A Soviet armoured personnel carrier that had erupted, probably by grenade, was proving a big hit with the locals because, apparently, it had a headless Russian on display inside. People vied to peer into the charred interior. Gyuri was totally unmoved by the sight of the Russian dead. He had heard all the arguments about how the Russians were people, how everyone is the same, what a great composer Tchaikovsky was; nevertheless he couldn’t help wishing that the Russians would fuck off and be people and the same, back in the Soviet Union. An incinerated corpse at his feet failed to elicit any compassion. Probably a conscript- he didn’t give a toss.
All around the Keleti Station, there were groups of tanks cutting off his intended route home. The Russian tanks weren’t doing anything but they didn’t seem to want to move. They were just occupying space. No one, Gyuri noticed, was strolling around close to them. The streets were full of people, no one wanted to stay at home, but a peopleless belt extended for hundreds of metres round the tanks. The streetcorner militia that had formed on the Rákoczi út were discussing what to do. There were two soldiers, several new teenagers (two on roller-skates) and a hotchpotch of individuals you’d find waiting for a bus, including two postwomen. ‘We need petrol bombs. That’s what they’re using at the Corvin. Who can get some empty bottles?’ asked one of the soldiers.
It was nearly eight. Gyuri cut down a sidestreet to see if he could sidestep the Red Army.
An hour later making his final approach, closing in from the direction of the Zoo, Gyuri was annoyed to discover that the Red Army had completely surrounded his flat. He was getting angry enough to attack one of the tanks.
As he was observing the tank blocking the end of Benczur utca and trying to think of a way of blowing it up, safely, without risk, with his bare hands, from an enormous distance he saw a man walk out of one of the blocks of flats at the end of the street and start to knock on the side of the tank, as if he were knocking on a door. He knocked very assiduously and after a few minutes, the turret opened and a leather-helmeted head popped out. What was the man doing? Asking them for a light? Hoping that the Russians would be less likely to open fire in mid-conversation, Gyuri galloped over. When he ran past, despite his grudging Russian, he realised that the man was haranguing the tank crew. ‘What are you doing here?’ the man demanded.
‘We’re here to protect you from hooligans and reactionaries,’ the officer protested.
‘Where are the hooligans? Where are the reactionaries?’ It was an intriguing exchange, but Gyuri had had enough current affairs for one day. Going up the stairs, he met Jadwiga coming down.
‘You’re late,’ she said sternly.
‘Time flies when you’re having a revolution.’
Inside, Elek greeted them with the news that Imre Nagy had formed a new government. ‘I’m pleased for him,’ said Gyuri, ‘but if you’ll excuse us, there are some urgent aspects of Hungarian-Polish relations to consider.’
Why shouldn’t things be conducted in comfortable conditions? thought Gyuri, glad that he had obtained a fully-qualified bed from Pataki as his farewell present. Worn out by history, worry, fear and his conjugal work, he was reclining into sleep when Jadwiga said apropos of nothing:
‘We are winning. It will be Poland next.’
He loved her craziness. Did it really matter what went outside the bedroom where they had established a bad-free zone? ‘Who knows, maybe even the Czechs will do something?’ Jadwiga continued, recounting her day out in the revolution and how she had come to Budapest. On Saturday, the students at Szeged University had held a meeting, as was suddenly the fashion, to discuss the pervasive iniquity of things. ‘It was the first time in my life I’ve seen anything that could even loosely be called democratic. Strange that I had to wait twenty-two years to see someone saying what they thought in public; there was something almost improper about it. So we voted to withdraw from that Communist-guided student union and to set up our own. I told them we had to do it. I remembered what you said about fighting all the way. That pushed me.’
Gyuri strained his memory but he couldn’t recall any such dictum.
The Szeged students had then voted to send a delegation to the university youth of Budapest to urge them to do the same. Jadwiga had arrived in Budapest on Monday night but hadn’t wanted to come and break the back of Gyuri’s sleep by saying hello at four in the morning. She had then been touring the collapse of the Party’s power. While Gyuri had been sheltering behind Stalin, she had been at the Corvin cinema, with one of the best seats in town to watch the fighting. Gyuri related his various encounters with Soviet tanks.
‘Were you afraid?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he lied, choosing a tone of cool indifference to the lethal nature of Soviet armour but not one of scorn, since he didn’t want to overdo it.
‘I wasn’t afraid either,’ she said. Not for the first time, Gyuri registered that Jadwiga was much braver than he was. A soul as firm as her breasts, beauty and fortitude, Venus and Mars in one. And her bravery was a self-fuelling, independent, detached bravery, the sort that would work alone, in the dark, in the gas chamber. What is she doing with me? Gyuri could envision rustling up some bravado if there was an audience or some support, but the sort of solo bravery that exists even though there is no one to witness or mark it was, he knew, beyond him.
Could doing brave things make you brave, as push-ups made you stronger? Was courage bone or muscle? Something that was meted out at birth or something that was up to you?
They vacated the bedroom to merge the food Gyuri had bought into an omelette. After they had eaten, Jadwiga went out of the kitchen and reappeared with a submachine-gun, the classic davai guitar, which she placed on the table. ‘Do you have anything to clean this with?’ she asked. Gyuri caught Elek looking at him with vast amusement.
The only thing that would have been more unlikely than a revolution, thought Gyuri arriving at the British Embassy with a folder full of AVO documents showing that a British diplomat had been spying for the AVO, would have been my arriving at the British Embassy with a folder full of AVO documents showing that a British diplomat had been spying for the AVO.
He rang the bell. After a suitably dignified pause, the door was opened, Gyuri was pleased to see, by Nigel. ‘Good morning,’ said Gyuri in his floweriest pronunciation. ‘How are you, Nigel? Do you know if the Ambassador is free?’
‘Actually, he’s a Minister Plenipotentiary, but don’t let that stop you.’ Gyuri had no idea what Nigel was talking about but didn’t want his status as a star English speaker to be diminished. He had met Nigel three days earlier, during the heaviest of the fighting. The agreement had been that anything moving down the Nádor utca would get it. They had a heavy machine-gun set up ready to rip, which was hogged by a surly, burly coal miner from Tatabánya, who didn’t like anyone coming anywhere near it. ‘I was a gunner in the Army, all right? I know how to use this thing. I don’t want anyone messing around with it, I don’t want anyone fucking it up.’
He didn’t take any breaks and he urinated on the spot, because he didn’t want to let go of the machine-gun or let it out of his sight. When the car appeared, the miner immediately misfired the gun, which was just as well since it gave everyone time to distinguish the Union Jack tied sloppily to the bonnet of the car. The car trundled up respectfully to their position, and as the miner continued to swear, to curse the quality of Soviet manufacturing standards and to eject cartridges left, right and centre, Nigel had got out and said cheerfully, ‘Good afternoon. Is there by any chance anyone here who speaks English and who knows the way to the British Legation?’ Gyuri had earned this conversation.