A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [87]
“Tuba,” was the shaky-voiced reply. And Konrad laughed as he marched his prisoner safely away from the angry women.
“I think you'd better find a safer place to hide,” Konrad said, shaking his head as the man ran off. He wasn't going to shoot a tuba player.
Konrad went home and decided he should get rid of the submachine gun. But the next morning, November 4, when he went to return it to the university, there were Soviet tanks on the street-entire armored columns that had been brought in from somewhere. People kept pulling him into doorways and warning him not to get near any major streets with that submachine gun. He could find himself standing in front of a Soviet armored division with nothing but a submachine gun. He returned home and dropped off the weapon, and then went back to the university, unarmed, only to find the campus wedged in with large steel clanking Soviet tanks. The university rebels were sitting around with their weapons. They certainly weren't going to start shooting at this many tanks. By the end of the day, the Soviets told them to give up, or the university would be leveled. They gave up.
IN SOUTHERN PEST, in Ferencvaros, the shooting started on October 24. A tank rumbled into firing position in front of the Gazdags’ building, firing with an enormous boom down their little street. At the end of the street were rebel-held barracks, which answered with the steady pop-pop-pop of machine guns. The tank responded with booms so large, they shook the windows, which had to be opened to keep from shattering. For six days the fighting prevented anyone from leaving the Gazdags’ building, and they had been caught with nothing to eat but potatoes. There was not even anything to put on the potato. Gyula's grandmother baked them by the rackful for three meals each day. On October 30 the shooting stopped, and Gyula's grandmother went out and bought food and spent the quiet day cooking and preparing for when the fighting would start again.
Sunday morning, Gyula was sleeping in his bed. At six o'clock he was awakened and given some new books that had been wrapped for Christmas. These Jewish atheists celebrated Christmas. Then he was led to the bomb shelter that had been set up in the basement of the building in preparation for World War III. Gyula had spent his childhood dreading World War III, the inevitable showdown with the Americans that could happen at any time. All buildings had to have bomb shelters where the residents could sit out the nuclear holocaust.
The fighting grew heavier—more than just one tank and a few machine guns. There was a war up there, not with the Americans but with the Soviets. But for nine-year-old Gyula, this was the best time of his whole childhood. The children of the building spent the entire day in the basement playing. Each family set up beds in the cubicle used for their belongings. The whole family was there. No one went to school. No one went to work. And making it even more exciting, they sat around all day by candlelight. And when the parents got dull and started debating, the children could just roam from cubicle to cubicle and find other children with whom to play. To Gyula, this seemed some sort of model lifestyle.
His parents sat on the bed and talked about leaving Hungary. But Zsuzsa was adamant that she was not going to spend any more of her life moving. She had started in Budapest, fled to Vienna, then back to Budapest—it was enough. She was staying here, come what may.
GEORGE LIPPNER was also nine years old, and he also was hiding with his family in the basement of their home in Ojpest. But he wasn't enjoying it. The family spent a night in the basement when the shooting was particularly violent, and when they came up in the morning, they found that two crosses had been painted on their door. Looking outside, they found similar markings on all the homes of neighbors of Jewish origin. These neighbors, like the Lippners, did not practice Judaism or talk about it. Nevertheless, somebody had known which doors to paint. George had no idea what Jewish practices were,