Shooting Star

by David Brierley

  ‘C’est incroyable.’

  ‘This land of ours is soaked in the blood of martyrs,’ Tibor Kassack declared, staring into the distance. ‘We should eat it and draw strength from their sacrifice.’

  Looking at that well-nourished face, Istvan decided the man would be quite capable of just such a gesture. Let others consider him mad, but driven to madness by overpowering love of his country. And yet, doubt growing larger in Istvan’s mind, and yet his body wasn’t wasting away. Perhaps out of sight of them all he filled his belly with more conventional food. Such as, for instance, pork fried with paprika whose sweetish smell had hung in the air of the kitchen one day.

  Istvan was the first to lift his fork again.

  Lying in their territory, their elected home in the corner of the sitting room, Istvan reached out a hand. There was the ache of manhood in his groin, the hesitancy of a boy in his hand. He touched her shoulder and she didn’t move. He touched her back, and felt her ribs swell under her sweater as she breathed. His hand reached her waist. He held his breath waiting for some convulsive rejection.

  Her breathing was steady. But she was awake. She had to be with his hand slipping over her. She wasn’t rejecting him. Or was she just hoping he’d quietly go away? He didn’t know. It was all new, the feel of her, the tumult inside him. Why wouldn’t she say: Stop, or Go on? He wanted, and didn’t dare, to slide his hand under her clothes and know what it was like to touch her skin and feel the softness of her flesh. He ached with wanting it. He wanted to stroke her breasts. In the argot of his school, he wanted to ‘milk’ her. Older boys boasted of that.

  Finally she said, ‘Istvan…’ It was a whisper and he couldn’t tell the tone of her voice, whether wistful or eager or cautionary. His hand froze flat on her stomach, just under the ribcage. He knew nothing of girls, except that the Palomino had troubled him when she stood too close in the school corridors; used to leave him with a fierce ache in the groin that wouldn’t go away. He didn’t know whether Ilona was warning his hand to stop or encouraging it. Should he ask if he could kiss her? The older boy said you just did it and the girl would usually squirm a bit at first but came back for more. When you’d kissed them a few times they let you milk them. And there were lurid details about sessions with the Palomino that Istvan had always thought boasting. But Ilona was different: brave, very beautiful of course, yet private. When she smiled she seemed so close but then her eyes changed, lost their focus, and she was so far away. It was because she was a girl, Istvan supposed, that she could be so close and far away at the same moment. It was a gift she had.

  She murmured: ‘I was dreaming.’

  He didn’t believe that. She’d been still but fully aware of his hand. Now she turned on her back and he withdrew the hand with great care because it must be an unwanted invader. This was her way of repulsing him. Tibor Kassack and the Palomino had left the apartment for some other place. But Ferenc, Matyas and Tibor Bihari lay on the floor in humps of blankets and cushions, so they spoke in whispers.

  ‘I was back in Eger, in my parents’ house. Do you ever have dreams like that? Worrying dreams?’

  Until a week ago Istvan had always lived with his parents. She knew that. Only the extraordinary spirit of the times had set him loose.

  ‘You see, my mother had to send me away from home,’ she went on. ‘Not in my dream, in real life. That’s why I came to stay in Budapest with my aunt and uncle.’

  There was a long pause. Istvan didn’t see.

  ‘What was worrying about your dream?’

  ‘In the dream my father got drunk again. After the vintage. Like he really did the last time.’

  ‘Perhaps your father supplies wine to my father,’ Istvan said. ‘He has too much and then mama says he is touched.’

  ‘Touched?’ she said. ‘Oh. Oh well.’

  Istvan was lost. He was aware of her breathing and the closeness of her body and the distance of her thoughts.

  She said: ‘Your father is touched. Istvan, how can I put it? My father got drunk and I was the one who...It was a terrible scene, frightening. He had the bottle in one hand and with the other hand...’ She didn’t know how to express it. The darkness was oppressive with the words she couldn’t speak. ‘My mother heard me shout and came in screaming. My father staggered back against the wall as if he’d been hit. I couldn’t move. I just sat up gripping the sheet to my neck. Babushka says that if you do enough in your life then one bad experience doesn’t loom large, there’s no room for brooding and regrets. Do you think that’s true?’

  Touched? She meant that? Her own father? He had believed she’d come to Budapest just for the dancing lessons. His mind was reeling. ‘I don’t know. Yes, I suppose so. If she says it. She’s no innocent, after all.’

  ‘No innocent. What do you mean?’

  ‘The kind of life she’s led, all the men; that AVO officer for instance.’

  ‘Is that what you think? Dozens of men so I forget my father? Is that what you think?’

  ‘Ilona, don’t turn your back. All I meant...’

  ‘I don’t want to hear.’

  ‘Ilona.’

  She didn’t reply. Their whispers had grown and now the echoes of their voices were in Istvan’s head. The other three must have heard the anger in her words. He breathed close to her ear: ‘I didn’t mean what you think. For God’s sake, I wasn’t saying you were like that. Please, say something.’

  She didn’t speak or sob. She was frozen.

  Istvan lay and no longer dared touch her. He couldn’t sleep for pain. It was everywhere in him. His face was taut. His belly tensed. His groin ached. His brain was stupid with thoughts of her father, winegrower, drunk after the wine harvest, filled with Egri Bikaver, his own Bull’s Blood.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ She couldn’t stay silent any longer.

  ‘No, I’m very...’

  ‘Don’t apologize. There’s no need. Really there isn’t.’ Why had she been so upset? He’d said nothing. Perhaps she was upset because she’d confided in him, which she’d never done before. By turns she had felt put out, angry, tearful. She’d hoped he would put his hand on her again so she could shrug it off, but it hadn’t come. She wanted to explain something to Istvan but her stomach knotted at the prospect. ‘It’s just when I think about it, the stupid drunken leer on his face, well, you know.’

  ‘But...’

  She was determined he wouldn’t speak of it. She heaved round and put a hand over his mouth. Enough, no more. They lay in silence, with her body against his chest and the feel of his lips under her fingers. And it came quite unbidden into her head that she loved him. This disturbance she felt close to him must be love. It was the last thing she sought, an inner chaos while the world outside was in chaos. She sighed.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll sleep now,’ she said and smiled, though he couldn’t see that. She settled herself with an arm lying across his chest.

  Istvan suffered agonies of stiffness. He was afraid to move in case her arm went away. The night had taken on its own strangeness. It was, Istvan imagined, akin to a long train journey at night, the land hidden in darkness; tiredness and stiffness in every muscle, unexplained halts, the frontier, the new country beyond, an unknown but thrilling destination. He lay waiting for the next lurch and the unexpected. There was watch-time and heartbeat-time. Istvan had only his heartbeats to go by. Half an hour passed? There was the sound of voices in the street and she half sat up.

  ‘You’re awake,’ Istvan said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tibor and Mino have found somewhere else, haven’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Istvan eased his stiffness as she settled with her back close against him.

  ‘So they can be alone.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘That’s right.’

  He put his arm over, his hand flat against her ribs. He felt a heartbeat, hers or his. Her hair was tickling his face and he blew it away, not wanting to move his hand. When he opened his eye
s her hair was everywhere, brush-strokes of her closeness against the deep grey window. There was a clamour in him and a heat she couldn’t miss. She turned over to face him. Her eyes, there was no doubting it, were staring at him but it was too dark to read their inner message.

  ‘Istvan,’ she whispered, ‘not now.’

  He understood: not yet.

  Her breath was warm in his face. He drank it in, her breath and the odour of her together with all the smells of the room, their meal and the lingering smoke of Tibor Kassack’s cigar. He was heady with the scents of the night and the warmth of her body. When he moved his hand she caught it and twined her fingers with his. He closed his eyes and saw brightness, a pale fire throbbing across his hot lids. His mind held tight to the idea that they were on a long night’s journey and their destination was somewhere else. They should find a private place where they could talk without others hearing, where he could feel her and explore her mystery. He could think of nowhere. Not the dining room, not the landing, nor his parents’ flat, nor the shot-up AVO building. Nowhere suited the mood. They would just have to go outside and walk under the night sky.

  When he leaned to whisper this to her, he found she had sunk into sleep.

  Natalya Zelenaya saw the room now as it was: threadbare, dusty, messed with living. It was the aftermath of a party. There were guests still, but no party. Tibor Bihari had left this morning. It was a question of an invalid mother, such nonsense, he’d not mentioned her for a week. But that was how you knew when a party was over. There could be fifty guests, twenty, even half a dozen, and it kept the spirit of a party. That Tibor Bihari left and the spirit was gone was no tribute to Tibor Bihari; he just had a child’s perception of the passing of the spirit.

  So it was. There were left only Matyas and Ferenc, Ilona and Istvan.

  But still, there had been a week taken out of the darkness of old age. There had been life about her again, reflections and echoes of youth, gaiety and quarrels, attentions to her because she’d given what they needed: freedom and a certain focus during the mysteries of growing up. Now they were no longer interested.

  So it was. Her usefulness was ebbing. Soon there would once more be only the mustard church (God protect it better than in the German war) and the loneliness. That was the cold rock you sat on in old age.

  There was Matyas and Ferenc by the window blowing on their tea like grown-ups. They’d seen railwaymen do this on January mornings or bricklayers taking their ease at building sites. They would blow on their tea and drink it and be the next to go. No matter, they had never stepped out of the crowd, she didn’t know them. But the other two.

  Had they quarrelled? Darling Ilona, difficult Istvan. No, not difficult, just a boy bouleverse. And no quarrel, something unsettled. Well, when was it ever settled? At fifteen, thirty-five, fifty-five? That was the fun of it, the uncertainty, the heartbreak, the hope for the next one.

  ‘Istvan, darling.’

  She beckoned. Vangeli, before the war it was, had said that she summoned people like a Greek, gesturing with her hand palm down, ‘as if you were shovelling thousand franc chips off the roulette table’. Vangeli had been kind, though he smiled too much. It was his wife who hadn’t smiled. Then the time came when Vangeli stopped inviting her to his yacht. He collected old masters and young mistresses, the Riviera wits had said. And she had been no longer young, even then.

  What a weight of memories. No wonder old people were bowed.

  Istvan put a match to the cigarette in the claw of a hand. ‘Bless you, darling,’ she said. She squinted up at him with one eye twisted by smoke. ‘You stay in an old woman’s apartment and for that I am grateful. It has its uses, an apartment such as this, isn’t that true? When you were a boy did you have a secret camp that was hidden from grown-ups? Perhaps you put up a notice: “Private — Keep out”. Then you grew older and had friends and went round in a gang. And now, overnight it seems, you want a place where you can put up the “Keep out” sign again. You grow up fast in a revolution. One day an innocent, the next, a man. Aren’t your parents worried about you?’

  ‘No,’ Istvan said. ‘I’ve been to see them. They don’t live far away, Matyas Square. Mama cried a little because I am still a boy to her. My father understands.’

  ‘Your father understands. What is it he understands?’

  ‘That we had to fight the Russians and defeat them. He’s proud of that. He says Russians come from the devil...’ He broke off. If the light had been better she might have seen the flush in his cheeks. From time to time they all forgot she was Russian. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...’

  ‘When you no longer apologize, you’ll be properly a man,’ she told him. Or at least like all the men she had ever known. ‘I’m charmed that you worry about my feelings. But you had better worry about the other Russians, the ones who invade the city. Worry about your father’s devils. You tore down the statue of Stalin and hacked off pieces for souvenirs. But Istvan, do you think they lost the mould for that one? There is a nightmare — I’ve had it twice, the same each time: the statue of Stalin comes to life, walking the streets at night, and the statue is immense, fifty or a hundred metres tall, a colossus, and its boots crush ants into the ground. But they’re not ants, they’re people, their arms waving like an ant’s antennae under the boots.’

  Istvan was silent. She shouldn’t have told him her nightmare. Now the giant Stalin haunted him, its dark shadow falling across the city.

  ‘I am old,’ she went on, ‘coming to the end of my life. If the hard men return, if Stalin comes alive again...’ Well, she didn’t know what would happen. She tried to wave the nightmare away with her claw.

  ‘But the Russians are leaving,’ Istvan insisted. ‘There’s no fighting any more. Their officers are meeting ours to work out the details. We heard it on the radio.’

  ‘They are giving themselves more time. They are putting Stalin together again. Then they’ll be back.’

  ‘We’ll fight them again.’

  ‘You and the two Tibors and Anna and Ilona and all. Boys and girls against the tanks.’

  ‘We’ll beat them again.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She folded her cigarette over in the ashtray where it smouldered until it died. Her talk died too, leaving the silence of an open grave. She saw the steel coming. The steel was Stalin, resurrected, a hundred metres tall. Kindness, civilization, love, the touching of one human with another, would turn to ashes.

  The whole of her heaved with a sigh. ‘You love her, it’s true.’

  ‘Who? Ilona?’

  ‘Oh child, child,’ and she shook her head. ‘Do you imagine I wasn’t young once, that I don’t understand those secret smiles and lingering touches and silent looks? She tells me you are already a poet. Recite to me.’

  ‘No, that’s not true, I’m not a poet.’ He was mumbling with embarrassment. ‘Perhaps when I’m a man.’

  ‘I think you’ve become a man,’ she said. ‘Come, Ilona said you’d written a poem specially. It came to you when you couldn’t sleep.’

  Istvan’s knees were pressed tight together in the agony of it. A poem was more personal even than this talk of love for Ilona. How dare Ilona tell her! At length he mumbled a few words.

  ‘You’ll have to speak up. I don’t hear so well any more.’

  He was silent again, summoning strength from whatever angels hold the hands of shy poets. He locked his eyes on hers and recited:

  ‘You came and learnt your steps

  Dancing so well

  Showing dark eyes and a secret smile

  Until I fell

  Under the deep and ancient magic

  Of your spell

  And I never knew your steps were climbing

  Out of hell.’

  ‘Oh, Istvan, Istvan.’ She was lost for a few moments. What had she been expecting — some devastating vers libre? It was the shortness of the poem and the intensity with which he had finally spoken that took her by surprise. ‘Well, I don’t know much
about poetry — I’ve known poets, mind you — but I like that. It showed suffering, yes? Of all artistes, it is poets who must suffer most. Do you know Osip Mandelstam? He suffered and became a poet and suffered most terribly because he was a poet. Fetch me that book of Mandelstam’s poems. It is somewhere on the shelf over there.’

  She turned the pages slowly. It was not her hands that slowed her but the smell of Russia that came from the poems. Finally she smoothed a page up and down and held the book to catch the light from the window. She read with deliberation, tasting all the phrases.

  ‘We live, without feeling ground beneath our feet.

  Ten steps away our words cannot be heard.

  But where there are enough of us for half a conversation

  There we commemorate the Kremlineer, murderer of peasants:

  His fat fingers slimy as worms,

  His words reliable as iron weights.

  The cockroaches chuckle on his upper lip,

  His top-boots gleam.

  And round him a riff-raff of dainty-necked adjutants;

  He plays with these half-men, lackeys,

  Who warble, or miaow, or whimper.

  He alone just pokes and prods.

  He forges his decrees like horseshoes:

  Some to be smashed in the balls, some in the brains, the brow, the eyes.

  And, munching executions like raspberries,

  Hugs us to death on his broad and welcoming breast.’

  She took a breath. ‘So darling, the Kremlineer was Stalin. He was a wolf-cub of the Ossetian tribe, that’s the story. They killed their enemy and ate a raspberry in celebration. A raspberry, do you like that? The juice red as blood and pips to spit out. Death was sweet to Stalin, you see. And to all the little Stalins.’

  She peered at the book again and laid it aside. ‘Poor Mandelstam. He only read the poem to five friends and one of them was a Judas who told Stalin. So Mandelstam was arrested and banished to a prison camp. He’s dead, of course. Culture cannot exist in Russia now. They kill, torture or bribe talent. Me, I think bribery is the worst because an artiste grows fat and no longer suffers.’