CHAPTER SIX
November 1, 1956
We stepped out of the hotel the next morning into a different Budapest, a sunlit city no longer in the throes of a revolution. All along the riverfront we saw people cleaning up, sweeping the pavements of broken glass, piling rubble at the curb, moving debris off the tracks to allow the trams to run again. Downed wires still dangled from the overhead power lines, but someone had wrapped white paper around the live ends. Shops were reopening—amazingly, it seemed as if nothing had been looted in the week of fighting—and the cafés were full of patrons.
“Would you take a look at that!” exclaimed Gray, indicating a fancy establishment whose fin-de-siècle allure was somewhat marred by the heavy shelling that had pitted the building’s marble facade. Yet inside, imp
