Under Budapest (16 page)

She writes for hours. She writes the same information five times over, ten times over. She writes him away; she calls him forth.

Monday, October 22

Gyula comes to Agi at a run. Late but at least he's come. She could cry with the relief of it. He's fine; he hasn't been arrested after his foolish meeting on the hill. He carries his coat in his hand in an afternoon suddenly warm as summer, loping across the bristled grass.

“Gyula, I told my mother.”

“Told her what?”

“That we're leaving. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Write me if you survive.' Can you believe that? Can you believe a mother would say that?”

“Who cares what she says. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter like we do.” He kisses her hard, but he can't stay long. The Student Federation has presented its petition to the government. Among the fourteen items they listed, they called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. He grips her hands. “They have to listen to us, Agi. It's time. They've come so far already, why not take the next step? They
must
agree to our demands.”

She stops him. “You put your name to a petition against the government?”

“Five members presented it on behalf of the federation.”

Could he really be so foolish?

“The time for hiding is over, Agi. It's time to stand up for ourselves. As the poet says, ‘It's now or never.'”

“But petitioning the government, Gyula? Signing your name.”

“We've been afraid long enough.
Slaves
long enough.” The poet's words again. Illicit words. They were revolutionary words when they were first written, a call to arms to rise up against Austria. Look how well that went. But the statue of Sandor Petofi still stands in his park, his hair flying, the very picture of Hungarian yearning. Now Gyula.

“Only three more days, and we won't be.”

He looks blankly at her. And then he understands. He sees her now, and she sees that he sees her, a focal centring. He's planning what to say next.

“Maybe we don't need to go.”

“What?”

“If things change, Agi, we don't need to run. We can be here and still have exactly what we want—freedom and hope and possibilities and…everything. Everything we want but here.”

“But we've been planning for months.”

“I know, but that was before.”

“Before what, Gyula? Before you signed a petition?”

“Agi.”

“And now what do you think will happen? Really? That your petition will with one blow flatten the Soviet state?”

“Agi.”

“Stop the AVO from spying and torturing? Make everything right?”

“
They
're the ones who made the first move, releasing the political prisoners, talking about a new friendship with the Soviets. We're all on the same side, mostly. Just get rid of Rakosi and Gero and things will happen.”

“Get rid of Rakosi? For God's sake, don't be such a child.” Without realizing it, she is hitting his chest, pushing him off.

“I'm a child?”

“Yes.”

“I'm the child? All you can do is talk about your precious exit plan, what shoes to wear.”

“It's
my
plan now? Funny. Just yesterday, it was
ours
.”

“Plans change.
History
is changing.”

“I haven't changed.”

“So maybe you should. This is our moment, Agi. Hungary's moment.”

Wary even now, more than ever now, they fight in whispers.

“Our moment? What about
our
marriage?”

“For God's sake, I still love you.”

“But you'll break your promise to me.”

He's extricating his fingers from hers. She grips.

“I have to go, Agi. We're meeting in”—the bastard checks his watch—“in fifteen minutes, and I have to be there.”

He kisses her cheek. Tells her not to cry, they'll work things out, everything will look better tomorrow, promise, promise, promise, I love you. And then he leaves, loping up the hill to the bridge and across the Duna to the spired grey parliament to learn the fate of his revolutionary hope.

Later that night, after a wordless supper, after the dishes, she spills everything into Zsofi's shoulder, trying to cry without a sound so her mother won't hear. Zsofi pats her back, uncomfortable with this role and unfamiliar with her sister's emotion. Finally, she says the only thing that occurs to her to say, and she hopes it sounds wise: “You have to let him be true to himself.”

It's not wise at all. It's trite. An insult. But it's also all that Zsofi is capable of. So Agi straightens, wipes the tears from her eyes. “Maybe you're right,” she says.

“Of course I'm right.” Zsofi replies, pleased with her achievement and the conclusion of this small crisis. A moment later, she is watching herself in the darkened glass of the window, pulling her hair into new coquettish twists. “The thing is, he's very inspiring. His speeches, I mean. To the federation, he's invaluable.”

To the
federation
? They're a bunch of idealistic, naive, careless, dangerous, big-talking children. And what does Zsofi know about it?

“People are quoting him, you know. He's a real leader. Everyone loves him.”

Everyone? What everyone? What kind of love? Abruptly, Agi stands, furious with the superior look in her vain little sister's face, this dispensing of wisdom as she admires her own beauty in the glass.

“I'm going to bed.”

Tuesday, October 23

Agi doesn't need a radio to know that something is happening. Her students are buzzing with it: the university students have gone out. Not just Lorand, but the Technical University too. They're marching. Thousands of them. Her classroom empties. One girl shoves a flyer at her. “Come, Miss Teglas.”

In her vacant, windowed classroom, sun glaring in, Agi reads the leaflet the girl has given her. It lists eleven slogans, and she can read Gyula's overblown urgent rhetoric in each of them.

Poland sets the example; we want the Hungarian way!

New leadership, a new direction, requires new leaders!

Children of Father Bem and Father Kossuth, let us go hand in hand!

Children of workers and peasants, we go along with you!

We demand a new leadership; we trust Imre Nagy!

We shall not stop halfway; we shall destroy Stalinism!

Independence! Freedom!

Long live the Polish people!

Long live the Polish Workers' Party!

Worker-peasant power!

Long live the People's Army!

The day's too warm for a coat. She leaves her jacket on the hook, screws the leaflet into her cardigan pocket, and joins the stream of students and teachers.

On the grassy Petofi Ter, it's louder and more chaotic than any parade or festival. Messy placards—“Independence, Equality, Friendship!” “A New Policy, A New Direction Calls for New Leadership!”—picket around the statue of Sandor Petofi, whose banned words Gyula recited at her yesterday. Hungarian tricolour flags wave from open windows, their red, green, and white stripes torn at the centre where the Soviet red stars have been slashed out. The shouts and cheers are joyfully terrified, like children on swings, a hundred thousand children on a hundred thousand swings, urging heels to sky. She can't see Gyula in the throngs that pour into the small square from all directions, yet he's made this happen. How? Somehow he's done this, he and his fervent, political, and careless friends. As she scans the crowd for Gyula, a student climbs the statue. He shouts the illicit words of the poem. At first, it's just him. Just his one voice, swinging wide over the crowd: “On your feet, Magyar, the homeland calls!” But before he reaches the next line, the others have it: “The time is here, now or never! Shall we be slaves or free? This is the question, choose your answer!” Agi, too, joins in. “Slaves no longer!” they declaim, Agi declaims. “Now or never!”

They're moving. She goes with the mass, a stranger takes one arm, another stranger the other. And now she's marching. Marching with elated strangers, marching up the broad, veering Kossuth Lajos Utca to Bajcsy-Zsilinszky. At every step, the crowd swells. From apartment windows flags wave, holes where the star used to be. People step out of little shops and businesses to cluster onto the sidewalk, shouting, “Eljen!”
Long may you live!
The shouting voices ricochet, brace, and bounce. In this whispering city, people yell, “Now or never.” Agi yells. For the possibility of freedom, and the end of lies, but also at her mother and her mother's fury. At the things taken away and the things too ugly to save. At the broken plumbing and the unfinished subways, and the ones locked away, and the ones returned. At the men who took and the men who lied for those who took, and the women hollowed out with the pain of it. And then, at some point, someone, somewhere, from some window starts throwing paper. Paper flutters down on them. It takes a moment to understand and then she sees: they're Soviet pamphlets, Soviet books, Soviet words, and people are throwing them out their windows. Marchers cover their heads and laugh. They march over this ripped-up stuff, this meaningless, featherweight, ephemeral stuff—for it has no more heft and far less might than a thousand, a hundred thousand, Hungarian voices unleashed.

Across Margit Hid, the crowd heaves. When Agi looks back, the river of people behind her seems to have no end. They keep walking, and the swell carries her, and the bridge miraculously holds as the evening sun lights the Duna on fire.

At Bem Ter, on the other side of the river, they stop. It's a small square, smaller even than Petofi, not big enough for the crowds that keep coming. Shoulders push at her shoulders, and she breathes into another woman's neck. They shuffle to make room for more, but there's no more room to be had. Just off Bem Ter, the Radetzky Barracks holds soldiers. Have they come to challenge them? But she's barely thought it when she realizes what's happening. Guards and soldiers are spilling into the crowd, yanking reds stars from their sleeves. They're shouting with the crowd, “Down with Gero. Down with Rakosi. Out with the Russians!” One of them comes up behind her and lifts her up into the air, onto his shoulder, in sheer jubilation. With him, she punches the sky: “Now or never!”

Is that Gyula? Over there by the statue of the lion? Yes. And he sees her, waves two ecstatic hands. “Now!” she shouts just as the soldier lets her down.

Now!
Full force and thick with love, the crowd pushes back, back over the Duna. To the parliament. The sun has sunk below the horizon by the time they get there, and Agi stands in Kossuth Ter next to an old woman, as old as her mother, whose hand grips hers. There's no such thing as a stranger tonight. They stand together as Magyars. They wait for something to happen. Kids have clambered onto the roofs of streetcars that have halted, electric current collectors lowered to the street. People chant their different demands. “Put out the star on the parliament. It wastes our electric current.” “Russians, go home.” Until all the shouting gathers into one: “We want Imre Nagy. We want Imre Nagy.” And tonight, this seems possible. He was prime minister once, for a few months, until he was ousted by the hard Communist Rakosi and the terrors began again. But maybe it's possible. Maybe the sheer force of their voices will bring him back to power. Yes, and maybe her father will be returned to her unharmed, and maybe the borders will be opened, and she can just walk across it. Maybe there will be meat in the stores, and loud, raucous laughter in the streets, and she and Gyula will get married and be happy here, in Budapest. Right now, as thousands of Hungarians stand together in a square, shouting loudly for the return of Imre Nagy, all this is possible. But wherever this singularly honourable comrade is hiding, he doesn't appear. The chanting goes on and on, the crowd swells larger and larger, and still Imre Nagy doesn't step out onto the parliament balcony to hear what the people have to say.

Suddenly, they're swallowed in darkness. Someone has turned off all the lights—inside the parliament and all the street­lights surrounding Kossuth Ter. They stand blind. Agi feels the woman's hand tighten around hers and bends her head to the woman's ear. “We're fine. As long as we're all together here, we're fine.” But she hardly believes her own words in a night so pressing, so purposeful.

A match flares, lights a single scrap of paper. Another match. Another scrap. To another scrap, another match. And another. And another. Scraps flare, pass, and vanish. Agi finds the screwed-up flyer in her pocket. She touches it to the flame offered by the hand in front of her. She lets it burn. She touches it to another's and so it goes. Tiny lights flicker and fall as wisps of paper burn. When she sees Gyula, she'll apologize. She'll stand by him, shoulder to shoulder, and try to see things his way.

At the parliament, suddenly two lamps. The crowd buzzes. “It's Nagy. Shh. It's Nagy.”

“Comrades.” The loudspeaker launches the word over their heads.

“Boo,” the crowd responds.

And again: “Comrades—”

“No!”

“My esteemed Hungarian fellow citizens.”

The cheers drowned out his next sentence. Agi hears hardly a word of what follows, but the crowd grows restless. People turn one to the other. “What's he saying?” Something about friendship. Soviet troops will stay. A new friendship? With the Soviets?

An entire city has left its post and wandered out into the streets to proclaim itself free, and this is Nagy's response? He was their only hope and he's offering friendship with Russia? No. No, this is not enough.

The crowd turns. Angry and right, it thrusts deeper into the clotted streets. It breaks apart. It finds itself. To Radio Budapest. It crashes against the wall, it storms: “In the name of the Student Revolutionary Council, let us in! We want our manifesto read on air! For all of Hungary to hear. For the world to hear.”