Dacia Maraini: Train to Budapest

The train sways. Now the young mother is asleep with her daughter in her arms. But even in sleep she doesn’t relax. She grasps her child as though they might take her away at any moment.

The man with fur armbands seems to be having disturbing dreams because he keeps thrashing about, still stretched out in his seat. He has taken off his shoes. His big feet are enclosed in woollen socks threadbare at the heel. But the man with gazelles on his chest has woken up and is reading in a corner, his book close to his face. There is very little light, but he persists. His face shows intense concentration, almost as if he has forgotten where he is and who he is travelling with.

Amara pulls out another letter.

Why don’t you come here to Vienna too? Yesterday I went for a gallop on a lion with a red mane. At one point I kicked his sides so hard he took off and flew, but my father said that’s enough so he came down again all crestfallen. He’s irritable these days, Papà. He says the business isn’t going well. The SS are constantly under our feet. And they want to give the orders, he says. Mutti has promised to sew me a pair of wings with real feathers for Christmas. Why don’t you come and see me for Christmas? I like the apple tart here in Vienna, but not the ice creams. They don’t have good ice cream here, not like in Florence. What’s good here is the cream. Almost as good as in Florence. Do you remember that day in the Cascine when we ate four wafers with cream and then we ordered a fifth and you dropped it in the bushes? I’m waiting for you, Emanuele.

The train moves off again. The new day has started, young and sunny. They are running through the middle of a birch wood. The tall slender white trunks flash past. When the man with the gazelles disappears to the toilet the traveller from Kladno with the fur armbands opens his eyes, turns towards Amara and says mysteriously: ‘That man must be a spy. You should never have acted as his guarantor. They’ll catch up with you. They’ll take away your passport.’

‘But I’m Italian. And I have a permit.’

‘These days anyone crossing the boundary between the two worlds is suspect. Don’t you know about the cold war? No one can avoid it. You also could be a spy.’

‘What sort of spy?’

‘The West needs information about the East. And the East needs information about what you call the “free” world.’ The man smiles, showing bright red gums.

‘So you could be a spy too.’

‘Of course. Who says I’m not?’ He sneers, his eyes still dull and very sad.

‘May I ask you something: why do you wear those fur armbands?’

‘Rheumatism in my wrists. My hands get paralysed if I don’t keep them warm. Satisfied? But maybe that’s not true at all. Maybe I tried to cut my wrists and want to hide the scars.’

There is something disquieting about this man who says things and then immediately contradicts them.

Now the woman is walking up and down the corridor with her baby, humming a lullaby. The child whimpers feebly with a low, tentative sound.

‘May I offer you some coffee?’ says the man with fur armbands. ‘I’ve got a thermos full. Let’s make the most of it now we’re alone in the compartment. If I’d offered it to the others too my thermos would be empty by now.’

‘I don’t drink coffee, thank you.’

‘Of course as an Italian you know what real coffee is. In fact all I have is a very poor Polish substitute. But still, it’s hot. You’re sure you don’t want any?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘A biscuit, then?’

‘A biscuit, yes, thank you.’

‘Terrible Soviet biscuits. But they do help fill the stomach. They know how to make missiles, do our Soviet friends, excellent ones, but they don’t know much about biscuits. Biscuits are a luxury, missiles a necessity, don’t you agree? Always bearing in mind the nationalist point of view, of course. Defending ourselves from the West, defending ourselves from your butter and ginger biscuits, that’s what communism is all about.’

The man laughs, throwing two biscuits at once into his mouth. There’s something simultaneously brutal and subtle about him. He seems to get enormous fun out of surprising her.

‘Did you know about Comrade Stalin? He died three years ago, alone, sozzled with drink, terrified and out of his mind. I don’t think it was living people he was afraid of, so much as the ghosts of the friends he’d had murdered. He saw an enemy in every shadow. Even his wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, was driven to kill herself in ’32. And to think everyone thought him a good family man. Or better still, a father to every Soviet citizen, no, to every communist the world over. Did he not seem like a good, fatherly peasant? In fact he was a lunatic with criminal instincts. Perhaps not unlike Peter the Great … In fact, I tell you, Peter the Great, in some ways, was more understanding and indulgent than Stalin … Did you know that Tsar Peter had a passion for pulling out his subjects’ teeth and would chase his courtiers down the palace corridors to do it? But there’s nothing wrong with my teeth, the wretch he had managed to catch would protest. Just one tooth, what’s that to you, then you’ll feel better, the Tsar would reply. But they all took to their heels. Did you know that? Just think of the courtiers running about all over the place! What a laugh! When he died, they found a sack full of teeth under his bed. Did you know that?’

Amara looks at him in consternation. Armbands seems to have no interest whatever in any response from her. He continues undaunted, despite the presence of the man with the gazelles who has returned to the compartment and is now combing his disordered hair with the window as a mirror.

‘My father got two years in prison,’ went on Armbands, ‘because he knew English and organised an exhibition of European painters. Accused of espionage. Locked up in prison, tortured. My mother was careful to distance herself from him, because the political police were after her. She was trapped into saying he secretly entertained American spies at home. Everyone round him believed the accusations, including my grandfather and grandmother. He instantly became an enemy of the State and as such had to be punished. Great Father Stalin couldn’t be wrong. communist Thought in its infinite greatness couldn’t be wrong. The worst possible criminals took advantage of the wonderful illusion.’

‘And didn’t you believe in it?’ asked the man with the gazelles.

‘Of course I did. Like you, like everyone else.’

‘I believed in utopia, but not in the practice of communism. I’m half Jewish and I won’t stay anywhere where they persecute Jews. Stalinism wasn’t kind to the Jews, remember.’

‘Though the first tank to enter the death camps was Soviet.’

‘But some of the worst persecution of Jews took place in Poland, with Stalin’s consent.’

‘That was what we believed in then … I ask myself, what the hell did we believe in?’

‘A new, just world, with no masters or slaves … a world where the weak would be protected and defended, where no one would be able to buy the body and soul of another person … To each according to his need. Isn’t that what we believed in?’

‘To each according to his need, what crap! And who decides what I need?’

‘The Party,’ says the man with the gazelles, smiling. ‘That’s the trouble, my friend. Once they start building pyramids, there’s no hope. Imagine a pyramid of innocent and generous people tightening their belts for the sake of their country, while at the top of the pyramid a well-fed man is waving a red flag with a gold star on it. And so many have died for that flag, honestly and sincerely, in the belief they were making a sacrifice for liberty.’