And after three intense, frenzied days of fighting, Hungary was rid of the communists. Elated, the people of the often-invaded land — for the first time in hundreds of years — went to sleep that night a free country.
Jonas woke the following morning in bed next to his girlfriend, Eva. She too was a budding poet, her father a cobbler, much as his had been a baker; a year younger than him, a slender fair-haired blue-eyed beauty, Eva seemed nearly waif-like in comparison to the norm of Slavic zaftig farm girls. And for all his artistic and scholarly leanings, Jonas had something of the warrior in his blood — the Hun in his ancestry could be seen in an angular face Eva insisted had a pleasing “exotic” quality.
“The Magyar in you,” she had reminded him that wonderful night, “it shows.”
“Don’t speak foolishness,” he laughed.
“They were fierce tribesman, you know. A thousand years ago they made a kingdom, here. Maybe you will be a poet king. Maybe you will help forge freedom. So few poets can make history…”
Such talk came only after many cups of their nation’s sweet, delicious wine. Of course students shouldn’t have been drinking in the dormitory, a violation of university policy…
As was spending the night together, which was an infraction that could have had both students expelled; but this was the new Hungary, and many such rules fell by the wayside that glorious night, including their previous precautionary use of birth control. With the promise of freedom, it suddenly seemed all right now to risk bringing another life into this better world.
As morning sunlight streamed in through the slatted windows of the tiny dorm room, Jonas was enjoying the warmth of Eva’s nude body, running his hands along her slender curves, mentally composing a poem to her charms as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Her long blonde hair smelled of smoke from last night’s bonfire; but the acrid scent was perfume to him, a pleasing reminder of how the students had made a pile of communist books and propaganda pamphlets they’d ransacked from the Party’s bookshop, and hauled into the street, and set aflame.
Suddenly, the door to the dorm room burst open.
“Jonas!”
Pluck, a younger classman — his pale, smiling face dominated by wild eyes so brown they were almost black — was standing in the doorway. The boy was wearing a Soviet Secret Police hat with the emblem torn off, his brown hair sticking out from underneath it like straw.
“Our resolutions are written!” Pluck blurted. “We’re taking them to Parliament…” Then he noticed Eva, who was hastily pulling a sheet up over her head, due to his unexpected entrance, and the boy shyly added, “Oh… hi, Eva.”
Eva giggled, muffled from beneath the sheet. She drew the bedding back, just enough to reveal her face. “Good morning, Pluck,” she said with a smile.
The happiness in the room — unaided by wine, merely a heady mixture of elation and youth — was as clear and obvious as the sunshine lancing through the shutters.
Jonas leaned on an elbow. “When are we marching?”
“Right now, you silly goose! Hurry up!”
And Pluck shut the door.
“Such language,” Jonas said, and burrowed under the blankets, cupping one of Eva’s firm, round breasts. “Maybe they could do without us today…”
Her blue eyes held his, her full lips made a kiss that was also a smirk. “Do without the poet king? Stuff and nonsense.”
“I’m no king, my sweet. Just another student.”
“And think of what we students have done… Don’t you even want to know what the student delegation has come up with?” And rather formally, she removed his hand from her small, perfect breast, then gave him a playful smile. “There will be plenty of time for… poetry… later.”
On Rákóczi Avenue in front of the dormitory building, Jonas bent over and picked up a leaflet dropped by one of the students. Eva, buttoning her dark wool coat against the cold morning wind, leaned against him, peering at the paper.
“Multi-party democracy…” Jonas was reading. “Freedom of worship, press, and opinions… public ownership of industry… return of the land to the peasants…”
“This too is poetry,” Eva said. “What about neutrality?”
Jonas scanned the paper. “…Hungary non-aligned with any other country.”
Eva’s eyes widened.
They both knew this was a bold step. By demanding neutrality, the Hungarians would be asking even more from Moscow than the Polish had, daring to demand that the door to the West be pushed open wide.
Jonas slipped an arm around her and Eva smiled at him, and he at her. He gave her what began as a peck of a kiss and turned into a long, passionate embrace.
Their lips parted, but their eyes did not. “Let’s catch up with the others,” Eva whispered, touching his mouth with a fingertip as he tried to kiss her again.
Jubilantly, holding hands, they hurried along the wide street where shopkeepers were already busy cleaning up debris and repairing broken windows. His father in Szeged would be doing the same, as would hers in Miskolc. Here and there lay remnants from the recent battle: a burnt-out Russian tank, sprawled like a dead beetle, an overturned Army truck, its broken headlight eyes looking stunned; in the middle of an intersection stood a life-size statue of Stalin, its arms outstretched as if directing traffic, but its head knocked off, at its feet.
At this, they looked at each other and laughed.
Just past Republic Square, they caught sight of the student delegation — nearly one hundred in all — approaching the steps of the Parliament Building, where a de facto government had hurriedly been put into place.
He and Eva were walking arm-in-arm, with a bounce in their step, when they first heard the brittle mechanical sound, shattering the peaceful morning, and it took several seconds before Jonas recognized it as machine gun fire.
The crowd of students — at first confused, then yelling and even screaming — tried to scatter, but were cut down by Russian soldiers materializing from all around them like uniformed ghosts. The hand-held machine guns made a terrible drumming, and the students marched to it, the air misted red with blood, the cobblestones streaming with it, crimson battle ribbons of dying surrender.
Within seconds, they were all dead — all of them — many still clutching the white resolution papers, now speckled and spattered with red.
Half a block away, Jonas and Eva froze in their tracks — they did not seek cover… they were not in the path of the invaders; like Stalin’s headless statue, they stood there, stunned and horrified, witnessing the massacre like some abstract theater piece, a grotesque ballet of blood.
But this was nothing abstract — not when their friends were dying. Eva gripped his arm and turned away when a boy fleeing toward them turned out to be Pluck, his eyes wide not with enthusiasm but terror; then his body was riddled with bullets, flung to street like so much refuse.
The machine guns stopped.
The street was scattered with puppets whose strings had been snipped; the acrid stench of gun smoke floated on the wind, a ghastly echo of last night’s bonfire.
Some of the soldiers prowled the perimeter, while others — snouts of their machine guns curling smoke — began climbing, two-at-a-time, the steps of the Parliament building — to assassinate the renegade government inside. Jonas and Eva were taking this in when, over the top of the building, a Soviet MiG fighter came streaking down.
Jonas grabbed Eva’s hand, spun her around, and pulled her roughly back down the street.
“Truck!” he said, meaning the overturned truck could provide a barrier from bullets.