Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

‘This fish soup,’ says Hans, dipping his spoon into it. ‘It’s really good, you must tell me how you make it.’

‘Put some garlic in a pan with a little oil and parsley, and as soon as it turns golden, slip in the fish, cleaned and cut up but complete with the heads which are the tastiest part, then pour on boiling water and let it cook for a long time. Then …’ But Hans won’t let him finish. The recipe immediately bores him.

‘But how can this Maggie from South Dakota have learned how to cook fish soup Neapolitan-style?’ he asks with curiosity, sucking the eye of a scorpion fish.

‘Before she and I got together she spent a few months with a man from Naples. Even introduced me to him. His name was Salvatore, or Salvo, and he worked in an Italian restaurant on Heistergasse, near the station. A beautiful boy, with very black hair and light eyes. He had good manners and was an excellent cook. He said the northern countries drove him mad. I think he wanted a child too. In that respect they were on the same wavelength. But one day he vanished without a word. So Maggie from South Dakota attached herself to me because I comforted her. I’m good at comforting people, oh yes, I’m the best comforter in Austria.’

The three laugh as they thrust spoonfuls of hot soup into their mouths. Every now and then, a dangerous fishbone appears, transparent and as sharp as a needle, but the three are unperturbed, pulling out the bones with their fingers and laying them on the side of their plates. The peppery soup also contains little squares of crisp bread soaked in a fragrant sauce. Sheer delight.

Horvath fetches a bowl of warm water for their fingers and drops into it two slices of fresh lemon. Hans fills their glasses with wine.

‘Müller Thurgau ’46. Ten years old this month. It’ll either be exquisite or vinegar. Let’s find out …’

Fortunately the wine hasn’t turned to vinegar though it has taken on a rather disquieting brownish colour and leaves an occasional black clot on the tongue, but it has a good flavour of wood and must. Bells are ringing somewhere. It’s nearly ten o’clock. Outside snow is spinning down out of a black sky, sticking to the windowpanes, sliding and drifting on the roofs. Inside, the room is cosy, as the wood-burning stove sends out waves of warmth. The wine attacks the palate and infiltrates the nose with its oaken fragrance.

As soon as they have finished the warm strudel and cream, Amara gives the two friends her presents: for Horvath, a book listing every library in the world that can be consulted free by phone. So the write-up claims and Horvath leafs through it with interest. For Hans a record of Verdi’s Rigoletto , the opera her father Amintore so loved.

Horvath has brought an electric-blue beret for Amara and a new knapsack for Hans. While Hans has a portable typewriter for Amara; it is called Lettera 22 and is new on the market from Olivetti. For Horvath he has a pair of American naval shoes, in an attractive dark blue, with cloth uppers to enable the feet to breathe and heels well supported by leather and India rubber.

‘I know you’ll never wear them,’ says Amara, watching Horvath turn them in his hands and inspect them from every angle.

‘How about some excellent apricot grappa!’

‘Gerard Haemmerle Schnapps. A special Christmas offer.’

The three friends drink sitting round the stove, in the warmth of a peaceful evening on the last day of the year 1956, remembering the uprising in Budapest and the friends they have left behind.

‘I’ve had a letter from Ferenc,’ says Hans, pulling out a folded sheet of squared paper. ‘They haven’t even got proper writing paper.’

‘Will you read it to us?’

‘That’s why I brought it.’

Dear Hans, I’m in Miskolc at my sister’s. All’s calm here. We’re buried in snow. They say it’s twenty years since the last time it was so cold and there was so much snow. I wanted to go back to Budapest to put a flower on Tadeusz’s grave, but moving about is dangerous. Every street, every corner, every cossroads is garrisoned and if you can’t produce a hundred pieces of paper and a hundred permits they throw you in prison. We breathe a lurid atmosphere of clean sweep. Slander has become State truth. And woe betide you if you don’t accept that. Yesterday it said in the paper that Nagy and his friends had plotted a coup together with foreign imperialists and internal counter-revolutionary forces. ‘Do you know what this means? That very soon he’ll be tried and sentenced to death. Kádár is now worse than Rákosi, whom we hated so much for becoming a pawn of the Soviets with his free use of political police and torture. The radio constantly repeats that the insurgents were working to restore to power the great landed proprietors, Horthy’s fascists and the old capitalists. And who is to blame? Those who helped the insurgents. That is to say, practically every single Hungarian citizen: students, workers, imtellectuals, teachers, professionals. In effect they’ve started collective trials and sentences are falling on people like snow. All the directors of the factory Councils have been arrested. The Revolutionary Committee of Intellectuals started at the Petőfi Circle has been dissolved. The sentences handed down are extremely severe: nearly always death. Those who are spared end up without a proper trial or any specific accusation in the concentration camps Nagy closed. These are being reopened in their dozens throughout the land. Even a mere suspicion will land you inside for six months, easily extended to twelve merely by an administrative decision. But can they gag an entire nation? The ÁVH with their hated uniforms, badges and cudgels have started circulating again. And they hit people. They hit anyone who gets under their feet … Though Hungarians must have very hard heads, because resistance is continuing; desperate, sporadic, improvised but continuous. In a factory at Debrecen the other day all the workers came out on strike. The police arrived by the lorryload, arrested the leaders and carried them off to prison. A hundred or so other workers presented themselves next day in front of the prison to demand that their comrades be freed. Little by little the crowd grew bigger. By midday a thousand people had gathered. They were unarmed and did no more than shout. Do you know what Kádár’s soldiers did? They fired on the crowd, indiscriminately and without warning. Fifty dead and more than a hundred wounded. Anywhere a crowd forms, the police come and fire directly at the people. On 12 December Kádár instituted special tribunals for political crimes. And what particularly saddens me is that on 8 December, at the Eighth Congress of the Italian Communist Party, the Soviet intervention in Hungary was approved, thus isolating the voices of any dissidents. The papers have been singing the praises of Italy in a big way these last few days. Tell Amara, if she doesn’t already know it. This is the way the wind is blowing in this country. Oh, I forgot the censorship, which sticks its nose in everywhere and blacks out letters, even personal ones. If I had posted this to you I would now be in prison awaiting trial for high treason. Luckily I found a friend who has a friend coming to Vienna with all his permits in place and I gave the letter to him. We may be taking a risk, but I want you to know what’s happening and tell the world about it. Tell Amara to publish it in her paper. Say hello to Horvath. With all best wishes from Ferenc.

Amara, Hans and Horvath are walking along the Wiedner Hauptstrasse. It’s half-past nine in the morning but not a soul can be seen in the street. Only a few drowsy figures sweeping up broken glass and collecting waste paper, cigarette ends and beer cans. At Horvath’s the evening before they ate and drank happily, with a toast at midnight while the city exploded with shots: fireworks that were a sinister reminder of the sounds of war. At one each returned home to sleep. But the explosions, drunken shouts and the dull sound of bottles thrown from windows continued till dawn.