“To the Stalin statue!” someone shouted, and the crowd answered with a tumultuous roar of approval. Others broke away and went in different directions, but Aaron and Lydia were swept along to the entrance of the great city park where they had first met. There, the huge bronze statue of the dead and discredited Russian dictator shimmered in the new moonlight.
Students circled the monument in a raucous, mocking dance. They pelted it with stones and with paper bags filled with dung, gathered on the bridle path. Globules of excrement trickled down the intricately sculpted mustaches, slithered onto the closed, unsmiling lips.
“He gave us shit. Now let him eat it,” someone shouted, and the crowd laughed.
The task of toppling the statue began. Steel cables were thrown about the monument and attached to three trucks. The huge vehicles heaved and strained like mighty, impotent beasts. The air grew thick with the fumes of their laboring exhausts, but the statue remained immobile.
“That won’t do it,” Lydia said. “They haven’t got anything near equal force. That statue is twenty-five feet of solid bronze. Even earth-moving equipment won’t be enough.”
Aaron looked down at her and smiled. He had forgotten, for the moment, that she was a physicist. The mysterious stores of her knowledge intrigued and fascinated him. He watched as she called a young man over—a physics student whom he had seen at gatherings and meetings. Lydia whispered urgently to him, and he nodded and minutes later rode off on a bicycle.
“One of my graduate students,” Lydia said. “I told him what must be done.”
But the students, still struggling with their cables, were not discouraged. They formed a human ladder, and a few of them climbed to the head of the glaring colossus. One of them waved his hat imperiously, unbuttoned his pants, and urinated, aiming the stream of golden urine onto the statue’s nose. Aaron smiled and wished that he could understand the orations being delivered from the demonstrators poised on the statue’s shoulders. Still, he enjoyed the appreciative laughter of the crowd, the ribald gestures. And then Lydia’s cycling student was back, triumphantly waving a flag. A sidecar trailed him filled with welders’ oxygen masks and a welding gun. Swiftly, the instruments were seized by workers who trained the flame on the bronze knees, burning holes into the metal limbs. They climbed down and clambered back into the trucks. Once again the vehicles strained to pull the cables forward, and the statue swayed, wavered briefly, and fell at last. A deafening metallic crescendo thundered forth as it crashed to the concrete square. The two bronze boots, like neatly symmetrical roots, remained attached to the pedestal. Aaron read the inscription: to the great stalin from the thankful Hungarian people. The “thankful Hungarian people” were shouting ecstatically now, clapping wildly.
Aaron took Lydia’s hand and they joined the crowd that trailed after the truck. The chained metal statue struck sparks as it dragged across the pavements; the fragments of light glittered like minuscule playful fireworks. At last at the intersection of the Grand Boulevard, the crowd fell upon the statue and pounded it to bits, seizing small bits of metal for souvenirs. Aaron, too, plucked up a piece of bronze. It was a portion of Stalin’s pinky finger; the nail was sculpted into a crescent that curved cruelly upward.
As they made their way back to Margaret Island, they passed groups of young people, all singing the same song.
“What do the words mean?” he asked Lydia. He had heard it sung at other parties and gatherings.
“It means, ‘We’ll turn the whole world upside down overnight,’ “ Lydia translated for him. “And we will,” she added fiercely. “We will.”
Her voice rose in song again, high and sweet and painfully tender.
“Overnight,” he repeated.
She turned and stared at him uneasily. There was a strange harshness in his voice, a grim set to his mouth. He was remembering his friend, Gregory Liebowitz, who had said to him, so many years ago, “You’ll see, Aaron, we’ll turn the whole world upside down.” The same words. Poor Gregory. Poor dead Gregory. Each year Aaron vowed that he would visit the sloping Ethiopian hillside where Gregory was buried, but he had never gone. He shivered now, in memory and in apprehension. Slogans were too easily mouthed, and too often they claimed the lives of the young. Stalin’s statue had taken too long to topple, and Lydia’s eyes were so dangerously bright that he feared for her, feared for both of them and for golden-haired Paul, so vulnerable in his youth and beauty.
He noticed, suddenly, that a new mood had overtaken the crowd. The wild excitement was quenched. All about them people were talking in hushed tones. Cyclists wove their way through small groups, shouting out information. Clusters of men and women rushed toward the city, trampling flowers and paper torches as they ran. A man shouted with fury and a woman screamed in desperation. Somewhere in the madding crowd a child wept in fear. The singing stopped, defeated by the new thunder of angry voices, the rush of pounding feet.
Lydia’s fingers dug into Aaron’s arm, and her breath came in gasps. He feared that she might faint, and thrust his arm about her in support. Her body collapsed against him.
“What is it, for God’s sake?” he asked.
“They say that there’s been a riot at the radio station. The AVO fired on the students. They don’t know how many are dead. Aaron, Paul is at the radio station. Paul!” She shouted his name. “Paul.” She whispered it now, almost in prayer.
“Come.” He took her by the hand as though she were a small child. “We’ll go to the station.”
They followed the crowd and ran through the teeming streets. Their hearts beat arrhythmically, and fear coursed through their veins. Their linked fingers were cold as ice, and when they spoke, their voices rasped out of raw and aching throats.
*
PAUL AND GENIA clutched each other’s hands. They had become separated from their student group on Kossuth Square, and now they were desperately afraid that they would lose each other in the frenzied crowd that milled about outside the headquarters of the radio station.
“Genia, we must go home,” Paul said, but she shook her head.
“I don’t want to go home, Paul. I want to stay here where everything is happening. I don’t want to miss anything.”
He did not argue. Genia had the fierce tenacity of the soft-spoken. When she set her mind to something, she would not be dissuaded. He had known that since the summer evening when they had wandered away from their music camp and found themselves alone in a small fir forest. He had wanted to return to the camp, but Genia’s soft voice had controverted him; her sweet breath on his face, in his ear, against his neck, had subdued him.
“Stay,” she had said softly then, and she had pulled him down beside her on a bed of fragrant pine needles. They glistened in the darkness, against her hair and her rose-gold skin. Afterward, he had scooped up a handful and threaded them across her shoulders and the blue-veined rise of her breasts.
“Stay,” she said with matching softness now, and he marveled that her gentle voice was audible above the shouting of the crowd, the wild songs, the choruses of slogans and poetry.
“Rise for the motherland—now or never!” The shout came from a man standing on the pedestal of a statue.
“Now or never!” the crowd roared back in unison.
A student leader leaped up to the parapet, unfurled the white scroll he carried, and shook it at the crowd.
“What are we doing here at the broadcasting station?” he shouted, and immediately answered his own question: “We are here to demand that they allow us to read this list of reforms on the radio. Is this the people’s broadcasting system? Then let the people speak!”
“Yes. Let the people speak!” they shouted after him.
“Why are they afraid of the people?” the speaker asked. A bright red light, a reflection of the neon-lit star atop the building, glowed crimson on his face, turned his eyes into angry specks of flame. Irritated, he stopped, plucked up a stone, and tossed it at the star. “Extinguish the red lights over Budapest
,” he bellowed. “Let the lights of freedom shine instead!”
“Kill the red star,” the crowd chanted. “Light the lamps of freedom.”
Another stone was hurled at the star and then another. Someone tossed a brick, and then a group of students formed a Jacob’s ladder and began the climb to the roof. It seemed suddenly that all the fury in Budapest was focused on the red star, which continued to throw its fiery light across the upturned faces of those assembled beneath it.
The soldiers, standing guard at the gates, stared uneasily at the crowd. They lifted their rifles, but they did not shoot. The air trembled with the sounds of breaking glass as the stones aimed at the star shattered window panes. Slivers of jagged glass rained onto the street, and within minutes, canisters of tear gas were thrown through the broken windows.
“People of Budapest, disperse!” a voice warned harshly over the amplifier.
“Never!”
Smoke filled the small square now, and people were crying and coughing. Children vomited, and a woman who had fainted was carried to a waiting ambulance. Still, the crowd surged forward and the climbers continued their ascent to the star.
Genia tore off her blue head scarf and covered her face with it to mask the gas. Still, she pressed forward. She was at once frightened and exhilarated. Paul kept his hand on her shoulder.
Genia loved the movies, the theater. Only last week they had seen For Whom the Bell Tolls, and she had wept in the darkened theater, her tears dripping hot upon his hands. Now, on this darkened street, she imagined herself starring in her own film. She had written herself into the scenario of the liberation of Budapest. Pretty Genia. Foolish Genia. He had to take care of her, protect her.
“Please, Genia, let me take you home,” Paul said, but she moved forward, pulling him with her to the outermost fringe of the crowd.
“Citizens of Budapest, disperse or we will shoot!” the authoritative voice shouted again through the amplifier.
Fire trucks screeched to a halt and enormous hoses were trained on the crowd. Those who turned were lashed by whips of water that soaked and immobilized them. An old woman fell to the ground, shivering and sputtering.
“For God’s sake, stop!” Paul shouted. “No one here is armed.” But his voice was lost in the tumult. A tear-gas canister hurtled near him, was caught by a demonstrator, and thrown back into the station.
“Take aim and fire!”
Marksmen appeared at the windows, but now the soldiers standing guard outside the building suddenly broke ranks. They passed into the crowd and distributed arms to the demonstrators. Soldiers and insurgents mingled; uniformed men and civilians stood side by side. An arms cache had been broken into, and weapons were being distributed at random.
The crowd surged forward, and Paul was separated from Genia. Frantically, he searched for her, his eyes tearing and his throat dry. Bullets whirled past him, but he moved on until at last he glimpsed her blue scarf.
“Genia!”
She whirled and he saw the fear in her eyes. He reached her at last and thrust her behind him, shielding her from gleaming steel ovoids of death. A small blond boy stood near them, his face contorted with fear.
“Mama, mama,” he cried plaintively.
Instinctively Paul lifted the child and placed him a few yards back.
“Stay down!” he shouted to the boy, but his command was caught in his throat as one bullet pierced his neck and another plunged into his body. He fell and heard Genia’s shriek, felt her hand on his face. His fingers flew to his chest, but he could not comprehend that the thick, dark moisture that poured out of his body was his own blood. Now he was on fire and now he was turning to ice. The world was exploding about him and the world was frozen in tableau. He drifted through darkness into fiery light and then back again into darkness.
“Genia!” Why was his voice so faint? He found her hand and tried to grasp it.
“Paul. I’m right here, Paul.”
Lydia’s voice, so strangely muffled. What was she doing here and why was her skin blanched to such a deathly pallor? Why was she crying? He could not remember her crying since his father’s death. And why was Genia crying? She should be happy and singing. Suddenly he wanted to sing. We’ve turned the whole world upside down. The lyric spun crazily in his mind, but his voice froze in his throat. He noticed now that Genia’s blue head scarf was ribboned with streaks of scarlet. Perhaps that was why she was crying. He opened his eyes, felt the searing pain again, and closed them. And then he smiled, because all pain had ceased and, blissfully, he was neither too hot nor too cold.
It was Aaron Goldfeder who moved forward through the frenzied crowd and took Paul’s limp wrist in his hand. There was no pulse. A woman offered him a small mirror, and he held it up to the boy’s mouth. No mist formed. There was no breath. He touched Paul’s hair and pulled his eyelids down.
“No!” Lydia’s scream froze them into silence. “It can’t be!”
She knelt beside Paul and lifted his hand, pressing it to her mouth.
“No!” She pressed her head against his heart, as though she might command it to beat again.
“No!” She tried to lift the inert form; she cradled him in her arms, tears streaking her face.
“Paul. Paul.” Her voice was pleading, cracked with grief. She willed him to life, and knew that he was dead.
Gently, Aaron Goldfeder separated her from the boy and led her away so that she would not see the strangers who covered Paul Groszman’s slender body with a coarse gray blanket.
*
PAUL GROSZMAN was buried the next day, beside his father, in the Martyrs’ Cemetery of the Dohány Street Synagogue. Aaron averted his eyes from the mass graves that bore the single date 1945. At least Paul’s grave would be marked with his name and the date of his death. Sweet-voiced Genia sang the Kaddish for Paul. The young people who had been Paul’s friends and were now his mourners, stood in a circle, their faces frozen into the masks of incredulity peculiar to the newly bereaved. Today, youth itself had abandoned them. Their lithe bodies were stiff with sorrow and their bright eyes faded with grief. One girl fainted. Her body fell lightly onto a pile of leaves.
Genia, her face pale and her eyes red-rimmed, trembled uncontrollably. She bit her lips until they bled and pounded at her chest with her fists. She was an initiate into the rite of death, the terrible reality of loss. Her parents spoke softly to her, but Lydia moved toward her and encircled the weeping girl in her arms.
“It was my fault,” Genia sobbed. “He wanted to leave and I wouldn’t go.”
“You mustn’t think that,” Lydia said. “Things happen and we cannot control them.” Her voice was fierce, and she remembered all the sadnesses and losses of her own life. “You must not blame yourself, Genia.”
She held the girl close. Her own tears coursed down her cheeks in a flow that would not cease; the source of her sorrow could not be sealed. Paul. Paul. Paul. Soundlessly, she mouthed the dead boy’s name, but Genia, who had at last stopped trembling, uttered it softly, tenderly. “Paul…Paul…Paul.” They would both remember him always, Lydia who had been mother to him and Genia who had loved him. Always, for them, he would be the sweet-singing boy whose idealized tomorrows had never been shadowed by reality.
The service was over and Paul’s friends moved forward. They had marched beside Paul Groszman and lifted their voices with his. They were the sharers of his dream, the gentle companions of his brief life. A boy who had been wounded the previous night, his arm cradled in a black sling, dropped the first handful of earth in the open grave, and the others followed him. Genia placed the bough of a fir tree gently on the raw pine coffin. How happy they had been beneath the evergreens that summer evening. She would never be happy again, she thought. Lydia moved forward and dropped a white carnation, the color of snow and sorrow, into the grave. The flower fell soundlessly, and the mourners turned and parted on the corner of Dohány Street.
*
LYDIA could not face the return to the s
mall apartment she had shared with Paul. A friend packed a small bag for her and brought it to the Grand Hotel. Exhausted by her grief, she slept for two days, waking only to nibble at the food Aaron had sent up to the suite. She drank small glasses of plum brandy, gazed disconsolately out the window, wept again and slept again. Genia called to say goodbye. Her parents were sending her to relatives in Austria. Lydia’s colleagues and friends called and sent messages of condolence. Her concierge told them where she was staying. The conservatory where Paul had studied sent a basket of flowers, and Aaron carried them to Saint Stephen’s Hospital. A small floral offering arrived—blood-red chinaberries entwined with ribbons of black and scarlet. There was no card, but the hall porter told Aaron that Russians sent such gifts to one another as condolence gifts. Andropov, Aaron thought, and he imagined the steely-eyed ambassador arranging for the gift, delegating the errand at last to an aide, pondering whether or not to include a card. What lingering dybbuk did the Russian hope to exorcise by his peripheral involvement with Lydia? Aaron was certain that they would never know. Always there were stories of high-ranking Soviet officials who had betrayed lovers and wives for obscure crimes of origin and aspiration.
Aaron slept uneasily on the brocaded chaise longue in the dressing room while Lydia tossed and turned beneath the huge feather-stuffed comforter in the bedroom. She moaned. He thought he heard her call her husband’s name, but he could not be sure.
“Paul,” she called clearly, and then her voice trembled and broke.
Aaron himself dreamed again of Katie—a weeping Katie in a gossamer shroud. Poor, restless, death-dressed Katie, wandered through narrow streets, past blazing buildings, carrying a single white carnation and a paper flag.
In the morning he and Lydia stared at each other through darkly circled eyes. Only they had slept in the ornate suite, but the spectral wraiths of Paul and Ferenc Groszman and Katie Goldfeder had shared the uneasy darkness. They decided to breakfast in the brightly lit dining room because they could no longer bear the silence and the shadows.
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