Train to Budapest

by Dacia Maraini

  ‘No,’ admits Amara, amused.

  ‘Prince Antonio, born in Budapest, speaks the roughest urban dialect, can you believe it, he didn’t even know where Italy was, he considered himself a Magyar, but like a real aristocrat he was ashamed of his princely name and so decided to call himself Antal Pálinkás, a distinctly proletarian name. A huge joke. But that name has brought him luck since, as a proletarian Magyar fighting the Soviets, he has been promoted to colonel by Nagy who sent him to rescue the cardinal, for which the Church will be eternally grateful to him.’

  Dr János has a fine proud head, smooth thick brown hair that slips over his ears, light-blue eyes, and an impressive nose with a bump in the middle that lends him an air of strength and decisiveness. But his smile is that of a sad little boy.

  The old Orion is now broadcasting Verdi’s Requiem which explodes in the Wilkowsky kitchen with majestic power. The liberation of the cardinal brings in its wake vaguely religious music and even prayers, inconceivable up to a few days earlier.

  ‘The political prisoners have been set free!’ a cheerful voice announces breathlessly, ‘the political prisoners have been set free!’

  ‘Who knows how many will now pass themselves off as political prisoners,’ remarks Dr Szabó sourly.

  Amara asks him if he would like to stay to lunch. Ferenc has found a packet of pasta in his miraculous cupboard and Amara has offered to serve it according to a special recipe of her own. Difficult, because they have no oil or butter and only a little lard, no tinned tomatoes and only a few old peppers. Can you make sauce for spaghetti from just lard and peppers?

  Dr Szabó decides to stay. Tempted by the spaghetti which reminds him of a journey to Italy many years ago. He was a child, he explains, and his mother, a pianist, forced him to sit long hours at the piano. Meanwhile he secretly spied on his father, a doctor. One day, without letting his mother see him, he followed his father to the hospital and saw him go down to the basement where dead bodies were kept. He climbed up on a low wall to be able to see through a small window and watched his father, sheathed in white with two pairs of green gloves, bending over the naked body of a boy and dissecting it. Instead of putting him off medicine for life, the sight of this lugubrious operation thrilled him, and the next day he firmly told his mother that he had no intention of being a pianist as she wanted, but would follow his father and be a doctor.

  And so it happened. And he was satisfied, even if he suffered a good deal. In the war he’d had to care for hundreds of wounded men, watching them die before his eyes. Among other things he too had been hit, in the calf. He pulls up his mud-splashed trouser leg to show the friends an ugly scar cutting across the middle of his right leg. He smiles contentedly. And asks for another cigarette, but there aren’t any more in the house.

  ‘Then give me those dog-ends,’ he says, eyeing an ashtray with a number of twisted stumps in it.

  With his skilful hairy white hands he opens the cigarette ends, lays aside the lacerated paper and with the balls of his thumbs gathers together the remaining tobacco. Then he pulls a steel cigarette case from an internal jacket pocket, snaps it open and extracts some small white rectangles. He smooths one out, pours on the scorched tobacco, rolls it with consummate mastery and wraps it, finally closing the paper with a touch of his tongue.

  ‘Done,’ he says with satisfaction.

  Hans reaches him a burning wax vesta. He draws in a good mouthful, half-closing his eyes, then passes the long dry cigarette to the others. Each in turn grasps the slender paper cylinder, luxuriously inhaling the acrid smoke. All except Amara who has never smoked. In fact, she thinks these miasmas in the tiny kitchen with its hermetically sealed windows will make her eyes weep. But what can she do?

  The spaghetti is ready and everyone looks for somewhere to sit. Three find room on Amara’s camp bed, two take a chair each and one makes do with the bathroom stool.

  The spaghetti with lard and pepper sauce is excellent. The friends eat eagerly and happily. Ferenc has found a bottle of white wine in his miraculous cupboard. It has no labels and its colour, something between topaz and verdegris, is rather disquieting. But Hans pours it liberally; a dense wine with a strong flavour of sulphur.

  ‘From the vineyards along the Tisza River, a Tokay that must be at least five years old.’

  The table is cheerful, despite the bullet in Tadeusz’s side, despite Horvath’s cavernous cough, despite the uncertainties of the future. No more shooting is heard from the street. And the radio announces the good news that the schools will open again in a few days. The shops will be full of new stock. The delegation to the United Nations has been received with all the respect it deserves. Will Hungary’s request for neutrality be accepted? The world is looking on. That is what everyone is saying.

  ‘A little country like Hungary, who could ever have thought it! Hurling itself like David against Goliath,’ says Tadeusz, knocking back a mouthful of that cold wine with its taste of resin.

  ‘We’ve done it, all credit to this cussed population with its hard horns,’ says Hans, drumming his fingertips on the table.

  ‘It could never have happened in Stalin’s time, I can tell you. He would have squashed us like lice. But now, after Khrushchev’s speech to the Twentieth Congress, they’ve become more careful. They’ve drawn in their claws like cats when they want to be cuddled.’ So says Dr János Szabó, using his fingers to help get his mouth round the spaghetti which is escaping in all directions, covering his hands and cheeks with grease.

  ‘No doubt Khrushchev is still consulting his socialist friends. And Mao? Do you think he will find the words to ask him straight out: where is it written that one socialist country may attack another socialist country? And Tito? That wily fellow would never publicly approve of an act of repression, since everyone has been able to establish, even from the work of international photographers, that it’s not a mere question of half a dozen fascists in the square, but of the whole Magyar people, headed by the very workers that all these people hold in such veneration? But Tito will intrigue in secret; I don’t trust his tail, I don’t trust his teeth, and I don’t trust the claws he’s learned to sharpen out of sight of those other nasty cats hunting for mice to swallow at a single gulp.’

  ‘Don’t forget, the workers and peasants are the angriest. How can they set themselves against people who hold them in the palm of their hands?’

  ‘What about the writers and musicians, the film makers and painters?’

  ‘No one gives a damn about them.’

  ‘But there are others: general employees, housewives, doctors, nurses, teachers; haven’t you seen them on the streets?’

  ‘They can’t possibly set themselves against everybody!’

  ‘But I’m sure Tito will discourage that dwarfish Russian from taking despotic initiatives. He will have told him, “You’ve denounced Stalin for his authoritarian policies, and now you want to behave in the same way”.’

  ‘If you denounce the cynical policies of a tyrant, you can’t yourself play the same game.’

  ‘But even the French workers have gone on strike dozens of times in our support!’

  ‘And even the Italians … well, some of the Italians, have taken our side.’

  ‘Togliatti.’

  ‘He’s not on our side.’

  ‘Togliatti always sides with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.’

  ‘Yet they’ve seen and heard what’s happening. There are wonderful photographs.’

  ‘The world wants peace. There has been too much war; now it’s time for peace and peace there will be.’

  ‘So you trust that scum?’

  ‘Who d’you mean?’

  ‘Who? Who? Those who’ve been holding us under water without letting us breathe for all these years.’

  ‘Don’t forget, they freed us from the Nazis.’

  ‘How extraordinary it was to see them emerging from the mists one morning in 1945. Huge, creaking and powerful. They came to free a people br
utalised by the Nazis. How we’d longed for them. They advanced with their red flags that we all trusted. Just imagine what a vision!’

  ‘And now they’re ready to crush us in the name of communism.’

  ‘But what do we really want, that’s the point?’

  ‘We all want our voices to be heard, not just one voice, that seems clear to me.’

  ‘The dictatorship of the proletariat, does anyone still believe in that?’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘The single party. Do you believe in that?’

  ‘I don’t, no.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  ‘And the great leader whose portrait peers at you from every wall and whose statue stands in every square … Do you believe in him?’

  ‘Powerful leaders usually begin with enthusiasm and generosity, but end up as fools, often even mad, neurotic and suspicious.’

  ‘Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely … who said that?’

  ‘It must have been your Pascal.’

  ‘No, no, not Pascal!’

  ‘Was Stalin mad?’

  ‘What can you expect of a man, who shoots his best generals at the height of a war? Who has his best friends tortured till they confess to being spies? Who has all his country’s best doctors strangled because they have the temerity to protest about the neglect of the hospitals; you can’t say such a man wasn’t mad!’

  ‘All dreams! You’re all dreaming, dear friends, you’ve forgotten partition. They’ve divided the world: one part on this side, the other on that. We are on this side and cannot be on that side. Can’t you see that neither the United Nations, nor the whole of America headed by the United States, can do anything to save us from the clutches of the Soviets?’

  They all turn towards Dr Szabó, thinking that perhaps, after all, he is right. But may we not hope for once?

  ‘And now, Tadeusz, let’s have another look at your wound.’

  Tadeusz lifts his sweater. The wound is still open. János takes a close look. He makes a grimace. He says he’ll pass by tomorrow with more suitable instruments and they’ll eject that damn bullet from the hole where it has hidden itself.

  ‘Now get some sleep, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. It’s getting colder. The streets are going to freeze. Maybe it’ll even snow a bit.’

  Dr Szabó explains in his melodious voice that he likes snow because it refines everything. But of course it soon turns to slush and becomes slippery and sticks to things. Well, now he really is going. He says goodbye to everyone and thanks them for the delicious spaghetti. He advises Horvath to stay indoors. Goodnight, all. He moves towards the front door with slow steps. A last goodnight, a smile, and he’s gone.

  49

  At five in the morning Amara wakes thinking, oh God, an earthquake! Her camp bed is shaking, and so are the windows and the whole building. She gets up, terrified. Going towards the front door she runs into Hans, who is quickly pulling his sweater over his pyjamas.

  ‘An earthquake?’

  ‘No, tanks.’

  ‘Tanks?’

  ‘Look out of the window. But don’t let yourself be seen. Turn off the light. Wake Horvath, wake Tadeusz. They’re invading the city.’

  From outside comes a dull continuous rumbling roar, as if an avalanche is falling on the streets of the centre. Even a suddenly broken dyke emptying tons of water and mud on the poor sleeping city would not produce a comparable sound, dull and terrible, making the pavements shake and windows rattle. From the window Amara sees a line of tanks advancing down Baross utca, their guns pointing straight up at windows on a level with their own.

  Horvath is behind her, hair on end, struggling for breath, watching the street in astonishment. He daren’t even cough. A moment later Ferenc comes too, his violin clutched to his chest and his eyes puffy with sleep and fear. Then Tadeusz, holding his side, pale and silent.

  Hans runs to switch on the radio. ‘Attention, attention. This is your Prime Minister, Imre Nagy. At dawn today the Soviet army launched an attack on the capital with the obvious aim of overturning the legal Hungarian democratic government. Our troops are fighting back, and the government is at its post. I want the Hungarian people and the whole world to know this.’ A disturbing silence follows, as if the radio has been struck dumb. Hans twiddles the knob repeatedly but there is nothing else to be heard, no signals or voices or music. A minute later Nagy’s desperate plea is repeated in French, English, Russian, Polish, Czech and German.

  Outside it is still dark. The friends look at each other, disconsolate. What can they do? ‘Stay indoors!’ Now the radio is speaking again, but it is not clear whose voice they are hearing. ‘Don’t move. Don’t shoot. Let’s shed no blood!’ The Sabre Dance follows. But only briefly; the music is interrupted by a solemn voice: ‘This is Free Radio Kossuth. Don’t surrender to the tanks. Try to set them on fire. A rag soaked in petrol thrown from your window will do. We must not surrender! We shall sell our bodies dear!’ The sound of cannons firing can be heard in the background. The voice continues undaunted. ‘A representative of the Union of Writers has just joined us, out of breath. He would like to read out an appeal just formulated by the Petőfi Circle: “To every writer, every scholar, every Academy and Scientific Society, and to the intellectuals of the whole world: there isn’t a moment to lose. Today, 4 November, Soviet tanks have invaded the centre of Budapest. Tell the whole world that they are destroying us. Help Hungary!”’

  ‘I have to go and see,’ says Hans, heading for the door. Tadeusz grabs his elbow.

  ‘You’re not leaving here.’

  ‘I must see what’s happening, Father.’

  ‘Isn’t it enough for you that I’ve been hit?’

  ‘By some damned ÁVH sniper.’

  ‘Whoever it was, the bullet’s still there.’

  ‘Does it hurt a lot?’

  ‘No, just a twinge.’

  ‘Well, I want to have a look. I’ll be back.’

  ‘Please don’t go!’

  But Hans is obstinate, and once he gets something into his head it’s not easy to stop him. Watching him go, Tadeusz sits down abruptly on a chair with a kind of sob. Amara knows he is more ill than he wants people to believe. She tries to get him to lie down on her camp bed. But no one wants to sit, let alone lie. Horvath is walking backwards and forwards with the usual blanket over his shoulders and his feet bare again even though Amara has carefully darned his stockings. Indomitable feet that can never be confined within ordinary shoes. Ferenc is holding his violin against his chest as if it were a child he must save. Tadeusz, at the window, is watching what is happening outside in the street.

  The line of tanks is endless, their menacing cannons pointing upwards. Aimed at closed windows. Slow and sinister they advance, shaking the streets. Enormous blunt steel brutes, hermetically sealed, heading across town for the heart of the city.

  A free radio voice shouts out their progress: ‘They are advancing from Váci Street, from Andrássy, from Üllői, from Baross, from Rákozi, from Lenin, from Pater, from Soroksari, moving towards the centre, thousands of them, citizens beware!’

  Amara is about to prepare some hot food when the shooting begins. The tanks bombard buildings indiscriminately to right and left, to create panic and terror. But incredibly, there is a lively response from roofs and windows. The rattling of Kalashnikovs can be heard. The dull thump of mortars echoes from every street. Every now and then a tank is hit by a stone wrapped in a burning rag soaked in petrol. Most of these improvised bombs slide off the sides of the iron beasts and end up on the wet pavement. But one or two manage to hit the engine and start a fire. The tank burns, and no sooner does the driver try to get out than he is seen from the roofs and hit with precision by a marksman. The other tanks reply by firing at the high windows. Plaster flies, amid an explosion of windows and screech of broken hinges.

  The only thing to do is to run to earth in Tadeusz’s bedroom whi
ch overlooks the courtyard and wait there for it to end. Shooting can be heard from the outskirts where the big factories are, and from the centre: from Parliament Square, from the Corvin cinema which has been an assembly point for the insurgents, and from Party headquarters in Köztársaság Square, scene of the fiercest fighting. Cannons and howitzers, perhaps hand grenades too. There seems no end to the deafening, obscene noise.

  But a voice that seems familiar calls them back to the kitchen, to the great Orion that is now speaking with a different note, the voice of the victor.

  ‘Calling the Hungarian people: the Revolutionary Government of workers and peasants has now been re-established. The movement that exploded on 23 October had the noble aim of eliminating the last vestiges of the crimes committed against Party and People by Rákosi and his friends and of defending the independence and sovereign power of the nation. The weakness of the Nagy regime and the growth of counter-revolutionary elements infiltrating the popular movement were endangering our socialist accomplishments, our People’s State, the power of our workers and peasants and the very existence of our country.’