Goodbye to Budapest by Margarita Morris

Author:Margarita Morris [Morris, Margarita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Landmark Media
Published: 2019-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Part 2 - October 1956

Chapter Ten

Monday, 22 October 1956

The cry of an infant invades her dreams.

With a mother’s instinct, Katalin is awake at once, pushing back the bed covers and feeling her way across the cold floor to the cot at the foot of their bed. Little Eva is six months old and has only recently started sleeping through the night. But with military precision she wakes at five thirty every morning demanding to be fed. Katalin scoops the baby into her arms, breathing in her warm, biscuity smell and pops her little finger into the tiny mouth to silence the squawks before she wakes her two-year-old brother, Lajos, who is still fast asleep in a camp bed on the other side of the room. Zoltán is stirring now too, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. A grey light filters through the curtains and outside the first trams of the day trundle past.

Katalin takes her daughter into the kitchen and straps her into her high chair. She needs to hurry and get some food into the child before the crying wakes the whole building. There are six of them living in the apartment now. Katalin, Zoltán and the children sleep in what used to be her parents’ room and Márton has moved into what was Katalin’s room. András sleeps in the former spare room. It’s a bit crowded at times, especially when they have to queue for the single bathroom, but they’re lucky they have the place to themselves, with so many people forced to live in communal apartments with strangers. Katalin tears off a chunk of bread and passes it to Eva who starts to gnaw at it with her half dozen tiny teeth. The crying stops and Katalin breathes a sigh of relief as she warms some milk in a pan.

She turns at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Her father appears in the kitchen in his dressing gown.

‘I hope Eva didn’t wake you,’ she says.

‘I was awake anyway,’ says Márton. Since his release from the labour camp at Recsk, he doesn’t sleep well. She hears him moving about the apartment late at night or in the early hours of the morning as if he can’t exorcise the ghosts of his imprisonment. She has tried to get him to talk about his experience as a prisoner, but he just shakes his head and turns away. He hasn’t been allowed to return to his old job at the university, but he says he wouldn’t have the heart for it now. Sometimes he asks her to play the violin for him and he listens with his eyes closed. It seems to soothe him and she’s glad to do it.

She pours the warm milk into a bottle and passes it to her daughter. ‘Shall I make us some coffee?’

‘Yes please, love.’ He sits down at the table, patting his granddaughter on the head. Only the children have the power to cheer him up these days.

For the next half hour the apartment is bustling with life as everyone gets ready for their day.

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