Train to Budapest

by Dacia Maraini

  ‘We’ll find a way. Meantime I must try and get some articles to my paper.’

  ‘All right, let’s go.’

  They run down the stairs two at a time. Outside the air is freezing, but there is an infectious sense of excitement. People are dancing round improvised fires in the middle of the streets. Men and women are out for a walk, even at night, smoking and chattering but without ever putting down rifle or machine gun or or taking off the bandoliers slung round their shoulders. Not wanting to appear too menacing they wear a flower in their hats or a coloured scarf round their necks. Everyone says the Soviet tanks are pulling back. In fact fewer and fewer are to be seen around. There is widespread belief in the delegation that has left for the United Nations. Surely they won’t be able to resist the will of an entire nation that has demonstrated with so many sacrifices its new and irresistible longing for freedom.

  At the Béke hotel there is no one to be seen. Where have the few foreign journalists who live there gone? Are they all out trying to understand what is happening? The fat bald man can’t be found. Though three waitresses dressed in black with immaculate aprons are going about with trays loaded with glasses and plates. But the glasses and plates are empty.

  Amara asks if the telephones are working. The sulky receptionist advises her to go down to the basement where the telephone girls are. Hans and Amara go downstairs. In a small badly lit room three girls are sitting at a switchboard, their temples gripped by steel-sprung headphones, pushing and pulling plugs with worn wires. Perhaps lines to the outside world are working again.

  One of the telephonists signs to them to wait. Amara and Hans sit down on a bench covered by a velvet cloth with a gilded fringe. Inside the cubicles, each marked by an enormous silver letter B, people can be seen with receivers that are obviously not working properly.

  They go on waiting. Every so often someone emerges from a cubicle shaking his head. The telephone girls are agitated, angrily pulling out plugs, talking in bursts and shouting into microphones that show no sign of life.

  ‘I’m going for a little walk,’ says Hans, getting to his feet. ‘Maybe I’ll run into the bald man. You stay and wait for a free cubicle and a line to Florence. Let’s hope we get through before one o’clock.’

  He moves away. Amara picks up her articles to check though them before dictating. So difficult to give life to what one has seen! To go from living to writing needs a leap which may look short and easy from a distance, but seen close up is revealed as an almost impassable gully with steep smooth sides. Yet the gap must be bridged. There is no knowing if one will reach the other side alive or dead. If she could only manage to tell just a little of what is happening in this country, if she could convey the expectation, the hopes, the fears, the sacrifices, the joys of these days of liberation from a blind and violent regime, she would be happy. But will she ever be able to do it?

  A bell rings repeatedly. Rapid voices. An imperious gesture, and it’s her turn. She runs to cubicle 4. She grasps the receiver. At the other end of the line there is no call-corder but a metallic voice that repeats: ‘Hello, Italy? Italy?’

  ‘Hello? I’m speaking from Budapest, who’s there?’ But the voice at the other end disappears. Now she can only hear the voice of the operator: ‘Hello, Italy? Italy?’

  ‘Florence, speak now!’

  ‘I’m here, but I can’t hear anyone at the other end. Nobody.’

  ‘Speak now!’

  A storm of whistles hits her ear, then what sounds like a toad singing, nothing intelligible, then more crackles and prolonged whistles.

  ‘No line to Italy, no line to Florence, sorry Miss Sironi, maybe tomorrow.’

  Amara puts her articles, handwritten in a school exrecise book, back into her shoulder bag and goes back up the stairs to the foyer. No sign of Hans. But now more people can be seen going in and out through the revolving door. She sits down in a wide, comfortable armchair with huge arms covered in blue velvet. And waits.

  In front of her two English people are murmuring in low voices as they study a map spread out on the table before them. A woman and a man of medium height: he is fair-haired and stocky, wearing a black leather jacket; she is slim, indeed very thin, a brunette wrapped in a purple raincoat. They are excited and unaware that someone is watching them curiously.

  ‘Have you heard anything new?’ asks Amara timidly, plucking up courage.

  The two look up, annoyed at the interruption but polite and willing to reply.

  ‘Are you a journalist too?’

  ‘Trying to be.’

  ‘Did you manage to get through on the phone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor did we.’

  ‘Any news?’ insists Amara.

  ‘Nothing much. But there are rumours of a massive movement of Soviet tanks from the north.’

  ‘The usual tanks stationed in Hungary?’

  ‘Apparently something different, but nothing is certain.’

  The two turn back to their map, forgetting Amara who opens her exercise book to scribble down another article to send to Florence. She must try a telegram, as Horvath said, but she needs Hans for the Hungarian language.

  And here he is, quick and confident as always, the gazelles running across his chest. He has a small bag in his hand.

  ‘Perecs?’

  ‘No, sausages. Some for everyone.’

  ‘And potatoes?’

  ‘We’ll try and find some.’

  47

  Tadeusz and Hans are always out looking for something to eat. But also trying to find news of what’s happening in and around the city. Ferenc has started playing his violin again. Amara, without anyone asking it of her, is staying close to old Horvath to look after him and keep him company. Hans never goes out without the rifle given him by the boys at the Corvin cinema. He probably doesn’t know how to fire it, but carries it all the same. ‘I shan’t try unless the Russians come with their tanks,’ he says firmly. Every now and then Tadeusz and his son bring back a bread baton, a couple of eggs, a tin of powdered milk or some aspirins.

  Horvath has decided that in daytime he prefers the kitchen. He lies stretched on Amara’s camp bed reading, sleeping, chattering, listening to the radio. He is happy if she stays near him, and together they bend over the table where she spreads rice to clean it of little stones and mouse excrement, or to separate good dried beans from mouldy ones, or to peel potatoes.

  The old Orion seems to have calmed down. No more excited voices crowding each other out, but announcements preceded by specially chosen music: Mozart, Paganini, Scriabin and Bartók, alternating with songs of the moment: Lili Marlene, When the saints go marching in, Egy mondat a zsdrnokagrol.

  ‘One senses a desire for peace in the country,’ says Ferenc. ‘Less anarchy and more organisation, this is the order of the day and I’d say that the Hungarians are adapting themseleves sensibly to it. You can even see this in the distribution centres which are no longer being run on a primitive private basis, but by the government which is replacing the self-proclaimed revolutionary armed guards with a proper corps of National Guards; haven’t the rest of you noticed that too? They’re only boys, but they have a serious and responsible look about them. I’ve watched them mounting guard over the most important institutions in the city: parliament, the Ministry of Defence, the Post Office, the prisons. We should embrace them and thank them for their dedication, don’t you think?’

  Every now and then the old Orion brings a voice telling of new students’ or workers’ initiatives in and around Budapest. Horvath turns the radio up: ‘We’re gathered in the great hall. Plenty of seats but no one is sitting down. We are standing in front of the platform. The students all gathered here with their colourful clothes and books under their arms. Immediately afterwards the professors came in, rejoicing as if at a festival. Many had red, white and green rosettes on their jacket lapels. Dead comrades were remembered. Then those professors who had touched the hearts of the students stepped forward. The oldest, P
rofessor Karely, spoke of slaves who submit for ages but finally explode, like Spartacus when he recognised the longing for liberty in so many thousands of men.’

  ‘But he didn’t say they all ended up crucified,’ remarks Horvath sarcastically.

  ‘Professor Erderly, in his turn, maintained that the Magyars have always been forced to submit to lords and masters, but have always fought tenaciously to get rid of them. Now we are showing ourselves equally couragious in rebuilding a sadly run-down country with no functioning economy, a country forced by its allied masters to concentrate everything on arms rather than the development of agriculture, and on heavy industry rather than on the services necessary to improve the condition of human life. But we are not interested in a policy of power. We want peace and neutrality …’

  ‘They always repeat the same things,’ remarks Horvath, ‘but they are right. They are perfectly right. I too repeat the same things about my fever, about my pneumonia. A sick people repeats itself ad nauseam until it regains its health.’

  Now a female voice recites in slow, soft cadences a poem by Nâzım Hikmet:

  They were sad, my love

  they were happy, full of hope

  they were courageous and heroic

  your words,

  they were men.

  Horvath loves poetry. You need only remember that his modest luggage contains two volumes of poetry, Rilke and Walt Whitman.

  ‘Under Rákosi, that stuff would have landed you straight in prison,’ remarks Ferenc, before withdrawing to play his violin.

  Horvath is wearing some knee socks Hans found for him on a stall. They are well worn and faded, but warm. When the man with the gazelles brought them, wrapped in a piece of newspaper, Horvath jumped for joy. But then, when he opened the parcel and took a good look at them, it was obvious they were so threadbare on the heels as to be useless. Amara darned them for him with wool of a different colour, but what matter? – the important thing was to keep warm. Thanks to the bottomless contents of Ferenc’s cupboard, which even contained needles of every possible size and several balls of wool.

  ‘Will you tell me something about your Emanuele?’ says Horvath suddenly, turning down the radio which was now playing nothing but trivial little marches.

  ‘I’ve told you about him so often, Horvath, you must be bored with the subject.’

  ‘We are here for him, Amara.’

  ‘The real reason we’re here is to see Hans’s father and his violinist friend Ferenc.’

  ‘In passing, on the way to Auschwitz. Remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  ‘I know, it’s not our fault Budapest was struck by an earthquake the moment we arrived.’

  ‘What d’you want to know?’

  ‘Why you have loved him so much and kept this love alive for so many years.’

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Horvath. Why do we love someone? I don’t know. And the more you love the less you know why. Have you never loved anyone?’

  ‘Oh yes. But I’ve always been rejected. I’ve never known reciprocated love.’

  ‘But you were a handsome boy. And you’re still a handsome man, Horvath.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Amara. I’m an old wreck.’

  ‘I know some very ugly men who have been much loved. But why do you think your love was never returned?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I was afraid. If a woman fell in love with me, I ran off.’

  ‘So you were the one who didn’t want reciprocated love.’

  ‘It could be. I wanted something more every time. A more beautiful woman, or a more intelligent or more sensitive one. The one I had seemed dull and boring. I made love to her for a few months, then got bored.’

  ‘A sort of Don Giovanni, then?’

  ‘I never found a woman I was completely happy with. As soon as I got to know her better, my arms dropped to my sides.’

  ‘So you never fell in love.’

  ‘Yes, but only for a month, or at most two. I had loves that struck me like lightning. That warmed my heart. Then they came to an end, but the warmth stayed with me. Maybe that’s how it is. I like living in the warmth of memory. The actual person gets in the way of my dedicating myself to that warmth. You and I probably resemble one another more than you think, Amara. You too live on memories and your heart is still warm from a fire that died years ago. Like the stars we can still see in the sky even though they exploded and expired millennia ago. It’s the light that travels on. And we live in that light.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps we are alike, Horvath.’

  ‘That’s why I asked you to tell me about him.’

  ‘Would you like me to read you his letters?’

  ‘You’ve already read them to me many times. And I don’t want to hear about the ghetto at Łódź and people dying of hunger. Tell me something about Rifredi and life when you were children.’

  ‘One morning we went out together with our bicycles. We went up into the hills. Took a narrow country road. And pedalled energetically up slopes covered with rocks. The Florence countryside was so beautiful. There were broad beans in flower, and potatoes with rich green leaves, in among hundreds of poppies of an unbelievable red. And on we went, flying ahead on those bicycles, scattering the stones, hurling ourselves into the valleys, climbing the hills beyond, it was a huge joy. Suddenly, round a curve, we came on an enormous cow. Calm and extremely beautiful, and with no intention of moving. Our brakes, you know, weren’t very effective. I threw myself into the beans to the right and Emanuele into the dried-up bed of a sort of stream to the left. The cow raised her head and looked at us in surprise. We got up all covered with scratches and bumps. Emanuele had hurt his thigh and torn the left shoulder of his shirt. I had taken the skin off both my knees which were bleeding badly, and hurt my temple; I had ridden slap into a large sharp rock. But do you know what Emanuele did instead of swearing at the cow? He sat down beside me and licked the wound on my forehead, saying saliva was a disinfectant. I closed my eyes and left him to it. His tongue was so large and rough that I convinced myself it was the cow. Even today I think I must have really been stunned and unaware of the cow coming up to me and licking the gash on my forehead, as dogs sometimes do when they have a wound.’

  ‘Was it Emanuele or the cow?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could have been him.’

  ‘Did you make love?’

  ‘We never did, Horvath. We were too young. And also very prudish and easily embarrassed. We thought sexual love was something for grown-ups.’

  ‘And even now you still live in the memory of that cow’s tongue on the wound on your forehead. Amara, frankly, I think you’re in a worse state than I am.’

  Amara and Horvath laugh together. At that moment the man with the gazelles comes in, carrying his father, like Anchises, on his back.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He got hit by a bullet in his side.’

  Hans lays his father down on Amara’s camp bed in the kitchen and starts taking off his sweater. Under that he finds another pullover, and under that yet another.

  ‘But how many pullovers are you wearing, Father?’

  Tadeusz laughs. Hans laughs too. Ferenc has noticed nothing. He goes on playing the violin shut up in the bedroom. Amara bundles up the pullovers for the wash. On Tadeusz’s white skin is a hole with a black border. No blood. But there is something sinister about that hole in his flesh.

  ‘It’s nothing. Could you get some alcohol please, Amara, it’s in Ferenc’s cupboard.’

  At that moment Ferenc comes into the room with his violin on his arm. He sees the wound and throws himself onto Tadeusz, embracing him as if he were dying.

  ‘It’s nothing, Ferenc, just a bullet that needs to be removed.’

  ‘We’ll get you to the hospital.’

  ‘Wait. Call János. Let’s try him before going near that hell of a hospital.’

  48

  Tadeusz’s doctor friend, János Szabó, comes. He tries to ex
tract the bullet, but fails. It seems to have penetrated deeply. ‘We’ll need more instruments to get that out,’ says Szabó. ‘But we’ll try again.’ An X-ray would be useful, but at the moment the radiography machines in the hospitals aren’t working. He disinfects the wound and takes the patient’s temperature, giving him an injection of penicillin, the last that he has. If the bullet stays where it is, Tadeusz will heal in a few days, the doctor says.

  Hans has made him some of that Chinese tea that tastes like straw. Amara has scraped the sugar jar to sweeten it. The doctor appreciates the hot drink, knowing how hard it is to find provisions in these days of readjustment. This is the word everyone is using, ‘the readjustment of the country’. People are talking about it everywhere. The shops are still shut, but they are ‘readjusting’ before opening again to the public. The schools are closed, to readjust their windows and clean their classrooms of the plaster debris caused by the aggression of the Russian tanks stationed in Hungary. Those same tanks that they have watched departing in line ahead, bound for the frontier. But there were not that many of them and only a few turned their guns on buildings. The Post Office has reopened even though its doors have been broken down and its windows have been replaced by pieces of cardboard glued in place. The national radio has ‘readjusted’ its machinery, has recalled its technicians and is now working and faithfully transmitting what is happening in the country, with one eye on the Nagy government which really is moving in the direction most Hungarians want.

  Tadeusz’s doctor friend János tells them that a few days ago he met an unusual procession of cars in the street. ‘I looked into them. D’you know who was in the first car? Cardinal Mindszenty.’

  The others look at him in surprise.

  ‘Where was he going?’

  ‘Have they released him from prison?’

  ‘A brave dog,’ remarks János. ‘He was condemned in 1944 by the Nazis for hiding opponents of Hitler, remember? He never watched his tongue, that Christlike man; one day, I remember, he said on the radio that everyone knew what the T4 programme involved: it had forced the SS doctors to kill seven hundred thousand handicapped people, psychopaths, mongols, and the mad, both children and adults. That’s what he said and nobody believed him. Then came the war and the post-war period. Do you think he had the least intention of controlling his awkward tongue? Once the Nazis were finished he started criticising the communists: he said in public that their elections were a fraud, a total fraud, that they wanted to gag the church and get rid of parish priests. They arrested him in 1948, as if to show that … and packed him off like a parcel to the little village of Felsőpetény. But the funniest thing happened when a group of ÁVH officers went to fetch him and move him to secure accommodation. They were terrified he might be set free. Meanwhile a delegation from a revolutionary council arrived in the village with the same aim of taking the cardinal to secure accommodation. But that was not all. Immediately afterwards a third delegation arrived consisting of National Guard, commanded by Antal Pálinkás, also with the intention of making the cardinal safe. A hilarious situation, with some pulling the cardinal one way and some another. And he himself? He decided on the official group led by Major Antal Pálinkás, alias Pallavicini. As an Italian you should know that a branch of the Pallavicini family came to Budapest in 1700 and settled here. Did you know that?’