Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

‘Unleavened bread.’

‘Yes.’

‘With your bare arms and rolled-up sleeves, and your floury hands grasping a knife, you remind me of Judith in the Old Testament, ready to cut off the head of the infidel leader to save her own people.’

‘I’m not interested in cutting off heads, I’d rather fasten them in place. The knife is for slicing the last onion in the house. Let’s hope Tadeusz will bring us something we can eat.’

The door opens and it is indeed Tadeusz that comes in. His shoes are muddy and his face looks tired.

Behind him is Ferenc, violin-case in hand.

‘Been playing at the hospital?’

‘I keep weapons in it. And a pistol they gave me at the Corvin. Even if I’ve never used it. I don’t think I’d even know how to use it. But today there’s something else. Two apples I pinched at the hospital.’

‘You’ve been stealing food from the sick!’

‘They were next to a dead man.’

‘I wish you hadn’t said that.’

‘But the apples aren’t dead. Look how beautiful they are! They look as if they’ve been painted, they’re so red and shiny.’

‘Maybe they’re fake …’

‘He was lying there with his mouth open and his eyes closed. I don’t know what he died of. The apples were on his bedside locker.’

‘And you took them.’

‘I don’t think the dead need apples.’

‘Bilateral negotiations are continuing,’ says the radio, and they all crowd round to listen.

‘The Minister of Defence, General Maléter, is negotiating with the Soviets the waithdrawal of all their troops from this country, whether permanently stationed here or not. The delegation for the United Nations left this morning. Prime Minister Nagy has confirmed the exit of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact.’

Amara pulls the bread out of the oven. It resembles nothing so much as a flat, dry pizza. But it’s hot and smells of spices.

‘Did you put in any cinnamon?’

‘I found a little at the bottom of a jar.’

‘It’s like a cake,’

The four sit down round the only table. Two sit on the chairs and the other two on the bench Amara sleeps on at night. On the table is the flat bread perfumed with cinnamon straight from the oven, a ratatouille of potatoes and onion, and some slightly rusty tap water. They tuck in with gusto.

The windows of the hospital are broken, patched with cardboard clumsily stuck down at the corners with sticking plaster. The building is crowded with beds to trip over: along the disintegrating floors of the corridors, in the waiting rooms. In the wards twenty patients are crammed into a space that would normally hold three.

Horvath is stretched out, his long feet with their pale blue veins sticking out from under a too-short cover. His eyes are bluer than usual, his smile animated.

Amara sits down on the bed and takes his hand. It is still very hot; the fever is still on him.

‘I’m perfectly well, but these shits won’t let me go.’

Amara squeezes his burning hand. It’s not true that he’s perfectly well. But the fever seems to be over-exciting him in a way that causes him constantly to move his feet, grimace, laugh meaninglessly and roll his eyes.

‘Last night three people died in here. They no longer even put up screens. They lift the dead by the arms and feet and carry them away. No idea where. The morgue I suppose. Maybe they cover them with lime, like with those who die in the street. D’you remember that terribly young soldier with a hole in his forehead and his face masked by white lead as if he was about to make an entry on the stage? I’m sure he died without feeling anything. Better so. Must have been sixteen years old. Got out of a tank to escape being burned alive and they shot him instantly. It must have been the man with the wooden leg.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Said to be an infallible marksman. Never misses. But that soldier was a child. Maybe they’d taken him from one of their subject nations: Ukraine, Estonia, Armenia. They must have said: put on this uniform, take this rifle, get in and come with us. And he obeyed. Without knowing it he’d been thrust into a tank to go and kill the boys of a subject nation just like his own. He can have had no idea that they would throw a can of petrol to set fire to the tank, forcing him to get out to avoid being burned alive, and that he would be shot by an infallible marksman like the man with the wooden leg. But what’s his name?’

‘János Mesz.’

‘You remember everything, Tadeusz.’

‘It’s not a big city. Lots of us know each other.’

‘Now please go because we must apply medication,’ says a nurse in a white coat stained with blood. Two doctors with masks over their mouths approach the bed of a boy who has had both legs amputated.

Amara, Hans and Tadeusz go out into the corridor but find themselves crushed between one bed and the next, in the midst of a coming and going of nurses and volunteers carrying pans of urine, syringes dancing on tin trays and small dishes of soup for anyone who can eat.

The boy with the amputated legs cries out when they touch his raw flesh. Then he quietens down, facing his medication with courage. Amara hears the nurse say, ‘Bravo Pál, bravo Pál, just a minute more, just one minute, then we’ll leave you in peace.’

‘But will I be able to walk?’

‘Of course you will, with crutches,’ answers the girl frankly, before going on to another bed containing an old man at the point of death.

‘We’ve finished now. You can come back in,’ says the nurse, carrying away a bundle of dirty dressings.

The three come close to Horvath’s bed. He is so pale his blood seems to be no longer circulating. He’s clearly doing everything he can not to cough. He swallows. Jerks. Presses his throat with his hand. Then suddenly loses control and the cough shakes his chest, shoulders, neck and head.

Amara again takes his hand in both of hers. He is not so fiercely hot any more. Perhaps his temperature is going down following his injection. He seems calmer. They don’t know what to say to one another. Hans is standing by the window. Tadeusz is leaning on the bars of the bed as if to rest his tired legs. Amara looks round. The old man who just now was in his death throes has stopped breathing. The boy with the amputated legs is moaning softly. Tears are drying round his eyes and on his round cheeks.

Horvath starts coughing again. Amara bends over him, trying to reassure him that he’ll soon be well again and be able to leave this horrible overcrowded place, that they’ll come and fetch him as soon as his fever is gone.

‘Have you been writing about what’s happening in Budapest?’

‘Yes, but I can’t reach Italy by phone.’

‘Did you know the Paris Match photographer was fatally wounded in the street? The nurses told me, you must write that.’

‘How can I?’

‘Send it all by telegram.’

‘A telegram several pages long? How much would that cost?’

‘Never mind the cost; it would be worth it, wouldn’t it? People need to know what’s happening here.’

‘We have to go, it’s getting late,’ says Hans, coming back to Horvath and stroking his head. ‘We’ll meet again tomorrow.’

But Horvath doesn’t want to let them go. He grabs Amara’s arm and squeezes it between his terribly thin fingers. She sits down on his bed again. There are no chairs anywhere near, and standing up she can’t speak privately to him.

‘Amara,’ he says, his mouth close to her ear, ‘if I die, don’t leave me here in the hospital. Take me away.’

‘You’re not dying, Horvath. We’re all going to go back to Vienna. You have work to do with your books.’