Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

Tadeusz’s doctor friend, János Szabó, comes. He tries to extract the bullet, but fails. It seems to have penetrated deeply. ‘We’ll need more instruments to get that out,’ says Szabó. ‘But we’ll try again.’ An X-ray would be useful, but at the moment the radiography machines in the hospitals aren’t working. He disinfects the wound and takes the patient’s temperature, giving him an injection of penicillin, the last that he has. If the bullet stays where it is, Tadeusz will heal in a few days, the doctor says.

Hans has made him some of that Chinese tea that tastes like straw. Amara has scraped the sugar jar to sweeten it. The doctor appreciates the hot drink, knowing how hard it is to find provisions in these days of readjustment. This is the word everyone is using, ‘the readjustment of the country’. People are talking about it everywhere. The shops are still shut, but they are ‘readjusting’ before opening again to the public. The schools are closed, to readjust their windows and clean their classrooms of the plaster debris caused by the aggression of the Russian tanks stationed in Hungary. Those same tanks that they have watched departing in line ahead, bound for the frontier. But there were not that many of them and only a few turned their guns on buildings. The Post Office has reopened even though its doors have been broken down and its windows have been replaced by pieces of cardboard glued in place. The national radio has ‘readjusted’ its machinery, has recalled its technicians and is now working and faithfully transmitting what is happening in the country, with one eye on the Nagy government which really is moving in the direction most Hungarians want.

Tadeusz’s doctor friend János tells them that a few days ago he met an unusual procession of cars in the street. ‘I looked into them. D’you know who was in the first car? Cardinal Mindszenty.’

The others look at him in surprise.

‘Where was he going?’

‘Have they released him from prison?’

‘A brave dog,’ remarks János. ‘He was condemned in 1944 by the Nazis for hiding opponents of Hitler, remember? He never watched his tongue, that Christlike man; one day, I remember, he said on the radio that everyone knew what the T4 programme involved: it had forced the SS doctors to kill seven hundred thousand handicapped people, psychopaths, mongols, and the mad, both children and adults. That’s what he said and nobody believed him. Then came the war and the post-war period. Do you think he had the least intention of controlling his awkward tongue? Once the Nazis were finished he started criticising the communists: he said in public that their elections were a fraud, a total fraud, that they wanted to gag the church and get rid of parish priests. They arrested him in 1948, as if to show that … and packed him off like a parcel to the little village of Felsőpetény. But the funniest thing happened when a group of ÁVH officers went to fetch him and move him to secure accommodation. They were terrified he might be set free. Meanwhile a delegation from a revolutionary council arrived in the village with the same aim of taking the cardinal to secure accommodation. But that was not all. Immediately afterwards a third delegation arrived consisting of National Guard, commanded by Antal Pálinkás, also with the intention of making the cardinal safe. A hilarious situation, with some pulling the cardinal one way and some another. And he himself? He decided on the official group led by Major Antal Pálinkás, alias Pallavicini. As an Italian you should know that a branch of the Pallavicini family came to Budapest in 1700 and settled here. Did you know that?’

‘No,’ admits Amara, amused.

‘Prince Antonio, born in Budapest, speaks the roughest urban dialect, can you believe it, he didn’t even know where Italy was, he considered himself a Magyar, but like a real aristocrat he was ashamed of his princely name and so decided to call himself Antal Pálinkás, a distinctly proletarian name. A huge joke. But that name has brought him luck since, as a proletarian Magyar fighting the Soviets, he has been promoted to colonel by Nagy who sent him to rescue the cardinal, for which the Church will be eternally grateful to him.’

Dr János has a fine proud head, smooth thick brown hair that slips over his ears, light-blue eyes, and an impressive nose with a bump in the middle that lends him an air of strength and decisiveness. But his smile is that of a sad little boy.

The old Orion is now broadcasting Verdi’s Requiem which explodes in the Wilkowsky kitchen with majestic power. The liberation of the cardinal brings in its wake vaguely religious music and even prayers, inconceivable up to a few days earlier.

‘The political prisoners have been set free!’ a cheerful voice announces breathlessly, ‘the political prisoners have been set free!’

‘Who knows how many will now pass themselves off as political prisoners,’ remarks Dr Szabó sourly.

Amara asks him if he would like to stay to lunch. Ferenc has found a packet of pasta in his miraculous cupboard and Amara has offered to serve it according to a special recipe of her own. Difficult, because they have no oil or butter and only a little lard, no tinned tomatoes and only a few old peppers. Can you make sauce for spaghetti from just lard and peppers?

Dr Szabó decides to stay. Tempted by the spaghetti which reminds him of a journey to Italy many years ago. He was a child, he explains, and his mother, a pianist, forced him to sit long hours at the piano. Meanwhile he secretly spied on his father, a doctor. One day, without letting his mother see him, he followed his father to the hospital and saw him go down to the basement where dead bodies were kept. He climbed up on a low wall to be able to see through a small window and watched his father, sheathed in white with two pairs of green gloves, bending over the naked body of a boy and dissecting it. Instead of putting him off medicine for life, the sight of this lugubrious operation thrilled him, and the next day he firmly told his mother that he had no intention of being a pianist as she wanted, but would follow his father and be a doctor.

And so it happened. And he was satisfied, even if he suffered a good deal. In the war he’d had to care for hundreds of wounded men, watching them die before his eyes. Among other things he too had been hit, in the calf. He pulls up his mud-splashed trouser leg to show the friends an ugly scar cutting across the middle of his right leg. He smiles contentedly. And asks for another cigarette, but there aren’t any more in the house.

‘Then give me those dog-ends,’ he says, eyeing an ashtray with a number of twisted stumps in it.

With his skilful hairy white hands he opens the cigarette ends, lays aside the lacerated paper and with the balls of his thumbs gathers together the remaining tobacco. Then he pulls a steel cigarette case from an internal jacket pocket, snaps it open and extracts some small white rectangles. He smooths one out, pours on the scorched tobacco, rolls it with consummate mastery and wraps it, finally closing the paper with a touch of his tongue.

‘Done,’ he says with satisfaction.

Hans reaches him a burning wax vesta. He draws in a good mouthful, half-closing his eyes, then passes the long dry cigarette to the others. Each in turn grasps the slender paper cylinder, luxuriously inhaling the acrid smoke. All except Amara who has never smoked. In fact, she thinks these miasmas in the tiny kitchen with its hermetically sealed windows will make her eyes weep. But what can she do?

The spaghetti is ready and everyone looks for somewhere to sit. Three find room on Amara’s camp bed, two take a chair each and one makes do with the bathroom stool.