Csardas (70 page)

Everything was diminished. Before, he had hated the oppression of the poor, the cruelty of the
pandur,
the lack of freedom. Now he hated Szabo, who had the bunk above his and who snored all night and never changed his underclothes. As a journalist he had wrestled daily with his conscience, wondering how far he dared risk his liberty in the cause of professional integrity. Now he was concerned with seeing that his ration of soup was as large as that of everyone else.

Szabo was the abrasive element in his cushioned existence, because Szabo’s favourite pastime was in pointing out to the unit that here was Ferenc, an educated man from a wealthy family, now the lowest and most inferior of them all. “And why?” taunted the ex-factory hand. “Why is his excellency less than we are? Because he is a convicted Communist. And most probably a few other things that he pretends not to be. Ha, Ferenc, I should like to see your secret files at headquarters. There’s interesting information there about you, I’ll swear!”

The remainder of the company were mostly peasants, phlegmatic and nervous of being drawn into an argument involving one of their hereditary overlords, but sometimes Szabo was able to sweep them into mirth at Leo’s expense and at those times he wanted to murder Szabo. He had to force himself into restraint, knowing that if he ever struck the man he wouldn’t stop, and then he would almost certainly find himself on a charge that would lead to gaol. Szabo was a devout member of the Arrow Cross Party and painstakingly plodded through its news-sheet whenever he could get it. Leo knew, in his saner moments, that a fight between them would be immediately construed as a political conflict, which it was not. Szabo was too stupid to rouse intelligent antipathy in Leo. When he lay on his bunk reading his paper out loud, it wasn’t the political content that infuriated Leo, it was his adenoidal voice and the fact that he collected phlegm in his throat and hawked it out every few seconds, once hitting Leo on the leg. Hitler, the impending war, the future of his country, all faded into obscurity beside his hatred for Szabo.

He would have been lonely, in spite of the panacea of army life, if he hadn’t struck up a vaguely amiable relationship with a little merchant’s clerk from Pest. In the ordinary way they would have found they had little in common, but in the enforced atmosphere of army life they turned to each other in relief, seeking comradeship that was born of necessity.

He was in the artillery unit of a hussar regiment, and for eighteen months he drilled, groomed the regimental horses, cleaned stables and barracks, and learned how to assemble and dismantle a gun so that it could be loaded onto three horses. He kept his uniform clean, queued for meals, washrooms, and evening passes, and in his off-duty moments brooded a little about his changing values, and a lot about the general unpleasantness of Szabo. His enemy’s latest manifestation of hatred was in drawing attention to the fact that Leo was almost certainly a coward. “All Communists and Jews are cowards. Everyone knows that.”

Leo clenched fists, mouth, and temper, and said nothing He knew, they all knew, that Szabo wanted more than any thing else to goad him into violence. “Wait until we get into battle, my friends, wait until we ride against the enemy! Then you’ll see the proud and mighty Mr. Ferenc run!”

“How interesting,” drawled Leo. “What enemy did you have in mind? To my knowledge we are not yet at war with anyone. Could it be your friends the Germans we may be battling against?”

Szabo’s eyes protruded from their sockets. “You’ll see!” he shouted. “Soon there’ll be mobilization like the last time! We shall fight beside Hitler’s armies and destroy the Bolsheviks and the Jews! That’s who the enemy will be!”

“Fascinating,” murmured Leo, and felt ecstatic when Szabo’s face purpled with rage. He thought Szabo was going to hit him and decided that, charge or no charge, he was going to hit back. He squared up, but the rest of the unit, the ex-peasants and factory hands, thronged between them with bedding, equipment, and clothing—anything to restore normality to the barrack-room and avoid the trouble that a fight would inevitably bring.

The wrath of the two men fizzled out into a state of tumescence. They did not speak for two weeks, and when they did break silence it was Szabo’s victory. He burst into barracks, panting with the exertion of running across the parade square. “We’ve taken Serbia!” he shouted. “Hungary and Germany, fighting together, we’ve moved in and conquered the filthy Serbs!”

“What are you talking about?” Leo asked, the old clutch of apprehension low in his stomach. “Serbia? Invaded Serbia? What rubbish are you talking?”

“No rubbish,” he shouted, spitting with excitement. “Serbia, Yugoslavia, call it what you like, we’ve invaded and taken it! We are allies of Hitler’s Reich!”

“Oh, no,” Leo whispered.

“You’re afraid now, my fine excellency,” gloated Szabo. “Afraid and well you should be. I’ve heard we are to ride south, down to the border to take part in the invasion. Now we’ll see, Ferenc, we’ll see how Communists fight in battle. And be careful, for if you don’t get an enemy bullet in you, you might get one of mine!” He spat again, and this time it was deliberate. It flew onto Leo’s wrist, a thick gobbet of liquid that hung there before dropping onto the ground.

“Filthy pig!” Leo screamed, his temper breaking at last. He began to swear, calling Szabo every foul name he had ever heard. He leapt forward and grasped the man’s neck, determined to bend him down into the dirt and rub his face in his own phlegm, but Szabo punched him hard in the stomach, and when he doubled over he felt the factory worker’s hard fist chop viciously into the side of his head.

They were wrenched apart by their comrades just in time to avoid the attention of the company sergeant, who strode in and began shouting orders for the regiment’s move. They packed battle kit and rations in silence. Szabo’s was the silence of a nervous victor, while Leo was only just able to stand after the blow on his head. Outside, the fresh air made him reel for a moment; then the chill April wind served to cool him and quieten his nausea.

They rode for five days, sleeping at night in specially requisitioned barns and stables. They were not even aware of the exact time when they rode over the border. They were in gentle, wooded farming country when the news spread through the lines that already they were in occupied Yugoslavia. At one point a messenger rode up to them on a bicycle with the information that a party of Yugoslav resisters were waiting just outside the village a few kilometres away. They were moved up, then the guns unloaded and assembled. A party of riflemen on horseback thundered past, and there was some desultory shooting in the middle distance, then silence, a wait of a couple of hours, and an order to move forward again.

Up and over the soft, undulating countryside. Whatever fighting had taken place in this part of Yugoslavia, it did not appear to have affected the crops or destroyed the vegetation. The damson trees were in blossom, and the grain and maize showed a healthy growth in well-cultivated fields. The sun grew hotter as the morning advanced and flies began to buzz around their heads. Apart from the flies, it was a pleasant and surprisingly unwarlike progress.

At a bend in the road, just before the village, the progress stopped, then moved again. Littering the path were several bodies: Yugoslav soldiers, all dead from rifle or machine-gun fire. They had been there only a little while but already flies were clustering thickly over the puddles of blackened blood.

Leo darted a quick glance at Szabo, wanting to see what his first reaction would be to men dead in battle. Szabo had a curious avid look on his face that Leo found distasteful and he looked hurriedly away. Farther along they passed the body of a woman. Her throat was cut and her skirts were bundled up round her waist. She wasn’t young, about forty, old enough probably to think herself free from the danger of rape. Szabo was staring hard at the corpse, so hard that he turned round as they passed and rode with his head twisted back. The hatred in Leo’s heart grew more and more virulent. Nothing would exorcise that hate except his fingers round Szabo’s fat neck, squeezing, squeezing....

When they came to the village they were ordered to dismount, and a major assembled them together and told them what they were to do.

“We are billeted here as occupying troops. You will be told by your company sergeants where to go. The village is composed of three national groups: Swabians, Hungarians, Serbs. The Hungarians and Swabians are friendly, the Serbs are not. Many of them have been killed, and tomorrow you will superintend the clearing of the dead from the road so that the rest of the troops can pass through. Can anyone here speak German?”

Leo stepped forward.

“You speak German? Well enough to understand the Swabian dialect?”

“Sir. Also a little Croat.”

“Good. You will report to headquarters for special duties. You are excused company drills and will be billeted near headquarters at the centre of the village.”

“Sir.”

The company was dismissed and allocated to stables and farmhouses. He followed the major to the centre of the village. Their billet was the village inn, closed and shuttered now against the advent of war, but Leo could see how very pleasant it was going to be when the shutters were down and the tables placed outside again. His delight with his special duties was centred almost entirely on scoring over Szabo, who had come south to fight a gallant war but who was, instead, going to clear bodies from a road and then, most probably, act as supply convoy for slicker, smarter troops in the active areas. And while Szabo was cleaning, fetching, and carrying, he, Ferenc, would be liaising between the officers and civilian population.

On the following day he was told to “acquire” a bicycle so that he could travel between all the various occupied villages in the area. One was “requisitioned” from the village, and Leo began to pedal happily along the country roads. The very first person he saw was Szabo, standing over a group of old men and boys, directing the lifting and disposal of bodies from the road into trenches that had been dug at the side. Szabo looked hot and frustrated. He was having to explain himself in sign language and shouts, neither of which were very efficient.

“Need any help, Szabo?” Leo gloated as he pedalled past. “Want me to translate for you?” Szabo glared but did not answer. “No? Very well then. I’ll leave you to your task. It seems you won’t be fighting in battle after all, doesn’t it?”

He was delighting in Szabo’s humiliation, feeling compensated for the spit on his wrist, the blow on the head, and the months of taunts and insults in the barracks. Smiling, his eyes slid past Szabo to the road behind, and then his smile faded. He forgot Szabo, forgot the feud, and for a moment even forgot the army.

In the trees at the side of the road were corpses, but these were not the bodies of soldiers or even a lone raped woman. Old men, women in aprons, black kerchiefs and children—young children: the bodies were stacked in rows ready to be put in the ditch when it had been dug deep enough. They were all stretched in attitudes of supplication, clutching hands and taut bodies showing that they had fought death at the final moment, even the little ones. They were poor, all of them, badly dressed and with no shoes, and their bodies were pathetic and hopeless, as though they had never expected anything but death.

He felt no horror, only despair. He multiplied this little group of victims and saw similar groups in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, and in all the countries that had not yet fallen but were inevitably going to. He saw the path his own country was taking, had been taking for years, each step towards self-destruction following inevitably on the one before. He saw the foolishness, the futility of his or anyone’s efforts to avert national suicide, the suicide of Europe. All these months he had been dormant, unaware of what was happening. Now he understood only too clearly the way things were to be. War, death, the annihilation of a people—his people, the people of Hungary.

“Frightened of dead bodies?” jeered Szabo, and he looked at his erstwhile enemy and felt no hatred, only pity, because Szabo, like the rest of them, was being led to his destruction.

“Don’t you understand what has happened, Szabo?” he said gently. “We have fought with Germany against Yugoslavia. Now all Germany’s enemies will be ours. And whatever happens, Hungary will be vanquished. Either Germany will devour us, or Germany’s enemies. There is no place for a little land like ours, Szabo. We shall be destroyed between the giants.”

A faint flash of fear crossed Szabo’s face, a brief realization that his personal wars and dislikes, desires and opinions might count for nothing in a national holocaust. His unaccustomed clarity stemmed not from Leo’s words but from Leo’s manner. The hated aristocrat had suddenly ceased to be an aristocrat. He had spoken with the voice of a prophet. Then rude joviality reasserted itself. The moment’s chill passed.

“Bah! Foolish talk! You are afraid of the bodies, afraid because it might be you next time.”

“It might be both of us, Szabo,” said Leo quietly, and then they were silent.

Two months later Germany, dragging Hungary behind her, marched into Russia. And by the end of the year the declared enemies of the Third Reich were also the enemies of Hungary.

The policy of appeasing the Third Reich began, almost imperceptibly, to make its impact on the people. Providing a few of Hitler’s requests were granted—food from the granary of the great plain, partial mobilization to support his Russian war, some gestures of anti-Semitism—their internal independence was left intact. They became an island of semi-autonomy in Hitler’s vast European empire. Poles, Jews, religious refugees from all the countries about them streamed over the border, knowing that for awhile, at least, they were safe—as long as Hungary continued to tread the tightrope and make placatory gestures. But even the gestures began to affect the country. Rationing was enforced, and husbands and sons began to disappear into the maw of Russia. And the anti-Semitic laws began to make themselves felt.