Later, when Adrienne snored like a hound dog, Father grabbed my shoulders and shook them very fast. He demanded I inform him why I imbued Adrienne with false promises. I told him I do not intend for them to be false. In reaction, he refrained from anger, like I predicted, but his shoulders sagged and he sat on the ground next to me, like Adrienne does sometimes.
I was not supposed to be in this character. I am his son; he is my father. Why did he not just seek to find her himself, and why is he upset when someone has offered to do this for him? Why must I be the hero to my parents? At that moment, I pondered if it is ever possible to completely love the parents who raised you. I sometimes speculate they were supposed to betray me. They spooned fed me love, and I became dependent on that love. But, is it right to remain enamored of their love, inaware to the burden it places on them?
My mom did not want to see me. It was too much for her to exist as a mom. It was us, Adrienne and I, not Father or Hungary, that served a threat to her life. When I drifted this theory by Father, he became very quiet. He informed me it’s not my burden that she became ill. Did he really speculate I would be satisfied from this answer? That’s the thing, with these people who raise you. They throw you into the washing machine of their shit, hoping that it will somehow cleanse you. And it smells absolutely foul, and then they ask that you understand why it smells so bad. It’s not fair, you say, you thought you were getting cleansed the whole time! Now you realize you are just covered in crap! You spend your whole life covered in their shit.
If I found my mom, he belabored, I wouldn’t be helping Adrienne because I would have to inform her that her own mom did not want to view her. I told him that will not happen. He said it would. I said it wouldn’t. He said it would. I said it wouldn’t. He resorted to his room, and I fled to work.
I experienced so much anger, Uncle Lanci, so was welcoming of work to take my mind away from it. But, as I cleansed that damn Ministry of Interior (the one on Andrássy út), an occurrence took place that I must inform you about. I was there with Andras, my cleaning mate, and naturally after we cleansed for but twenty minutes, we indulged in the peacefulness of the voided building. We were in the main compartment, on the initial floor, in one of those pesky offices. Andras lit my cigar, as the usual routine demanded, and then we settled into the couch. We sunk into the comfort of that moment, praising that it wouldn’t come to a stop.
That’s when our ears picked up on a scratching like a rat was stuck in the floor. It scuttled and banged itself against the floorboard. It bemoaned and bemoaned ad nauseam. Andras and I nearly had shits right upon the couch. Okay, it possibly could have been a mere rat, I reasoned, except then it uttered these words: “Cseke, Cseke, Cseke. Laszlo, Laszlo, Laszlo.” That is your name, isn’t it? The first and last? I do not know what was uttered next, since we streaked upward and ran out the door.
Uncle Lanci, who is that being beneath us? You must know! I contemplate the chance exists for you to obtain some knowledge of this sound’s origins. I am aware of your intelligence spindles that extend all the way into the most intimate areas of Hungary. I am so curious, but so scared. I do not know which one will conquer the other. Perhaps you could just inform me as to whether it’s a-okay to return to cleansing this building?
In return for the fear and sadness that insists on arriving at my house this evening, I request you play “Blowin in the Wind.” Perhaps I will sneak into my bed, where my sister has already snuck in. I’ll cuddle beside her. I’ll shut my eyes and imagine your music until I forget what I promised tonight, and I’ll wake up and think it was solely a dream and store it just as that. A dream. Unfortunately, for me, dreams are meant to be accomplished.
Sincerely,
Mike a Korvinközből
Desire is fueled by all, but fulfillment. —Ernő Osvát
Eszter Turján
October 23, 1956—Afternoon
Hundreds of students pushed against me, nudging me closer and closer to the middle of their frenetic gathering. “Let us speak! Let us speak!” they yelled at the state’s radio office. It was a goliath of a structure, taking up the entire city block with its jumble of offices, hallways, and courtyards haphazardly connected to each other behind heavy oak gates, which the students were determined to take down.
Above us, a group of police held submachine guns and fire hoses in ready position. They kept unleashing the latter on us, drenching us in a deluge of water every few minutes. A flurry of goose bumps was practically plastered to my arms—but rather that than blood, I reminded myself. I was thankful the police hadn’t used their guns … yet.
I was witnessing the culmination of a day of demonstrations. The government had tried to ban the student march, but failed to stop it. I had made it to the couriers and the factories in time to distribute Realitás to the workers, advising my most trusted contacts to begin setting aside arms. When I ran low on copies, I hung the paper on every bulletin board I found. By the time I joined the march, whispers of Nagy taking over had started circulating through the masses, and Radio Free Europe had even announced the same thing. (Antal must have woken up and informed them.) I felt satisfied with my work. We had successfully planted the tiny seeds of hope growing and reaching into our collective conscience. Nagy was our man.
The students surrounding me grew louder and more excited, making up new chants every few minutes—the most recent one: “A microphone in the streets. A microphone in the streets.” They were agitating to read their sixteen demands over the state radio. Above us, the police paced across the rooftops, their gate quickening. They looked nervous and determined at the same time—a truly lethal combination. I noticed a copy of Realitás on the ground, Nagy’s face muddied and ripped by the torrent of footsteps. I picked it up and handed it to one of the students next to me, shouting over the chaos that we should chant for Nagy. I was already planning my next move, which was pressuring Nagy into assuming the leadership role, whether he wanted it or not—I still didn’t have direct confirmation that he would do the job.
Major General Hegyi, head of the army’s training wing, appeared on the balcony of the building. We all knew Hegyi—he wasn’t a diehard Stalinist by any means, and it appeared the students would allow him to speak. I hoped Hegyi would say what the students wanted to hear. I had a feeling their excitement could morph into something else entirely at any second.
Hegyi stepped up to the microphone, his age more evident as he strained to straighten his back and stand completely erect.
“Please,” he said to the crowd, now completely silent. “Disperse and return to your homes.”
At first, the students didn’t make a sound. Nearby, I heard quiet laughter. Through the silence, it grew louder and louder, until it was next to me, and next to the person next to me, and once it reached the entire crowd, a ripple of booing tore through us. The booing turned into a gigantic wave that gave into yelling as students shouted and cursed Hegyi.
Hegyi disappeared, but the crowd surged forward, ramming its collective mass into the gates of the radio building. The police trained their machine guns on us. One fired a warning shot into the air, but the students didn’t stop. A second warning shot went off. The students pushed forward even harder. A collection of knees and elbows jabbed into the back of my body. The police let out another warning shot, then another. My ears began screaming. They felt like they would explode, and I looked around, and everyone’s mouths were open. They were screaming too. My lungs filled with air, but nothing came out. Some people ran. Others tripped and fell to the ground.
Next to me, one of the students yelled, “Death to the police!” I couldn’t hear his next words because a puff of smoke erupted between us, forcing an antagonizing gas into my lungs. As I coughed, I squinted through the mist, only to realize I was staring at a neck without a head. The body still stood, packed in so tight with the crowd, but his head … the tear gas canister must have exploded on the boy’s face.
Clamping my eyes shut and holding my breath tigh
t, I managed to wriggle my way out of the gas plumes and into another crowded space, where teenagers were ramming an old car into the building’s wooden gates, cursing as they splintered the wood that would not give.
Tiny, almost imperceptible gaps began opening up in the crowd. Beneath them were the fallen, either bleeding or dead. I searched the crowd, trying to find someone, anyone, who could help, when I locked eyes with one of the policemen pointing the long nose of his rifle at me. He smirked, opened his mouth wide, and burst into laughter. I ducked as the shots punctured the air above me.
My hands and legs shook, and I felt my legs bending toward the ground, but my mind refused to give in. My thoughts started to have clear beginnings, middles, and ends. I knew what I had to do. I had to help the students secure arms.
I grabbed the shoulder of the girl shielding herself next to me, her long hair thick and grimy underneath my trembling fingers.
“Go to Csepel. Now. You can get guns there.” I yelled at her. When she turned to face me, she looked like a mousy teenager who belonged in a physics lab.
“Where?” she shouted.
“The factories at Csepel!” I screamed.
“Who are you?”
I showed her Realitás. “I wrote this. Take this to them. It will tell you where the guns are.”
“I can’t hear you.”
I started shoving copies of Realitás into the opening of her coat, but she shook her head and, stepping only a foot away from me, was lost.
A trio of ambulances sped toward the crowd, swerving through the random clumps of people to try to reach the injured and dying. I couldn’t believe the regime was actually going to help us. Perhaps they did have some shred of humanity. Out of the back jumped men in white coats, one after the other. There had to be forty of them. But, they seemed too nimble for doctors, leaping from the ambulances like athletes clearing hurdles. That’s when I noticed instead of stretchers or medical kits, the doctors’ shoulders sagged beneath the straps of submachine guns. They ripped off their coats to reveal the uniform of the secret police.
Before we could run away or attack them, they sprayed the crowd with bullets. I ducked again, this time trying to shuffle sideways out of the crowd. A little boy drifted by me. The students were, miraculously, stepping around him and letting him wander through the mayhem. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Dollops of blood clung to him in random patches, though he didn’t look injured himself. What was he doing here? He looked like he could be seven or eight. When he saw me, his yellowish eyes grew to the size of small apricots. They went directly to the space between us where a small gun lay on the ground.
“This isn’t yours. Go home,” I shouted.
The boy came up next me, enveloping me in his little pocket of protection. I could smell the baby powder his mom must have applied to his skin the night before mixed with the dried blood that wasn’t his own.
“No, I can’t. I can’t.” He started crying. “Just around the corner!”
“What’s around the corner?”
“Please, just follow me.” He grabbed my hand with his tiny, snot-encased fingers. “It’s just right here.”
“Okay, you have one minute.”
He led us through the crowd, unscathed, and I felt a greater appreciation for the students, who showed concern for this little boy’s safety. We both wanted nothing more than to make this country better for him, and the other children.
When we rounded the corner, I smelled gunpowder evaporating in the air. Crumpled on the ground lay a body, disfigured and bleeding, in the alley off Wesselényi út. As I crept closer, I recognized the man’s tattered white shirt, his silver hair, and his ink-stained fingers. It was Antal. He must have left the office to join the efforts and somehow ended up here, destroyed. I felt like I was the one who had been beaten up, so stricken by his battered state. Thin streams of blood trickled from his mouth, and his eyes, puffy and bruised, were swollen shut.
“Is he going to be okay?” the little boy pleaded amidst the thud of tanks rolling toward the fighting.
Ignoring him, I swooped over Antal. When I asked him what happened, he choked and coughed up bloody saliva. He called me babushka over and over again. Turning to the boy, in the most sweet voice I could muster, I asked him what happened. He stammered, and with each attempt at a word, tears tumbled out of his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I just came around the corner because I heard kicking and screaming. And then there was this big group of men, and they looked normal but then they were beating this other man and saying he had to do it. He had to do it.” The boy collapsed into a fit of crying.
“Where did they go?”
“That way.” He pointed in the direction I came from. This made him cry again. Enveloping him in my arms, I held the boy as tight as I could, trying to squeeze all the tears out of him. “Look at him and do not look away.” I pointed to Antal. “This is what could happen to you if you stay out in the streets.”
The boy’s lower lip jutted out. He nodded, and a few straggling tears fell down his puffy cheeks.
“Please, go home so you can stay safe,” I said. “Now.”
Stepping away while fixating his eyes on us, he slowly backed away from the gruesome scene, saying nothing.
I resisted following him to make sure he went home. I feared if I did, Antal would be scooped up by someone—whoever these enemies were—and tormented once again.
A mess of bloody skin clung to the side of Antal’s arm, barely. It looked like a bullet had skimmed his skin, but not implanted itself there. Antal attempted to pull his arm away from me, referring to someone named “czar.” He displayed sure signs of shock, yet his eyes seemed coherent and alert. They followed me as I inspected his body to make sure he hadn’t broken anything critical. I decided to move him to our office—I reasoned I could let him rest there while I tried to find a doctor.
I wrapped his uninjured arm around my shoulder and yanked him up. Draping his jacket over his disfigured face, I escorted him back to the office, a twenty-minute walk away. Every minute or so, Antal would abandon his strength and plummet into me, pushing me sideways and almost completely over. Each time I veered to the right or left, Antal groaned and let out minor phrases and grumbles. I remember he said something about being hurt and some garbled reference to plans.
A gelatinous liquid snaked down my neck, and I knew it was Antal’s blood dripping from his jaw. At one point he refused to continue walking, like a stubborn dog sensing danger ahead of him. Reminding him that he was safe with me, I cooed into his ear promises about getting somewhere quiet, being comfortable and warm.
We passed Horizont, a Russian bookstore, which had been gutted and burned, leaving tattered paper and ashes heaped in piles on the street. Our shoes carved textured imprints onto the books’ remains, and I knew that it had been said before, and would be true today, that where books burn, people will too.
We passed the offices of Szabad Nép—the regime’s official newspaper—where staff members, their clothes and hair in disarray, threw down leaflets declaring their support of the revolt. I wondered if this desperate attempt at redemption would work or if the journalists would suffer the same fate as their leaflets—torn up, stomped on, and burned in a makeshift bonfire.
The moment we stepped onto Andrássy út, a woman, old enough to be my mom, ran toward one of the patrolmen standing nearby, waving her fists at them. I continued dragging Antal along, hoping to go unnoticed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the fattest guard in the group grab the old lady’s braid, turn her around, and smack his stomach into her back. Screaming, the woman stumbled and collapsed.
The wretched officer noticed us—and me, specifically—eyeing him. He turned his attention away from the poor woman and, looking at us, licked his lips. I put my head down, pretending I had seen nothing. I thought nothing. My thoughts were all movement. “Eyes to the ground, go here, move there. Say nothing,” my mind commanded. Never looking again at the sol
dier, I dragged Antal forward. The twenty-minute walk took us two hours.
Dora Turján
January 22, 1965
Dora blinked. She opened her eyes. She blinked. She opened her eyes, and still she saw the eyes from the basement plastered on the little children at the KISZ meeting.
She imagined she was staring at one hundred tiny replicas of Boldiszar. Those were his eyes. The second the thought came into her head, Dora discredited it immediately, unwilling to allow her logic to flag even for one second. Those eyes were gray—his were brown, almost black. But cataracts, and time, and suffering could have changed their color.
No, there was no way Boldiszar could still be alive. She had proof he died. She had scrutinized that photo of him. She mourned over and over again. Those were not his eyes. Dora ran the sentence through her mind until she was sure of it: Those were not his eyes. Still, his blank stare watched her as she shifted from one foot to the other backstage. She thought about making an excuse to leave, but then Marta would ask her even more questions. Dora was relieved when the children, led by a mousy girl named Adrienne, staged their rebellion. The meeting ended without her needing to make her speech at all.
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