Temptation

  So why was I so impatient? Was I a “fanatic”? I don’t know. I’m always suspicious of those kinds of words. I, too, wanted to live, like everyone else, to live well, if possible, and not at all “dangerously”. The only people in awe of living dangerously are the ones bored for want of danger, and anyone born poor in Hungary had nothing to fear on that front. No, a working-class boy did not go hunting lions unless he had to. And I had to. There was no other way. I accepted the danger the way a pregnant woman accepts it, thinking of a new life and knowing there’s no other way. I, too, was thinking of a new life that would emerge from this pregnancy and the thought filled me so completely that there was no room left within me for doubts or reservations or fear. The experience was almost physical, like a pregnant woman’s—I could feel, yes, physically feel something move, come to life, and grow in the womb of the slums; that something was being born in Angyalföld, China and Újpest; it was being born everywhere, and I was drunk on the thought that I, too, would be part of this incredible struggle. Only a small part, it’s true, one cell in the pregnant body, but I knew that even the smallest cell lives as long as it’s part of the body, and even the greatest head will rot if it’s cut off from it.

  It was only now I came to understand why the poems had wilted within me and why I couldn’t write even in the days of my prosperity, when loose change rang in my pockets and all was well at home. Now, nothing was well, and yet I still, after fourteen or fifteen hours of work, dizzy with hunger and exhaustion, had to reach for my pencil. The poems burst out of me almost completely finished, through some kind of immaculate conception, each affirming life: a hallelujah, amen and evoe. I was living in the heavy realities of a luxury hotel and a slum, and yet I was still above, or below, that in a floating, dreamlike state—outside all sense of place—that only lunatics and artists know. This was a kind of constant sober stupor, a waking ecstasis. The flat pastures of reality were flooded by a wonderful light and the old familiar image took on a new and unexpected depth—somehow, everything became simpler and more complicated, easier to understand and more mysterious. Hunger? Homelessness? Prison? Broken ribs? Death? I was no longer afraid of anything except that awful what for from my mother just now, and would have rushed head first into any kind of danger without thinking twice, if only I never had to say it myself.

  I knew what for, I finally knew. I was preparing for it like a pregnant woman for the birth, and I gave myself over to my fate the way they give their newborn child the breast: here it is, take it, I’m yours, you’re mine. I don’t know what you’re going to be like, I don’t know how you’ll treat me, but I accept you, I’ll stand by you, and I’ll be true to you—because that is all that you can do: that little. That much.

  That was how I prepared for my task, for my fate. In the morning, I woke thinking it would be fulfilled today, and in the evening, tomorrow, tomorrow. And then one day they called me to the telephone, and it all happened completely differently.

  It was a Monday, 29th September. It must have been two in the afternoon. I was getting out of the staff lift, coming back down from upstairs, when Boldizsár said, perfectly indifferently:

  “You’re wanted on the telephone.”

  I got so excited that, ignoring all the regulations, I ran head over heels for the booth. It was a woman’s voice.

  “Is that Béla?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “That’s not important,” she replied softly, tensely. “Imre’s been arrested.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “Arrested?!”

  “Over a week ago. I went to see him in jail today. He says hello.”

  “Didn’t he say anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Not when . . . when I can meet . . . with . . . um . . . with you?”

  “You can’t now, not for some time.”

  “Why not?” I asked, dim and childish. “Imre promised.”

  “Because you can’t, get it into your head!” she replied, curt and impatient. “I have to go now.”

  “Wait!” I cried. “Hello? . . . Hello?”

  There was a click, and the line went dead. At first, I tried to fool myself that we’d just been disconnected, but I waited in vain—the phone didn’t ring again. I could see the electric clock through the window of the booth, could see its minute hand jumping every sixty seconds with nerve-shredding regularity. One minute, five minutes, ten. I was no longer fooling myself, I knew that it was all in vain, but still I just stood there in the booth and didn’t budge.

  What for?

  •

  The rent was due on 30th September. “Otherwise,” ran the letter from the bank, “you will have to vacate the property by midnight.”

  That was all I thought about all day, of course, and that evening, when I got home from the hotel, I hadn’t even got through the door when I asked:

  “Well?”

  My father laughed.

  “Well what?”

  He was sitting on the table, kicking his heels, and his brilliant, handsome teeth flashed as he laughed. I couldn’t understand why he was so cheerful. Had something happened while I’d been out?

  “Did you take care of it?”

  “Ain’t talked to the Schwab yet,” he said, but he said it so cheerfully that I was mystified by the whole thing. “I didn’t want to let your mother go down there alone,” he explained easily, smiling. “And she said it would be better if I didn’t go with her. So I thought you could go with her instead.”

  “All right,” I nodded, giving my cheerful father an agitated look.

  What had happened?

  My mother said nothing, as usual. She was sitting at the table in her best dress; she sat there, poor thing, as if she was going to meet the King. She exuded some indefinable sense of occasion, purple spots of apprehension on her face. But my father looked so calm enthroned on the table, kicking his heels, that I was beginning to think he’d managed to get the money somehow after all.

  “How much we got?” I asked.

  “Seventy-four pengős,” he said boldly, as if he had no idea that we had ninety-six to pay. “Why the long face?” he asked, and laughed once more. “You and your mother really are somethin’. You don’t really think they’re going to put us out on the street over twenty-two pengős, do you? You think the bank’s that stupid? They know full well they won’t get a fillér if they do. They ain’t fool enough to throw seventy-four pengős down the drain.”

  I knew this easy tone was for the benefit of my mother, but it nonetheless stoked a little dormant hope in me, too.

  “That’s true,” I said, and smiled encouragingly at my mother. “Come on, then, let’s get it over with.”

  My mother wasn’t really up to the stairs yet. She kept getting out of breath, coughing and panting for air, blue in the face. Her heart can’t have appreciated the three flights either; we had to stand in front of Herr Hausmeister’s flat for a good while until it calmed. Then she drew herself up ramrod straight, like a soldier, knocked softly, humbly on the door, and even tried to go as far as smiling, just as a well-brought-up poor woman should.

  “Come,” called the all-powerful man, and in we went.

  “Good evenin’,” my mother said.

  “Good evenin’,” I said, too.

  Herr Hausmeister didn’t say anything. He just sat there behind a ledger on the table, counting like a grave deity totting up the sins of the mortals in preparation for imminent judgement.

  We stood in the door and waited respectfully. Herr Hausmeister had really transformed his place since his wife had moved out to the cemetery. She hadn’t even died yet when he was boasting in the tavern that he’d managed to wangle her a pauper’s grave from the city authorities, and how he was going to do up the apartment with all the money he’d saved on the funeral, so that there would be nothing left to remind him of that “hideous cow”. And there really was nothing left to remind him, that much is true. Everything in the apartment was new, and the whole
thing had cost Herr Hausmeister less than a third-class funeral. It had all been done as “little friendly favours” by the craftsmen among the tenants who were good at their jobs but not at paying rent. Herr Hausmeister didn’t so much as buy them a shot of pálinka—not even the Virgin Mary did he prize enough to actually pay money for her. Her picture, which now hung above his bed, he had extorted for nothing from Mátyás. Mátyás, being a religious man, had resisted parting with it for a long time, but eventually handed it over because what else could he do? Apparently, Herr Hausmeister was no longer interested in his wife.

  He wasn’t really interested in us, either. He just kept on counting and didn’t so much as look at us. There was a suffocating silence in the room and a hideous smell of patchouli. Herr Hausmeister had taken to perfuming himself. He’d had something of a bouquet before, it’s true, but that hadn’t had anything to do with perfume. He, too, had changed, along with his place. He’d grown scented and alarmingly fancy. He’d been buying hand-me-downs from the upper classes hand over fist and used to go about on Sundays in black patent-leather shoes with spats, a silver-handled walking stick dangling from his arm. His politics had changed, too, but the only sign of that so far was that he had taken to wearing his moustache like his great fellow-countryman, Adolf Hitler. Officially, he still declared himself Hungarian, and at election time, he was still rabidly patriotic (for a fee, of course).

  He finally looked up.

  “What is it?”

  The way he snorted those three short words at us was as if he’d been spitting in our eyes. But my mother just smiled at him very humbly.

  “We’ve brought seventy-four pengős, Herr Hausmeister,” she said, soft and agitated, and kept looking at the omnipotent man to see if the axe would fall or he’d show mercy.

  He did neither. He was struggling with a cigar that wouldn’t draw and his face was inscrutable, as the faces of deities generally are.

  My mother screwed up her courage.

  “You can see our good faith, Herr Hausmeister . . .”

  “What good faith?” he asked drily.

  “Well . . . we’ve brought seventy-four pengős,” repeated my mother. “That’s a lot of money, Herr Hausmeister.”

  Herr Hausmeister did not reply.

  “For some,” he commented evasively, and since my mother still hadn’t shifted from the door, he barked at her impatiently: “Well, what you standing there for? Let’s have it, then!”

  My mother looked at me, as if for counsel, then stared down at her shoes before eventually going over to Herr Hausmeister and handing him the money. He counted it, but still refused to show his hand.

  “Seventy-four pengős,” he said neutrally. “I’ll make you out a receipt.”

  “Thank you, Herr Hausmeister.”

  Herr Hausmeister went and took his receipt book out of the drawer of the sideboard, sitting imperiously back down at the table. There was silence; I could hear my mother’s laboured breathing. Herr Hausmeister leant forward, dipped his pen in the ink, but before he started writing, looked at my mother.

  “I hope you know what the law proscribes,” he muttered under his Hitler moustache. “You can’t take anything out of the apartment. We take possession tomorrow.”

  My mother, it seems, didn’t quite understand, for she was still trying to smile.

  “You doin’ what tomorrow?”

  “Taking possession. In light of the shortfall.”

  This time, she understood, poor thing. Her lips began to tremble.

  “You . . . you throwing us out?”

  “No,” Herr Hausmeister grinned. “I’m going to move you in here with me. What did you think?”

  My mother hardly dared say a word. She kept squeezing her handkerchief helplessly. She stood there in front of the great man like the personification of hopelessness.

  “You wouldn’t really do that to us, would you Herr Hausmeister?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he snapped. “You ain’t exactly model tenants. It’ll be good riddance to bad rubbish, far as I’m concerned.”

  My mother, poor thing, swallowed her tears, and the humiliation along with them.

  “Herr Hausmeister,” she pleaded. “I beg you, in the name of Our Lord . . .”

  “Don’t answer back!” he roared. “I’ve said what I said. If you ain’t out of the flat by midnight, I’ll have the police throw you out. Understand? And now shut up so I can make out the receipt.”

  With that, he leant fussily over the little book and started sketching out the letters slowly, awkwardly, his tongue sticking out of his mouth like a schoolboy.

  The money was lying in front of us on the table. My mother just kept looking at it. What was going through her mind? The nights she’d worked for it? The days she’d starved for it? Horthy Miklós út, where she’d collapsed from exhaustion? The ambulance? The operating table? The baby it had killed? All of a sudden, she did something of which I would never have thought her capable. She swooped on the money like a hawk and ran for it.

  “Thief !” Herr Hausmeister roared, running after her. “Thief ! Stop her! She’s taken the bank’s money!”

  In a matter of moments, curious onlookers crowded the entrance-way, but they were not about to stop my mother at all. Only Herr Hausmeister pursued her, and that not for very long. Suddenly, appearing from nowhere, there stood my father. Herr Hausmeister simply turned and sloped off back to his apartment. He only recovered his bravado when he already had the door half closed and felt completely secure again.

  “Go ahead and take it, then!” he roared in impotent fury. “The police’ll take it off you tomorrow anyhow. They’ll take it all off you, the shirt off your backs and all! Bunch of dirty thieves! You’re going to pay for this.”

  We were out on the street by the time he said it. My mother had run like crazy, but my father caught her in front of the gate and made a point of carrying on with her slowly, at a walk, to show everybody that we had nothing to run from.

  My mother suddenly turned the corner.

  “Where you going?” asked my father.

  There was a gleam in my mother’s eye.

  “The grocer’s.”

  “It’s closed.”

  “Well, it’s about to open again!” my mother replied in a strange, hoarse voice and gave a short laugh. “Because I’m about to go and spend seventy-four pengős there, seventy-four, you get me?!”

  No, we didn’t get her at all. Something had happened right under our noses that was incomprehensible and almost frightening. She started cackling like a madwoman, and simply couldn’t stop.

  “We’re goin’ to eat it all up, all them seventy-four pengős!” she guffawed. “And the upper class can eat the shit what comes out our rear ends tomorrow! They can go ahead and have that! They deserve it!” she cried, and just laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

  It was horrible, her laugh, it still sometimes wakes me in the night. She was thirty-four back then. At six, she was already looking after the Count’s geese, and from that day on she’d served the upper class faithfully. She liked order, hated “Commernism” and respected the laws of heaven and earth. Now all she could do was laugh. At those laws? Or at herself ?

  In the heart of Anna R., thirty-four, washerwoman, the revolution had begun.

  •

  Whatever there was edible at the grocer’s, she bought, though there wasn’t much, it’s true. The grocer was a war cripple who’d got a lot of medals during the war but very little in the way of credit after. The poor man didn’t even have an icebox, so in warm weather he could only keep as much fresh produce as he could sell in a day. He kept the tiniest little shop, the smallest I’ve ever seen, but there was no chance of going anywhere bigger because it was almost nine. This grocer of ours, for want of anywhere better, used to sleep in his shop, which must have been uncomfortable, but from our point of view was very convenient.

  “If the police come knocking,” he whispered even as he was letting us in the door, “say you’r
e just here for a visit.”

  This was not how my mother had imagined this “visit”. There she was with seventy-four pengős, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t spend more than ten.

  “What do we do with the rest?” she asked when we came out of the shop, and she looked so careworn that my father had to laugh.

  “You leave that to me, love!” he said. “You take the food home, and I’ll go get a surprise to go with it.”

  Half an hour later, he was home, but the only surprise was that he hadn’t bought anything.

  “Where’s the surprise?” asked my mother.

  “On its way,” he replied, and smiled suggestively.

  “What kind of surprise is it?”

  My father clicked his fingers.

  “The kind, my love, they won’t soon forget round these parts!”

  He refused to reveal any more, no matter how hard we probed.

  “Come on, let’s eat,” he said mysteriously, “ ’cause we won’t have a chance later. There’ll be plenty going on here before midnight.”

  With that, he rolled up his shirtsleeves as if he were getting down to hard work, and sat down at the table. My mother and I hadn’t touched the food while he’d been out, because if a family starved together, it should eat together, too. Now we could finally start. My mother locked the door like a highway robber counting his loot, then joined us, and the feast began.

  It was wonderful, and it was scary. We’d been going hungry for months, we didn’t even remember the last time we’d been really full, and now here was this vast quantity of food; we could eat as much as we could stomach. The thought was intoxicating and I forgot about everything else, just like a drunk. I didn’t think about what would happen at midnight—I didn’t think about anything. This was how I’d felt back in prison, three years before, when I’d found the packet of food in my pocket, and as I ate, I hadn’t even felt the pain, though the bruises from that blow with the rifle butt hurt like hell. Now, too, I was seized by that great, wonderful, reassuring feeling; after the unnerving ramblings of the chaotic and unreliable mind came the mercifully direct words of the body: I’m hungry! I’m hungry and I can eat! I can eat as much as I like. My stomach rejoiced, my teeth tore into the meat in utter transport, my jaw laboured passionately through its loving motions, and vast, sweeping, enticing juices splashed through me. My body was filled by simple flesh-and-blood reality, the sweet, strong security of pure animal being . . . for twenty or thirty minutes.