Dacia Maraini: Train to Budapest

Amara glances up at the worn and battered suitcase on the rack. Her father gave it to her years ago, saying: ‘I took this with me to Venice on honeymoon — now you can have it!’ At the time she threw it on top of the wardrobe without a second look. But later she came to appreciate it. Post-war suitcases are made of cardboard and fall apart at once, while her father’s, even though old and worn, is made of strong, durable leather. It bulges, scarcely able to hold everything she has crammed into it: skirts, jumpers, light boots, books, and the packet of Emanuele’s letters and his diary. She knows some of what he wrote by heart. Like the first letter, which reached her from Vienna in December 1939.

Dear Amara, our house is on Schulerstrasse. On the ground floor there’s a clockmaker’s where I always stop when I’m going out or coming in. All the clocks tell the same time. Isn’t that funny? Even the ones marked with the names of distant cities, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York: they all say three in the afternoon. What does your watch say? And what time is it in your head when I’m not there? The hours dance, you know, like in Ponchielli’s Gioconda which I saw with Mutti at the Pergola in Florence last year. The dance of the hours; I never expected to see ballerinas come on holding hands. They made a circle and boys in black slipped into the middle to mime the slow regular movements of the clock’s hands. My hours stopped in Florence. I ought to go back and get them, because here there are other hours I don’t recognise. Hours not made from minutes but from jumps and strange backward movements. Why are you not here with me? I so much want to put my arms round you. From my window I can see a pancake seller who stops at the corner of Blutgasse and he’s really good at making palacsintas: he spreads a little butter on his hotplate, then as soon as he takes his ladle to add flour mixed with milk, a jet of steam hits him in the face. He wipes his face clean on his sleeve, but never for a moment takes his eyes off the hotplate, where the flour is coagulating and beginning to curl up. As it sets, he spreads it out with a short wide knife. Then, with a quick flick of the wrist, he separates the thin palacsinta disc from the hotplate and turns it over. In less than a minute it’s ready. Then he delicately places it to one side, on a plate smeared with butter. If a customer comes along he moistens it with rum, adds a spoonful of plum jam and folds it delicately like an expensive handkerchief before gracefully handing it over. Write to me soon, write to me constantly, even twice a day, please, your letters are like your kisses to me. I love you. Emanuele.

The linguistic virtuosity of little Emanuele makes her smile; that childish need to prove himself better than everyone else, to show off the adult observer living in the body of a child.

At last at about five in the morning the passports come back. A very young soldier is holding them in his hands, hardly more than an adolescent with his pink cheeks and bow legs. He returns them one by one, except the one that belongs to the man with the gazelles. The soldier looks at him scornfully and says something in Czech. The man replies timidly, but looks annoyed. The soldier turns and gestures as if to say what can I do, it’s nothing to do with me. Then he sets off down the corridor to the sound of hobnailed boots.

‘What did I tell you? Now they’ll make me get off the train and hold me for two days. It’s always the same.’

‘If you know it’s always the same, why expect anything different?’ asks the man in fur armbands sarcastically.

‘I’ve got to get to Poznań where my daughter’s about to have her first baby. She’s alone, her husband died in an accident. Her mother, my wife Ester, died of cancer eight years ago. I keep hoping things will change. They’ve been saying on the radio that relations between Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia have been improving at the frontiers. But it’s not my nationality that’s the obstacle, it’s because I’m listed as half Jewish and I’ve been a journalist, two things that make me suspect. As a businessman I’d have no problems.’

His German is precious, rather out of date and very literary, slow and polite. Amara wishes she could help him, but how? At that moment another soldier comes into the carriage, this time an officer with a haughty manner. Planting his feet wide apart in front of the man with the gazelles, he asks his first name and surname, then starts addressing him rudely in Czech. The other answers calmly if unhappily, then turns timidly to Amara.

‘He’s asking if we’re related. I said yes. Please excuse me presuming on such a brief acquaintance. Would you be willing to act as my guarantor?’

Amara nods. She knows nothing of this man but feels she has known him for years. Let’s hope he doesn’t get me into any trouble, she reflects rapidly. The official gives her a form. She gestures to say she doesn’t understand. The man with the gazelles reads, translates and helps her fill it in: ‘I the undersigned, Maria Amara Sironi, daughter of Amintore Sironi and Stefania Bai, born Florence 2 December 1930, resident in Florence at Via Alderotti 102, declare that Hans Wilkowsky, born Vienna 4 July 1910, son of Tadeusz Wilkowsky and Hanna Paduk, resident in Vienna at Strobachgasse 6, is a cousin of my father on his mother’s side and that I can guarantee for him. Signed and countersigned.’

Amara signs immediately. She hands the paper to the official, who goes away. Is that all? Is a signature all that’s needed to snatch a potential ‘enemy’ from the frontier bureaucracy? The man with the gazelles answers with amusement as if reading her thoughts: ‘Just regulations. Tiresome, stupid sometimes, but inescapable. None of the people who apply these rules believe in them. But they have to respect them, they have no choice. They have to fill in forms to prove how efficient they are. A totally useless efficiency, I might add. So sorry to have bothered you, but without you I would have lost two days. I’m extremely grateful to you for signing.’

Why does this man inspire confidence? Is it only because he vaguely resembles her father? Or because he speaks such good Italian as well as German, Czech and Polish? Or because of the mysterious grey reflections in his eyes?

‘If you should need me,’ the man goes on. ‘I live in Vienna but for the moment I shall be in Poznań at my daughter’s. I’ll write the address on this piece of paper. I hope you won’t be angry with me …’

‘Why should I!’

‘I’ve memorised your address in Florence. You’re lucky. You live in a warm city with ancient memories, with harmonious memories I mean …’

Funny, that formal tone. So far from irritating her, it touches her. Perhaps it’s those family traits: the high cheekbones and almond eyes, the soft, gentle smile. Now, superimposed on her travelling companion, she sees the image of little Emanuele perched at the top of the cherry tree waving to her to join him. Come on up, he says, come on, I’ll help you! And she takes off her sandals so she won’t slip on the bark and starts climbing the lowest branches. The bitter scent of the cherry leaves fills her nose, blending with the subtle odour of hot feet and grazed knees that comes with Emanuele, and which deep down she calls ‘the smell of happiness’. She hears his laughing voice as he spurs her on: come on, come on, higher, higher! What are you scared of?

Emanuele Orenstein: an oversensitive child who is upset when the slightest thing crosses him. The neighbours say he’s been spoilt by his mother who is too elegant and rich and owns houses in the great city of Vienna. Her husband owns a toy factory at Rifredi. No one understands how anyone can prefer Rifredi when they could live in Vienna. Emanuele has no use for his father’s toys. These are mass-produced in sets, but he prefers unique things, like the Pinocchio carved from a single piece of soft wood which he gave his little friend on her birthday. With Amara he is easygoing, always ready to start a new adventure. He might seem fragile, but he isn’t really. Together they climb the highest walls, braving the sharp fragments of pottery along the top to reach the wild pears that set their teeth on edge. Together they open manhole covers and go underground with a torch to explore the city sewers. Together they read books about fabulous voyages. Together they race through the avenues of Florence on two ramshackle bicycles with tyres that constantly get punctured. And no matter whether it’s her tyre or his, they always stop and crouch together by the roadside to mend the puncture. They pull the patches and rubber solution out of their rucksack and get down to work: you hold the tyre while I pull out the inner tube. You open the rubber solution because my hands are full. Two heads close together, one fair and one chestnut brown. They have something in common. Like a brother and sister. No sooner is the tyre fixed than they’re off again, hands sticky with rubber solution, pedalling at breakneck speed down Viale Michelangelo.