Douglas Kennedy - Woman in the Fifth

‘For the time being.’

‘How badly was Yanna beaten?’

I gave her the full picture. Her face tightened as I explained the extent of the injuries inflicted on Yanna.

‘Bastards,’ she said. ‘That’s what they did to my mother.’

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘The secret police … when they came to kill my father, they also beat the shit out of my mother. Actually beat her around the face.’

‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

‘May 11, 1957. I was seven years old. My father was a newspaper editor — a one-time Party member who turned very anti-Communist after the 1956 Uprising was crushed by Russian tanks. Since martial law was declared, he had gone underground and was publishing a samizdat newspaper — very anti-Kadar and his regime — which was being run from a variety of safe houses around Budapest. Father was never at home — he was essentially on the run all the time — but I remember these men in suits or leather jackets frequently waking us up in the middle of the night, and sometimes ransacking the apartment and even pulling me from bed to see if Father was hiding underneath it.

‘This went on for months. I kept asking Mother, “ Why are these men after Papa? When do I get to see Papa again? ” Mother simply told me to be patient … that we would be reunited with Papa soon … but that I should stop asking questions about his whereabouts and that, if anyone at school asked me where he was, I was to say that I had absolutely no idea.

‘Then, one Friday, Mother said, “ I have a nice surprise. We’re going away for the weekend. ” But she wouldn’t tell me where exactly where we were heading. So we got into our little car and drove off after dark. Hours later — I had no idea how long we’d been on the road, as I’d fallen asleep in the back — we turned off down a dirt road and eventually stopped at this tiny cottage in the woods. There, inside the cottage, was Papa. I ran into his arms and wouldn’t let go of him … even when Mother, who was crying with happiness to see him, tried to hug him. Papa was mine … until I got tired and they put me to bed on the lumpy sofa in the front room. I remembered waking once or twice in the middle of the night when I heard groans from the bedroom — not knowing what they were doing at the time — but then falling back to sleep again … until, suddenly, there was this loud pounding at the door. The next thing I knew, there were loud voices and Mother came running out of the bedroom and I turned around and saw Papa trying to scramble out of the bedroom window. Then the front door burst open, and several policemen and two men in suits came marching in. One of the cops went running into the bedroom and pulled Papa back from the window and started beating him with his stick. My mother began to scream — and a plainclothes officer grabbed her while his colleague repeatedly punched her in the face. Now I started to scream, but the other cop held me down while his colleague dragged my father outside. The officer who was beating Mother stopped, and pushed her on to the sofa. Her face was a bloody pulp and she was evidently unconscious. Now he started shouting orders and dashed to join the cop who pulled Papa outside, then ducked back in once to grab a chair. His colleague — certain that Mother wasn’t moving — ran out as well. There was more shouting — then the cop holding me lifted me up and frogmarched me outside.

‘First light was in the sky — and what I saw there I will never forget. My father — his hands behind his back, a rope around his neck that had been suspended from a tree — was being forced to climb on top of a chair placed right under the tree. When he refused, one of the plainclothes cops grabbed him in the crotch and squeezed so hard that Papa doubled over and the two men forced him on the chair, and I was crying and trying to turn away, and the same officer who’d grabbed Papa in the crotch shouted to the cop holding me, “ Make her watch .” So he grabbed my ponytail and forced me to see the other plainclothes guy kick the chair, and Papa wriggling and jerking and coughing up blood as …’

Margit stopped and sipped her whisky.

‘It must have taken him a good two minutes to die. And do you know what one of the plainclothes officers — they were Secret Police — told me? “ Now you know what we do to traitors. “’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘I never knew …’

‘Because I never told you.’

‘How the fuck could they have done that to you … a little girl … ?’

‘Because they were bastards. And because they could do this. They had the power. They made the rules. They could force a seven-year-old-girl to watch her father being lynched.’

‘What happened after?’

‘They bundled me into a car and took me off to a State orphanage. A hellhole. I was there for three weeks. Refused to leave my bed, except to go to the bathroom. Refused to speak to anyone. I remember they sent doctors to see me. I said nothing. They were always talking in whispers to the nurses and the orphanage people, saying things like, “ She’s traumatized … She’s in shock … She has to be fed .” But I refused to eat. So they eventually tied me down to a bed and stuck needles in my arms and fed me that way.

‘After three weeks, one of the matrons of the orphanage came in and said, “ Your mother’s here. You’re leaving .” I didn’t feel elation. I didn’t cry with happiness. I felt nothing but numbness.

‘Mother was waiting for me in the director’s office. Her face had only half-healed. One eye was half-closed, the other … she was never able to use that eye again. She came over and put her arms around me, but there was no strength to her hug, no comfort. Something had been killed in her. She was accompanied by two men in suits. When I saw them I immediately recoiled — and hid behind my mother — because I was certain they were the same sort of men who had killed my father. Even they were embarrassed by my fear of them, and one of them whispered to my mother who then whispered to me, “ They want you to know they will do you no harm .”

‘But I still refused to come up and face everyone until Mother crouched down beside me and said, “ We have been given permission to leave Hungary. These men will drive us to the Austrian border, and there we will be met by other men who will bring us to a city called Vienna. And we will start a new life there .”

‘Again, I said nothing. Except, “ Those men who killed my father … will they hurt us again? ”

‘One of the suits crouched down and spoke to me. “ No, they will never hurt you again ,” he said. “ But I can promise you they will pay terribly for what they did .”

‘As I found out from my mother some years later, those men with her at the orphanage were also from the Secret Police. My father’s death had been something of a big deal. One of the uniformed officers who had been on the scene when he was murdered had a crisis of conscience, and made contact with the Reuters correspondent in Budapest. The story went everywhere — especially the bit about me being forced to watched Papa’s execution. The fact that the cop who yanked my ponytail to make me keep my eyes open was the same one who ratted out his colleagues and went to the Western press … well, I suppose it shows that even the police sometimes have a conscience.’

‘What happened next?’

‘There was a small international cause celebre. It was the height of the Cold War, and the press outside of Hungary jumped on the story — Communist savagery and all that. Anyway, the Kadar government were under a lot of pressure to “solve the problem”. So they offered my mother and me free passage out of the country and a little money to start a new life in the West.’