Train to Budapest (37 page)

Meanwhile the boy with amputated legs has died from loss of blood. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. It is still dripping through the mattress forming a pool that is growing darker and darker. Amara tries not to look at the boy, who has died in silence, but with his face contracted by the strain of fighting the pain. His neck muscles are tense cords and his closed fists lie abandoned by his sides.

Horvath has swallowed his soup. He asks if there’s anything else. But that’s all the supper the hospital can allow the sick.

Time to go. Soon they’ll be closing the doors. Even if the closing is merely symbolic because at all hours of the night ambulances arrive, and even tricycles like the one she saw in Corvin Lane, unloading the more or less severely wounded.

‘I really am hungry,’ says Horvath in her ear when she bends down to kiss him goodnight.

‘Tomorrow I’ll bring you some bread I’ve made myself. It’s a bit flat, but edible even so.’

‘Will you bring me a little sugar too? Here they give us tea without sugar.’

‘If I can find any.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t. In the whole of Budapest there’s no more than a teaspoonful of the stuff. In my opinion the Russkies are trying to make the point that without them we’re screwed.’

At that moment the door opens and two elderly women come in dragging by the arms a Russian soldier with his uniform in rags. Blood is draining from his nose and mouth. His head is thrown back. His hair is short and blond like ears of corn and his head is that of a child.

‘What’s this one doing here,’ shouts the nurse György, known to all for his rough manners, ‘we haven’t enough room for our own people. Take him back where you found him!’

‘But he’s only a little boy! He needs help!’

‘I’ll never treat a Soviet soldier. Just let him die.’

‘Don’t be such a swine, György. Have pity!’ says one of the
women, drying hands wet with blood on the corners of the big squared scarf that covers her head.

‘Do they have any pity for us when they go shooting in our houses? Do they have pity when they occupy our streets with their damned tanks?’

‘It’s not his fault! He’s only a child and God knows where he comes from!’

‘Just leave him there and I’ll have a look in a minute.’

46

Next morning Horvath unexpectedly returns to the flat. Amara opens the door and sees him before her. The same ankle-length trousers, the same dark-blue beret, the same sparse white hair over neck and shoulders.

‘But you have to be cured then!’

‘They needed the bed. Sent me away.’

‘We’ll look after you. Considering what they gave you …’

‘I’m sorry. But I really didn’t know where to go.’

Tadeusz teases him, affectionately draping the blanket round his shoulders and making him a cup of dark and tasteless Chinese tea. Ferenc has been lucky enough to find half a kilo of sugar.

‘Please put in plenty.’

‘How many spoonfuls – two, three, four?’

‘Ten. I’ve seen too many people die in the last few days. Let me console myself with a little sugar, I seem to have cemeteries for eyes.’

Although old Tadeusz says nothing and is as polite as ever, Amara feels communal life is getting strenuous for the two owners of the flat. It is getting more difficult daily to find enough food for everyone. The house is always messy and dirty. It’s impossible to find wood for the stove. Coal is expensive and it’s getting colder. Ferenc has had the idea of stopping the draughts pouring in through the rickety old windows by forcing rolls of cotton wool into the cracks. Effective, but it means you can’t open the windows. The result is a stuffy stagnant smell that hits you when you come in from outside. How can five people live in such a tiny space?

Amara discusses it with Hans who agrees they should leave. But how can they without permits?

‘How about trying again with that bald man at the Béke hotel?’

‘Eight hundred forints for a permit is crazy. Do you know how much a worker earns in a month? Four or five hundred. And in any case we haven’t the money.’

‘Couldn’t your father lend it to us?’

‘He’s already helped me so often in the past. I don’t want to exploit him. And then everyone’s afraid of the future. What’s going to happen? No one can say. Anyone with a little money or a bit of gold keeps tight hold of it.’

‘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, Professor 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.