The Secret Speech (42 page)

The wounded soldier fell ten paces from the tank, unable to walk any farther. Zoya moved the crosshairs toward the hatch, waiting to see if they’d take the bait. The tank came to life, edging forward, moving as close to the wounded man as possible. They were going to save him. The hatch opened. A soldier cautiously lifted the steel lid, peering out, waiting to see if he’d be shot, ready to duck back down. After a pause, he climbed out, hurrying to the aid of his injured comrade. Zoya had the man in her sights. If she didn’t pull the trigger he would help his comrade back into the tank, then they would advance into the city and kill more innocent families and what good would her guilt be then? She was here to fight. They were the enemy. They’d killed children and mothers and fathers.

As she was about to pull the trigger, a hand pushed the gun down. It was Malysh. He lay beside her, their faces close together. She was trembling. He took hold of her rifle, checking on the tanks. She peered over the rubble. The tanks were moving again. But they weren’t advancing into the city: they were heading in the opposite direction, back across the bridge. Zoya asked:

– Where are they going?

Malysh shook his head:

– I don’t know.

Leo examined the room, searching for a way out. Engrossed in his study of the door, the window, the floorboards, he noticed the relative quiet. The sound of explosions and gunfire had stopped. There were footsteps outside the cell. The door opened. Fraera strode in:

– Listen!

A radio in the adjacent room was turned up to full volume. The announcer was speaking in Hungarian. Leo turned to Karoly. He listened for several seconds. Impatient, Fraera called out:

– Translate!

Karoly glanced up at Leo:

– A cease-fire has been declared. Soviet forces are pulling out of the city.

Sensing skepticism,Fraera insisted on a victory tour. They set out, Leo, Raisa, and Karoly, surrounded by insurgents and the remains of her gang. Leo counted only four vory excluding Fraera and Malysh, far fewer than there had been in Moscow. Some might have been killed. Others must have abandoned her cause: the life of a revolutionary was not the life of a professional criminal. Fraera didn’t seem to care, leading them down the central thoroughfare of Sztalin ut as proudly as if she were marching on Stalin’s tomb. Raisa was beside Leo, Karoly just behind, dragging his injured leg. Through the ring of armed men, Leo caught glimpses of Zoya orbiting the group. She walked beside Malysh. Though Zoya ignored Leo completely, from time to time Malysh would flick a hostile glance in his direction. Raisa was correct. They were, unquestionably, in love.

Leo didn’t see how a Hungarian triumph was even a theoretical possibility. He’d observed the insurgents armed with bricks and gasoline-filled bottles. They fought fearlessly, fighting for their homes, the ground on which they stood. But as a former soldier he saw no strategy. Their campaign was haphazard and improvised. In contrast, the Red Army was the most powerful military force in the world, numerically and technologically. Panin and his coconspirators intended to keep it that way. The loss of Hungary would never be tolerated, no matter how bloody the conflict became. Yet pacing the streets Leo was forced to accept that there was no longer any Soviet presence in the city. There were no tanks or troops. Many of the Hungarian fighters had abandoned their positions.

Fraera stopped walking. They’d arrived at an office, a medium-sized, unremarkable building. There was a commotion at the front doors, a great number of people entering and exiting. Karoly dragged himself forward, catching up with Leo:

– This is the headquarters of the AVH.

Leo replied:

– Your son?

– This is where he works. The officers must have fled as soon as the uprising began.

Fraera noticed their exchange. She moved through the line of her men, asking:

– You’re familiar with this building? It is the home of the Hungarian secret police. They’ve abandoned it and are now hiding somewhere. But we will find them.

Karoly managed to conceal his concerns. Fraera continued:

– Now that the city is free, the building is open to the public. The secrets held here are secrets no longer.

Most of the insurgents remained outside. The building was too busy to accommodate the entire gang. Fraera led a smaller group through the doors, entering an internal courtyard. Sheets of paper, typed and stamped, the bureaucracy of terror, fluttered down from the balconies. It was dusk. Electricity was spotty. To compensate, candles were lit, spread across the balconies and floors. The offices were filled with citizens searching through files. Reading by candlelight, men and women thumbed through the information stored about them. Watching many of them cry, Leo didn’t need the documents translated. The files contained the names of family and friends who’d denounced them, the words spoken against them. Like a hundred mirrors dropped on the floor, all around he saw faith in mankind shattering. Fraera whispered:

– Downstairs.

Whereas the offices had been crowded, the stairs leading to the basement were empty. Taking a candle each, they descended. The air was damp and cold. Just as Leo knew the words in those files, he knew what they’d find downstairs-the cells where suspects had been questioned and tortured.

Water dripped onto cracked concrete floors. All the cell doors had been opened. In the first, there was a table and two chairs. In the second, there was a drain in the center of the room and nothing more. Leo watched Zoya’s face, desperate to pick her up and carry her out of this place. She took hold of Malysh’s hand. Leo scrunched his fingers into a tight fist, wondering how long Fraera would make them stay down here. To his surprise, Fraera, apparently fearless, seemed shaken by this place. He thought upon the tortures she must have gone through after her arrest. She sighed:

– Let’s drink to the end of all this.

And briefly, in the darkness, she was human again.

Taking place in the courtyard of her apartment complex, Fraera intended to host the first victory celebration. Open to all, she provided crates of alcohol, spirits, liqueurs, and champagne-the preserve of the elite, drinks many had never tasted before, secreted away for exactly this moment. Leo noted these preparations: proof that she always believed victory was possible. To offset the cold, a fire was built in the center of the courtyard with timber stacked as tall as a man, flames reaching high into the night sky. Crude effigies of Stalin and his Hungarian equivalent, Rakosi, were dressed in uniforms stripped from the corpses of Soviet soldiers. Leo noted that Fraera, standing on the top-floor balcony, photographed the flaming figures, taking care over the shots before putting her camera away.

As the burning uniforms turned to ash, a cigany band arrived clutching hand-painted instruments. After a timid start, as if worried that their violins would draw a barrage of Soviet shells, they gradually forgot their anxieties. The music became louder and faster and the fighters began to dance.

Leo and Raisa were sat back from the party, under armed guard, spectators as Zoya became drunk, sipping champagne, her cheeks turning red. Fraera drank from a bottle, which she did not share, always in control. Catching Leo’s eye, she joined them:

– You can dance if you want.

Leo asked:

– What are you going to do with us now?

– The truth is, I haven’t decided.

Zoya was trying to persuade Malysh to dance. Unsuccessful, she grabbed Malysh’s hand, pulling him into the ring of people circling the fire. Though she’d seen him clamber up drainpipes, nimble as a cat, he was awkward. Zoya whispered:

– Pretend it’s just you and me.

Under the pretense that they were alone, they spun around the fire, the world becoming a blur, the fire hot on their faces, dancing faster and faster until the music stopped and everyone clapped. But, for them, the world continued to spin and they had only each other to hold on to.

The fire had burnt down to a mound of red embers and charred stubs. The cigany band was no longer playing. The revelers had returned home, those who hadn’t passed out. Malysh and Zoya were curled up under a blanket, close to the remains of the fire. Karoly was humming an indistinguishable tune, drunk after having pleaded for alcohol to numb the pain of his leg. As energetic as if she’d rested the entire night, Fraera declared:

– Why sleep in cramped apartments?

Forced to take part in Fraera’s expedition, they left the courtyard, crossing the Danube, treading wearily toward their destination-the ministerial villas on the lush Buda slopes. Malysh and Zoya accompanied them, along with the vory and her Hungarian interpreter. From the top of Rose Hill, they watched dawn rise on the city. Fraera observed:

– For the first time in over ten years, the city will wake up to freedom.

Arriving at a gated villa with high walls, there were, remarkably, guards stationed at the perimeter. Fraera turned to her interpreter:

– Tell them to go home. Tell them this is now the property of the people.

The translator approached the gate, repeating her words in Hungarian. Perhaps having watched the fighting the guards had already come to a similar decision. They were protecting the privileges of a fallen regime. They lifted up the gate, took their things, and left. The interpreter returned, excited:

– The guards say this villa belonged to Rakosi.

Slurring his words, Karoly remarked to Leo:

– The play-place of my former boss, the once glorious leader of my country. This is where we used to phone him and ask: Do you want us to piss in the suspect’s mouth, sir? Do you want to listen while we do it? Yes, he would say, I want to hear it all.

They entered the immaculately landscaped grounds.

Fraera was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. From the smell Leo guessed it contained stimulants. Amphetamines would explain how she maintained her ferocious energy level. Her eyes appeared completely black, pupils that were like puddles of oil. Leo had used her drug during the all-night arrests and interrogations he’d performed as an officer of the MGB. It would exacerbate aggression. It would make reasoning impossible, skewing her mind toward violence while sealing every decision in unshakable confidence.

With the keys from the security guard’s hut, Fraera ran up the stairs, unlocked the doors, and threw them wide open. She bowed to Malysh and Zoya:

– A new couple should have a new home!

Malysh blushed. Zoya smiled as she entered the house, her exclamation of amazement echoing around the grand reception hall:

– There’s a pool!

The swimming pool was covered in a protective plastic sheet, spotted with dead leaves. Zoya dipped her finger in the water:

– It’s cold.

The heaters had stopped working. The teak chairs had been stacked in the corner. A deflated brightly colored beach ball was nudged this way and that by the wind.

Inside the house, luxury had decayed. The kitchen was covered with dust, unused since Rakosi was forced to leave Hungary, exiled to the Soviet Union after the Secret Speech. Built to the highest specifications, the appliances were foreign. Crystal and fine porcelain filled the cupboards. Bottles of French wine were unopened. Fascinated by the contents of the fridge, trying to identify items turned patchy with mold, Leo and Zoya chanced across each other. Side by side, it was the closest they’d been since his capture.

– Zoya…

Before he could finish, Fraera called out:

– Zoya!

Zoya ran off, obeying the call of her new master.

Following behind, entering the living room, Leo came face-to-face with Stalin. A vast oil portrait hung from the wall, staring down, a god keeping watch over his subjects. Fraera drew a knife, offering it to Zoya:

– There’s no one to denounce you now.

Knife in hand, Zoya stepped up onto a chair, her eyes coming level to Stalin’s neck. In the perfect position to mutiliate his face, she did nothing. Fraera called out:

– Gouge out his eyes! Blind him! Shave off his mustache!

Zoya stepped down, offering the knife to Fraera:

– I don’t… feel like it.

Fraera’s mood switched from elation to irritation:

– You don’t feel like it? Anger doesn’t come and go. Anger isn’t fickle. Anger isn’t like love. It isn’t something you feel one minute but not the next. Anger stays with you forever. He murdered your parents.

Zoya raised her voice in reply:

– I don’t want to think about that all the time!

Fraera slapped her. Leo stepped forward. Fraera drew her gun, pointing it at Leo’s chest but continuing to speak to Zoya:

– You forget your parents? Is it that easy? What has changed? Malysh has kissed you? Is that it?

Fraera walked toward him, grabbing Malysh and kissing him. He struggled but she held him fast. Finished, she pulled back:

– Nice, but I’m still angry.

She fired a shot between Stalin’s eyes and then another and another, emptying her gun into the oil portrait, the canvas shaking with each bullet. With no bullets left, the trigger clicked against the chamber. Fraera threw the gun at his face, the weapon bouncing off, clattering to the ground. She wiped her brow before laughing:

– Bedtime…

The statement was loaded with innuendo. She pushed Zoya and Malysh together.

Startled, Leo woke, shaken by one of the vory:

– We’re leaving.

Without any explanation Leo, Raisa, and Karoly were rushed to their feet. They’d been locked in the marble bathroom, using towels to make a bed. They couldn’t have snatched more than a couple of hours of sleep. Fraera was outside by the gate. Malysh and Zoya were beside her, everyone exhausted, except for Fraera, jittery with chemical energy. She pointed downhill, toward the center of town: