Temptation

  “Yes,” he said. “They live here.”

  “Where?”

  “In the basement. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  We cut across the darkened courtyard.

  “Why isn’t their name on the list?”

  “On account of the bank,” he replied. “Had ’em evicted.”

  “Then how can they still be living here?”

  The boy laughed.

  “Oh, you know, the way all us ordinary folk do,” he said. “On the sly. One of the tenants let ’em have his woodshed in the basement, and the hausmeister don’t say nothing, ’cause he gets to pocket what they’re paying. Well, here we are,” he said, pointing to the entrance to the basement, leaving me to my fate. “G’night.”

  “G’night.”

  The entranceway leading to the basement was so low I could only get through it doubled over. Cobwebs hung off the filthy walls, and the old, cracked stairs wobbled scarily beneath my feet. I struck a match, since it was pitch black, but there was a powerful draught coming from the basement that kept putting my matches out. By the time I got downstairs, there wasn’t a single match left in my box.

  I felt my way haltingly in the dark. It was a big, ancient basement, deep and damp. The earth had become so soft with the seeping ground-water that I couldn’t hear the sound of my footsteps at all. The silence was unbearable. There was something constantly dripping from on high, and the walls were overgrown with slimy mould—I shuddered at their touch. I had the feeling I’d been wandering around down here for hours and would never make it out.

  Suddenly, I stopped. I seemed to hear a child’s cries. I headed in the direction of the sounds, but after a few steps, bumped into a wall. The corridor had come to an end, there was nowhere left to go. I felt about, helplessly. The crying hadn’t come from here, before, but farther down, much farther. I kept listening for a long time, but heard nothing. Had I only imagined it?

  I was ready to turn around when my hand felt a door. I pressed the handle, and it gave. I found myself in a long, narrow corridor, at the end of which there was a weak light. These were the tenants’ wood stores—I recognized them at once. In our building, too, the wood stores were separated by such jerry-rigged, rickety wooden grilles, and they were just as devoid of firewood as these ones here. These were the crypts of working-class households, the burial grounds of martyred prams, unfortunate saucepans, skewered pillows and exhausted furniture.

  The light was coming from the unit at the end. This, too, was a wood store like the others, but instead of discarded household items, it had five children lying on the floor, five sleeping boys wrapped up in rags. The youngest must have been around four, the eldest sixteen. They were lying in a row, packed tightly next to each other—otherwise, they wouldn’t have fitted into the narrow unit. Next to them, on a crate, sat a stocky, broad-shouldered old man with a heavy moustache, rocking a sniffling little girl. The girl must have woken him from his sleep, because he was wearing neither shoes nor trousers, only a ragged, green-tinged black overcoat, from under which his long undershorts peeked out. The little girl gave the occasional cry in her sleep, the old man trying to calm her. He can’t have heard me coming, because his head snapped up so sharply when I appeared out of the darkness, it was like he’d seen a ghost. That was when I saw he was missing an eye.

  We looked at each other in alarm. The petroleum lamp flickered restlessly in the draught.

  “I’m a friend of Elemér’s,” I whispered nervously.

  “I’m his father,” he replied with a sort of awkward grace, looking me over suspiciously. “What brings you here?”

  I didn’t know where to begin. The “plan” that had been born inside me back in the Constable’s flat had consumed my mind so completely that such prosaic details had not even occurred to me. I thought I would come, and tell him, and that would be it. Now that I was standing here in front of the old man, I suddenly had doubts. Maybe he didn’t know about it . . . or maybe he did . . . No, this was not how I’d imagined Elemér’s father.

  “I just came to ask,” I said awkwardly, because I had to say something, “how,”—I tried to smile—“how is he?”

  The old man did not reply. He just watched me stiffly out of his one eye. I knew what it meant when a working man looked at you like that. To try and gain his trust, I asked him:

  “Is he still in hospital?”

  “Hospital?” he repeated in astonishment, and his yellow, stubbly face took on a greenish tinge in horror. “Since when’s he been in hospital? What’s the matter with him?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, because I was afraid of telling him the truth, and that of course just made me look all the more suspicious.

  He looked at me in shock.

  “Then what makes you think he’s in hospital?”

  “That’s what they told me.”

  “Who?”

  “A . . . mutual acquaintance,” I muttered, and I could feel myself blush.

  Someone laughed derisively behind me. I turned. It was the oldest of the boys. He stood there in front of me, his legs spread and his hands in his pockets, his big black eyes almost overflowing with hate.

  “What mutual acquaintance?” he asked, ready to jump.

  “A friend of Elemér’s,” I lied, and I could feel myself blushing again. “A . . . um . . . mutual friend,” I added quickly, to cover my discomfort. “A boy, who—”

  “What’s his name?” he interrupted. “I know all of Elemér’s friends.”

  I was digging myself deeper into a hole. I said:

  “Not this one.”

  “Is that right? . . .”

  The boy looked me over disparagingly and laughed once more.

  “Then I think I know who it is,” he said. “Well, you go ahead and have a good look round, young master, so you can give him a detailed report. We’re having a whale of a time. The money just keeps piling in from Moscow. Ain’t it obvious?” he shouted, pointing at the ragged, skin-and-bones children who looked at me, terrified, from inside their appalling burrow. “Can’t you see, young master? We’re simply bursting with roubles!”

  My gaze wandered to his right hand—I could see it shifting inside his trouser pocket. I knew he was holding a knife.

  “Don’t be stupid!” I shouted. “I’m your brother’s best friend. Three years we worked together.”

  “Where?”

  “In the hotel, of course.”

  “What’s your name?”

  I told him.

  His face changed at once.

  “That’s a different matter, then,” he muttered with a shy smile. “Why didn’t you tell me right away? I’m Imre. Hi.”

  We shook hands. He was a tall, dark, handsome lad and bore not the slightest resemblance to his brother.

  “Don’t take it the wrong way, brother,” he excused himself with a laugh. “They keep sending snitch after snitch after us—we can’t even trust our own fleas any more. Anyway, pull up a pew,” he gestured grandiosely with a wink, pointing to a dirty soapbox. “A fine box that, first rate. Got that from Moscow too. Used to belong to Ivan the Terrible.”

  I laughed too. We were all three of us laughing. The four children crawled out of their burrow and stood there gaping at me like some sort of circus attraction.

  “Shoo!” Imre waved at them. “Off you go to sleep, or I’ll set Horthy on you. Go on, go on. Tomorrow’s Monday, you’ve got school.”

  The boys went back to their places, but the little girl was startled awake by the laughter and started bawling and wailing. The old man rocked her like an infant, though she can’t have been less than three. She was a thin child with rickets; only her belly looked frightfully swollen, like the bellies of all the children society keeps on starvation rations. Her big, swollen stomach trembled under her ragged little shirt, her grey, sick little face twisted with pain.

  “What’s the matter with her?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” the old man replied. “Could be she’s upset h
er stomach.”

  “The hell she has,” Imre whispered. “She’s just hungry.”

  The little girl would not stop crying, but a quiet still fell over the wood store. A moment before, we’d been laughing, and now it seemed that that little girl was crying for us, crying for all of Angyalföld, and all of Újpest, too, for every working-class child. And China, far-off, unimaginable China, where tens of thousands of children were starving to death, now seemed no more than half an hour from Angyalföld.

  “I’ve got a few fillérs,” I muttered awkwardly, digging out the money.

  “We ain’t beggars!” the old man snapped at me. “No, we ain’t beggars yet.”

  “Ah,” Imre gave a wave of the hand. “What you putting on an act for with a friend? How much could you spare, brother?”

  “I just need the tram fare,” I said. “I can give you the rest.”

  “Jackpot!” he shouted, and pocketed the money happily. “That’ll buy a whole loaf ! I’ll be off and get it before they lock the gate.”

  We looked at each other, and I suddenly knew it was him I had to talk to and not the father.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said, and took my leave of the old man.

  Outside, the rain had stopped and a warm wind was blowing through the alley. The raindrops were still glittering, a-tremble, on the leaves of the acacias, but the wind had almost dried the pavement and the sky was full of stars. I took Imre’s arm and suddenly everything seemed so simple.

  “Imre,” I said calmly, without hesitation. “I came out to see you because—”

  “Careful!” he whispered. “They’re watching us from the house opposite. Ground floor, third window on the left. See it?”

  “Yeah. Coppers?”

  “That’s right,” he nodded. “Just keep walking. I know their habits. He’ll turn up in a moment, follow us for a while, then walk past us slowly, turn into the side street and a few minutes later pop up again behind our backs. You can talk freely when he’s in the other street. Slow down a bit,” he said, poking me in the ribs. “Nice and slow. I’ll walk you to the tram.”

  “All right.”

  We walked slowly side by side. The street was deserted, there was only the occasional drunk. Anyone sober had gone home already to save having to pay the hausmeister to open the gate, and you couldn’t tell if the drunks were really drunks or not. The seedy denizens of the night sloped about the slums: informers, robbers, prostitutes and policemen, who—at this time—only dared show their faces round here in pairs. Our copper really did come out of the house. We could hear his footsteps clearly in the heavy silence.

  “Were you wanting to talk about that with the old man, too?” Imre whispered.

  I nodded yes.

  “Thought as much,” he said, and I could see he realized why I didn’t talk to him about it in the end. “Poor old man!” he sighed. “He was a good comrade once. He’s been a Party member for more than thirty years—the coppers knocked his eye out in the good old days before the war. Real hellraiser, so they say, always on the hard left. Now, he’s nowhere. He did three years inside after the revolution, then he couldn’t get a job anywhere any more. Ma died last year from consumption and the old man was left with six hungry children, and . . .” Imre drew up his eyebrows, and then gave a wave of his hand. “You know how it goes. Lost his edge. He don’t know what to make of us any more. He’s fifty-eight now and just sits in that wood store, talkin’ about the good old days. When the coppers knocked his eye out for him. Hell of a thing, ain’t it?”

  The policeman’s steps accelerated behind us.

  “Is he comin’?” I asked.

  Imre nodded.

  “Turn this way so he don’t see your face,” he whispered, and started talking loudly about that afternoon’s match.

  The policeman walked slowly past us and turned into the side street. Imre winked at me.

  “Now you can talk.”

  I felt his open gaze upon me, and had no trouble talking.

  “I want to join an underground group,” I said simply, not beating about the bush.

  “Yes,” he nodded. “I know.”

  I looked at him in surprise.

  “You know?”

  “I know,” he repeated. “Elemér told me you’d come by sooner or later.”

  My throat went tight with pleasure. I had never been so proud—I had never been so humble. I won’t let him down, I said to myself, I won’t let them down! And I saw my father kneeling before that cross at dawn, and suddenly understood—beyond religion, beyond it all—that only someone who’s fallen to their knees can truly rise.

  “What are you?” Imre asked. “Social Democrat or Communist?”

  “God knows,” I said. “Don’t know enough about it. Whoever’s against them is a friend of mine, and whoever’s with them is an enemy. That’s what I know for sure.”

  Imre smiled. It was all so simple.

  “Can you introduce me to the comrades?”

  “Not yet,” he replied. “You can see we’re bein’ watched.”

  “It’s urgent.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the Constable. You know him?”

  “Do I!” he said, his eyes flashing. “What about him?”

  “He wants me to join the Party, and . . . you can guess the rest. Even promised me money this morning.”

  “That . . . really is urgent,” he said pensively. “It’s just that I don’t know how . . .” He fell silent, then shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll figure somethin’ out. I’ll introduce you in the next few days.”

  Footsteps sounded behind us once more. Imre glanced backwards cautiously, out of the corner of his eye.

  “He’s back,” he whispered. “Vanish.”

  “Call me?”

  “Yes. Go.”

  He pointed towards the bend in the street, where a tram flashed past.

  “Is it going the right way?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, and now I knew he was right.

  I got to where I had to be.

  14

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, THE DOCTOR told us flat out that there was nothing more to be done for my mother.

  “Best to prepare for the worst,” he said. “I doubt she’ll make it through the night.”

  My mother made it. Barely two weeks later, one evening when my father and I were washing in the kitchen, the door suddenly opened, and there she was in the clouds of steam like an apparition. We could hardly believe our eyes. The day before, when we’d been to visit her in hospital, she’d been lying in bed and could barely sit up.

  “What happened?” my father asked in alarm. “You ran away?”

  “Not a bit of it,” my mother said, with a wave of her hand.

  “What you doing here, then?”

  My mother’s bloodless lips curled into a pitiful smile.

  “I’m cured,” she said, and gave a sharp laugh.

  We thought she was joking. She could barely stand unaided.

  My father looked at her, shaking his head.

  “How could you do this, Anna?”

  My mother started laughing once more, but this time she couldn’t stop. A fit of coughing came over her, and she turned blue.

  “Don’t you get it?” she said, panting for breath. “Today, at rounds, the professor says I’m cured. I thought he were joking, too, to begin with, but then the nurse comes over and tells me to get up, ’cause they need the bed for someone else. So I guess I’m cured.”

  We didn’t say anything. What was there to say? We had washing to do, so we washed. My mother went into the room to make the bed, but she didn’t have the strength.

  “Mishka, would you make the bed?” she called out, “I’m awful tired.”

  My father went in, and I carried on with the washing. We washed day and night, but we still hadn’t managed to wash enough for that ninety-six pengős. It was 26th September already, and there was less than seventy pengős in the ginger tin. What would my mother say? . . . I liste
ned anxiously, but the door to the room was closed, and the water for the washing was boiling volubly on the stove. I couldn’t hear a thing.

  A little while later, my father came back. He was on tiptoes, and he looked pretty pale.

  “She’s sleeping, poor thing,” he whispered. “Her head’d hardly hit the bed, she was asleep.”

  “She didn’t ask about the rent?”

  “No, not yet.” My father twisted his mouth bitterly. “But you can be sure she will tomorrow.”

  My mother didn’t ask. She asked nothing, said nothing, and was silent—silent as those “cursed” fields on the abandoned outskirts of the village that the superstitious old women said bore an “unholy crop”. In the morning, she clambered out of bed and dragged herself out to the tub, but when my father shooed her away, she did not protest. She went back to the room, sat down beside the table and stared at the tablecloth blankly. She would sit like that for hours, barely moving. Her rosary hung, gathering dust, on the black wooden crucifix above the bed; she didn’t take it down, she didn’t have any more use for it. She no longer prayed. She no longer had anything to say to God.

  “Go to church,” my father told her.

  “No,” she replied.

  “Why not?”

  “What for?”

  The question dropped out of her mouth like a dead bird. My father and I looked at each other in downcast silence. An icy wind seemed to blow from the room; I shivered next to the steaming washtub.

  The hours died slowly, agonizingly. It was my day off and, recently, I’d come to detest my days off. It had now been almost two weeks since I’d been to Angyalföld, but Imre had still not been in touch. I was full of uneasiness and forebodings and was constantly afraid that I wouldn’t be at the hotel when he did, eventually, call me. I knew, of course, that he’d call again the next day, that it would just be a delay of a single day, but I found even that day too much to bear.

  I found every moment too much. I was so impatient, it was as if I’d been sentenced to death, or I don’t know what, and it was now from Imre that I expected news of a reprieve, though I knew that what I wanted from him had led plenty of people in Hungary to the gallows for real.