is what we all want,’ Zoltan agreed, ‘and freedom.’ He muttered to his followers: ‘Keep your guns hidden if you can. But keep them.’ What was a peaceful demonstration of strength with-out strength, in the name of God? If God existed. He had been playing hard to find, all Zoltan’s life. Certainly He had tiptoed away on that night a year ago when Ildiko had been driven away to…
‘Don’t be a fool.’ That was the Palomino’s squeal of delight.
Turning, Zoltan saw Tibor Kassack astride the gun of one of the tame Soviet tanks, whooping it up with his beret in the air. Zoltan drew breath. They were his responsibility, sworn to him. But he never shouted.
Across the broad square, above the hum of the huge crowd, rose a clatter of gunfire, ragged at first, then continuous, finally drowned by screams and cries. All thoughts of God were obliterated in Zoltan. The mass of people turned and stampeded and Zoltan’s fleeting view was of a line of uniformed figures silhouetted on the roof of the building opposite Parliament, aiming rifles down into the crowd. Aiming was scarcely the word: there was no missing such a target.
Tibor Kassack was dislodged from his mount on the tank. The gun swivelled, not knowing what to fire at.
People streamed past, running if they could, tripping, tumbling over bodies, trampling the wounded in their panic.
‘Get out! Get out!’
As if anyone needed that advice. But Uncle Zoltan was mother-hen and his voice rose above the uproar. Istvan and Ferenc kept close, running as if the bulls were after them. Then Istvan was swept away. For giddy moments he swore his feet never even touched the ground. The crowd dumped him again, tripped him up, fell on top of him. When a hand pulled him out of the riot he’d lost his rifle. The hand belonged to Tibor Bihari, pale and desperate, and they ran hand in hand like lovers.
They reached the safety of the embankment. Here the whole tide of humanity had been dammed by people who turned and craned their heads to learn what happened in the square. Jostled at his back, Istvan wheeled round and found his face scratched by a rich moustache. Uncomfortable under the man’s heavy scrutiny Istvan’s eyes shifted to the girl at his side and his whole world did a violent somersault. He’d seen her before, the long black hair, the eyes you could lose yourself in. He’d seen her in the radio building when she’d been trembling with excitement.
‘Ilona?’ It was Tibor Bihari, uncertain for a moment. In two days she had changed, as they all had, running through several fevered lives to the one pale existence that had lasted until now.
She must have asked something of Tibor because he was saying, ‘No, with Uncle Zoltan, well, not really an uncle...’ But Istvan would swear her attention was hardly at all on the young Tibor.
Reunions
were cut short. The Soviet tanks retreating from the chaos in the square created their own, bulldozing their relentless path through the crowd, hatches locked tight. In the aftermath Zoltan collected his group. He was a droopy sheepdog; Lazlo sniffed, relapsing from his sworn allegiance. School assembly, was Tibor Bihari’s opinion as Zoltan lined them up and counted them.
For a moment they stood: Tibor Bihari pushed to one side and looking little-boy-lost with his spiky hair; Tibor Kassack with his arm linked round the Palomino’s neck and his hand claiming territory; Matyas and Ferenc finding common cause as rescued waifs; Lazlo attending to a private itch; Sandor scowling at everybody or at his memories; Zoltan drawn with worry about the world or perhaps about Istvan and Ilona who might just claw each other to pieces so intense was their stare.
‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Someone in a belted raincoat was imploring them to face his way. ‘At least try and look like heroes. Or orphans. Or bloody something. Hey, great frown, vicar. Could the blonde girl lose another button from her blouse? Jesus wept, don’t none of you speak English?’
Screams from the square provided background music to the impresario with a camera from Fleet Street.
11 - London, now
‘There are certain places you can never return to. Can’t bear to.’
Steven spoke with the finality of someone who has experienced the globe and rejected large areas of it. In his hand he held a photograph, quarter-plate, black-and-white, glossy. ‘It could be a house, for instance, where a girl you knew swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills. All right, the past is buried and to any other pair of eyes the house is completely normal, even boring, the rooms with new people, photos of different kids on the mantelpiece, other smells in the kitchen. But you could never bring yourself to go through the front door of that house because there’s an old image in your head, and some tricky little electrical circuit damn well imposes your memory on reality. If you went in you’d see the girl’s smile and hear her humming in the kitchen and swearing ‘Sugar!’ when the toast burnt. She’s dead and you torture yourself because you never helped with her fears. Or not enough.’
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