Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

The Corvin cinema is very crowded. Its seats have been removed. In the dark auditorium young people are handing out bottles of milk by gaslight. A blackened coal-basket contains oval forms that from a distance look like dirty bundles. In fact they are a kind of bread. On the stage a mime leaps about portraying the Soviets arriving and the Hungarians resisting them. He does everything himself: first he is a Soviet soldier in full uniform climbing out of a tank, then suddenly he is a Hungarian rebel firing at the tank and then climbing up on top of it. Then he mimes a dog pissing on the tank’s caterpillar tracks oblivious of the soldier’s cries of protest. Then a little boy playing football with his friends. Then he rises up on his legs to become a dead soldier opening his wings to fly to paradise. But what does he find in paradise? A little Hungarian tribunal that interrogates him on his actions. From behind, lanky and exhausted, comes the massive moustachioed figure of Stalin who furtively steals the soldier’s wings and runs off sneering.

Hans comes up, looking worried.

‘Our own government has called in the Soviet tanks,’ he says. ‘Fortunately the ones in question are part of the standing army already here. There aren’t many of them and they know us. But they could still do a lot of damage. Let’s go.’

That evening, over a soup of water in which an onion has been boiled and pieces of potato float, the five talk about what they have seen during the day in the city. But what is happening? asks Horvath, who seems to have come down that moment from the moon like Monsieur Candide. Tadeusz maintains they’ve landed by chance in the eye of the cyclone. A historical cyclone. Nothing else had happened since 1948 when, after victory over the Nazis, they had set themselves with cheerful enthusiasm to reconstruct their country: ‘Discussions went on all night. Philosophy was mixed with politics and art and theatre with economics. We were convinced we were bringing to birth a new society, without injustice or violence.’

‘You’re forgetting the arrest of Béla Kovacs on Stalin’s orders. An alarm bell none of us took any notice of,’ says Tadeusz.

‘And how long did this enthusiasm last, my friend?’

‘Long enough to regenerate a life.’

‘You forget how Zdanov and his criticisms landed on all our heads like a bucket of cold water.’

‘I’m not forgetting that. What I’m saying is that 1948 was a year of great dreams. Which we woke from with a sore arse.’

‘You are forgetting the trial of Rajk and the purges that followed, utterly unjust and brutal.’

‘Well, what about now, then?’

At this point the voices start interrupting each other. Everyone has his own opinion, while outside the sound of shooting intensifies. But who’s doing the shooting? Hans runs to the window but can’t see anything. Tadeusz fiddles with the huge radio set, an Orion with a striped face, which is sitting on a primitive icebox covered with a blue cloth. The icebox is empty. It is two days since they last saw the young boy who normally tours the district from morning to night on his bicycle with its large carrier full of ice.

Tadeusz twiddles the knob producing whistles, wheezes and crackles. Finally a contemptuous stentorian voice comes through clearly. ‘That’s Gerö,’ Tadeusz recognises it at once as that of the Party secretary, the most hated of the Stalinist bureaucrats.

‘Citizens, don’t be deceived!’ says the cutting voice. ‘Go back to your homes and listen to the directives of the glorious Hungarian Communist Party. Those at this moment putting the city to fire and sword are enemies of communism, enemies of Hungary, enemies of the People. They are in the pay of agents of the secret police of enemy countries. Their aim is to destroy everything the People have achieved in recent years, to reintroduce capitalism in our country. Citizens, don’t let yourselves be deceived. Budapest has fallen into the hands of a small group of lawless counter-revolutionaries. Stay at home, show your dissent from these hysterical criminals who hope to damage everything we hold most sacred in our country. Citiz—’ The voice is interrupted by the violent whirling of a csárdás dance.

Tadeusz looks at the radio in perplexity. The others too look up as if wondering what’s going on.

‘This is Radio Kossuth, Radio Freedom!’ shouts a youthful voice. The csárdás fades and the room fills with a rapid excited chatter. Horvath stands spoon in hand before the radio with his mouth open as if paralysed. The violinist bursts out laughing. Hans goes closer to the loudspeaker with his ears pricked.

‘They’ve taken the radio, they’ve taken the radio, boys!’

‘Shall we go and see?’

‘Wait a minute!’

‘Let me hear what he’s saying. Let me listen!’

The excited voice is shouting into the microphone as if it were a megaphone: ‘Budapest is in the hands of insurgents. We are no counter-revolutionaries. We are the citizens of this city, of this country; people who have had enough of Soviet bullying, who will stand no more servility from our own leaders, who have had enough of spies, arbitrary arrests, meaningless trials, torture and executions; enough of the single Party and censorship of everything and everyone. For once we, the citizens of Budapest, say No, whatever the cost. We demand the immediate withdrawal of our country from the Warsaw Pact. We demand immediate free elections and the abolition of the ÁVH secret service and its chief Gerö. We demand the right of a free vote for all, and the right of a free press and free speech. We demand …,

But the young man is interrupted by other voices. A girl with a voice like a child declaims in an inspired tone a poem by Gyula Illyés often heard at this time:

Where there’s tyranny, there’s tyranny

Not only in the rifle

not only in the prison, not only in the torture chamber

not only in the voice of the guard at night

not only in the obscure language of denunciation,

or in Morse code tapped on prison walls

not only in confessions

or the judge’s verdict of guilty without right of appeal!

Tyranny is everywhere

even in the nurturing warmth of schools and in fatherly advice

in a mother’s smile

in goodbye kisses

… in the face of the woman you love

that suddenly turns to stone

yes, tyranny is there too

in words of love

in words of ecstasy

like a small fly in the wine

tyranny is there

because you can never be alone

not even in your dreams

not even when you embrace

and even before that, when you feel desire

and wherever tyranny is

nothing has any meaning

not even the most faithful word

not even what I write myself

because from the very beginning

tyranny supervises your grave,

tyranny decides who you have been

who you are now and who you will be

even your ashes will still serve

tyranny…’

But the child is interrupted: everyone wants to speak, to say what they have to say. Someone is laughing in the background. Soon after more shots are heard. Moments of silence. The radio seems struck dumb. Then the music is back, and in that tiny kitchen in a small Budapest flat, in the midst of the smell of cabbage and unwashed clothes, four men start dancing to the rhythm of the csárdás . Amara watches astounded, incredulous. Then Hans takes her hand to show her the dance: right step, left step, a twirl, a hop. The two chairs and the pallet where Amara sleeps are moved to the far end of the little kitchen, the table is folded against the wall and the men wave their arms and leap and turn while on the radio the csárdás gets louder and louder.