The Secret Cave

Zary Fekete

After the afternoon of scouting the hilltop for a campsite, we were truly famished by the time the fire was hot enough. Gabor brought the sausages, fresh the countryside where his grandparents were from. “The pig was killed last week.” Marton, or Marci, as we called him, brought the bread, two loaves, taken from the pantry just off the kitchen in the large house where his parents, his two sisters, and his grandmother lived. The house was originally a Hungarian nobleman’s house in the 19th century, but the socialism of 1960s and 70s had chipped away at the building and its various rooms were combined into small apartments for five different families. Marci’s family had the largest space: the ground floor. My earliest memories of Hungary were from visiting Marci on Saturday mornings, just after his grandmother made palacsinta, the thin crepes still steaming, barely containing the gooey, sugared whipped eggs.

We were four childhood friends: Gabor, Mate, Marci, and me. Gabor lived just down the hill from where we camped that night. His father was a delivery truck driver and spent most of his days bumping down the pot-holed side-streets of Budapest, delivering plastic toys manufactured in Yugoslavia to large warehouses across the capital. Gabor’s mother worked for a government import office downtown, so she usually had the first news on what new candy might be coming into the country in the upcoming weeks, giving us a thrill every time we visited the corner ABC stores.

Mate lived in a grander apartment on Bartok Street, just a few blocks from the Danube. He came from a fine arts family and attended a conservatory across town in the fifth district. Every time I visited him at home he was playing music, usually on the flute, but he could play anything and sometimes was on the piano or violin.

Marci was the youngest, only ten to the rest of our thirteens. His father worked for Hungarian television, and he regularly received advance cassettes from different music agencies, sometimes bootleg ones from western Europe with recordings by Neneh Cherry or Terence Trent Darby. His father was out late most nights, and he almost always slept until noon. When we visited Marci, we knew his father was awake when we would year pop music playing in the living room. Usually it was Abba, but sometimes he chose Hungarian pop groups like Edda or Neoton Familia.

We were camping that weekend because Gabor heard the hilltop would be unguarded. There was a guardhouse at the weedy entrance to the hill where the land sloped up from the last apartment buildings clinging to its gravely base. The hill was officially a wildlife protection zone, so visitors were only allowed on Hungarian holidays. We were there that night because we had too much energy for a single weekend to contain and couldn’t imagine waiting until March 15th.

Hungarian holidays were when I felt most like a foreigner at school. My schoolmates all wore navy blue and white uniforms with red kerchiefs: the standard dress for “Little Drummers”. The drummer rank in elementary was the precursor to the “Path Breaker” rank in high school. The ranks eventually led to enrollment in the Communist party for college-aged Hungarians. Back then I didn’t know what any of the ranks meant. I only wished for my own uniform so I could fit in.

My parents were had two reasons for being in Hungary, one public and one secret. Officially my father represented a midwestern agricultural machine business. He visited various Hungarian companies to see if they might be interested in importing tractors from the west. Unofficially my parents were missionaries and hoping to meet Hungarian Christians. Unlike in some countries behind the Iron Curtain, Hungary had never pressed down hard on Christian churches, but it was not common for Hungarians to be open about their beliefs. My father spent most days visiting various universities about town, practicing his fledgling Hungarian phrases and hoping to meet students who might be from a Methodist or reformed church background.

When my parents first enrolled me in Hungarian elementary school, I was something of a novelty to my classmates. In the first grade they either teased me for my non-existent Hungarian or asked me to say the names of foreign cars (“correctly, please” which meant using my midwestern Minnesota accent). I was glad once the novelty wore off, and I could just be a fellow friend.

We often snuck onto the hilltop, but this was the first time deciding to make a go at spending the night. My parents agreed to put up the sleeping bags for the four of us, each one purchased across the border in Austria, a country my family visited once a month to renew our visa but a fabled land in the eyes of my Hungarian friends who had never been outside the borders of their small country.

We each promised to bring what we could. Gabor brought the sausages. Marci the bread. Mate brought corn puffs, the closest thing to potato chips available in Hungary. I, the only foreigner, promised chocolate chip cookies, a treat that never failed to astonish my friends, in spite of how relatively simple they were compared to the complexities of the Hungarian pastries for sale at any neighborhood cukraszda.

The sky was just starting to kindle into the golden spell of evening when we finally got the fire going. As we waited for it to settle into a good heat, Gabor impressed us by launching lit matches off the side of the cliff. He held the tiny wooden sticks against the strike pad on the side of the flimsy cardboard box and then flicked the matches with his finger. Earlier in the week he showed us a way to make a tiny smoke bomb out of a matchbox by using a scissors to cut off the strike pad and then wedged it against the heads of the matches. He pitched the matchbox at the ground, igniting all the matches at once in a puff of smoke. We were very impressed.

After the sausages were grilled, we ate, slicing off greasy hunks and catching the drippings on large tufts of fresh bread “the Hungarian way.”

“The only thing missing are peppers and onions,” Marci said.

Gabor choked as he gestured frantically in agreement while swallowing his mouthful. “Yes! And what a shame! My mother had some. I should have remembered.”

The sun was still just visible above the tops of the tree line on the western fringe of the hill top, and it cast dark shadows across the dry stubble covering the lumpy ground all around us. I looked up at the sky, and, a moment later, as if a switch had been flipped, the blue above us darkened into a deep purple and the first stars peeped out. Across the way from the hill top was the slightly higher peak of Geller Hill with the citadel fort and, to its north, the castle district with its many turrets.

“Any moment now,” Gabor said, looking at the river. “Watch the Parliament building.”

“How do you know?” Marci asked.

“My mother told me,” Gabor said. “Her colleague’s husband is a caretaker for the cityscape, and he times the evening lights.”

At that moment, as if Gabor’s words had willed it, the sun sank completely below the trees behind us, and the entirety of the Danube was illuminated by rows and rows of white and yellow glowing orbs.

“Pearls,” Gabor said. “Never gets old.”

Mate stood and looked up the river to the north. “It’s hard to believe she begins as nothing but a small stream.”

Marci looked up at him. “Where?”

“Somewhere in Germany,” Mate shrugged.

Gabor nodded. “My grandparents said there were winters during the war when the river froze over. Neighbors from both sides met each other in the middle for ice fishing.”

A pleasant calm settled on the hilltop and the four of us sank back on our hands. The fire settled into a bed of glowing red coals. I reached into my bag and brought out the cookies, passing them to each of my friends before taking one myself.

“There are tunnels below the castle district,” Marci said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Father told me. During the war there was a secret hospital there and that’s where they cared for the patients.”

Mate leaned forward, nodding. “Many of the hills in Buda have caves, too. In fact…” he grinned at us and lowered his voice. “My music teacher told me this hill also has one.”

Gabor looked astonished. “No,” he said. “Where? We would have found it already.”

“No,” Mate said. “It’s on the far side, just above the barracks.”

A knowing silence settled over us. The barracks were a legendary place to us. Hungarian soldiers were housed there for boot camp. Once or twice during our excursions to the hilltop we had crept over to the bluffs that overlooked the barracks and peered down at rows of soldiers marching across the dusty grounds.

“What’s in the cave?” Gabor asked.

Mate smiled at us secretly. “My teacher said there are dozens of tunnels.” His voice quieted to a whisper. “…all filled with musical instruments. Hundreds of them.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

“The Hungarian orchestra played a final performance for the soldiers before the enemies crossed the border,” Mate said. “The musicians didn’t know when they would get a chance to play again, so they crossed the river and hid the instruments in the caves to keep them safe. Then the orchestra members fled the country.”

“They never came back for them?” Marci asked.

“I don’t think so,” Mate said.

We were all quiet for a moment. Then Gabor tossed a small twig into the fire. “We should go look for them.”

I looked at him. “Really?”

“Of course,” he said. “Imagine what they might be worth.”

Mate shook his head. “If we found them, we must return them. The orchestra could still use them.”

“Fine,” Gabor said. “What about next weekend?”

Marci’s face was doubtful. “My family will be in the countryside next weekend. We’re visiting my cousins.”

“Alright, then,” Gabor looked around at us. “The next weekend.”

The sense that two weeks was a huge amount of time was enough for the rest of us to nod and shake each-others’ hands in agreement. We sat back down by the dwindling fire and eventually turned to our sleeping bags. The darkened sky above was twinkling with stars.

Before I fell asleep, I heard Gabor say, “But remember. We’ll all search for them together.”

---

We never did.

The next time the four of us met was a month or two later, and the instruments were forgotten in the rush of youth and schooltime. The years passed, and our paths took us in different directions.

Today, Mate lives in Vienna and plays for a local chamber orchestra. He is one of the few who graduated with a coveted “artist” inscription on his college diploma. Gabor is a bus driver for the Budapest municipal transport service. He regularly drives the 112 up the flanks of Gellert Hill, the same hill we gazed at from our campsite many years ago. Marci is the only one of us no longer here. He was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was in high school.

I live in Minnesota now. I’ve managed to visit Hungary from time to time over the past years. I’m friends with Mate and Gabor on Facebook. We exchange birthday greetings and comment on family photos we take. Last year, I was in Budapest for business. One morning I took a jog and wound my way up the sides of our childhood hill. The hilltop is still preserved as a wildlife refuge. A friendly caretaker told me families often hike around the top on the weekends.

I asked him if he had ever heard of a secret cave beneath the hill. He smiled and nodded. “It’s a childhood story,” he said. “My friends and I talked about it when I was in grade school. We dreamt of trying to find it.”

Published in Issue No. 4, Musa et Verbum, January 1st, 2025.

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete