How is it possible to reach Szabolcs Street but avoid Hősök Square?
One has to go left down Bajza Road off Andrássy Avenue, because the next crossroads is Mihály Munkácsy Street, so it is not advisable to go down there as there may be armed patrols around the vacated Red Cross home. So I go left down Bajza Road, turn right up Lendvay Street and then, after crossing Dózsa Avenue, along past the terrarium of the Zoological Gardens.
The photograph on my ARP papers shows me standing by the terrarium of the zoo. Over the white short trousers is a somewhat darker linen jacket and open-collared white shirt. My hair is parted on the left. The photograph was almost certainly taken in the summer; one can tell from my squint that I was facing into the sun. There is no yellow star on my jacket, so one can suppose that the photograph must have been taken the year before it was stuck into the identification papers. Under the photograph is the personal description:
Face: long
Nose: regular
Hair: brown
Eyes: hazel/green
Height 172 cm
Distinguishing marks: crossed off
The pavement dips into the subway under György Dózsa Avenue then rises again on the other side.
I turn into Szabolcs Street. The hospital is made up of three huge blocks. It has gone six o’clock, and visiting hours finish at seven. I raise two fingers to my cap in a salute to the doorman; I have no wish to be drawn into giving an explanation as to why I have come or where I’m going — it’s visiting hours. In the lobby there are staircases going in all directions, passages, openings, tables and, on the left, directions to Basement 1.
There are five steps down. The basement is the same one as fifty-eight years ago, except now it contains no mattresses, palliasses or stretchers. The walls are the same and the network of pipes under the low ceiling. There is a single wheelchair to the right, like a symbolic element in an art installation.
I walk the length of the corridor, counting the steps: 120. I walk back.
I saw the two of you immediately as you came down the stairs, says Mother.
VIII
We do not stop at the main gate to the hospital. I’ll take a look and see if there is a side door, I tell Vera, and set off towards the second building. I give three knocks on the door but get no response, so I went back to the main building where the door is opened when I knock.
Three men are standing in the hallway. One has a white smock on; the other two are wearing ICRC armbands. They pull me in. Quick, says the man in the white smock, they’re firing. Didn’t you hear? There’s shooting going on all over, I say, adding that our parents are here in the hospital.
A night nurse is called who leads us upstairs. I tell her my parents’ names, but she does not know all the patients by name, so she accompanies me as I look through all the wards.
Vera stands in the corridor, slumped against the wall and shivering. I make a sign that she should say there and set off.
Two years before, in the Amerikai Road Hospice, I saw my grandfather a few hours before he died. Mother would only allow me to come as far as the door to the ward, and it was from there I glimpsed him. Mother embraced me and covered my eyes before leading me out to the corridor.
I open the door to the first ward. Then the door to the second.
In twos and threes, patients are lying on the beds and on mattresses laid on the floor between beds. Where there are three those are dead, and in places there is one dying patient next to two dead ones. In places there are even small children sitting between the beds. Night nurses are doing their rounds. Men with stretchers arrive to take out the corpses.
I cannot find my parents, even after having looked in the fourth ward.
A fat man arrives. Behind him are, no doubt, doctors.
He asks me who I am and how I managed to get into the building. Have I got a permit or some kind of safe-conduct paperwork?
I show him my ARP messenger’s papers.
You came here with that?
That’s right.
He says something to one of the men in white smocks to take a note of my name. I also dictate Vera’s name. The man says that the people who were brought in from Hegyeshalom may be in the basement corridor.
We go back to the entrance. One of those with a Red Cross armband takes us across to the basement. Vera stumbles on the steps in the dark.
We move about deep down with only a flickering candle.
I have to bend forward in order not to bump my head against the pipes that run under the ceiling.
I keep bumping into into beds and mattresses on the floor.
There is not room for us to go side by side, so Vera follows behind me, and I reach back to hold her hand.
I only spot Mother when she is standing right in front of me. She hugs me tightly to her. She is terribly thin, but I never felt her hug me more fiercely. The skin of her face is burning. She does not smell sweet or of cigarette smoke like sometimes, and she does not smell sweaty; it’s more as if she were bringing it from very far away, from a very great depth, as if she herself were the mysterious smell. She embraces me at such great length that I am able to identify the odour wafting from her body; it is like the smell I sensed a few minutes ago from the corpses in the wards.
Vera stands forlornly behind me.
Mother takes me by the hand and pulls me after her, while I, in turn, pull Vera.
By now I can see quite well in the dark.
Beds on both sides with mattresses between them. The many bodies seem to become one enormous body trailing off into the dark infinitude of the corridor.
I lean over Father. His smell is familiar; it’s rather as if the skin of his face had preserved something of the sharply fresh aroma of his shaving soap, even though my lips touch a bristly stubble. He finds it difficult to raise his arms from under the blanket, which is pulled up to his chin; his embrace is feeble. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch Mother help him to struggle up. He is in his winter coat and Mother in a warm housecoat. Jolán Bors brought it, she says. Father grins. I can’t see much of his face, but I can see the grin and the grey of his stubble. It’s not at me but Mother that he is smiling. A foot fishes for his shoes; suddenly he gets up with ease. He takes a few steps and sees Vera, takes her by the hand, leads her to his bed, sits her on it and wraps his blanket round her. A white-smocked man comes, shining a flashlight. He hands out doses of medicine. Already all the better for seeing your son, aren’t you, Uncle Béla, he says to Father. For an instant the torch flashes light on his features. He’s an elderly man; he must be at least ten years older than Father.
Vera enquires what became of her mother; she knows she isn’t here, in the hospital, but where might she be? We are given some bread from Mother’s haversack on to which she spreads margarine. That, too, was brought by Jolán Bors. Police raid, it is announced by the guards at the entrance. I get into bed next to Father, Vera next to Mother. Beams of light sweep over the basement. Men in black uniforms are holding a flashlight in one hand and a submachine gun pointed at us in the other. Making his way ahead of them is the same podgy white-coated man that I saw in the corridor on the first floor. Father pulls me down further under the blanket. That’s Dr Temesváry, the head physician, he whispers. They stop at each bed. At each the head physician takes the pulse, and in each case he reports that the patient is not in a fit condition to walk. Marasmus. Moribund. Pneumonia. Plenty of Latin terms. Thrombophlebitis, he says as he leans over Father. I can see from his look that he has recognized me. Severe infective hepatitis; he indicates me. I feel hot. I am probably running a fever. Maybe I had picked it up on the road or even back at Nagyfuvaros Street.