Temptation

by Janos Szekely

  The bed creaked. My father must have sat up.

  “Anyway,” he said, “that night I swore to myself I’d never do anythin’ else that could land me in trouble. It was a strange night, a very strange night. I hardly closed my eyes, Anna, but I tell you, I still woke the next morning the way I used to before Communion when I was a boy, and I’d been to confession the day before. D’you know what I mean?”

  “ ’Course I do. You repented of your sins.”

  “The hell I did! Why would I have repented? You don’t get me, Anna. I say what Menyhért says, my comrade Menyhért, that in a world like ours you can only be two things. A revolutionary or a crook. Well, I wasn’t born a revolutionary, but you can take my word for it, I wasn’t born a crook, either. I was a decent man, long as they let me. If they hadn’t taken away our sea, I’d be a sailor still. If they hadn’t pulled the land out from under me, I’d have stayed a peasant till my dying day. I didn’t care for factories, it’s true, but I would have gone for factory work, too. There just weren’t any jobs to be had. What could I do? Starve to death? Let Horthy starve. Who’s to blame? The man that shoves someone into the sea, or the one that climbs on the other’s back because he’s drownin’? Those millions and millions of jobless were pushed into the sea, Anna. They’re drowning, poor fellows, gaspin’ for air. They keep on sufferin’, puttin’ up with it, and starving, and when they can’t take it no more, they take a bite of someone else’s bread. Then they lock ’em up. Well, when I saw that was how it was, I says to myself, Mishka, I says, if the poor man ends up in prison either way, it’s better to know what for. I thought bigger than the others, that’s why I wasn’t put away before. And if I could have done it even bigger, I may never have been locked up at all. They might have made me a minister in the end, ’cause it’s them that are the biggest crooks. I just wanted to tell you so you’d know: I ain’t repented of nothing. I wanted to go straight on account of you. So I could take you out to America. I didn’t want to get into trouble no more, and that was what landed me in it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’ll tell you. I could tell right away when they picked me up, they didn’t have no proof. So I was happy as Larry and just laughed at the whole thing. I liked it that they couldn’t get one over on me. I played with them like a cat with a mouse. But when I thought about that plan with America, I suddenly lost all my cheer. I started to get scared. I was scared for that fine, decent little life of ours. I was scared they might cotton on to something. I’ll tell you straight, I got in a real state. And then one day, as if it weren’t enough, they brought in a lawyer in the cell next door, and more fool me, I started tapping away to him.”

  “What?”

  “Tapping. That’s how prisoners talk.”

  “The lawyer was a prisoner, too?”

  “That’s right. Exchange fraud.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He took money out of the country.”

  “Money he stole?”

  “ ’Course not. His own.”

  “Since when’s that a crime?”

  “A crime, my dear, is whatever the Almighty says it is. Not the Almighty sittin’ up there in heaven, but the one sitting in the Royal Palace. The one that has a man kill innocent men, women and children on his orders, and then makes them a member of parliament, with the country paying his wages. And whoever don’t want to keep his money in a country where that murderer can do with it what he wants, they drag off to jail. That’s the way it is, my love. So I start tapping with this lawyer, and that was the worst of it.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I got curious. I asked him how much time I could get for what I done. ’Course, I didn’t tell him it was me that done it, but just asked, you know, in general terms.”

  “And what did he say, how much?”

  “One or two years.”

  “One or two years?” my mother gasped.

  “If only that had been it! But then I asked about the past ones, too, ’cause I couldn’t sleep at night, and everythin’, everythin’ I’d ever done wrong came back to me. Little things, you know, but it all adds up. And the lawyer just kept tappin’ out the years, and I scratched it all up on the wall, and added it all up in the end. You know what it came to? Eighteen years.”

  “God help us.”

  “Quite. I’m forty-three now, I said to myself. Forty-three and eighteen is sixty-one. What can you do at sixty-one? So much for America. So much for life. At least the other prisoners knew what they had coming. They could count the days. They could say: that’s one less. But I went to sleep each night not knowing if I’d wake up in your bed, or be lying there on that cold hard bunk at the age of sixty.”

  “God help us!” my mother sighed again, and I suddenly understood that mysterious letter, and a host of other things besides.

  “In the end, I did still manage to outwit ’em,” my father said, not without a touch of pride. “They couldn’t pin nothin’ on me. But it was strange, Anna, mighty strange, when I looked in the mirror for the first time after all that time. I thought my hair was black, and suddenly I see it’s white. It turned my hair white. Oh well, I says, so what? So you’ve gone grey, Mishka, but you’ve learnt a thing or two as well. From now on, you won’t get into no more trouble. You’ll take the family to America and you’ll all live decently, the way people should. I gave up drinking, I gave up smokin’, and didn’t touch the women or the cards. There ain’t a job in the world I wouldn’t have done. I would have gone digging out latrines, if that was what was needed. But it wasn’t needed. And then I hear you’re in the family way. Well, I says to myself, I’ll have to go see Rudi after all. ’Cause I didn’t tell you, but it was Rudi and me did what they picked me up for, and that crook’s only got me to thank they didn’t get him and all. What I asked him for wasn’t what he owed me, oh no, but a tenth or a twentieth. But I didn’t want to go see him, and I thought he might leave me in peace if I only asked for that little.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  “No he didn’t. He promised me the money when you were there, but when I went to see him to ask when he was going to give it to me, he says: I’ll give it you, Mishka, when you do another job with me.”

  “He denied he owed you the money?”

  “Didn’t even deny it. He just laughed. He says: if you don’t like it, Mishka, go turn me in. That’s what he says. He wouldn’t have dared say that before. He knew I could bash his brains in with one hand tied behind my back. But his sort always knows when you won’t put up a fight. And I wasn’t going to. I was worried about our voyage. And now here I am. If I take his money, it all starts again from the beginning, and if I don’t, you’ll end up going to that old woman. As the Lord is my witness, I wanted to do the decent thing. But if you die of it, what use is decency to me? So I don’t know what to do now, Anna. I don’t know what to do.”

  My father fell silent. There was silence—a dark, thick silence. Onetwo . . . one-two . . . one-two . . . As if the tap were dripping louder now, as if the silence itself were dripping in the darkness.

  At last, my mother spoke. She said:

  “I’ll keep it, Mishka.”

  My father did not reply.

  “Why don’t you say anything?” she asked.

  “Ain’t my place.”

  “Why not? You’re its father.”

  “It’s easy bein’ a father. All I’ve had is happiness from my son. You’re the one that suffered for him.”

  “That’s why I think that, Mishka.”

  “What?”

  “That it’s worth it. It’s worth the suffering. If eighteen years ago the pharmacists’ assistant didn’t bleed to death and the angel-makers didn’t get the wind up about the gendarmes, there wouldn’t be no Béla now.”

  “That’s right,” my father said in a strange, heavy voice. “And what a boy he is! He’s goin’ to beat Petőfi into a cocked hat. And I ain’t just saying, that, Anna, I read up on this Petőfi on account of him
.”

  “You did what?”

  “Read up on him. You know, in prison you get books for good behaviour, so I went and read all of Petőfi’s poems, cover to cover. Well, and the professor that compiled them poems was obsessed with how humble Petőfi’s origins was. Because his father was a butcher. But goddamn it, at least a butcher has meat for his son. What did our son get? And just look at the fine poems he’s writin’ at fifteen!”

  “That’s right,” my mother said, taking up the thread, “with no schoolin’ and no bread. He had to steal the paper to write on from the hotel. Tell me, Mishka, that sort of thing, where’s it come from?”

  “I don’t know where it comes from, Anna, but one thing’s for sure: it don’t come from the upper classes.”

  “Maybe it’s from the Lord, Mishka. Or d’you still not believe in him?”

  “Who knows? Sometimes when I look at the boy, I almost start believin’.”

  “Would you want another one like him?”

  “Ain’t for me to say,” my father repeated stubbornly, quietly, but his voice almost burned with joy. “We’ll go to America, the four of us.”

  “Oh, how good it’d be!” sighed my mother.

  How good it would be! I sighed as well.

  Shame, I thought. Shame, shame, shame. We just don’t have any luck, this family. We only came together when it was already time to say goodbye.

  10

  A FEW DAYS LATER, ON A STIFLING late August night, something strange happened. It must have been around nine when I got home, but the house was very quiet, as if it had been well past midnight. I had a bad feeling as soon as I got to the gate, because when a working-class house is that quiet, it always spells trouble. Were the police raiding someone again? Had someone died?

  I listened anxiously. Silence, darkness, not a soul about. My steps echoed eerily on the winding stone stairs as I stumbled up in the darkness.

  At the first turn in the stairwell, something grabbed my attention. I thought I’d heard noises. I looked out onto the walkway. I couldn’t believe what I saw there. In the dark, like a petrified collection of statues, stood a crowd of people completely still, leaning against the railings and staring up, silent, into the darkness, craning their necks towards the third floor.

  Had something happened at ours? I started scrambling up the stairs. But when I got to the third, I saw that the centre of attention was actually Árpád and Márika’s apartment.

  I couldn’t understand what they were staring at. Árpád was standing in front of the apartment, but there was nothing peculiar about him. He was standing there perfectly calmly, as if he’d just got home and knocked on the pane in the kitchen door. You couldn’t have imagined a more prosaic scene. A resident comes home at night and knocks on the door. What was there to be staring at? I wanted to ask, but people were listening so gravely in the darkness I didn’t dare make a sound.

  Árpád now struck a match and held it to the keyhole. The key, it seems, must have been in the lock, because Árpád grew agitated.

  “Márika!” he yelled, rattling the door, “you all right?”

  That was when I noticed that the shutters on their windows were closed. In this heat, you didn’t close the shutters even at night, let alone now when the air had barely cooled from the day. I shuddered. Had she committed suicide? Is that why everyone was staring? But then why don’t they tell Árpád?

  Then something unexpected happened. Árpád, as if he’d sensed the curious looks, suddenly turned around. When he spotted the crowd of onlookers, he turned and headed straight for the stairs.

  That was even less comprehensible. A moment before, he’d been afraid that Márika had come to some harm, and now he was abandoning their door without a word. Why? After all, he could see they were all staring at him.

  I rushed into our apartment to ask what had happened, but my parents weren’t home yet. There was movement outside. Little groups formed, whispering in the darkness, but from our window, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was just on the point of going back out when I noticed something strange. Someone had drawn the curtain carefully aside in Árpád and Márika’s kitchen. I couldn’t make out who in the darkness, but from then on, I didn’t shift from our window.

  Five minutes passed, then ten, fifteen, and nothing happened. I was just beginning to think I’d been seeing things before, when the door opposite suddenly sprang open.

  There was a fearful silence. It was Herr Hausmeister who stepped out.

  He filed past the residents slowly, strutting provocatively, the crowd parting to make way for him. No one said a word, no one moved from their spot; only their heads turned in the darkness to follow him. And in that silence, someone suddenly started laughing.

  At first, Herr Hausmeister pretended not to have heard, but the laughter grew louder and he suddenly stopped.

  “Who’s that laughing?” he asked menacingly.

  No one replied. The silence became even thicker, and the laughter louder. I had never heard laughter like it. It reminded you a little bit of an infant’s cries or the whining of a dog, and yet it was still laughter—cheerless, ghostly laughter.

  I went outside and could see that it was Old Gábor who was laughing. He looked like he might not even know what he was laughing at. His face was serious, he was staring absently before him, the drool came dripping from his mouth.

  Herr Hausmeister went up to him and yelled:

  “What you laughing at?”

  The coffin-maker did not reply. He just kept laughing that dreadful, crazy laugh, as if he hadn’t heard the question, as if he hadn’t even seen Herr Hausmeister, who now suddenly grabbed him by the lapels.

  “Old fool!” he growled, and slapped him in the mouth so hard he laid the old man out.

  He must have fallen very hard, because it took three people to lift him, and even they could barely manage it. But when he was back on his feet again, he acted as if nothing at all had happened. At other times, when Herr Hausmeister walked past him peaceably, he would always yell at him to say good day to his elders, but now, when he had treated him this way, he didn’t say a word. His face was expressionless, his eyes vacant; he just carried on drooling.

  Herr Hausmeister, for his part, withdrew like a wrathful god and turned into the staircase with slow, dignified steps. Then, like a crash of thunder from the sky, a man’s voice broke the darkness and the silence.

  “Shame!”

  The word struck like lightning, setting the whole house on fire.

  “Shame!” people chorused everywhere in the dark. “Shaaaaame!”

  The chorus came from the basement, rising through the ground floor to all three upper floors as well. The house became a wild beast provoked, growling aggressively in its cage.

  “Shaame!”

  “Shaaame!”

  “Shaaaaame!”

  “Shut it!” yelled Herr Hausmeister from the courtyard. “Shut your faces or I’ll call the police.”

  But the house did not “shut their faces”.

  “Shame!!” their disgust thundered ever louder. “Shaaame!”

  It must have taken a good half-hour for the house to settle back down, but Herr Hausmeister did not call the police.

  “He daren’t stir the pot,” said the one-eyed wheelwright. “Even a copper would smell a rat.”

  “That’s just why he ain’t going to let it drop,” said Mózes the locksmith, and unfortunately, he was right.

  But meanwhile, something else happened as well.

  •

  In the morning, I woke to hear my mother in the kitchen saying:

  “Look, Mishka, they’ve put one of them flyers under the door again!”

  I immediately jumped up and started to dress so I could go out into the kitchen and read it, because I knew my mother burned these flyers—they’d already got more than one tenant in trouble. The police had been out several times to search people’s flats and had arrested everyone who’d had one, though it hadn’t done them muc
h good. They got only the stupid and the naive, because anyone who had any sense, and especially anyone with anything to hide, did not keep flyers around the house. The people they arrested didn’t know anything, and the people who did know weren’t on speaking terms with the police. Sometimes you’d wake to find another one of “those” flyers lying on the kitchen floor. Someone had shoved it under the door, but as to who, and when, no one knew. On these mornings, the house would wear a furtive smile. The residents would read them and then throw them in the stove, and when they were all burned up, they’d call across to the neighbours:

  “Good, ain’t it?”

  As to what was good, they didn’t say, and the neighbours never asked. They looked at each other the way peasants do in a drought when the sky starts clouding up above them. A storm’s coming, people’s expressions said, and the house listened and waited.

  As soon as I’d pulled on my trousers, I rushed out into the kitchen. My mother shuddered when I opened the door.

  “Scared of your own son now?” my father joked, laughing tensely.

  “Give it here,” I whispered, because you always lowered your voice unconsciously when talking about those flyers.

  My mother went to the door and locked it. Then we all sat down on the edge of the bed and started reading. It wasn’t printed like the rest, but typewritten and mimeographed. I could see straight away why. It read:

  COMRADES!

  PROLETARIAN BROTHERS!

  Don’t get bogged down in righteous indignation! The hausmeister’s lording it over us is a symptom of the Fascist insanity that forces the working class in Hungary to live like dogs; and now they’re trying to stifle our cries of pain with the arm of the law.

  Fight the system, which cannot survive without inhuman hausmeisters, informers, assassins, exploiters and sadistic policemen. A rotting tree has to be cut down at the root; what use is it tearing off a single bad leaf ?