Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

A key can be heard in the lock. Tadeusz enters wrapped like a sausage in his long padded coat. He takes off his beret and throws it on the floor.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Horvath has pneumonia. We’ve left him at the hospital. They’re out of penicillin, though they’re expecting more supplies.’

‘And Ferenc?’

‘He’s stayed with him.’

‘Let’s go and see him.’

‘I must finish the bread.’

‘All right, we’ll go. You come and join us later.’

‘Where is the hospital?’

‘On Baross utca. You can’t miss it, go straight towards the river nearly as far as Kalvin Square, then turn into Maria utca and you’ll find it.’

Tadeusz and Hans go out leaving the door open. The French radio station transmitting from goodness knows where is now describing the antecedents of the Suez war. Amara listens as she kneads the flour.

‘The Suez Canal was opened in 1869, financed by France and the government of Egypt. In 1875 the British government bought Egypt’s share, ceding partial control of the Canal in exchange. In 1882, during a foreign invasion of Egypt, the United Kingdom assumed de facto control of the Canal. Clearly, the Canal has always had great strategic importance as the link between Great Britain and her empire in India, as became clear during both world wars. During the first war it was closed to all ships not belonging to allies of the French and British. During the second it was fiercely defended during the North Africa campaign. In 1948 the founding of the State of Israel was immediately followed by an Arab-Israeli conflict that established the independence of Israel.’

The voice is suddenly swallowed up in incomprehensible gurgles. From the street the sound of machine guns and rifles can be heard. Amara, hands covered in soft sticky flour, goes to the window. She has a shock. A tank has stopped in the middle of the road with its cannon pointing straight at her window. She takes an instinctive step backwards, lifting her flour-covered hands to her face. But the cannon doesn’t fire. Curiosity gets the better of her fear. Softly approaching the window again, she sees the cannon has swung round and is now trained on the windows of the building on the opposite side of the road. But still it does not fire. It seems to be trying to find a target to shoot at. What should she do? Run down the stairs and escape through the yard or wait, hiding under the part of the wall that carries the room’s supporting beam?

Ten minutes pass, a quarter of an hour. Nothing. Ever so slowly, Amara goes back to look out of the window. Now the street is empty. The tank has disappeared. She draws a sigh of relief. Turning back to the table, she finds the flour has hardened and cracked. Flour of the worst quality, she tells herself cleaning her encrusted fingers. Adding a little warm water, she begins kneading again. Dreaming over the housework, as Luca put it. Is that all she’s capable of? She should be at the Béke trying to send off her reports. Instead here she is making bread for her travelling companions.

Emanuele comes powerfully back into her mind. Where can he be now? Why has she stopped trying to find him? But she hasn’t stopped trying to find him, she says in her own defence; she has been pinned down in this foreign city by an extraordinary situation she could never have foreseen or imagined possible. But why is she not doing everything possible to get to Poland, to the camp at Auschwitz, where he must have been interned? She has already accepted Hans’s suggestion that they should go back to Vienna. Is not that a journey? She remembers the final words in the black exercise book someone posted to her after the war.

Now I must get ready because tomorrow they’re certain to come for everyone who lives in this building. I’ll hide this notebook in the hole in the wall. In the hope, God help me, that the building doesn’t collapse, and that someone finds it. The last people to leave have all been headed for Auschwitz. It seems there’s not even room for another fly at Chełmno. Whereas at Auschwitz they’re putting up new buildings. That’s what Max said. Goodbye, Amara. I send you a last kiss. Your Emanuele.

Meanwhile the radio has another surprise. The tender, shrill voice of Doris Day singing what has become a hymn of freedom: Que sera sera, Whatever will be, will be, The future’s not ours to see, Que sera sera … A song whose words seem to suggest an obscure fatalism, but which in fact with its music and the story it recalls arouses a sort of communal enthusiasm inspiring resistance. In the film freedom is achieved through the courage of a mother who has known how to investigate, discover and be patient. Like Hungary?

She tries to remember Emanuele’s kiss. Thin and slightly sweaty lips and fragrant breath. The nostalgia of those kisses takes her breath away.

She tries to hear his voice again, but her ears cannot take in anything except sounds of the present: shots in the street, the squeaking of a cart, a horse’s hoofs on the flagstones, and the voice on the radio which has returned to set out arguments in support of the Egyptians against the British and French who today are bombarding Egypt and distracting attention from little Hungary’s appeal for help in asserting her independence.

She closes her eyes, searching her memory for that face she loved so much. The lock of hair that constantly fell across his brow. Those nut-coloured eyes so deep and serious even when they laughed. Those arms so powerful when he clung to branches, those broad hands reaching out their long fingers towards her. Come on, climb! But it is her own voice saying the words. His image eludes her and cannot speak. Her head is an empty room echoing with sinister sounds.

The key turns in the door. Hans is out of breath. He has run up the stairs two at a time.

‘How’s Horvath?’

‘Better. He’ll be fine in a few days. They found some penicillin. Finished kneading the bread?’

‘I’ve put it in the oven.’

‘How have you been getting on here all on your own?’

‘I was terrified to see a tank pointing its gun straight at our window. But then it slowly turned to face the other way and eventually disappeared.’

‘The Russian soldiers are leaving,’ breaks in a voice from the radio, trying to sound confident but with something tragically interrogative about it. So much so that Hans looks at the ancient Orion as if to say: explain yourself properly, my boy!

‘They’re vacating their base at Tököl,’ the voice continues. ‘We’ve won! We’ve won! Everyone out into Parliament Square!

‘The Nagy government has announced that we are entering a thorough process of reorganisation. The power of the police has passed from the ÁVH to the National Guards. Parliament is already full of new parties. The people’s representatives are negotiating with the Soviets the withdrawal of all their soldiers and tanks from Hungarian soil. Kádár and Nagy are united and hurrying things forward. The Soviets seem to be in agreement. We have sent a delegation to the United Nations asking them to accept our request for neutral status.’

‘They really do seem to be leaving,’ comments Hans after translating the young man’s agitated words. ‘Negotiations have reached a good point. Hungary is going to be neutral, do you realise that? She will leave the Warsaw Pact. She’ll have her own autonomous parliament. It seems incredible that the Russians have accepted this. But it really does seem to be so. Perhaps Khrushchev really does represent a new trend in politics. Or, to be more sarcastic, he must be asking the opinion of his allies.’

Hans is sitting astride the chair while she looks into the oven. The bread is beginning to brown, but not rising.

‘I’ve never before made bread without yeast. Who knows how it’ll turn out.’