The Bridge at Andau: The Compelling True Story of a Brave, Embattled People by James A. Michener
“It was when I started to grow up that I appreciated what had really happened. I started college, but when they found out I was an Esterhazy, I was kicked out. I had to live surreptitiously with friends, but when anyone on the street discovered that I was an Esterhazy, I had to move. My friends were willing to take the risk, but I wasn’t willing to subject them to it.
“I tried to go to the university but was told, ‘There is no place in Hungary for people like you.’
“I asked, ‘Then can I leave Hungary and get a job in America?’
“They said, ‘No. In America you would tell lies about the new Hungary.’
“When I asked, ‘Then what can I do?’ they gave no answer.”
But because he had dared to ask about leaving Hungary—a fearful crime in a land where the leaders say everyone is happy—the AVO began to torment him and he was thrown into a forced-labor gang to work in the sugar-beet fields. I don’t know whether this next statement is true, it sounds so unbelievable, but young Esterhazy said, “We were hauled out of bed at three o’clock in the morning and we worked with only one decent meal till midnight. Three hours later we were hauled back to work. This went on for three months until the AVO felt that we had been properly indoctrinated. Then we were set free.
“But we still could take no job, find no place in society. I asked in despair how I was to spend my life and they said, ‘In the labor battalion.’
“My life in this army was one of long persecution. Officers would see my name and call out, ‘All right, Esterhazy! You clean out the sewer.’ Day after day they found joy in assigning me to such jobs, but I found that my fellow workers in the labor battalion took no part in the persecution. Their attitude seemed to be, ‘So he’s an Esterhazy. But that’s no reason why he shouldn’t live.’ ”
Yet in the revolution against the Soviets these same labor battalion men, who were among the most furious fighters, would not permit Esterhazy to aid them. “We don’t want anyone to say that former noblemen helped us,” the fighters told him. “Wait until we have won, then things will be better for everybody.”
I hesitated a long time before including the story of the young nobleman. I reasoned, “If I even mention an Esterhazy the Russians will say, ‘See, he wants the old regime back.’ ” But then I thought, “My former students in Colorado, who remember how I argued in 1938 that if the nobles of Hungary did not distribute their lands there would have to be revolution, will know that I never had much sympathy for the Festetichs and Esterhazys.” I was glad to find that young Esterhazy did not have too much sympathy for them, either.
For the important aspect of this story was that the young man I met at Andau was a marvelous human being. He could have made a fine engineer, or a good professor, or an excellent manager of a freight office. He had an affinity for machines, taught himself German and French, seemed to be promising in mathematics. No one I know in Hungary wants to put young Count Esterhazy back in control of his 1938 peasants, or even to restore to him his four thousands holds of land near Budapest. Those days are gone, and he knew it better than I.
But for a society conscientiously to degrade human beings because of their accidental birth is disgraceful. For any nation to deprive itself of the capacities of any man is really a sin against the entire society. And if a system not only refuses to use native capacities but establishes a regime for stunting or destroying those capacities, then such a regime is doomed.
Young Esterhazy played no part in organizing or operating the revolution. That was done by others who were disgusted with the way their nation in all its aspects was being criminally abused. When I last saw Esterhazy he was on his way to Great Britain. “Maybe plastics or automotive engineering or electronics,” he said. “Anything that’s useful to the world.”
No matter how long one stayed at the border, he was constantly surprised. One night a Hungarian man of thirty who spoke English helped me with translations and I sought to repay his kindness.
“Do you need any money?” I asked him as dawn came over the frozen marshes.
“Not money,” he replied. “But I have always wanted to see the Vienna opera.”
“You shall, tonight.”
Like everyone else, he had come out with one suit, but somehow that first day he got it pressed, and as we entered the bright new building of the Vienna opera he said, “I’ve heard about this new production of Carmen. In Budapest we were hungry for any news of European art.”
“What new production?” I asked.
“Vienna has hired a brilliant young Russian, Georges Wakhewitsch, to design a completely new Carmen. It’s supposed to be glorious.”
When the curtain rose, Wakhewitsch’s Carmen hit me right in the eye. It was dazzling. First, the designer had built on the stage several complete houses with roof-top patios, and large plazas hung midway between the village street and the roofs, so that action took place on three levels. Next he had dressed literally hundreds of extras and chorus members in brilliant costumes, so that as the action swirled about the stage, there was a constantly changing kaleidoscope of color harmonies. Finally he had arranged the opera so that there was a great ebb and flow of human beings, more than I had ever dreamed Carmen could accommodate.
Wakhewitsch’s Carmen was not a Spanish opera, but it was grand opera. Micaela was a winsome little German girl down from the Alps in a dirndl. The big blond chorus girls were German girls come to Seville from Munich. And the pace of the opera was heavily deliberate, with the best notes hung onto by both orchestra and singers until the spirit of the action was lost.
“I don’t mind the words being sung in German,” my Hungarian whispered. “Gives a kind of Spanish effect.” I agreed with him. They sounded more Iberian than the customary French words.
And I thought that Wakhewitsch had been downright brilliant in his staging of the toreador’s song, during which the top tier of the stage was filled with Spanish dandies dressed all in black and lighting the song with dozens of candles. My refugee thought the third act was best, when no footlights of any kind were used, only traveling spots which followed the principal figures from above and made Carmen’s song of fate and death immensely powerful.
In the intermission following this gloomy act my Hungarian said quietly, “You cannot know what it means to come back into the full world of art. A modern production of Carmen. How we used to long for communication with the rest of Europe.” He sat literally bathed in the joy of hearing Bizet, and toward the end of the intermission he said, “And to see as my first opera one in which a new artist is trying to accomplish something new. This is very exciting.”
But neither of us was prepared for the last act of this bright new Carmen. From Bizet’s Fair Maid of Perth the music for an extensive ballet had been lifted, and now as the curtains parted we were thrust into the middle of Seville. The entire depth of the stage was used, several house fronts having been built, and the rim of a complete bull ring. To the left a chorus of many Spaniards stood vocalizing the borrowed music, while from the distant rear of the immense stage at least sixty ballerinas approached from so far away that they looked like children. After them came sixteen separate groups of bullfighters, followed by officials, townspeople, hangers-on and finally Escamillo and Carmen. And from the rafters that crossed his stage, Wakhewitsch had hung some two dozen great chunks of cloth in brilliant colors, draped like bullfighters’ capes. It was an overpowering scene and prepared one for the magnitude of the final tragedy.
If the reader is surprised that I have interrupted my account of the revolution so long to speak of Carmen, I would say only this. Those of us who met the refugees at the border or in Vienna were unprepared for the spiritual hunger with which these people wanted to talk about art and ideas, about politics and the nature of man’s experience. One of the most promising aspects of the Hungarian revolution was that it was initiated by men who wanted the human spirit to be inquiring and free. They wanted the simple rights of talk, and honest newspapers, and respect for
The aspect of the revolution which surprised me most was the profound longing with which Hungarian intellectuals wanted to return to the community of European nations. Many spoke of this with fervor. “Of all that Russia robbed us of,” my chance interpreter said that night, “the most precious was communication with our fellow citizens of Europe.” Shortly before the revolution broke out, a Hungarian poet, Tamas Aczel, expressed this longing in his “Ode to Europe,” passages of which have been translated as follows:
Europe, our common mother, we return to thee.
Set an example, show us how,
As you have done for centuries …
Be with us, Europe,
Common fate, love, work, future.
Oh, beating heart, pure truth
To plow, to sow, to harvest, to die and rise again a thousand times.
After the opera my companion observed, “The intellectuals inspired the students and the students inspired the workingmen from Csepel. But do you know why the students felt they had to revolt? Because whenever they wanted to read one of the world’s important books they were forbidden. But they were free to read some communist’s critique of the book. I know what communism thinks is wrong with Schopenhauer. But I don’t know Schopenhauer. Only what some third-rate communist thought about him.
“For example, Georges Wakhewitsch is a White Russian. I’m sure that in Budapest I could have read everything that was wrong with his version of Carmen. It would have been a corrupt capitalist work that offended the great soul of the workingman. I like things better the way you do them in Vienna. You don’t lecture me about what’s wrong with Carmen. You let me see for myself.
“Does all my talk about Carmen bore you?” the refugee asked finally. “You don’t know how wonderful it is to be able to sit here with a glass of beer and talk. And if discussing Carmen leads you to get mad at Eisenhower or Bulganin, you can say so, and nobody arrests you. How delightful it is to let talk lead on to new ideas. In Budapest if you talked about Carmen you always stopped with the music, and even then you had to be careful to say what was accepted at that moment.”
If Americans forget that Hungary rebelled against communism primarily because the young people of the nation wanted intellectual freedom, we would miss one of the focal truths of this revolution. We must remember that there are men in this world who are willing to fight for the right to read newspapers and to argue about what has been said. There were young men in Budapest who laid down their lives because they wanted to return to a system in which a man could sit with friends over a glass of beer and let the wild flow of ideas lead where it would.
At one camp near Andau, a Catholic priest visited a group of refugee students and asked, “Now that you are free, would you like me to conduct religious services here next Sunday?”
The boys were embarrassed, but finally one said, “Father, we thought we’d just sit around and talk.”
The priest understood and laughed: “Yes … after so much silence.”
The climax at Andau came on Wednesday, November 21, when the maximum number of refugees came into Austria across the Einser Canal. It was a cold, crystal day of memorable beauty, and thousands of Hungarians sought refuge. They resembled the procession of prisoners who march into daylight from the dungeon in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
Then, as dusk fell, there was an ominous halt to the procession. Figures already on the canal bank passed us … but no more came. A whispered rumor flashed down the canal: “The AVO have arrived.” There was a silent half hour as cold winds from the marshes moaned through the bare branches of the white birches that lined the canal, and those of us who were watching tried to penetrate the faltering light to see what was happening at the bridge.
Suddenly there was a dull, distant garrrummmph! We peered into the darkness and saw nothing, but a refugee who had been waiting for a chance to escape came rushing down the canal bank shouting, “They dynamited the bridge!”
In order to find out how much damage had been done, two daring spies wormed their way along the canal and well into Hungary. By the dim light of flares which the guards in the watchtower were using they saw that the bridge at Andau had indeed been destroyed. The two rude pillars on either bank were standing, and part of the bridge itself, the southern span, if so inconsequential a bridge could be thought of as having spans, had been blown apart. Gloomily the spies confirmed the bad news. “The bridge can’t be used.”
Night now enveloped us, and we thought of the thousands of refugees who were huddling in chilled groups throughout the Hungarian swamps. They were only a few feet from freedom, seeking desperately some way to cross that final barrier of the canal and the steep banks they must negotiate before reaching Austria. But the bridge was useless, and unless some alternative was discovered quickly, these refugees would be stranded in sight of freedom but powerless to attain it.
The moon rose over the silent canal. Frost grew mysteriously on the frozen marshes and reeds crackled when a man walked through them. We were about to experience one of the fabled white nights of Central Europe, when the birches and the shimmering icy swamp and the pale, powdery moon combined to make one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in nature. This was not only my opinion; five different war-toughened reporters from countries around the world reported the same fact. The silence of this magnificent night, following the joyful chatter of the day, created an atmosphere of almost unbearable emotional intensity.
For several hours we listened in real agony as the escape route remained empty … the great flood of humanity finally cut off. I cannot explain the pain we felt that strange night, for in contrast to the empty footpaths, the heavens were a thing of crowded glory. There was a shining harvest moon, a wealth of stars, a white glaze over the world. The night was bitter cold and had therefore precipitated a hoarfrost that covered both the rushes to the south and the Austrian swamps to the north. But most memorable of all was the tragic silence, for where there had been the laughter and uncontrolled joy of people finding safety from communism, now there was only silence.
Toward midnight a brave team of three Austrian college students decided that something must be done, and they lugged logs into Hungary and repaired the dynamited bridge—not well, but enough for a precarious foothold—and by this means they saved more than two thousand people that night alone.
They were just college kids with earmuffs and no caps, but they had abundant courage, for after their wet clothes had frozen on them, they crossed their own improvised bridge and combed the Hungarian swamps, dodging communist guards and Russian outposts. They led many refugees to their bridge, and we marveled at their daring.
Then came the floods! Hundreds upon hundreds of refugees came across the frail footbridge. They would come down the canal bank in an excess of joy, having found rescue when all seemed lost. They would hear the Austrian students cry, “This is Austria!” and they would literally collapse with gladness.
But as they walked along the canal bank, another more cautious student would warn them, “Don’t walk on the bank. It’s still Hungary, Russians have been shooting at the silhouettes.” And the refugees would climb down the bank and fan out across the frozen, snow-white marshes of Austria. One aspect of their flight had given them a weird, ethereal being: they had come so many miles through the crisp night air that hoarfrost had formed on their backs, and they looked like bent-over snow men from a fairy tale. Mists rose from the bitter cold ground and enveloped them, but still they moved on under the silvery November moon, like ghost figures from another world, walking neither in time nor in space but in freedom.
I have never seen anything more beautiful. Not only was nature dressed in cold perfection, but the emotion of that starry night was beyond the capacity of a man to absorb. Once a woman nearly fainting from hunger and exhaustion came down the trail and I thought she was going to collapse, but when she heard the word “Austria!” she summoned up her last energy and rushed across the line. There, as if by
“Oh, God! I reached Austria!” she cried.
McGurn, who had been on the border for hours, handed her on to an Austrian student, who carried her to safety. “I can’t take any more,” McGurn said, and he trailed off through the mists, through the frozen marshes of Austria.
It was at this time that I met a brave and daring photographer whose pictures helped tell the story of Hungary’s mass flight to freedom. He would go anywhere, and for the next several nights we patrolled the border together, bringing in hundreds of Hungarians.* Sometimes we went well into Hungary, occasionally up to the bridge and always with an ear cocked for that sweetest of night sounds, the soft, tentative calls of men and women seeking freedom.
One very cold night we were on the watch when toward dawn we heard curious sounds coming from the temporary bridge. We crept up as close as we dared and saw a revolting sight. The communist guards, well liquored up, were chopping down the bridge and burning it to keep their feet warm. Then, as we crouched there observing them, we witnessed a tragedy that neither of us will ever forget.
A band of some thirty refugees, led by a man in a fur cap, appeared mysteriously out of the Hungarian swamps and walked directly toward the drunken guards. These unlucky people had no way of knowing that the bridge was no longer a route to freedom, and we were powerless to stop them. Quickly the guards grabbed their rifles and dogs, and the last refugees to reach the bridge at Andau were rounded up and carted off to prison. They had walked no one knew how far and had come to within fifty feet of freedom. Heartsick, the photographer and I crept back with the sound of communist axes in our ears, and by the time we reached the corner of Austria the bridge at Andau had forever vanished.
But there was to be one final miracle. Long after the bridge had burned and when AVO policemen and Russians with trained dogs patrolled the routes, a night came when freezing rains had made the swamps totally impassable and even the teams of Austrian students gave up hope. But a beautiful young English newspaperwoman, Shelley Rohde of the Daily Express, went out for one last midnight look.