‘Let’s go,’ murmurs Amara, afraid of the mob. Still holding her wrist, Hans pulls her towards Jòzsef körút. But wherever they go they still find snaking crowds of seemingly aimless people on the move; pushing, shouting, raising their hands and waving flags. By now nearly all the flags have a hole in the middle. Hungarian flags minus the red star.
Now the crowd pushes them towards Erzsébet körút and from there along Andrássy ut as far as György dózsa, towards Felvonulasi Square. Exhausted, they arrive with the great snake right under the flight of steps leading to the gigantic statue of Stalin. But by the time they reach the square the statue has already been torn down. All that remains to cast defiance at the sky are its two empty dark bronze boots. Into one of them someone has thrust the pole of a Hungarian flag with a hole in it.
‘The dictator’s gone. But he’s left his boots behind. A bad sign. It shows he means to come back.’
‘Where have they taken the statue?’
‘To the centre, to Blaha Lujza Square,’ answers a voice from the crowd.
‘Shall we go there?’ says a woman with a child in her arms.
‘I don’t give a damn about Stalin. He’s dead and buried,’ says a man with a cigarette glued to his lips, as he sucks in smoke and blows it out again without using his fingers.
‘Where then?’
‘Why not Party headquarters? I’d like to see what they’re up to there!’
37
‘But where are they running?’
‘No idea.’
Some people are moving rapidly in one direction, while others are hurrying in the opposite direction. Here and there a crowd forms. A bonfire has been lit in front of Communist Party headquarters, where the door has been broken down and burned. On the fire have been thrown cardboard portraits of the hated ‘comrade’ Rákosi. In Köztársaság Square a young man with a worried expression leans out from a first-floor balcony to throw into the street some rolled-up red flags. Two girls with short hair collect them and throw them with theatrical gestures onto a pyre that has just been lit. The red flags burn quickly. A lad with trousers held up by a string round his waist and no coat tries to keep the fire burning by stirring up the dying flames with a long pole of uncertain origin. A man in a blue hat, legs wide apart, is taking a stream of photographs with a large camera. Two soldiers in ankle-length greatcoats and high belts pose for their picture. A child is crying desperately. To comfort him his mother hoists him up on her bicycle which she is holding by the handlebars. The child, no longer obstructed by long coats, looks around in astonishment. His mother strokes his head with a smoke-stained hand.
Suddenly shots are heard. Amara starts. Hans pulls her towards the wall. The shots continue but luckily move further off. People are running. ‘What’s happening?’ shouts a woman hurrying behind a group of youngsters. No one answers. But two girls appear, pushing through the crowd in the opposite direction, their faces distraught and one of them weeping desperately. ‘The ÁVH are firing at unarmed people.’ ‘Where?’ ‘At the occupied radio station.’ ‘Shooting at demonstrators in the street.’ ‘My brother,’ cries the weeping girl, ‘they’ve hit my brother.’ Her friend pulls her in the direction of the nearby hospital. The crowd seems less eager to head for the radio. Some stop in small groups to argue vigorously. Others decide despite everything to press on. A man advances down the middle of the road brandishing a pole with a card nailed at the top. Hans translates: ‘Nagy will address the Hungarian people, nine p.m., in front of parliament.’
‘But it’s half-past nine already,’ says Amara looking at her watch. Is it possible they’ve already been so long on the move!
‘Let’s run. Maybe he’s still speaking.’
Others, like them, hurry after the man with the placard in the direction of Kossuth tér. It’s difficult to understand what’s happening in the city. A turmoil of actions succeeding one another in rapid improvisation from Buda to Pest. Someone reports furious shooting from the area of the Kilian barracks. Someone else says Russian tanks have been called in, and someone else that Mikoyan and Suslov have passed in a diplomatic car with darkened windows, while yet another person swears that Khrushchev himself has been seen peeping out of an enormous silver limousine. But no one believes this. There is laughter. Even so, things are getting serious.
‘Let’s hurry. I can hear the loudspeaker! He’s definitely still there.’
But when they come within sight of parliament, Nagy has gone. Thousands of people are slowly dispersing down the side streets.
‘Well then?’
‘Shall we go home?’
Amara is getting very hungry. But where to find anything to eat? The bars are closed. The shops bolted shut. Every Hungarian is out in the street this day of 23 October 1956. Ignoring the cold, the fierce wind that fans the fires and the continual threat of rain. Flags with a hole cut in the middle are everywhere, like the one at the university.
Suddenly Amara flinches with shock. A few metres in front of her is a man in dark clothes, boots and a black jacket, tied by the waist to a lamp post with his head hanging down.
‘An ÁVH man,’ whispers Hans in her ear. Amara looks with disgust at the purplish blood leaking from the corpse’s nostrils. The light of the street lamps flickering in the wind makes shadows dance on his face so that he seems to be moving and breathing.
‘He’s still alive. We must untie him!’
‘Dead as a doornail. Anyway, someone he’d tortured must have recognised him and killed him. They spied for the Russians and were brutally cruel to poor innocent people. He’s not worth your pity.’
‘But it does upset me,’ insists Amara, unable to tear her eyes away from the white face of the young man with his smart moustache, and highly polished boots, the showy watch on his wrist and the dark blood draining from his dead nostrils. She wishes she could staunch his wounds. But Hans takes her elbow and pulls her far away from Party headquarters, along Luther Street.
Now the crowd opens and divides. Before them, in the greyness of a square strewn with papers and stones and dimly lit by weak street lamps, a Soviet tank appears. Hans guides Amara by the arm towards a side street. But astonishingly the tank has lost its usual air of menace, and about thirty young men are standing on it, prancing about and shouting and holding up a Hungarian flag.
‘Look, they’ve hijacked the tank! They’ve hijacked it. How can it go forward with all those people on top of it.’ Hans laughs happily. Even he is surprised. A Soviet tank reduced to a people-carrier for partygoers celebrating a rather easily achieved freedom.
‘Don’t you think it’s time to go home?’