. Return -Back to 3It is late, the radio in the sitting room plays softly. I can hear it through the door. In between news bulletins extolling the brave Hungarians in their stalwart resistance to the Soviets Liszt is played on high rotation. At the moment Piano Sonata in B minor, a frenzied disquieting attack, to dispel the lulling effect of the Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 in C sharp minor, that optimistic romp that was broadcast at times when the news was bad in the belief it would stir our patriotic inclinations. My father is a patriot. A medal wearing, flag waving blind fool of a patriot. My mother on the other hand distrusts the country, it’s leaders, it’s people. But she loves my father so she stays. The programmers at the radio station are undoubtedly cognisant of the Soviet penetration through German and Hungarian lines in what the Russians called operation Bagration. I leave the news as Marshal Grechko and the Ist Guards are not coming through the Carpathian Gap after not crushing the Hungarian Ist Army. I climb out of my bedroom window to meet Ignaz, the boy who delivers the sodas to the farm every week.
A mist clings to the ground like gloom and the gibbous moon momentarily breaks through scudding clouds, the billowing spinnaker of an invisible ship passing between vapour islands.
I see my father’s head lit yellow by the storm lantern he is holding. I can see my mother standing a little distance from him but shrouded in the dark. He hands her the lantern to hold, the light from which paints her face an anxious expression. He uses a long handled shovel to neatly chop a square of turf from the ground and lays it beside the hole he is digging. I watch cloaked in shadow without making a sound as he works the shovel. My mother passes him the metal cash box which usually sits in the bottom draw of his desk from which he pays the farm labourers. He puts the box in the hole, then back fills being careful to separate a volume of soil equivalent to the volume of the cashbox. In two trips he casts the excess soil onto the tilled onion beds which reach close to the back of the house. Returning he replaces the square of turf into the wound in the ground then leans the shovel against the wall and my mother and he disappear into the house. I’m puzzled by this because I am unaware of what is coming. I am quickly distracted by Ignaz quietly whistling to attract my attention.
“Lena, what was your father doing?” He asks emerging from the shadows and stepping into a puddle of moonlight.
“I don’t know.” I reply.
“Was he was burying treasure?”
His question alerts me to some indistinct peril.“I don’t know. You mustn’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.” he says reaching out pulling me close. His mouth envelopes mine, his tongue probing mine with brute teenage urgency. His hand between us massaging my breast. The hole forgotten in the physical moment. But as we kiss the question lingers in the back of my mind like an eidolon.