Shooting Star

by David Brierley

  Well, you only had to look out of the window to see the people of Hungary collaborating closely and fraternally with Russian tanks, toasting their future in peace-loving Molotov cocktails, offering gifts of pears.

  Zoltan Janca had no high expectations of Nagy as Prime Minister. His own vision of the future was simple, doubtless unworkable but he didn’t speculate much on that: there would be no politicians, none. The tired rhetoric they used added to his despair. He didn’t care that Nagy had been the people’s darling. Nor did he know that Nagy had AVO guns at his back when he spoke on the radio. It would likely have made no difference because he, Zoltan Janca, had had Gestapo guns at his back at one time. And it seemed to him that the Gestapo had barely had time to scramble out the back door before the AVO had hammered their way in through the front. Then he had had AVO guns at his back, and their fists in his face, and their truncheons on the soles of his feet, and been wrapped in wet canvas that crushed his body as it dried until he went half-mad. It had been their pleasure to try and make him confess that he was a spy — essentially a spy — because he listened to the BBC news. But he had never spoken like Nagy. He would rather have died, only they wouldn’t let him.

  There were people who gave in and people whose spirit fought back. A line was drawn: you stood on one side with your head bowed, or on the other with steel tempered inside you.

  So it was. He called for Istvan, Tibor Bihari, the Palomino and Lazlo.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ilona asked.

  Sandor had heaved his iron bed away from the corner. He didn’t bother to reply. He used words as if they were rationed. So she watched him, wondering what went on inside that head. There were thoughts inside, so there must be sentences, half-sentences, words. He couldn’t bring them out.

  He went across to the window, standing flat against the wall to stare down at the street. Half a dozen times he’d done that. Also he’d re-checked that the door was locked. There was a table covered in oilcloth and on it a wooden box that contained tools. He selected a chisel and hammer and returned to the corner. He kneeled on the floor, inserted the chisel between the boards and gave two decisive taps with the hammer. The board eased up. He did the same to the next board and then he lifted from its secret place a longish parcel. It was wrapped in oilcloth, the same grey and yellow design as the stuff on the table.

  He perched on the bed to unwrap his parcel. Ilona knew as much as the average fifteen-year-old schoolgirl about weapons. A rifle of some kind, she supposed. There were bullets, a couple of dozen it seemed, that came in a long metal clip. His fingers were deft, slotting the ammunition into place by a stubby handle. He looked up at her now.

  ‘I brought it from the factory, in pieces, see. I keep it here just in case.’

  ‘In case what?’

  ‘In case they come to get me, see. They took my brother. They might figure I was worth a tickle.’

  Sandor didn’t want to say more. He didn’t want to speak about anything, about himself, about his life, about her, about the wildness outside. He was suspicious of words, the traitors in your mouth. He waited for her at the door and locked the room up behind him. In the street she asked: ‘Where are we going?’

  He loped ahead of her, carrying the gun easily in one hand. He’s not surly or rude, Ilona thought, he’s shy. He knows where he’s going but he just can’t say.

  Sandor’s room was in the run-down thirteenth district, where decrepit light industry fought for air with decaying blocks of workers’ flats. He kept to the backstreets until he reached Marx Square, where a crowd disputed possession with a task force of Soviet tanks. Sandor had nothing to do with the tanks. He skirted the square and made instead for the suburban railway terminus of Nyugati. No trains ran. Huddles of people stood round talking.

  Sandor knew precisely where to go. He crossed the concourse to a door near the ticket window and climbed the stairs with Ilona trailing well behind. At the top he turned left to a door that was closed but not locked. If it had been locked he would have shot out the lock. Ilona was sure of that. He had a finger inside the trigger guard as he burst into the room.

  There was the sound of smashing glass. Sandor was outside on the narrow balcony that gave pretension to the front of the station. Either the tall window had been jammed or he’d been too impatient even to try its catch. He was slashing with a knife, the blade catching the light as he hacked and hacked again. A deep flow of anger in him had finally broken loose. He was stabbing blindly.

  It was the big red star adorning the façade that came down. Sandor wasn’t satisfied merely to have it down. He brought it into the room and stamped on it, snapping the painted plywood with savage upward jerks, hurling the pieces to every corner.

  He said: ‘My brother worked here, see. He was a signalman.’ Sandor turned his back and Ilona didn’t know what to do. His shoulders shook with sobs.

  He stood like a hunting dog scenting the air.

  There was a tank battle along Ulloi Street; artillery fire, not returned, near the Astoria Hotel; small arms fire from towards the river.

  Istvan watched Uncle Zoltan; marked the way his head adjusted by a fraction to isolate each sound. They all had rifles now, handed out from the back of an army truck by soldiers with red, green and white armbands. Istvan saw how Tibor Bihari carried his rifle stiffly; the thing was too big for him. The Palomino took a delight in hers and it was Lazlo’s pleasure to instruct her in its ways. Uncle Zoltan held his rifle loosely across his chest.

  He said: ‘Follow me. Doorways if there’s trouble.’ After all they were just kids. The soldier Lazlo, with his surly face, he was a kid too. Lazlo knew it all. Lazlo knew nothing.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Tibor asked.

  Zoltan shook his head. ‘This is a different war. It’s a partisan fight moved into the city. There’s no focus. We just search for a target and use our wits.’

  He wasn’t keeping his tactics secret, Istvan was sure of that. He was simply puzzled how they should fight an army of tanks with their rifles. After he had spoken his eyes had lifted towards Gellert Hill over the river. Istvan had learnt from his father that the Nazis had dug in there in 1945 and had been blasted out cellar by cellar. He could picture Uncle Zoltan — and now when he studied Zoltan perhaps he was only ten years older than the rest of them — as a boy like himself, crouching with a rifle as they captured the hill a stone at a time.

  Some didn’t even use rifles against the Soviet tanks. Some were armed with paint and brush.

  They turned the corner together — he should have instructed them to string out — and there was no need to search for a target. The target was coming directly at them: half a dozen tanks, a hunting pack. This was jozsef Avenue and the Soviet tanks had a free run, scattering people info doorways, Zoltan and his gang into a shop. One person stayed too long, the artist with the fevered paintbrush daubing the wall with Russzkik haza! The leading tank didn’t like that, didn’t appreciate one bit how the double-S had been rendered with the jagged lightning strokes of Himmler’s SS, and had no intention of being told: Russians get out! There was machine gun fire and the boy dropped his paintbrush and spun — possibly he tripped — to the ground.

  Zoltan ducked under the level of the shopwindow. He shouted something to the others — ‘Get down, get away, get to the back’ — it wasn’t clear in the uproar of the tanks and the gunfire and the shouts outside. But it had been something terse, something ur-gent, something common sense would insist was obeyed. But one of them ran past him out into the street. Risking his head above the sill, Zoltan witnessed a rush hour of tanks and Istvan staggering back with the boy half across his shoulders.

  The front of the shop was crammed with boxes and jars on dingy shelving and through the doorway at the back was a kitchen with more pots and pans than Istvan had ever seen before. A woman was staring at him from the gloom by the stove. There was a shawl round her shoulders which was pinned in front by a brooch, an apron with pockets lumpy with unknown objects, a dres
s with a hem that drooped in front. All this clothing was made of the same gloom as the kitchen. She came forward with her crooked hand brushing the air aside in front of her. Istvan unloaded the boy into a wooden chair and suddenly the kitchen was filled with sounds: a puppy’s whimper from the wounded boy, the old woman’s moaning, Lazlo’s metal-tipped boots on the stone floor, the Palomino’s excitement (Istvan caught no actual words) and Uncle Zoltan’s brisk orders to let him bloody well see the boy.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Matyas.’ The boy was shaking so much he spoke as if he had a stammer.

  ‘You’ve got God’s luck, or the devil’s luck.’ There didn’t seem much to choose between them in Zoltan’s muttered opinion. ‘I don’t know how you got out of that alive, Matyas my lad.’

  The boy’s coat was tossed on the floor. Zoltan used a knife on the shirt, slitting across a sleeve that was gory with blood. He stripped off the sleeve and Matyas’s arm was smeared to the elbow. Their eyes were held by the sight of fresh blood, the brightest colour in that dusty backroom.

  ‘It’s a graze, a scratch,’ Uncle Zoltan calmed him. ‘Though it could have...You’ll be all right when it’s bandaged. Little mother, can you help the brave Matyas with a bandage?’

  The woman had a witch’s nose and the skin of her face had the colour and wrinkles of an old apple. She bent over and breathed her foul breath over the wound. ‘A gift from Russia, eh?’ She went away, with nimble steps for her age, a hand still parting the air in front of her. When she returned from the yard outside she clutched green leaves of plantain. Ratstail was her name for the weed. She cut the leaves into strips, swearing the juice would stop the bleeding, and bound them to Matyas’s arm with a red scarf. ‘Red to match the wound,’ she instructed them.

  She heated water and poured some in a cup with a spoonful of dried flowers from one of the jars in the shop. ‘Purple clover to strengthen his heart. Ratstail to staunch the flow of blood. I am friends with all the citizens of the soil.’ Her sharp eyes forbade any protests. ‘And you: citizens of the soil too. Our soil.’

  It was, Zoltan understood, her blessing.

  Istvan kept her in the corner of his eye. You didn’t stare openly at a witch. Possibly she was touched. That was his mother’s expression. She had said after a disastrous homecoming one night that his father was touched. Touched by what? Whose were the fingers? Perhaps you never felt them; perhaps they just felt you.

  Uncle Zoltan took Istvan into the front room. ‘That was well done, understand me. I didn’t tell you what to do. You showed a man’s courage.’

  I didn’t feel frightened, Istvan nearly burst out. He stopped his tongue, afraid the praise might be taken back. So he nodded. In his mind he saw the unfinished daub on the wall and redness on a sleeve and the darkness of the advancing tank; the colours and shapes left no room for fear. Yesterday he’d been frightened; even this morning he’d run; a moment came when you changed. Was that it?

  Matyas suffered shock. But the bleeding stopped. So now there were five of them, five and Uncle Zoltan.

  This was the best time of year. Oh, spring brought its release and summer had its ease but autumn came with a delight all its own. Ilona treasured it for the sun’s warmth on her face by day and the crackle of frosted leaves under foot at night.

  This afternoon the whole of the city lay open to the pale blue sky. The sun and a thousand red stars looked down. And one by one the stars came tumbling out of the sky, from roofs, from balconies, from walls.

  A red star was suspended between the shattered statuary on the upper level of the opera house. Sandor eyed this from the curving carriage-way below. Ilona stood apart. There was no point in standing close because he shared none of his feelings. She watched a woman — middle-aged and slow like her aunt — wander up to stand directly in front of Sandor. She rummaged in the basket she carried in the crook of one arm. She took out an apple and handed it to him. Then she ambled off. All this passed without words. She should have said something: Well done. Keep on, I’ll pray for you. Something. And Sandor’s lips, Ilona never saw them move, not at all, not even to mumble dumb thanks.

  Sandor steadied his rifle against the ornate lamp-post and loosed off three or four rounds at the red star. Maybe he hit it. The star was too high up even to show bullet holes. It had been a gesture.

  The woman didn’t turn at the sound of rifle shots. She continued slowly away. There was no curiosity in her.

  Sandor polished the apple on his sleeve and bit into it.

  Why did Ilona begin to cry? Her sadness dismayed her.

  ‘Doing well, aren’t you?’

  People were clustering down towards Blaha Luga Square where the newspaper building was. Uncle Zoltan led the way, walking in the road for the pavement was awash with ruptured plumbing. Lazlo tugged at Istvan’s arm to make him turn.

  ‘I said, you’re doing well.’

  Generous words. But his voice had been heavy with a nineteen-year-old’s sarcasm and Istvan had pretended deafness. ‘Who are you out to impress?’

  Istvan had no answer. He heard shouts and distant rifle fire as the people of Budapest fought a thousand little battles. Here, in the face thrust close to his, Istvan saw dull eyes and a curled lip.

  ‘Old Uncle hasn’t pulled a stunt himself yet, has he? I mean, just hiding behind you kids. You want to watch all those heroics of yours. Could be unhealthy.’

  Lazlo pushed away the arm he’d been holding and returned to the others. Istvan was choked with emotions. The schoolboy in him protested he hadn’t been showing off. And it wasn’t fair to say that Uncle Zoltan had been holding back from danger. Then he saw the Palomino give a shake of her blonde hair and smile to herself.

  Oh no. She’d been watching, no doubt of it. A couple of stallions had pawed the ground and the brief clash had pleased her.

  Women are trouble you know, his father’s words came stupidly to mind. Trouble? Sssh, his father warned with the loud caution of the drunk, lifting heavy eyes towards the closed bedroom door. I know what I’m talking about, his father had confided. And Istvan’s world had jolted with the unexpected vision of his father as a reckless Don Juan, his mother by turns hysterical and frosty, his father seeking refuge in the borozo, his mother’s assertion that he was touched. But how do you judge your parents? Impossible. He couldn’t even see Uncle Zoltan straight, or Lazlo, or the Palomino.

  Shouts from the crowd and a kind of collective gasp called Istvan from this nightmare. Things were happening in the real world. He saw that the shouts had been warnings about the Soviet tank that had lurched into Jozsef Avenue and grumbled to a halt, its gun showing as a menacing black hole. And that sharp gasp was the same as greets the lion-tamer’s entry into the cage.

  It was an extraordinary spectacle they witnessed. In a city in the grip of the Soviet army, a man had pushed through the crowd to indulge some fantasy. There was nothing unusual about wearing a beret, but round his shoulders was draped a dark opera cloak. And his walk: it had the swank of a matador, or perhaps the careless ease of some mad count in his schloss. In his hand he gripped a Hungarian flag, which on that day was the greatest lunacy of all. He strolled right up to the tank, halting in front of its main gun. Istvan was put strongly in mind of the Palomino’s gesture the night before: baring everything, daring the enemy to do his worst. Searching her out in the crowd he saw she was enraptured by this echo of her own spirit.

  The cloaked man had a slim cigar in his mouth and he went on tiptoe as if to light it at the end of the gun barrel. No go and he rapped with his knuckles on the armour plating of the tank.

  ‘Open up there. Come on you sardines, open up.’

  In this crazy world that is what happened. No one inside the tank could possibly have heard his words but a hatch swung back and the head and shoulders of a soldier appeared. It was the gunner, his view blocked by the madman in his cloak. His cheek

  was smeared with oil, his curly hair matted with sweat.

  ‘Good
day to you, sir. Could you oblige with a light for my cigar?’

  Blank incomprehension.

  ‘Have you any matches?’ In Russian this time, which had become compulsory at Hungarian schools. ‘Perhaps you will join me in a cigar?’

  ‘No. Smoking is prohibited inside the tank.’

  ‘But your head is outside the tank. Smoking would be permitted. But let it pass. What is your name?’

  ‘Alexandr.’

  ‘Well met, Sasha. And my name is Tibor.’

  Tibor Kassack gestured up to the tank, sawing the air in a vigorous (though one-sided) handshake.

  ‘Is this your first visit to Budapest, Sasha? What do you think of our fair city? Do you find the girls pretty? I trust the wine and the music please you?’

  The Russian cast a wild eye at the silent crowd and rubbed at the grease on his cheek.

  ‘If you aren’t a tourist,’ Tibor Kassack continued in his very reasonable tone, ‘why are you here?’

  Silence.

  Tibor Kassack continued: ‘I mean, dear Sasha, what urgent need has brought you to Budapest?’

  ‘We are fighting fascists,’ the Russian said.

  ‘Fighting fascists? Is that what they told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that is terrible, Sasha. Where are the fascists? Do you see any fascist beasts among these honest faces?’

  The Russian looked miserable. His discomfort worsened at the rumble of his commander’s voice ordering him roughly to get down and shut the damned hatch.

  ‘Wait, Sasha. Don’t be upset. I have caught a fascist.’ And Tibor Kassack slapped his own cheek. ‘Look, Sasha, a mosquito. These are the only fascists in Hungary, sucking our blood.’

  A grin spread on the Russian’s face and died away. Perhaps it wasn’t a joke. Perhaps he was being made fun of.

  ‘Go in peace,’ Tibor went on. He seemed suddenly in a consuming hurry. ‘We wish you a speedy return to your own country.’ He slapped the tank’s side as you would the flank of a friendly but boisterous dog.