The Portuguese Escape

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Thank you, I am not thirsty. I had tea not long ago.’

  He looked at her with incredulous amusement.

  ‘I didn’t mean tea, or real thirst; I meant drinks, what one has at this time of day.’

  ‘What does one have? You see I do not know. Do you want something?’

  ‘Yes please. One has sherry, or cocktails, or whisky, before dinner, here,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry.’ She too looked round the room, rather helplessly. ‘I wish you could have what you like, but there does not seem to be anything here.’

  ‘One rings the bell for it,’ he said, doing so.

  When Esperanza appeared he told her that the young Countess desired as bebidas—the maid smiled, said ‘Immediately, Minho Senhor,’ and disappeared in the direction of the dining-room. Waller looked at Hetta thoughtfully.

  ‘Don’t you have drinks before meals in Hungary?’ he asked.

  ‘I did not. You must forgive me for entertaining you so badly, but I have never drunk a cocktail in my life.’

  ‘Well, try one now,’ Townsend said, as Esperanza reappeared with the tray. He mixed two Martinis. ‘Only take a little—we mustn’t make you tight!’ he said.

  ‘Please?’

  Oh God, what will become of her? Townsend thought. He explained.

  ‘But not women?’ Hetta said, now as incredulous as he.

  ‘Not often, no; and never nice women, unless they are inexperienced, and it happens by mistake. Do you like that?’

  Hetta sipped, then wrinkled up her nose in a funny grimace.

  ‘No. It has rather a disagreeable taste, I think; curious, but not agreeable. Wine is nicer.’

  ‘Then you’d better have some sherry.’ He poured her out a glass of Manzanilla.

  Townsend, well-brought-up in the high Bostonian sense of the phrase, nevertheless had few or no qualms about thus organising drinks for himself in Countess Páloczy’s apartment. She was always liberal with them, and would have hated a compatriot, or anyone else, to sit dry and miserable in her rooms; she was fundamentally quite a kind person, he reflected, if she did tend to attach a rather exaggerated importance to social success.

  ‘So you do drink wine?’ he said to Hetta, who was not making any faces over the sherry.

  ‘At Detvan we did, even I—it was always on the table at meals. Our own wine—we made it at home. Pappi loved his vineyards, and was so proud of his wine.’

  ‘I bet it was good.’ The young man followed up this promising line; he asked questions, and listened with interest to the answers, which on this familiar and obviously well-loved subject came in an eager flow. He got a clear, even a vivid picture of a happy country childhood in patriarchal surroundings—the vast flat fields, intensively cultivated; the enormous herds of cows and oxen, the droves of pigs, the flocks of geese and turkeys being brought back to the village at night by the swineherds and goose-girls. ‘Of course the pigs and geese belonged mostly to the peasants, and when they came down the village street in the evening it was so funny, how each small flock knew its own homestead, and of its own accord turned in at the right gate—the geese stepping so sedately, the cows walking, the calves perhaps jumping a little, but the pigs galloping, kicking up their heels and squealing!’ Her face was alight.

  ‘But why were the pigs and the cows all mixed up together, so they had to find their own gates?’ Townsend asked, rather puzzled.

  ‘Oh, but of course the animals from the whole village went out to feed together; Pappi gave the grazing, and paid the wages of the cowherd and swineherd. It is always so—I mean it was,’ the girl said, rather sadly.

  ‘Didn’t the peasants have any land of their own, then?’

  ‘Each house half a hectare, to grow what they liked— and of course the garden round the house. But one cannot graze five cows on half a hectare, especially with calves too.’

  ‘Did each peasant have five cows, then? For goodness sake! And how many peasants in the village?’

  ‘In Detvan there were a hundred-and-fifty houses; in the other two villages perhaps a little fewer; about a hundred in each, I think. But each peasant could keep up to five cows, and as many as forty pigs—not more.’

  Townsend did sums in his head.

  ‘And your father gave free grazing to sixteen hundred cows, and their calves? And paid the cowherds’ wages with it? It’s fantastic!’

  ‘Why?’ Hetta asked flatly. ‘With us it was always so.’

  ‘Fourteen thousand pigs too,’ Townsend mused. ‘Don’t know what they eat. And your father just gave the people all this?’

  ‘But naturally.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem at all natural to me, in the twentieth century.’

  ‘I cannot see what the century has to do with it. They were our people; they worked for us.’

  ‘Did they get any wages?’

  Hetta laughed at such ignorance.

  ‘Of course they received wages—and some of the produce of the estate: maize, and wheat, and wine for each family.’

  ‘I begin to see what Atherley meant about feudalism,’ Townsend said thoughtfully, really to himself. ‘Yes—on those lines it is pretty good for the peasants too. He’s quite right.’

  ‘Who is Atherley?’ the girl asked, catching hold of something concrete in these rather puzzling utterances.

  ‘A friend of mine in the British Embassy here—you must meet him; he’s a grand person. And he knows Hungary.’

  ‘No! Oh, I should so much like to meet someone who knows Hungary.’

  ‘You’ll meet him all right—your mother likes him. But tell me—I say, might I call you Hetta?’

  ‘I had rather you called me Hetti—that is what friends used to call me.’

  ‘Fine—though I like Hetta better than Hetti. Anyway, what’s become of all this free grazing and everything since the Russians came in? Weren’t all the big estates broken up?’

  ‘Yes, indeed; everything was taken, and the land divided up among the peasants—at first.’

  ‘Did they like that?’

  ‘How should they like it?’ the girl exclaimed vigorously. ‘Each family was given 4½ hectares, and a pair of horses or oxen to plough. But what is this, compared with what they had? You cannot feed two cows, and make hay for them, on 4½ hectares, and where v/ere the bread-grains to come from?—and the land for the pigs to feed? Concerning the pigs, this was soon settled’—she gave an angry little laugh —‘because the Russians took them nearly all away.’

  ‘Took them away?’

  ‘Yes. Over five million pigs they sent to Russia in the first year, and nearly all the turkeys. The women loved their turkeys; they fed in the fields after the harvest, and so grew fat; when they were sold the money was for the housewife—the birds were hers.’

  Townsend was doing more mental arithmetic—American career diplomats are very well-informed.

  ‘The hectare is nearly 2½ acres,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘No, you couldn’t do even subsistence farming on 11¼ acres. But why was there enough for everyone before?’

  Hetta had her answer pat.

  ‘Because on a big estate, with huge fields and no divisions—fences, do you call them?—and with good manuring, much more was produced than simple peasants can do, on these silly little plots. Also everyone worked then together at the harvest, as my father and his—do you say manager?—directed; whereas now, except in the collectives, each man works alone, or tries to get his neighbours to help; and there are arguments and quarrels—all is without organisation.’

  In spite of the curious phrases she used, Townsend got a clear picture of the two different epochs; so clear that it rather surprised him. ‘How do you come to know so much?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, before my parents went away I used to go with Pappi when he drove about the estate to overlook everything; the harvest, especially, was in the holidays, so that I was at home, and he liked to have someone with him. Mama did not care so much for the country things, she liked Pest better; so it was
I who went.’

  I bet she liked Pest better, Townsend thought. Aloud he only said—‘But how do you know what it’s like now— were you in the country? Didn’t you stay in your convent in Budapest?’

  ‘Till the end of 1948, yes; then the Communists forced all convents to close. It became a crime to be a nun!’ Hetta said, her dark eyes huge. ‘All had to put on civilian dress; they looked so strange without the habit!—in fact in ordinary clothes they looked awful.’

  Her tone made Townsend laugh. ‘Awful in what way?’ he asked.

  ‘Silly!’ Hetta said crisply. ‘In the habit, and living their own life of work and prayer they looked as they felt —calm and full of purpose; therefore dignified. But thrown out into the world, which they had given up and forgotten, they felt utterly lost; and again they looked as they felt— lost, and very silly.’

  This time the young man did not laugh. Some strange ring, of a strangely objective compassion, in the young girl’s voice as she pronounced the last four words precluded laughter.

  ‘Were they always silly? One hears nuns get so,’ he said.

  ‘But not in the least! Living the life they had vowed themselves to, of prayer and works of charity—or of education, like my nuns—they are perfectly competent; noble, heroic even. But suddenly obliged to take jobs as servants, or as waitresses in factory canteens, which is what most of them did, can you wonder if they were at a loss, and seemed foolish? Oldish women, please reflect. No Mass to begin the day, and Holy Communion; no times of meditation before the Blessed Sacrament. Instead, hustle and bustle among pots and pans, or handing plates of food to young Communists! This they willingly did for the love of our Lord, who blessed even a cup of cold water given in His name; but how should they be good cooks, or quick waitresses? Of course they seemed silly.’

  As Hetta poured this out—‘She looks like a sybil’—the young man thought to himself. It was all surprisingly reasoned, too; she was no fool, if she did seem a bit ultra-religious.

  ‘Yes, I get all that,’ he said. ‘Well, go on—where did you go when your convent broke up? You were—let’s see —fifteen then, I suppose?’

  ‘Nearly sixteen. Mother Scholastica—she was one of the nuns, who taught us Latin—took me with her; she went first to the house of a friend in Pest, as a cook, and I helped her. To strangers we had to pretend that I was her daughter—imagine, for a nun!—but I was accustomed to calling her “Ma mère”, so it was not too difficult. Then after a time the deportations began, and the lady we were working for was threatened, so we had to leave.’

  ‘What deportations? To Russia?’

  ‘No no—from Pest to the country; the May deportations. All who were not “workers”, in industry or something the Communists thought useful, were sent away, to make room, so they said, for the workers; but really it was just’—she hesitated—‘animus. Should I say spite, or malice, perhaps?’

  ‘Animus will do,’ Townsend, who had received a classical education, said, smiling a little. ‘Where did these deportees go, in the country?’

  ‘To peasants’ houses—in a good room, if the peasants were friendly, as usually they were; but then often the village Commissars came, and said that they were “enemies of the people”, and must sleep in the barn, on straw. Oh, the wickedness and cruelty! Shall I tell you what I have seen with my own eyes?’

  ‘Please do,’ Townsend said, unable to repress a secret wish that Perce’s press correspondents could hear what he was hearing.

  ‘There was an old lady—over seventy—the widow of a former Prime Minister, the Countess X; this is a great name in Hungary, and he had done much for the people, and was beloved. She was sent to the same village where Mother Scholastica and I went, and naturally the peasants treated her like a queen, and gave her the best of whatever they had. But the Commissars came and said she must work for the nation, and since she was far too old to do any real work they took her out into the cornfields, and tied branches to her head and hands, and made her stand there in the burning sun, waving her hands to frighten the birds from the grain—she was to be a bird-scare.’

  ‘Scare-crow,’ Townsend muttered automatically. ‘Good God! You saw that?’

  ‘Certainly I did. As often as I could, when no one was about, I went and changed places with her, so that she could go and rest in the shade—I put on her old hat with the branches, and she tied the other boughs to my hands, and so I stood, hour after hour. The heat is unbearable, in the Alfold in harvest time.’

  ‘Good for you. What’s the Alfold?’

  ‘The central plain of Hungary, down to the east of the Danube—the black-earth country, they call it; the soil is very rich. Detvan was on the edge of the Alfold,’ the girl said, that bright look again illuminating her face as she mentioned her home.

  ‘And what did you and the learned Mother What’s-her-name do when you went to the Alfold, as I take it you did?’

  ‘Oh, we were so fortunate! The lady we had worked for in Pest somehow arranged for Mother Scholastica to take a position as housekeeper and cook to a wonderful man, Father Antal, who had gone to be a village priest down there.’

  ‘Why was he wonderful?’ Townsend asked—he was rather allergic to priests.

  ‘Because he was holy, and learned, and wise, and also very brave,’ Hetta replied, with her usual clarity. ‘He managed to say Mass almost daily, in spite of the Commissars; the peasants hid bottles of their wine for the Mass in the thatch. He went quite often to see Cardinal Mindszenty in his prison—’

  ‘Goodness, was he allowed to do that?’ the American interjected.

  ‘Of course not—not allowed; he went disguised as a peasant, bringing in wood for the fires, or some such thing. It was a fearful risk.’

  ‘Did you hear how the Cardinal was?’

  ‘Not much—it was better not to speak of such things. I gained the impression that he was not really ill, but not well; the confinement and the distress about his people were eating him,’ she said—‘and the loneliness too, of course. It did him so much good when Father Antal went to see him; they were friends, they had studied at the same seminary—and it was a chance for him to hear a little truth, for a change. Lies, lies, lies, every day and all day long; these are suffocation. I think without the Father’s visits he might have died. This is partly why I would do anything for Father Antal. I loved cooking for him.’

  ‘But were you the cook? I thought you said the nun was?’

  ‘So she was supposed to be, but she was a terrible cook! First, she had no idea how, and further, she was always leaving the saucepans in order to recite the Office!’ Hetta said, with an honest girlish giggle. ‘So, one cannot cook! No, I did most of it.’

  ‘And can you cook? How did you learn?’

  ‘As a child at Detvan I was often in the kitchen with Margit, our old cook, who had been with us for ever; I used to watch her, and afterwards remembered, and did as she had done. Father Antal liked the food I made.’

  ‘Sounds as if the priest had been just as fortunate as you and the scholastic mother,’ Townsend said. He poured himself out another drink, gave Hetta a second sherry, and returned to his chair. He was impressed by what she told him, although all the stress on saying Mass and so on passed him by completely, indeed rather alienated him. But he could not help realising that here was a first-hand behind-the-curtain story, from a person who had the power to make it vivid; he began to see all sorts of possibilities. He asked more questions—about the deportations, how much luggage people might take, and so forth; and also about how the village commissars were organised. Her replies were satisfyingly detailed and lucid, especially about the commissars. ‘Everywhere are there not sometimes young men who are failures, and therefore dissatisfied? —and such turn often into mauvais sujets, small criminals; without conscience, and angry with a world in which they have no success. But give them the chance of power over other people, and they are delighted; they take this to be the success the disagreeable world has denied them, out of m
alice! Such were the commissars; sometimes from the villages themselves, or from some small town near by. Where we were, one was actually the village idiot—a lumping youth, with one eye squinting, his mouth hanging open always, his nose dirty! It was he who had the idea of sending the old Countess to stand in the fields to frighten the birds.’

  For a moment or two Townsend was fairly silenced by the horror of this. At length, pulling himself together, he said, with an effort at lightness—

  ‘I see that your nuns gave you a course in psychology, among other things!’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Oh Hetta, you must learn not to say “Please”! Say “I beg your pardon?” or “Would you repeat that?”—anything but “please”!’

  ‘Very well. Thank you for telling me. In German one says bitte? when one does not understand, but in English this is wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s—well, somehow it’s tiresome,’ he said, feeling ashamed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Do not be. This helps me—I have so much to learn. Will you tell me again what I should say when I have not understood?’

  ‘Well, I think “would you repeat that?” is about the best,’ Townsend said, quite abashed by her humility.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Shall you feel up to meeting the Press tomorrow?’ he asked presently.

  ‘Oh yes—I have told Mama I would.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll tell Perce—our Press Attaché, you met him this morning—that I think it ought to be as full-dress as he can make it. It will be a big thing.’

  ‘Can you tell me why one must speak to journalists?’ the girl asked. ‘You and my mother both think so, but I do not really see why.’

  ‘But—’ he paused, staggered by such ignorance. Then he began to expound the importance of publicity, the propaganda value of her story, so unique and fresh. Warming to his theme—‘I’m certain Radio Free Europe would love a recording of a talk by you,’ he said—‘You could do it in Hungarian, if you’d rather. And some articles, too—they’d be syndicated all over the States.’

  ‘PI—I mean what does “syndicated” mean?’