“Will you help?” Helga asked. “Ute has an uncle in West Germany. He’ll support her.”
I was stunned and felt foolish. Earlier in the week a friend had joked that I harboured refugees and I joked right back that I had nothing more clandestine than tourists at home. I was so focused on Hungarian politics that I did not notice the big news in my own apartment.
“Does Sabine know about this?” I asked.
“No,” said Helga.
I wondered about the dynamic between Helga, Ute and Sabine. I could not imagine travelling with a friend, even a neighbour, and concealing such significant plans. Maybe inclusion would jeopardize Sabine’s situation in East Germany, or they might just not trust her.
“Are you going as well?” I asked Helga.
“No, I will return home in some days,” she said. “There will be suspicions if I do not go soon.” I wanted to help them, but what they asked might mean breaking the law. I felt confused and needed time to think.
“So why are you going back?” I asked Helga.
“I thought about leaving with Ute,” Helga said, “but the best place for me to make changings is at home.”
She would join an opposition group in East Germany, one that opposed the Communist regime and protested against environmental degradation. Helga hated what she called “disinformation” in university lectures. Humiliated, she said, “You don’t know the feeling to be a second-class human being everywhere and every time because you can’t pay with hard currency.” Such honesty was compelling.
I wondered whether Ute had discussed escape plans with her parents but did not like to ask such a personal question. I just asked why she wanted to leave. Ute simply said, “I don’t feel free.” Our conversations, so halting and broken because of language difficulties, meant that I never really knew Ute. I felt a stronger affinity with Helga, who would not remain long.
I was distracted during Helga’s last days in Budapest and did not know what to do. Helga and Ute had discussed the escape plan in private and once divulged, began to act on it. I still wondered if escape was a good idea.
Helga and Ute had only seen the good side of Hungary. I felt fairly confident that the reformers would win but could not forget one incident the previous autumn that showed a dark side of Communism still lurked in the system.
A small group of Hungarians had planned a demonstration, a march to the Romanian embassy. They would give the embassy staff there a petition that protested Romania’s treatment of ethnic Hungarians resident in Romania. Sallie, who was an established journalist from London, would cover the march. I worshipped this friend. She epitomized the best in journalism. She was professional, objective and brave with a good code of ethics. The foreign press corps in Budapest remained tiny — no more than half a dozen reporters — so we spent a lot of time together, which served as an informal apprenticeship for me. If she covered the demonstration, I would too.
We met up the road from the embassy where the protesters gathered. The crowd numbered no more than a few hundred people. The organizer made sure that everyone stayed on the sidewalk so traffic flowed well. Then we began walking down the road toward the Romanian embassy. Sallie and I positioned ourselves near the front of the crowd.
I heard people shout rendorszeg [police]. Policemen on motorcycles appeared. Their motorcycles flanked us on three sides. We stopped, trapped between the motorcycles and buildings that lined the sidewalk. Then, through a gap in the rows ahead of me, I saw more riot police with plexiglass visors and shields. They rushed forward and I heard dull thuds as their thick black truncheons struck backs, arms, legs. People in front screamed and pushed their way back to escape. In the confusion, Sallie and I were separated.
I noticed some people held handkerchiefs over their faces. Then my eyes stung. The police had used tear gas. I turned and hunched down, saw a gap between buildings and an alley. I pushed and jostled through the crowd, reached the alley and ran faster than I imagined possible. I ducked into a basement café and rinsed my eyes in the bathroom. Then I stood by a tiny window and looked up at the street. I saw people’s feet as they ran past and then the black boots of policemen who chased them. I ordered a coffee. My hand trembled as I picked up the cup. I hated the police and the government that ordered police action. What had commanders told the men behind visors that made them attack with such vengeance?
I wondered how Ute would be treated if she were caught at the border. I worried but did not discuss the situation with anyone else in case it compromised Ute’s efforts to leave or her future in East Germany, if she returned. East Germans who tried to escape could still be imprisoned; in the past, border guards sometimes shot them. I trusted two people — Sallie and Anna, a Hungarian friend whom I met through my landlady. Both Sallie and Anna were away on holiday.
I respected Anna’s judgment. She also made me feel safe and secure. Every morning I took Buda-bound public transport over the Széchenyi bridge and walked the short distance from Moskva tér to Anna’s apartment. I crossed through a courtyard and entered a quiet world shielded from the bustle of the street, and then into her apartment. Anna usually hovered over the kitchen sink when I arrived. Often she cleaned dirt from vegetables that soaked in a pan. She boiled water for coffee, put cups on a tray with a plate of cookies and we would walk through the dark hallway into the living room.
Natural light poured in from massive windows that faced the street. Anna’s daughter, Juli, a toddler, usually sat on the floor with toys. Sometimes Anna’s husband, Gyula, and their six-year-old son, Dani, would also be home. I loved it there. Anna’s family was my surrogate family for those two years in Budapest.
Over coffee, Anna helped me read the Hungarian papers. She had a sharp mind and good news insights. I looked forward to our morning conversations and wished that Anna was in Budapest so that I could ask for her advice on Ute’s situation.
When Helga left, I felt responsible for Ute. Had someone told me a year earlier that I would help an East German escape I would not have believed it. This would abuse my position as a journalist and breach trust with the paper that sponsored me. It might also be illegal. Most people born in the Eastern Bloc knew many laws made no sense and broke them to survive. Ute’s request sent me down that path, though I felt that I might lose something of myself along the way.
I could see that Ute remained determined not to return. Ill-informed about the situation in East Germany, I did know about some difficulties she would face as a refugee. That winter, I had spent time in Budapest with a twenty-six-year-old Romanian refugee named Victor. We met under a hotel awning in heavy rain. As we waited for it to stop, Victor told me his escape story.
Victor’s girlfriend, a member of the Romanian Securitate secret police, worked in the passport office. Victor persuaded her to get him a passport for what he said would be a short holiday. He stuffed school certificates, which could not be taken out of the country legally, down his trousers and ditched his tour group when he arrived in Hungary. I felt appalled that he betrayed his girlfriend so casually but also admired his resourcefulness and courage, traits common in many refugees that I met. One of his friends swam the Tisza River twice to escape from Romania. He was shot at, apprehended and imprisoned the first time, but succeeded the second.
As I came to know Victor and his friends I observed their lives in Budapest, struck by their vigilance, which verged on paranoia. They believed that the Securitate operated in Budapest and kept them under surveillance. Victor never returned home through the front door. He always entered via a back courtyard and climbed in a window to shake off anyone who might tail him.