Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

‘We’ll find a way. Meantime I must try and get some articles to my paper.’

‘All right, let’s go.’

They run down the stairs two at a time. Outside the air is freezing, but there is an infectious sense of excitement. People are dancing round improvised fires in the middle of the streets. Men and women are out for a walk, even at night, smoking and chattering but without ever putting down rifle or machine gun or or taking off the bandoliers slung round their shoulders. Not wanting to appear too menacing they wear a flower in their hats or a coloured scarf round their necks. Everyone says the Soviet tanks are pulling back. In fact fewer and fewer are to be seen around. There is widespread belief in the delegation that has left for the United Nations. Surely they won’t be able to resist the will of an entire nation that has demonstrated with so many sacrifices its new and irresistible longing for freedom.

At the Béke hotel there is no one to be seen. Where have the few foreign journalists who live there gone? Are they all out trying to understand what is happening? The fat bald man can’t be found. Though three waitresses dressed in black with immaculate aprons are going about with trays loaded with glasses and plates. But the glasses and plates are empty.

Amara asks if the telephones are working. The sulky receptionist advises her to go down to the basement where the telephone girls are. Hans and Amara go downstairs. In a small badly lit room three girls are sitting at a switchboard, their temples gripped by steel-sprung headphones, pushing and pulling plugs with worn wires. Perhaps lines to the outside world are working again.

One of the telephonists signs to them to wait. Amara and Hans sit down on a bench covered by a velvet cloth with a gilded fringe. Inside the cubicles, each marked by an enormous silver letter B, people can be seen with receivers that are obviously not working properly.

They go on waiting. Every so often someone emerges from a cubicle shaking his head. The telephone girls are agitated, angrily pulling out plugs, talking in bursts and shouting into microphones that show no sign of life.

‘I’m going for a little walk,’ says Hans, getting to his feet. ‘Maybe I’ll run into the bald man. You stay and wait for a free cubicle and a line to Florence. Let’s hope we get through before one o’clock.’

He moves away. Amara picks up her articles to check though them before dictating. So difficult to give life to what one has seen! To go from living to writing needs a leap which may look short and easy from a distance, but seen close up is revealed as an almost impassable gully with steep smooth sides. Yet the gap must be bridged. There is no knowing if one will reach the other side alive or dead. If she could only manage to tell just a little of what is happening in this country, if she could convey the expectation, the hopes, the fears, the sacrifices, the joys of these days of liberation from a blind and violent regime, she would be happy. But will she ever be able to do it?

A bell rings repeatedly. Rapid voices. An imperious gesture, and it’s her turn. She runs to cubicle 4. She grasps the receiver. At the other end of the line there is no call-corder but a metallic voice that repeats: ‘Hello, Italy? Italy?’

‘Hello? I’m speaking from Budapest, who’s there?’ But the voice at the other end disappears. Now she can only hear the voice of the operator: ‘Hello, Italy? Italy?’

‘Florence, speak now!’

‘I’m here, but I can’t hear anyone at the other end. Nobody.’

‘Speak now!’

A storm of whistles hits her ear, then what sounds like a toad singing, nothing intelligible, then more crackles and prolonged whistles.

‘No line to Italy, no line to Florence, sorry Miss Sironi, maybe tomorrow.’

Amara puts her articles, handwritten in a school exrecise book, back into her shoulder bag and goes back up the stairs to the foyer. No sign of Hans. But now more people can be seen going in and out through the revolving door. She sits down in a wide, comfortable armchair with huge arms covered in blue velvet. And waits.

In front of her two English people are murmuring in low voices as they study a map spread out on the table before them. A woman and a man of medium height: he is fair-haired and stocky, wearing a black leather jacket; she is slim, indeed very thin, a brunette wrapped in a purple raincoat. They are excited and unaware that someone is watching them curiously.

‘Have you heard anything new?’ asks Amara timidly, plucking up courage.

The two look up, annoyed at the interruption but polite and willing to reply.

‘Are you a journalist too?’

‘Trying to be.’

‘Did you manage to get through on the phone?’

‘No.’

‘Nor did we.’

‘Any news?’ insists Amara.

‘Nothing much. But there are rumours of a massive movement of Soviet tanks from the north.’

‘The usual tanks stationed in Hungary?’

‘Apparently something different, but nothing is certain.’

The two turn back to their map, forgetting Amara who opens her exercise book to scribble down another article to send to Florence. She must try a telegram, as Horvath said, but she needs Hans for the Hungarian language.

And here he is, quick and confident as always, the gazelles running across his chest. He has a small bag in his hand.

‘Perecs?’

‘No, sausages. Some for everyone.’

‘And potatoes?’

‘We’ll try and find some.’

Tadeusz and Hans are always out looking for something to eat. But also trying to find news of what’s happening in and around the city. Ferenc has started playing his violin again. Amara, without anyone asking it of her, is staying close to old Horvath to look after him and keep him company. Hans never goes out without the rifle given him by the boys at the Corvin cinema. He probably doesn’t know how to fire it, but carries it all the same. ‘I shan’t try unless the Russians come with their tanks,’ he says firmly. Every now and then Tadeusz and his son bring back a bread baton, a couple of eggs, a tin of powdered milk or some aspirins.

Horvath has decided that in daytime he prefers the kitchen. He lies stretched on Amara’s camp bed reading, sleeping, chattering, listening to the radio. He is happy if she stays near him, and together they bend over the table where she spreads rice to clean it of little stones and mouse excrement, or to separate good dried beans from mouldy ones, or to peel potatoes.

The old Orion seems to have calmed down. No more excited voices crowding each other out, but announcements preceded by specially chosen music: Mozart, Paganini, Scriabin and Bartók, alternating with songs of the moment: Lili Marlene, When the saints go marching in, Egy mondat a zsdrnokagrol .

‘One senses a desire for peace in the country,’ says Ferenc. ‘Less anarchy and more organisation, this is the order of the day and I’d say that the Hungarians are adapting themseleves sensibly to it. You can even see this in the distribution centres which are no longer being run on a primitive private basis, but by the government which is replacing the self-proclaimed revolutionary armed guards with a proper corps of National Guards; haven’t the rest of you noticed that too? They’re only boys, but they have a serious and responsible look about them. I’ve watched them mounting guard over the most important institutions in the city: parliament, the Ministry of Defence, the Post Office, the prisons. We should embrace them and thank them for their dedication, don’t you think?’

Every now and then the old Orion brings a voice telling of new students’ or workers’ initiatives in and around Budapest. Horvath turns the radio up: ‘We’re gathered in the great hall. Plenty of seats but no one is sitting down. We are standing in front of the platform. The students all gathered here with their colourful clothes and books under their arms. Immediately afterwards the professors came in, rejoicing as if at a festival. Many had red, white and green rosettes on their jacket lapels. Dead comrades were remembered. Then those professors who had touched the hearts of the students stepped forward. The oldest, Professor Karely, spoke of slaves who submit for ages but finally explode, like Spartacus when he recognised the longing for liberty in so many thousands of men.’