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1. Freya's Story.
She spoke very sparingly of her early days, even to me,
even in the dead of night, safe in my arms. I have pieced
together some of her background.
She was born in Sužice, Czechoslovakia, of an Austrian
father who left when she was five, and a Czech mother. Her
parents were well-educated and intelligent. Her father was a
high ranking politician and her mother a tertiary lecturer in
European History. She lived with her mother in Sužice, until
that fateful holiday in a small village in Hungary's north.
It was October of 1956. Since the establishment of a full
dictatorship in the Stalin style in 1947, the Hungarian people
had lived in the asphyxiating atmosphere of a police state, in
fear of each other, in fear of speaking out about the
government even to their own children lest their words be
interpreted as treason against the ruling body. Any form of
dissent, real or perceived, usually resulted in that person
disappearing in the night, never to be heard of again.
In the main square in Budapest, beneath the hero's statue
a smallish group of students rallied. One seventeen year old
boy stood beneath the statue of the Archangel Gabriel towering
over thirty metres above him and recited the poem that had
united his countrymen for over one hundred years.
He began, "Stand up Hungarians..."
The next day the boy's mother reported to his school that
her son had not returned home. His friends concluded that he
had been taken by the Tithos Rendersog and the story spread
like wildfire through the school. At ten o'clock in the morning
forty schoolgirls, dressed in their uniform white blouses and
dark skirts, marched on the headquarters of the Secret Police.
They demanded that the young man be released from jail.
As the young girls stood chanting in front of the grey
building someone threw a bomb from a first floor window.
Eight girls died and twenty were wounded.
----------------------------
By noon the people of the city of Miskolc had heard the
news. Three thousand of their steel workers marched with tools
in hand through the streets of dull grey mortar-covered
buildings to the local Secret Police Headquarters. They were
soon joined by many more townspeople. There, they detained
every employee leaving the building. Venting ten years of
frustration and anger, the people used their bare hands or
their tools of trade to kill their oppressors. Only a few of
the Secret Police escaped.
One man who had a police friend in another town had
managed to obtain a gun and they used this to defeat the few
remaining occupants and force their way to the first floor
armament storage area. In minutes it was empty. The crowd was
armed and so began the bloody revolution.
--------------------------
It was nearly dusk on that same day in October. Five men
in crumpled suits walked the long, single street of a small
mountain village near Miskolc. They were not known to the
villagers. Someone fired a single shot. Mindless enough, but
with terrible consequences. The men were the remains of the
Miskolc Secret Police. They had escaped the crowds in Miskolc
and were tense and afraid. After their own narrow escape and
with most of their comrades dead they should have been
incapable of further violence, but something inside them
snapped. They lashed out as trapped animals would. They
retaliated swiftly and cruelly. They went from house to house.
They shot the men. They shot the children. They savagely
raped the women and then shot them. After a shameful night of
terror, they left. The bodies of their victims lay as they had
fallen, distorted in fright and agony.
As the rays of the morning sun pierced the gloom of a
shattered room, a ten year old girl still shivered in her
hiding place. She peered through the ventilator grill of the
cupboard into which she had scrambled when those terrifying men
had smashed their way into the house where she and her mother
were visiting. They were away from her home in Sužice for the
first time in her life. She saw her mother's dead body on the
floor and heard again her screams. She crawled out of the
cupboard to lie beside her mother and wrapped her arms about
her. She closed her eyes tightly but was silent. She would
not cry.
Late in the afternoon she was still there. Three young
men had arrived, and working quickly and quietly, they searched
the village thoroughly, taking identity papers and any other
useful documents. They found only two people alive. A young
boy, who died in their arms, and they found Freya. A grim,
determined little girl. Gently, but firmly they took her from
her mother and from that place.
These men where not known to the local people. Such was
the control the Secret Police had established over ten years or
more that these men had to be invisible. There were informers
in every village. The Secret Police would be called if a
stranger was seen. During each brief sortie from their base
in Austria, they hid in the hills and forests. Very few locals
were brave enough to help them. They belonged to a group of
humane men whose main motivation was to help ordinary,
vulnerable people, in any way that they could. They were
well-supported financially, if unofficially, by the United
States Govt. They were paid to obtain information about
conditions in Hungary, and about the strengths and weaknesses
of the occupiers. They were also paid for another service to
the Americans.
Using all their resources, they had established a pipeline
from the USSR and its occupied territories to the outside
world. To Austria. Over the next twenty years many hundreds
of people from Hungary and the USSR were to pass this way.
The pipeline became known to the Americans and they used it to
filter valuable people from the USSR. People who were
considered to have important information. This work did not
always find favour with the Austrian men, but they needed the
money, so they co-operated with the USA while continuing their
own work.
Little Freya was carried unwittingly into this nomadic
world of stress and secrecy. She was adopted by Eva, the wife
of one of these men, a teacher with no children of her own.
Eva soon became aware of Freya's agile and retentive mind. A
quiet, thoughtful girl, Freya was an ideal pupil. Eva filled
the little girl's head with facts and figures, with philosophy
and religion. She taught her four or five languages in addition
to Freya's own Czech and German. Freya desperately grasped
every morsel of information as if her very life depended on it.
By the age of sixteen, a little girl no more, she could not be
contained at home. She began to venture across the border with
the men.
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It was during one of those cold, Hungarian nights we spent
in each others arms that Freya told me of her first journey
back into Hungary seven years before. I can hear her words
now, her eyes sparkling in the dim light with the remembered
excitement. I have translated as closely as I can remember
from her broken English and her occasional Czech or German:
-----------------------------------------------
"It took me one whole year of nagging and making promises
to study harder and harder before Eva agreed to let me go with
Hans and the others. She finally said that if I learnt to
read one particularly large book of Russian, then I could go.
I did it so quickly even Eva was surprised.
It was eleven o'clock at night. The three men had slept
since two in the afternoon, but I had not. I could not sleep.
My hands would not stop shaking. It was late autumn, nearly
winter. I was dressed in peasant's clothes, but they were very
warm. My papers said I was the daughter of a steel worker from
Miskolc. The men would not tell me what our mission was. I
think they were a bit cross that Eva had allowed me to come.
We entered the forest near our village and walked for two hours
in the darkness along winding pathways, under dripping trees.
I was so lost. I had no idea which way we had come. One man
was younger than the others. His name was Jan and he saw that
I was stumbling in the dark and so he helped me and stayed near
me.
We stopped at the edge of a clearing and I soon discovered
that we had reached the border with Hungary. The land ahead as
far as I could see had been cleared of all vegetation. Jan
said there was a two metre high, double barbed wire fence and a
wide strip with mines and alarms. As well, he said, there was
a ten metre wide strip of carefully raked ground on the
Hungarian side. It would show any footprints. I could not
see any of this and it looked so quiet and peaceful.
Instead of continuing, we walked carefully along the edge
of the forest until we came to a steep hillside. Little
streams of tumbling water ran down the slopes and sparkled in
the dim moonlight. I remember it was very pretty and I wasn't
at all afraid with Jan beside me.
We headed back into the forest around the rocky slopes and
then we stopped and the men began carefully moving a large
clump of long vines which covered the slopes here. Soon we
could see a black opening in the hillside. With our small
electric lanterns lit, we entered the tunnel which appeared to
be an old mine shaft. The timbers lining the sides and roof
looked very old and rotten. I was a little worried that the
roof might fall on top of us.
After some time we stopped again and the men removed some
timbers from one side of the shaft to reveal another opening.
This shaft was smaller and we had to bend our heads and go
carefully. It was a newer tunnel with clean, straight timber
lining it. Jan proudly told me his father had helped make this
tunnel. We followed it as it sloped downwards for a long time
before beginning to rise again. Jan crashed into me and held
me as the men in front stopped suddenly. It was nice to feel
his strong body next to mine.
We waited while the men worked to open the end of the
shaft until I could just see the light outside and smell the
fresh breeze on my face. It was very cold after the lovely
warmth of the tunnel. We scrambled out into another forest.
The opening to the tunnel was well hidden beneath several huge,
fallen trees. I shivered and Jan held me again. I was enjoy-
ing this night.
I was only sixteen years old and I was in Hungary with
false papers but I wasn't really afraid. I felt like a woman,
not a child. The men around me seemed efficient and confident
and I had great faith in them. They had, after all, been
using this tunnel for nearly five years. It was built early in
1957 after the Russians had constructed a new barrier along the
entire border. I remembered Eva joyfully telling me of the
hundreds of people they had helped cross the border in the
months following the revolution, before the great gaps in the
border defences were closed.
We walked quickly into the forest and soon came to a
highway. We paused to listen and crossed quickly. We came
out of the forest and walked through orchards and chestnut
groves, rows of bare trees lit from the east by the moonlight.
We continued on and down into a valley which led us to the
edge of a small village. We stopped and listened again.
Muffled sounds of cows and goats reached us, but fortunately
few people could afford to keep a dog and so no canine alarm
sounded.
Skirting quietly around the village, we came to a broken
down house. The fence surrounding it was barely standing.
The men dropped into a hollow some distance from the house and
I followed. We lay still and I heard one man scratching in
the ground. Jan whispered to me that they were checking a wire
which would show them if anyone had found the hiding place we
were to use. It must have been all right because the men
quickly crossed the yard, keeping low, and slipped quietly into
an old shed behind the house.
It was pitch dark inside and I heard the men rustling
around on the floor until they found a door which led down a
steep ladder to a space beneath. We lit our lanterns and I
saw that it was a large room with a very low roof. It seemed
to be carved out of rock but when I looked closer I could see
it had been dug into the earth and lined with stones. Jan
showed me the wall he had helped to construct two years ago.
The room was well stocked with tins of food and in one
corner there were bags of straw and blankets. I was quite
hungry now and thankfully these men were well prepared. Cold
beans and chocolate bars made a strange breakfast before we all
lay together on the blankets. Jan made sure he was next to me,
and he covered me with his blanket. I snuggled as close to him
as I dared. How could I sleep? What an adventure!
I awoke stiff and sore, feeling as if I had slept directly
on the rocky floor. When I moved Jan put his arm around me
and held me close to him as I tried to fully wake up. His
watch said it was late afternoon. We had slept all day. Tea
was the same as breakfast, beans and chocolate with a hot drink
a bit like coffee. Jan showed me the little magic container
that became very hot when you put two pieces together. It
quickly boiled the coffee drink.
When we finally emerged from our little hideaway it was
dark again, a cold, overcast night, the blackness thick like a
blanket wrapped around us. Jan said we had 25km to walk to
S rv r, a town outside the frontier zone, where it would be
safe to travel by train and bus to our final destination across
Hungary to the Zempln mountain district in the North.
I was so excited and so careful not to appear to be a
nuisance to the men that I didn't feel at all tired when, after
five hours of walking, Jan pointed out the lights of S rv r in
the distance. We had walked through forests, over plains of
dry grasses, across roads, canals and two railway lines. The
men walked quickly and confidently. They had done this trip so
many times before. We met up with the Gyngys River a few
kilometres from the town and followed its left bank all the way
in.
We were dressed like the factory workers and once in the
town we joined other workers for breakfast at a large, run-down
cafeteria. It was so dirty and smoky, but the cooked sausages,
thick bread and hot coffee were very welcome after our all-
night trek.
After breakfast we made our way to the train station in
time to board a train for Budapest. It was very busy and the
train was crowded. Jan and I sat together and the other two
men went in another carriage. Jan said our travel papers were
very good but so far no-one had even wanted to check them.
It was lunchtime when we pulled into the Western Station
in Budapest and we bought some bread and meat before finding
the train to Miskolc. Jan and I remained separated from the
others. He said they would meet us at Miskolc. It was still
quite busy with people and I was having very good practice with
my Hungarian, listening to the locals and talking to Jan who
spoke it like a native.
It was nearly evening and although I had slept for most of
the journey from Budapest I was feeling quite tired as the
train rattled slowly into the outskirts of Miskolc. The hazy
smog from the steel factories made the dull grey buildings look
even more depressing. I was close to Mamma now and the
memories suddenly flooded back. It was only six years ago,
but it seemed like a whole lifetime. I felt panic and almost
choked. Jan heard me catch my breath and he saw the sorrow in
my eyes. He held me to him. "I know about your Mamma, little
Freya. She is safe now. You are safe now," he said in
Hungarian. The people in the carriage looked at us and one
woman smiled at me. I snuggled into my man friend. He knew
me and it would be all right.
I had no time to look around Miskolc as we met the others
on the station platform and had to run to catch the bus for the
45km journey to Szerencs, on the edge of the Northern frontier
zone.
Jan explained that the others would leave us at Szerencs and we
would have to walk into the frontier zone like lovers taking a
stroll in the country-side. It was a one hour walk to T llya
where we could safely catch a local bus into the mountains.
We walked hand in hand in the cool dusk along the small
road towards the mountains and my life felt complete. I was
going to learn about the pipeline that rescued so many people,
and my teacher would be this man who was already so close to
me.
The black car pulled up silently behind us and two men
dressed in dark suits quickly got out. "One moment please!
Your papers, let me see your papers."
My heart stopped beating then, but Jan squeezed my hand
gently before letting it go to advance confidently toward the
car. He held out his papers with a smile. The man with the
thin, hard face examined the papers, examined Jan, and then
approached me. I tried to smile. I think I just looked ill.
I handed him my papers. He only glanced at them and said,
smiling, "Young lovers, please do not get lost in the forest.
I do not wish to spend my holiday tomorrow looking for you!"
I blushed then and lowered my face before taking my papers.
Jan waved to both men as he came to me, took my hand and led me
away along the road. "Little Freya, I thought you might faint
and fall down in the road! What a fright you had." He
stopped and pulled me gently to him and I lifted my face to his
and he kissed me. The road sank away beneath me as he held me.
My whole body floated, my head began to spin and I really did
feel faint. I could feel only his strong hands and his lips
softly exploring mine. I completely relaxed into his arms .
He held me. He kissed me and then he brushed his lips on my
eyelids and my cheeks before he whispered, "What a beautiful
woman has joined the team. I will be her friend and I will
hold her close and I will teach her. Come Freya we must
hurry."
I don't think my feet touched the ground for the remainder
of that wonderful walk through the countryside of Hungary. To
our right rose the beautiful Zempln mountains, covered in
beech trees and Hungarian oaks. To our left the undulating
hills were covered by vineyards. We talked and talked like
old and intimate friends of things that children speak of and
things that adults speak of as well. Jan was twenty years old
and had been in the teams for four years. He enjoyed the work
and the danger although he had not had any real trouble so far.
All too soon we reached T llya and met the men at the
little store in the centre of the small village. Conditions in
Hungary were much better than before the revolution, but the
buildings needed attention and spoke of poverty and hardship.
The store owner and his wife were known to the men and
after warm greetings and big hugs for me, they fussed around
helping us change our clothes. We now dressed in the corduroy
pants, thick jumpers and long coats that folk from the larger
towns wore when on bushwalking or hunting expeditions in the
area. Rucksacks were retrieved from where they had been hidden
the last time the men came through on their way home from the
mountains. One of the men pulled out a vodka bottle and we
toasted our hosts and our mission. Soon we heard the bus
clatter to a halt outside.
The noisy, smoky little bus took one hour to wind around
the base of the mountains before heading up a steep valley to
drop us at Regc where it continued on to the mountain village
of Ujhuta. Only two old women travelled with us and the town
itself was almost deserted. The main tourist areas and
facilities were on the far side of the mountains, so this
village had the air of a forgotten place, a place of little
importance.
It was dark and we saw no-one as we struck out through the
scattered forest trees which clung to the base of the mountain
that towered above us. While we were following a track around
the mountain, I heard a low whistle and saw a light flash just
ahead of us. Jan held me back as the men went ahead. We heard
greetings exchanged and we too continued and found we had been
joined by another man. He was introduced to me as Charlie. I
could not tell if he was European, but he spoke Hungarian well,
with little accent.
I was really beginning to feel exhausted now, but I was
determined not to show it. I thought strong thoughts and
stayed near Jan as we walked on and on through the night. Jan
pointed out various landmarks so that I could begin to learn
the way for future trips. Future trips! I had not thought
beyond this great adventure. Of course, if I could become a
member of the team I would come this way often. Jan told me
that this team came here every two or three months to show
people the way to Austria and freedom. Mamma would be so
proud if only she could see me now, if only she could know that
I was to do such good work. I stumbled then and Jan held my
arm. I was so tired, but I would not show it.
My legs felt like stone and I felt sick with the tiredness
when at last Jan touched my arm and pointed up ahead. In the
morning light I saw the sharp outline of a large hut almost
blending with the side of the mountain."
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Freya tossed and turned and cried out in her sleep one
night in our room in the hut. I held her and comforted her,
but to little avail and so we rose at the break of dawn.
"It is time to continue my story, Tony." she said rather
hoarsely, "Today I must tell you more of another love, more
about Jan." She tumbled bread and meat and vodka into a ruck-
sack and pulled me out the door. She headed into the forest
and I stumbled after her. We went through the forest with the
hillside rising steeply on our right. Freya almost ran as we
followed the curve of the hill. Each time I complained at her
pace she simply said, "We are almost there."
The sun had crept up and over the trees and it was nearly
three hours later that she finally stopped. She paused before
carefully approaching a large clearing covered with signs of
human traffic. We continued across the clearing and entered a
wide pathway, bordered by large oaks and shrubs, winding down
the hillside. We stopped where a fallen tree made a natural
resting spot and as we sat, the sun's early morning rays fell
on us, filtering through the tree tops. Freya knelt in front of
me and took my hand with both of hers. "Tony, you are my true
love. Be very sure you are my love." She kissed my hands with
cold lips, "But now I must tell you all about Jan, my love from
before you came to me."
It was my third visit to the hut on the mountain and our
relationship felt very secure. She had mentioned her love of
Jan in the teams, but I had never pursued the matter further.
She had always spoken of Jan in the past tense. We were
certainly very close and very much in love, but Freya seemed
worried about what she had to tell me.
We sat on the edge of the pathway beneath the trees and
Freya continued her story.
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"I went many times with Jan to the hut and we often took
only one other with us, sometimes a younger man and sometimes
older. At the hut we met with teams from the USA, like your
team now, men who knew who we were trying to liberate, and who
would make sure that only the correct person would use our
pipeline. Many times we safely took these people through
Hungary and into Austria. We were always lucky and very
successful.
The man we knew only as Charlie often met us at certain
places, but just seemed to be there to watch what we were
doing. Two years ago he came to me in Austria and asked me to
lead a special team, a team that would do other work as well as
the pipeline. He gave me a great surprise when he said that
someone had purchased a small house in a large town not too far
from here, and that it now belonged to me. I could use this
house very safely as my base. It would be known only to him
and to me. This would mean that I would not have to cross the
border and would only do that small stage of each journey from
my house to the hut and back again. He had also arranged
Hungarian citizenship for me. I now had real identity papers
for my times in Hungary.
I think you know, Tony, that he is somehow connected with
the British and it is for them that he asked me to do some
work. I cannot tell you, but my knowledge of languages was
very useful. It was good work and I agreed straight away.
He asked me to choose a team and so I chose three young
men who had experience with the teams. One of these men was,
of course, Jan. The others were his friends and knew the work
very well. Charlie arranged some special training for us in
Vienna and we did this for three months.
Our work was to do with information only. We were not to
interfere with the occupiers of Hungary, although we despised
them so much. This work went very well, and with that and the
pipeline, we were very busy until this day one year ago. Yes,
my Tony, this day is an anniversary.
Jan came to me in very great distress. Three of his
relatives in a village not far from here had been murdered. He
was sure that the local area supervisor and one of his men were
responsible. They were feared by the locals for their
brutality and many hated them. He had a very foolish plan to
kill these men and make them disappear. He was so angry and I
loved him so much that I finally agreed.
It was so easy. Jan knew a woman called Elza who was
pretending to be friendly with this supervisor and so Elza and
I had no trouble luring the men out one night. We met for
drinks and then convinced them to walk with us along the
pathway beneath the trees. It was a place for lovers and so
after some drinks they were happy to take us there. Jan and
his friends were waiting for us at a particularly deep part of
the forest where the pathway crossed through.
Someone made a mistake when we made our plans. I am sure
Elza and I had to keep to the left of the men, but when the
ambush happened we were in the way. There was confusion and
both the supervisor and his man were shot but it was a mess and
one of them had time to draw a gun and shoot Jan. He was
already dead when I came to him. I could not even say goodbye.
We buried the other two quickly and then took Jan's body
far into the forest and buried him deeply and carefully. We
are near him now."
---------------------------------------------
Freya stopped talking then, her breath came in short gasps
and her face lost all its colour. I lifted her onto my lap and
held her very close. "I'm here Frey, it's all over and we are
here together." I whispered. "You can cry away this sorrow
now." But she couldn't cry in my arms, not yet.
I cried for her, and I held her all day as we talked
quietly and gently as intimate friends do. As the sun settled
into the forest I kissed her long and tenderly. Still she
could not cry. It was to be another twenty years before the
sorrow deep inside her would finally be released in a flood of
tears.
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