A friend of her father’s? Has Papa ever mentioned a Zoltán Dobos? Katalin thinks not. She’s suspicious but intrigued.
‘How do you know my father?’
‘Fair question.’ His tone is friendly and reasonable, not at all offended. He walks down a couple more steps towards her. ‘But we can’t talk here.’ He gives a significant nod in the direction of József’s door and holds his right hand up to his ear. He’s right that the building has ears. ‘Is there somewhere we could go? A café maybe?’
He’s stepped into a pool of light and she can see him more clearly now. Dark eyes, well-defined cheekbones, a strong-set jaw and a straight brow that almost meets in the middle, giving him a serious look. His complexion is olive-skinned, like the peasants who work all day in the fields. He looks older than her, but by how much it’s hard to tell, maybe no more than a couple of years. The trench coat looks like something left over from the war. She notices it’s fraying at the hem.
‘There is a café that stays open late,’ she says.
‘Feri’s place? I know it well. Shall we?’ He descends the last few steps and joins her on the landing. He’s tall, she only comes up to his shoulder, but his manner is entirely unthreatening. Rather he seems to be leaving it to her to make the decision. She could say no and she feels sure he would simply go away. But something tells her he would be sad if she did. And besides, she’s curious. He says he knows her father. Maybe he can tell her something useful, unlike Professor Novák. She’ll feel safe at Feri’s.
She nods, and his face breaks into a broad smile, lighting up his stern features and making him look younger.
Outside, he lights a cigarette and offers her one which she politely declines. They walk to the café in silence through the darkening streets. She has to hurry to keep up with his longer stride. The way he walks, it’s as if he owns the pavement.
The café is empty, save for two old men playing chess. Feri is humming along to the radio, polishing glasses behind the bar. He smiles when he sees the two young people approach the counter.
‘Mademoiselle, Monsieur, what can I get you?’
They order two coffees and two pastries and sit down at a corner table, out of earshot of the chess players. Katalin is ravenous after her visit to Professor Novák. She tucks in to her pastry which is flavoured with cinnamon and nutmeg.
‘I saw what happened to your father the other night,’ says Zoltán, stirring his coffee.
‘You did?’ She is surprised he is telling her this. Most people prefer not to admit to seeing anything. If you don’t see or hear what happens to your neighbours, you can’t be held responsible for them. It’s easier and safer that way.
He nods. ‘Like I said, I live directly opposite.’
‘I’ve not seen you before.’ She is certain she would remember him if she had. He’s not conventionally good-looking but he’s the sort of man who would stand out in a crowd. He’s taken off the beret and his hair is dark and springy. The hands that pick up the pastry are strong and a little roughened, as if he does manual labour.
‘I’ve only been there three months. I leave for work early and get back late most nights.’
‘You must have been up very late if you saw the AVO arrest Papa.’ She sips her coffee and waits for him to explain himself further.
‘I like to read when everyone else is asleep. I was sitting by the window when I heard the cars in the square. I saw they were Russian Pobedas. That usually means only one thing. Only the Secret Police call at such unsociable times.’
Katalin nods. ‘I was in bed. The doorbell terrified me. At first I thought it was just a bad dream, but then it rang again and wouldn’t stop.’ She shudders at the memory. At the time she felt so vulnerable and alone, she had no idea someone else was watching events unfold. A thought occurs to her – was he spying on them? But she doesn’t believe he had sinister intentions. He wouldn’t admit to it so freely if he was spying for the AVO. Everyone hates informers.
‘What were you reading?’ she asks.
‘Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. In fact your father lent it to me.’
‘He did?’ The AVO took away the rest of her father’s German books. She’s pleased they didn’t take this one. ‘It’s one of his favourites,’ she says.
He smiles, remembering. ‘We got chatting one day here in this café about books. He saw I was reading Crime and Punishment and he asked me what I thought of it. He was reading Anna Karenina. He offered to lend me some Thomas Mann. I’ll return it soon. I’ve nearly finished it.’
‘It is all true,’ says Feri who is wiping down the nearby tables. ‘Those two always have their heads in a book.’
Katalin laughs. She has no worries about Feri overhearing their conversation and she can well believe what she is hearing. Her father often reads in cafés and likes nothing more than a literary discussion. She imagines Zoltán Dobos and Márton Bakos getting on very well.
Feri moves off to chat to the elderly chess players and she is once again alone with this strange man whom she has only just met. Suddenly she feels shy and picks at crumbs on her plate, not sure what to say. There’s so much she’d like to tell him, but where to start?
Zoltán breaks the awkward silence that has fallen between them. ‘The reason I came over this evening is because I wanted to make sure you were all right. I’d have come sooner, but work got in the way.’
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you did.’ She is touched by this act of kindness. She has a sudden urge to tell him everything that’s on her mind.
‘The worst thing,’ she blurts out, ‘is that I don’t know where they’ve taken him or what’s going to happen to him.’
‘They’ve probably taken him to the Secret Police headquarters on Andrássy Avenue, but you can’t just march in there and demand to know. They’d lock you up too.’
‘Then what am I supposed to do?’
‘Be patient. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but you don’t have any other choice.’
‘I went to see my father’s colleague today in Buda.’
‘And I’m guessing from the look on your face that it wasn’t a successful trip.’
‘Far from it.’
‘The thing is,’ says Zoltán, ‘people are scared. It’s the only way the Party can stay in power, by making people afraid of them. It’s not that people don’t want to help, but they have to think about themselves and their own families first.’
He speaks calmly and openly. It’s a brave thing to do, thinks Katalin, criticising the Party in public. Feri can be trusted, but what if one of those old chess players overhears? What if one of them is an AVO informer?
‘You don’t seem afraid,’ she says. She realises that this is what marks Zoltán out as different. He walks tall, both literally and metaphorically. She’s never met anyone quite like him before.
‘I try to believe what Roosevelt said, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’
‘And do you?’
‘Most of the time.’ He laughs. ‘Well, at least some of it.’
There’s a draught of cold air as the two chess players open the door and walk out into the dark street. It’s grown late. She could sit here all evening, talking to Zoltán, finding out what else he reads late at night. She wants to ask him about his work, his family, where he’s come from. So many questions. But Feri has turned the radio off as if he’s trying to give them a gentle hint that it’s time to be leaving.
‘We should go,’ she says. ‘Thank you for coming to find me.’
‘My pleasure. I’ll return The Magic Mountain in a couple of days.’
She smiles at the prospect of seeing him again. Maybe he’d like to borrow more books, the ones the AVO didn’t take with them.
They bid Feri goodnight and walk back to Király Street. There are no cars following them and she feels safe in Zoltán’s presence.
He walks her to the door of her building where they pause on the pavement. There’s a moment’s
awkwardness when she doesn’t know what to say to him but she doesn’t want him to leave just yet.
He takes her hand in both of his and says, ‘If you ever need me, I’m just over there, on the top floor.’ He points to the building opposite.
‘Thank you.’
‘Well, goodnight then.’
‘Yes, good night.’
He still has hold of her hand. ‘Would you like to have lunch with me on Saturday afternoon? I know a place that does good food.’
‘Yes, I’d like that very much.’
‘That’s wonderful. I’ll come for you at midday.’
He gives her hand a gentle squeeze and then he’s striding across the square, his trench coat flapping behind him. Katalin lets herself into the building and runs up the stairs. She feels lighter than she’s done since the AVO arrested Papa. That night she sleeps soundly without waking.
*
Sleep is the thing Márton desires above all else. For the second night in a row, he is sitting in front of a typewriter, typing his life story. Apparently yesterday’s effort was not good enough and, like a naughty schoolboy, he is being made to do it all again.
His back is stiff and sore, his buttocks are numb and his fingers are starting to cramp up. It’s an old typewriter and the mechanism is recalcitrant at best. The words on the paper swim in front of his eyes, blurring and reshaping themselves into meaningless squiggles. His head nods forwards, his neck muscles unwilling to hold it up straight a moment longer. The guard on duty prods him in the back with his rifle butt and orders him to keep typing. He’s starting to run out of things to write.
He can’t imagine what relevance his childhood has to his present predicament. Nevertheless, he does as he’s asked and fills pages with stories of growing up in eastern Hungary. Once he starts to type the memories flood back: the acres of arable land handed down through his family from one generation to another; picking apples in the orchard; fishing in the river; plentiful harvests; good wine. The peasants who worked on the land were treated well. It was a time of abundance and plenty, unlike now. He grew up free to roam the hills and forests, to explore and discover. That was how he became a scientist, through his love of nature. His father saw that he wasn’t cut out to be a landowner and encouraged him with his education. He went to university and studied physics. His parents were proud of him. But they died in the war. In some ways it was a blessing. It would have broken their hearts to see their land divided up and redistributed in the government’s land reform programme. He had a good childhood but it would be better for him now if he’d been born a peasant. The Party professes to love peasants and factory workers, although Márton has long doubted that is truly the case.
And now he must write about his time in England. He remembers wisteria-clad quadrangles, medieval college dining halls, summer walks in Christ Church Meadow, punting on the river Cherwell, lively debate, stimulating lectures and above all a thirst for knowledge and the freedom to discuss ideas openly and without fear. There’s no getting away from the fact that this was one of the happiest periods of his life. But he must play all of this down as he types his life story for the AVO. England is the imperialist enemy now. That is how the high-ups in Hungary see things. And they are the ones holding him prisoner. He skims over his Oxford days, trying to make out that the time spent there was not so important to him after all.
He hits the keys of the typewriter, making more and more spelling mistakes as he struggles to stay awake. He’s sure that much of what he’s writing is gibberish, but if he pauses for a moment the guard will prod him in the back with his rifle.
Finally, when he’s filled twenty pages with stories about his life, the guard tells him to get up. He staggers to his feet, his knee joints clicking. He has no idea what time it is, but it must be early morning. He lets himself be led back to his cell like a lamb. All he wants is to lie down on the wooden plank which has now assumed the desirability of a feather mattress. But there’s a note pinned to his cell door. The prisoner is not allowed to sleep.
He stands in his cell, shivering with cold and swaying on his feet as his eyelids close. Is it possible to sleep standing up?
Chapter Five
‘You did what?’ Róza looks horrified. She puts down her coffee and stares at Katalin across the table. They are sharing a slice of apple and cinnamon pie at Feri’s. Its sweet and spicy texture crumbles in the mouth. The radio is playing the usual stream of Party-approved folk music and Feri is humming along to the tunes as he walks around clearing the tables.
‘I went to see Professor Károly Novák. I thought he might know something about Papa’s arrest.’
Róza shakes her head. ‘You shouldn’t have taken the risk. You might have been followed.’
Katalin doesn’t say anything about the car in Buda. It would only confirm Róza’s worst fears. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, this not knowing.’
Róza gives her a sympathetic look. ‘So did Professor Novák tell you anything?’
‘No, nothing. But the worst thing was when his wife appeared.’ Katalin still can’t reconcile the Ilona of last night with the woman she remembers from all those years ago, the one who sang Mozart so beautifully in her parents’ apartment. ‘She made it plain that I wasn’t welcome in their house. She couldn’t get me out of there fast enough.’
Róza taps the table with her finger. ‘They know something, then. Or at least she does. Which is precisely why you mustn’t talk to them. They’re dangerous.’
‘But they were such good friends of my parents.’
‘Even so.’
They fall silent. Outside, darkness has fallen and a gentle rain patters against the window. She can’t understand why people her parents once trusted would turn her away so cruelly. Unlike Zoltán who went out of his way to find her and offer his support. A man in a trench coat is crossing the road, weaving between the trams. Katalin’s heart somersaults in expectation. She’s been thinking about Zoltán all day, unable to get him out of her mind. She squints into the night, but it’s not him. She swallows her disappointment.
‘What is it?’ asks Róza. ‘Did you see someone you know?’
Róza doesn’t miss a thing. Katalin feels herself starting to redden. She wasn’t going to say anything about Zoltán until she’d got to know him a bit better, but Róza will pester her until she spills the beans.
Katalin stirs her coffee with one of Feri’s little silver spoons. ‘When I arrived home last night there was a man standing on the landing outside my apartment. He was ringing the bell.’
‘Good grief, you must have been terrified after what happened to your father!’
‘I was at first. But it wasn’t the AVO.’
‘So who was it?’
‘His name is Zoltán Dobos. He lives across the street. He’s only a year or two older than us, but he says he’s a friend of Papa’s. They got to know each other talking about books. He saw what happened the night when the AVO came to arrest Papa, and he came over to make sure I was all right.’
Katalin can see the disbelief on her friend’s face and it disappoints her. She wants Róza to like Zoltán, not mistrust him.
‘Are you sure he is who he says he is?’ asks Róza, lowering her voice. ‘You can’t be too careful. He might be an informer.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
How can she explain? Is she putting too much faith in a shared love of books? No, there has to be more to it than that. In the end she says, ‘He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. Not many people are brave enough to do that.’ When Róza continues to look sceptical, Katalin adds, ‘Anyway, I’m meeting him for lunch on Saturday.’ She enjoys the look of astonishment on her friend’s face.
*
‘What is this pile of waffle?’ The red-faced officer holds up the pages that Márton has typed. He flicks through the sheets with his tobacco-stained fingers, scowling at the densely packed prose.
‘That is my life
story,’ says Márton. He’s so exhausted he doesn’t have the will to argue. ‘It’s what you asked for.’ He doubts the man has read it. He doesn’t look as if he has the patience to read a child’s story book, let alone dozens of pages of autobiography.
It’s late evening and Márton is back in the upstairs office, sitting on the hard wooden chair opposite the man whose name he has discovered, from overhearing the guards talking, is Vajda. He’s had no proper sleep for the last forty-eight hours. Every time he’s nodded off for ten minutes, the spy hole has banged open and the guard on duty has shouted at him to wake up. He’s relieved that Vajda hasn’t turned on the interrogation lamp, but on the other hand it means he can see the cold-hearted ruthlessness in the man’s eyes.
Vajda takes the top sheet of paper, scrunches it into a ball and tosses it across the room. ‘Lies! All of it lies!’ He continues to scrunch up sheet after sheet and throw them around the room, like a child having a tantrum, until the floor is littered with Márton’s life story.
Márton sits tight, clenching his fists. He wasn’t expecting Vajda to praise his literary efforts, but he riles at being called a liar. Every word he has written is the truth.
When Vajda has finished playing ball he leans across the desk and points a stubby finger at Márton. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’
‘I told the truth,’ says Márton, forcing himself to look Vajda square in the eye.
‘Bollocks!’ Vajda’s jowls wobble and spittle flies from his mouth.
‘What else would you have me write?’
‘What about your spying activities?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Vajda sits back in his comfortable chair. ‘You spent time at Oxford. You have friends in the west. You shared our nuclear plans with them.’
So that’s what they think of him, is it? Despite the fug of exhaustion clouding his brain, He is incensed by this slur on his integrity. ‘That’s an outrageous lie. It’s true that I have some personal friends in England, but I have never passed on to them anything relating to my work.’
Goodbye to Budapest Page 7
