Read Online Triptych by Margit Liesche - Free Book Online

everything? Risk being taken from her home. Her daughter.
    Her mother turned the roller, dabbed a white letter with corrective fluid, saying, “He is in Buda helping to run off flyers at a location there—” and blew on the wet dot. She fanned it with her hand, adding, “Then, throughout the night, they will be pasted on walls, distributed on the streets, delivered to Budapest factories. Tomorrow, the demonstration.”
    Ã‰vike was at the door. “Mother, I should go. Do you have the key?”
    â€œWhat? Oh, the apartment is open,” her mother said vaguely over her shoulder. “I will be late. Your father, too. I do not like to leave you alone but this…tonight, tomorrow…this is it. The moment for change. You will be okay, yes?”
    She thought of Gombóc and felt sick inside. Then of the caring neighbor’s words: “You are brave. You will be fine.”
    â€œYes, Mother. I am not a baby like little Dórika. I will be okay.” An eerie flash of Major Gombóc’s face in shadowy light . “Our neighbor arrived home when I did, let me in the front door. Maybe I can visit with her later.”
    A quiet descended. Her mother turned. Her gaze was penetrating, and it struck Évike that her mother was seeing her for the first time since she entered the room. For a moment, Évike thought she would change her mind, not go, or forbid her daughter to mingle with a perhaps untrustworthy neighbor.
    Instead: “Of course, this is a good idea. You will not be alone. I will not worry about rushing back.” She thought a moment. “Maybe our neighbor won’t mind helping you take of care of the baby. I will see what Dóra has arranged.”
    Near the doorway, a large placard on a wooden stick leaned against the door jamb. RUSZKIK MENJETEK HAZA, RUSSIANS GO HOME. How had she missed it, coming in?
    â€œMother, this sign, the flag on the table. What are they for?”
    â€œThe march tomorrow. Dóra will carry the sign, me the flag.”
    â€œB-but the flag…” Évike stumbled over her words. “It is dangerous.”
    â€œOf course. Revolutions are dangerous and they begin with symbolic acts.”
    ***
    Budapest, 23 October 1956
    The following day Évike’s fears and worries for her mother, for the outcome of the charade she’d pulled on Gombóc, for facing her classmates, evaporated. Her parents declared a holiday. No school, no work. Mid-afternoon, hand in hand, the threesome set off from their apartment in Pest to join with other marchers on their side of the Danube. On the Buda side, another throng marched simultaneously, the multitudes on both sides increasing rapidly in numbers, their chants demanding reforms growing stronger and sharper as they marched, urged on by the strident shouts of approval and encouragement from windows and the bystanders they passed.
    Not even the organizers or the Petöfi Circle, which had undertaken to lead the demonstrators, were expecting such a crowd. They were unprepared for the task of controlling it, and the Circle’s one loudspeaker-van soon became lost in the throng. Eventually, the two-pronged show of force met in Bem tér, the Buda Square on the opposite bank of the Danube from Parliament. There, Évike, her tall handsome father on one side, her flag-
waving mother on the other, listened as the sixteen demands were read to the assembly, which they later would learn was estimated at over 100,000 people.
    It was getting dark when demonstrators, comprised of both university students and workers, began marching back across the Margit Bridge in the direction of the Parliament Building. Upon reaching Kossuth tér, a large square in front of the Parliament, the swollen crowd began shouting and agitating for the appearance of the movement’s chosen new leader, Imre Nagy. Évike, nestling close to her father for warmth and protection, pressed a cheek to his dark wool