Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

Emanuele, where are you? she murmurs, dropping the huge sickly-sweet mass into a rubbish bin. It’s Christmas and here I am looking for you. Why don’t you appear? She sees again the ravaged and lacerated face of the strange Peter Orenstein who claimed to be Emanuele. She couldn’t believe him. Even so, thinking back over it, he did have some furniture very like that in the Orenstein home. How can it have come to him? This Peter is certainly over forty; how can he claim to be twenty-eight? We must go back and see him again, she tells herself. She will discuss it with Hans. Who knows whether he wants to go any further with this search that is becoming increasingly unreal.

Now it comes back to her: Emanuele made her go up in the flying gondola. She huddled on the floor the moment it started and held her head in her hands, such was her terror as it rose higher and higher before, reaching a certain height, it turned over and went down on the other side of the structure. A frightful sensation, almost as if her stomach was coming out of her mouth, and she asked herself why she had agreed to face it. But he had taken her in his arms and hugged her so affectionately that eventually her fear passed. She started laughing, then he laughed too. But how long had they been on that flying gondola laughing at each other? She can’t remember. Certainly, when they came down it was dark and they had to go home. They had sworn never to be separated.

‘Not even when we are old?’

‘Not even when we are old.’

‘But what if I catch an illness?’

‘Then I’ll catch it too.’

‘And if I die?’

‘Then I’ll die too.’

Not true, because she was still alive and he was dead or at least had disappeared. Long ago, the gondola travelled on and on and they held each other close. Somewhere inside her that gondola was travelling still and something was contracting in her stomach like a fist squeezing her guts violently and wringing them out.

Where are you? she whispers, as she watches a little boy heading alone for the merry-go-round, squeezing an enormous ice-cream that is melting over his wrist.

But she grew up. She met the man of the caresses and married him despite the misgivings of her father Amintore. She was even happy with him for a while. Was not that already a terrible betrayal? Had she not repudiated the memory of her Emanuele merely because of a banal fear of the future? Even if now she tries to justify herself by saying the relationship between Luca and herself never had any depth. She never loved Luca. But she had still betrayed her pact with Emanuele. She had got married, like any ordinary girl who wants to feel safe and secure. But it did not take her long to learn that her husband was in constant need of new women to caress. So they separated. But could this have been a mitigating factor in her betrayal?

‘I’m going, you know, Luca.’

‘Where, darling?’

‘Away.’

‘For ever?’

‘For ever.’

‘You mean you’re going to leave me?’

‘Yes, I’m leaving you.’

‘Why?’

‘I need to be able to breathe.’

She never discussed the caresses with him. He wouldn’t have understood. She just packed her bag and left, while he watched without moving a finger. He didn’t seem to mind her going. Perhaps he had expected it, perhaps not. When she put on her coat he came up behind her and kissed her neck.

‘Anyway, I know you’ll be back,’ he had said without conviction. To comfort himself. Or maybe just to fill the silence.

‘I think not.’

‘I’m sure you will. Do you need any money?’

‘I have something set aside.’

‘Good. And the house? Where are you going to live?’

‘With a girlfriend, just for the moment.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘No one you know.’

‘Okay; I’ll be waiting for you, little one. Come back soon.’ Which was worse than if he’d made a scene. His voice had been at the same time cold and exultant. She too had felt a strange bitter sort of relief. Was it mere pride or was it also a recognition of defeat?

Her friend Tonia had taken her in with great generosity, offering her a bed and her company even though she worked all day at a lawyers’ office. In any case, Amara gave no trouble. All she had brought with her was a small suitcase containing Emanuele’s letters, his photograph, a pair of check pyjamas and two or three blouses. She had decided from that day to concentrate on searching for Emanuele. She needed to know whether he was dead or alive. Never mind that years had passed since he disappeared. She seemed to have a feeling that he was alive somewhere and that if they met everything would be again like when they were little and had sworn to be together for ever. She knew now that they would make love. Closing her eyes she visualised Emanuele’s body entwined with her own, feeling the sweet pressure of his hips and stomach and the happy and so long delayed union of his sex with hers.

Amara runs up the stairs two at a time. She stops after each flight to catch her breath. But how many floors does this building have? The bag with the champagne hangs heavy from her arm, together with her presents for Hans and Horvath.

She reaches the top floor out of breath and very hot. Though outside it’s snowing and when darkness came it had got colder. She stops at the door. A bass voice is singing Que sera sera, Whatever will be will be … Doris Day’s song from Budapest and the days of storms, cold and hunger. Happy, she rings the bell twice.

Horvath throws his arms wide to hug her and kisses her cheeks, her temples and her lips.

‘Was that you singing, Horvath?’

‘How happy I am to see you, Amara!’

‘And I to see you …’

A tiny home. In one corner a dwarf Christmas tree, decorated with red bows and chestnuts wrapped in silver paper. Fixed to one wall a small bed covered with striped cloth. Next to it, a wooden plank propped on two trestles to serve as a table. A kitchen recess in one corner, a big cast-iron stove and four folding chairs, of which two are open. The table has been laid with a red cloth, three white plates, some mismatched glasses and cutlery with wooden handles.

‘Where’s Hans?’

‘I thought he was coming with you.’

‘I haven’t seen him for days.’

‘He must have married two or three girls by now.’

But here he is, arriving in his tailcoat. He seems taller and thinner than usual.

‘You look good in tails.’

‘One has to dress for a special occasion, don’t you think?’

‘If I’d thought, I could have made myself more elegant too. But instead …’ Horvath is wearing his usual old trousers at half-mast, with his usual friar’s sandals and his usual stretched sweater with its overlong sleeves.

‘I have to admit, I’m hardly up to your standard either,’ adds Amara with a shrug. She’s wearing the finest thing she has with her, a blue jersey in lightweight wool. With coarse woollen stockings and snow boots. ‘But I did wash my hair this morning,’ she states proudly.

‘Elegant, don’t you think?’ Hans gyrates, showing off his hired tailcoat, well-polished shoes and white bow tie.

‘I like you better in your sweater with the running gazelles.’

‘That’s in the wash. It was beginning to walk on its own feet like French cheese. Well, what are we eating tonight?’ Hans rubs his hands and looks around, sniffing the air.

‘Fish soup Neapolitan-style and Tyrolean strudel. I managed to get hold of some fresh fish. All stuff from the bottom of the net but still alive, and it gave me the idea of the soup. I was taught how to do it by one of my girlfriends, Maggie, who came from South Dakota. An American of Austrian extraction. She came here to look for her roots and found me. What bad luck. She was desperate to have a baby and I wasn’t. It’s immoral to bring babies into such an ugly, idiotic world, I told her; you’ll just produce little criminals. But she was absolutely set on it. So I found her a wonderful boy, Willy Wüppertal, who was working with me in the library and dreaming of becoming a father. I introduced them and they became lovers. They produced four children, then separated. They nearly killed each other because he wanted to keep all four and so did she. Eventually they decided to go halves. Poor Maggie went back to South Dakota with two children in her arms. Before she left she came to see me. She told me Willy Wüppertal was scum, that he was desperate to have children but too lazy to look after them, leaving them all day in the street. True, but what can a man do when first his mother and then his father die within three years, when he loses his job for spending too much time off work, and when he finally gets another job in Africa, he comes back half-dead from malaria … I mean, how can a man in such a situation care for his children properly? Life has been hard on him, poor Willy. But he does love his children very much, I assure you. He no longer loves his Maggie, but that happens. He called her ‘the American stone-eater’ in front of the children. She was furious. I’ve no idea what he meant by stone-eater. The fact was she had to live on boiled potatoes and cheap sausages because she wasn’t making any money. But they both got it wrong and their children are neurotic. I occasionally see the two who have stayed with their father: they never stop hitting each other and trading insults, and they don’t give a damn about poor Willy Wüppertal.’