Amara fills the small pan with tap water that tastes of chlorine and contains a little rust. She lights the gas which luckily has not been cut off, and puts the water on to heat.
Horvath is still asleep. When he comes into the kitchen in his pyjamas, a blanket round his shoulders, bony white ankles sticking out and his skin a maze of blue veins, the friends receive him with applause. His floating white hair is like a halo and his blue eyes are shining.
Amara pours the coffee into the glasses which she has rinsed with the help of a fragment of soap discovered under the sink. She slices the bread and puts it on the only clean plate in the house.
Horvath claims he isn’t hungry but swallows his slice of bread in huge mouthfuls and scalds his tongue on his boiling-hot coffee. Ferenc, at the smell of the coffee, also appears in his pyjamas. With his violin stuck under his ear he plays them a Paganini Scherzo. Tadeusz watches him, smiling tenderly.
Hans, glass of coffee in hand, goes to switch on the radio.
‘They told me that in one single night any number of new free broadcasters have come onto the air. Who knows if we’ll be able to hear them on this old set!’
He places his powerful hands on the ugly great Orion with its light-coloured wooden sides and oblong glass window lit by mysterious lights. A brown cloth grille stretches between four chipped knobs. The loudspeaker blows, whistles and puffs like an old steam engine. But finally a radiant if agitated voice emerges to tell them: ‘This is Radio Borsod. We announce the dissolution of the local ÁVH and that Soviet troops stationed in the area have not intervened. Factory Councils have been meeting all night to draw up a list of proposals to present to the new Nagy government, including recognition of political parties, free elections and the expulsion of all Soviet troops from the Republic.’
The five gather once more, cold but with their glasses steaming in their hands, round the big Orion. Hans translates quickly and concisely. A happy female voice announces, ‘Gerö and his Stalinist friends have left the country! They are joining Rákosi in exile in the USSR. Let’s hope they don’t ever dare to come back!’ A triumphal march by Verdi follows.
‘All this music!’ shouts Tadeusz. ‘We want to hear how things are going!’
‘Why are you twiddling that knob?’
‘I want to hear better!’
‘You’ll lose the station it took me so much trouble to find!’
‘We’ll find another!’
Tadeusz continues turning the knob. Eventually he finds a third free station. Crowding close, the friends make out a young female voice above the crackling and hissing: ‘Radio Győr-Sopron. The world is watching us, comrades. Everyone’s eyes are on us. Radio France has announced that Hungarian workers are successfully attacking the forces of the communist police. Radio Monaco has broadcast live the voice of comrade Zoltán Frei who was present at the shoot-out in front of parliament in Budapest. He has given evidence that the police fired at a crowd armed with nothing but stones. A rumour is circulating that we are fascists. But we declare with pride that we are socialists. If attacked we shall defend our country and our liberties with weapons … The latest news: in Italy 101 communist intellectuals have signed an appeal for solidarity with the Hungarian revolution. And students in Rome, Milan and Naples are demonstrating in our support. Thank you, Italy!’
Now the five seem more cheerful. They have drunk hot coffee and eaten bread and dried figs, and now they smoke a cigarette with a satisfied air, even if their eyes never leave the radio for a moment. Tadeusz continues manipulating the knob, brilliantly capturing every word that leaps out from unofficial sources. But every now and then they are chilled by the cold and presumptuous voice of the official Radio, recaptured since yesterday, angrily commanding citizens not to leave their homes. ‘From every part of the land telegrams are reaching the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ Party, expressing the indignation of the nations’ workers at the criminal actions of the counter-revolutionaries, and assuring the Party and Government of their determination to defend the socialist order from attack by any enemy.’
‘Twiddle the knob, Tadeusz, no more of that stuff!’
Tadeusz shrugs his shoulders, mortified. ‘We need to hear what the official Radio is saying too!’
But here are strident, excited voices, clearly recorded in the street: ‘Me and my sister Olga left home to go to work. After a few metres, at the corner of the ring road and Rudas László utca, near where the hairdresser’s used to be, we saw a big hole in the middle of the street. We had to go back.’ Suddenly a male voice interrupts: ‘We were lined up in front of the Astoria Hotel, workers and others, and we shouted “Soviets out of Hungary!” and “An end to martial law!” The locally-stationed Soviet tanks didn’t fire on us. We explained to the Russian soldiers that we’re not counter-revolutionaries, we’re independent socialists who want a better socialism … Some of them embraced us. I think they’d had orders not to fire on us, and they left their weapons hanging from their shoulders. We thrust the Hungarian flag into the mouths of the cannons. They invited us on board and took us where we wanted to go. I tell you, my friends, the Russian soldiers are on our side.’
‘It really seems impossible,’ broods Hans, chewing his nails.
‘Well, are we going to make it then?’ says Tadeusz.
Horvath has taken the blanket off his shoulders. Underneath he is fully clothed. He is holding a book in his hand and reading aloud from Pascaclass="underline" ‘Imagine a great number of men in chains, all condemned to death, with some every day having their throats cut in full view of the others, so that the survivors see their own future in the fate of those like them and, looking at each other in sorrow and without hope, await their turn. That is the human condition.’
‘What on earth are you talking about, Horvath!’
‘Pascal said that, not me!’
‘Who cares a fig about your Pascal, keep him to yourself!’ says Tadeusz angrily, twiddling the knob.
‘Is this the time for that sort of stuff?’ says Hans reproachfully.
But Horvath is no way put out. Entirely serious, he opens at random another page of the Pensées: ‘To make sure passion cannot harm us, let us live as if we only had eight days of life left.’
‘Please stop!’
‘If we must make a present of eight days of our lives, we might just as well make a present of a hundred years.’
‘Well said! But that’ll do now. Let’s listen to the voices from the city.’
‘Or from the whole nation.’
Horvath lifts his eyes from the book and studies the others with compassion. He fearlessly opens another page and reads on, ignoring their protests: ‘When I consider the brevity of my life, absorbed in the eternity that has gone before it and will follow after it, and the tiny space I fill and am scarcely even aware of, buried in the infinite immensity of a universe I do not know and that does not know me, I am terrified and wonder at the fact that I am here rather than there, now rather than later. Who put me here?’
‘Horvath, you horror!’
‘Can’t you stop being a librarian even for a minute?’
But Horvath is unrelenting, and while the radio continues to crackle and spit, he remorselessly continues to read Pascal’s words: ‘Are you less of a slave because your master loves you and flatters you? Lucky slave! Your master may flatter you now, but he’ll be beating you soon enough.’