The frontier guards search the carriages. They stop suspiciously in front of the foreigners. Hans particularly alarms them: his origins are too heterogeneous, his journeys up and down Eastern Europe excite mistrust. Amara’s papers are in order but what is an Italian woman doing on a ramshackle train from Vienna to Kraków via Budapest? Luckily Horvath is there, with his ascetic air and ability to speak both excellent Hungarian and German. He is even able to speak polished Russian to the Soviet supervisors who are always present at the frontiers. With Olympian calm and a permanent smile, Horvath explains slowly and simply who they are and where they are going. To look for books for a new library in Vienna. Hungarian books for Hungarian readers living in Austria. The guards are dumbfounded. Who is this old man with such an authoritative air who travels for days to go and look for books? There’s certainly something about him to instil respect. And they withdraw without comment.
The three are taken to the station offices and searched by the gloved hands of inscrutable guards. Their passports are taken away. Their bags are opened, rummaged in and examined with comic pedantry. A small bottle of water scented with Parma violets that Amara has in her bag is uncorked and sniffed by first one soldier then another, then by yet a third. The little bottle is passed from hand to hand almost as if it might contain liquid explosive. But in the end Amara realises that these young guards, two of whom are women, are motivated less by suspicion than by a morbid curiosity about the products of the West; they finger the underclothes and open the blouses and shake out the skirts as if to say: just look at the bourgeois pretensions of the West. But when all’s said and done, what’s it all about? Nothing to speak of.
The three friends are hungry. But there is nothing to eat. They have spent a whole day in the train, and consumed the provisions they prudently brought with them. They never imagined there would be so many stops, so much waiting, and so many obstacles before they reached Budapest.
In the evening the train starts again. A fragment of moon is hanging like an icicle over a potato-shaped mountain. Dogs are barking far away. Horvath is cold. He pulls a chequered blanket from his cardboard suitcase and drapes it round his shoulders.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘Cold.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘Me too.’
‘Shall I see if I can find something?’
‘You won’t find anything. The train’s full of starving people.’
At Győr the carriages fill with Hungarian soldiers from Czechoslovakia who laugh, eat and fool around. Apart from one who is weeping in a corner because he has lost his best friend. But not in war, as Horvath will report later with his mania for getting into conversation with everybody. A soldier called Bilo has died of typhus after drinking contaminated water. The happy brigade is on its way from East Germany to Szeged. They have been at work on frontier defences. ‘War? Rubbish,’ says one boy, stuffing an enormous omelette roll into his mouth. ‘There are no more wars in the world, and there never will be any more. All wars are over. And that’s a fact.’ The youngsters cheer. One pulls from his knapsack a flat bottle in a lovingly crafted red wool cover and lifts it to his mouth. Someone shouts and reaches out a hand. The boy passes the bottle. Pálinka, the commonest form of plum brandy. Others open their own knapsacks and take out bottles of every shape. All neatly covered in coloured covers crocheted by solicitous mothers and wives. ‘To warm you when you feel cold,’ they will have said as they dressed the little glass bottle or aluminium or pewter flask.
But in no time at all the carriage is an encampment of shouting and singing drunks. One vomits out of the window. Another gets a friend to start delousing him.
‘Couldn’t we move to another carriage?’ suggests Amara tentatively.
‘But where? Can’t you see the whole train’s full? There are people stretched out in the corridors.’
The train stops several times in open countryside. Peasant women in flowered cotton headscarves approach the carriages, at first shyly then more and more shamelessly, to sell hard-boiled eggs, dried figs and little wild apples. And the young soldiers stretch out their arms to bargain and shout, finally buying an egg for eight or a basket of plums for twenty. The women haggle too from below, but more softly. They are afraid of rebukes or fines from the railway police.
Now the soldiers doze, lulled by the slow regular rhythm of the wheels. One snores with his head propped on a companion’s shoulder. They have thrown their rifles onto the netting racks that hang above their wooden benches. It isn’t easy to sleep. The seats are hard and hunger is gnawing at them. Amara watches the countryside fill with shadows beyond the dirty window. A delicate bluish mist descends on the landscape, hiding trees and fields and even a little river running beside the track punctuated by black and white stones. The moon is closer now and has become more human, hinting at an unfocused smile. Through the dirty window Amara can make out the small figure of woman walking fast. Strange: either the train has slowed down, or the woman is running or rather flying. She tries to see the woman’s face but it is hidden by a cascade of nut-brown hair leaping and dancing in time with her steps. There is something familiar about the woman. Her strong, rapid step, her rebellious head, her long muscular arms are those of … there can be no doubt about it, her mother Stefania! How can it have taken Amara so long to realise it? The beautiful young Stefania, long dead but now more alive and active than ever. Where are you going? asks Amara with her mouth closed. Stefania doesn’t turn to look at her but seems delighted simply to be running beside the train. She is completely engrossed in her flight as if in some childhood contest. Amara timidly reaches out a hand to knock on the glass window with her knuckles. Finally Stefania lifts her head. She has the most beautiful big eyes but they do not see Amara. She can’t recognise me because the glass is so dirty, Amara tells herself. She goes on knocking discreetly on the window. Stefania smiles, but more to herself than to Amara. Where are you going, Mamma? Stop a moment, sit down with me. But in that instant her mother vanishes, leaving only her smile. The smile of the moon hanging there in the dark. You always cheat me, Mamma, you always have cheated me, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. You slip off without speaking to me, not a single word, stop, say something to me! She tries to remember how it was when her mother bent over her when she was a child and hummed the tune of the wordless chorus from Madam Butterfly. Her mother was so beautiful that it hurt Amara’s eyes to look at her. And her voice rose from her throat like a tender breath of air. Why did you go away so soon? Then she sees her, covered with soil and blood, being raped by that friend of the lover who wanted to punish her. Papà has told me about it but don’t be ashamed, it wasn’t your fault. She sees Stefania move her hand to her bleeding legs and spit with rage. She sees her run towards a stream and crouch to wash the blood off her thighs. This is not what I wanted, says a well-dressed young man watching from behind a tree. I didn’t want it to end like this. I only wanted a light punishment, not a massacre. But Stefania turns her back and walks off, determined never to see him again. Will you go and report him? Do that, Mamma Stefania, please do that! But at that moment a whistle pierces her ear and she feels a hand on her shoulder.