Dacia Maraini: Train to Budapest

Now the city is struggling to wake up. There is a smell of coffee, and here and there singing from behind closed windows. Soon the New Year concert will begin. The 1st of January 1957 opens on a cold but sunny morning. The three friends walk arm in arm, making a comic sight as they avoid the broken bottles, fried potato cartons and tin stars that fill the street. Two men and a woman. An elderly youngster, as his friends call him, with white hair cut short, dark trousers stopping short of his bare ankles, and huge feet enclosed in sandals. Next to him a small girl with nut-brown hair in a light blue coat, her red beret pulled well down on her head, her eyes half-shut against the cold. On her right another ageing youth, his thick brown hair streaked with grey tending to fall across his brow above intense and inquisitive chestnut eyes.

But where are they going so early in the morning on New Year’s Day, trampling the remnants of the previous night’s celebrations, in a Vienna still sleeping under the benevolent hand of the sun?

They do not speak. Each seems sunk in his or her own thoughts. But there is a subtle understanding in their linked arms. An understated and perhaps not even fully conscious friendship that has grown with time.

Reaching Karlsplatz they stop. The street they are looking for cannot be far away. They cross Ressel Park followed by a cat, its tail erect like a flag. But the moment they show signs of coming close it runs off severe and proud, tail scything the air.

Here’s Brücknerstrasse. They follow the numbers: one to 32; 18 must be somewhere in the middle. A street that has more or less survived the bombs. Only two houses destroyed, their yards ready for rebuilding. Stacks of bricks covered with snow, a crane waiting for good weather to get back to work. A digger. A cement-mixer. All abandoned under the snow.

Number 18 is a red-brick house with a fringe of icicles hanging from its low roof.

‘Here we are.’

‘Sure? I can’t see any number.’

‘This is it, he even described it to me.’

‘Are you absolutely sure we’ve got the right day?’

‘Of course, don’t worry. He won’t eat you.’

Hans presses the bell. No answer. He tries again. A woman’s voice from above. The three raise their heads to see an open window and a woman with two blonde plaits wound round her ears signing to them to come in. They push open the small gate and find themselves before a door of dark wood bearing a green ring covered with little silver bells.

When the door is opened all the little bells start tinkling together, each with a different sound. The woman with the blonde plaits gives a little bow of invitation and precedes them up some steep steps. The three follow. She seems extremely young, with an adolescent face above a solid, massive body. She climbs rapidly. On reaching the top she disappears down a small corridor to one side leaving them alone in a small sitting room panelled in light-coloured wood. On the rust-coloured wall-to-wall carpet are a small sofa and two small armchairs covered with white cotton decorated with obtrusive pink elephants and light-blue tigers.

They stand for a minute or two in the entrance uncertain what to do, then the door before them opens and the man they had met before comes in.

Peter Orenstein holds out his hand in his familiar clumsy and graceless manner. He seems to have changed since the last time they met. He is now wearing clean clothes, a fine red velvet shirt and an open grey wool cardigan. On his feet are plush slippers and under his arm a book. But his head is hairless, the hole in his cheek distorts his face and his parted lips reveal a set of dentures. He offers a sardonic grin.

‘So you’ve moved, Herr Orenstein?’

‘This is not my house, but my wife’s. You’ve met her, Brunhilde, she’s very timid. I come here when I want to see the child. And I have to say, she welcomes me with great courtesy. As she welcomes my friends. What can I offer you? I think Brunhilde keeps the drinks in here.’ He bends to open a small cupboard of painted wood, pulls out a pot-bellied bottle with no label and pours into their glasses some white liquid diluted with water from another bottle.

‘A little Pernod?’

He offers each of them a glass, and empties his own in a few gulps then refills it with quick, furtive movements.

‘We would like to bring you our best wishes for a happy New Year, Herr Orenstein. Please excuse us for calling on you during a holiday but Frau Amara has to go back to Italy and before she goes she would like to have back the letter she left in your hands.’

‘It was I who chose the day for your visit.’

‘Yes, but today is New Year’s Day.’

‘That means nothing to me. For me holidays are a mere accident.’

‘Well, that’s all right then.’

‘When you came before there were two of you, now there are three,’ remarks their host slyly.

‘This is our friend Horvath. We have no secrets from him. We were together at Budapest during the uprising. We all risked our lives together.’

‘Oh yes, those awful friends of Horthy who tried to bring off a coup d’état .’

‘That’s not how it was. Perhaps you have been misinformed. We were there. It was a popular uprising.’

‘The Soviets have done an excellent job putting them back in their place.’

Amara wants to argue, but Hans squeezes her elbow. They are there to understand and get the letter back, not to dispute politics.

‘Herr Orenstein, last time you said that Emanuele Orenstein was yourself. Why did you say that?’

The man looks at them as though he doesn’t understand. Meanwhile he has gulped down another glass of Pernod. Amara notices his hands are shaking as he pours the alcohol.

‘Because it’s true,’ he finally says, grimacing like a puppet.

‘But Emanuele was born in 1928 which would make him twenty-eight today. Excuse me, but how old are you?’

‘Mind your own business,’ says the man, suddenly offended.

Now his eyes are shining brightly. With stained, bony fingers he continues to pour Pernod, without even asking the others if they want more.

‘Signora Maria Amara Sironi, who has been looking for you for months, would like to know a little more. Otherwise please tell us if you know nothing and we will leave you in peace.’

‘Signora Amara, whom I knew as a child, is very sure of herself. Where does this presumption come from?’

‘Presumption?’

‘To know who I might or might not be.’

‘She has been looking for you for months. And it was you who said that Peter Orenstein and Emanuele Orenstein are the same person,’ interrupts Hans, trusting in logic.

‘Have you been to Dachau?’

‘No.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Why are you speaking in riddles, Herr Orenstein. What have you to do with that boy?’

‘I am that boy.’

‘Why are you teasing us, Herr Peter?’

They see him lean perilously over the carpet. At the last moment he saves himself by falling in a sitting position onto the sofa, leaning on one arm. Then he rises again painfully and stifles a retch. Grabbing the bottle with greedy fingers he lifts it straight to his mouth. The three watch in astonishment. They don’t know whether to tear the bottle from his hands, to help him, or to go away. Everything seems possible and impossible at the same time.

‘Are you Amara then? You don’t seem to me the same person at all. I think you’re trying to confuse me.’

‘The fact is we’re here to find out about Emanuele, not about Amara,’ says Horvath, beginning to lose patience. But Hans holds him back. Perhaps, and Amara agrees, all this drinking will help to loosen a few knots, to draw out words buried for too long.

‘If you really were Amara, you would have come to look for me before now. What have you been doing all this time? What have you been up to? Are you married? Screwing some foul Florentine turd?’