Balkan Star (novel excerpt)

“Szabadkik Street,” the conductor yelled over the trolley’s squealing wheels. The smoke from the motor’s smoldering electrical wires seeped through the floorboards as Peter Balogh and Anna Palinka stepped down onto the cobblestones. They stood in striking contrast to each other. He was lanky and poorly dressed. She, so beautiful, even her old clothes looked elegant.

One hundred meters from where they stood was the steel factory where one week ago the workers’ strike shut down all production. But tonight, a blinding yellow light flickered from partially enclosed buildings as molten steel was again poured. Within the barbed wired compound were railroad cars with defaced Russian lettering indicating the destinations of Vladivostok, Leningrad, and Moscow. Surrounding each car were young Russian soldiers, some nervously stroking their machine guns.

“No, not that way,” Anna said as she tugged him away from the direction of the flickering lights and the stares of the soldiers.

He looked where she was pulling him, but saw only blocks of deteriorating buildings. Against his university advisor’s warning, he was not only with her, but tonight would be in the presence of Hungary’s most famous writer, Andreas Fodor. A man labeled as a “counter-revolutionary” by the Rakosi regime.

“I thought you would have another reason for not coming,” Anna said.

“You didn’t give me much of a choice. Either I come or you’d leave me.”

“There are some things more important than a teaching position in the History Department.”

He turned his head away from her as his body stiffened. It was inevitable he would meet Fodor. But this was not the time. He was close to finishing his dissertation, then would come the promised teaching position if his dossier was approved by the Communist Central Committee. They walked past blocks of blighted buildings.

This section of Budapest had been the light manufacturing center of the country. But with the shift of emphasis into heavy industry, they were abandoned when workers were forced into other jobs. Covered with pidgin dropping, every sellable item within them was scavenged years ago. Finally, after walking for thirty minutes they entered a district where once grand buildings were in disrepair. Broken windows were replaced with cardboard or wood, and with no money to buy paint for the elaborate iron railings, they were rusted, some right through the intricate filigree. As they walked past a street lamp, the dim light illuminated three people leaning against a building.