Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

The spaghetti with lard and pepper sauce is excellent. The friends eat eagerly and happily. Ferenc has found a bottle of white wine in his miraculous cupboard. It has no labels and its colour, something between topaz and verdegris, is rather disquieting. But Hans pours it liberally; a dense wine with a strong flavour of sulphur.

‘From the vineyards along the Tisza River, a Tokay that must be at least five years old.’

The table is cheerful, despite the bullet in Tadeusz’s side, despite Horvath’s cavernous cough, despite the uncertainties of the future. No more shooting is heard from the street. And the radio announces the good news that the schools will open again in a few days. The shops will be full of new stock. The delegation to the United Nations has been received with all the respect it deserves. Will Hungary’s request for neutrality be accepted? The world is looking on. That is what everyone is saying.

‘A little country like Hungary, who could ever have thought it! Hurling itself like David against Goliath,’ says Tadeusz, knocking back a mouthful of that cold wine with its taste of resin.

‘We’ve done it, all credit to this cussed population with its hard horns,’ says Hans, drumming his fingertips on the table.

‘It could never have happened in Stalin’s time, I can tell you. He would have squashed us like lice. But now, after Khrushchev’s speech to the Twentieth Congress, they’ve become more careful. They’ve drawn in their claws like cats when they want to be cuddled.’ So says Dr János Szabó, using his fingers to help get his mouth round the spaghetti which is escaping in all directions, covering his hands and cheeks with grease.

‘No doubt Khrushchev is still consulting his socialist friends. And Mao? Do you think he will find the words to ask him straight out: where is it written that one socialist country may attack another socialist country? And Tito? That wily fellow would never publicly approve of an act of repression, since everyone has been able to establish, even from the work of international photographers, that it’s not a mere question of half a dozen fascists in the square, but of the whole Magyar people, headed by the very workers that all these people hold in such veneration? But Tito will intrigue in secret; I don’t trust his tail, I don’t trust his teeth, and I don’t trust the claws he’s learned to sharpen out of sight of those other nasty cats hunting for mice to swallow at a single gulp.’

‘Don’t forget, the workers and peasants are the angriest. How can they set themselves against people who hold them in the palm of their hands?’

‘What about the writers and musicians, the film makers and painters?’

‘No one gives a damn about them.’

‘But there are others: general employees, housewives, doctors, nurses, teachers; haven’t you seen them on the streets?’

‘They can’t possibly set themselves against everybody!’

‘But I’m sure Tito will discourage that dwarfish Russian from taking despotic initiatives. He will have told him, “You’ve denounced Stalin for his authoritarian policies, and now you want to behave in the same way”.’

‘If you denounce the cynical policies of a tyrant, you can’t yourself play the same game.’

‘But even the French workers have gone on strike dozens of times in our support!’

‘And even the Italians … well, some of the Italians, have taken our side.’

‘Togliatti.’

‘He’s not on our side.’

‘Togliatti always sides with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.’

‘Yet they’ve seen and heard what’s happening. There are wonderful photographs.’

‘The world wants peace. There has been too much war; now it’s time for peace and peace there will be.’

‘So you trust that scum?’

‘Who d’you mean?’

‘Who? Who? Those who’ve been holding us under water without letting us breathe for all these years.’

‘Don’t forget, they freed us from the Nazis.’

‘How extraordinary it was to see them emerging from the mists one morning in 1945. Huge, creaking and powerful. They came to free a people brutalised by the Nazis. How we’d longed for them. They advanced with their red flags that we all trusted. Just imagine what a vision!’

‘And now they’re ready to crush us in the name of communism.’

‘But what do we really want, that’s the point?’

‘We all want our voices to be heard, not just one voice, that seems clear to me.’

‘The dictatorship of the proletariat, does anyone still believe in that?’

‘Not me.’

‘Nor me.’

‘Well, then?’

‘The single party. Do you believe in that?’

‘I don’t, no.’

‘Nor me.’

‘And the great leader whose portrait peers at you from every wall and whose statue stands in every square … Do you believe in him?’

‘Powerful leaders usually begin with enthusiasm and generosity, but end up as fools, often even mad, neurotic and suspicious.’

‘Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely … who said that?’

‘It must have been your Pascal.’

‘No, no, not Pascal!’

‘Was Stalin mad?’

‘What can you expect of a man, who shoots his best generals at the height of a war? Who has his best friends tortured till they confess to being spies? Who has all his country’s best doctors strangled because they have the temerity to protest about the neglect of the hospitals; you can’t say such a man wasn’t mad!’

‘All dreams! You’re all dreaming, dear friends, you’ve forgotten partition. They’ve divided the world: one part on this side, the other on that. We are on this side and cannot be on that side. Can’t you see that neither the United Nations, nor the whole of America headed by the United States, can do anything to save us from the clutches of the Soviets?’

They all turn towards Dr Szabó, thinking that perhaps, after all, he is right. But may we not hope for once?

‘And now, Tadeusz, let’s have another look at your wound.’

Tadeusz lifts his sweater. The wound is still open. János takes a close look. He makes a grimace. He says he’ll pass by tomorrow with more suitable instruments and they’ll eject that damn bullet from the hole where it has hidden itself.

‘Now get some sleep, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. It’s getting colder. The streets are going to freeze. Maybe it’ll even snow a bit.’

Dr Szabó explains in his melodious voice that he likes snow because it refines everything. But of course it soon turns to slush and becomes slippery and sticks to things. Well, now he really is going. He says goodbye to everyone and thanks them for the delicious spaghetti. He advises Horvath to stay indoors. Goodnight, all. He moves towards the front door with slow steps. A last goodnight, a smile, and he’s gone.

At five in the morning Amara wakes thinking, oh God, an earthquake! Her camp bed is shaking, and so are the windows and the whole building. She gets up, terrified. Going towards the front door she runs into Hans, who is quickly pulling his sweater over his pyjamas.

‘An earthquake?’

‘No, tanks.’

‘Tanks?’

‘Look out of the window. But don’t let yourself be seen. Turn off the light. Wake Horvath, wake Tadeusz. They’re invading the city.’

From outside comes a dull continuous rumbling roar, as if an avalanche is falling on the streets of the centre. Even a suddenly broken dyke emptying tons of water and mud on the poor sleeping city would not produce a comparable sound, dull and terrible, making the pavements shake and windows rattle. From the window Amara sees a line of tanks advancing down Baross utca, their guns pointing straight up at windows on a level with their own.