Shooting Star

by David Brierley

  ‘Hungry are you?’ Tibor Kassack enquired without much interest. He polkaed out of the kitchen singing: ‘Wurst and kisses, that’s what a young man lives on.’ He was uncertain of the tune but made up for that in loudness. Istvan drifted after, gnawing on the bread.

  It was the time of day when the light in the sitting room grew weird. Positively Old Testament, in Istvan’s fancy, waiting for Jehovah to smite down the enemies of Israel. His brain protested in vain that it was only the result of the afternoon sun reflecting off the prosaic brickwork opposite; biblical excess was natural to the times. The walls, the lumpy furniture, the skin of Babushka’s face were all of tarnished pewter. By the window Ilona and the Palomino knelt side by side on the floor, black and blonde hair mingling over the tarot cards. They would never be intimate friends; they were like distant cousins thrown together on a visit, bright but a little taut. They told each other’s fortunes, inventing the wildest tales, oblivious to the revolution in the streets. Tibor Kassack teetered on his heels above them. Stretched on the chaise longue, Natalya Zelenaya clawed at the fox round her throat.

  ‘Nine of Pentacles. Mmmm, I see a year in Hollywood before you become Professor of Advanced Salt Technology at Voronezh.’

  ‘The Hanged Man.’

  ‘No, no, no. I can’t bear to hear.’

  ‘Don’t worry. The card’s upside down which is another matter entirely. Your fate is to go to a masked ball and dance all evening with a handsome prince.’

  ‘At midnight I kiss him,’ Ilona knew the ending to this story, ‘and he turns into a toad.’

  Babushka croaked a ‘Darling,’ as if that struck a chord or two in her memory. Tibor Kassack clapped for silence, as if there were more than five of them in the room.

  ‘A brilliant idea. A ball, a masked ball is what we shall have.’ In the silence Babushka murmured: ‘Darling, and will you invite the handsome Russian tank crews to waltz with the girls?’

  ‘When the blood and thunder is over, dear lady, when they’ve been sent home to Siberia. We shall hold a ball to celebrate. Every one of us must be there, a superb reunion of our gallant group and its greatest ornaments.’ Here Tibor bowed to the two girls whose faces were turned up to him. ‘The estate in Bakony will be returned to its rightful owners and I shall invite everyone. The grand ball will be the scandal of the district, with assignations under the chestnut trees and unmasking at midnight. Then you must stay for the hunting and the riding. Ah, in my grandfather’s day we had more than sixty horses. What a choice. Some were big and powerful, some graceful roans, some fierce puszta blacks. But none, I swear, had the beauty of the palominos. As a boy I loved to gallop on the palominos, kicking their flanks for more wildness; eyes wide, blonde manes flowing, the thunder of their hooves and the thunder in my blood.’

  He stopped and in the silence they played back the sound of his words. No question had been asked of Tibor but an answer had been given. At length Babushka rescued them: ‘Ilona darling, my throat is rough. Make me a glass of tea and come and talk to me.’

  Tea, she lived on the stuff. Hot, strong and sweet were her instructions. ‘Like our Hungarian women,’ Tibor Kassack had informed her. ‘A slice of lemon sharpens the taste, provides a certain zest,’ Natalya Zelenaya retorted, ‘but that is not to be found anywhere in Hungary.’

  ‘Well darling,’ she murmured, ‘and does our stallion not impress you?’

  ‘He talks well,’ Ilona said.

  ‘Which you make to sound a fault. I confess I have reached an age when fine talk, a certain flattery, is the most a man can do for me. But you have your life to come and perhaps you are right: a little too much wind to him. What are you going to be when you leave school? Did I hear an actress?’

  ‘A ballerina.’

  ‘Ah ballet.’ There was a sudden stillness about the old woman, Ilona could have sworn she was going back into her past, to some memory that was deep down. Had she dreamed of being a dancer once? Had she loved some Adonis in the Bolshoi? She sighed. ‘It is, bien entendu, the only magic left in the world. Ballet is precious, it must be treasured and its artistes honoured. Because if not, the Bolsheviks will kill it.’

  ‘But Babushka, ballet is revered in the Soviet Union.’

  ‘Not for itself, not for the art. It is encouraged as an activity of the State. If the Kirov or the Bolshoi has a triumph, then the State has a triumph. It is ballet with a commissar in every dressing room. And of course you would have to go to Russia because there is no ballet here. You would find a commissar in your dressing room to correct the ideological purity of your pliés. Bah, for all his wind Tibor has the right idea: fight them, throw these invaders out.’

  Such violent emotions puzzled Ilona. ‘But they are your people.’

  ‘Not my people. They tortured, killed and imprisoned my people. Now Russia is a country of savages ruled by murderers.’

  For all the intensity, her voice was hardly above a hoarse whisper. It carried as no more than a mumble to the other three sprawled on the floor playing taricot by the doubtful light from the window. Istvan could see something very like dismay on Ilona’s face but had no idea of the cause.

  ‘My advice is to shoot them when you have the chance.’ The old arthritic claw plucked at the fox’s tail, savaging bits of fur out of it. ‘Don’t speak to them, don’t make the mistake of treating them as human. They are dogs. There was a saying in the country — perhaps you have it here — if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Kick them, the curs.’ She had a drink of cold tea, which restored her humour. ‘So, little Ilona is going to be a ballerina. Better to be an actress, you will have greater opportunities here. Never mind, they are the same. Nothing was there until you created it, and it vanishes as you do it. I think acting and dancing are very much like love: you create illusions with your body. Do I shock you? I am an old woman, you see, and I have experienced much, thank God. As you must, as every artiste must. If you experience a great deal, you regret nothing. It is only if you make too few mistakes, so that each one stands out in your memory, that you have regrets. Tiens, you can see how old I am, I ramble. And you are young and thin. I can read your face, do you know what I mean? It is more certain than the tarot pack. I see the suffering you will have. You must suffer, it is in the bones of an artiste, and later you will have memories but no regrets. So do you love him?’

  ‘Who?’ Ilona was startled by the directness of the question.

  ‘Who? Who, darling?’ A hand reached over and tilted Ilona’s chin up. ‘Oh my child, how old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘Well, fifteen, are you still virgin?’

  Ilona was silent.

  ‘I was fourteen when I had my first, but in Russia we grew to passion younger. The great sacrifice, my mother called it. Which is nonsense. My mother was a silly woman. My grandmother had more sense. This is what she told me, as I am telling you. She said that love was like this planet of ours. Some are Eskimos and live a frozen love life. Most people spend their whole lives in temperate zones. But a few live near the equator where it is hot and humid and you have occasional hurricanes. St Petersburg is close to the arctic, but in my grandmother’s atlas its bedrooms were tropical. A revolution, darling, is also hot and tropical. Which is why you have grown so fast into a woman and he has become a man. You will love him.’

  There was more Natalya Zelenaya wanted to pass on. Oh, about how to behave with an ardent young lover, about how to leave him always wanting a little more of her, about that magic which would make him feel he was the centre of the world, about the need for some small area of privacy so that he would continue to find mystery in her, about the pain of parting and the corrosion of jealousy. They were things the girl would discover herself but it is not often the very old have an assured audience. But Ilona had gone to the kitchen to fetch a candle. Now she was fiddling with a box of matches, giving herself time to breathe. Istvan was stretched out against the wall. Tibor Kassack had his arm round the Palomino, mouthing sof
t words in her ear, for which his reward was a giggle and a jab in the ribs from her elbow. The others had been gone all afternoon.

  We’re all catching our breath, Ilona felt, before the decisive battle outside, before personal decision. This is the interval. Then will come the final act.

  The candle gave a feeble glow, making conspirators of them all.

  ‘Darling, be an angel and make more tea. My throat has run dry with talking.’

  The tea was never made.

  ‘What is it, darling?’

  Ilona had moved to the window. She had heard the racing of a car engine, heard the tyre squeal, heard the slam of the door. Then, as if that had been a rehearsal, the same sequence of sounds was repeated. Dusk filled Puskin Street. Directly underneath were two cars.

  ‘There are soldiers, I think,’ Ilona said. ‘Three soldiers.’ She could distinguish three caps but the dusk gave everything the drabness of uniforms.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘They’re talking to people. They’re asking questions, or at least they keep making gestures. Pointing at doorways, this building, down the road.’

  Istvan joined her. The crowd below had swelled. In Budapest it seemed the buildings were stuffed with people waiting for a reason to come on the streets. There were already a couple of dozen and they peered through the windows of the first car.

  ‘He’s got away,’ Istvan said, ‘whoever drove the car.’

  Tibor Kassack had left the Palomino. He said, peering past their heads: ‘It’s a Pobieda.’

  Ilona had known that, for the snub nose was distinctive. Istvan had known that. It was left to Tibor Kassack to bring it out in the open. The AVO drove Pobiedas. Every man, woman and child in Hungary knew that, and turned aside his face when one passed. But no longer. Now even the army, through fire and water with the people, were demanding a reckoning.

  Istvan looked at Ilona: ‘I’m going down to find out what’s happening.’

  He didn’t. There was shouting in the stairwell, a rush of foot-steps climbing, the door flung open. A man of about fifty, stocky and thick-necked, wearing a tight-fitting blue suit, stumbled to a halt. He peered with what looked like surprise round the room: at the figures grouped by the window and at the shadows that lunged with the flickering candle. Istvan, Ilona, Tibor Kassack and the Palomino weren’t what he’d bargained for. On his heels came Lazlo and Tibor Bihari.

  ‘That’s him, that’s the pigshit they’re looking for.’ Lazlo came forward with his hand out.

  The stocky man turned in fury. ‘Keep your hands off. Don’t you dare touch me.’

  His voice was a surprise. It should have been a bull of a voice to match his stocky build. But even in anger he didn’t bellow. He hardly had to raise his voice for the authority to show. Lazlo’s hand dropped to his side very fast; he could have been standing to attention. Istvan, trying to place the man, put him as an ex-cavalry officer who’d lead the charge on one of Tibor Kassack’s puszta blacks. Perhaps something in the voice attracted Tibor; he pushed his way to the centre.

  ‘Who are you? Why did you burst in?’

  The two men sized each other up. For all his tone of authority, the stocky man seemed at a loss how to answer. He glanced over his shoulder. Tibor Bihari by the door carried a rifle.

  Tibor Kassack persisted: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve made a mistake. The wrong apartment.’

  ‘Why didn’t you knock?’

  ‘I told you: I made a mistake.’

  ‘Did you think there was no one here?’

  ‘I must have counted the flights of stairs wrong. It’s dark out there.’

  ‘Do you mean you wanted the tailor-boy in the attic? You?’

  The stocky man made no reply. There is a logic to interrogations: that every answer demands a question. He broke the pattern, dabbing at sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. The handkerchief came from his breast pocket and was in neat folds like a sail on a lake.

  ‘He was hiding on the staircase,’ young Tibor Bihari blurted out.

  ‘Catching my breath.’ He made some play with the handkerchief. ‘See? There are more stairs than I...’

  He left it unfinished.

  ‘More stairs? More than you remember? You’re talking gibberish. Did you want this floor? Or the one below? Or the attic? Make up your mind.’

  ‘I was looking for a friend.’ He said this with much dignity in the face of the cross-examination, but there was a jerk to his eyes at a shout in the street.

  ‘Oh, a friend. Of course we’re all friends here. At this time some people are particularly in need of friends. Those soldiers outside are searching for someone. I wonder if they’re looking for a friend. What do you think?’

  The stocky man had no opinion. His chest was still heaving from the effort of running upstairs. Or was it plain terror. Istvan noticed the sweat had come again, gleaming in the candlelight. The stocky man must have been aware of the sweat but didn’t wipe it away. If he was terrified, he wouldn’t admit it publicly. Once his eyes wandered to the door that led to Natalya Zelenaya’s bedroom and jolted back at the next question.

  ‘Where’s your uniform?’

  ‘I have no uniform.’

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing it? Not proud of being in the AVO any more?’

  ‘I’m not AVO.’ There was no particular emphasis in his reply, as if he didn’t want to draw attention to it. But there should have been vehemence, even revulsion. In contrast to the flatness of the man’s voice, Tibor’s tone sharpened.

  ‘What was your rank, Mr Not-AVO? Major? Captain? Maybe we have in our presence a Colonel. My God, there’s a thought: a Colonel of the AVO. Should we go on our knees? Perhaps the girls should strip so you can lash their naked bodies.’

  ‘Don’t, Tibor,’ said Ilona. The stocky man glanced at her but had nothing to say.

  ‘So you’ve thrown away your AVO uniform,’ Tibor Kassack returned to the subject, ‘and put on this suit. Do you know how we can tell the AVO nowadays? By their smell. Mothballs. Your suit smells of mothballs because it’s hung for years at the back of your wardrobe. Until now you were happy to wear the uniform of torturers and murderers, and now you stink of mothballs. And look at your trousers: got knife-edge creases, never worn.’

  Again the man’s eyes flickered towards the closed bedroom door. Then, dismissing the idea of escape or help in there, ne moved with surprising speed to the window. For a ghastly moment it seemed he was going to jump. But he took no more than a glance at the darkness below before he turned to Ilona. In her face he’d recognized the only spark of compassion.

  ‘I’m not begging a favour of you, I am simply appealing to your humanity. You know what they are down in the street: a lynch-mob. You understand what I mean? They aren’t concerned with truth or a fair trial or witnesses or evidence. They simply want to tear me to pieces. I hold myself to be an honourable man, to have served my country, but that is of no importance to them. They have become savages with a blood-lust. It’s in your hands I put myself, young lady, and if you choose to give me over to the mob, then my blood will be on your hands.’

  Appalled by the steady and reasonable tone of voice as much as the speech itself, Ilona stared and stared at his sweating face. She had one thought: Why me? Why me?

  ‘God save Hungary,’ Tibor Kassack said, ‘when the AVO make themselves out to be patriots.’

  Nobody else spoke or moved. Why are they waiting for me? Ilona demanded. The silence grew oppressive. She saw the bob of the man’s adam’s apple and a death’s head grin.

  ‘You know, I’ve got a daughter of your age. Still at school. What school are you at? Perhaps you know her?’

  Ilona wasn’t interested in friendship with the man’s family. The grin faded.

  ‘Of course, she’s not as pretty as you. In your face I can see the beauty that made Hungarian women famous...’

  He reached out and touched her cheek. It was Istvan who felt the greatest sense of outrage. He
crashed open the window and shouted down to the street:

  ‘He’s up here, the AVO rat!’

  At the sound of the ugly roar from the street the man hauled out a small automatic that had been jammed in the waistband of his trousers. He held it pointing loosely at the floor and backed towards the door. His face looked terrible. It was the candle that did it. That damned candlelight, in Istvan’s view, gave his face the pallor of a corpse in a coffin.

  There were boots and shouts echoing up the stairwell. No one lifted a hand to help him or stop him.

  He slipped out on the landing. The first of the heaving crowd reached the top of the stairs when the man put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  ‘No,’ was all Ilona said. Her face was numbed as if someone she loved had died.

  Turning to comfort her, Istvan was startled to catch sight of Natalya Zelenaya sitting bolt upright out of the shadows that surrounded the chaise longue. Her lips offered some whispered prayer and her body began to sway back and forward as if on a rocking horse, her shadow grotesque on the wall. Were there tears on her cheeks? That damned candlelight seemed to glisten on something. But then she sank her face in the foxskin and he couldn’t be certain.

  15 - London, now

  She showed Steven her hands.

  ‘What do you see?’

  He saw pain and a deep wound, but that was in her eyes. She pushed her hands right into his face.

  ‘Look.’

  The palms were upward. The fingers clawed the air. The sinews were drawn taut.

  ‘Never come clean,’ she said. The man had put his life in her hands and she had refused to help. They were soiled and the guilt wouldn’t wash away.

  Steven took one of the hands in both of his and lifted it to his lips. She tightened her hand, clenched it into a fist. He kissed the knuckles as if his mouth could bring colour back to their whiteness. There were rings on three of her fingers and he kissed them. He turned her hand over and opened her fingers. It was like prising open an oyster, the fingers gripped tight shut and suddenly relaxing and opening before him. He kissed the palm. His tongue found it warm and moist and salty. The palm of her hand was crying for the dead man and he tried to kiss away the salt tears.