A Place to Stand Read online

  “What’s funny?” Kirkland asked.

  “Oh, just that Madame X, who said she wasn’t going to die for Count Csáky! But why should Hitler mind Hungary and Yugoslavia being friends?”

  “Because his motto, I guess, is the good old Roman one of ‘Divide and Rule’—look how he’s mopped up Czechoslovakia, alone, then Austria, alone, then Rumania, alone. Besides, he thought he’d tied this crowd to his coat-tails last year by the Vienna Award, giving them back a bit, at least, of the territory they lost at Versailles. Naturally he doesn’t want them ganging up with the Yugoslavs, who are real fighters. Mind you, I think Teleki was doing the right thing, but he took a risk in doing it, I’d say.”

  Mrs. Kirkland liked John to talk, it was good for him to get things off his mind; but she was always rather out of her depth in these local politics. People, however, she could manage; she knew about people, and said now—“Countess Hanna Teleki’s pretty sick, I hear. They’ve taken her to the Szanatorium.”

  “Yes. A pity. She’s a mighty nice woman, and a good wife to him. Well, I must get back. ‘Bye, dear.” He went out, and when her husband had gone Mrs. Kirkland, promptly forgetting all about the German menace that loomed like a thundercloud over Budapest from the North, went on worrying, alone, about Hope’s interest in telephone-calls.

  To the market Hope took her way on the Friday morning: on her arm a large plain wicker basket such as the peasant women used to bring their wares in to the city, her constant companion on these flower-buying expeditions, on her lips a happy smile, and in her heart a little tune lilting—the stave Stefan had sung as he leaned beside her on the embankment:

  “Along the green frontier, the corn is so green—oh so green!

  And so high, that a man may pass through it unseen—all unseen!”

  It went to a merry little air, and words and tune had stuck in her head. As usual when going to meet Stefan, she didn’t take the car; she was getting quite used to doing without it. It was delicious in the streets—the morning was bright and sunny, and that bewitching woman, Budapest, was in great beauty. Hope walked down the Váci utca, the Bond Street of the Hungarian capital, where all the best shops were situated; like the original Bond Street it was narrow and far from straight, a homely-looking street to contain so much of elegance and value; and as in London’s Bond Street, the most expensive shops of all were the most modest and unassuming of aspect. Hope dawdled along in the bright sunshine, pausing now and then to look in at a window: at Nassers the jewellers, where her Father had bought her the diamond wristwatch which had attracted the warning attention of the horn-faced woman in the Sörözö; at Fabian the shoemakers—goodness, that was an exquisite pair of black and silver evening sandals, sitting solitary between two bunches of flowers. She paused longest by the Herend shop, where the designs of genuine Hungarian artists were to be seen, wrought in porcelain in the factory out towards Devescer: coloured groups of flowers, as natural and delicate as in life; formal statuettes—there was that exquisite peasant Madonna, all white, wearing the country dress of the South, stylized and formalized, her full skirt and frilled petticoats frothing up with such graceful dignity round her ankles, the Child in her arms; and those delicious bracelets of tiny porcelain plaques, threaded on elastic, which Hope had always coveted. But though Mrs. Kirkland had filled the flat with Herend flowers, for some reason she had never been willing to give her beloved daughter a porcelain bracelet—and though Hope’s allowance was more than ample, one couldn’t give oneself that sort of present.

  Everyone in Budapest used to dawdle along the Váci utca of a morning, and Hope encountered various friends, among them Tibor’s pretty sister Erzse and her mother, the old Countess—going for a fitting, so they informed her, at the smart couturière’s conducted by another Countess with a resounding name, who very sensibly made her living—and a very good living too—by going to Paris twice a year, buying models, and copying them at home for Budapest society. All Hungarians went about on foot in Budapest in 1941, owing to the petrol shortage—only the diplomats and oil magnates like Mr. Kirkland could run their cars to any extent; Hope was quite accustomed, when invited to some country-house for the week-end, to being rung up by her hostess and asked to bring the So-and-So’s—“unless you are taking your maid”; and as she never did take Berta away with her she always collected the So-and-So’s on her way out, and crammed them and their luggage into the Dodge.

  The old Countess rallied her. “You are off to buy your wild flowers at the market, I see—but what a basket!”

  “Yes, I’m going flower-buying, Countess. Isn’t the basket grand? I got it in the fair at Székesfehérvár.”

  “It makes you look like a country-woman!” the old lady said teasingly.

  “I know. I like to look that way!—country-women are nice,” Hope replied gaily.

  “Indeed yes—” The Countess suddenly turned serious. “They are splendid people. Bless you, my dear child; my kindest regards to your Mother.” And accompanied by her daughter she moved on with slow, rather limping steps towards the dressmaker’s.

  The Central Market in Budapest before the battles of 1944, when it was badly damaged, was a vast glass-roofed building filled from end to end with stalls of country produce; a gallery ran round below the glass roof, from which the roar of voices raised in bargaining, the shuffling of feet along the concrete alleys between the stalls, and the rattle of trolleys wheeling in sacks of flour or grain re-echoed downwards to join the din which perpetually arose afresh. Here, most visibly, the country fed the town; the stalls were piled mountain-high with vegetables, green and white, with the vast yellowish rounds of cheeses, with sacks oozing the cream-coloured richness of meal, with the clean red-and-white of carcasses of meat, and the biscuity whitish yellow of poultry—chickens, turkeys, geese. But flowers were only sold in the gallery, and Hope, passing in at the main entrance, tripped up the open iron-work of the wide staircase, sniffing happily at the mixture of wholesome odours which filled the whole place as she went.

  At the top she found Stefan waiting.

  “Good morning,” she screamed at him—you had to scream to be heard in that resounding glass cave. And—

  “Good morning,” he screamed back. “You have chosen a fine place for a confidential conversation, I must say!”

  The girl laughed.

  “No, it’s perfect. No one else can hear a word, however much we screech at one another! How is your Mother? I hope she wasn’t too tired the other day, after our drive?”

  “On the contrary, it did her all the good in the world. She has not been so fresh and cheerful for months.”

  “It was lovely,” Hope said, going over and leaning on the iron balustrade, where she could look down on those mountainous stalls of edibles. “Oh Stefan, isn’t this a nice place? I do love it.”

  “You love all country things, I think,” he said, smiling at her. “And you have a regular peasant basket there.”

  “Yes—I always bring that for my flowers. It holds such a lot.”

  “And now, what do you buy?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing here,” the girl said. The part of the gallery at the head of the stairs was full of the grander flowers: hyacinths in pots, huge bunches of Parma violets, forced daffodils and jonquils, and even great sprays of white lilac and carnations from the hot-houses of Kesthely; the scent was almost as overpowering as the roar of sound, and the mingling of shapes and colours made the broad gallery, lined with flowers on both sides, look like fairyland.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Are they not lovely?”

  “Yes—yes they are. But they aren’t what I buy. I’ll show you—” But even as she set forward along the gallery a thought struck her, and she paused by a stall of hyacinths, their flowers of a peculiar fat solidity and magnificence. “Does your Mother mind the scent of hyacinths?” she asked.

  “No, she loves it. Why?”

  “Then I’ll get her some. White ones? I always like the white best.”

&n
bsp; “So does Mama,” he said.

  “Fine.” And she purchased a huge pot; when it had been wrapped in white paper she thrust it into his arms. “You must take that back to her.”

  “How she will love it,” he said, sniffing the fiercely penetrating fragrance as they walked on. But in a moment Hope stopped again.

  “Oh, the freesias are in! I must have some freesias. Heavenly, too heavenly, how they smell! I’ll bet you anything that your Mother loves freesias too,” she said.

  He stared at her. “You might have been brought up with us, as Jurek was,” he said, in a sort of astonishment. “My Mother has an absolute passion for freesias; we always had them in the greenhouse at home—freesias in the early spring, cyclamens in the autumn. I cannot think how you know these things; you must be clairvoyante”

  “No, nothing so interesting; just a good guesser!” she said, strangely warmed by his words. Was she perhaps after all not as un-European, as far from him and his life as she generally felt herself? Or was something bringing her, bit by bit, nearer to them all? But she had no time, her mind promptly told her, to stop and think about what that something might be—she turned to the stall, and after friendly chafferings had two pots of freesias wrapped and set aside. “We’ll get them as we come back,” she said, moving forward.

  While she had been bargaining for the freesias Stefan too had made a purchase, and now held it out to her—a huge bunch of dark violets.

  “I also made a guess,” he said—“that you like these better than the Parma violets.”

  “Oh Stefan, how lovely! Yes I do. You’re a good guesser too!—Thank you so much.” She set her countrified basket down on the floor and put her bag in it, while she pinned the violets into her coat; somehow the practical simplicity of that action stirred the young man, performed by a Princess in a Winter Fairy-tale. “In the States,” Hope went on, trying to push the pin of a diamond brooch through the thickness of her grey lambskin, “they always give you long pins with nosegays—so handy. But they haven’t got around to that yet in Hungary.”

  “What sort of pins?”

  “Oh, with sham pearl heads—but very strong. Come on; I have it fixed now.”

  They were extraordinarily happy and at ease that morning; more so than they had ever been. But as they passed along the gallery, from the region of the more splendid pot-plants into the humbler part where Hope proposed to make her purchases, she bethought her that she had met him here, brought him here in fact, to learn about his movements and plans—and pausing before a stall full of late snowdrops and little bunches of the wild aconites which they had seen shining like coins up on the Hármashatár-hegy, she said:

  “Has it come?”

  Before he could answer an old crone hurried out from the stall, snatched Hope’s hand and kissed it, muttering, “Kezicsókolom! (I kiss your hand!) And what does the young lady buy today?”

  “One minute,” Hope said to the old woman, and turned expectantly to Stefan.

  “Gracious lady, these are the last snowdrops; there will be no more. But see, they are still fresh, and perfect, perfect!” the old woman urged, thrusting a bunch into Hope’s face. “Smell the fragrance! You too, Sir”—and she held another bunch of the delicate ice-cool green-and-white things under Stefan’s nose. The young man burst out laughing.

  “I must say, chère intrigante, this time you have not chosen your moment so well, noise or no noise!” he said.

  Hope laughed too, then turned to the old flower-seller and addressed her with a friendly firmness that quite surprised him—as the fluency of her Hungarian always did.

  “Now listen, Mother—no, take those bunches away,” for the old woman was putting them into her basket. “You know very well that I never buy anything till I have looked at every single stall. No—please leave me be—I shall walk right along, and examine the flowers, and buy where I choose. I will see you presently; and don’t ask too much when I come back!”—and she walked determinedly away.

  “Formidable, the way you know how to manage them,” Stefan said, falling into step beside her.

  “I suppose it’s having lived here since I was a child—I do think it’s much easier for children to get to know another nation than for grown-up people. One runs about, with servants and so on, in such an easy intimate way when one’s a child; I used to come here when I was barely eleven with our old cook, before we had a chef, and I heard how she talked to these old girls on the stalls, and so now I do the same. Whereas my Mama is utterly at the mercy of any shopkeeper—she has simply no sales-resistance. No, Mother!—I am still looking; I shall buy presently,” she said, waving away another old creature who tried to thrust aconites and violets on her. “A little patience, in the name of Heaven!”—and she turned to Stefan again.

  “Let us walk fast; but you can tell me in one word. Did it come?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Hope was carrying her basket on her arm; when he said that she struck her gloved hands together, in an impatient distress which surprised herself.

  “Not yet? But this is absurd! Will you never get away? Why doesn’t it come?”

  “I too am worried,” he answered. “I am so afraid, so much afraid, that something may have gone wrong.”

  “What could go wrong? Someone be held up at the frontier—not get through, I mean?”

  “Yes—or that it falls into the wrong hands. And that would be a disaster,” he said, once again with that steely look and tone; she noticed that he seemed to show no concern about not getting away himself.

  “But can’t you find out?”

  “No. At least not yet. In our work one must have great patience. If things have gone wrong—which God forbid—word will come, sooner or later.”

  “But have you got to wait for that?—you and Jurek?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We are entrusted with getting it out, this time.”

  “And suppose there are hold-ups at the other frontiers, Yugoslavia and so on?”

  “Oh, for those we have our visas—thanks to you—that will be all right,” he said easily.

  They had come to the end of the flower stalls; Hope turned and began to walk back again. She was so much upset that it made her quite angry. “It doesn’t look as if it had been much good my bringing you passports, and getting your certificates to leave, if you’re just going to go on and on hanging around,” she said with irritation.

  “Miss Hope, please, do not be vexed with me,” he said, putting his hand on her arm. “You have been so good—you have done so much; I shall never forget. I am sure that you really understand how it is for us, that we cannot go at once.” He was very patient with her; he was touched; he wanted to soothe her. “All this must be so strange to you. You have never lived in such a world—while we have, always.”

  “Not in a world of secret police and frontier-hopping, surely?” she said, still irritably. “Not at home, when you were young, anyway.”

  “Always,” he said; “all my life, to some extent. I had to learn Polish, my own language, in secret.”

  “What can you mean?” she asked, her interest overcoming vexation. “No, let’s turn back—they’ll only come badgering us again”—and she wheeled round and once more walked away from the stalls and the urgent old women. “What do you mean?” she repeated. “Surely you were brought up speaking Polish?”

  “Speaking it, yes; but we were not allowed to learn to read it. As soon as we were of an age to start learning our letters, we had to be sent to a school where we were taught the German alphabet, and to read and speak German—and all our lessons were given in German: that was the law. You see we lived in the part of Poland that was handed over to Germany at the Great Partition, and all Polish education was forbidden—until Poland was re-united after the last war.”

  “Good Heavens! It’s too fantastic! Then how did you learn to read Polish?”

  “My Mother taught us. She had an old children’s spelling-book with letters an inch high, and she taught us out of
this, Litka and I; standing at her knee before the fire in her sitting-room, on winter evenings. If anyone was heard coming, she would hide the book under the cushion of her chair.”

  “But a person couldn’t be punished for teaching her own children their own language, privately, like that, surely?”

  “Indeed, yes. The penalties were very severe. We did not know that then, of course, but she bade us never to speak of it, and we did not, to anybody. The servants we could always trust, naturally, but it was better to take no risks, and I don’t think even old Jadwiga ever saw that book.”

  It stirred Hope when he said that; he was back in the past, with his memories; he could not know that she had any idea of who Jadwiga was, and yet he spoke of the old cook as if she, Hope, must know all about it. And in fact she did know!—and how the old woman used to dry his and Jurek’s clothes when they had been riding down the Vistula on the ice-floes.

  But Stefan was going on. “Our own peasants would never have given us away, either; but you could not trust any stranger—even people who came from the towns to buy corn, and still more those men who went from house to house selling buttons and boot-laces on a tray might be spies, and frequently were. How often when Antek, the old manservant, came to announce one, I have seen my Mother slide the book under her skirt—and when he had gone downstairs, push it in under the cushion.”

  She listened in horrified astonishment to this account, which the young man gave her so matter-of-factly. What a childhood!—with even learning one’s own alphabet a matter for secrecy, and pains and penalties if one was discovered doing it. This was the reverse of the medal, the other side of that happy up-bringing which she had visualized from the picture of the big house in the sun-filled landscape, and Stefan’s and the old lady’s words. Walking along the gallery in the Central Market in Budapest, away in Hungary, the American girl pictured those evening scenes: little Mme Moranska—still young, then, and probably pretty—teaching the tiny Litka and Stefan their forbidden letters in the firelight, and tucking away the dangerous book when the old butler came in. It was so utterly impossible to imagine anything of the sort in her own childhood—in Massachusetts or Vermont, where her grandparents and aunts lived.