Temptation

  But if you didn’t, then God bless

  The man who invented you.

  What a great invention,

  If that is what you are,

  Either way, you should know

  From my heart you’re never far.

  It beats so weakly now,

  For lack of food to drive it,

  But you and your cross

  Will always live inside it.

  It’s good to know you lived,

  And if not, that you might have done,

  That miracles for the poor you made,

  And more than just the one.

  I’ve no more prayers,

  All my strength now freezes,

  But still it’s good to say:

  O! My good Lord Jesus.

  O! My good Lord Jesus,

  I am not bad inside, down deep,

  All I need’s some daily bread,

  Or a crumb of sleep.

  Or a crumb of sleep.

  That was my last poem. From then on, I couldn’t even write. The magic stopped, the font of inspiration dried up. I still copied the English words out of the dictionary, but I could no longer commit them to memory. My mind was no longer sharp. I was still alive, but only just alive. The stubborn flame of my will to live flickered in unwilling flesh; my mind was burned out like an empty saucepan on the stove. One night, I found myself saying aloud in the street:

  “I’m going to die. I’ll never see America.”

  And that is clearly what would have happened, if at this point luck had not stooped to pick me up. It was a dubious sort of luck, and it cost me dear, but nonetheless it saved my life.

  •

  It was all thanks to a dog. The dog was called Cesar, and he was a very elegant dog indeed. He came and went in the hotel like a haughty diplomat with extraterritorial rights who didn’t give a damn about anyone. He was a fine, large, long-haired animal, an impossibly white Russian wolfhound. Everyone turned to look at him when he passed through the lobby, but he didn’t so much as glance at his admirers. His aristocratic features spoke of boredom and disdain. When anyone asked who he belonged to, the bellboy who happened to be taking him for his walk would reply, ceremoniously and sotto voce:

  “This is Her Excellency’s dog.”

  I didn’t know Her Excellency, because she’d been in Paris for some time. Her husband, His Excellency, known to the bellboys as Exfix, used to bring the dog down in the lift. Exfix, as I later found out, was short for “Excellency” and “fixer”. I don’t know if it was the bellboys who’d come up with this nickname, or others, too, called him by it behind his back, but the fact remains that for us, he was Exfix.

  Exfix must have been around fifty. He was a stocky, thickset man with a fat neck; his head resembled an outsized billiard ball. He was bald all over, and shaved the little patches of hair remaining on his head as smooth as he shaved his cheeks. He had small, piggy eyes and a big, meaty nose, beneath which languished a thick, pointed moustache. It was a carefully groomed, studiously “casual” aristocratic moustache that was always, since it was dyed a little too often, a shade blacker than the blackest of black moustaches. He was a rosy-cheeked, full-of-life character, and you could tell that he loved his bloody steaks and good rich sauces. The strange thing was that this big, scrappy man, strong as an ox, did everything he could to affect the manner of a degenerate aristocrat. He imitated their sleepy, arrogant speech, their lazy, slightly swaying walk, and generally did his best to appear as dull and eccentric as any peer with a propensity for early-onset senility. But everyone knew, of course, that he was of painfully middle-class origin. His father had been a smallholder near Debrecen who’d done well for himself. Apparently he’d been illiterate, and if Exfix hadn’t worn such fine English suits, you’d have thought that he, too, was some well-todo provincial farmer who’d come up to the sinful capital to deal with some troublesome administrative affair, and was trying to imitate the gentlemen he’d found there.

  Elemér once pointedly said that Exfix was only an excellency because an absent-minded prime minister had once made him a cabinet minister by mistake. He was a minister without portfolio for about seven or eight months. That was many years before, but in those days if someone had been a minister for a day and a half, they still got to put “Cabinet Minister (ret’d)” on their calling cards for the rest of their lives, and those calling cards were gold in Hungary at the time. A cabinet minister (ret’d), especially one as sharp as Exfix, could arrange almost anything, and anything he couldn’t arrange, he could find others to arrange for him—people he’d arranged things for in the past. Eventually, Exfix attained almost everything you could attain in Hungary in those days. He was a member of parliament, a privy counsellor, a member of the Vitéz order, the recipient of the Corvin Medal and more or less every other civilian decoration in existence; president, secretary or treasurer of the most exclusive social and cultural institutions; second to the finest gentlemen in their duels; guest of honour, patron, honorary citizen, and just generally everything that could possibly feature on a pillar of the Hungarian community’s calling card and in their obituary. But that was not what got him his twenty-thousand-acre estate. Exfix, whom newspapers and masters of ceremonies always called “a distinguished statesman” was, in actual fact, a fixer.

  “Fixer” did not feature in the dictionary of the Hungarian language as a profession, but it was all the more a feature of Hungarian public life. The Horthyist state stuck its slimy fingers so far into every pie that in the end, you could barely breathe without some form of official permission. And anyone who didn’t want to wait till Judgement Day for their official requests to be approved, if they were approved at all, turned to a fixer, who would fix whatever needed to be fixed. “Fixer” was a collective term like, for example, money, and in just the same way as there were single-figure notes and six-figure notes, there were single-figure fixers and six-figure fixers. A single-figure fixer was a dirty, hungry little man in fraying trousers who made a living because he knew three clerks in the ministry or in some other department, who would—if adequately compensated—take the relevant forms and move them from the bottom to the top of the pile on the departmental secretary’s desk—or if it wasn’t in the pile at all, would slip it in. A double-figure fixer knew the departmental secretary himself, who would do the same thing with his boss’s desk. A triple-figure fixer was a close personal friend of the boss, while a four-figure fixer was friends with the ministerial advisor, the five-figure fixer with the Secretary of State, and so on, right up to the Minister himself.

  Exfix, needless to say, was a six-figure fixer. In keeping with his rank, he bribed only the highest echelons of society, and no one dreamt of calling him a fixer. Only single-, double-, and triple-figure fixers actually went and “fixed” anything. Four-figure fixers were said to “intercede”, five-figure fixers “lent their support”, while six-figure fixers “worked for the public good”.

  Exfix’s work was made easier not only by his own rank, but the fact that his late father-in-law had been, in his time, one of the most influential men in the country. Exfix’s ascent began the day he married his father-in-law’s daughter. Those in the know also claimed to have insights as to why and how he did that, but that does not belong in these pages.

  Exfix was apparently still aping his father-in-law. For the old man had been a real aristocrat, a Count and an honest-to-goodness peer who sat, on festive occasions, at Lord God Almighty Horthy’s right hand; and all that separated him from Christ himself was that this seat was down here on earth and not in heaven, and in Hungary what’s more—which at the time was hardly an earthly paradise.

  The dowager Countess was still a regular feature of the society pages. She had once been a famous beauty, and for the gossip columnists, she still was. She was a good thirty years younger than her husband and rumour had it that she had been cuckolding him since their wedding day with a man from the Foreign Office, a fact of which everybody was aware except the Count himse
lf, although some claimed that even he knew. As to how much of that is true, I don’t know, but the fact remains that after the Count’s death the man from the Foreign Office married the lady and her forty thousand acres. In my time, he was a leading light of the Hungarian mission in Paris, where Mrs Exfix, Her Excellency, was now paying him a visit.

  Mrs Exfix’s dog was the first animal in my life for which I had felt a marked disdain. Every time I saw it, I was seized by a strange anger. His bored aristocratic features annoyed me, as did his slow, dignified, diplomat’s gait, and everything about him just generally. The dislike was mutual, manifesting itself with Cesar in the fact that he never took any notice of me. He looked right through me, just like the two-legged guests of the hotel. His dislike of me made perfect sense in both human and dog terms. The other bellboys constantly sucked up to him, partly because he was Her Excellency’s dog, and partly because whoever took him for his walk always got a tip. I did not make nice with him, and of course, I could hardly have taken him for his walk anyway, because I couldn’t leave the lift.

  In the mornings, when Exfix got out of the lift, he would throw the dog’s lead to the first bellboy he saw and, with aristocratic nonchalance, say:

  “You . . . boy . . . what’s your name again? Take Cesar for a walk.”

  One morning, he couldn’t find any bellboys in the lobby and he brought the dog back to me.

  “You . . . boy . . . what’s your name again?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, as usual, he said: “Look after Cesar till they pick him up.”

  So we were left alone. Reception, it seems, had forgotten about Cesar, because it was a good two hours till they came for him.

  We were both acutely embarrassed. At first, we tried to ignore one another, but after a while, this proved impossible. Whenever a guest came, I had to usher Cesar into the lift, and if he took an undue interest in a skirted female guest’s silk-stockinged leg, I was forced to intervene. His presence made me strangely uncomfortable. The dog, too, was restless. We watched each other testily.

  Around noon, I pulled the lever a second sooner than I should have and Cesar’s tail got caught in the door. After that I stroked him, but that was all.

  From then on, however, our relationship changed. We still kept our distance, but were no longer enemies. Cesar began to take notice of my presence. He was hardly friendly, but he occasionally turned his aristocratic face towards me and looked at me with cool politeness, the way you do at a vague acquaintance who is no friend, but tolerable company nonetheless, and socially respectable.

  Then one day, something unusual happened. Exfix used to feed the dog chocolate, something I, as a country boy, considered utterly ridiculous. Exfix, who also came from the countryside, must have felt that, for he once said to me, almost apologetically:

  “Her Excellency got him into the habit.”

  One morning, when he left me with Cesar once more, he gave me a handful of chocolate.

  “Give him those,” he said. “They’re from Gerbeaud. His favourite.”

  That was around eleven a.m. I had last eaten at seven the night before, and had hardly had my fill even then. Long story short, as soon as Exfix had left, I took the chocolate and the dog into the lift and stopped in between two floors, where there was no danger of my being surprised, and devoured the chocolate.

  Cesar looked at me angrily, or at least it seemed so at the time.

  “Don’t be stingy,” I said, my mouth full. “You get plenty to eat and I’m starving to death.”

  Cesar, however, was not moved by this argument. He stood up on his hind legs and demanded his chocolate. If I had given him a piece, he would probably have calmed down, but just then the lift’s buzzer rang, and in my haste, I stuffed the last of the chocolate into my mouth. Cesar started barking at the top of his voice. I was afraid that someone would hear and give me a ticking off for hanging around between two floors when there were people waiting for the lift. But I wanted to finish the chocolate, and even if I hadn’t wanted to, I could hardly show myself before the guests with my mouth full. But Cesar was barking more and more wildly, and finally, the buzzer rang again. This was enough to cause my already frayed nerves to hand in their notice. I burst into tears.

  That was when the unusual thing happened. When Cesar saw that I was crying, he sidled up to me and started whining. I knew a lot about dogs, and was aware that this sort of thing did happen, but I had never imagined that this jaded, disdainful beast would be capable of it.

  When Lajos came to collect him to take him for his walk, I asked him to cover the lift for a few minutes, hurried down to the kitchen and asked them for a bone “for Her Excellency’s dog”.

  Cesar broke into barks of joy when I gave it to him. It was the first time I’d seen him happy. His whole being changed. He was no longer an aristocratic dog, but just a dog plain and simple, a dog happy with his bone.

  The next morning he came up to me and dropped the chocolate Exfix had given him at my feet. I was absolutely convinced he did it out of gratitude, though it’s possible—or even likely—that he was simply bored of sweets. Suffice to say that from then on, I liked him far better than the hotel’s two-legged guests.

  Whenever Exfix gave him to me to look after, I went and got him a nice big bone. Eventually, Exfix noticed.

  “You’re giving the dog bones?” he asked in horror.

  I looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  “They’re very good bones, Your Excellency,” I said. “See how Cesar likes them.”

  “That may be,” Exfix agreed, clearly remembering his provincial childhood. “But if Her Excellency sees you, she’ll have your guts for garters.”

  It seems he, too, was a little scared of Her Excellency. It seemed to me everyone was a little afraid of her.

  Her Excellency was a legendary figure in the hotel. The most outlandish tales circulated about her. Once, for example, she had slapped the second-floor maid—the kind and obliging Eszter—so hard she bled because her new evening dress had proved too tight at the last moment and the poor girl had been unable to do it up. Then she gave her the 250-pengő dress.

  “She’s not a bad person,” said Eszter, “she’s just crazy. You never know what she’s going to do next.”

  “But what a woman!” Gyula noted expertly. “Those tits, my friend . . . phew! Like that!” he said, demonstrating. “And they’re the real deal. Never wears a bra. I swear, she’s the finest thing I ever saw.”

  Generally, whenever her name cropped up, there was always a superlative attached to it. She had the “sweetest tits”. She had the “best legs”. She had the “finest little rear”. She had the “cutest red hair”. She gave the most generous tips. She was the nicest guest. She was the rudest guest. She “made the biggest spectacle” when she got drunk at the bar, which happened often. She had the dirtiest mouth. She was the most refined lady. Just generally, she was “the most” in everything.

  If a new bellboy complained about a guest, the others just shrugged and said:

  “That’s nothing compared to Her Excellency!”

  But if, on the other hand, they were raving about someone, the others would also say:

  “That’s nothing compared to Her Excellency!”

  They insisted on this idea of Her Excellency being “the most” in an unfathomable and sometimes really quite ridiculous way. Once, I remember, there was a delivery of a two-metre-tall basket of flowers for someone, and one of the maids said it was the biggest bunch of flowers ever made. But the others couldn’t let even that stand. Three of them chorused:

  “You should have seen Her Excellency’s flowers!”

  Her Excellency was also the most irresistible woman. Apparently, she drove all the men mad. The boys had an entire roll call on hand, featuring the cream of Hungarian society.

  “But she’s just playing with ’em,” Gyula said. “She plays ’em all for fools.”

  “Not András!” Antal interrupted. “She gave him the goods, all right.
”

  “What do you know about it? Were you holding the candle?”

  “No need for candles. You’d have had to be blind not to see it.”

  “Rubbish,” Gyula grumbled, insisting—for reasons of his own—on Her Excellency’s unapproachability. “Like she’d want András, of all people. She didn’t want Horthy, no, but that useless sixteen-year-old bellboy, oh yes, that’s just what she wanted. As if !”

  “It’s possible,” Lajos intervened. “Likes ’em young. Bit of fresh meat.”

  “Then why did she get András fired, eh?” retorted Gyula angrily.

  “ ’Cause she’d had enough of him,” Lajos replied. “András must’ve been making a fuss, so she had him fired, that’s all.”

  “Oh, you can all go shove it up your you-know-what,” Gyula said furiously, putting an end to the argument. “You ought to wash your mouths out with soap and water!”

  In that respect, Gyula was absolutely right. But from then on, I thought a lot about Her Excellency.

  This was back when Elemér was still on the day shift. I remembered that when my mother had asked whether there were any vacancies, Elemér had mentioned a boy they’d just let go because of some Excellency. Later, I tried to get some details out of him, but he would always deflect the conversation, just like when I asked him why the boys called Ferenc Franciska. He blushed when I asked him.

  “Nonsense,” he shrugged awkwardly. “Dezső was just unlucky, that’s all there is to it.”

  So his name was Dezső—at least I’d found out this much.

  Once, when Antal was in a chatty mood, I asked him:

  “Did Her Excellency have something to do with someone called Dezső, too?”

  “Dezső?” Antal looked at me. “But that’s András!”

  “How’s that?”

  “Her Excellency started calling him András, and it stuck.”

  That sounds strange, but at the time it seemed perfectly natural to me. It was part of an old and venerable tradition to which our upper classes were very given. The highest members of society didn’t bother to remember their servants’ names. You inherited not only your predecessor’s uniform, but also their name. The butler, maid or footman might change, but their names stayed the same. This was how their masters expressed, though perhaps not consciously, that they did not consider their servants people, but merely functional objects that were just as much a part of the furniture as, say, the dining-room table.