Csardas (79 page)

Two days later, in the wake of the Russian army, he came down from the mountains and, on a bitterly cold, snow-filled night, entered the deserted streets of his own home town.

It was a place of empty houses and silence. The diminished population was seen only rarely, scurrying from home to food queues and back again. The women were kept firmly out of sight, but the Russians found them anyway and helped themselves in the same way they helped themselves to wrist watches, cameras, and other less understandably attractive items such as chamber pots and family photographs. On the whole it was not too violent an occupation, provided one didn’t try to protect the women or the wrist watches, and as the Soviet colonel explained to Leo at the first meeting of the town’s newly formed District Committee, the reason for his troops’ superb and well-mannered behaviour was that the town had “co-operated” and was listed as a partisan area.

There was, surprisingly, very little damage, and that mainly from the air raids of the summer months. The German gun emplacements had been blown up with remarkable efficiency. The German and Arrow Cross units had speedily evacuated themselves westwards and the Soviet army had marched into a city completely devoid of resistance. Leo, observing the “well-mannered” behaviour of their liberators, wondered what their occupation of German-defended areas would be like, but he hurriedly thrust the thought away, as he was thrusting so many other disquieting questions away.

Why, he reflected gloomily, could he never accept things in a way that was sensible and practical? Gabor, who was importantly forming the town’s first committee, seemed to be troubled by no doubts at all. “We have been waiting all these years for liberation, Leo,” he cried jubilantly, “and now the hour has come! Remember the years of repression, of starvation for the many, of the cruelty of the
pandur,
of lack of freedom. Hungary has been given a new chance and we must see it is not abused. We must build a land where socialism and democracy become the birthright of every single Hungarian.”

“The Russians—”

“The Russians will soon be gone,” Gabor had said, waving his hand impatiently in the air. “Once Germany is defeated the Russians will leave us to rebuild our nation in peace. Now—” He shrugged. “Soldiers are soldiers. And we have to pay the price for trying to placate Germany all these years. Be thankful the occupation is not worse than it is.”

Gabor was right. No army could sweep through a country without behaving like a conqueror. And surely anything was better than the last nightmare months of the German occupation. But questions still nagged at him. He noticed things that made him uneasy. Their boots, for one thing, and the rest of their uniforms. For so long he had thought of Russia as the land of equality, where peasants were no longer kept in poverty and servitude. The Russian soldiers’ boots were made of rubberized linen and their greatcoats of thin cloth. That was all right, except that the officers wore leather boots and coats of pure wool. No doubt there were good reasons; only so much leather and wool, so who should have it? And no doubt there was also a good reason for the Soviet major who pulled out a revolver and shot two of his own men who were coming out of a house with a sack of stolen food. There were reasons, most certainly... but was he foolish to be disappointed at the socialist dream in action?

He suppressed his traitorous thoughts and accepted the post that was allotted him as editor of the town’s newspaper, which, after some discussion, was called
Liberation.
For the time being the paper consisted of a single sheet written mostly by Leo. There was little paper available and an even greater shortage of staff, but after years of apprenticeship in Berlin and Budapest he was disproportionately proud of his creation. He was suddenly aware of the power of the printed word, of his power, and he remembered with a nostalgic affection the little old Jew in Berlin who had employed him in the press translation agency. Mr. Heinlein had behaved as though he were the protector of a message for mankind. Now Leo understood the pride and the principled integrity that had enabled the old man to carry out a war against the Nazi press. Mr. Heinlein. Where was he now?

Another thought to be thrust away. Where were any of them? More and more rumours filtered through from survivors relayed through Russian lines, rumours of mass murders and prison camps. He shut them out. He must look not back but forward, to the new Hungary. He had gone to the old house almost as soon as he arrived in the town. Foolishly he had thought there might be someone, just one person there. But the windows were boarded up and the downstairs apartment had been stripped of everything valuable. The corner of the coach yard was filled with excrement and he had hurried away before loneliness overwhelmed him. He was alive, but there was no one else. Oh, God, please let there be someone still alive! Don’t let me be the only one left. Give me back someone of my blood, my flesh, my family!

As the population began to creep out into the streets, he started to ask questions. There were a few, infinitesimally few, old acquaintances who still lived in the places they had always lived, but there was little information they could give.

“My parents? My sister and her husband and son?”

“Vanished. With the others.”

“My cousin, Kati Racs-Rassay, and her son?”

“Vanished.”

“My sister Eva and her family? Up on the Kaldy estate?”

“Vanished.... But, no, not quite.” And hope pumped into his heart until the speaker said that Adam Kaldy—and only Adam Kaldy—had still been there during the summer months, before all transport and communications had broken down and severed news from the country.

“Just him?”

“Just him. He was under arrest for a while. His brother was shot and there was suspicion of murder, but they let him out again. They needed the produce from his farm, they needed him to run it. And then there was a rumour that the old lady was involved in the killing, but she was paralysed from a stroke and could say nothing. The last we heard she was living at the farmhouse, unable to speak or see or hear.”

Adam. His first disappointment faded and he thought that even if the rest were gone forever, there would still be Adam. Dear, beloved old friend from childhood, a familiar face, shared memories, someone with whom he could be not quite alone. If only Adam had survived he would not ask for anything else.

A week after his return the man who was to be the secretary of the town’s District Committee, the man who had been the leader of the partisan movement in their area, arrived from behind the Russian lines: Janos Marton.

Leo had known he was coming, had heard of little else, in fact, for Marton had become the local hero—the man who had led an attack on a German supply column and distributed the arms and ammunition to the local resistance, the man who had operated a wireless transmitter during the dangerous months of the Nazi occupation, the man who had made the map of the German gun emplacements. And—a small voice whispered—the man who had betrayed the family to the Gestapo after the German occupation? Now that theory seemed absurd; so many had gone whom Janos Marton did not even know. And a hero of the people was surely above such methods of spiteful revenge. Reason dismissed the old suspicions as ridiculous, but the animosity that the suspicions had aroused remained with him.

Janos Marton came back dressed in one of the borrowed thin coats of the Russian soldiers. He presided over his first meeting with an efficiency that was frightening because he spoke so little, just short questions and, at the end of an answering report, a nodded “yes” or a silence, a stare, and a scribbled note on a piece of paper.

“Ferenc.”

Ferenc? Already the times had changed. The last time they had met it was Mr. Ferenc.

“Ferenc, the paper. You have taken over the old offices of
Hungary Today.
Is there sufficient paper for three months?”

“Yes. If we continue with a single news-sheet.”

A scribbled note. “Good. And we must have reports from sources other than your own. It is supposed to be a newspaper, not a daily treatise from the editor.”

How dare he! The jumped-up son of a peasant who knew nothing of journalism, who would not even be able to write if it hadn’t been for Adam Kaldy educating him.

“I don’t think you understand the problems, Marton,” he snapped. “Members of the committee are too busy to write editorials. And everyone else in the town is too frightened. What is said now may prove incriminating in the future.”

A stare from the glacial eyes and a scribbled note on the paper before him. Once, long ago, he had felt pity for Janos Marton, a lonely, loveless, underprivileged child who had grown into a solitary and unlovable man. Now he aroused nothing but anger and resentment. He tried to rationalize his resentment. Was he really still so bourgeois in outook that it was impossible for him to accept, in practice as well as theory, that a peasant could be the intellectual equal of anyone else? Was he really as hypocritical as that? No, some warring voice within him cried, it is not that. Any peasant but this one! I would take orders and reprimands from any peasant but Janos Marton!

“Ferenc! Would you wait, please! I have something to say to you.”

A reprimand, no doubt, for implying that the aims of the committee were not necessarily reliable ones and later might be dangerous. He stood by the door, watching Gabor and Julius and all the others shaking Janos Marton by the hand and congratulating him on his courage and leadership. Adulation at last: the peasant turned into a prince, the local charity schoolboy a hero. And still he did not smile. He thanked his supporters courteously, but his thin face registered none of the usual human expressions of gratification or pleasure. Janos Marton was a cold, efficient political machine.

When the others had gone he watched Janos struggling into the Russian coat. Leo remembered him as a thin child, and a thin man, but now he seemed to carry no flesh at all on his whipcord frame. He was—how old? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? And there was no youth in him at all. A machine.

“I would like you to come with me, Ferenc. I have some good news for you.”

“If it’s about the paper—”

“It is not about the paper.” They left the icy County Offices and trudged out into the snow. “Ferenc, I hope you are not going to find it difficult to accept that one of your former family servants is now directing you in your work.” He said it gently, quietly, but with cold authority. “It would be a great pity if, after we have worked for the same cause through all these difficult years, you now discover you cannot forget your—antipathy.”

“I never—”

“Oh, yes, Ferenc. Antipathy. Even as a child. But what you and I feel is unimportant, is it not? The fact remains that I am able to govern a committee and you are not. I understand what has to be done in Hungary, and I know how to do it. You understand too, but you do not know how to do it. You are a dreamer, an idealist. Whatever happens you will always be looking beyond, looking for the nirvana that does not exist.”

“That is unfair,” he burst out. “I have done as much as you during the bad years. I fought fascism too. I stood trial for Communist activities when you asked me to lecture to the steel workers. I worked with the resistance in Budapest—”

“But you are an idealist, Ferenc. Useful and necessary in the years of persecution, but now is the time for the realist. Already you are beginning to wonder if our way is the right way. You look at the Russians and see they are not perfect and so you begin to doubt and dream again. We have no time to dream now. We have to feed a country in which no crops have been sown and where the land has been ravaged by the Germans and by the Russians. We have to lay down roots of government that will rebuild our economy and independence. There is no time to dream now.”

“You think, because people must be fed, we should throw away our consciences?” He was angry because so much of what Janos said was true. And he resented that the peasant child should be able to read his thoughts.

“Conscience is the privilege of those who are not hungry,” Marton replied quietly. “I too would like to be a dreamer, Ferenc, but I have settled for realism because I never again want to see my people hungry, or humiliated, or dying without comfort and help.”

He remembered Janos Marton’s mother and was suddenly ashamed. Not a political machine, a machine with a memory.

“I endeavour not to allow any emotional memories to influence me now,” Janos continued, uncannily reading Leo’s thoughts again. “But the lessons one learns in youth are there to be analyzed, sifted, used where necessary. It is difficult to have a conscience when you are hungry and poor.”

“But the Russians... you have seen the Russians. It is not what we thought, Janos Marton. They still have their rich and their poor.”

“The Russians do it their way, Ferenc. Once they have gone, then we shall do it ours. I hope you will still be here to work with us. I hope your conscience will not make it necessary for you to... leave the committee.”

He was threatening to replace him! After everything he had done—rebelled against his background and family, joined the party in the years when he could have been imprisoned if caught. Was this the reward for his years of endeavour?

Marton turned into a cobbled yard filled with puddles of dirty snow. They had walked a long way and were now in the poor area of the town, down by the steeelworks. The bomb damage was worse here—piles of rubble partially covered with soil and snow, and several rows of apartment buildings ripped open like doll’s houses. An old man with a bundle under his arm hurried away from them, down into a cellar under one of the devastated buildings.

“Why are people still living here?” asked Leo, puzzled. “The town is half empty, plenty of good houses abandoned by the Germans or Arrow Cross... or by the Jews. It is unsafe for them still to be living here.”

“Their homes are here.” He began to pick his way over the rubble. A few frightened faces peered out from doorways and cellar steps. Then blankets and sacks were hastily dropped over the various openings.