The train pulls into Szombathely station. My mouth is a testimonial to steam locomotives; the taste of sulphur lingers on and the poor quality brown coal from Hungarian mines makes matters worse. Still, only four years from the end of Europe's most devastating war ever, things could be worse. The sheer luxury of travelling in a passenger car instead of a cattle wagon is something to be grateful for.
According to plan, Józsi is waiting for me on the platform. Józsi is a local fellow who studies medicine in Budapest. When I asked my cousin Árpi , also doing medicine, to find me someone who lives near the Austrian border and could help me with my defection ("disszidálni" is the Hungarian word, derived from the English-Latin word "dissident", being one who disagrees), my old buddy was more than willing to help and within a week or so he introduced me to his colleague, Józsi Kovács. For his ready assistance I shall be forever grateful, whether I now succeed or fail.
The July heat is becoming serious, but bearable. The train for Körmend that will take us to Mária-újfalu, leaves at 15:45, plenty of time for a light lunch. Despite some slow tightening in my stomach, the two of us are having a genuinely good time and laugh a lot. We have no problem with downing a good lunch and a jug of beer.
I now enter the highest-risk zone of my journey. If I am to be caught, this is the stretch where it is most likely to happen. But the train ride to Mária-újfalu ( Józsi's village), is uneventful despite the fact that the Austrian border in now only a stone-throw away. I am getting tenser despite the apparent lack of any train police, they could be just coming through the next car for all I know. I'm holding that book, the "A TÖKE " close to my chest, it's title page turned outward, like a shield, like a priest holding the crucifix toward the Devil. Józsi notices and grins. I catch his eyes and laugh. It is funny, I concede.
Mária-újfalu is practically a suburb of SzentGotthárd,, a Hungarian town that almost straddles the border. We are now so close to the border that we no longer measure distances in kilometres, we now think in hundreds of metres.
As we are getting off the train, a group of schoolgirls is also getting off, make an awful racket. Eventually the station master sorts them out.
Józsi is taking me to his parent's house; on the way two policemen come towards us on the opposite side of the road. I put on my most nonchalant look and make sure that my shield, "A TÖKE" is properly in place, the crimson letters on the cover well visible to them. Józsi must know them as he waves in greeting. I follow his lead and even throw in a friendly smile. They nod back and pass us. We continue on without any incident.
We spend half an hour at his parents' house. The conversation with them is lighthearted. We talk only about the past and present; the future is too uncertain just at this moment, best not to touch on it. After a cup of coffee I have to say goodbye, staying longer could lead to problems for them. They wish me luck and we get moving.
(Jumping a few months ahead. When we,(Józsi and I), met again in Innsbruck in 1950, he asked" Do you remember those two policemen we encountered on the way to our place?"
"Yes, what about them?"
"Well, next day I met one of them, he asked - 'Did your friend get through alright?'. I nearly fainted. They knew. .
I turned pale even though it was several months after the event).
The sky has opened up, a sudden, heavy summer downpour catches us and within seconds we get soaked to the skin. I have a raincoat rolled up in my attache case .It is of a very shiny mid- brow rubber bonded on to a very light weight canvas material. With its fabric brown collar it is a very smart garment, a gift from my father. I don't put it on, partly because Józsi hasn't got one, partly because the downpour came too quickly and I have no time to fiddle with the locks on my briefcase. We run to a nearby tavern and settle ourselves as far from the window as we can, eat something and the waiting begins. At 22:00 a local character turns up, he is my guide. No introduction, no names, just a "Good evening" and handshakes. We leave the inn. Once outside I grab Józsi's hand and thank him for his help. He hands me a thick brown envelope, I know it holds my papers, my old Hungarian-German dictionary and a thin but excellent German grammar book. We embrace and with a final wish of good luck, he dissolves into the darkness. The rain has stopped.
My guide takes me to his place and I climb a ladder into the loft. I am still soaking wet, my heavy wool suit dries very slowly and my shoes are also quite wet. I am worried about catching a cold at such critical time….
The floor of the loft is lined with freshly cut hay, the fragrance is overpowering. I stretch out, exhausted; the day has been a long and tough one. Within a few minutes I am fast asleep.
The wake-up call comes at 02:00. I grab my attaché case and say good riddance to my, until now, protector, "A TÖKE" A book is a book and I save it from my spit. Anyway I am too dopey to care and make my way down the ladder.
Outside another character joins us. Again, no introduction, no names, just a whisper of "Hello". The wheels are in motion, the drama is in its final act. But I know that since late afternoon my odds have improved tremendously. The greatest danger lay in the second train ride and that went without any problem. I am winning. At this time I know nothing of the two policemens' awareness of my sinister intentions. Just as well.
The three of us set out towards the border. It is pitch black, the air still carries the smell of the evening rain. It is humid. One fellow is in front of me, the other one behind. My parents have already given Józsi their fees and he will hand it over tomorrow (rather this morning), after I am safely across.
Every noise of the night causes a flutter in my heart, I am tense, yet, strangely, I cannot call this fear. Fear is much more than this. We can just hear dogs barking at a great distance. The still air carries the barks over many kilometres. But what is more ominous than the barking dogs, is the searchlights sweeping back and forth with slow deliberation. Border guards, high in their towers watch the barbed wire fence in the wash of their
searchlights through binoculars . But the lights cannot reach us, we are outside their range. Unless, of course, there is a tower near us that is yet to switch on.
I am in no poetic mood, yet the dark lines of Omar Khayyám keep hammering my brain:
"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it"
The lines keep returning and the only way I can expel them from my tired brain is to start silently humming a silly song I learned last week " A csetneki csikós itat a Tiszán, sárga cserép csengő cseng a csikaja nyakán...." ("The herdsman of Csetnek takes his herd to the river Tisza to drink, his colt sports a yellow ceramic bell about his neck.."). This is all crazy.
Before this curative song itself becomes a fresh problem, we reach a small stream that must be flowing into the river Rába, the very river which is born in Steiermark of Austria as the Raab, and flows north through Hungary to reach the Danube at Györ. The river that taught me, Árpi, and his young brother Zsolti to swim at Kisbabót during those hot summers so many years ago. We halt at the stream. The soft whisper of the swishing water shuts out the faint noises of the night.
"You must not get your shoes wet, you have a lot of walking to do yet. Get on my back and I will carry you over the water" speaks very softly guide number one. I do as I am told, guide number two takes my attaché case. A few meters of wading in the knee-deep water and we are over. He puts me down. It would be too corny to think of the River Rubicon, but the parallel is there.
I don't think this was the border, we keep walking in the dark. The silence of the night is deafening. After a few metres we stop. Guide number one whispers "Here is the fence" he bends down and pushes the bottom strand of the barbed wire down as far as he can, whilst number two pulls the one above up so that I could climb through the fence. I am through and both follow me.
We walk another short distance, another fence and we repeat the same procedure. I know that the minefield that is being extended southward will be laid between these two fences. But I beat them to it!
Another twenty or fifty metres and we stop. "This is it, we are in Austria." says number one. Number two hands me my briefcase.
Number one whispers again as we reach a walking trail. "Just follow this path, walk straight ahead, a few hundred metres, say three, you will reach the highway. When you get to a T-junction at Helligenkreuz , only a few hundred metres from here, turn hard left and head west toward Eltendorf and keep going until you are through the Russian zone and in the British one. You should get through by daybreak. Remember to turn left! Toward west! Good luck!" We shake hands and he turns away. Number two had left us before, without saying a word.
I am alone.
There must be a full moon above the heavy clouds because I can, very faintly though, see the outline of trees and bushes. I stop for a minute and look back towards Hungary. I can no longer hear the dogs, but the searchlights, passing back and forth, sweeping the countryside, are highly visible. I let this picture penetrate my mind and etch itself into my brain. This is the picture I never want to forget; I want it to be the antidote for homesickness, regrets and all the sentimental schmalz.
This is rock-hard reality.
But it is my homeland I am leaving under the cover of the night, like a thief. Like a rat the sinking ship. I'm not sure about the rats, - I think I am leaving a lot of them behind just now- but I do know when the ship is about to go down, then it's every man for himself! The good ship "Hungary" is foundering in that red sea and it is not in my power to save her. The fact remains that the rats have taken command of her and it is the humans who must jump ship. I must, therefore, disengage myself and save what I can. There is a huge amount of good, solid work waiting for me and I can hardly wait.
I turn my back, "Farewell Homeland!"
I reach the T-junction and turn left. He had said "remember to turn left, towards the west." A short, four-line stanza surfaces in my mind. I read it in a Hungarian youth fiction called "Szabó Pali, a Hermit of the North Pole"
In the book, his father taught him this stanza and it saved him from getting lost forever in the endless snow. I don't remember how and why he got there, but I remember the stanza:
"I am facing North,
Behind me is South,
On my left the Sun declines
On my right the Sun will rise"
The problem was that I used to keep mixing up left and right and the corresponding decline-rise bits, until one day I found the way to remember. If I imagine the map of Hungary, and stand on Budapest, facing Slovakia, then that's north, the rest is easy; behind me is Yugoslavia to the south; on my left is Austria, being the west; the Glorious Soviet Union is on my right, that is the east.. Simple. The current problem, however, is that the overcast sky denies me navigation by the stars; rudimental as my skill may be, however I could still steer by the North Star, the good old Polaris. I must thus put my trust into this road to take me westward.
To avoid villages I must make a long detour in the heavily undulating countryside. I hope I can find my way back to the highway. It is still too dark to see my watch, but I guess is must be getting near 04:00. I am going through a timbered section of the road, there is a house near the highway. One window shows light, it must be a farmhouse. The farmer would be getting up. I stop and veer off towards it. I consider the risk of asking and confirming my current position and decide this course is worth taking. They must all be hating the Russians as much as I do. I tap the window and a man's deep voice asks:
"Ja, wer da?" as he opens the window. I muster my best school-German and say that I am coming from Hungary and ask whether I am still in the Russian zone? "Yes, you are", says the man "but keep going straight ahead and you will reach the British zone before the Sun is up, but step out smartly, young man!" I am pleased, not only because I am on the right track, but also because I understood every word he said. The window closes and I keep walking westward.
I am getting more relaxed and the rhythm of the steady walk is quite enjoyable. My brain is alert and its focus on the state of the environment is sharp. There is still the possibility of a Russian patrol coming out of nowhere. I allow fragmented bits of my thoughts to drift back an hour, back to the barbed wire moments, the sinking ship metaphor. I suddenly feel with Pyrrhus after his victory at Asculum
I won all and lost all.
Behind the barbed wire stayed Comrades Rákosi, Gerő, Révai and Péter Gábor with the rest of the returnees. But I have also left behind the giants of Hungarian culture. My poets, Ady, Kosztolányi, Radnóti and József Attlia, my composers, Lehár, Kálmán, Kodály and Fényes. Together with the thugs of AVO, the concentration camps and People's Courts and Dr. Tamás Nagy*. I lost my architects, Ybl, Lechner and Hauszman and my painters, Benczur, Csók and Szinyei Merse and the thousands of others. I can, I am sure, get their poems, books, music and prints outside Hungary, but I have thrown away my share of the soul of my nation that gave them birth. That soul remained behind the barbed wire. Then again, that spirit may most likely be dead by now, it had probably started dying sometime after the last Hungarian soldier laid down his arms in 1945.
I will find new poets, new writers, painters and architects but they belong to other nations, they can probably never really be mine.
How long will this exile last? Five years? Forever? Will the clash between East and West really come? Who knows.
Dawn must be approaching, I can see just a little better. Tiredness is slowly creeping into my muscles; it has been a long day and wasn't a dull one either. However, I am fit, eager, and travelling light.
The night is warmish and my drenched suit is getting dry, I am not so sure of my shoes but they cause me no trouble.
I am now going through another village (I cannot make out its name on the signpost, it is still too dark), and the last house on the right has a lit window. I knock on it. Another farmer's voice asks same question. I repeat the same answer.
"Yes, you are in Kiellesdorf, this is the border village of British zone, you are in the British zone." .I thank him before he closes the window and take a very deep breath.
The dice had stopped rolling. I won. I am free.
They were right. The Sun is just coming up, from my right, from the east (the only good thing that comes from that direction), and I am in the British zone. All the world's roosters must have gathered in this village to greet me. The ear shattering cacophony is heavenly music to my ears.
I keep on walking, the rising Sun slowly rolls the night back. By half past seven it is well up in the sky when I sight an Austrian policeman on his bicycle coming from the opposite direction. On my signal he stops, gets off the bike and comes over to my side of the road. I tell him who I am and ask him what I should do next. His friendly manner is not unexpected, nevertheless it makes me feel good. We head towards the next village.
The police station is on the main street. We go in and report my arrival. A policeman on duty puts a few questions to me and writes my personal details in some sort of a journal .He is easy to understand and my replies are brief and precise. This doesn't take much time. My first gendarme then takes me to a nearby house where an old woman gives me a mug of coffee and a piece of bread, no butter. It tastes good but the mug and the plate are of dubious cleanliness. Matters little, yet it is a hint of things and ways to come.
We go back to the station, the policeman brings out his bicycle; we set off on foot to somewhere. I would like to practice my German on him, but I am getting too tired for talking, besides what I could tell him? Life behind the Iron Curtain? He already knows about that only too well, I am sure, so, what's the point?
We reach Fürstenfeld, a small town, after a short half an hour's walk. He says good bye and wishes me good luck. We shake hands as I am handed over to another police officer. I guess I have walked almost thirty kilometres this morning. My true birthday is over, that mug of coffee and piece of bread was no party to celebrate it, but, my God, thanks for all that.
* Dr. Tamás Nagy was the new rector of the University of Economics, Budapest, my "expeller".
"Titoism" was an expression created in about 1948. Tito, was a charismatic and talented Croat who led the Yugoslavs partisans during WW2.He was a nationalist with socialist/communist leaning. After the war had ended
Stalin was trying to draft him into the communist block as a fully-fledged vassal. Tito ignored the directives from Moscow and told Stalin to get on his bike. He had thus invited the wrath of the Soviets and was excommunicated from the Soviet camp. He never looked back.
Rajk, the Minister of Interior was tried by the People's Court and found guilty of Titoism , condemned to death and hanged, if my memory serves me correctly on 15 October 1949. In the true Soviet tradition, some years after his execution he was rehabilitated, his body dug up from the unmarked grave and was given a State funeral.
Some forty odd years later, after the Soviets pulled out of Hungary, a friend, himself son of a Latvian refugee, a Melbourne educated lawyer half-mockingly, half- challengingly asked me "Charles, are you not feeling guilty for having abandoned your country?" I looked at him and with all the honesty I could muster, said "Friend, I have never abandoned my country, on the contrary, my country had abandoned me." My friend, the lawyer, for once, was lost for words.
I should like to point out the huge difference between the refugee of 1949 and that of 1999.
In 1949, the Soviets were sealing their borders, trying to stop the exodus of their citizens. We were locked in, desperate to get out. In sharp contrast, the refugee of 1999 is the one who is being pushed out, whilst desperately wanting to stay home. They are pushed out in 100s of thousands, if not in their millions. We escaped singly, a lone male, sometimes a single female, or the nucleus of a family, husband, wife, and the children.
Many of the refugees of 1999 are old people; you can see them on your television screen. We were the young ones; hardly anyone, I guess, was over 40 years of age. Our composition was heavy on students and professionals with a good sprinkling of tradesmen, manufacturers and merchants. The Soviets were, in a thin but endless stream of refugees, losing their middle class, the very layer that forms the backbone of nations and creates the bulk of a nation's wealth. Trying to stop this haemorrhage of their people, they constructed an Iron Curtain that stretched from the North Sea down to the Adriatic; their cost/benefit ration was very marginal, I might add.
Because they rigged the elections, the only way we could deliver our genuine votes was to vote with our feet. And we did just that.
Returning to the doomed Minister for Interior, László Rajk. He was a devoted communist, who fought in the International Brigade of Spanish civil war. I heard him once in the Parliament in 1948. I don't remember anything about his speech, but I do recall the man himself very clearly. His tall, lean, ascetic figure, his mousy hair that hung over his right eye, his grey sports jacket and black skivvy. And I remember his style of dress so sharply, because it was in such disharmony with the Gothic elegance of the building and decor of the Hungarian parliament. He didn't seem to belong there.
.
His nephew was a schoolmate of mine; he sat a couple of rows behind me. He was the only one in our class
who studied classical Greek, whilst we all did Latin. I liked him; he was a quiet type, in my judgement, an honest bloke. I was dieing to find out whether is was a communist like his uncle, but all my prodding, sometimes sarcastic remarks concerning the then current political situation, designed to extract a revealing response, yielded only his typical, enigmatic smile.
In 1995, when I worked on organising a 50-year reunion of the class of 47, I managed to find only three of them, my mate Rajk was one. I invited them for drinks at my one time watering place, the Hotel Astoria in Budapest.
Naturally, I was curious to know how he got on in life after we parted following the valedictory dinner in June 1947.
To my question, he said, "Well, you know, with a name like mine, it was impossible to get any reasonable job. For years and years, I was allowed only casual labouring. I cleared rubble, did gardening, washed up in kitchens and the like. It was only after my uncle was rehabilitated that I managed to get quite a good position as sales representative of a manufacturing company. Would you believe it? They even gave me passport and I was able to travel and sell abroad; life became bearable. But those years have damaged my heart, I am an invalid, haven't been able to work for years." The same enigmatic smile.
When I wanted to renew our friendship 1997, I was told that he died the year before. By then, another of the three, Wagner, was also dead. The third one, Ruby, who shortly after matriculation was sentenced for five years of hard labour to be served in Hungary's most notorious labour camp at Recske, was seriously ill with his wrecked kidneys. The illness was the direct result of an infection gotten and untreated in the camp. I don't know whether he is still alive today.
In May of 1999 I had a long telephone chat with my one-time Innsbruck college friend now living in London, István Kanócz. He escaped in December 1949 and my helper Józsi came out with him.