The Fourth Estate (13 page)

Other than
watching light followed by darkness through the slit in the wall, and sharing
the one meal that was left for the prisoners every morning, there was no way of
counting the days. Every few hours the soldiers returned to remove more bodies,
until they were confident that only the fittest had survived. Lubji assumed
that in time he too must die, as that seemed to be the only way out of the
little prison. With each day that passed, his suit hung more loosely on his
body, and he began to tighten his belt, notch by notch.

Without warning,
one morning a group of soldiers rushed into the cell and dragged out those
prisoners who were still alive. T*hey were ordered to march along the corridor
and back up the stone steps to the courtyard.

When Lubji
stepped out into the morning sun, he had to hold his hand up to protect his
eyes. He had spent ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty days in that dungeon, and had
developed what the prisoners called “cat’s eyes.

And then he
heard the hammering. He turned his head to the left, and saw a group of
prisoners erecting a wooden scaffold. He counted eight nooses.

He would have
been sick, but there was nothing in his stomach to bring up. A bayonet touched
his hip and he quickly followed the other prisoners clambering into line, ready
to board the crowded lorries.

A laughing guard
informed them on the journey back into the city that they were going to honor
them with a trial before they returned to the prison and hanged every one of
them. Hope turned to despair, as once again Lubji assumed he was about to die.
For the first time he wasn’t sure if he cared.

The lorries came
to a standstill outside the courthouse and the prisoners were led into the building.
Lubji became aware that there were no longer any bayonets, and that the
soldiers kept their distance. Once inside the building, the prisoners were
allowed to sit on wooden benches in the well-lit corridor, and were even given
slices of bread on tin plates. Lubji became suspicious, and began to listen to
the guards as they chatted to each other. He picked up from different
conversations that the Germans were going through the motions of “proving” that
all the Jews were criminals, because a Red Cross observer from Geneva was
present in court that morning.

Surely, Lubji
thought, such a man would find it more than a coincidence that every one of
them was Jewish. Before he could think how to take advantage of this
information , a corporal grabbed him by the an-n and led him into the
courtroom. Lubji stood in the dock, facing an elderly judge who sat in a raised
chair in front of him. The trial-if that’s how it could be described-lasted for
only a few minutes. Before the judge passed the death sentence, an official
even had to ask Lubji to remind them of his name.

The tall, thin
young man looked down at the Red Cross observer seated on his right. He was
staring at the ground in front of him, apparently bored, and only looked up
when the death sentence was passed.

Another soldier
took Lubji’s arm and started to usher him out of the dock so that the next
prisoner could take his place. Suddenly the observer stood up and asked the
judge a question in a language Lubji couldn’t understand.

The judge
frowned, and turned his attention back to the prisoner in the dock.

“How old are
you?” he asked him in Hungarian.

“Seventeen,”
replied Lubji. The prosecuting counsel came forward to the bench and whispered
to the judge.

The judge looked
at Lubji, scowled, and said, “Sentence commuted to life imprisonment.” He
paused and smiled, then said, “Retrial in twelve months’ time.” The observer
seemed satisfied with his morning’s work, and nodded his approval.

The guard, who
obviously felt Lubji had been dealt with far too leniently, stepped forward,
grabbed him by the shoulder and led him back to the corridor. He was
handcuffed, marched out into the courtyard and hurled onto an open lorry. Other
prisoners sat silently waiting for him, as if he were the last passenger joining
them on a local bus.

The tailboard
was slammed closed, and moments later the ferry lurched forward. Lubji was
thrown onto the floorboards, quite unable to keep his balance.

He remained on
his knees and looked around. There were two guards on the truck, seated
opposite each other next to the tailboard. Both were clutching rifles, but one
of them had lost his right arm. He looked almost as resigned to his destiny as
the prisoners.

Lubji crawled
back toward the rear of the lorry and sat on the floorboards next to the guard
with two arms. He bowed his head and tried to concentrate. The journey to the
prison would take about forty minutes, and he felt sure that this would be his
last chance if he wasn’t to join the others on the gallows. But how could he
possibly escape, he pondered, as the lorry slowed to pass through a tunnel.
When they re-emerged, Lubji tried to recall how many tunnels there had been
between the prison and the courthouse. Three, perhaps four. He couldn’t be
certain.

As the lorry
drove through the next tunnel a few minutes later, he began to count slowly.
“One, two, three.” They were in complete darkness for almost four seconds. He
had one advantage over the guards for those few seconds: after his three weeks
in a dungeon, they couldn’t hope to handle themselves in the dark as well as he
could. Against that, he would have two of them to deal with. He glanced across
at the other guard. Well, one and a half.

Lubji stared
ahead of him and took in the passing terrain. He calculated that they must be
about halfway between the city and the jail. On the near side of the road
flowed a river. It might be difficult, if not impossible, to cross, as he had
no way of knowing how deep it was. On the other side, fields stretched toward a
bank of trees that he estimated must have been about three to four hundred
yards away.

How long would
it take for him to cover three hundred yards, with the movement of his arms
restricted? He turned his head to see if another tunnel was coming into sight,
but there was none, and Lubji became fearful that they had passed through the
last tunnel before the jail. Could he risk attempting to escape in broad
daylight? He came to the conclusion ~ hat he had little choice if there was no
sign of a tunnel in the next couple of miles.

Another mile
passed, and he decided that once they drove round the next bend, he would have
to make a decision. He slowly drew his legs Lip under his chin, and rested his
handcuffs on his knees. He pressed his spine firmly against the back of the
lorry and moved his weight to the tips of his toes.

Lubji stared
down the road as the lorry careered round the bend. He almost shouted
“Mazeltov!” when he saw the tunnel about five hundred yards away.

From the tiny
pinprick of light at the far end, he judged it to be at least a four-second
tunnel.

He remained on
the tips of his toes, tensed and ready to spring. He could feel his heart
beating so strongly that the guards must surely sense some imminent danger. He
glanced up at the two-armed guard as he removed a cigarette from an inside
pocket, lazily placed it in his mouth and began searching for a match. Lubji
turned his attention in the direction of the tunnel, now only a hundred yards
away. He knew that once they had entered the darkness he would have only a few
seconds.

Fifty yards...
forty... thirty... twenty... ten. Lubji took a deep breath, counted one, then
sprang up and threw his handcuffs around the throat of the two-armed guard,
twisting with such force that the German fell over the side of the lorry,
screaming as he hit the road.

The lorry
screeched to a halt as it skidded out of the far end of the tunnel. Lubji leapt
over the side and immediately ran back into the temporary safety of the
darkness. He was followed by two or three other prisoners. Once he emerged from
the other end of the tunnel, he swung right and charged into the fields, never
once looking back. He must have covered a hundred yards before he heard the
first bullet whistle above his head. He tried to cover the second hundred
without losing any speed, but every few paces were now accompanied by a volley
of bullets. He swerved from side to side. Then he heard the scream.

He looked back
and saw that one of the prisoners who had leapt out after him was lying
motionless on the ground, while a second was still running flat out, only yards
behind him. Lubji hoped the gun was being fired by the one-armed guard.

Ahead of him the
trees loomed, a mere hundred yards away. Each bullet acted like a starting
pistol and spurred him on as he forced an extra yard out of his trembling body.
Then he heard the second scream. This time he didn’t look back. With fifty
yards to go, he recalled that a prisoner had once told him that German rifles
had a range of three hundred yards, so he guessed he must be six or seven seconds
from safety.

Then the bullet
came crashing into his shoulder. The force of the impact pushed him on for a
few more paces, but it was only moments before he collapsed headlong into the
mud. He tried to crawl, but could only manage a couple of yards before he
finally slumped on his face. He remained head down, resigned to death.

Within moments
he felt a rough pair of hands grab at his shoulders.

Another yanked
him up by the ankles. Lubji’s only thought was to wonder how the Germans had
managed to reach him so quickly. He would have found out if he hadn’t fainted.

Lubji had no way
of knowing what time it was when he woke. He could only assume, as it was pitch
black, that he must be back in his cell awaiting execution. Then he felt the
excruciating pain in his shoulder. He tried to push himself up with the palms
of his hands, but he just couldn’t move. He wriggled his fingers, and was
surprised to discover that at least they had removed his handcuffs.

He blinked and tried
to call out, but could only manage a whisper that must have made him sound like
a wounded animal. Once again he tried to push himself up, once again he failed.
Fie blinked, unable to believe what he saw standing in front of him- A young
girl fell on her knees and mopped his brow with a rough wet rag. He spoke to
her in several languages, but she just shook her head. When she finally did say
something, it was in a tongue he had never heard before. Then she smiled,
pointed to herself and said simply, “Mari.”

He fell asleep.
When he woke, a morning sun was shining in his eyes; but this time he was able
to raise his head. He was surrounded by trees. He turned to his left and saw a
circle of colored wagons, piled high with a myriad of possessions. Beyond them,
three or four horses were cropping grass at the base of a tree. He turned in
the other direction, and his eyes settled on a girl who was standing a few
paces away, talking to a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder. For the
first time he became aware of just how beautiful she was.

When he called
Out, they both looked round. The man walked quickly over to Lubji’s side and,
standing above him, greeted him in his own language. “My name is Rudi,” he
said, before explaining how he and his little band had escaped across the Czech
border some months before, only to find that the Germans were still following
them. They had to keep on the move, as the master race considered gypsies
inferior even to Jews.

Lubji began to
fire questions at him: “Who are you.) Where am l?” And, most important, “Where
are the Germans?” He stopped only when Mari-who, Rudi explained, was his
sister-returned with a bowl of hot liquid and a hunk of bread. She kneeled
beside him and began slowly spooning the thin gruel into his mouth. She paused
between mouthfuls, occasionally offering him a morsel of bread, as her brother
continued to tell Lubji how he had ended tip with them. Rudi had heard the
shots, and had run to the edge of the forest thinking the Germans had
discovered his little band, only to see the prisoners sprinting toward him. All
of them had been shot, but Lubji had been close enough to the forest for his
men to rescue him.

The Germans had
not pursued them once they had seen him being carried off into the forest.
“Perhaps they were fearful of what they might come up against, although in
truth the nine of us have only two rifles, a pistol, and an assortment of
weapons from a pitchfork to a fish knife,” Rudi laughed. I suspect they were
more anxious about losing the other prisoners if they went in search of you.
But one thing was certain: the moment the sun came up, they would return in
great numbers. That is why I gave the . order that once the bullet had been
removed from your shoulder, we must move on and take you with us.”

“How will I ever
repay you?” murmured Lubji.

When Mari had
finished feeding him, two of the gypsies raised Lubji gently up onto the
caravan, and the little train continued its journey deeper into the forest. On
and on they went, avoiding villages, even roads, as they distanced themselves
from the scene of the shooting. Day after day Mari tended Lubji, until
eventually he could push himself up.

She was
delighted by how quickly he learned to speak their language. For several hours
he practiced one particular sentence he wanted to say to her. Then, when she
came to feed him that evening, he told her in fluent Romany that she was the
most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She blushed, and ran away, not to return
again until breakfast.