Hungary, November 1956

My father

loved the radio, his anodyne to loneliness. Awake in bed at twenty- five, half-listening to the broadcast, a voice read Pushkin in his ear: words so beautiful, they bruised him. Bruise, or beüt— in his native tongue—this was the word he used. Was it the bare night above, he wondered, or did the poem seem to clarify his place? He learned it by heart, and in the Russian, though my father was no Muscovite. Evenings he sat in stillness, listening to the nightly report. His gut flush with hate, twitched constantly, needled—as it were— by the spectral hatchet of the East's swift progression. Rumor spread of this Red Army's advance. Orosz devils, people whispered chaotically, coming here! Shame, for shame! We want no Russians here. We want no Communist regime. But my father was wise, and with ancestral sorrow bowed his heavy head and let a bated breath out, like a plume of smoke it hung in the cooling autumn air. He spoke then, to no one in part- ticular: aki mer, az nyer. The sun fell, no rain fell. That night was raw and cold.

My father

was a layman. In a factory on the skirts of Pest, he made auto parts for trains, for city buses. He was paid piece-rate for his labor; it was not uncommon, though, for him to come home penniless, having drunk his daily wages. Those nights my mother cried. After one such night, I watched my father leave early for work, his demeanor quiet and repentant. He kissed my mother on the cheek and gently closed the door behind him. It was fall. It was 1956. It was November. Outside the wind made somersaults in the shifting air as the Soviets took Buda, easily and without trouble. The afternoon they spent collectively, positioning their tanks along the mouth of Danube River. Their mouths mirrored their eyes then; em- boldened, they wanted to take Pest.

My father

spent the day like any other, hoisting girders, welding steel pieces with carriage bolts, he toiled beneath clouds of man-made carcinogenic flame. He neither faltered, nor complained. Soon after lunch his buddy Ezra appeared, shouting: the siege had begun. The workers scrambled, my father among them. Not long after he began his hurried descent down the winding city streets, he fainted. His body lay there, immobile. In the capital of Hungary, his body kissed the stone.

My father

surfaced, some hours past curfew. With fear he raised his head to register the sky a shade too dark, the streets hushed, and emptied. He collected himself, and briskly, he hurried, quietly as he was able. In the distance he saw the river, and beyond the river, Buda. Buda, where, he imagined, his wife and son sat waiting patient at the table for him, for his arrival. Their supper growing cold. Coming upon the western bank of the Danube, a bark hit him like a bullet. Emerging from the darkness, two Russian army officers. The men spoke furtively to each other, while my father, helpless and confused, watched: one soldier stopped talking; the other's arm moved, extended then, passionately, in the direction of where my father stood, holy, like a stone. But he was not stone.

My father

a simple man, spoke the only Russian that he knew. When he finished, the soldier lowered his gun while the other turned away, his eyes flooded with tears; the moments felt heavy with them. Finally, the soldier wiped his eyes, and the two soldiers walked in step, in silence, beside my father. Home. Across the bridge, across the blue Danube.