The Company

by Robert Littell

  Feeling his way in the darkness, Zoltan led them down a series of winding steel staircases into the bowels of the barracks, and then through a hatch and down a wooden ladder into what had been the Kilian magazine when the barracks was first constructed. The cavernous hall, illuminated by several railroad kerosene lamps, was bare except for wooden crates once used to transport cannon powder. The brick walls were green with moisture. Gradually the last of the Kilian defenders made their way down to the magazine. Twelve Russian deserters who had been hiding in an oubliette used for prisoners at the turn of the century were brought over; each had been given civilian clothing stripped from dead fighters, Hungarian identity cards and money, along with road maps marked with routes to the Yugoslav frontier. The Russians, their eyes dark with dread, leapt at the chance to make a run for Yugoslavia; they would certainly be put before firing squads if they were captured alive.

  Dividing into groups of five and moving at five-minute intervals, the surviving fighters and the Russian deserters climbed down what looked like a brick-walled well at one end of the magazine. From the avenue outside the barracks came the dull crump of the Russians firing off their three A.M. rounds. Zoltan, Ebby, Elizabet and two deserters made up the next-to-last group. Descending hand over hand into the well, Zoltan came out into a tunnel awash with thick ankle-deep sewage that reeked of feces. Elizabet, sandwiched between Zoltan and Ebby, covered her mouth and nose with her forearm but the stench made her dizzy. Ebby noticed her reeling from side to side, her shoulders slamming into the brick walls, and took a firm grip on her belt to steady her. Zoltan, up ahead with a kerosene lamp, the curved knife tucked into his belt, the violin case slung across his back on a rope, plunged on. They must have gone a hundred and fifty meters when the level of the sewage began mounting. Elizabet cried out in fear. Zoltan quickened the pace, wading through the slop that had now risen to his knees. From behind them came the panicky gasps of the last group pushing through the rising waters.

  The sewage had risen to their waists by the time the tunnel curled to the right and a steel ladder appeared in the sallow beams of Zoltan’s kerosene lamp. The rungs, driven individually into the bricks of the wall, disappeared into the darkness high above their heads. Zoltan threw himself onto the ladder and reached back to tug Elizabet onto the first rung visible above the water level in the tunnel. One by one the five of them began to claw their way up the ladder. Every time they came to a rung that had rusted away, Zoltan reached back to pull Elizabet over the gap. From far below came the spluttering gasps of other escapees struggling through the sewage, and then frantic splashing and sounds of choking.

  Resting on a rung, Zoltan hollered down in Hungarian. A rasping voice shouted back. Zoltan said, “Only two made it out,” then turned and continued climbing.

  Above their heads, a light flickered and soft voices called encouragement in Hungarian. Strong arms reached down and pulled them over the top and they collapsed onto a dirt floor. The two young Russian deserters—so young it was impossible to tell they hadn’t shaved in weeks—settled down next to them. Around the room the surviving freedom fighters who had arrived before them from the Kilian Barracks rested with their backs against the walls.

  “Where are we?” Ebby asked.

  One of the fighters who spoke some English said, “We come out to sub-basement of old building converted to industrial bakery. Listen.”

  Sure enough, from above came the low rumble of machinery. Zoltan consulted with several of the fighters, then returned to sit with Ebby and Elizabet. “They say we have two and a half hours left of darkness, okay. We going to catch our breath for a minute, then split up into small groups and put space between us and Kilian before the Russians figure out we are escaped. Students who know Pest will guide us out.”

  “Where are we going?” Elizabet asked.

  Zoltan grinned. “Austria.”

  She turned to Ebby. “Surely you can take refuge in the American embassy.”

  He shook his head. “The Russians will have circled it with troops to prevent Hungarians from seeking asylum there.” He smiled at her. “My best bet is to go with you to Austria.”

  The twelve Russian deserters, who had the most to lose if they were captured, started out first. One of them turned back at the door to deliver a quick speech in Russian. Bowing from the waist to the freedom fighters, he managed a brave half-smile before turning away and disappearing up a wooden staircase. Minutes later Ebby and Elizabet and Zoltan joined a group and made their way out a loading ramp, then climbed over a wall into a soccer field behind a school. A cold dry wind was blowing in from the Danube, and Elizabet angled her face toward it, inhaling in deep gulps. In the distance flames licked at the night sky over the city. The National Archives building across the river on Castle Hill in Buda was ablaze. The Rokus Hospital was a smoldering ruins. Fires raged over Csepel, Ujpest and Köbánya. The student leading their group, a thin-faced bespectacled young man with an old rifle slung over a bony shoulder, led them through a maze of back alleys toward the southern suburbs of Pest. The trek took them across well-kept gardens behind mansions, over brick walls and chain-link fences, through warehouses filled with silent women and children, down narrow streets. At one point they came to the main avenue leading, further up, to a square. As far as the eye could see apartment houses on both sides of the avenue had been reduced to heaps of rubble. The pavement underfoot was strewn with debris and dry yellow autumn leaves. Peering around the corner of a building, they could make out Russian paratroopers in short capes warming their hands around a fire blazing in the middle of the street near the square. Close by, the branches of trees were stark against the matte red of the blistering sky.

  Hanging from the branches, twisting slowly in the currents of air from the Danube, were the bodies of twelve freedom fighters. In the street near the bodies was a human figure, his arms splayed, one leg tucked underneath, the other awry at the knee. On first glace it looked as if a large rag doll had been flattened onto the gutter by the treads of a Russian tank. But it quickly became obvious that the figure had once consisted of flesh and bones.

  Ebby realized the horrible truth before the others. “Don’t look,” he whispered fiercely, dragging Elizabet back.

  Sick at heart, she lurched against the side of a building and held her head in her hands.

  Bent low and running, the Kilian survivors crossed the avenue in twos and threes without attracting the attention of the Russians around the fire. After a while Elizabet, short of breath and pushing herself through a fog of nervous exhaustion, began to lag behind. Ebby threw an arm around her waist and pulled her along. By the time the first wisps of gray were visible in the east, they were deep into the southern suburbs of Pest. To the left the first fields appeared, the dark earth plowed and glistening with dew. Below Csepel, they found tourist pedal boats chained to a pier. They broke the locks and slid the chains free and pedaled the boats over to the other bank of the Danube, then started down a dirt road that ran parallel to the river. Two kilometers on they came to the crude wooden arch marking the entrance to the Red Banner Farm, a dairy collective known to be sympathetic to the rebels. With the sky completely light now, a bearded night watchman hustled them into a storage shed. Within minutes everyone was stretched out on bales of hay, sound asleep.

  During the day more refugees joined the group in the shed: an aging university professor and his emaciated wife, the conductor of Budapest Philharmonic, a puppeteer carrying two enormous suitcases filled with marionettes, a famous sportscaster with his blonde girlfriend, and the equally famous goalie of the Hungarian national soccer team with his wife and baby. At midday several women from the collective carried over hampers filled with bread and cheese, which the refugees attacked ravenously; for many it was their first meal in days. At dusk the collective’s ancient Skoda diesel truck was brought around. Elizabet took the driver aside and whispered to him in urgent undertones for a moment. When he seemed to hesitate, she found a roadmap in the glove compar
tment and, flattening it against the hood of the truck, traced the route for him. Folding the map away, she took his hand in hers and repeated the request. The driver glanced at his wristwatch and nodded without enthusiasm and Elizabet, blinking tears out of her eyes, thanked him profusely.

  The nineteen refugees crowded into a cavity hollowed out of the load of hay in the back of the truck. The farmers set planks over their heads and then lowered bales of hay onto the planks. In the darkness Elizabet, drained despite having slept for most of the day, leaned her head on Ebby’s shoulder. He put an arm around her and pulled her closer. Huddled against each other, they heard the Skoda’s motor backfire and finally crank over.

  For the better part of three hours the truck meandered across the countryside in a westerly direction, skirting towns and villages as it jounced over dirt roads. Shifting from side to side inside their hiding place to ease their cramps, the refugees clung to each other. The professor, who turned out to be a Talmudic scholar, muttered an occasional prayer in Hebrew under his breath. The conductor took out a small pocket flashlight and an orchestral score and distracted himself by reading through the music; every once in a while he would hum a particularly melodic passage in a strained falsetto.

  Around ten the passengers could feel the truck swerve sharply onto a paved road and, moments later, pull up. The motor died. Men could be heard climbing up the sides of the truck. Hands pulled away the bales of hay overhead, and then the planks. Suddenly a cloudless sky riddled with stars became visible, the Milky Way cutting a broad swath across it. The passengers climbed out to stretch their limbs for a few minutes. Several disappeared into the darkness to urinate. The truck was parked inside the hangar of a collective farm; workers in overalls formed a chain and began filling plastic jerry cans from an overhead diesel reservoir, pouring the contents into the truck’s gas tank. Elizabet looked around anxiously. A thickset woman appeared at the door of the hangar. She was clutching the hand of a slim little girl with cropped dirty-blonde hair. The girl, dressed in a boy’s overcoat and clutching a doll, spotted Elizabet and, crying out, bolted into her arms. The two hugged each other tightly. As soon as the fuel tank was topped off, the driver announced that they had no time to lose; they had to be at the border-crossing rendezvous no later than three. The heavy woman dropped to one knee and hugged the little girl to her. Then she and Elizabet embraced. Ebby lifted the girl onto the truck and lowered her into the hollow space in the middle of the hay. As the last of the bales were set over their heads, Elizabet leaned toward Ebby and whispered, “This is my daughter, Nellie. Nellie, sweet pea, this is a very nice man called Elliott.”

  Nellie hugged the doll to her. “Hi,” she said shyly. “Do you like hiding in hay?”

  “It’s great fun,” Ebby replied.

  “Will the bad people find us?”

  Ebby took her small hand in his. He could feel her tenseness. “Not much chance of that,” he told her.

  “What if they do?”

  “They won’t.”

  She seemed to accept that. After a while she said, “Elliott?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you afraid of the dark?”

  “I used to be,” Ebby said. “I’m not any more.”

  “Me, too, I used to be when I was four. Now I’m practically six, so I’m not afraid anymore,” she said in a surprisingly grown-up voice.

  “Whatever happens,” Elizabet told the girl, “you must promise not to complain.”

  “I promise,” Nellie said.

  “Good girl,” Ebby said.

  Nellie went to sleep on Elizabet’s lap; Elizabet dozed on Ebby’s shoulder. The minutes dragged by as the truck, back on dirt roads, continued westward. From time to time someone would switch on a flashlight and Ebby would catch a glimpse of his ghostlike companions, some asleep, others staring straight ahead with wide-open eyes. Just after one in the morning, the truck drew to a stop and the refugees inside the hay came awake. They could hear voices talking to the driver outside. Elizabet, scarcely breathing, passed her Webley-Fosbery to Ebby in the darkness. He fingered the bullets in the cylinder to make sure one was under the firing pin. Zoltan whispered in his ear, “Hungarian Army roadblock, not Russian, okay. Not to worry. Driver said him don’t search under hay because it will wake everyone up. The soldiers laugh and ask how many. Driver tells him eighteen, not counting one child and one baby. Soldier asks for cigarettes, tells us to watch out for Russians patrolling the frontier, wishes us luck.”

  Bumping over the potholes, the truck continued westward. At two twenty-five in the morning it pulled off the dirt road and eased to a stop next to a stream. Once again the hay was removed and the refugees climbed out. Elizabet wet a kerchief in the stream and rinsed Nellie’s face, then her own.

  “I’m hungry,” Nellie said. Overhearing her, the elderly professor came over and offered her what was left of a sandwich. “Oh, what stories you will tell your children when you are older,” he told her. “They will think you made it all up to impress them.”

  Twenty minutes later Ebby heard the muffled sound of hooves on the dirt path. Moments later a lean, middle-aged man wearing knee-high riding boots and breeches and a leather jacket appeared leading a dun-colored stallion, its hooves wrapped in thick cloth. Speaking Hungarian, he introduced himself as Marton. The refugees gathered around him as he spoke in low tones.

  “He says it is forty minutes by foot to the border,” Elizabet told Ebby. “In principle we will cross an area patrolled by Hungarian Army units. If they spot us it is hoped they will look the other way. He instructs the young couple to give sleeping powder to their baby. He argues with the others—he says luggage will only slow us down. But the puppeteer insists—he says his whole life is in the valises. Without them he would not be able to make a living in the West. Marton tells him, If you fall behind it’s your problem. He tells us we are to walk double file directly behind him and the horse. He knows the way through the mine fields. He has been through every night for weeks. Each person is instructed to walk in the footsteps of the person before him. The little girl will not be able to keep up, he says. Someone must carry her.”

  “Tell him I will.”

  Marton supplied a vial of sleeping powder, and the young couple broke the end of the capsule and poured it into the baby’s mouth. Those with luggage removed the objects that were valuable and threw the rest aside. When they started out, with Marton in the lead, Ebby saw the puppeteer struggling with his two enormous valises. He reached down and took one from him.

  The elfin man, his face taut with anxiety, attempted to smile at him. “Thanks to you, Mister,” he whispered.

  A low ground fog closed in on the refugees as they left the safety of the clump of trees. Walking in a double file behind Martin and his horse, they cut across the tarmac of Highway 10, the Budapest-Vienna road, and headed into the countryside. Each field they came to was bordered by low stone walls—for centuries the peasants who guarded the flocks had been obliged to build a meter of stone wall a day. Scrambling over the walls, the group trudged through fields that were dark and empty and still. An icy wind knifed through layers of clothing, chilling everyone to the bone. Hoarfrost on the ground crackled underfoot. The women wearing city shoes began to complain of frostbitten toes but there was nothing to do but trudge on. Off to the right a dog bayed at the moon threading through lace-like clouds. Other dogs further afield howled in response. A star shell burst silently high over Highway 10 and floated back toward the earth on a parachute. Marton’s horse, visible in the sudden daylight, snorted through his nostrils and pawed softly at the ground. The refugees froze in their tracks. Marton, alert to sounds in the night, climbed onto a low wall and concentrated on the horizon, then muttered something.

  “He tells that the Russians are probably hunting for other refugees trying to cross further north,” Zoltan explained to Ebby.

  When the light from the star shell faded, Marton motioned them forward. The orchestra conductor, immediately in front o
f Ebby, turned with a long drawn face. His ankle-length leather coat was dripping with fog. “Are you by any chance familiar with Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder?” he asked. When Ebby shook his head, the conductor removed his beret and cleaned his eyeglasses on the fabric as he hummed the melody in a quiet falsetto. “I was supposed to conduct it in Budapest tonight,” he remarked. The jowls in his cheek vibrated as he shook his head in disbelief. “Who would have thought it would come to this?” He turned back to continue on through the icy fields.

  Nellie, astride Ebby’s shoulders, tapped him on the head. “I am quite cold,” she whispered. “I’m not complaining. I’m just giving you information.”

  “We’re almost there,” Elizabet told the girl. “Aren’t we almost there?” she asked Ebby, a note of alarm in her voice.

  “It can’t be much further,” he agreed.

  They tramped on for another half hour. Then, far across a field that sloped gently toward a stand of trees, they saw the white stucco of a farmhouse. It materialized out of the ground fog like a mirage. Marton gathered the refugees around him and began to talk to them in an undertone. Several reached out to shake his hand.

  “He says this is where we part company,” Elizabet translated. “The farmhouse is immediately inside Austria. There will be hot soup waiting. When we’ve rested, there will be a two kilometer walk down a dirt road to an Austrian Red Cross center in a village.”

  Starting to retrace his steps, Marton passed close to Ebby. The two regarded each other for a moment and Ebby reached out to offer his hand. “Thank you,” he said.