Under the frog (31 page)

The
makeshift catafalque had been moving but didn’t even start to make up for the
death. A whole lifetime poured down the drain. The person gone, and a lifesize
effigy, a livid, well-observed caricature left. All those beliefs, emotions,
memories carefully stored up over twenty-three years junked. Twenty-three
years. What? 200,000 hours, a Hungarian Second Army of tooth brushing, cleaning
behind the ears, blackhead squeezing, small talk, waiting for public transport,
wiped out. An identity, spring-cleaned out. A whole being just left as a resume
in a few memories, until those repositories were disposed of as well. Abridged
away. Nothing like death, thought Gyuri climbing out of the morbidity, for
making life look good.

He got
off the tram at the Körút. Although most of the shops were closed, he
remembered that the day-and-night people’s buffet (a delicatessen short on the
delicacies) had been open earlier, and he decided to investigate what was going
in the way of edibles.

Near
the buffet, lying in the middle of the road like a giant’s abandoned football,
was the head from Stalin’s statue, dragged there by a jubilant public as a mark
of their triumph, displaying the traitor’s head on a gargantuan scale. A
gentleman was seeking to knock off a chunk with the aid of a pickaxe, and it
occurred to Gyuri that he should take a souvenir as well. He queued up
patiently behind the man, when the Soviet tank appeared.

It
roared into the middle of the Körút and opened fire on Gyuri.

Sheltering
behind Stalin’s head with the other souvenir-hunter, the first and only thing
that occurred to Gyuri as the bullets smashed into the shops and cut down tree
branches, was how much he wanted to live. He had never been aware of how
enormous, how global this desire was deep down, a desire that was in no way
smaller than the universe – how he would do anything, absolutely anything to
live, to live for even a few more seconds. If life meant huddling up to Stalin’s
head for the next forty years or so, that would be quite satisfactory as long
as he could stay alive. Rolled up tighter than a foetus, he closed his eyes not
questioning whether that could be of any use.

The
shooting stopped, and there was no movement apart from some shards of glass
keeling over; those who had taken up assorted positions on the ground were
evidently quite happy with them and were in no rush to move. Gyuri could still
hear the rumbling of the tank engine unpleasantly close. An old man embracing
the pavement next to a tree, with his bag of shopping beside him, yards away
from Gyuri, was protesting with amazing persistence and volume: ‘Two world
Wars.
Two
world
wars and now this.’ Gyuri considered whether it might be a wiser investment in
self-preservation to run to a more secure and spacious sanctuary but while he
had faith in his speed, the notion of having only air between himself and the
barrel of the heavy machine gun on the tank was too disturbing. Unless the tank
closed in, he was going to sweat it out behind Stalin. The rumbling of the tank
continued at the same remove; Gyuri became curious as to what they were up to
but he wasn’t going to have a look

‘I
never thought I’d be grateful to Stalin,’ commented Gyuri’s companion whom Gyuri
was half-crushing. They were there for what may or may not have been a long
time but certainly felt like it. Gyuri didn’t mind waiting; it was one of those
activities you could only do alive. His co-huddler had been in Recsk, the
labour camp that had been set up as an extermination centre in the middle of
the Hungarian countryside. Gyuri knew nothing about it except that it had
existed and been shut down under Nagy; one of István’s friends had been an
inmate but had given him only the most elliptical of accounts.

Normally,
Gyuri avoided the offers of life stories offered in the traditional Hungarian
style of expanded self-history, the vocal autobiographies that all Hungarians
seemed to be working on continually but he didn’t have much choice and besides,
Miklós’s extracts were quite gripping. Gyuri had always rated himself unlucky
but now he realised he was only a weekend player in misfortune.

‘The
Germans, what a cultured people when they’re not invading your country,’ Miklós
explained. Miklós had done a stint in the anti-Nazi resistance. Caught, the
Hungarians were too lazy to execute him and passed him to the Germans who put
him in Dachau where he had been dying of cholera when the Americans arrived. He
got better. ‘It seemed a bit pointless to die when you’d just been liberated.’

He came
back to Hungary. ‘Talk about being stupid.’ Where he worked for the
Smallholders’ Party. ‘Talk about asking for it.’ Then he got a free ride in a
black car which led to him being imprisoned in Recsk. The concept of Recsk was
that you went in but you didn’t come out. ‘Its scope was modest compared to the
Soviet or German models, I suppose,’ Miklós conceded, ‘but we’re a small
country, after all: there were only fifteen hundred of us.’ For three years
Miklós and the others had no news from outside. ‘The only news we got was from
shitty newspaper we filched from the guards’ latrine and let’s be honest, the
papers aren’t much to talk about in the first place. We only found out about
Stalin’s death when one of us noticed a black border around his picture in the
main office.’

Miklós
was very talkative despite the discomfort of his position, pinioned by a first
division basketball player. ‘You know what the worst thing was? It’s all crap
about how important freedom, friendship all that abstract stuff is. You know
what matters? Sleep and food. The hunger was unimaginable. You thought it was
bad during the War? I tell you, a few weeks, a couple of months of going hungry – it’s
nothing, nothing. A doddle. A year… two years…three years without enough to
eat,’ he was now shouting, ‘it’s beyond human belief. Ever since I got out, I
always carry this.’ With some difficulty, he unwrapped a cloth containing a
piece of cheese, a hunk of bread and some radishes. ‘I have to carry supplies
with me all the time. I hardly ever use it. I just have to have it with me.’ He
offered Gyuri a tired-looking radish.

‘No.
Thanks. So are you going to be looking up your old guards while you have a
chance to express your gratitude?’

‘That’s
an interesting question. We used to discuss that a lot at Recsk. What sort of
people could beat someone to death just for the hell of it? There was disagreement
about this in the camp, as there’s always disagreement when you get two
Hungarians together. You know how the 23rd of October is going to be described
in the history books? The day the Hungarians agreed.

‘Anyway,
my view was that the guards at Recsk were basically very ordinary, if not too
bright lads. They’d been told we were the scum of the earth, the most evil,
degenerate, child-murdering, odious, verminous parasites to be found in
creation: in short the sort of people who would run concentration camps. What
use was it us trying to explain we were there because we h ad voted the wrong
way?

‘The
other thing is that, you know, someone who is jailed falsely for a long time,
not a year or two, but three or more, tends to go to one extreme or the other.
Judging from my experience you either become excessively forgiving or
excessively vengeful. I feel we should remember Recsk. People should know what
happened. But we should also forget about it and get on with other things. When
the tanks go.’

A
moving-off rumble came. Having made its point and intimidated the vicinity, the
tank moved off. When Gyuri saw people emerging from the buffet he knew he could
safely stand again. His clothes were soaked with sweat, the nostril-curling
stench of fear. ‘Nice meeting you,’ he said, shaking Miklós’s hand, ‘hope you
like the revolution.’

He
bought some food. It was after seven, and because he had made eight the
rendezvous time with Jadwiga and because his luck was sorely depleted, Gyuri
was very keen to get home. Moving up to the Keleti Station he was annoyed to
see the revolution strengthening. Dead Russian soldiers were lying in gutters
and against buildings like inebriated vagrants. While Gyuri had no objection to
dead Russian soldiers, it suggested that he was moving closer to the fighting
rather than away from it as he desired. His hands were still shaking from his
time out on the target range. His stomach would be mulling over the terror for
weeks. Ridiculously, in the middle of the shooting he had had the impulse to
shout at the tank crew: ‘Stop! You don’t understand. I’m a coward. This isn’t
fair. Find some brave people to shoot at.’

A
Soviet armoured personnel carrier that had erupted, probably by grenade, was
proving a big hit with the locals because, apparently, it had a headless
Russian on display inside. People vied to peer into the charred interior. Gyuri
was totally unmoved by the sight of the Russian dead. He had heard all the
arguments about how the Russians were people, how everyone is the same, what a great
composer Tchaikovsky was; nevertheless he couldn’t help wishing that the
Russians would fuck off and be people and the same, back in the Soviet Union.
An incinerated corpse at his feet failed to elicit any compassion. Probably a
conscript– he didn’t give a toss.

All
around the Keleti Station, there were groups of tanks cutting off his intended
route home. The Russian tanks weren’t doing anything but they didn’t seem to
want to move. They were just occupying space. No one, Gyuri noticed, was
strolling around close to them. The streets were full of people, no one wanted
to stay at home, but a peopleless belt extended for hundreds of metres round
the tanks. The streetcorner militia that had formed on the Rákoczi út were
discussing what to do. There were two soldiers, several new teenagers (two on
roller-skates) and a hotchpotch of individuals you’d find waiting for a bus,
including two postwomen. ‘We need petrol bombs. That’s what they’re using at
the Corvin. Who can get some empty bottles?’ asked one of the soldiers.

It was
nearly eight. Gyuri cut down a sidestreet to see if he could sidestep the Red
Army.

An hour
later making his final approach, closing in from the direction of the Zoo,
Gyuri was annoyed to discover that the Red Army had completely surrounded his
flat. He was getting angry enough to attack one of the tanks.

As he
was observing the tank blocking the end of Benczur utca and trying to think of
a way of blowing it up, safely, without risk, with his bare hands, from an
enormous distance he saw a man walk out of one of the blocks of flats at the
end of the street and start to knock on the side of the tank, as if he were
knocking on a door. He knocked very assiduously and after a few minutes, the
turret opened and a leather-helmeted head popped out. What was the man doing?
Asking them for a light? Hoping that the Russians would be less likely to open
fire in mid-conversation, Gyuri galloped over. When he ran past, despite his
grudging Russian, he realised that the man was haranguing the tank crew. ‘What
are you doing here?’ the man demanded.

‘We’re
here to protect you from hooligans and reactionaries,’ the officer protested.

‘Where
are the hooligans? Where are the reactionaries?’ It was an intriguing exchange,
but Gyuri had had enough current affairs for one day. Going up the stairs, he
met Jadwiga coming down.

‘You’re
late,’ she said sternly.

‘Time
flies when you’re having a revolution.’

Inside,
Elek greeted them with the news that Imre Nagy had formed a new government. ‘I’m
pleased for him,’ said Gyuri, ‘but if you’ll excuse us, there are some urgent
aspects of Hungarian-Polish
relations to consider.’

* * *

Why
shouldn’t things be conducted in comfortable conditions? thought Gyuri, glad
that he had obtained a fully-qualified bed from Pataki as his farewell
present. Worn out by history, worry, fear and his conjugal work, he was
reclining into sleep when Jadwiga said apropos of nothing:

‘We are
winning. It will be Poland next.’

He
loved her craziness. Did it really matter what went outside the bedroom where
they had established a bad-free zone? ‘Who knows, maybe even the Czechs will do
something?’ Jadwiga continued, recounting her day out in the revolution and how
she had come to Budapest. On Saturday, the students at Szeged University had
held a meeting, as was suddenly the fashion, to discuss the pervasive iniquity
of things. ‘It was the first time in my life I’ve seen anything that could even
loosely be called democratic. Strange that I had to wait twenty-two years to
see someone saying what they thought in public; there was something almost
improper about it. So we voted to withdraw from that Communist-guided student
union and to set up our own. I told them we had to do it. I remembered what you
said about fighting all the way. That pushed me.’

Gyuri
strained his memory but he couldn’t recall any such dictum.

The
Szeged students had then voted to send a delegation to the university youth of
Budapest to urge them to do the same. Jadwiga had arrived in Budapest on Monday
night but hadn’t wanted to come and break the back of Gyuri’s sleep by saying
hello at four in the morning. She had then been touring the collapse of the
Party’s power. While Gyuri had been sheltering behind Stalin, she had been at
the Corvin cinema, with one of the best seats in town to watch the fighting.
Gyuri related his various encounters with Soviet tanks.

‘Were
you afraid?’ she asked.

‘No,’
he lied, choosing a tone of cool indifference to the lethal nature of Soviet
armour but not one of scorn, since he didn’t want to overdo it.

‘I wasn’t
afraid either,’ she said. Not for the first time, Gyuri registered that Jadwiga
was much braver than he was. A soul as firm as her breasts, beauty and
fortitude, Venus and Mars in one. And her bravery was a self-fuelling,
independent, detached bravery, the sort that would work alone, in the dark, in
the gas chamber. What is she doing with me? Gyuri could envision rustling up
some bravado if there was an audience or some support, but the sort of solo
bravery that exists even though there is no one to witness or mark it was, he
knew, beyond him.