by Alan Duff
And she murmured, Have I …? in a most ambiguous tone — or to his ears it must have been — for the bed ceased registering his thrusting.
He must have been smiling when he asked her, Does that say yes? Or starting to? Or not yet? For he ended with a rather tight chuckle.
She replied, Are those the only choices?
And his laugh did not sound pleased. He began moving on her again, that weight of male upon female that no other’s ears should be hearing, not unless it is a growing-up child hearing and understanding that it is the way parents love so that he, the child, when his time comes, learns to love, too.
He was humping her and asking, Are you saying there are other options? His question had a quaver in it, of the physical wobbling of sexual movement. I could rip his fucking windpipe out.
She did not answer. His screwing was unhurried, without yet the fury, the urgency that takes men, maybe every man. Again he stopped, asked, How long with me before you climax?
Climax …? With a big hollow echo that could have been reverberating in the bleakest Budapest sky.
That is what I said.
She did not answer. I could have stepped out and shot him dead then. End that arrogance. Bring halt to this violation of her every sensibility.
She was never going to answer, which is why he told her: I will make you then!
And he started pounding, pounding; and grunting. It was a ramming act, blows, worse than raw animal rutting since this one knew, knew what he was doing, he just wasn’t getting what he wanted back.
Finally, I heard the distinct sound of spitting, all his true contempt of women coming out his mouth with his bastard semen.
And I knew then the reason for my turmoil, why I couldn’t step out and do as I had planned, since it was not about ending this mongrel’s life — that will be easy — but of doing it in these circumstances. Without her compliance, against her will. In the middle of this act taking place, mine would be but another gross violation, perhaps even worse for denying her the right to her own retribution.
So, I stood there, with the gun held limply and uselessly, cold against my side through my thin summer trousers, and the heat rivering out from me, forehead, armpits, a slow clammy trickle down my back, in place of tears for my mistake, my guilt, my own violation. I knew in my heart, I was full of a furious jealousy, as if she were my marriage partner and he, this killer of her husband and my father, was raping my wife.
I, with the means to end it, had to stand there and listen to his climax come roaring from him in a bellow of triumph, as though on some battlefield. Spitting as he orgasms, Ávós man’s contempt for her, for us all.
Klaudia, oh, Klaudia, let me lose myself in you, of that part you once gave, you said, only to me. Give me that you again, Klaudia, but take me deeper into all parts of you, show me, tell me, know me of every aspect of woman, then make it suffering woman, oh, but let her heave thrusting hips up to me, promising bloody revenge; show me all the ways of woman so I might take some of my friend’s suffering. Fuck me, Klaudia. Fuck me to death and back to life again. And I’ll tell you of my poor Aranka hurting so.
WE WALK INTO the noise of an excited crowd, even joyous — no, it cannot be. And yet that is what it sounds.
It’s late October, an unusually warm autumn day, the river its sparkling best, the sun adding to the splendour of stone castles and monuments. For some reason Aranka starts telling me a folk legend. Which I already know and she would know I do.
Of two princes long ago, Hunor and Magor, the sons of King Nimrod, who set out hunting one day, accompanied by fifty hunter warriors each. An elusive stag set them a merry chase, which took them on a journey that went days and nights, and far into the forbidden Far Eastern steppes. They came upon a forest clearing, and there were two beautiful maidens, the daughters of a King Bulár. Aranka tells me this unnecessary tale as more and more people add to the growing crowd.
When they saw these two beautiful sisters, the brothers forgot about the white stag they were pursuing and began dancing with the women, Aranka continues and I am barely listening.
It’s a legend so familiar I could recite it at the age of five, like most Hungarian children could. A tale that does not seem to fit, not a forest in ancient times with a pair of beautiful maidens and our first ancestors, with the unexplained crowd and the street we’re on, Közraktár, fusing with Forván Street to run parallel with the river and those large numbers of people this side, too.
Aranka, what’s going on?
I haven’t finished my story yet, Tilla Szabó. Don’t be rude.
Rude? When there is this huge crowd growing before our eyes of unprecedented size — at least without precedent in my memory.
As we near we see Szabadság Bridge streams with people — like a tributary joining that main river across the real river Duna — originating it would seem from the University of Engineering. Aranka’s tale continues, as if no such thing is happening.
The two princes bring the two maidens back to their land, from the Western slopes of the Ural Mountains. Magor was the strongest and hence the name derived for the Magyar people of the joined tribes.
I butt in. So now I know you are a direct descendant of one of those two beautiful maidens. Now, what do you think that crowd is about?
I’ve not seen her so happy; she is almost gay. Oh, and what a large crowd it is, too. How will they categorise it? When three’s a conspiracy, five a riot and ten a revolution. She’s chuckling and I am feeling confused.
We were a nomadic people, Attila. There was Álmos, chief of the Magyar tribe who had a son, Árpád, whose name I know you carry proudly. Árpád was our first elected ruler after a union of seven tribes chose him. They sealed the pact with a blood oath.
Here, give me your hand. She takes it anyway. If you had your father’s favourite knife on you, I would ask you to cut us both so we might seal a pact in blood, Attila Árpád.
(We have Name Days to celebrate saints and those who carry their names. Heroes celebrated before mere mortals. So what is this mass of people celebrating?)
Over the river the university is like a factory, which oozes out figures, a sea of hats, worn and waved and tossed in the air, and voices in full cry. And on this Pest side are thousands who walk against the mighty Duna’s flow, and every bridge jammed with people, joining those on the other side.
Freedom! Freedom! They keep roaring, like the word is the heartbeat of this massive body. We hear near us a cry demanding an end to the Secret Police: Down with the Ávós! Down with the Ávós! The unthinkable is happening. I’m all over with excitement, tinged with a little fear. For surely this is soon going to be broken up?
Aranka, why did you tell me a legend every Hungarian knows?
To remind you of who you are and what — she pauses to look across the mass flow of citizens across the river — and what we are. As a nation.
This time I’m listening.
Genghis Khan decimated Hungary. Set it back a thousand years as the remnants of defeated Magyars plunged into despair. Yet out of this, the Royal Palace, under Mátyás Corvinus, became one of the centres of the Renaissance. There it is up on that hill. Out of the ashes of defeat he brought forth great works of art and literature from the same people. A century later — she has to raise her voice because the din of the crowd is getting louder — the Ottoman Turks invaded. And in less than another century the population of Hungary had been halved. But every time they reduced us, we came back stronger. Every time it happened the same in our history: we got pushed down so far we fought back ten times harder than they had oppressed us.
(Where has she heard the ten times rule? My father’s face suddenly appears — no, not his face. It’s his voice. My papa’s, inside my head, stored in the vaults of my memory. If anyone lays a hand on you, Attila Árpád Szabó, give him back ten times what he gave you.)
I know what is happening and yet don’t — no one does, I am sure of it. I ask Aranka, Did you hear this march might hap
pen?
Yes, she winks. But I did not believe that they, the university students, would have the guts to start it.
But what about all these people around us, they’re older, ordinary citizens? What rhetoric and political debate would they have gone to at the same time as middle-class university students?
Suffering does not care what class you are, Attila. It simply is. Stop questioning and be part of it.
While we can, I feel obliged to add.
A few days ago there was another revolt by the Poles against Communism and the Soviet dominance of their country. The Monday News carried the headlines shouted by street vendors on every corner, of a speech by Poland’s Minister of State, Gomulka, demanding reform. The Soviets gave in to many of their demands. The writer’s publication, Literary Gazette, has been selling furiously on Sunday nights to long waiting queues with its ever-bolder editorials demanding change. Though not so that protest like this might have come about.
Oh, my Péter would love to have been part of this, she says, with every light on in her marvellous eyes for but one man.
He is gone now, Aranka.
She stops, places hands on my shoulders. No, Attila. He is not gone. He will never go, not until I do. And, if I should ever have child, I will name him Péter. (Forget it, Attila. Stop hoping against hope.)
Two huge crowds, walking parallel either side of the Duna River. Porkpie hats, arrays of women’s hats, banners waving, placards, flags, and a forest of arms thrusting from time to regular time. Now I have something to say to her, except we must make our way to the outer edges of the crowd, and in fact find ourselves on a street one back, even if quite dense with yet more citizens on the march.
I tell Aranka of an incident about three years ago, on Váci Street, which used to be the city’s favourite shopping place until every business was collectivised: I was with Mama, trying to find a government office for some forms she had to fill out, and there was a group of youths, prominent for being outrageously dressed, in zoot suits and American-style jeans and painted neckties. We pick up on the street talk that this is a spontaneous movement expressing youth dissatisfaction with the government, at its lack of reform. But they are hardly armed insurgents, these pimple-faced youths.
Next, a lorry load of Ávós arrived and set upon these boys with fists and rifle butts, then tossed them like garbage into the backs of lorries and took them away.
A few days later, the State newspaper had front-page photographs of these chastened kids, paraded before the ÁVH headquarters in front of several gleeful Ávós officers, whom, the caption said, had punished the youths for imitating the decadence of the West. Aranka, their hair had been shorn off like sheep. And they wore ordinary clothes and expressions to match. That’s what will happen to this lot.
But how? When we are tens of thousands? Attila, I swear you are much more cynical than even I. Then the lights dim in her green eyes. And her voice is quieter: And I would have slightly more reason to be cynical, would I not? she says.
Yes. (Yes, but not by much, not now. The same man murdered my father. We are brother and sister of our loved ones’ blood. We have a different kind of blood oath already.)
I have to ask several people where this march is headed before a young man tells us it is Bem Square. It started at Petőfi Square because he is one of our revolutionary heroes and a poet, too.
A man climbs onto the foot of the general’s statue and starts shouting through a megaphone. He says he is from a delegation of writers who have compiled a list of demands they want announced to the government. Whilst drowned in immediate cheers, his personage appears of too little account to be taken that seriously. Though no one else seems to know why they are here and what they intend doing, other than protest and be part of an exciting afternoon on 23 October 1956.
We keep to the outer edges of the crowd, meaning more often hugging the buildings encircling the square. It is Aranka’s insistence we keep moving, so to have better understanding, a better feel of the pulse of this extraordinary event.
I point Aranka’s attention to a military barracks and Hungarian Army soldiers looking down at us from balconies. People try to read what the soldiers are wondering: on what orders are they? Where do their loyalties lie?
On the roof of the same building clamber a group of youths, by their dress university students, who start rocking and pulling on the Soviet red star proclaiming itself central to the building.
The crowd realises what is going on and for a moment pause in questioning silence at what this action means. They know that this will change things, it might even be its definition.
As the youths wrestle with the Soviet emblem, several soldiers remove their caps and fiddle with them a moment and then make tossing action to the crowd.
More moments of uncertainty, of uneasy silence; what are they up to, what were they throwing, was it what it looked like — no, surely not? Before the word goes out.
Citizens, listen! bellows someone up on the general’s pedestal. The soldiers have discarded their own badges of the hated Soviet domination! The soldiers are telling us they’re on our side! Our soldier boys are with their own Magyar kind!
Another defining moment. At least to some of us.
The star sign on the roof lets go of one corner of its anchoring. The crowd roars. Gaining extra energy from the crowd’s support, the youths heave and shove, and finally the Soviet emblem’s last bolt gives way.
Look out below!
There must be thirty-thousand sets of eyes witnessing in astonishment as the red star hangs on the roof edge, and then pitches forward. No single word could have been heard in the roar of affirmation as it plummets and smashes to the ground.
The writer with the megaphone tries again to address the crowd, but his timing is wrong, the crowd needs physical action, and a place of more moment. Besides, someone yells out: Where have the writers been when the country needed them, its more articulate voices, to be more outspoken, this last decade of hell? Weren’t some of you writing propaganda for them, sucking your Communist masters’ dicks?
And didn’t they, Aranka chimes in beside me on hearing this talk, betray even their finest own? For my ears, she quotes the poet, Benjámin László: Believing in your guilt, I was the guilty one.
I know exactly what she is talking about.
A debate has started around us. Some ask if this is not a people’s protest rather than one claimed by the intellectuals. Whilst they are at State-funded universities, we workers suffer like slaves for the same State. A writer protagonist claims that the Literary Gazette, a writers’ publication, started it by demanding sixteen-points of reform. Insults fly, blows are nearly traded. But the crowd makes the biggest claim, demanding government listen to them. No more no less.
Even in this densely packed mass I can still pick out pockets of seemingly organised protesters; their demands more articulate, their dress and manner marking them as university students.
Just as I see those more like myself, working-class youth sick to death of living like this. And it is those same faces that give me a rush, of violence about to happen when we have but dreamed it, of hope that if the dream is to come true then it shall be at their rougher hands.
Some writers argue with the crowd over a passed-around megaphone, laying claim to seeding the protest. Someone cries, Poland started it and why can’t Hungarians show they have the same courage as the Poles. That’s why Bem Square was chosen, because a Pole fought for us and Poles have led the way in rising up against the Soviets.
But then others ask, Who chose this site? Who is behind this march? Where is it going to lead us? To hell? Or heaven?
Then a ringing male voice bellows, There is where the triumph belongs! Pointing to the roof, where the students are framed against a blue sky, punching it with fists and waving a large Hungarian flag, at which more fingers point in delight at the large ragged hole of the torn-out hammer and wheatsheaf.
One rebel pushes a fist through the hole in th
e flag, bringing an almighty roar that could lift the roofs of Parliament.
And I, Attila Árpád Szabó, am thinking then: if revolution is to be done, let Magyar youth be the first to step forward. Feeling the blood of my ancestors, Magor and Árpád, surging.
To Parliament! To Parliament! Is the next clarion cry.
WE ARE LIKE an endless pouring of oil over the bridges: Chain, Margaret, Liberty and a temporary bridge named Kossuth, marching for the vast square that these rulers never thought would ever fill with such protest. But as the excitement builds, so does my caution. All my fighting instincts are on high alert. Where are the Ávós? Where the Soviet tanks? When will lorries packed with armed soldiers arrive to smash this illegal protest to pieces?
Aranka, too, has my wariness, and we find ourselves walking close, hugging the buildings and pausing in every third doorway to reassess, look around us.
It is impossible to know what is happening, only that this is spontaneous and evolving by the moment. We are tens of thousands’ strong, yet there is no sense of violence in the air, just joyous voices at last venting long years of misery.
Yet I say to Aranka, How come I feel the presence of Ávós as if they are everywhere, concealed, secreted, watching us, waiting for their moment to attack?
And she adds, Shatter our dreams once more, you mean?
Hungarian flags, with the Communist emblem cut out, hang from nearly every other window, drape from rooftops and balconies and railings, hang from make-shift flag-poles, flutter gaily in old and young hands. And looking through every hole in the flags we can literally see endless light of sky. Meaning, maybe, freedom at last.
Students rush everywhere pasting up posters, bearing the basic demands for free elections and cartoon depictions of Rákosi, with his back turned, departing, his bald pate, carrying a suitcase toward a train signed: Moscow. And around him happy Hungarian faces gleeful at his departure.
