Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Thirteen: Hungarian Uprising

I knew then, my head tucked under his chin, the eventually we would have to part ways. But I wanted to savour the seconds. His body was like a hot water bottle, and I was going to horde his heat. The stroke of his hand was like the kiss of a Mediterranean tide and I let it glide over my body. His heartbeat was the steady pulse that could lead an orchestra; and me alike. 

A wiggling tear sloshed onto his bare arm, making a ‘plink’ on the metal. "It's never going to get better... Is it..?" I tilted my head up to him, my eyes outlining his silhouette in the darkness.

He had the opportunity to brew me a potion of lies, but administered me the truth. “Not now...” He seethed like the words were a dagger to his back. “But someday, you’ll come through this...” And even though his first sentence had a semblance of truth, his second tasted like deceit.

I let his arms cave me, the most comfortable restriction I’d ever experienced. Cage bars were cold, stiff and solid. His arms were warm – even the metal one had been transplanted heat from our hug; they were malleable, shaping to my tiny frame that could be crushed like grains of wheat. And his flesh and muscle could be squeezed under hand; he had the bruising fragility of a human vessel to his soul.

And that wasn’t the last time I sneaked to his quarters. We established an alliance. A reliance. But our friendship had to remain confidential. I couldn’t risk anyone impinging on our secret circle of trust, or anyone trying to split us apart. So we spoke in silences; adventurous skims of the hand, defensive companionship in the field and stealing silent stares.

In corridors, he’d mesh fingers on the way past – sometimes slotting a creased slip of paper between my fingers; details of the guard shift, to arrange my drop-ins around their patrols. My ammunition’s clip would deplete in the field, my gun clicking as nothing dropped into the cartridge; he wouldn’t just reload me, he’d sacrifice his gun for me. He’d linger at the intersection between our two parts of the building, and through the bustling halls, just smile vacantly, like my watchful satellite.

I came to know the touch of his skin; the ridges and whorls of his fingertips as we kissed palms, his hand dwarfing my dainty one. I came to know his musk, the aphrodisiac of vodka mixed with cordite; sinful scents, repugnant and compelling. I came to know the shape of his lips, how when he smiled, the right side tended to quirk first, a dimple dipping in his cheek. I came to know the pitch of his voice, able to pick out his resonance in a stream of ambient noise, like a clarinet beneath the percussion.

When every day I was put through my paces, he knew how to draw the laughter from me. Even if I was in agony, he managed to rectify my pain with the right Hippocratic mentality. Even when it seemed hopeless. The days I wanted to hide beneath my bed, trying to drown out the world with my hands over my ears, he found a way to coax me out of my bubble of despair.

Still, the field work intensified. Daily they’d uncover a stockpile of documents for us to loot or a significant person to lynch. The resistance against the USSR was fluctuating, starting to spring up hither and thither. People didn’t just drop to their knees and salute the earth before accepting death, they stood up, refusing to just take the blows. That’s when I realised I wasn’t the only one doubting the Soviet Supremacy.

The orders came with shouts. And the orders came from high up; Khrushchev himself.

Books I had devoured in my education had told me that Budapest was a grand city; ancient with castellated towers that spiralled into the sun. It told of the river Danube, how it split Buda and Pest in two with it’s span of shining water. How the hilly banks, with rockslides of churches and spires climbing the mountainous terrain shone, shadowing the plateau parallel. It told of a city still entrenched into archaic ways, streets still cobbled and walls of chalky stone.