Temptation

by Janos Szekely

  That it had been Franciska who betrayed him to the management was now beyond doubt. Elemér had spoken to his “comrade”, and when we asked him what he’d found out, all he’d said reluctantly was:

  “Unfortunately, you were right.”

  So we determined to get our revenge on Franciska, but when it came to how, the boys grew uneasy. Gyula’s case scared them: none of them dared take a stand; they were all afraid they’d get in trouble. They hummed and hawed and beat around the bush, talking in generalities.

  “He should be beaten to death!” they called. “He should be driven to suicide himself !”

  “What do you mean should ?” I snapped finally. “We have to give him such a hiding, and before the day is out, that he never even thinks of doing something like this again till the day he dies.”

  “Yes,” said Márton. “But how?”

  “Leave that to me. I’ll teach him a lesson, the little fag.”

  This was greeted with general approbation; only Elemér protested.

  “That sort of thing isn’t worthy of a conscious proletarian,” he declared drily and didactically. “It goes against the Socialist world view.”

  “So go give him a pat on the back, then!” I burst out angrily.

  “Hear! hear!” the boys chorused.

  He didn’t get far with his “Socialist world view” with them either. They, too, had only the vaguest notion of what it was. Everyone took my part, and I took advantage of the situation rather viciously.

  “Socialist world view!” I muttered mockingly. “Where I come from, they call that cowardice.”

  The boys laughed, but Elemér still wasn’t angry with me. His voice stayed calm and practical.

  “Let’s leave the demagoguery out of it,” he said neutrally. “Think about it. The first thing Franciska would do is go tell on Béla, and then he’d be out on his ear like poor Gyula.”

  “That’s my affair,” I said. “Why are you always so worried about everybody else’s problems?”

  “Because this is collective action. No one person can take responsibility for this.”

  “You’re all welcome to come and kick him up the backside, too, as far as I’m concerned,” I said, somewhat less academically; I thought that had really put me over the top with the others.

  But that wasn’t the case; quite the opposite, in fact. The boys no longer dared support me openly, because they were afraid that if they did, they’d have to take part in the beating, too, and then Franciska would tell on all of them as well, and they would all go the way of Gyula.

  Besides, another idea was then mooted.

  “Let’s do to him what he did to Gyula,” Gábor suggested. “Let’s tell ’em he’s a fag, and then he’ll be out on his ear, too.”

  That was effective and seemed to me completely risk-free, too. Everyone was delighted. Elemér waited for them to finish rejoicing, and then asked:

  “Do you know about his family?”

  There was silence. It suddenly turned out that we knew nothing at all about Franciska, except that he was a “fag”.

  “Well, then,” Elemér continued. “Listen. Franciska’s father is one of the finest men in the movement, an honest-to-God metalworker, a good old-fashioned Socialist. They blacklisted him for it years ago. Can’t get a job and the whole family lives off what Franciska makes. D’you want them to starve to death?”

  That settled the boys down a bit, but had just as little effect as the “Socialist world view”.

  “You can’t always be so bloody considerate,” Lajos said. “He can keep them with his fag-money!”

  That resulted in another round of general laughter. Elemér waited till it had settled down and then tried a different tack.

  “All right,” he said, “but do you really think the management don’t know why Franciska spends half the day in 302? If you’re gone for half an hour, the sky falls in. Why do you think they turn a blind eye for him? Because his friend is connected up to here. He supplies the army with German chemicals, and that means more to your bourgeois than morality. You can rest assured that an anonymous tip-off will end up in the bin, and if one of us reports him in person, they’ll end up carrying the can. So what’s the point?”

  That, of course, did the job. No one was laughing now. They hummed and hawed and beat around the bush again.

  By that point, I had long withdrawn from the debate. I just sat there by myself, smoking one cigarette after the other in silence. Just like poor Gyula, I thought, and my mouth went dry.

  The debate had well and truly petered out when Elemér laid out his plan.

  “Let’s boycott him,” he proposed. “We won’t speak to him any more. Let’s say that from this moment on he’s dead to us, and we’ll boycott anyone that talks to him, too. Everyone in favour, raise your hands!”

  Everybody but me put their hands up.

  “What about you?” Elemér looked at me. “I want you to know, you have the right to make a counter-proposal if you want.”

  “Kiss my arse,” I grunted. “That’s my proposal.”

  With that I left, slamming the door behind me.

  •

  It was still only eight o’clock, and I didn’t dare go home. I lay down again in the basement, but couldn’t sleep. Eventually, I gave up the hopeless struggle, went into the changing room and changed. I checked in the bathroom, and still couldn’t see anything—that reassured me a little. I’ll go over to Buda and take a walk, I thought.

  When I left the hotel, I found myself face to face with Franciska. He was pretty, he was fresh, he smelt good, his girlish baby-face was all smiles. Had he been smiling last night, as well?

  I wanted to get going, but then I saw that Elemér was watching me through the window of the lobby, and—possessed by something—I said hello to Franciska.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “Where you headed?”

  Franciska winked.

  “Officially, I’m off to the Ministry of Defence.”

  “And less officially?”

  “Guess.”

  “Skipping work?”

  “Precisely. You off home?”

  “Not yet. I’ll hang around with you a bit.”

  “Let’s go up to Gellérthegy, all right?”

  “All right,” I nodded and we left together.

  Elemér was still watching from the window, and this filled me with a queer satisfaction. I started whistling.

  “Did you see him?”

  “Who?”

  “Elemér. He was really looking at you.”

  “And?”

  Franciska shot me an inquisitive glance. His blue, noncommittal eyes were cold as steel.

  “They’ll stop talking to you,” he teased. “Aren’t you scared?”

  “Only of the Almighty. And not always of him, either.”

  So he knows, I thought. Or does he only suspect and is he trying to find out from me? Well, he’s barking up the wrong tree if he is.

  “Aren’t you surprised?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  “That I know.”

  I deliberately didn’t ask him what he knew. I whistled “Mr Stux”.

  “My sources are good, aren’t they?” he laughed. “What a silly bunch, I ask you. Boycott. That’s a laugh. Elemér must have been going on about the Socialist world view again.”

  I tried to smile. I’m not sure I succeeded.

  It was a fine, sunny morning. We were walking across the bridge. What if I shoved him into the Danube? I wondered. I shivered unconsciously as we passed a policeman.

  Franciska took my arm.

  “Old man,” he said confidentially, “I have to say I admire you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you couldn’t care less about them. You know where to belong.”

  “I do?”

  “ ’Course. Don’t be so modest. I’ve had my eye on you for some time. First the Americans, then Their Excellencies, now the night shift. You’re the only one of the boy
s who knows how to make their luck.” He sounded sincere now. I felt incredibly awkward. He liked me more and more every minute. “I don’t know why we weren’t friends sooner. We’re going to make something of ourselves, you and I. Shall I tell you why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because we know where to belong. These idiots are never going to do more than pick up scraps, because they spend their whole lives chasing after an empty cart.” He smiled. “But you and I know how to make our luck, don’t we? Socialist world view!” He made a face. “Tell me, what do you think of that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “I do,” he said disparagingly. “My old man’s a Social Democrat. I get the Socialist world view for breakfast.”

  “And what do you think of it?”

  “What do I think?” he shrugged. “That they’re right. Poverty’s bad. So? Death’s bad, too. But you try fighting that. There’s always been death, and there’s always been poverty. The question is, do you like being poor?”

  “No one likes being poor.”

  “Well, then. What about the conscious proletarian? Load of hooey. No one likes being poor. What’s the cure for poverty? Money, isn’t it? And where can you find money? Where there is money. And where is it? With the rich. There. Then why should I stick with the poor? You know, it’s all a case of sour grapes. The only reason that lot complain about the bourgeoisie is ’cause they’re too stupid to get into it. And then there’s people like Elemér—they’re worse.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re not stupid but still choose to live stupidly. Instead of trying to help themselves, they want to save the world. Just imagine—Elemér saving the world. They live eight to a room and three of his brothers’ve died of consumption, but he’s got principles, don’t you know.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I do. But the difference is, I don’t cling to them. Life isn’t algebra, where every equation makes sense. My principle is: whatever works. Why should I cling to a principle if it does me no good?”

  “But it would be good for you too if they put an end to poverty.”

  “If they did! Where have they ever? When have they ever?”

  “That’s what they’re fighting for, though, isn’t it? Maybe they’ll get there eventually.”

  “Eventually. I like that. After I’m long gone, I’ll bet. Well, my boy, you can keep that as far as I’m concerned. Just look at my old man. Spent his whole life fighting for that. And what’s it got him? Damn all. He hasn’t saved the world, and he’s ruined his own life. Ever since I can remember, I’ve seen nothing at home except misery, strife, sickness and fear. Whenever a policeman enters the building, my ma has a heart attack. The old man’s been inside four times, once for two years at a stretch. Had to have three of his ribs removed, he got beaten up by the police so bad. He’s blacklisted, he can’t get work; he’s like a hunted animal, and that’s how it’s been forever. We’ve never had enough to eat, never had decent clothes, never had a good day. We’ve always lived like dogs. And why? For the future, says the old man. Aren’t I, his son, the future? Tell me, please. You can tell me that, can’t you?”

  “ ’Course you are.”

  “There. And I don’t give a damn that he’s spent his whole life fighting. I don’t want that world of his, he can keep it. So then what’s he been fighting for? What was the point of it all?”

  “Not everybody thinks like you.”

  “And not everybody thinks like him, either. How on earth does he know whether people in the future really will think the life he imagines for them right now is so good? Am I right or am I right? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “You’re right,” I said, and was shocked to find I meant it.

  Yes, he was right—he was right about a lot of things, and that was the terrible thing.

  We were already heading uphill. This was the hill the pagans had rolled Bishop Gellért off of into the river for trying to convert them. What would happen if I took him and? . . .

  I took my arm out of his.

  “Got a smoke?” I asked. My voice sounded very strange.

  He didn’t notice.

  “Here you go,” he said generously, extending a silver cigarette case.

  It was full of Egyptian cigarettes, ten in each half. The peasants in our village had to work four full days for the price of those twenty cigarettes. Who was right now?

  “Let’s sit down,” Franciska suggested.

  We lay down in the shade of a lilac bush. There was a sweet, warm scent in the air, the meadow covered in colourful flowers, and a light, pleasant breeze tickled the tall grass. Up here, you could no longer hear the noise of the city. It was quiet, not a soul in sight, only a bird singing above us. It suddenly swooped, picked off a maggot and flew on, to carry on singing. It was all so peaceful here. The bigger animals ate the smaller ones, and down in the city, people did the same. We smoked on in silence.

  All at once, Franciska turned to me.

  “Did you know I keep my whole family?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And you know what thanks I get for it? Yesterday, my little brother called me a hooligan in front of the whole family, and a selfish pig. You’d have thought the old man would smack him, wouldn’t you? Not a bit of it. He didn’t say a word, but I know he thinks the same thing. The whole family does. What do you say to that? I’m the selfish pig that keeps them all, and the old man is so selfless, though we all would have starved to death long ago if it were up to him.” He knocked the ash tetchily off his cigarette. “But it won’t go on much longer,” he added angrily. “I’m going to get the old man a job so they don’t end up in the street, and then they’ll have seen the last of me.”

  “You’re going to get the old man a job?”

  “Who else? The Socialist world view isn’t!”

  “But how can you get him a job in this day and age?”

  Franciska was quiet for a moment.

  “I can tell you,” he said and dropped his voice somewhat. “I asked the German. It’s easy for him.”

  “So the old man’ll get a job.”

  Franciska furrowed his brows and stared pensively after the smoke from his cigarette.

  “It’s not quite as simple as that,” he said eventually.

  “Why?”

  “You know, he’s not a bad sort, the German, but he’s got a fixation. Or rather, two. The Reds and the Jews. You’ve never heard anything like it, believe me. He says they’re going to wipe them out in Germany, but not in the haphazard way our Whites do it, when they toss the editor of Népszava in the Danube, or massacre a couple of hundred Jews, and then nothing. He says that’s Sauwirtschaft, a joke. They have to wipe them out in an organized way, he says, legally, openly, clean and proper—the German way.”

  “And he knows your old man’s Red?”

  “He does now. Problem is, he didn’t hear it from me. You know, I should have fed it to him slowly, with some good sentimental yarn. But it’s done now. I was stupid, I didn’t tell him. They told him in the factory where he wanted them to take him.”

  “And?”

  Franciska gave a whistle.

  “Oh boy! You should have seen it. He was furious. How I’ve put him in an impossible position, and what was I thinking trying to get him to help someone like that. Someone like that can go starve to death, and so can his entire family, and so on, and so on.”

  “So what you going to do now?”

  “Leave that to me!” he shrugged. “First of all, I’m going to starve him.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” he snapped. “They gossip enough about me in the hotel.” He looked at me and added mysteriously: “But there’s something they don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “That he’s mad about me.”

  He said that as naturally as if his German had been a woman, or if he’d been a woman, and his German a besotted sui
tor. I must have made a very silly face, because he was almost confrontational when he asked:

  “Well, what are you staring at?”

  I was acutely embarrassed, but at the same time I was so curious that I couldn’t let it go at that.

  “It’s just that,” I stuttered slightly, “I’ve never . . . I’ve never known . . . one of them, and . . .” I dropped my voice unconsciously. “What’s it really like? Can someone like that be in love with a man the same way that, say, I can with a girl?”

  Franciska gave a dismissive wave of the arm.

  “Of course! Much more so.”

  “And . . . are you in love with him?”

  He laughed sharply.

  “The hell I am!”

  “But you’re . . . like that, too, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Not at all. What are you looking at me like that for? Not everybody who does it is like that.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “Some people are born that way, and some people just do it. I just do it.”

  “But how can you do it if you’re not like that?”

  “How? Don’t be stupid. Didn’t the boys in your school do it with each other?”

  “Yeah, some.”

  “And were they all like that?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “There you go, then. If I could do it with the boys in school, why couldn’t I do it with him now?”

  “Is that all you do? You don’t do anything else?”

  “We do other things, sure, but . . .” he smiled. “You know, that’s not so bad either. And why shouldn’t I do it, if it’s to my advantage?”

  “Is that the only reason you do it?”

  Franciska thought about it.

  “You know, I really don’t know,” he said. “You have to do something, and at the end of the day it’s all the same, isn’t it? The boys spend all their money on it and end up catching all sorts of diseases from those girls, to boot. And then they’re the ones with the big mouths. Well, they can talk all they want, for all I care. Eventually, I’ll get married, and not to just any woman, either!”