‘They’ve taken the radio, they’ve taken the radio, boys!’
‘Shall we go and see?’
‘Wait a minute!’
‘Let me hear what he’s saying. Let me listen!’
The excited voice is shouting into the microphone as if it were a megaphone: ‘Budapest is in the hands of insurgents. We are no counter-revolutionaries. We are the citizens of this city, of this country; people who have had enough of Soviet bullying, who will stand no more servility from our own leaders, who have had enough of spies, arbitrary arrests, meaningless trials, torture and executions; enough of the single Party and censorship of everything and everyone. For once we, the citizens of Budapest, say No, whatever the cost. We demand the immediate withdrawal of our country from the Warsaw Pact. We demand immediate free elections and the abolition of the ÁVH secret service and its chief Gerö. We demand the right of a free vote for all, and the right of a free press and free speech. We demand …,
But the young man is interrupted by other voices. A girl with a voice like a child declaims in an inspired tone a poem by Gyula Illyés often heard at this time:
Where there’s tyranny, there’s tyranny
Not only in the rifle
not only in the prison, not only in the torture chamber
not only in the voice of the guard at night
not only in the obscure language of denunciation,
or in Morse code tapped on prison walls
not only in confessions
or the judge’s verdict of guilty without right of appeal!
Tyranny is everywhere
even in the nurturing warmth of schools and in fatherly advice
in a mother’s smile
in goodbye kisses
… in the face of the woman you love
that suddenly turns to stone
yes, tyranny is there too
in words of love
in words of ecstasy
like a small fly in the wine
tyranny is there
because you can never be alone
not even in your dreams
not even when you embrace
and even before that, when you feel desire
and wherever tyranny is
nothing has any meaning
not even the most faithful word
not even what I write myself
because from the very beginning
tyranny supervises your grave,
tyranny decides who you have been
who you are now and who you will be
even your ashes will still serve
tyranny…’
But the child is interrupted: everyone wants to speak, to say what they have to say. Someone is laughing in the background. Soon after more shots are heard. Moments of silence. The radio seems struck dumb. Then the music is back, and in that tiny kitchen in a small Budapest flat, in the midst of the smell of cabbage and unwashed clothes, four men start dancing to the rhythm of the csárdás. Amara watches astounded, incredulous. Then Hans takes her hand to show her the dance: right step, left step, a twirl, a hop. The two chairs and the pallet where Amara sleeps are moved to the far end of the little kitchen, the table is folded against the wall and the men wave their arms and leap and turn while on the radio the csárdás gets louder and louder.
But very soon the music is brutally silenced. ‘It is 23.30 hours on 23 October 1956,’ says an agitated voice, ‘we must give you the facts, comrades, before those damned people falsify them. The ÁVH opened fire on the crowd after several of them were hit by stones thrown from below. They have killed about a hundred people. Many are still lying wounded in the road. They are being taken to hospital though there is little light or water there. One boy has just died from loss of blood, we’ve brought him here to the radio so everyone can see him. If you have a camera, please come and take a photograph. His first name is László, surname unknown. He was fifteen years old. Hit in the head by a Soviet bullet. The government says it never ordered the ÁVH to fire on the crowd. But they did it nevertheless, encouraged and supported by Soviet troops. They must be held accountable for this …’
More shots are heard. The radio goes silent. A cry rips the air followed by desperate weeping. But what’s happening? The loudspeaker pours out an avalanche of song: a Red Army chorus. The five sit in a circle round the ancient Orion waiting for more news. But the music continues with no human voice to explain what is happening at the Hungarian National Radio.
The friends start arguing again. Tadeusz lights a cigarette. Hans pours a little homemade brandy into a dirty glass and offers it round. Each takes a sip and passes the glass on. They know how much that brandy is worth and how little is left.
A voice at last! Attention switches to the big Orion standing on its iceless icebox. ‘This is Radio Budapest. Here is an announcement by the Government of the Hungarian People’s Republic. fascist and reactionary elements have attacked public buildings and assaulted troops and the police. In order to re-establish order and promote eventual initiatives designed to re-introduce the rule of law, from this moment all assemblies and demonstrations are forbidden. The army has orders to apply every measure consistent with the law to all who do not obey these orders.’
A long silence follows. The radio seems to have gone dumb. Then the calm voice resumes: ‘Dear listeners, a special announcement. At today’s meeting of the Politburo the date of the next session of the Central Committee has been fixed for 31 October. On the agenda will be the present situation and the duties of the Party in this connection. Report by Comrade Gerö.’ An old-fashioned version of the Soviet national anthem follows.
Horvath looks around in astonishment. ‘So it’s all over, then?’
‘Nothing is over. They’ve recaptured the radio. That’s all. They want to persuade the Hungarian people that those who come out into the street are enemy agents, hired criminals. To give the real situation, they would have to admit that everybody is in the street, starting with the workers, who are all signed-up members of the Communist Party, together with students, professors, housewives, shopkeepers, craftsmen, writers and artists; all there to protest. They can’t either admit this or deny it.’
The radio splutters and crackles but recovers, after an attempt at more Soviet choruses. ‘Dear listeners. The Politburo has requested the Central Committee to announce an immediate meeting to discuss the present situation and the duty that faces us.’ Band music follows.
‘And now we shall tell you about a film soon to be shown in cinemas throughout the land,’ announces a peaceful female voice. Shots can be heard in the background, some quite near at hand. The male voice returns and interrupts the publicity for the film: ‘Dear listeners. The recent announcement about a meeting of the Central Committee was based on mistaken information. The Central Committee will meet again in a few days.’
General laughter. ‘They really don’t know what to say.’
The shots continue.
‘I think we should go and have a look.’
‘When can we sleep? I’m tired.’
‘You think this is a night for sleeping? All bedlam has broken loose and all you can think of is going to sleep.’
‘But I’m so sleepy.’
‘Stay here then. We’ll go, okay, Amara?’
Amara looks at them in confusion. She is tired, but she realises this is an exceptional night and not for sleeping. She must send a report to her paper and she wonders if the phone lines to Italy are working.
Meanwhile the carefully modulated voice of the presenter has resumed: ‘This is Radio Budapest: a special announcement. The armed attacks carried out during the night by sinister counter-revolutionary gangs have created an extremely grave situation.’ A short silence. Cries are heard in the background. A dry shot. Then the music begins again at full volume.
‘See, they’re admitting it, now they’re admitting it!’ shouts Horvath.
‘Quiet, let’s hear what comes next!’
‘The outlaws have fo
rcibly entered factories and public buildings and killed many civilians, members of the national armed forces and State security agents,’ announces the voice, forcibly keeping itself under control.
‘What the hell do you mean, outlaws!’ shouts Tadeusz, aiming punches at the radio. ‘Have you been out in the street yourself, you bastard, have you been out? Where are these outlaws, you fucker!’
‘Quiet, I want to listen.’
‘The government has been taken off guard by such a violent and ruthless attack,’ continues the voice, rapid and breathless, ‘and for this reason, bearing in mind the provisions of the Warsaw Pact, it has asked for support from units of the Soviet services stationed in Hungary.’
A cry of rage in the room. Meanwhile the voice continues undaunted: ‘The government expects that Soviet units will participate in the restoration of order. We ask citizens to keep calm and support the Soviet and Hungarian troops in carrying out their mission.’
Hans rushes to get his jacket. But Tadeusz stops him, his face tired and desolate. ‘Don’t go out now. You can do nothing to help. And you could get a bullet in your head for your pains.’
‘The city is about to be invaded by the Soviets and you expect me to stay at home and sleep!’
‘It isn’t about to be invaded. The troops they are talking about are already stationed here. Everything is still to be decided. Till now nearly all those Russians have fraternised with us. Didn’t you see the tanks passing with university students on top of them?’
‘I want to see it all with my own eyes.’
‘It’s late, better to go to bed and get some sleep. After all, they have to sleep too. We’ll have a tough day before us tomorrow.’
‘Do you think they’ll bring in their real tanks, the ones from outside Hungary?’
‘I don’t know. If Europe helps us … If the United Nations recognise our neutrality … If they’re afraid of the masses and trust Nagy … If someone makes a move, perhaps Tito … we may be able to establish a different Hungary.’
‘I’m going, Father. I’ll be back soon.’
‘But leave Amara here.’
‘She can decide for herself.’
‘She’s an Italian. What has all this got to do with her?’
‘We’re up to our necks in it.’
‘Goodbye, everybody. If you don’t see me tomorrow morning, come and bury me.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ says Horvath. ‘And be sure to keep us in the picture!’
Amara decides at the last minute not to go. The need for sleep has given her a violent pain in the nape of the neck. She needs to lie down for a bit. I’ll join him later, she tells herself. But she falls asleep at once.
39
It’s almost morning when something wakes her. A sense of suffocation. Amara gets up and opens the window. Outside, at last, it is silent. The cold hits her in the face. She goes back to bed, but cannot get to sleep. In the dark her fingers reach like thieves for Emanuele’s black exercise book which she keeps under her pillow. Her eyes begin to read again the familiar words that seem perpetually new.
The Ghetto, Łódź. 18 April ’42
For several days now we’ve been tormented by swarms of fleas that get everywhere. They are obsessive and tenacious. The more you kill the more they reproduce themselves from one night to the next, thousands of them, and they invade beds and clothes. We’ve tried putting petroleum under each foot of the bed. Though Mamma believes in talcum powder. She says fleas hate talcum powder. But it makes you laugh that in the whole ghetto there’s not a pinch of talcum powder to be found. We’ve taken to boiling everything: clothes, sheets. It’s only when we boil cloth that the damn things die. But there are others hidden in cracks in the floor, clefts in wood and the interstices of tiles, and the minute you spread clean sheets on the bed you’re attacked again. You should see the water in the pan after it’s been boiling clothes for a while: black with fleas. You can cream them off with a skimmer, like fat.
Łódź. 22 April ’42
Amara darling, I’m afraid I shan’t ever get out of here. I’m covered with chilblains and you can count my ribs, I weigh forty kilos, I may have tuberculosis. I’ve spat blood a number of times, but I don’t want to go to the ghetto hospital because they conduct constant rounding-up operations and if you are really ill they jot down your name on a list and at the next deportation they throw you onto a lorry and off you go. I don’t want to end up in Auschwitz or Chełmno. Even if what they say of those places isn’t true, even if they really are just labour camps, I don’t trust them. Here at least we’re together and can survive somehow. Mamma says I’m too distrustful; if it was down to her she would leave at once, convinced she was heading for a better place. We’d get a bit more to eat then, she says. But deep down I don’t think even she has any confidence. Here at least we do have a home of our own, even if it consists of only one room. There, it seems they throw everyone together in a kind of hen-coop. There’s talk of dead bodies piled in ditches, of a foul-smelling smoke constantly pouring from the camp chimneys. The smoke of burned bodies. Can we trust them? Nobody knows how things really are. Some say it’s just rumours. Others insist it’s all true. I’m still working, even if they only pay me forty Reichsmarks a month. It’s the only reason they don’t take me away: if I work I’m productive and if I’m productive I’m helping the war effort. Twelve or thirteen hours a day for a handful of Reichsmarks. They don’t talk about złotys any more now, only marks. Which is like saying that the cost of goods in the ghetto has doubled without any increase in our pay. A kilo of sugar costs eighteen RM. And who can allow themselves that! Even Mamma, weakened as she is, gets up at five to go to the factory. Even she has realised that so long as she can work she won’t be deported. Her optimism keeps her alive. She believes in a benign future. We’ll get out of here, she says, I feel it, the allies will come, they’ll liberate us, you’ll see, we’ll start living again, eating and sleeping. We’ll even get back to Florence, to Amara. Yes. Mutti, we’ll get out of here. But when?
Time to sleep, Amara, time to sleep, says a sensible voice inside a dark room that she persists in regarding as the place of internal tribunals. But there’s an echo and her words return to her doubled. People seem different in that empty room. But who can be there other than that tiresome pain in the arse, her maltreated conscience?
Her fingers, of their own free will, open, run and give signals and her eyes follow, drowsy but attentive. All she can do is return to Emanuele’s words that spring to life again in those pencil markings, if sometimes so weak and faint as to be almost invisible.
Łódź. 15 May ’42
This morning on my way to work I saw a woman crouched on the dry mud selling early cherries. I went up to her thinking to buy a few, but had a severe shock. Three marks each. I took one in my hand just to smell it, but the woman made a scene. If you eat it I’ll force you to spit it out, she said, either you pay or nothing, don’t touch it! I abused her in a loud voice, calling her a thief, and she answered in verse: Filthy boy, can’t you see yourself? Got no hair and covered with scabs! Go and piss somewhere else! But if she’s selling those cherries it must mean someone is buying them. There are distinctions even here in the ghetto, where some Jews have rights and others don’t, rich Jews and poor Jews. Only rich in a manner of speaking, of course, but a little less stricken than we who were once seriously rich and are now the lowest of the low.
Łódź. 3 June ’42
Papà has been arrested. He was on a list of workers of low productivity. They took him away. We’ve heard nothing of him for days. Mamma in her invincible optimism says they’ll have sent him home. But I don’t believe it. I’m afraid they’ve deported him, like Uncle Eduard who disappeared into the void after he was thrown onto a lorry at five in the morning. There’s no longer talk of shootings, only of goods trains leaving for Chełmno or Auschwitz or even Dachau. We don’t really know what goes on inside the camps. The Germans call them labour camps. But there’s a rumo
ur doing the rounds that anyone who can’t work is shut in a large room and suffocated with gas. That’s what’s being said. By voices overheard by the sharp ears of people who know German well and work in the SS kitchens or barber shop.
Łódź. 6 June ’42
This morning on Zidowska Street I saw three girls with scarves on their heads and stars on their chests running away. Two German soldiers were after them. They ran quickly, leaping over any obstacles: buckets, shovels, dead bodies. Then one of the soldiers shouted ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot!’ All three went on running so both soldiers fired together. The girls fell, first the one at the back, striking her face on the pavement; then the second, dressed in black, who curled up on the ground and shook as if with St Vitus’ Dance. The third, though hit, continued to run. The stronger of the soldiers shouted and chased her. The other stopped to make sure the two fallen girls were dead. The wounded girl had nearly reached the corner of the street when the SS man reached her, knocked her down with the butt of his rifle and shot her in the head.
Łódź. 8 June ’42
Despite the hunger that torments me, but perhaps precisely so as not to think about it, I slipped into the theatre on Krawiecka Street where on Saturdays they put on concerts or funny plays to raise morale. It seems strange to have theatre performances in a besieged ghetto. But it’s the only thing they can do. That’s what they say. The hall was packed. There was a strong smell of feet. But also intense concentration. One comedian mimicked the wretches in the camp. Another set to music all the things he would have liked to eat. Two girls danced like bears. Everyone laughed. At the end they went round with a small plate. Some people gave two pfennigs, some half a pfennig. I was ashamed: I had nothing in my pocket, nothing at all. The hand holding the plate was trembling. I pulled out the slice of bread I had kept for my supper and gave that. She thanked me with a click of the tongue.
Train to Budapest Page 25