Train to Budapest

by Dacia Maraini

  Hans and Amara let the crowd, noisy and compact, carry them on. Who could have imagined this the morning they first arrived in the muffled and stifling silence of a city that seemed asleep! Who could have known that these people were just waiting for a sign to come into the streets! At Kálvin Square where the crowd divides before joining together again in Üllői utca. A bustling group of young men are carrying hammers, saws, chisels and picks. Some ten of them have a long ladder which they lean up against a wall. Then, very quickly, a child in a red hat runs up it with a hammer and defaces the Soviet emblem, a plaster hammer and sickle over the main entrance to a building. People collect the pieces of plaster that fly off and throw them happily into the air as if playing a game. Further on some men in ties and long coats are smashing the window of a shop that sells Soviet records and books. A young man with fine gipsy features squeezes into the shop through the broken glass and brings out armfuls of records and books. He throws them to his friends outside who pile them on the ground where someone has already started a bonfire. The young man goes in and out of the hole in the window and throws out records with the official symbol on their sleeves and books whose covers proclaim in gold letters Stalin, Stalin, Lenin, Stalin, and so on. More people swell the crowd. Two boys head for a grocer’s shop only to be immediately warned: ‘No looting! No stealing! There’ll be trouble if you take anything!’

  ‘Let’s go,’ murmurs Amara, afraid of the mob. Still holding her wrist, Hans pulls her towards Jòzsef körút. But wherever they go they still find snaking crowds of seemingly aimless people on the move; pushing, shouting, raising their hands and waving flags. By now nearly all the flags have a hole in the middle. Hungarian flags minus the red star.

  Now the crowd pushes them towards Erzsébet körút and from there along Andrássy ut as far as György dózsa, towards Felvonulasi Square. Exhausted, they arrive with the great snake right under the flight of steps leading to the gigantic statue of Stalin. But by the time they reach the square the statue has already been torn down. All that remains to cast defiance at the sky are its two empty dark bronze boots. Into one of them someone has thrust the pole of a Hungarian flag with a hole in it.

  ‘The dictator’s gone. But he’s left his boots behind. A bad sign. It shows he means to come back.’

  ‘Where have they taken the statue?’

  ‘To the centre, to Blaha Lujza Square,’ answers a voice from the crowd.

  ‘Shall we go there?’ says a woman with a child in her arms.

  ‘I don’t give a damn about Stalin. He’s dead and buried,’ says a man with a cigarette glued to his lips, as he sucks in smoke and blows it out again without using his fingers.

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘Why not Party headquarters? I’d like to see what they’re up to there!’

  37

  ‘But where are they running?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Some people are moving rapidly in one direction, while others are hurrying in the opposite direction. Here and there a crowd forms. A bonfire has been lit in front of Communist Party headquarters, where the door has been broken down and burned. On the fire have been thrown cardboard portraits of the hated ‘comrade’ Rákosi. In Köztársaság Square a young man with a worried expression leans out from a first-floor balcony to throw into the street some rolled-up red flags. Two girls with short hair collect them and throw them with theatrical gestures onto a pyre that has just been lit. The red flags burn quickly. A lad with trousers held up by a string round his waist and no coat tries to keep the fire burning by stirring up the dying flames with a long pole of uncertain origin. A man in a blue hat, legs wide apart, is taking a stream of photographs with a large camera. Two soldiers in ankle-length greatcoats and high belts pose for their picture. A child is crying desperately. To comfort him his mother hoists him up on her bicycle which she is holding by the handlebars. The child, no longer obstructed by long coats, looks around in astonishment. His mother strokes his head with a smoke-stained hand.

  Suddenly shots are heard. Amara starts. Hans pulls her towards the wall. The shots continue but luckily move further off. People are running. ‘What’s happening?’ shouts a woman hurrying behind a group of youngsters. No one answers. But two girls appear, pushing through the crowd in the opposite direction, their faces distraught and one of them weeping desperately. ‘The ÁVH are firing at unarmed people.’ ‘Where?’ ‘At the occupied radio station.’ ‘Shooting at demonstrators in the street.’ ‘My brother,’ cries the weeping girl, ‘they’ve hit my brother.’ Her friend pulls her in the direction of the nearby hospital. The crowd seems less eager to head for the radio. Some stop in small groups to argue vigorously. Others decide despite everything to press on. A man advances down the middle of the road brandishing a pole with a card nailed at the top. Hans translates: ‘Nagy will address the Hungarian people, nine p.m., in front of parliament.’

  ‘But it’s half-past nine already,’ says Amara looking at her watch. Is it possible they’ve already been so long on the move!

  ‘Let’s run. Maybe he’s still speaking.’

  Others, like them, hurry after the man with the placard in the direction of Kossuth tér. It’s difficult to understand what’s happening in the city. A turmoil of actions succeeding one another in rapid improvisation from Buda to Pest. Someone reports furious shooting from the area of the Kilian barracks. Someone else says Russian tanks have been called in, and someone else that Mikoyan and Suslov have passed in a diplomatic car with darkened windows, while yet another person swears that Khrushchev himself has been seen peeping out of an enormous silver limousine. But no one believes this. There is laughter. Even so, things are getting serious.

  ‘Let’s hurry. I can hear the loudspeaker! He’s definitely still there.’

  But when they come within sight of parliament, Nagy has gone. Thousands of people are slowly dispersing down the side streets.

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘Shall we go home?’

  Amara is getting very hungry. But where to find anything to eat? The bars are closed. The shops bolted shut. Every Hungarian is out in the street this day of 23 October 1956. Ignoring the cold, the fierce wind that fans the fires and the continual threat of rain. Flags with a hole cut in the middle are everywhere, like the one at the university.

  Suddenly Amara flinches with shock. A few metres in front of her is a man in dark clothes, boots and a black jacket, tied by the waist to a lamp post with his head hanging down.

  ‘An ÁVH man,’ whispers Hans in her ear. Amara looks with disgust at the purplish blood leaking from the corpse’s nostrils. The light of the street lamps flickering in the wind makes shadows dance on his face so that he seems to be moving and breathing.

  ‘He’s still alive. We must untie him!’

  ‘Dead as a doornail. Anyway, someone he’d tortured must have recognised him and killed him. They spied for the Russians and were brutally cruel to poor innocent people. He’s not worth your pity.’

  ‘But it does upset me,’ insists Amara, unable to tear her eyes away from the white face of the young man with his smart moustache, and highly polished boots, the showy watch on his wrist and the dark blood draining from his dead nostrils. She wishes she could staunch his wounds. But Hans takes her elbow and pulls her far away from Party headquarters, along Luther Street.

  Now the crowd opens and divides. Before them, in the greyness of a square strewn with papers and stones and dimly lit by weak street lamps, a Soviet tank appears. Hans guides Amara by the arm towards a side street. But astonishingly the tank has lost its usual air of menace, and about thirty young men are standing on it, prancing about and shouting and holding up a Hungarian flag.

  ‘Look, they’ve hijacked the tank! They’ve hijacked it. How can it go forward with all those people on top of it.’ Hans laughs happily. Even he is surprised. A Soviet tank reduced to a people-carrier for partygoers celebrating a rather easily achieved freedom.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s time to go home
?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We don’t know anything about the others. What if Horvath got hurt?’

  ‘He’ll be as happy as a sandboy. This is a great day, Amara. We must make the most of it. After years of submission, of obedience, fear, terror and repressed hatred, here we are living a day when people are saying no, breaking their silence, joyfully being themselves without pretence, loving their own country and at last feeling independent without being spied on, controlled and obstructed … A great day, Amara, and I’m so happy I’ve been able to live it on the streets together with the Hungarian people.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Hans turns and sees a man standing near them. Not tall but majestic in manner. A loaded bandolier over one shoulder, hat pulled down low on his forehead and a loaded rifle in his hand. But the most surprising thing is that under his trousers, instead of an ankle one leg is a piece of wood that ends on the stone pavement like a broken branch.

  ‘János Mesz, the man with the wooden leg. Everyone knows him. Famous for his courage.’

  But the man, who looks as if he has been posing for a photograph in the ardour of his courage, now limps off quickly towards Corvin Lane.

  ‘Let’s go and see what’s happening,’ says Hans, still gripping Amara’s wrist.

  Round the corner are the hospital gardens. They see Tadeusz approaching with the violinist, and behind them Horvath too. Tadeusz has an ancient rifle on his shoulder. Ferenc is busily munching a perec or pretzel, a twisted ring-shaped roll encrusted with salt. Horvath follows, paler than ever. He has lost his beret and seems tired, but is smiling happily.

  ‘We meet again at last. Where have you come from?’

  ‘The Corvin cinema. That’s where the hardliners are. They’ve formed a group. And captured two armoured cars. They’re saying the Russians are coming. That seems unlikely to me. But we’re arming ourselves for all eventualities.’

  ‘Did they give you that rifle?’

  ‘Can we go on letting ourselves be shot at like unprotected pigeons? The ÁVH have been firing into the crowd, hundreds are dead.’

  ‘And we’ve forced open the doors of the arms depots.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘Us, them, the citizens.’

  ‘And now they’re handing everyone rifles.’

  ‘Even to those who don’t know how to fire them?’

  ‘Even to them.’

  ‘I’ve never fired a gun in my life,’ says Tadeusz, ‘but if I have to …’ He laughs, snatching a piece of perec from Ferenc, who protests.

  ‘Would you like one too?’

  ‘I don’t know how to shoot.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  They laugh. They pass pieces of perec among themselves, breaking in many pieces the circular salt-encrusted bread, the only thing to be found in the streets today. ‘There’s a woman with an enormous backside selling them by the kilo in Kisfaludy utca. Shall I go and get two more?’

  A smiling girl goes up to a man who is leaning against a main entrance right beside them. She has a bandage on her forehead, and two bandoliers full of bullets over her chest. She has wound a black scarf three times round her neck. She talks intimately to the man and laughs. Then they kiss, unaware of everything and everyone else. A kiss right in the middle of a popular uprising. A deliberate exhibition? Someone claps. But the two still cling together. They go on kissing as if they were alone. Four children are unscrewing the wheels of what must have been an ÁVH car: it is large and shiny and has a dozen hammers and sickles stuck on its windows. A woman walking down the middle of the road is kicking an empty tin that is making a hellish noise. Someone shouts ‘Stop that, you cow!’ but she takes no notice and goes on kicking the blackened empty tin. An elegant man in a cream-coloured raincoat is sketching a coat of arms on the side of a lorry with a small brush dipped in white paint.

  ‘The republican arms of Kossuth,’ explains Tadeusz.

  Now they have reached József Boulevard, and sit down on the entrance steps to a large closed building to rest their tired and muddy feet.

  A man in a tattered shirt passes clasping two loaves of French bread.

  ‘Where did you get those?’

  ‘They’re distributing them at the Corvin cinema. If you hurry you might be in time to get some.’

  ‘But I thought they were handing out arms?’

  ‘The arms are finished. Now they’re giving out bread.’

  So the friends make their way to the Corvin cinema, a large circular building with its doors open to hungry people going in and out with armfuls of white French loaves.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  To pass the time as they queue, Amara studies two posters on the wall by the cinema entrance. The title of the first film, displayed in huge letters, is In Perfect Rhythm. A very handsome worker bends over an assembly line brandishing a monkey wrench, while the haloed head of Stalin smiles paternally behind him. As Amara gazes at this enormous poster an egg flies past and smashes on the face of the Great Father. Turning quickly, she just manages to dodge a second egg that cracks against an immense photograph advertising a Romanian film called Life Always Wins, on which two female peasants with round faces rise up to indicate with outstretched arms the horizon from which a red ball is approaching. The two women have bunches of carrots under their arms. Their mouths embellished with gold teeth are stretched in smiles that are presumably intended to be reassuring but are in fact menacing. It might not be a bad idea to sit there in the dark resting your eyes on one of those films the posters are promoting.

  The Corvin cinema is very crowded. Its seats have been removed. In the dark auditorium young people are handing out bottles of milk by gaslight. A blackened coal-basket contains oval forms that from a distance look like dirty bundles. In fact they are a kind of bread. On the stage a mime leaps about portraying the Soviets arriving and the Hungarians resisting them. He does everything himself: first he is a Soviet soldier in full uniform climbing out of a tank, then suddenly he is a Hungarian rebel firing at the tank and then climbing up on top of it. Then he mimes a dog pissing on the tank’s caterpillar tracks oblivious of the soldier’s cries of protest. Then a little boy playing football with his friends. Then he rises up on his legs to become a dead soldier opening his wings to fly to paradise. But what does he find in paradise? A little Hungarian tribunal that interrogates him on his actions. From behind, lanky and exhausted, comes the massive moustachioed figure of Stalin who furtively steals the soldier’s wings and runs off sneering.

  Hans comes up, looking worried.

  ‘Our own government has called in the Soviet tanks,’ he says. ‘Fortunately the ones in question are part of the standing army already here. There aren’t many of them and they know us. But they could still do a lot of damage. Let’s go.’

  38

  That evening, over a soup of water in which an onion has been boiled and pieces of potato float, the five talk about what they have seen during the day in the city. But what is happening? asks Horvath, who seems to have come down that moment from the moon like Monsieur Candide. Tadeusz maintains they’ve landed by chance in the eye of the cyclone. A historical cyclone. Nothing else had happened since 1948 when, after victory over the Nazis, they had set themselves with cheerful enthusiasm to reconstruct their country: ‘Discussions went on all night. Philosophy was mixed with politics and art and theatre with economics. We were convinced we were bringing to birth a new society, without injustice or violence.’

  ‘You’re forgetting the arrest of Béla Kovacs on Stalin’s orders. An alarm bell none of us took any notice of,’ says Tadeusz.

  ‘And how long did this enthusiasm last, my friend?’

  ‘Long enough to regenerate a life.’

  ‘You forget how Zdanov and his criticisms landed on all our heads like a bucket of cold water.’

  ‘I’m not forgetting that. What I’m saying is that 1948 was a year of great dreams. Which we woke from with a sore arse.’

  ‘You
are forgetting the trial of Rajk and the purges that followed, utterly unjust and brutal.’

  ‘Well, what about now, then?’

  At this point the voices start interrupting each other. Everyone has his own opinion, while outside the sound of shooting intensifies. But who’s doing the shooting? Hans runs to the window but can’t see anything. Tadeusz fiddles with the huge radio set, an Orion with a striped face, which is sitting on a primitive icebox covered with a blue cloth. The icebox is empty. It is two days since they last saw the young boy who normally tours the district from morning to night on his bicycle with its large carrier full of ice.

  Tadeusz twiddles the knob producing whistles, wheezes and crackles. Finally a contemptuous stentorian voice comes through clearly. ‘That’s Gerö,’ Tadeusz recognises it at once as that of the Party secretary, the most hated of the Stalinist bureaucrats.

  ‘Citizens, don’t be deceived!’ says the cutting voice. ‘Go back to your homes and listen to the directives of the glorious Hungarian Communist Party. Those at this moment putting the city to fire and sword are enemies of communism, enemies of Hungary, enemies of the People. They are in the pay of agents of the secret police of enemy countries. Their aim is to destroy everything the People have achieved in recent years, to reintroduce capitalism in our country. Citizens, don’t let yourselves be deceived. Budapest has fallen into the hands of a small group of lawless counter-revolutionaries. Stay at home, show your dissent from these hysterical criminals who hope to damage everything we hold most sacred in our country. Citiz–’ The voice is interrupted by the violent whirling of a csárdás dance.

  Tadeusz looks at the radio in perplexity. The others too look up as if wondering what’s going on.

  ‘This is Radio Kossuth, Radio Freedom!’ shouts a youthful voice. The csárdás fades and the room fills with a rapid excited chatter. Horvath stands spoon in hand before the radio with his mouth open as if paralysed. The violinist bursts out laughing. Hans goes closer to the loudspeaker with his ears pricked.