Istvan, the committee deliberates without recess. Day and night lights burn and angry voices spar. Delegates come in armed. Rifles hang in the cloakroom instead of coats. One feels that the earth is trembling under Hungary. Momentous hours. Under the windows a parade passes. Young people cry, “Don’t believe Nagy. He only babbles.” “Power to the committee of the Revolution!” I walk along the street. I go into the crowd. It is a raging river. I entrust myself to its current. I want what is good for this nation. I want what is good for Hungary.
Warmest regards,
Your Bela
P.S. Two more days have passed. It is calm, and that is gratifying. I do not trust the mail; it is still not working properly. I am giving this letter to the correspondent from Vienna, who leaves today, for nothing unusual is happening here. Thank God; I dream only of such bulletins.
November 3rd, 1956. Budapest.
P.S. One word more: believe me, we will emerge whole from this chaos. It is impossible that in our camp two socialist countries, two countries bound to each other by a defense pact, would turn their gun barrels on each other.
Your red Bela
Dazed, he looked blankly at the map of India, at the outline of a triangular land like a dried cheese. Outside the window the sky glowed and a car horn blared. The Austin was open. No doubt Mihaly was sitting behind the wheel.
The next day at dawn, the dreadful memory confronted him again. How could you trust them, Bela? The nation is not the mob that stamps on portraits and roars in the squares, brandishing weapons torn away from soldiers. Yes — it is easy to say that now. And with every day, as the date memory clung to grew more remote, it would be easier to recognize the signs of hate, madness, provocation, and obvious counterrevolution. But they did not want to see, as the comrades who were carried away earlier by airplane from their positions of power did not want to hear the voices of protest, the complaints and calls for justice. Bela is dead. It cannot even be said that he died for the cause. UPI only reported that he had been wounded as he tried to cross the Austrian border. And so you let yourself be swept away by the mob, the outflowing human river, by mindless forces. The suffocation was too much for you. You abandoned Hungary.
Was the letter that dangled from his fingers a call to arms, a testament? Or, now that it had reached him, was it only a warning? Was it a sign that he should not go back? If there were no homeland, to what would he be returning? Or was it wrong to think that way, even at the worst of times?
If the Western newspapers were putting out the news of Bela’s death, they must have buried him in Austria — not even on Hungarian ground. Anyway, was that important? Magical thinking: the ground is the same everywhere. No. No. The ground on which we took our first tottering steps…In that grass I hid my face, I wiped away the tears of my first humiliations. I beat it angrily with my powerless fists. I tugged at it so it would not slip away from me, for it whirled so after the mad chase that my ears rang. The ground I named in the most beautiful of languages, for it was my own: Hungarian. It is waiting for me, I know — not a large place by my standards.
Bela is dead and I am foundering, crumbling. Now there is no one who remembers the enjoyments of childhood: bathing the horses, camping on the island in the Danube that was overgrown with willow when the river rose without warning and nearly drowned us as we slept in the cabin. Bela was the only one I told that I loved Ilona when we were still schoolboys, before we had taken the final examinations. I wanted to beat him to death when he grabbed her photograph from me and laughed as he hopped from bench to bench and held it over his head. Then when I caught him, he threw it to the other boys, and they gave it back with a mustache and beard drawn on her face. I wished he would die. And now he has.
Indeed, I loved him because he knew me. He shared my anxiety; so many times we talked the night away, chatting until dawn. We had bitter mottos for those nights: Fun shall make us free. Revelry revives the nation. A devoted friend. A splendid colleague, full of the joy of life. Always ready for adventures, full of madcap inspirations. Impossible that the air has closed over him like water, without a trace.
Words about a lost friend from childhood…about my own death in the passing of my loved ones. Istvan was ashamed. Was he ready to exchange every motion of the heart for words, calculating unconsciously that he would print them the next day and throw them to the world as one throws seed to birds?
Fervently he set about conjuring up faraway images. The meadows by the Danube loomed before him — the doleful cry of the startled lapwings. Willows: big cats with the downy golden coats of spring. Branches swayed in the wind, jostling tiger-striped bumblebees who protested in bass rumblings. The water was a strident blue; it whirled away into little streams and slowly filled each of the horses’ hoofprints with quicksilver. Suddenly he heard a heavy step in the corridor and noticed that the handle of his door was trembling.
“Come in!” he called, sitting erect and alert.
“I do not want to disturb you. That is why I listened for the sound of the typewriter,” mumbled the caretaker.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing. I would only like to ask if you received your letter, counselor.”
Istvan grasped the thin sheets, which were folded accordion-style, and showed the man the envelope.
“Thank you. I have it.”
“No, not that one. Among the old newspapers I cleared from here I found a letter you had written by hand. Tom brought it here, but the secretary met me and said that he himself would give it to you, and sent me to the warehouse.”
“Why do you think he couldn’t give it to me?” The counselor tilted his head.
“I saw him read it, and then he took it off somewhere. Where, I don’t know. But I could see that you had written it and laid a newspaper on it, and then something happened and you forgot about it. But a letter like that had better not get into the file.”
“Did you read it?”
The caretaker squirmed uncomfortably and shifted from one foot to the other.
“My English is weak. It was not in the envelope. I read — counselor, sir — I read the letter, so nicely written…” He put a hand on his chest. “Comrade Ferenc is in. Perhaps just now you could—”
Istvan moved toward the door.
“Wait here.”
He went to the secretary’s office. Ferenc brightened at the sight of him.
“Give me the letter,” he snarled.
“In good time. Sit down. What is your hurry? I have been wanting to have a personal conversation with you.”
He groped in a drawer and drew out an unsealed envelope. Istvan saw the address: Miss Margaret Ward. Agra. He did not dare glance inside and see which of his letters it was and what declarations of feeling it contained. Heat flowed along his spine. He could have choked with rage at himself. All those evasions and concealments, only for this — that all should be lost for such a stupid reason, everything given away. He tucked the envelope into the pocket of his jacket. He would have given anything to be able to see its contents.
“Take a seat,” Ferenc said invitingly. “Whither away so fast? Surely not to the post office; that is dated two months ago. It can wait. When are you taking your furlough?”