Goodbye to Budapest

by Margarita Morris

  Géza jumps off the sofa and opens the doors to a cabinet. ‘Whoa! Look at all this booze.’

  The shelves are stocked with bottles of French wine, champagne and liqueurs. He picks up a bottle of Pálinka.

  ‘Ever tried this stuff?’

  Tibor shakes his head. His mum would have a fit if she caught him drinking Pálinka.

  Géza unscrews the lid and takes a swig straight from the bottle. Then he passes it to Tibor. As Tibor lifts the bottle to his lips, he inhales the waves of alcoholic fumes.

  ‘Go on,’ says Géza. ‘It won’t kill you.’

  Tibor knocks back a mouthful, nearly choking as the liquid burns the back of his throat and makes his eyes water. ‘Jesus! How do grown-ups drink this stuff?’

  ‘Come on,’ says Géza, ‘let’s check out the rest of the house.’

  In the kitchen they find lots of shiny new appliances, not at all like the ones Tibor’s mother has to put up with. She’s always complaining that Hungarian washing machines don’t last five minutes and she often resorts to doing the laundry by hand. Upstairs the other boys have trashed the luxurious bedrooms with their pillow fights.

  Tibor sits on the top of the stairs with his head in his hands. The revolution makes so much more sense to him now. In a communist society everyone was supposed to be equal, but it was all just a sham. Those in power had wealth and comfort whilst everyone else had virtually nothing. When he gets home he’ll give his mum the biggest hug ever.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tuesday, 30 October 1956

  With nowhere else to call home, Tamás has been holed up for the last five days at the Communist Party Headquarters in Republic Square, and he’s not the only one. Other AVO officers have taken refuge there too, whilst the world they used to own is now in the hands of rank amateurs who patrol the streets with their stolen rifles and submachine guns. No one dares leave the building. They fear for their lives.

  He stares glumly out of the top-floor window at the leafless trees and burnt-out cars. The Russians have been all but defeated, and by whom? By these so-called insurgents who are roaming freely around the square, smoking and talking. Some of them have stopped to chat to a group of women queueing outside a grocery shop. They share a joke. Laughter. They are the heroes of the hour, this ramshackle army of men and women who until a week ago had never held a weapon in their hands. Now look at them! Students, factory workers, office clerks, old men, children even. The Secret Police, on the other hand, are reviled and hated, hunted down like wild animals. Everything that Tamás understood about the world has been turned upside down. The attacks against the AVO have been vicious. He has seen things which will haunt his dreams for the rest of his life, however long or short that may be.

  His comrades pace up and down or sit with their feet propped on the long mahogany table, cradling their submachine guns, waiting. A portrait of Rákosi gazes down from the wall behind them. There’s an air of expectancy and impatience. Nerves are frayed. Tensions are running high. It will only take a tiny spark to set them off. And then God knows what will happen.

  Gábor joins him at the window and scowls at the insurgents in the square below. Tamás can feel the anger coming off him in waves.

  ‘Bloody hooligans,’ says Gábor. ‘We should go out there and take back control.’ That morning he proudly showed Tamás a coat that he’d stolen from a fallen freedom fighter. It’s a good quality trench coat. He called it a souvenir of war.

  ‘You wouldn’t last five seconds out there,’ calls one of the older men from the table. ‘They’d gun you down as soon as you stepped outside.’

  ‘Just let them try. I bet I can shoot straighter than that lot.’

  ‘They don’t need to shoot straight. There are more of them.’

  Tamás ignores the argument and turns back to the window. He agrees with the man at the table, but there’s nothing to be gained by antagonising Gábor in this already volatile environment. They’re under siege and there’s nothing to do but wait.

  *

  Petra has been queueing outside the grocery store for ages already, but she doesn’t mind because the mood in Republic Square is relaxed, happy even. Now that the fighting has died down, it’s safe to venture outside. She hasn’t enjoyed being cooped up in the apartment all this time, with Tibor driving her up the wall. She nearly had a heart attack when he gave her the slip and went out in the middle of all that anarchy. The fact that he returned half an hour later with a bag of potatoes and a couple of turnips only went partway to calming her frayed nerves. That boy will be the death of her.

  The women in the queue are friendly, everyone keen to talk about the events of the past week. A pair of handsome young freedom fighters stroll past, their rifles slung over their shoulders. It seems to Petra that everyone on the streets is armed these days.

  ‘Well done men!’ says a short woman in a brown headscarf. ‘You’ve done us all proud.’

  They acknowledge the praise with a nod of the head. ‘And how are you ladies coping?’ asks one of the freedom fighters.

  The woman in the headscarf pulls herself up to her full height. ‘We’re doing all right, thank you. We’re survivors, aren’t we ladies?’ She encourages the other women to join in. There are murmurs of agreement.

  Then everyone starts telling stories about how their sons and daughters helped in the fight.

  ‘My grandson used my frying pans to stop a tank, can you believe it?’ chuckles one elderly lady with no teeth. ‘Turned upside down on the road, they look like land mines.’ That raises a laugh. ‘Then his older brother got the tank with a Molotov cocktail. You never saw anything like it!’ She mimes a huge explosion with her knobbly hands.

  It seems the children across the city have taken great delight in devising new and cunning ways to immobilise tanks. Silk bales soaked in oil and spread out on the ground caused the caterpillar tracks to lose their grip; jam smeared on glass viewing panels made it impossible for the Russians to see where they were going.

  ‘My son helped bring down Stalin’s statue,’ says Petra proudly, completely forgetting how furious she was with him for staying out late without permission. ‘And he’s only fourteen, well just turned fifteen.’

  ‘It’s some of the children who’ve made the biggest contribution,’ says the woman in the headscarf.

  ‘And the biggest sacrifice,’ says another woman in a subdued tone.

  Everyone falls silent for a moment. No doubt they all know someone who has been injured or killed. The queue shuffles forward a few inches. It’s still a slow and tiring business, shopping for food.

  A truck pulls into the square and stops outside the Communist Party Headquarters.

  ‘What’s going on over there?’ asks the woman in the brown headscarf.

  The women watch the driver get out of the cab, open the rear doors and start to unload a supply of fresh meat which he carries into the building.

  ‘Did you see that?’ asks the toothless grandmother who sacrificed her frying pans in the fight against the Russians. ‘They’re getting supplies of fresh meat whilst we have to queue for hours for a scrap of dried sausage. It’s outrageous.’

  ‘It’s a bloody disgrace,’ says Petra, feeling a sudden surge of indignation. If she had a weapon, she might just be tempted to use it.

  ‘Let’s put a stop to it,’ says the woman in the headscarf.

  ‘Agreed,’ says one of the freedom fighters to his companion. ‘They’re not going to get away with this.’

  *

  Tamás has been watching the delivery of meat to Party Headquarters. About time too. Their supplies were running perilously low. It was getting to the point where their choice was to starve inside the building or risk being lynched outside.

  But why did the driver have to park right in front of the building in full view of all those women queueing up for their rations? Couldn’t he have had the sense to use a back door? Tamás can see that the women have alerted the insurgents and now groups of angry people ar
e storming across the square. It doesn’t take much to get this lot fired up. God help us, he thinks, is this going to be the spark that ignites the fuse? A delivery of meat?

  He can’t see what has happened to the van driver. Is he inside the building? The shouting outside has brought other AVO officers to the windows to see what is going on. The room grows silent as everyone watches and waits.

  With no warning, an explosion rocks the stairwell of the building. One of the insurgents must have thrown a hand grenade inside. A burst of gunfire from outside shatters the windows and Tamás ducks down. This is it, then.

  At that moment, Vajda walks into the room from wherever he’s been hobnobbing with other senior Party figures.

  ‘What are you lot waiting for?’ shouts Vajda. ‘Don’t just sit there. Let them have it! Show them what you’re made of! Fire back!’

  The men scramble for their weapons and take up position at the windows.

  ‘About bloody time,’ says Gábor, crouching down beside Tamás and pointing his submachine gun through the broken window. He pulls his finger on the trigger and lets off a magazine of bullets into the crowd, not caring where they strike. He turns to Tamás. ‘Get shooting, you moron.’

  *

  Sitting by the open rear doors of the ambulance, Róza is sharing a moment of respite with István and Bálint. They’ve become good mates in the short time they’ve been working together. They’re chatting about their plans for the future – István wants to be a surgeon one day – when they hear the unmistakable sound of gunfire in Republic Square, just round the corner from the hospital. It’s been quieter these last few days and it seemed that the worst of the fighting was over, but something has triggered this new skirmish.

  They don’t need to say anything to each other. Working as a team whilst dodging shells and bullets, they’ve learnt to communicate with very few words, just a look and a nod. There’s no question of them not going to Republic Square to see what they can do to help. It’s what they’ve been trained to do.

  They jump into the ambulance and Bálint drives at speed the few hundred yards round the corner into the square. When Róza jumps down from the back of the ambulance the first thing she sees is women with shopping bags running every which way, screaming, amidst the gunfire.

  She grabs the arm of a freedom fighter who is carrying a rifle. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘AVO in the Communist Party Headquarters,’ he shouts, pointing to the building on the edge of the square. ‘They’re shooting at us, the bastards.’ He runs off to join in the battle.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says István. ‘This is bad.’

  *

  Sándor takes the call at the Corvin cinema informing the Corvinists that fighting has broken out in Republic Square and that the freedom fighters there urgently need reinforcements. AVO men entrenched at Party Headquarters are firing at anything in the square that moves.

  ‘We’ll be there as soon as we can,’ he says. He puts the phone down and hurries off in search of Bandi.

  Zoltán has gone home to spend some time with his family, but Sándor has stayed on at the cinema, helping to deal with the last remaining outbursts, mainly directed at the Secret Police. He shares Bandi’s view that AVO men who are guilty of crimes should be arrested and tried, and not face mob justice at the hands of angry citizens. But it’s difficult to control a crowd intent on vengeance. If the reports of AVO shooting at crowds in Republic Square are true, then there are going to be some very ugly reprisals.

  It doesn’t take long for the Corvinists to mobilise their forces and soon a convoy of armoured vehicles – one bearing the anti-tank gun – is on its way to Republic Square.

  Riding in the front vehicle with Bandi, Sándor can’t help feeling a sense of pride about what they’ve achieved in the past ten days. They’ve taken on the Russians and they’ve won. Now it’s just a question of dealing with the handful of hard-line AVO that don’t know the game is up. Once, he thought he would spend the rest of his life working in that awful factory, but his role with the Corvin Circle has taught him that he’s capable of so much more. In the hours spent waiting for Russian tanks to trundle past so that he could blitz them with the anti-tank gun, he came to an important decision. When this is all over he’s going to ask Róza to marry him. He’s made up his mind and he shouldn’t put it off any longer. If there’s one thing he’s learned it’s that life is not a rehearsal for something else. You only get one shot at living and you have to grab opportunities as they appear.

  The convoy rounds the corner into the square and he can see at a glance that this is more than just a spat involving a few hardened AVO. It’s already turning into a bloodbath.

  *

  Tamás picks up his weapon and aims it out of the window. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He doesn’t want to be here in this room, crouching next to Gábor, shooting at other Hungarians. But if he goes outside the insurgents will lynch him. He’s seen it happen. They’ll string him up from a tree by his ankles, douse him in petrol and set fire to him. So what other choice does he have but to shoot? He chose this line of work. Now he must stand alongside his comrades and fight until the last man is left standing. He pulls the trigger but he aims high, above the heads of the angry crowd.

  The room shakes with the sound of gunfire. Plaster falls from the ceiling, lights shatter, the portrait of Rákosi cracks and falls to the floor. A shriek by the window cuts across the racket. Someone has been hit. There’s a commotion whilst comrades drag the wounded man back from the window. He lies on the floor near the table, clutching his upper arm. We can’t win this, thinks Tamás. The number of insurgents in the square is growing all the time, the sound of gunfire drawing them in like wasps attracted to overripe fruit. The AVO numbers are limited and they’re already one man down.

  Gábor turns to him, opens his mouth to speak, and then freezes as a bullet slices into his temple. For a second he looks startled, then he collapses on top of Tamás, spraying him in red blood. Tamás screams in horror, drops his weapon and pushes Gábor’s limp body off him. The insurgents are firing directly at them now from the building opposite.

  Tamás can’t take any more of this. For one crazy moment he thinks of flinging himself from the window. All around him the room is in chaos. Wounded men are groaning. The dead ones lie silent, getting in everyone’s way. More AVO appear from elsewhere in the building. They take up places at the windows and the shooting continues.

  But still the insurgents keep coming. And now they’re armed with Molotov cocktails. They toss them in through the ground floor windows. A series of mini explosions rocks the building and black smoke billows into the square. And then through the smoke and chaos Tamás makes out the lumbering shape of an armoured vehicle carrying an anti-tank gun. Oh my God, he thinks, we’re done for.

  *

  Róza and her colleagues pick their way around the edge of the square, hoping against hope that their white coats and red-cross armbands will shield them from flying bullets. There are already a couple of dozen bodies lying in front of the Communist Party Headquarters. Unless they can get closer they can’t see who is already dead and who is still in with a chance.

  ‘Go that way,’ says István, pointing. ‘We need to get under the cover of the building.’

  ‘Medical workers coming through,’ shouts Bálint.

  The insurgents hold their fire for a moment to let Róza and her team approach the fallen, but there’s no corresponding ceasefire from the building.

  ‘Get back,’ shouts István. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  But Róza is already running towards a man lying on the ground calling for help. From the way he’s clutching his right thigh, his hand covered in blood, it looks as if he’s been shot in the leg. He makes eye contact with her and his eyes light up with hope at the sight of her white uniform. He manages a thin smile in a face drained of colour. She smiles back. This is what she does – she brings hope to people. She gives them the strength to go on. The man reache
s out to her with his other hand. All they have to do is roll him onto the stretcher and they can have him out of here in no time. They’ll save his leg. They’ll save his life.

  She sees the shock in the wounded man’s eyes before she feels the pain in her own body. For a moment, time stands still and the battle around her is caught in a freeze-frame. All is silent and she’s floating in space. Then the ground comes up and smacks her in the face. She tries to draw breath but she can’t. In the second before she dies, her medical training kicks in and she knows that she has been shot in the heart. There is no more hope left in her.

  *

  Tamás has the unnerving sensation that the barrel of the anti-tank gun is pointing directly at him. He ducks to the floor, his hands over his head, as a shell explodes into the building. The floor above them has been hit. God knows how many casualties there are. The other AVO officers who are still alive run for cover beneath the conference table as the ceiling cracks and chunks of plaster drop to the floor. The dust is blinding, the taste bitter.

  Through the bangs and crashes, he can just make out the voices of his comrades.

  ‘We have to get out of here.’

  ‘They’ll lynch us if we leave.’

  ‘If the building collapses we’ll be crushed to death.’

  ‘Better to try and make a run for it.’

  They’re preparing to evacuate and Tamás doesn’t want to be left behind.

  He takes one last look at Gábor’s immobile form. The bullet caught him square in the temple so that one side of his head exploded. The eyes which stare vacantly into space are covered in a film of pink plaster dust. Tamás recoils at the thought of closing them. The others are already leaving the room and he hurries to catch them up, trying not to trip over the bodies of the dead.

  It’s pandemonium on the stairwell. AVO are running in all directions. Those trying to go down are met by others fleeing upwards. Shouts fill the air.

  ‘Go back up!’