Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

An hour has already passed and they have only advanced a few steps towards the inside of the cinema. Now it’s raining harder. People are protecting their heads with newspapers. Everyone is pushing towards the sheltering roof of the cinema. Two children of about eight pass in the street in ankle-length military raincoats. They are proudly holding Hungarian flags in their hands. Behind them the crowd is moving slowly. A group of workers are in a hurry to reach the parliament with a petition from a bus factory at Borsod. They make no effort to shelter from the rain. A few have caps; the rest nothing, their wet hair glued to their brows and necks.

An hour later they are still outside the cinema. By now it’s dark. Hans has finished his cigarettes. Their feet are beginning to freeze; they are tired of standing in the cold.

‘Amara, you go home. I’ll wait. No point in us both staying here.’

‘The queue’s moving more quickly now.’

It’s true. Now one knows why, but people have begun to come out more quickly. And no more are arriving to add to the crush. Finlly Amara and Hans manage to get into the auditorium, which smells strongly of wet shoes and fresh bread. When they reach the place of distribution the smell is still there, fragrant and inviting, but there is no bread left. A man with his machine gun over his shoulder makes a desolate gesture. He offers them a bag of flour and a tin of Romanian condensed milk. There is nothing else left.

All they can do now is go home. With the flour and the milk under their arms.

Outside the rain has become heavier and more aggressive, with icy blasts of wind. Amara and Hans press on close to the walls, making the most of the projecting roofs. Many of the street lamps have been broken. It isn’t easy to see. After a bit they realise they are lost. What to do? Hans asks the way from a small boy passing on a bicycle, who brakes abruptly. He looks pityingly at them, and indicates they must retrace their steps to find Magdolna.

Frozen, they rapidly go back they way they’ve come. Suddenly they are in front of a lighted window, with a brown notice stuck on it saying CAFÉ.

‘Shall we go in?’ says Hans. ‘They might have something hot.’

Amara follows him through a revolving door and down a dark corridor until a double door with a lining admits them to an absurd interior: inside a sort of alcove dug out of the wall, surrounded by red candles, a woman with a head piled with ash-blonde hair and a mouth painted in the shape of a heart is sitting singing and playing at an upright piano. The room is empty. The woman smiles at the new arrivals from under her towering hair. She has two gold front teeth, and a big white bosom wobbling inside a dress of evanescent lace. A vision from another age.

Amara and Hans sit down in two comfortable armchairs uphostered in red velvet. In front of them is a little round table with a linen cloth.

‘Where on earth have we come to?’ whispers Hans.

‘We’ve made a leap in time. Nothing happened in Budapest today.’

Meanwhile an elderly waiter appears. It is obvious from the extremely cautious way he moves his feet and rolls his peering eyes that he can’t see very well. His tailcoat is threadbare and dirty. These people are like extras in a very poor film projecting images of a bygone age in an empty cinema.

‘What can I bring you?’

‘Something hot, please.’

‘A punch?’

‘Have you no hot coffee? Perhaps with a little milk?’

‘Coffee’s off, sir. But we do have tea.’

‘That Chinese stuff with rolled-up leaves? No thanks.’ Amara laughs and Hans laughs with her.

‘It’s Russian tea, aromatic,’ protests the waiter.

‘No, thanks,’ says Hans, looking at him to gauge any reaction. But the other doesn’t bat an eyelid.

‘Please bring the punch.’

‘And for madame?’

‘She will have punch too.’

The waiter moves away, walking with care. Now the woman at the piano starts singing again and surprises them. ‘ Que sera sera, Whatever will be will be, The future’s not ours to see, Que sera sera …’

‘Doris Day’s song.’

‘Incredible.’

But there is something provocative in that song. Something passionate in the shrill voice of this woman past her first youth, with her gold-toothed smile, ash-blonde hair marked by the curling iron, and gentle, languid heavily made-up eyes.

‘Well, Amara, what now?’

‘In what sense?’

‘No, I mean, we’ve stopped in Budapest for me to say hello to my father and his violinist friend and been caught up in something unexpected and magnificent. I’m happy about that. But what about our plan to go to Poland and check those new lists of deported people? I’m afraid we’re going to have to go back to Vienna.’

‘I’ve written two articles but I can’t get through to the paper on the phone.’

‘They’ll put them on the front page!’

‘I have to dictate them first.’

‘You’ve pulled off a real scoop.’

‘I hope they’ve got some good photos.’

‘We ought to go back to Béke and ask. That’s where all the journalists are. They’ll know about sending articles and photos.’

‘Yes, we must really go there …’

‘Then we’ll also be able to see the fat man with the permits again.’

‘And pay him eight hundred forints each?’

‘How can we ever find sixteen hundred forints!’

‘I could sell the amber necklace my mother left me.’

‘I doubt you’d get sixteen hundred for that.’

‘I’ve got a gold ring too.’

‘We’ll never make it.’

‘We can try offering them to the bald man.’

‘I bet you haven’t been thinking so much about Emanuele Orenstein for the last day or two.’

‘I dream of him at night. But by day I’ve had other things to think about, it’s true.’

‘Is he always up in the tree when you dream of him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Always in the cherry tree asking you to climb up and join him?’

‘More or less.’

‘You should get down from that tree, Amara.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s down here on the ground that life happens, not up in trees with an invisible boy who makes too many claims on his status as a ghost.’

‘We did come to an agreement, Hans.’

‘I know, and I’ll stick to it. But what would you like to do now?’

‘I’m worried about Horvath and his fever. We haven’t even found any aspirin. Let’s go back home.’

‘OK.’

There’s no one at home. Not even the feverish Horvath. But the door is locked and nothing has been disturbed. A note must have been left somewhere. In the kitchen perhaps? Or the bathroom? But no matter how hard they search, they find nothing written. Hans lifts the phone, but it is silent. All they can do is wait. Amara, just for something to do, empties the flour onto the kitchen table and starts mixing it with a little water. She has no yeast but never mind, it will be unleavened bread but no less nourishing for that.

Meanwhile Hans has gone to turn on the radio. It takes a little while for the old Orion to warm up. Then the croaks and cracks and whistles begin.

‘It’s like being in a fish-and-chip shop.’

Finally, amid the great noise of spluttering frying pans, an excited male voice, distorted and intermittent, emerges from the background speaking French: ‘The Cairo aerodrome at Abu Ghilla has been bombed by planes of RAF Bomber Command, taking off in a constant stream from the British aircraft-carriers Eagle, Albion and Bulwark. Also from the French carriers Lafayette and Arromanches. In reply Nasser has sunk forty ships in the Suez Canal. The Israelis have invaded the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, moving their troops ever nearer to the Canal. The USSR is threatening to intervene on the side of Egypt to defend its own rights. Colonel Nasser has warned that he will send his warplanes over London and Paris if the blitz on Egypt continues.’