by Derek Hansen
‘My God,’ said Neil. ‘You killed him?’
‘Yes,’ said Gabriella, ‘I killed him. It was terrible. More terrible than you can ever imagine. I have lived with the knowledge that I killed a man ever since. I have lived with that sickening sound.’
‘My God.’ Neil leaned across the table and put his arm around Gabriella, trying to comfort her.
‘It was self-defence,’ said Lucio. ‘He would have killed you. You and Tibor. You can’t blame yourself.’
‘Can I get you some coffee?’ asked Ramon.
‘No, not yet,’ said Gabriella, ‘it is not yet time for coffee. I have not finished. See, I can talk about it now and my friend the doctor says it is good for me to talk about it. Milos made me have a boiled egg for breakfast this morning. Made me crack it open myself. I can do this now. Ask me and I will tell you that I am no longer afraid. Ten years it took my friend the doctor, but now I can listen to the eggs break. I can listen to the eggs.’
‘Ten years,’ said Ramon sympathetically.
‘I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want him to open the door to that part of my mind where I kept all the things I didn’t want to remember. But he found the key and I can tell my story. I can go on with the rest of my story.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Neil.
‘Yes, Neil. Thank you for your concern. I can go on.’ She took hold of his arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
My last day in Hungary turned out not to be my last. Without contacts and without help we could not make our way through Czechoslovakia and across the border. Tibor was badly bruised and his ribs were splintered. I couldn’t stop crying. I cried for Milos and I cried for myself. I could not get Milos out of my mind, or the terrible sound of that man’s skull cracking. There was blood and I suppose brain matter but I couldn’t see it. It was so dark beyond the pool of light from the lamp. I could not see what I had done. I only heard it and the sound wouldn’t leave me.
Once he’d recovered enough, Tibor forced me to leave that abandoned stable and once again we were on the move. He screamed at me and cursed me, kept me moving and kept me alive when all I wanted to do was die and forget the horror of what I’d done. Snow had begun falling and the wind had picked up. We stumbled on through the rest of the night, Tibor leading by instinct with no North Star to guide him and no moon to show the way. Just before dawn, he spotted a light in the distance and we headed towards it. The light came from a small farmhouse. Tibor banged on the door until a man opened it. He took one look at us and stood aside to let us in. Surely there were no more pitiable people than us in all of Czechoslovakia.
The farmer was a Slav but his wife was a Magyar, a Hungarian. They took us in. Tibor explained that we were trying to escape to the West and how our guides had tried to kill us. They bathed, fed and comforted us. We lived with them for ten days. Tibor offered to pay for their kindness but they refused. They finally agreed to accept half. After ten days, Tibor had recovered enough to move on but I was still a mess. My nights were filled with nightmares, the worst I’d ever experienced, and my days were filled with tears. I didn’t want to leave the farmer and his wife but we could not stay. I had no choice.
We headed west towards the caves at Aggtelek where Uncle Jozsef had brought me one time with the boys. Tibor had gone there often enough to know the countryside well and also make contacts in the railways. Of course, that meant we had to cross back into Hungary. But Tibor argued that the AVO would no longer be looking for us; they knew we’d escaped to Czechoslovakia. His plan was to use his contacts in the railways to get to the border with Austria and then find someone to take us across.
That is what we did. We hid in freight wagons carrying crates of cherries. We hid beneath bags of grain. We hid in the guard vans of trains carrying lime for cement. We even hid in the guard van of a train carrying coal. We made it to Koszeg on the border with Austria. Two days later, with the help of smugglers, we crossed the border into Austria. We were free. I had never felt less free, even in the camps in Germany.
I soon discovered what the loss of Tibor’s rucksack really meant. It had contained all the money and gold he’d accumulated to begin a new life in another country. It had also contained his papers. So Tibor seized the papers I carried.
‘I am Milos now,’ he said.
‘No!’ I protested hysterically but he wouldn’t listen. It was so disrespectful to Milos and cruel to me. ‘My Milos was a gentle man,’ I protested, ‘he was not like you. He was kind and loving. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, not even his enemy. He would never carry a gun.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Tibor. ‘Milos is dead but so is the Tibor who came back to you from Budapest. I had no choice how I lived my life. The rules were not my rules but I had to live by them or perish. But, you see, now I’m free. I don’t have to live like that any more. I am no longer a criminal. I no longer have to act like a criminal. I am free. Free to be gentle and kind. Free to be loving. Free to be Milos.’
The whole idea of Tibor becoming Milos was abhorrent to me, but Tibor had made up his mind and nothing I said could change it. Everything was happening too fast. I hadn’t come to terms with the loss of Milos and now Tibor wanted to steal his identity, his life and his place in my heart. I fought but I was fighting the inevitable. Tibor needed new papers and a new identity.
‘Think of all the times I’ve helped Milos,’ Tibor said. ‘Milos would not hesitate to help me. He would want me to do this.’
Maybe I should have fought harder but, in my weakened state, how could I? When we reached Germany, Tibor converted my diamond into cash. He had money in bank accounts in Switzerland but said we’d need that once we’d settled somewhere. He used the money from the diamond to buy a wedding dress for me. I had my spring wedding. I cried all through the service. I should have been marrying Milos. Tibor kept reminding me that I was. He also reminded me that he was all I had and that we had no choice but to stick together. So I married a Milos and a Milos married me. This Milos told me I would learn to love him again, like I had as a child.
We did not consummate our marriage then but sometime later after we had reached Australia. Tibor was right. I did grow to love him, or at least become utterly dependent on him. In my condition the two were the same. My nightmares continued to plague me and I was always grateful that Tibor was there to wake and comfort me just as my Milos had done. The nightmares were ferocious. Night after night I was burned alive in the ovens of Auschwitz. Night after night Milos was shot dead and ripped apart by dogs. Night after night I crushed that man’s skull. I came to fear night and sleep, and in my fear I refused to sleep until exhaustion overcame me. And then they were there, waiting to ambush me. My nightmares.
By the time we reached England for our passage to Australia, the combination of everything I’d been through, my nightmares and sleep deprivation, had left me irrational. I probably had a nervous breakdown of some description, but such things were easily dismissed then. The doctor said all I needed was sleep and rest. Sleep, for God’s sake! I clung to my identity papers like I’d clung to my book in the camps. My papers were my life raft in a very confused sea. They told me who I was, who I’d married, where I was going. I was Gabriella Heyman. I was married to Milos Heyman. I was going to Australia. When nothing else made sense, there were my papers. They were stamped and official. Unarguable. Absolute. They told me who I was.
Sometimes people make the mistake of believing their own publicity, and I think Tibor made this mistake. He avoided contact with the Hungarian community in Sydney, fearing that somebody would recognise him or somehow connect him with the notorious gangster from Budapest. But who would recognise him? Who would know his face? Some might recognise the name Tibor Heyman, but Tibor wasn’t Tibor any more. He was Milos. Perhaps if I’d had contact with my own kind I could have begun the process of recovery sooner. But Tibor forbade it.
Instead we rented a house in Paddington, one in a row of terrace houses. I made Tibor put bars on the w
indows and new locks on the doors. I became a prisoner in my own home, as much a prisoner as I’d been in the camps. But that was where I felt secure, that was where I felt safe. I panicked whenever anyone came to the door. I’d hear them knocking and think they’d come to take me away, just as the gendarmes had come a lifetime earlier to take away my father and my brother. Just as the gendarmes came to take away me, my mother and Elizabeth. No good ever came from a knock on the door. My mind straddled two time frames and I was never really certain which one I was in.
Sometimes I would go out, but only with Tibor. The girl who had walked home to Sarospatak from Germany was now too scared to go to the shop for a loaf of bread on her own. I didn’t understand what had happened to me, only that it had. Tibor indulged me. He didn’t make me face up to what was happening. Sometimes he would coax me into trying something more adventurous than walking in the park or walking through the city at weekends when it was deserted. Sometimes we sat in cafés but they weren’t like the cafés in Hungary and the coffee was terrible. Once he tried to take me to a movie but I couldn’t bear to sit in the dark surrounded by so many people. I ran from the cinema: another mad woman from Europe. Perhaps if we’d mixed with other Hungarians I might have made friends. The friends might have helped me find my way back into life. But there were no friends. Tibor was my only friend and my only contact with life.
Tibor started a small company cleaning windows of office blocks. Most offices then had caretakers or janitors and keeping the windows clean was their responsibility. Tibor introduced them to the idea of contract-cleaning windows and later contract-cleaning of offices. But companies were slow to see the benefits and utilise his services. For many the idea was too radical or they couldn’t see the value. However, enough people gave it a try and Tibor’s business started to grow. But once the business became successful, Tibor grew bored with it. He sold the cleaning businesses and we bought a house in Rose Bay with the proceeds. The first thing we did was put bars on the windows and locks on the door. Our neighbours couldn’t understand us at all. They couldn’t understand why anybody would turn their home into a fortress.
Tibor started many more businesses. A painting business, a company that imported tiles, and he even opened a café that sold real coffee and continental cakes. The cakes were made by immigrants like us who yearned for the sort of things we were brought up with. Australians ate biscuits and meat pies, sausage rolls and fish and chips, things which to us tasted disgusting. But as each business became successful, Tibor sold it. We made money every time but neither the money nor the businesses made Tibor happy. One day he bought a Jaguar sports car and learned to drive. Every weekend after that we would go for a drive. I felt safe in the car because we were in our own little world. I don’t know if Tibor was a good driver but he was certainly a fast driver. They were some of the few times he was genuinely happy. He loved the Jaguar and he loved driving fast. He loved the risk.
Tibor wanted children but I could not bear to bring a child into a world where there was so much pain. The years passed but for me nothing much changed. The pain remained. Although the nightmares eased I still couldn’t bear to hear eggs break. If we needed eggs, Tibor had to break them open for me while I covered my head with pillows. My way of life became a habit and, in becoming a habit, shut off all the roads to recovery. I no longer cared why I was the way I was. I no longer cared that my life was almost non-existent. I spent my days locked in my home with only compound analgesics for company. At first I took just one or two a day. They helped me cope. When I didn’t take them I missed them so I took them more often. I became hooked on the combination of aspirin, phenacitin and codeine. APCs. I spent my days in twilight, not thinking and not feeling, unable to tell one day from another. Only the weekends and the car trips brought any relief. But I always took my Vincents powders with me.
We’d lived in Australia for eight years when suddenly everything changed. There was no warning. We awoke one day to hear the news on the radio and to read it in the newspapers. It was October 23, 1956. The Hungarian people had risen up against the Russians. The Hungarian revolution had begun.
For eight years we had tried to forget Hungary and now Hungary filled every news broadcast and the front page of every newspaper. Tibor stayed home with his ear glued to the radio. When he couldn’t get enough information locally he tuned into the BBC World Service on the short-wave. But our little radio wasn’t powerful. Tibor wanted a short-wave radio like the ones radio hams used. He offered somebody a ridiculous amount of money to install one for us. The man came, set it up and put a huge aerial mast on our roof. Our neighbours were convinced we were crazy but we didn’t care. One night, as Tibor slowly manipulated the dial, we heard a voice broadcasting in our own language. Somehow we’d found Radio Budapest and the station had been taken over by freedom fighters.
From that moment the radio was never turned off. We cheered when we heard about Russian tanks being destroyed and AVO officers being hung in the streets. But the broadcasts were intermittent and often meaningless to us. Ordinary people used the station to send messages or make appeals to the West. Sometimes, mostly during the day, all we could hear was a wall of static, but we were too frightened to turn the radio off in case we missed something, and too scared to play with the tuning in case we lost Radio Budapest altogether. On the morning of November 1, we heard on our little kitchen radio that the Russian army was returning to Hungary. Thousands of tanks and thousands of troops were crossing the border to crush the revolution. We even heard Satoraljaujhely mentioned. Tanks were rolling back through the border town.
We ran to our short-wave radio but all we heard was static. Tibor was beside himself with anger and impatience. I knew he wanted to be there, fighting the Soviets. But we were so far away and, besides, Tibor could never leave me.
Later that night we picked up Radio Budapest again. The student revolutionaries were begging the West for assistance, pleading for NATO and America to come to their rescue. It was so hard to listen and not be able to help. For me the broadcasts were torment because they awakened so many terrible memories, but I couldn’t turn away. I sat listening while tears streamed down my face. Once again my poor country was being destroyed. We sat there into the early hours of the morning, hanging on every word, living every moment.
On the night of November 4, we heard gunfire and explosions in the background and the announcer’s fear as he relayed the news that tanks and artillery had opened fire on Budapest. People interrupted his broadcast to send desperate messages to relatives in America and Canada. Sometimes the announcer excused himself because he had to run to a window to help defend the building. It was shortly after four in the morning, when the announcer had just run to pick up his rifle, when we heard another voice come on air, another poor, defiant soul sending a message. We stopped breathing, Tibor and I, and stared dumbstruck at each other. My heart did a somersault and ended up in my throat, beating so hard I was sure it would burst. There was no mistaking the voice, even over the thousands of kilometres, even with the ebb and flow of static.
‘H-hello,’ it said, ‘is anyone listening? This is Milos Heyman. Milos Heyman from Sarospatak. Gabi, Tibor … if you are listening, I am alive. I am alive.’
‘I knew it!’ said Lucio delightedly. ‘I could not see how the Milos we know could be the Tibor you described. I said so last week after you left.’
‘Lucio’s heart always rules his head,’ said Ramon. ‘But for once it seems he was right and I am happy to have been wrong.’
‘And you, Neil?’ asked Gabriella.
‘I think you’ve cut off the circulation in my arm.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry.’ She released her grip.
Neil turned towards the kitchen to catch Gancio’s eye but once again the restaurateur had anticipated their wishes.
‘I think we should toast the resurrection of Milos with our grappas,’ said Lucio. ‘And, I suspect, the resurrection of this beautiful lady.’
‘Indeed,’
said Ramon. ‘I must confess that I too prefer the company of Milos to the company of Tibor. But I’m curious. How exactly did this resurrection of Milos come about? It doesn’t ring true. You were shot dead. Tibor saw you. He’d seen enough dead people to know who was dead and who was merely wounded.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Milos dismissively. ‘Do you think he had time to see if I was breathing? Do you think he waited, with bullets flying around his head, just so he could check my pulse? The bullet that hit me struck my collarbone right beside my spine and exited just below my throat. There was enough blood to convince anyone I was dead. Besides, the impact hammered me to the ground. I hit my head and compounded my injuries by knocking myself unconscious. Tibor would have tried to help me up, seen the blood around my throat and perhaps even noticed that my eyes had rolled back. But I doubt it. I doubt he saw much at all. It was too dark and he could only have had time for the most fleeting examination. The blood and my limp body would have made him assume the worst. Bear in mind that he was panicked, exhausted and riddled with guilt. It was his fault that I’d been shot. The AVO were after him, not me. In his guilt and the panic of flight, he assumed I was dead.’
‘I have no trouble with that,’ said Lucio.
‘So who is going to tell us what happened? You or Gabi?’
‘Patience, Ramon,’ said Milos. ‘Here comes Gancio. First you may toast my resurrection and, yes, Gabi’s also. After we have drunk our coffee I will tell you how I survived.’
‘Will you persist with the third person?’ asked Ramon.
‘No. That device is no longer necessary.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Under any other circumstances, I would have been finished off by the border guards and my body dumped into the Hernad River. But, in an ironic twist, the guards mistook me for Tibor. Istvan had made it clear to them that he wanted Tibor alive if at all possible. The guards carried me on a makeshift stretcher made from saplings and the waterproof canvas in my rucksack.
