CHAPTER THREE
Hotel Duna, Budapest
October 31, 1956
József met us at the Duna the next morning and we drove him to the magazine’s offices to meet our brother. “Offices” is probably too dignified a word for the tiny third-floor apartment off Republic Square, a scrubby park in a working-class district of Budapest, where he and our brother produced The Cold Truth. I’d been expecting a hive of literary activity, bearded poets hunched over their typewriters in the throes of inspiration, crafting odes to their courageous brothers on the barricades. Being an actress, I tend to have an overactive imagination.
The cold truth, to borrow the expression, couldn’t have been further from my romantic vision. The room was cold, for sure. All the windows were blown out, shards of glass blasted across t
