Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

‘May I see that letter, Frau Sironi?’

Amara pulls the letters from her bag. By now they are crumpled and fading but still carefully preserved in a large envelope wrapped in transparent cellophane. She extracts one from the envelope and hands it to the man who takes it with trembling hands. He lifts it to his eyes and reads greedily.

In the semi-darkness, Amara detects a glitter. Tears are rolling down his cheeks.

‘I was that child,’ he says, lifting a wet face to Amara. The man with the gazelles starts in his chair. Amara sits as if turned to stone. Not only from the revelation, but because this man claiming to be her childhood friend is so utterly unrecognisable. How can there be nothing, absolutely nothing, in him of the Emanuele she once knew? Where is the smooth blond hair? The kind smile? The lively, affectionate eyes? The man facing her is like an angry owl, staring at her with obvious distaste, as he moves his dead lips like a horse over his false teeth.

‘I don’t recognise you …’ says Amara in embarrassment. Her only thought is to run away from this house and this man who is clearly fooling her, she has no idea why but he is clearly fooling her.

‘Let’s leave it at that. I’m tired,’ says the self-proclaimed Emanuele, changing his tone.

‘But why do you call yourself Peter?’ asks Amara.

‘It’s a long story. I don’t feel like going into it at the moment. Anyway, I’ve closed the door on that past. Now please go away. Go!’

That evening, sitting at a table at the Figlmüller beerhouse, the man with the gazelles and Amara ask themselves about that strange meeting with Peter Orenstein who claimed to be Emanuele Orenstein. But if he doesn’t resemble Emanuele in any way? And in any case, he must be much older than twenty-eight; he looks at least forty-five. Amara lifts to her lips the good draught beer an elderly waiter has placed before her, but she doesn’t feel like drinking.

After claiming to be the Emanuele they are looking for, the man to all intents and purposes threw them out of the house. Amara had no time to ask him the questions on the tip of her tongue. She had no chance to clarify, understand or ask anything. Still weeping and panting, the man had taken them to the door saying he wanted to be alone. Out of tact, dazed and perplexed, they left without asking anything more, and without even retrieving the letter that Amara always liked to have with her.

‘We must go back for the letter.’

‘And to ask more questions. He can’t get away with it like that, leaving everything in doubt.’

‘We need to find out why he’s pretending to be what he isn’t.’

‘But the furniture was very much like the Orenstein family furniture. Fake sixteenth-century, with small carvings in dark wood. Expensive items from Florence, made for a large house with plenty of room in it.’

‘But how can he have aged so much? He looked at least fifty.’

‘With the face of a hungry wolf.’

‘He must be an impostor who wants to get something out of passing himself off as somebody else.’

‘That hole in his cheek …’

‘We don’t look like rich people. What can he hope to gain?’

‘But those tears, Hans, they seemed real enough.’

‘If what he says is true, your Emanuele has turned into a monster. Either that or the man’s a speculator. A clever actor.’

‘Could a concentration camp reduce a young man to such a state?’

‘Anything can happen, even to the extent of turning a child into an old man.’

‘But did you notice his hair? Almost bald and what’s left of it was white. How can a man of twenty-eight have a head like that? The war ended eleven years ago. There’s been time enough to get over it.’

‘It is strange.’

‘I don’t understand a thing, Hans. What shall we do?’

‘We must go back. He’s got to explain his name to us and much more.’

‘And we must get that letter back.’

‘The letter, yes.’

They look at each other. Amara bursts out laughing, but it is sad, nervous laughter. Hans lifts the tankard of fresh beer to his lips and drinks, closing his eyes and throwing back his head. Amara drinks too. Everything is getting complicated if also a little grotesque.

‘But if it really does turn out to be him, what will you do, Amara?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Do you think you would still love him?’

‘Yes of course, but not what we met.’

‘You must have realised he would be different from the person you remembered.’

‘Different but not unrecognisable. This is a different person, Hans, someone else. It frightens me. He even has a different name. It can’t be him.’

‘Anyone who escaped from the concentration camps has to be different from other people … as if he had died and risen again.’

‘Died and risen again?’

‘That friend of my father’s I was talking about, the principal violin of the Budapest Academy who was engaged for a series of concerts in Vienna: Ferenc Bruman. He spent two years in Africa with his father who was a diplomat. He used to tell a strange story about how they once ran into a tribe from the north of the Ivory Coast. Hunters who went naked apart from a cache-sexe of leaves, with a knife in their belts and a long spear always in their hands. When the two came into these people’s village, a man had just died. Next morning all the village elders gathered in the shade of a large mango tree. They had placed the dead man, all washed and clothed, against the tree and all crouched round him. Then one of the men started questioning him: Why have you died? What killed you? Who will you leave your spear to? And so on. At each question the elder pulled the dead man by the sleeve, and they understood his reply from the way his head moved, and everyone knew what he was trying to say. Well, I think Emanuele Orenstein is dead and we’re questioning a substitute according to some archaic magic rite. We need to understand what this dead man is trying to tell us, like the Africans in the northern Ivory Coast.’

‘I don’t believe he’s trying to tell us anything. More likely trying to hide something from us, Hans. But what?’

‘I wish I could discuss it with my father. He has an extraordinary eye for people and never gets things wrong.’

‘Your father’s still alive?’

‘Seventy-six, but like a young man. He lives in Budapest. I’d like you to meet him. A wise, lucid man. He chops the firewood for his stove every day.’

‘Did he never marry again after your mother’s death?’

‘He lived a couple of years with a girl my age. But she got bored and left him. Now he lives on his own. No, to be honest, with a friend, the principal violin of the Budapest Academy orchestra, Ferenc Bruman, the one I’ve just been telling you about, remember? The man who was saved with him the time they talked about music on the day of the great bombing raid on Vienna. The afternoon the Academy collapsed and they survived unscathed while everyone else was killed or wounded. Now he teaches music and earns enough to buy his daily food and fill his evening pipe. They’re like a married couple, him and Ferenc, they quarrel a lot but get on well enough. They’ve had a small flat assigned to them in Budapest, right in the centre, near the Corvin cinema, in Magdolna utca. I’d love to introduce you to them both: Ferenc, an excellent violinist, and Tadeusz, a man of great talent, generous and cultured. I’d really like you to meet them. After the raid they’d survived by talking about music they disappeared, then met again a few years after the war. Ferenc was playing the violin in the street. My father could no longer find an orchestra to take him on as its conductor, so he started teaching. They decided to set up house together. First with the girl I was telling you about, Odette. She was a bit on the plump side but had a pretty face and they both liked her. Best of all she was cheerful, with a sort of open, childlike cheerfulness that did the two old men good. I’m not exactly sure but I think she probably shared her favours between them. In return they let her have a fine room and a huge bed with a flowered chintz cover, bought her a rather bald rabbit fur, lit a stove every day to keep her warm and made sure she didn’t go short of food. She thanked them by doing the ironing and looking after the housework. Ferenc did the cooking and my father chopped the wood. I think it was a good life for all three. I hardly ever went to see them, but when I did I found them cheerful, active and full of ideas. My father got it into his head to teach Odette opera. He said she had a good voice and got her to practice every day. In my opinion she couldn’t sing in tune, but it was lovely to see them doing things together; they played together and she sang. Naturally the piano was aborted before it could even be born. Odette got bored with vocal exercises, found a young man who wanted to marry her and disappeared one morning without a word.’