Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

Moving with agility on his long thin legs, the elderly Horvath leads them to a little room almost too small to contain three people.

‘My kitchen, my living room, my lumber room, my study and my thinking corner. Please make yourselves at home.’

But where? There’s only one chair and it’s occupied by a pile of books. The table is piled with papers and magazines. But Horvath will not admit defeat; he runs out, opens the head librarian’s office and returns with two wooden folding chairs.

‘In any case the head librarian never appears. The secretary has just had a baby so it stands to reason she’s off work. Busy breastfeeding. But I can’t understand how the head librarian ever got his job. Anyway, he’s only interested in politicking. Hardly anyone ever comes to the library and I look after everything.’

As he speaks, he pulls down from a shelf three ceramic mugs with hook-shaped handles. Lighting a gas ring, he puts on a small pan filled with water from the tap. He opens an American army tin of soluble coffee, puts a spoonful in each mug and when the water boils he pours it into the cups. The coffee foams and spatters.

‘A little milk too?’

Amara and Hans say no. But he still extracts a tube of condensed milk from a shelf full of books and squirts it like toothpaste into the boiling coffee.

‘All done. Unfortunately there’s no sugar. But the milk is sweet. It’s the only way I have of sweetening coffee.’ He laughs. His teeth are broken and stained.

‘But what are you two doing here, what are your names?’

Amara and Hans tell him. And as they sip the bitterish coffee flavoured by the ancient pan that has boiled everything from onions to cabbage, potatoes and the occasional pork chop, they tell him their experiences. Horvath, who seemed so annoyed to have had to open the door to them that morning, is now cheerful and sociable. He presses them to have more coffee and tells his own story, without excessive modesty.

‘I toured half Europe collecting these Stalingrad letters. You will say: how can you have toured Europe when you haven’t a penny to your name? But I’m good at chatting to people, I get them involved and they invite me to lunch or dinner, they ask me to spend the night at their homes. Even a railwayman became so passionately interested in the idea of the book that he let me travel free in his cab, pretending I was a railwayman too.’

‘How many had you collected by the time you finished?’

‘A hundred or so, I think, I’ve never counted them. Every now and then another reaches me, even now. The word has got around. Someone may remember the bombardment of 10 January. Someone else that of 31 January when the Russians captured more than fifteen thousand Germans. Then somebody might want to describe in detail how he managed to get home and how it took him a year, perhaps, wandering about, stopping to work for this person or that, taking cows to pasture to earn a pittance and then continuing his travels, always on foot, with the aim of reaching his own village.’

‘So you never went back to Hungary?’

‘I did go back. But the house had fallen down and my people were all dead. There was no place for me. I decided to come here to Austria, and worked for five months on a farm near the border. But they wouldn’t let me across the frontier without a permit and I had no papers; I’d lost everything when I was wounded. All those hours under two dead bodies. I always remember them with gratitude; they saved my life. One night I had to go out because a cow was in labour and I couldn’t find the vet. She mooed and mooed and couldn’t get the calf out. So I started pulling its legs and while I pulled I talked gently to the cow who was nervous, until she quietened down and I finally got her offspring out. I was covered in blood but the calf was born and the mother was safe and sound. Look, you should have been an obstetrician, I said to myself, you have the right hands for it. My boss was so pleased he gave me some money, enough for me to be able to buy myself a passage across the border. I was quickly taken past the barbed wire at night and into the snow-covered mountain forest. Which way should I go? I asked my guide, but he held out his hand: first you pay. I paid him. And he immediately turned his back on me without even saying goodbye. Which way? I asked in desperation and he said, Go down to the valley. And so I did but after the first valley there was another then yet another. And I didn’t know whether I was going straight or crooked or where I was. I walked for a night and a day through a snowstorm with nothing to eat or drink. Then I saw a cave and slipped inside and found some wolves who looked at me as though I was a creature from another planet. I must have looked strange with my torn and dirty trousers, two blankets round my shoulders, enormous sandals made from a couple of American tyres, and white hair standing on end. The wolves gave me a wide berth and let me sleep; I couldn’t go any further. Next day I started walking again. There was no visible horizon; it was snowing continuously with a blizzard blowing. I had no idea where I was or where I was heading. Finally I came on a hovel and knocked, terrified that I’d find a forest ranger or police officer who would want to send me back to Hungary. Instead I found a countrywoman who was helping a she-goat to give birth. She made room for me at her side. Strange, don’t you think? From a calf to a kid. My life was hanging on a thread of maternity. Two corpses had saved me from being killed and two newborn animals saved me from freezing to death. The kindly countrywoman gave me a little milk from the she-goat and I was so unbelievably happy that I fell asleep there beside her. I stayed for three days and nights in that hut with no idea where I was, delirious with a high fever. The peasant woman, whose name was Herta, visited me and brought me milk. I was exhausted and my fever got worse but I was not about to die, I did know that. On the fifth day I felt better. This time when Herta brought me milk she kissed me and unbuttoned my flies and said, Look how well you are, you’re ready for love. So that’s what we did, there among the little goats. Herta seemed happy and so was I. I asked her rather carefully where we were. She spoke a strange dialect I could barely understand, but she explained, with the help of marks on the ground, that we were in Hungary, in the woods near Répcelak. I believed her; I had no reason not to. But it wasn’t true. The fact was that all the local men were dead and my Herta thought herself a queen because she had found a man for herself. She wanted to keep me. That was why she lied. In fact I was already in Austria, in the mountains round Sopron, near the Neusiedler See and the Hungarian border. She knew I wanted to get to Austria, so kept me isolated, promising that as soon as I was strong enough she would help me across the border herself. So I stayed in that freezing hovel, kept warm by the goats, for more than three months. I knew I depended on her. I didn’t know the area which was all forest and on my own I would have been lost. I was afraid they’d stop me at the frontier and I believed the Hungarian guide had tricked me. Instead it was the woman who was fooling me. But she was sweet, my Herta. Methodical and reliable. She would bring me food: bread, an egg, a piece of fresh cheese. We would kiss till our lips were sore. We would make love, then she would leave again. Have you got a husband? I asked her once. She shook her head. If she’d had one he was dead. Any children? She gave an inscrutable smile. I would have liked to go to her home and meet her family, but she didn’t want that. She wanted me entirely for herself, hidden in that hovel in the woods with the goats. But after three months I was bored and felt trapped, and told her with some force I was not prepared to go on living like a mouse. She nodded very seriously. That evening she brought me a knapsack with fresh bread, dried meat, a piece of cheese and a small bottle of brandy. We kissed as we always did and made love more passionately than ever. Then she left and I never saw her again. I had no idea which way to go. But I could see a village in the distance in the forest, clinging to a steep hillside. I headed for it assuming it must be a Hungarian village. I was afraid and walked slowly, thinking things over in my mind. On the road I met a peasant and when I spoke to him I understood at once that my Herta had deceived me. We were in Austria, no doubt about it. I burst out laughing; the peasant didn’t understand. I laughed and laughed and he looked at me strangely. I asked him whether he had any work for me. I told him I was a vet, that I was good at helping cows to give birth. He took me with him and gave me fresh clothes and something to eat. He understood I was someone who had escaped but that didn’t matter to him. A free vet was more interesting. So I used the tiny library in the village and started studying books on medicine. And eventually I made it. I’ve learned so much from books. For that I love them and will always love them.’