December 1944
The German soldier was trailing behind the others, clutching in his left hand a good portion of the intestines spilling out from an otherwise quite smart uniform. To Gyuri, he didn’t seem greatly distressed – it was rather as if the unTeutonic untidiness of runaway guts was far more troubling than any physical pain.
Of course, fussing or expecting any sort of sympathy or attention would have been a waste of time – like everything else sympathy and attention were running out. The Germans, pedestrian or motorised, still pretending that the war wasn’t over, were heading to the river and crossing over to the castle where it was rumoured they were going to hole up and fight it out with the rapidly approaching Russians. Gyuri had watched the Germans arrive in force, months earlier, when they had helped themselves to Hungary ’s government. The Germans had poured in with their heroic motorcycles and other items of snappy transport, swaggering around in beautiful leather coats.
The Germans weren’t looking so confident now, the prospect of getting mashed by the Russians not agreeing with them. It would have been fun to watch if it hadn’t been for the fact that the mashing was going to take place in Budapest. From the direction of the City Park Gyuri could hear the distant rumbling of artillery, the mighty footfalls of the Red Army.
Military training, even for fourteen year-olds like Gyuri, had been stepped up since the Hungarian High Command, having lost one army, was trying to get another to play with. Gyuri’s instructors had placed exclusive emphasis on running around a lot in gas masks and then crawling back and forth over some prime cow pats. ‘The Russians will be in big trouble if they try to defend themselves with cow shit,’ one of Gyuri’s fellow soldiers had remarked.
They were also shown the much-hailed ‘Panzerfaust’, the shoulder-launched antitank missile that was the latest secret weapon from the German scientists, and the piece of kit that everyone wanted to get their hands on. Their instructor had taken the Panzerfaust out of its box and held it out to them like some sort of talisman. ‘There it is, lads, the Panzerfaust,’ he had said, packing it back into its box so it could be taken off to be exhibited elsewhere and launching into a lengthy description of sundry hush-hush techniques for getting a truly first-rate shine on your boots.
Some of the duties were more pleasant. There had been a boom in requisitioning, presumably on the premise of doing your looting while you could. The notoriously stupid Hankóczy, who having made it to fifteen, was in charge, had led them on a stripping tour of properties in the Jewish quarter.
Supposedly searching for items that would help the war effort, Gyuri and Dozsa had an exceptionally good pillage in a pharmacy, recruiting lots of soap. Dozsa’s presence had been rather odd, since his father was Jewish and had been issued with a yellow star and one evening had been taken away. Gyuri had spotted him being escorted away, carrying one small suitcase. But a day or so later, Dozsa’s father had returned, and although he hadn’t been tap-dancing on the roof, he had been left alone.
Coming out of the pharmacy, Gyuri and Dozsa had heard a shrill protest from the other side of the street. From a fully-opened second floor window, a diminutive, but vocally powerful old lady unleashed a savage tirade against their appropriation of toiletries: ‘filth, termites, bloodsuckers. Have you no shame? Stealing like this in broad daylight?’ The woman had the appearance of being irritating on a full-time basis but Gyuri had been startled by the vehemence of her denunciations, which were surprising: against the background of wholesale export of Jewish families, the emptying of a pharmacy didn’t really rate a mention. Also Gyuri didn’t see why he should get the blame for the Nazi goings-on. Was the woman out of touch, or was it her pharmacy?
But she was very loud and very persistent. People stopped to watch the show. The most annoying thing, Gyuri suspected, was that she was right. Hankóczy had materialised and taken stock of the situation: ‘Right, Fischer, shoot the old bag.’ Gyuri had been issued with a vintage revolver, as a sort of official warrant, which he enjoyed wearing. ‘Go on,’ Hankóczy commanded in a senior, military sort of way. Gyuri pulled out the revolver from its holster. ‘Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!’ insisted the old lady, weary of the world, but Gyuri, after reflecting that at that distance he’d probably miss, had decided to be merciful.
‘Your mother, dear madam, was a whore,’ he had shouted belligerently. This massive and out-of-all-proportion rudeness had pleased Hankóczy even more than a round through the old girl would have. It had certainly blown her back into her flat, ripping apart her lace-curtain world. Hankóczy slapped Gyuri on the back approvingly but a creeping feeling of shame soon overtook Gyuri. You’re brought up to be polite to little old ladies, Gyuri thought, but all you want to do is to shoot them.
Tired of watching retreating Germans, Gyuri set off for home. He was curious about what war would be like close-up. Their first instalment had been yesterday, when he and Pataki were looking out from the tiny balcony that the Patakis had, a sort of a concrete slab that jutted out of the building. Pataki’s mother called them in for a few samples of the parliamentarian pastries she had been baking. A minute later, there was a faint thump and they went back to the balcony to see what it was, or rather they wanted to go out on the balcony, but they couldn’t because it was gone, seized by a long-distance Russian shell that hadn’t felt like exploding.
Gyuri had heard a similar story from Gergely. Gergely’s family were down in the shelter during an air raid and when it was over went back upstairs to their top-floor flat, opened the door, and found the whole flat gone. All that was left were the front door, its hinges and a view of dusty debris four floors down. ‘At least we didn’t have to bother tidying up,’ Gergely had commented.
Gyuri had also quizzed István about the war. István had spent three years on different fronts, always bringing back in an elder brotherly way some mementos for Gyuri: bullets, bayonets, helmets and one Russian revolver that sadly didn’t have any ammunition. ‘What’s it like at the front?’ Gyuri asked. István hesitated, uncharacteristically, and then replied: ‘You try to shoot first… otherwise it’s like anything else. Some people love it, some people hate it.’ Elek, who had been highly decorated the last time round, never discussed the war, but then he never discussed anything with Gyuri. Dealing with his children came as naturally to him as juggling pineapples. Gyuri had inquired once about the decorations, to which Elek had volunteered the information: ‘As a soldier in a war, you end up highly-decorated or dead, though some manage to overlap.’ The imminence of the Russians had coaxed one further military, paternal revelation from Elek, however: ‘Listen, if it comes to the point where someone is stupid enough to tell you to fight, just vanish and hide somewhere till it’s over.’
As Gyuri walked down Damjanich utca, he saw a limousine with army insignia parked outside number ten. Wondering if this signified anything for the family, Gyuri spotted Kálmán, one of István’s closest friends, now something influential at the High Command, wearing a fancy dress uniform. Kálmán was taken aback to see Gyuri and you could see him reviewing a number of approaches before going for the shortcut: ‘István’s back. He’s badly wounded.’
Inside the flat, Gyuri got a glimpse of István lying on the dining-room table, looking like an eleven stone steak. Elek was next to him with one of his old army chums, Krudy, a doctor who was taking instruments out of a black bag. Gyuri knew, although he knew that he shouldn’t know, that Krudy had made a fortune out of pussy, angel-making (conducting abortions) and reconstituting hymens to produce born-again virgins for the best families in Budapest. Just before Elek shut the door in his face, István, who had somehow noticed Gyuri standing there, shouted: ‘Sorry, I didn’t bring you back anything this time.’