by Derek Hansen
We thought the fighting was over and that, against all odds, the uprising had succeeded. We thought we were too late to take up arms and contribute. Like most people, we gathered around radios to hear Radio Free Budapest. It broadcast the demands and conditions for a free Hungary. Acceptance of the conditions was a prerequisite for a truce with the Soviets. The radio station kept people informed of the political manoeuvrings and directed armed volunteers to trouble spots. It told people where food was being distributed. It served so many purposes in a city where communications had been devastated. But Radio Free Budapest also relayed rumours.
Some of the speculation was wild. One minute the Americans were coming to save us, another it was NATO. But only one rumour carried any conviction and it was the one we least wanted to believe. Despite all their assurances that they were leaving peacefully, the Soviets had begun massing tanks and troops on the eastern, northern and southern borders. It was apparent that Hungary’s glorious days of freedom were drawing to a close. We knew the Americans weren’t coming to save us and we knew the Russians would not tolerate such a rent in the iron curtain. We knew Budapest and Hungary were doomed.
For years Nyers and I had been kept in isolation and denied all contact with the world. For us, Radio Free Budapest symbolised everything we were fighting for. It didn’t take a genius to realise the station would be one of the first targets the Russians would attack. We decided there and then to help fight for its survival.
The Russians opened fire on Budapest at four in the morning on November 4. In 1945 I had witnessed the ferocity of the battle between the Germans and the Russians over the occupation of Budapest. This time the fire was all one-sided. The Russians had artillery and tanks. We had small boys and girls with bottles filled with petrol. We also had a population armed with rifles and a few machine guns, but rifles and machine guns could not stop tanks. From the windows of Radio Free Budapest we saw boys run out from buildings to drop Molotov cocktails down the turrets of tanks and directly into their petrol tanks. We saw tanks destroyed along with their crews, but we also saw young boys blown up with the targets they’d attacked, immolated by their own bottles of petrol or gunned down by supporting tanks. The courage and sacrifice of those children will live in Hungarian history for ever, but not all the children in Budapest could stop the Russian tanks.
Shells exploded in the radio building but I remained at my post, firing non-stop while a girl of about twelve reloaded rifles for me. But our efforts were more symbolic than effective. Nyers called to me and pointed out a group of four tanks which had halted in a nearby square. The barrels of their guns were swivelling directly towards our position.
‘Run!’ he said. ‘Run and don’t stop until you reach Austria.’
I didn’t need telling twice. There was no way I was ever going back to prison. I preferred death to prison but I didn’t want to die either. I dropped my rifle and ran. Others did the same. It was then that I noticed the unattended microphone in the studio. I didn’t know if it was switched on or not but I had seen others send messages and wanted to send one myself. I wanted to tell the world that I was alive and trying to escape to Austria, in the hope that somehow Gabi or Tibor would hear of it. I grabbed hold of the microphone and started speaking. But how could I say I was heading for Austria? I had to assume the remaining AVO would be monitoring every word spoken on Radio Free Budapest. Istvan Kiraly would learn of my intentions. I decided to mislead him. When I gave my name I said Milos Heyman from Sarospatak, in the hope that he’d conclude I was heading back there. It never occurred to me that in trying to mislead Istvan I was making a catastrophic mistake.
The building was falling down around me as I ran. I never saw Nyers again or the twelve-year-old girl who’d reloaded my rifles. I hope they had the good sense to run too. A piece of shrapnel clipped the back of my head but I hardly felt it. All I knew was that my hair was sticky with blood. When I reached the street it was filled with rubble from collapsed and burning buildings. The smoke and noise was terrifying, but I knew where I was and knew I was heading west. As I left the city centre I heard a car coming up behind me, weaving around the rubble, tooting its horn. I thought it was the AVO after me. In all the chaos of Budapest I thought the AVO had heard my broadcast and sent a car after me! I turned around to see if I could outrun it or try to escape by running through a damaged building. The car was a Mercedes and there was a French flag flying from one of the side windows. The car was full of reporters, French, German and English. They tried to drive around me but I blocked their way.
‘Take me,’ I begged them. ‘Take me out of Budapest!’
The reporters argued heatedly. The driver apologised and said it was too risky for them. So I stood in front of their car and refused to move. The reporters became more agitated. The English reporter offered to give up his seat for me.
‘Okay,’ they said, ‘lie down in the footwell of the rear seat.’
They put their coats and equipment on top of me and told me that Budapest was ringed by tanks and the Russians were stopping anyone from entering or leaving. They said they were going to try to pass me off as another reporter and to keep my mouth shut and pretend to be unconscious. By this stage the back of my head was covered in blood. At least their ruse would have some substance.
We drove straight through the Russian lines without being stopped. I think the Russians were happy not to have foreign reporters witness the fall of Budapest. But we knew there’d be more Russians ahead and more roadblocks. It was only a matter of time before we’d be stopped and, in all likelihood, my flimsy disguise would be revealed for what it was. I asked the reporters to stop on a quiet piece of road where there were trees for cover and let me out. That started another argument, with the English reporter insisting that they should take me all the way and smuggle me across the border. Even I knew that would only get us all arrested. They dropped me off just east of Gyor and gave me some bread and cheese which was the last of their food. After watching them drive away I circled wide around Gyor and headed for the border south of Sopron.
The countryside was swarming with people trying to escape. I met up with a family of five, a husband and wife and three small children. She was carrying one child on her back while her husband was struggling with the remaining two. They were exhausted and on the verge of giving up. Weak as I was, I took one of the children and some of their bags. Unwittingly, I also took over command. I became their Tibor. I realised that we needed rest and food more than anything and marched up to the door of a farmhouse. I asked the farmer if we could hide in his barn until it was dark.
‘Hide,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask. I never saw you.’
He asked me about the revolution and I told him it was over. He closed his eyes momentarily and nodded. It was easy to imagine this scene being played out all over the countryside. Once again Hungary would be forced to do penance, but most Hungarians believed their country’s penance was disproportionate to its sins. The farmer gave me some bread and some stew for the children.
That kindness was repeated all the way to the border. For one brief moment the flag of freedom had flown over Hungary and the peasants were determined to help those who had put it there. Young men volunteered to guide us through the lines where they knew the patrols were least frequent. It snowed the night we crossed over into Austria. Border patrols had been stepped up but the storm limited their activities. I crossed into Austria on my hands and knees with a little boy stuffed down the front of my jacket to keep him warm. He slept right through the night. We made it, and for that I had to thank my months on the run with Tibor.
Even on that terrible night, in the snow and cold, ordinary Austrian citizens were patrolling their side of the border looking for people like us so they could help us. They gave us blankets and hot coffee and took us to the Red Cross. We were too cold and exhausted to feel any elation over our newfound freedom. The family I had helped were sent to a refugee hostel. I was sent to hospital with pneumonia.
I had dreamed of freedom. Freedom had always been more than just an ideal but something tangible, something I would feel with my heart and every fibre of my body. In my dreams it had always been something uplifting and triumphant. And, in my dreams, Gabi had always been by my side. But Gabi was not by my side and neither was Tibor. I had no idea where in the world they were or how I could ever begin to look for them. I felt as if I had escaped into a vacuum. I had lost my home, my country and the flesh off my body. I was a homeless, stateless skeleton with pneumonia in a hospital where I knew nobody and, apart from the occasional interpreter, nobody even spoke my language.
Milos slumped back into his chair. He took a sip of his coffee but it had long grown cold.
‘You know, Neil,’ he said, ‘on the first day of my story, during our first break for coffee, I said how much I envied you. How I envied the fact that you will never know fear as I have, never suffer my deprivations, never be in a situation where life and death stand as equals and not care which of them the next day brings. When I said that, I was thinking of Vac.’
Neil nodded, unsure how to respond.
‘I envy the fact that you, in this lucky country, never had to go through what I went through.’
‘But you escaped and made your way to Austria. You survived. All credit to you.’
‘Yes, I survived. But what you call baggage and I call my past does not acknowledge borders. I’d escaped from Hungary, but not from the horrors, not from consequences and not from obligations.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Neil.
‘I did nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘That’s right, Neil. I did nothing. For two weeks I did nothing. Then they told me I had a visitor. In the space of minutes I went from boundless joy to despair. It was then that I learned the tragic consequences of my mistake.’
‘I’ll get Gancio to bring you another coffee,’ said Lucio.
‘Let’s all have another,’ said Ramon. ‘Gabriella, I take it you are going to continue the story? You are going to tell us about this mistake?’
‘Yes, Ramon. Milos has convinced me to share the telling. And coffee is a good idea.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Milos’s desperate message on Radio Free Budapest affected Tibor and I differently. Of course we were both stunned at first but, once we’d got over the shock of hearing Milos’s voice and discovering that he was still alive, we were overjoyed. But we were also frightened out of our wits. We could hear the battle raging, hear the explosion of shells and the last desperate pleas for the West to intervene. We looked at each other in horror. I could not imagine how anyone could survive such a bombardment. At the very moment we learned my Milos was still alive it seemed we were about to lose him again. It was so unfair. Suddenly, Radio Free Budapest ceased transmitting. Both Tibor and I knew what that meant but Tibor refused to believe it also meant the end of Milos.
‘I taught him how to survive,’ he said fiercely. ‘He is alive, I know he is. He has survived the Russians before. He can survive them again.’
I knew Tibor was voicing hope more than conviction, but that is what I also wanted to believe and believe with all my heart. I hoped desperately that Tibor was right, that my Milos was still alive. Can a few words revive a love, bring it back stronger and deeper after so many years? Of course they can! Those few words took me back to Aunt Klari’s, to the nights when Milos slept by my bed and his love was all that stood between me and insanity. They took me back to my last Christmas in Hungary, when Milos gave me my father’s bracelet and I realised how much I loved him. People say love conquers all. Maybe it does. All I know is, hearing his voice snapped me out of the stupor I’d descended into. Suddenly there was something in my life more important than me. Suddenly I had something to live for.
But I was alone in my euphoria. Tibor became increasingly agitated. During all the years we’d lived in Australia we had believed Milos was dead and had made no attempt to find or help him. The news that Milos was still alive delighted Tibor but also devastated him. He believed he’d failed his brother and the duty of care his father had entrusted to him. He turned on himself for not having made sure Milos was dead, for not having made enquiries, for not having helped Milos when it was obvious he’d needed help. He paced around the house and refused to settle. He ignored the coffees I made for him. Later that morning he dashed out of the house without saying where he was going. He returned that evening with two air tickets to London.
‘We have to find him,’ he said. ‘After all this time, we have to find him! We must do this even if we do nothing else with our lives.’
At that stage we were cashed up. Tibor had sold all his businesses except his Jaguar dealership and he instructed his solicitor to sell that in our absence in case we needed more money. Five days later we took off for England on a Qantas flying boat. There I was, too scared to leave my house, sitting on an aeroplane. The flight to London was prohibitively expensive but even so we were lucky to get two seats. People had cancelled, fearing that Europe was once more on the brink of a war. From England we flew to Austria. Tibor was determined that no expense would be spared in our quest to bring Milos back.
The problem was, while we’d heard from Milos we’d heard too little. Tibor read more into Milos’s words than were ever intended. Milos had mentioned Sarospatak and Tibor convinced himself it was Milos’s way of telling us where to find him. If he’d stopped to think, he would have realised that Milos would never risk going back to Sarospatak, but he didn’t stop and he wouldn’t listen. He was determined to make up for everything that had happened to Milos from the time he’d persuaded Milos and me to escape from Hungary with him. Only a truly heroic act could compensate for the years in which Milos had been abandoned. Tibor planned to cross back into Hungary and make his way to Sarospatak and was deaf to any argument.
I didn’t argue too hard, I must confess. I wanted my Milos back, whatever it took. I would have agreed to anything, no matter how dangerous or foolhardy. There was no stopping Tibor anyway, his mind was made up. It had taken almost a week to get to England and another two days to get a flight to Vienna. We were told that the telephone system in Budapest had been destroyed, but Budapest isn’t the whole of Hungary. Tibor kept ringing around until he found a line that was working and somebody he knew answered it. That person got a message to Endre Benke.
Benke managed to call us back at our hotel. He was adamant that Tibor should not return to Hungary. He offered to send people to Sarospatak on our behalf to find Milos if he was there. But Tibor wouldn’t listen. Benke told him to try all the refugee hostels first, but again Tibor wouldn’t listen. He felt he’d lost too much time flying over. He was worried that Milos would think we hadn’t heard his message. He feared that Milos would despair of ever being rescued. But in hindsight, we know the real reason Tibor insisted on going back. It was the risk. The thrill of the danger. That was what had been missing from his life in Australia. That was why he hadn’t settled. Tibor needed to stand on the edge and look over one last time.
Benke arranged for Tibor to meet with contacts who could smuggle him back into Hungary. He left that night with his pockets stuffed full of English pounds and American dollars. I kissed him goodbye and begged him to take care but I don’t think he even heard me. He’d reverted to the Tibor who had come back to us from Budapest. Only his mission to rescue Milos mattered. Nothing else. Not even me.
He left me in Vienna by myself. A woman who for eight years had been too scared to venture outside to the corner shop. He left me alone to cope in that strange city and, to my utter surprise, that is what I did. Perhaps the sound of all the German-speaking voices awakened something in me and I drew upon the survival instincts I’d developed in the camps. Benke had told Tibor to try the refugee camps and that was what I decided to do.
There was no way I could find my way across town to the relief agencies alone, nor hope to communicate successfully once I’d got there. So I did what Tibor should have done t
he instant we arrived in Vienna: I made my problem the hotel manager’s problem. He was most sympathetic and placed a young woman who spoke English at my disposal. I sat with her all morning while she phoned around the hostels and aid agencies. The Austrians, like the Germans, are good record-keepers but even their resources had been stretched by the sheer numbers of Hungarians who had used the uprising as an opportunity to escape. But my young woman was polite and thorough. By lunch time we knew Milos was not registered at any of the refugee hostels. ‘Have you tried the Red Cross?’ one man asked. My helper suggested we ring the Red Cross after lunch.
She was calm, my young woman, calm, patient and thorough and I thought I should try to be like her. I wasn’t anxious or desperate. I expected my search for Milos to take days, if not weeks, and even then I did not feel confident of success. Tibor’s obsession with going to Sarospatak had almost convinced me that he would find Milos there. Tibor was my strength and Tibor was not often wrong.
The young woman and I ate open sandwiches and salad and drank a glass of wine each. I talked about Sydney and our beautiful harbour. I told her about kangaroos and koalas, cockatoos and lorikeets. The young woman was fascinated. After lunch we went straight back to her office and she dialled the Red Cross.
‘Yes,’ they said, ‘we know the whereabouts of Milos Heyman.’