The Longest Pleasure (10 page)

'Don't you believe it, Alexander. These people are being whipped up by fascist agents. Oh, yes, we know about these things. We will return to camp and wait for orders.' He glanced at the young captain, smiled. 'You are disappointed?'

Galitsin shrugged. 'If you wish to return .. .'

'It is my duty to be with the regiment should there be trouble. And I would not wish it to be otherwise. But at the same time I must have accurate information as to what is going on in Buda. Do you think you could obtain such information for me?'

'Of course, Comrade Colonel.' Galitsin opened the door.

Colonel Evenssohn winked. 'Now, I wish you to be very careful, Alexander. Mobs are dangerous things, eh? Do not go into the midst of them, if you can avoid it. I would prefer you to interview one Magyar thoroughly than a dozen superficially. And do not attempt to return to the barracks tonight. Find a bed somewhere in town, and I will send a car to pick you up in the morning. On the corner over there.'

Galitsin stepped on to the pavement. 'Good night to you, Comrade Colonel. And thank you.' 'Take care, Alexander Petrovich.'

Galitsin saluted, watched the car drive into the distance. Colonel Evenssohn liked him. Because he was Red Army Chess Champion. This was a distinction for any regiment. And because he wore the Order of Glory, which was also distinction for the unit. And because he was a good officer.

A. P. Galitsin was a valuable man to have in your command, the sort of officer the ranks respected and would obey. Even in an unhappy situation like sitting heavily on this supposedly allied and supposedly friendly country, enjoying special shops and special whores. So Galitsin enjoyed all the perquisites of being the best officer in the regiment. Because no one, not even Evenssohn, knew about the night he had Iain on the cobbles with urine runnning down his legs. That episode had never got into his record. Captain Ascherin was dead, and Tigran Dus, for some reason of his own, had kept it quiet. He supposed he was the world's luckiest man, to be given two whole existences. One had ended that night, and the other had begun with a bang the very next day. A very loud bang.

He glanced at his watch. It was just after seven and Irena did not expect him until eight. He could cease to be a sham for an hour. He walked down the street, and the noise seethed around him, as if he were in the centre of a swarm of bees. Now he could see the radio building, a blaze of lights, and surrounded by people, all shouting and some screaming. But there were people close at hand, too. He was in the centre of a group of young men, who jostled him and pushed him, and then grinned at him. One of them slapped him on the shoulder. 'Do not be alarmed, Ivan. We have nothing aga
inst you. It is the bleeding Avo
that we hate.'

His Russian was quite good. 'What is happening?' Galitsin asked.

'We have sent a delegation into the building,' the man said. 'We wish our demands to be broadcast to the nation. We are not going to be fobbed off any longer.'

'They made Nagy address us just now,' said another man, also in Russian. 'But he could only manage a sentence.'

Galitsin sniffed. 'There has been tear gas here.'

'Oh, yes. The Avo tried to send us home with their little bombs. But we just threw them back. Oh, we are going to have action this night. You are going to have to go home, Ivan.'

'That would suit me well enough.' Galitsin pushed his way farther into the crowd. Except for Irena. He wondered what Michael Evenssohn, so sympathetic, so tolerant, would say to a request from his favourite junior officer to export a Hungarian whore back to Moscow.

But there was nothing more to be learned here, and he was wasting time. He made for a side street, ran into a group of people coughing and wiping their eyes, and discovered that his own were smarting; he had encountered an isolated pocket of the tear gas. Someone recognised his uniform, and made an uncomplimentary remark, and someone else aimed a sly kick at his feet. He stumbled, but did not fall, pushed through the crowd, reached the open space in front of the Museum Garden, and heard a shot.

V

Galitsin flattened himself on the pavement. The noise became a tremendous, screaming roar, as of a wounded animal, at once frightened and angry. But it came from several thousand throats, not just one. And now the shooting was general, coming from the windows of the radio building on the far side of the street, and from some workmen's huts close by. The mob surged away from Galitsin, and surged back again, as the fusillade was joined by the more sinister chatter of automatic weapons. He reached his feet, hurried towards the shelter of the garden. A score of young men were scrambling on to the high railings, waving their fists at the radio building, shouting defiance. A machine gun clattered, and they fell, like puppets knocked over at a coconut shy, scattering blood across the red roses. Galitsin had not seen death in such quantity for eleven years. The young men's places were taken by others. And they, too, fell in seconds.

Galitsin reached the side street, hurried down it, running now, towards the relatively empty spaces beyond. He-watched a car charging towards him. Others saw it too. With a half shriek, half moan, several hundred people converged on the street corner at the same time, running at the car. Galitsin took shelter in a doorway. The car braked, leapt forward again, struck a woman. She was spun round several times, and flung to the ground, blood dribbling from her neck, her left shoulder twisted and unmistakably shattered. Two men dragged her clear, while she howled with pain. The car door swung open, and a man emerged, wearing the uniform of the Avo. A group of young men closed around him, lifted him off the pavement and hurled him down again. He cried out in Magyar, and the sound faded into a choke. The group moved across the street, carrying and
hitting and bumping, and
growling;
occasionally a booted foot came into the air, but then a foot came up which wore only a sock.

Galitsin pressed himself into the doorway, his stomach revolving. For most of the crowd had remained by the car, and when the driver tried to get out, they forced him back inside, pushed the door shut, and leaned on it. Someone unscrewed the petrol cap at the rear, thrust in a lighted newspaper. The crowd scattered, one youth leaning on the door to the last possible second, while screams of anticipation and pleasure mingled with the firing. The man inside the car scrabbled at the door, thrust it open; from behind him there came a roar and a flash of light. The car dissolved into twisted metal, and the man was lost for a moment. Then he emerged, running, his clothes blazing from shoulder to heel; even his hair was on fire. He went towards the crowd, his hands turned outwards, and the crowd drew back from him, snaking away, laughing. It occurred to Galitsin that in some dreadful way this crowd had ceased to be an accumulation of people, and become instead one person, one monstrous, hysterical, destructive force.

The driver fell to his knees, his face blackened, the flames crawling up his clothing. The crowd commenced to dance and shout. Savages doing a ritual war dance. But they were all Hungarians, the man on the ground no less than his destroyers. And the man kneeling on the pavement was already dead, falling forward, his face disintegrating as it struck the ground. The other policeman was still alive, swinging from a lamp-post by his ankles, trouserless, while the crowd chanted beneath him, and threw stones, and reached up to scratch his face and strike his genitals.

But there were other people on the street, and the firing continued. A man stood opposite Galitsin's doorway, pointing. Galitsin's stomach rose up to collide with his heart, and his bowels dissolved. The old fear of imminent, unpleasant death was paralysing his system, and to be shot was infinitely preferable to being hung by the heels from a lamp-post and robbed of his manhood in the process. He threw his weight against the door behind him, but it was locked. He ran down the three steps, and along the pavement Someone emerged from the shadows and tripped him up. He was travelling so fast that he rolled over several times, found himself back on his knees, regained his feet, and was surrounded by thrusting, scratching, grabbing fingers, leering, hate-filled faces, gabbling voices. Sexes were unrecognisable, except by their clothes. Murder was rampant in their eyes. He recognised the word 'Ivan!' over and over again, as he was thrown against the wall by the sheer weight of numbers, trying to resist them without striking back, aware that his life was now worth nothing more than a caprice.

Fingers tore at his belt, ripped it away from his
waist
.
The mob gathered around the man who had taken the pistol, uttered a cheer as he waved it in the air, began to run back towards the radio building and the firing. Someone kicked Galitsin in the thigh, and he fell to his knees. But the crowd was already fading, all running behind the man with the gun. Only a girl remained, a very little girl, who should surely not be on the streets at eight o'clock in the evening. She stared at Alexander Galitsin solemnly for some seconds, and then spat in his face.

Kirsten Moeller hurried down the street. The rubber band had parted, and her hair strayed in the breeze. There was dirt on her face and blood on her hands.

She panted, and laughed, as she hurried. She greeted people, was greeted by them. She had become a familiar sight, in her white raincoat, over the past twenty-four hours. She was one of them. She was a friend from the West.

And she had killed. With her own hands she had dragged a policeman to his death, had stamped on his belly with her high heels. Now the real business of killing would begin, the killing of Russians. The heavy reports of tanks firing their cannon which came from behind her assured her of that.

She banged the street door, ran up the stairs, her heels clattering. How strange to go to war in high heels, to kill, dressed for the theatre. But that, too, made her a figure of distinction beside the shabby, down-at-heel Hungarians. She was jealous of her prerogatives.

The apartment was in darkness. She closed the door behind her, switched on the light, gazed at the bump in the bed. 'I thought you'd be at work.'

Irena raised the pillow, peered at her. 'I have stopped working. And I would not have gone out tonight, any way. Can't you hear the firing? I wish I knew what's happening.'

'The revolution is happening,' Kirsten said proudly.

Irena sat up. She had not dressed all day, and her flesh was a desert of reddened creases. 'Against the Russians? You are mad.'

Kirsten knelt before her travelling bag, took the automatic pistol from its wrapping inside a brassiere, the cartridges from the rolled stockings.

'But what
happened?'

Kirsten removed the magazine, pressed bullets into the spring as a mother might fill a bottle for her child. 'We met, as I said we would. Oh, it was tremendous. You should have been there, Irena. We sang songs and made speeches. Everyone wanted to make a speech. It was
1793
all over again. Wazyk was there, but he couldn't even get to the rostrum. Then we marched to the Parliament buildings to present our petitions again. There was the usual oily man there, fobbing us off with the usual placatory nonsense. Some of them went home, then. But the rest of us marched on the radio building itself, and demanded the right to broadcast to the nation. Oh, they tried the same tricks again. They allowed our delegation inside, and told them that the broadcast was going out, but it wasn't. They stood on the balcony and made speeches at us. They even had your hero, Nagy, make a speech at us, but he only managed a few words of trash. And all the while do you know what they were doing?'

'Calling out the Avo?'

'That's right. There were police in the building already, and others in the huts nearby. And they were trying to smuggle additional ar
ms and ammunition into them. Oh,
we saw through that. We seized one whole load.
Then
we
showed them a thing or two.'

'You
began the firing?'

Kirsten slapped the magazine back into the gun. "Who knows, sweetie. Somebody did. Somebody had to.' 'And the students were killed.'

'Some of them. And some of the Avo, too. And how they died. You should have been there.' She held out her hand. 'Avo blood.'

'Ugh! You should wash it'

'Never. Not until this is over, anyway.'

'Sometimes I think you are mad,' Irena said.

'Of course I am mad, sweetie. I went mad on the floor of that house over in Pest, when that Russian brute was beating me. And you went mad too, Irena. The difference between us is that while you decided to accept everything the world handed out, I decided I was going to do a little handing out of my own. Especially to the Ivans. They've joined in, you know. Their tanks are those deep bangs you hear.'

'And you are fighting tanks, too?
^’
'Of course.' 'With that thing?
^’

'We have tanks. Hungarian tanks. Army tanks.
They
are fighting for us.' She turned towards the door as the floorboard on the landing creaked.

Irena leapt off the bed and ran to the door. Kirsten caught her arm as she reached for the handle. 'Who is it?' she whispered.