Temptation

  After dinner, he called the waiter over.

  “Is there a good peach pálinka in the house?”

  “Yes, sir,” the waiter said, clicking his heels. “We have a lovely twenty-five-year-old. Made in small vats in Kecskemét. I highly recommend it.”

  “All right,” he nodded.

  “Two glasses?”

  “Bring the bottle,” the Constable decreed. “Then leave us alone.”

  I could tell he wanted to get me drunk. He kept plying me with drink after drink, cracking jokes and telling stories, doing everything he could to distract my attention. I drank in moderation and only when I really had to, but despite all my precautions, I suddenly noticed that my head was fogging up. I was frightened. What if I do get drunk? I screwed up my courage.

  “May I please have a coffee, Doctor?”

  “Later,” he said, and I, of course, knew why.

  That sobered me up for a while. I watched him like a card sharp—I knew the stakes were high.

  “Well, my boy,” he asked suddenly, pulling his chair a little closer. “How does it feel to be in with the upper classes?”

  “Ummm . . . fine,” I stammered.

  “Would you like to be part of it?”

  What could I say to that? I replied:

  “Who wouldn’t, sir?”

  “Well, this is your chance,” he said mysteriously. “It’s up to you whether you take it.” He gave me a look full of meaning and paused, clearly for effect. “So,” he said, “what do you say? This is your chance to really make your luck.”

  “How do you mean, Doctor?” I asked naively.

  There was a brief silence. The Constable did not reply at once. He removed his monocle, rubbed it with his handkerchief and surveyed me thoroughly.

  “How much do you know about me?”

  Oh I know plenty about you! I thought, and replied haltingly:

  “That . . . you were a hero during the war, Doctor.”

  “What do you mean, during the war?” he asked. “You think there isn’t a war on now? Nineteen eighteen was merely the end of the first act—but the play is far from over. This is just an intermission, that’s all. The audience is still out in the bar, but behind the scenes, they’re already preparing the next act. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Strange, I thought. Elemér says the same thing.

  “Wars,” he explained, “do not start when the cannon start booming, and don’t end when they fall silent. What happens in between is the most important part. The rehearsals, get it? That’s what determines if the play’s going to be a success or a failure. The Jews have known that for some time. When we went out to fight in 1914, they’d already stealthily undermined the country so thoroughly, it was only a question of time before it collapsed. They’re doing the same thing now. They’re working underground, the Red moles. They leave the dirty work to the stupid goys, while they live high on the hog on Moscow’s money and deck their wives with diamonds. Well, cheers! Here’s to your health.”

  “Your health, Doctor.”

  He offered me a cigarette. We lit up.

  “But there was a time,” he said, “when that wasn’t possible. After that Communist interlude, even the goys opened their eyes—or if they didn’t, we took them out. Your older workers didn’t forget that lesson, but the ones your age weren’t even in school back then. Today’s youth are easy pickings for the Jews. The outlook’s not so rosy—our lads are disappointed and these kosher messiahs are selling them some Commie Promised Land. They buy their way in to the workers’ youth organizations, and . . .” He looked up at me. “But I’m sure you know all about that.”

  “Me?” I started in fright. “Not at all, sir.”

  “Oh, come off it!” he snapped at me suspiciously. “You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve never heard of the Workers’ Youth Movement?”

  “I’ve heard of it, sir, but . . . that’s it. I didn’t even know it was banned.”

  “That’s just the thing—it isn’t banned, and that’s what makes it all the more dangerous. They can get the Communists straight away, but these people won’t admit they’re Communists. They belong to the Social Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party is, for the moment—sadly—allowed to carry on freely. They melt into the crowd like needles in a haystack. Do you know how many young workers’ heads they’ve turned?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Thousands!” he hissed furiously. “Tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands! What do you make of that?”

  Like I’d tell you of all people! I thought, and said:

  “It’s disgraceful.”

  “That doesn’t even begin to cover it!” he doubled down. “It’s downright murder! Spiritual mass murder! Do you see now why I said before that there’s still a war? Shouldn’t every decent man do whatever he can to fight against all this?”

  “Yes . . . of course . . .”

  It was as if that was just what the Constable had been waiting for. He suddenly leant right over and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Do you want to join our fight?”

  “Um . . .” I muttered, “sir, I . . . don’t know . . .”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “Wh . . . what could I do?”

  “I’ll tell you, my boy.” He looked around to make sure nobody was listening. “Listen here,” he whispered then, and his eyes flashed as if some warning light had gone off behind them. “If you breathe a word of what I’m about to tell you to anyone, even your own mother, I will personally beat your brains in with my bare hands. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, then. Don’t ever forget it.” He smiled. “Let’s get to it, then.” He looked around once more, dropped his voice, and carried on: “Look, even the leading Social Democrats are up in arms about this movement. But they’re hardly heroes and they want to save their own skin. Most of them, I think, would happily give up the Communists, but they themselves don’t know who they are. They’re very cunning—even the police haven’t managed to catch up with them yet. So the task has fallen to me. So,” he looked at me, “are you going to help me?”

  “Y-yes, but . . .”

  “What do you mean, but?”

  “But . . . I’m just a nobody, sir . . . a bellboy . . . a . . . um . . .”

  “That’s just how you can help. I can’t get in with them, you see, but you can. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well then, that’s settled. Put it there!”

  His hand was like a toad—cold and clammy. I shuddered. What now? The question hammered away inside me. How am I going to get myself out of this?

  The Constable patted my shoulder.

  “I hope you know what an honour it is to have been chosen for this task.”

  What could I do? I nodded yes.

  “And so you should,” he assured me. “It’s a great thing, truly great. If you do your job well, all sorts of doors will open for you. You can really make your luck.” He lifted his glass. “Well, cheers. Long live the fatherland!”

  “Cheers!”

  If I asked him for a break on the instalments now, I thought, he’d be bound to give it to me. But just at that moment he turned suddenly towards me.

  “Tell me,” he asked, “how do they approach these lads?”

  “I don’t know, Doctor.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? They must have approached you, too.”

  “No, sir.”

  The Constable furrowed his brows.

  “How is that possible? You live in Újpest, in a working-class building, and I know,” his voice suddenly changed, “I know,” he repeated pointedly, “that they’re active in the hotel, too. You must know them. They’re your friends.”

  Elemér! I thought, petrified. I’ve got to warn Elemér!

  I quickly said:

  “I don’t have friends, sir.”

  “How do you mean?�
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  “I just don’t.”

  “What about before?”

  “I had some before, but . . .”

  “But you don’t want to betray them, eh?” he interrupted, and guffawed harshly. “Well, why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. “It’s a fine thing not to betray one’s friends. I wouldn’t want you to, anyway. We’re both gentlemen, after all, or whatever. Well, cheers!”

  “Cheers, Doctor.”

  My head was now all over the place and my stomach was up in arms.

  “Have a cigarette,” he encouraged me, extending his case. “And I’ll explain what’s going on. You’re a bright lad, you’ll get it right away. I’m looking for the ringleader, but in order to find him, I have to know his crowd. I have no problem, mark you, with the crowd. Those lads are just poor misguided sheep. I’m after the big game, my boy. Follow the stench to the Jew. I wouldn’t touch a hair on the boys’ heads. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then go ahead and tell me the names,” he said casually, producing a notebook.

  “What names, sir?”

  “Oh for the love of . . .” he swore. “Don’t play the fool with me, you’re not smart enough. You know what I’m talking about. Tell me the names of the Communists.”

  “I don’t know any Communists, sir.”

  “Is that right?” he looked at me menacingly. “You’d better stop playing around, I’m in no mood.”

  “I mean it, sir.”

  The Constable laughed.

  “Oh I see!” he said, all friendly. “You’re scared the boys will find out where the wind’s blowing from. Don’t you worry about that. It’s all very simple. One day, we’ll get the Jews, and that’ll be that. The boys won’t even know they were being watched. You don’t doubt what I’m telling you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, then. Let’s have the names.”

  “I don’t know any Communists, sir.”

  The Constable slammed the notebook down on the table. His face went red.

  “Tell me, boy, are you looking for a new job?”

  “Not at all, sir, why do you ask?”

  “Because let me assure you that if you lose this one, you’ll never get another in this country again. Or haven’t you heard of the blacklist?”

  “I have, sir.”

  “Well, then. Use your head and start talking.”

  My fright sobered me up completely.

  “Please understand, Doctor,” I said, now hard and determined, “that I can’t do without the money I make, but I don’t know any Communists, I never have, and there’s nothing more I can tell you.”

  There was now a longish silence. The Constable once more removed his monocle and rubbed it with his handkerchief. He never took his eyes off me meanwhile.

  “Listen here,” he said, unnervingly calm. “I don’t know what you do and do not know. I can’t get inside your head, but I swear to God I’ll beat it to a pulp if you’re lying to me.” With that, he pulled out his wallet and took out a calling card. “Here’s my address and telephone number. If you really don’t know what I want to know then I recommend you find out, and fast, because otherwise there’ll be trouble. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, then, let’s be off. Waiter! The bill.”

  I thought he’d finally cut me loose, but oh no.

  “Get in,” he said, in front of the restaurant.

  He drove back over to Pest and I was shocked to find that we were heading to the outskirts. I didn’t understand quite what the meaning of that could be, since I was certain he did not live in the poorer part of town.

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  “I’m taking you home,” he mumbled without looking at me. “The tram doesn’t run this late.”

  “How do you know where I live?”

  “How?” he said, turning towards me suddenly with a twisted, nefarious smile. “I know a lot more about you than you think. And you’d better not forget it.”

  With that, he leant once more over the wheel and didn’t say another word.

  He stopped the car in front of the scrap metal yard.

  “Get out here,” he said. “The proles needn’t know I brought you home.”

  “Yes, sir. Good night.”

  “Have a nice evening!” he replied sardonically and started the engine.

  My mother was asleep by the time I got home, but Manci was still awake.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I growled.

  “You don’t look so good.” She shook her head and, dropping her voice to a whisper, asked: “You still got the clap?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shame,” she laughed. “I could have used a little something to help me sleep.”

  But she got to sleep without it anyway. In a matter of minutes she was snoring gently.

  I undressed, lay down on the floor and gazed muzzily into the darkness. They’re going to fire me, I thought, just now when my mother’s in trouble. No job, no flat, nothing. We’re going to starve to death in the street—that is if the Constable doesn’t get me first. I could see my predicament clearly, and yet at the same time saw it the way an anaesthetized patient watches their operation. An astoundingly deep numbness came over me, an incredible, frightening emptiness.

  “I deserve it,” I mumbled aloud, shuddering at my own voice like a criminal being read the verdict.

  I thought of Elemér. Now there’s a man. But me? What good had I done in life, what had I created? Nothing. I’d just been tossed about this way and that like a rag—and I deserved it, because a rag was exactly what I was. I wasn’t going to be much of a loss to anyone. Tomorrow, I’ll warn Elemér, and then . . . who cares!

  I spun into a hazy dream, but was awake again by five. What would Elemér say? That was my first thought, and I was pierced with fright. He’ll find out that I’d broken the boycott, and . . . I almost cried. A terrible thought occurred to me—that Elemér would say: I wonder why he picked you? What could I say to that? He might end up thinking that . . . Oh damn it all! I swore. That’s all I need! Didn’t I have enough trouble already? Why do I have to talk to Elemér, anyway? What was I going to warn him of ? Did the Constable say anything about him? No. Not even indirectly. So what was I worried about? The Constable was only after Communists. Elemér was a Social Democrat. Isn’t that what he’d always said himself ? Well, then. Why make such a fuss about it? The whole thing’s ridiculous.

  But I couldn’t get to sleep. I got up to fetch a cigarette from my jacket pocket, but bumped into a chair in the dark and woke up Manci.

  “What is it?” she mumbled sleepily. “Can’t you sleep?”

  “No. Could you give me a little pálinka?”

  “Next to the sink. But don’t use my glass.”

  “All right, all right,” I grumbled. “So you’ll catch it from someone else instead.”

  I drank till I was completely drunk and then I told myself, all full of swagger: it’ll be all right in the end. It’s never not been before. But from then on, I couldn’t get to sleep without pálinka.

  I took to the bottle.

  6

  I LIVED IN A SHADOWY STUPOR like fever patients and the quietly insane. I woke up each night with a hangover and went to sleep drunk in the morning. During the night, I kept going down to the kitchen for a drink—I was never fully sober. I didn’t want to think. I could feel the noose around my neck; there was only one way out of it and I knew, with every drop of my blood I knew that I would never, never take it, no matter what. And I also knew, of course, that sooner rather than later, it would all come out and they would fire me from the hotel and blacklist me, and I would never get another job. They’d chase us out of the apartment, my mother would eventually drink lye, and sooner or later I would end up like all the other homeless people. What was there for me to think about? Whether it would be better to be a snitch or a convict? These were the two careers left open to me
in my fair homeland, the country I was meant to stick with through thick and thin.

  My every heartbeat said no, no, no, but who in Hungary gave a damn about a peasant boy’s heart? What could I do? My life was in other people’s hands. Someone had set a bomb ticking—had set the hours and the minutes on the timer so that it could go off at any moment, but I knew that there was nothing, nothing I could do. The Constable’s threats haunted me even in my dreams, and I waited, helpless and terrified, to see what would happen.

  This was just before the first of the month. The bare flat was like a tomb, waiting to receive its body. Sometimes I thought I could even smell that mixture of incense, flowers and body odour that I remembered from my days as an altar boy at village funerals, and the bottle of lye seemed to have grown and swelled beneath the sink.

  One night, my mother started hanging around me as I was washing at the tap and I knew, of course, what she wanted. I didn’t wait for her to come out with it.

  “I have some money,” I muttered, forcing my voice to stay neutral, and started fishing about in my pockets.

  I gave her everything I had, down to the last fillér, but still had no more than six or seven pengős. My mother didn’t say anything, just stood there staring at her shoes.

  “Will we make it past the first?” I asked woozily.

  My mother shrugged and sighed heavily.

  “That’s for Herr Hausmeister and God to decide.”

  That was all she said. My gaze fell, unconsciously, on the bottle of lye, and I shuddered.

  I counted off the days like an old woman fingering her rosary. My heart would start beating faster on the tram home—I was constantly afraid of coming home to find her dead. Invisible highwaymen of dismay lay in wait for me at every corner, and the world was full of monsters. The Constable! My father! Elemér! And her, her! So many open wounds that stung whenever my thoughts brushed them. And not a soul on earth I could confide in.

  I hadn’t seen her in three weeks. She’d never made me wait this long before, and her timing couldn’t have been worse. She was the only solid point in the obscure flux of these nightmarish days. She was the sin and she was its absolution, for everything—everything—was for her. It was for her that I had descended into this hell, and it was only through her, I felt, that I could make it out. If I could only talk to her! I thought. If I could only talk to her. I don’t even know what I expected from that conversation, and I suspect I couldn’t have said clearly even at the time. The longer I waited, the more significant, the more fateful it seemed, until in the end I was convinced that if only I could talk to her, everything would be resolved. But in vain. She did not call me.