Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

Horvath is behind her, hair on end, struggling for breath, watching the street in astonishment. He daren’t even cough. A moment later Ferenc comes too, his violin clutched to his chest and his eyes puffy with sleep and fear. Then Tadeusz, holding his side, pale and silent.

Hans runs to switch on the radio. ‘Attention, attention. This is your Prime Minister, Imre Nagy. At dawn today the Soviet army launched an attack on the capital with the obvious aim of overturning the legal Hungarian democratic government. Our troops are fighting back, and the government is at its post. I want the Hungarian people and the whole world to know this.’ A disturbing silence follows, as if the radio has been struck dumb. Hans twiddles the knob repeatedly but there is nothing else to be heard, no signals or voices or music. A minute later Nagy’s desperate plea is repeated in French, English, Russian, Polish, Czech and German.

Outside it is still dark. The friends look at each other, disconsolate. What can they do? ‘Stay indoors!’ Now the radio is speaking again, but it is not clear whose voice they are hearing. ‘Don’t move. Don’t shoot. Let’s shed no blood!’ The Sabre Dance follows. But only briefly; the music is interrupted by a solemn voice: ‘This is Free Radio Kossuth. Don’t surrender to the tanks. Try to set them on fire. A rag soaked in petrol thrown from your window will do. We must not surrender! We shall sell our bodies dear!’ The sound of cannons firing can be heard in the background. The voice continues undaunted. ‘A representative of the Union of Writers has just joined us, out of breath. He would like to read out an appeal just formulated by the Petőfi Circle: “To every writer, every scholar, every Academy and Scientific Society, and to the intellectuals of the whole world: there isn’t a moment to lose. Today, 4 November, Soviet tanks have invaded the centre of Budapest. Tell the whole world that they are destroying us. Help Hungary!”’

‘I have to go and see,’ says Hans, heading for the door. Tadeusz grabs his elbow.

‘You’re not leaving here.’

‘I must see what’s happening, Father.’

‘Isn’t it enough for you that I’ve been hit?’

‘By some damned ÁVH sniper.’

‘Whoever it was, the bullet’s still there.’

‘Does it hurt a lot?’

‘No, just a twinge.’

‘Well, I want to have a look. I’ll be back.’

‘Please don’t go!’

But Hans is obstinate, and once he gets something into his head it’s not easy to stop him. Watching him go, Tadeusz sits down abruptly on a chair with a kind of sob. Amara knows he is more ill than he wants people to believe. She tries to get him to lie down on her camp bed. But no one wants to sit, let alone lie. Horvath is walking backwards and forwards with the usual blanket over his shoulders and his feet bare again even though Amara has carefully darned his stockings. Indomitable feet that can never be confined within ordinary shoes. Ferenc is holding his violin against his chest as if it were a child he must save. Tadeusz, at the window, is watching what is happening outside in the street.

The line of tanks is endless, their menacing cannons pointing upwards. Aimed at closed windows. Slow and sinister they advance, shaking the streets. Enormous blunt steel brutes, hermetically sealed, heading across town for the heart of the city.

A free radio voice shouts out their progress: ‘They are advancing from Váci Street, from Andrássy, from Üllői, from Baross, from Rákozi, from Lenin, from Pater, from Soroksari, moving towards the centre, thousands of them, citizens beware!’

Amara is about to prepare some hot food when the shooting begins. The tanks bombard buildings indiscriminately to right and left, to create panic and terror. But incredibly, there is a lively response from roofs and windows. The rattling of Kalashnikovs can be heard. The dull thump of mortars echoes from every street. Every now and then a tank is hit by a stone wrapped in a burning rag soaked in petrol. Most of these improvised bombs slide off the sides of the iron beasts and end up on the wet pavement. But one or two manage to hit the engine and start a fire. The tank burns, and no sooner does the driver try to get out than he is seen from the roofs and hit with precision by a marksman. The other tanks reply by firing at the high windows. Plaster flies, amid an explosion of windows and screech of broken hinges.

The only thing to do is to run to earth in Tadeusz’s bedroom which overlooks the courtyard and wait there for it to end. Shooting can be heard from the outskirts where the big factories are, and from the centre: from Parliament Square, from the Corvin cinema which has been an assembly point for the insurgents, and from Party headquarters in Köztársaság Square, scene of the fiercest fighting. Cannons and howitzers, perhaps hand grenades too. There seems no end to the deafening, obscene noise.

But a voice that seems familiar calls them back to the kitchen, to the great Orion that is now speaking with a different note, the voice of the victor.

‘Calling the Hungarian people: the Revolutionary Government of workers and peasants has now been re-established. The movement that exploded on 23 October had the noble aim of eliminating the last vestiges of the crimes committed against Party and People by Rákosi and his friends and of defending the independence and sovereign power of the nation. The weakness of the Nagy regime and the growth of counter-revolutionary elements infiltrating the popular movement were endangering our socialist accomplishments, our People’s State, the power of our workers and peasants and the very existence of our country.’

The friends look at each other aghast. The voice shows such self-confidence and arrogance in asserting the reverse of the truth as to leave them breathless.

‘How can they turn the facts upside down in this obscene manner?’ Tadeusz asks himself darkly, translating into French for Amara.

But the voice goes on, with the calm of one who knows he has the power of arms behind him.

‘Reactionaries have raised their hand against our democratic regime. Their aim is to restore the factories and the means of production to the capitalists and the land to the great proprietors. They have already mobilised Horthy’s militia, those representatives of a despotic and exploitative order, with the aim of placing the people under their yoke. If they had won, they would have calmly established slavery, poverty, unemployment and pitiless aristocratic oppression in place of liberty, welfare and democracy.’

‘See how they are trying to flatter the young.’

‘These honest patriots have only wished to make our society, our politics and our economy more democratic … So it is unjust and illegitimate to accuse them of subversion. Nevertheless we must not lose sight of the fact that, due to the weakness of the Nagy regime, counter-revolutionary forces in our country have in recent days been assassinating, robbing and despoiling the Hungarian people … Today we observe with great sadness and a heavy heart the alarming situation in which our dear country has been placed by these counter-revolutionary elements, and also because of certain elements of goodwill which respect progress, but have allowed themselves to be seduced into serving reaction. Hungarians, brothers, soldiers, citizens. We must flush out these counterrevolutionaries, identify them, set them in the pillory and render them harmless.’

‘Wait for the best bit!’

In fact the climax emerges unexpectedly, the bitter medicine good Hungarians now have to swallow: ‘In the interests of the people and of the whole working class, the new government now led by Comrade Kádár has asked the Soviet army to assist the Hungarian people in their attempt to annihilate the dark forces of reaction and help us as we re-establish order and tranquillity in our country.’