My Happy Days In Hell

by György Faludy

  In the meantime Vambéry had completely charmed Valy with a few compliments and witty anecdotes. Suddenly, however, my wife uttered a remark completely out of place and unconnected with anything we had been talking about. She declared how happy she was to be returning to Hungary to serve the Idea (meaning the teachings of communism), then complained indignantly at how unfair the capitalist powers were to the Soviet Union. Vambéry who, contrary to his custom, was sipping his second glass of wine after the oysters, did not, as he usually did, pretend not to have heard Valy’s words. Instead, he inclined his small beard on the damask napkin tied around his throat, so that the flat, coin-shaped surface topping his long, vaulted and attractive bald head flashed bright for a moment, and then he nodded slowly. True, he said, the Anglo-Saxons were indeed unfair to the Soviet Union; they had already pursued the same wrong policies against Tsarist Russia. Valy was right – he said – one should indeed employ entirely different methods when dealing with an Asiatic despotism that interpreted the goodwill of its partners as stupidity, their tractability as cowardice, and their magnanimity as weakness. According to his habit he told a story to support his thesis. Towards the end of the 1870s, still a child, he had accompanied his father and Bishop Vilmos Fraknoi to Constantinople. As they were the Sultan’s guests, the Monarchy put a special railway coach at their disposal. On the frontier of the Ottoman Empire a kindly, bearded Turk appeared in the door of their coach: the station-master. He told them, with many humble bows, that they would have to pay to remain in the coach, but he would make them a special price and refrain from giving a receipt. Should they refuse he would, to his deepest regret, disconnect the coach. Armin Vambéry jumped from his seat and slapped the station-master so hard that the latter rolled about on the red carpet. Oh! – the station-master exclaimed, getting to his feet – I didn’t know, please accept my apologies. With this he picked up his red fez and backed away reverently. When the train moved out of the station the Bishop asked Vambéry senior what had given him the courage to slap the station-master. ‘I know the Near East well,’ the great traveller replied. ‘Afraid though I was of slapping him, I was much more afraid of the consequences should I not slap him.’

  ‘The Georgian Generalissimo,’ Vambéry continued, but talking to me and watching Valy from the corner of his eye as she almost exploded with fury, ‘speaks a little differently from the Turkish station-master in the last century, but they think alike. When my father slapped the Turk, my childish heart was filled with deep indignation. The childish public opinion of the Western world would probably be shaken with the same storm of moral indignation if the Anglo-Saxon powers, after winning the war, had given Soviet Russia a good kick in the behind. I, however, have, in the meantime, learned a great deal from my good father and this time I felt indignant when Roosevelt paid through the nose – and in advance – when Stalin presented his fantastic bill: presented it orally, and without giving a receipt. In addition it was not from his own pocket he paid, nor from other people’s purses, but with other people’s blood and freedom. I am afraid mankind will go on paying for a long time before the situation undergoes a fundamental change.’

  ‘In your last book, and also in your article published in Foreign Affairs,’ I interrupted, ‘you spoke differently. You stated that after the war a more or less stable balance of power will develop between East and West. You also said that the new Hungarian constitution fulfilled the requirements of democracy. And so does Hungarian political life, as far as you can judge it from such a distance. You added that the Soviet Union obviously knows that its interests are best served if it is surrounded by benevolent, neutral neighbours rather than by rebellious communist vassals. And should this not be so, the Western powers, with the atom bomb in their exclusive possession, are strong enough to bring Stalin to his senses by threats alone. Finally, you quoted numerous examples from world history to show that it has never happened, not once since Chefren Pharaoh or the days of the Assyrian king, Tiglatpileser, that in a victorious coalition the weaker partner should get the larger share of the loot. These were your arguments, Professor, and they were very strong arguments which I, too, fully believe.’

  I did not add that I did not, on the other hand, believe in formal logic and found it rather ridiculous when applied to future events, historical situations, people’s actions or emotional lives. However, as I truly agreed with Vambéry’s writings, and as the correctness or incorrectness of our political arguments had no bearing whatsover on my decision to go home, I dropped the subject. All the more so as I hadn’t yet made up my mind whether to disclose the real motives of my return to Hungary or not. ‘Politically,’ the old gentleman bore down on me, ‘the point is not to proclaim truth but to make it victorious. If I imagined that the world, a priori, agreed with my ideas I should not put them on paper. In my book I expressed, in my own modest way, my hopes for a rational Utopia. True, I called the spirit of the Hungarian constitution democratic, but I added that even the most ideally formulated constitution isn’t worth a fig compared to a constitution the institutions of which live in the hearts and everyday habits of the people, even though they may not have been put into written words. I went on to say that to establish a democracy without democrats is just as risky an enterprise as to sell fans in Kamchatka, or to open a pork butcher’s shop in Mecca. Consequently, I called attention to the necessity of supporting the new Hungarian democracy, which, up to date, exists only on paper. Its future fate depends on the alternative of developments, something which I tried to put across in the title of my book: Hungary – To be or not to be, and expounded in detail in the concluding chapter.’

  The professor fell silent for a moment and sipped his wine. From behind the rim of his glass he gave me a long, friendly, almost loving glance.

  ‘If,’ he went on, ‘my book led to your decision to go back to Hungary, I am sorry I ever wrote it.’

  I made a movement of protest but he continued without waiting for my answer.

  ‘The alternative I mentioned in my book will be decided within a few months. At present Hungary is in the throes of inflation. Your passport, handed to you at our Legation in Washington with such flattering solemnity, will be taken from you at the Hungarian border without any solemnity whatsoever. One should never voluntarily enter a room or a country the door of which cannot be opened from the inside. Wait until the situation has become consolidated, until the inflation is over and you can not only enter, but can also leave Hungary. I don’t want to dissuade you from going home: that would be incompatible with my principles and the admiration I have for you. I don’t quite know whether to ascribe it to my old and softening heart, to my delight in your poems or to the calcium particles accumulating in my brain-cells – but, silencing my own human dignity and offending yours, I have come here not to see you off but to beg you to delay your departure. Delay it, George, by at least six months.’

  ‘But, Professor!’ Valy interrupted excitedly, ‘our luggage is on board ship, our flat …’

  ‘That is beside the point,’ I interrupted my wife. ‘Our flat is probably still free and our luggage can be returned from Le Havre.’

  Although I only wanted to show that I was not turning a deaf ear to Vambéry’s request, it was obvious that my reply gave him much pleasure. Immediately he began to draw a very convincing picture of the second alternative, depicting the communist dictatorship so coolly and objectively that even Valy forgot to protest, and even I forgot to think him old-fashioned. He added that in a left-wing dictatorship I would start with all the odds against me. The trouble was not that I was not a Marxist, still less a Leninist, but that I fullfilled not a single one of the communist requirements, not even the very modest one of putting on an act and keeping my thoughts to myself. Secondly, I had visited many countries. Thirdly, I had received a classical education and was thus in the category of the unreliable. Lastly, I had no particular aspirations or passions; I would, in fact, embarrass even the most benevolent communist, because there was nothing
with which I could be blackmailed or intimidated. Thus, from the bolshevik point of view, I was necessarily expendable. It was also important to remember that communists are interested neither in the value nor in the popularity of an artist. Their only consideration is his apparent usefulness to the totalitarian state. Vambéry mentioned Babel and Tarassov-Rodianov, whom the communists had murdered, and Jessenin, whom they drove to suicide.

  While he was speaking, two completely contradictory trends of thought streamed through my mind. Jessenin’s name scared me for a moment, but I quickly ascribed the parallel to the old gentleman’s imagination, fired by anxiety and tenderness. As he had still made no allusion to the real motives of my return, which were absolutely independent of political eventualities, I wondered whether to mention them at all. He himself had retired to his room for an hour after the death of his first-born son, and never again, not even to his wife, had he mentioned his name; yet now, for my sake, he was transgressing the limits he had drawn with the precision of an international lawyer round his own and other people’s emotional worlds, round man’s individuality and the Semiramis-gardens of privacy: limits which he had always observed with a nineteenth-century modesty, not hypocritically, but with a noble, liberal ease. Still, I doubted that he was ignorant of my motives. Six years earlier, when I had intended to disappear in the desert, he had calculated my plans from a distance of four thousand kilometres. If now, at our last meeting, I kept silent, I should always feel guilty of spiritual disloyalty, even though he was aware that I, like himself, was reserved and modest.

  The second train of thought was more a collection of impressions, underlining and colouring the foregoing but only loosely in contact with it. Without, of course, comparing myself to Columbus, I could not prevent my mind turning to the great Genoese. It was an idée fixe, consisting of several elements. There was the salty, tangy smell of the sea streaming in through the open windows and filling me with an irresistible desire for adventure; there were the large jetties on either side of the pier, reminding me of the slow, uncomfortable journey to this country five years earlier, on the deck of the Navemar which had set out from Cadiz with a crew of mutinous seamen and had taken seven weeks to reach the flat shores of the Bahamas. Then there was my wife’s black velvet beret embroidered with semiprecious stones, copied from a portrait in the Louvre, attributed to Raphael, of Queen Joanna of Aragon, which suited Valy’s beautiful face but clashed mercilessly with her bolshevik notions. Every time I looked at her I thought of her frightening resemblance to Raphael’s model – though Mad Joanna was a melancholic, while Valy’s attacks of screaming hysteria made her throw dishes and wake the entire neighbourhood at any time of night. It would have been difficult to draw a parallel between the professor and King Ferdinand of Spain, but I saw all the more similarity between Columbus’s position and my own.

  I too was setting out towards a continent in which, without confessing it, I hoped to find traces of an old world; and thus I too, like Columbus, had to count on the possibility that I might never know where I had landed. My journey, like his, was called madness and suicide. Everyone told me horror stories and foretold unknown dangers which frightened me even though I could not believe them. Like Columbus, I might, for all I knew, find myself among primitive savages instead of among cultured Asians – or among cruel Asians, instead of among simple but benevolent savages. But my closest bond with the great Genoese was that although I appeared to be setting out on this journey for the sake of symbolic treasure, the real motive was vanity, the desire for fame and glory: our different trades drove us both with the same imperatives, and both of us, while fully aware of dangers, still hoped for success.

  This comparison so electrified me, and the immoderate quantities of French wine which I had drunk so loosened my tongue, that I plunged into my little speech, stumbling over my words and disregarding the order and importance of my arguments, although I had long ago worked them out.

  I began with my feelings of guilt. Here in New York, and in the army too, I had lived in comparative safety, while at home people had been slaughtered, deported to concentration camps, gassed, or buried in their houses by the thousand. This was one of the reasons why I thought it essential to return home with the greatest possible humility now, and not like some unconcerned visitor, when inflation abated and things had settled down.

  Then I spoke of the problem of the Hungarian language, which bound me to my fatherland with ties stronger than any other. I described how shocked I had been when, at the air-base at Kodiak, my fellow-soldiers told me one morning that I had been talking English in my sleep. At Fort Leonardwood, a military camp in the middle of a forest in Missouri, one of my buddies had stopped behind me when I was busy writing a poem in a PX, and had asked me why I wasn’t writing in English. I had explained to him that when I pronounced the word wood, it meant to him the surrounding dense, dark-green forest of strangely-shaped, intertwining trees, a jungly undergrowth full of jiggers, an unfathomable, frightening darkness; when, on the other hand, I pronounced the Hungarian word for wood, erdö, I saw the thinly scattered, slender young trees of the Matra Mountains, with fragments of blue sky between their branches and wild strawberry plants and tussocks of grass at their feet. Even concrete words meant different things to us, not to mention abstractions such as political party, ethics, way of life, religion or duty.

  When a Hungarian rhyme occurred to me I knew at once whether it had already been used by some other Hungarian poet; I knew whether it sounded modern or old-fashioned, solemn or comical, banal or affected. I knew whether it was slyly modest, refined, deliberately dim, artistically polished, or sham; whether its mere sound evoked melancholy, happiness, arrogance, despair, unexpressed rudeness, irony, boredom or nothing at all. In English I didn’t even know for certain whether a rhyme was a rhyme on paper only, or also when pronounced. I had been born into the process of Hungarian literature, of Hungarian history: it was not Herrick whom I studied at school, but Balaasi, not Keats but Janos Arany. The word victory conjured up in me not the red brick wall of the Appomattox Court House but the green grass of the battlefield at Isaszeg; the word democracy took in my mind the shape of Lajos Kossuth’s face, not that of Abraham Lincoln’s. Hungarian literature and history were going through a phase different from that of American literature and history: it was a different river, with a different course, different currents, a different colour, on which one rowed with a different rhythm, in a different way. I knew everything about a Hungarian peasant: I knew what fairy-tales had given him bad dreams in childhood, how he moved, what grimaces he made when shaving in his kitchen on a Sunday morning; I knew just how distorted his notions and memories of Hungarian history would be. About the joys and worries of a farmer in Georgia I knew nothing.

  And then there was vanity! In America, when I went into a restaurant, I might get good service by giving good tips – but what I got, I got for money. When I entered a restaurant at home the waiter would suggest the best and cheapest dishes not only because he would know who I was – for the sake, that is, of my fame as a poet – but because he could tell at once that I was an honest man, and poor. If I should want to win a woman, in America it would take me two weeks, in Hungary an afternoon. In Hungary I would have credit; in America I would be obliged to learn English perfectly and acquaint myself in detail with the country before I could even hope to open an intellectual bank account. This was valid not only in everyday life, but in making new friends and acquaintances, and among enthusiastic admirers from whom, at home, I did my shy and desperate best to escape, while in America I despaired because I had no one to escape from. It was even valid in death. Absurd I might be, but I felt that resting in the Kerepes Cemetery at home I would feel less dead than I would here, buried in that drained marsh, beside Lazlo Fényes.

  How many arguments had I lined up? Six. For a seventh I would have to quote Dante, likening emigration to an endless spiral staircase; I would have to enumerate everything I had been through in seven years; des
cribe how I had slept in the desert, in the hold of a ship, in a tank, on ice, in a jungle, at an air-base and in some two hundred beds, and explain that now, at last, I wanted to sleep in the same bed for decades, to collect a library, to plant a walnut tree for my grandchildren; that although my thirst for adventure was still alive, I felt that I could get all the adventure I wanted at home.

  For an eighth argument I could put forward something which the professor knew as well as I did: the articles published day after day in Hungarian liberal and social democrat newspapers, calling me home; my books, once banned, burned and seized and now published again; my poems and songs, broadcast week after week over the Budapest radio. If I did not return home now, I should disown myself.