With whom should I talk to shorten the long period of waiting? The beans I had eaten half an hour earlier hurt my stomach as if someone had boxed me in the solar plexus and left his fist there. Every time I breathed I felt in my throat the sharp smell of the weeds cooked with the beans. After Doctor Acs’s words I craved light chatter, but Gabori, Egri and Garamvölgyi who stood near me were out, and so were my two neighbours, Pali Musza and Toni Vojacsek.
Musza stood with his hands crossed on his stomach, his head slightly bowed and a beatific smile on his porcelain-white, smooth, childish face. Presumably he was praying or meditating; if I spoke to him he would answer at once and pretend I had not interrupted him, because he regarded ostentatious prayer as a great sin. He was almost a child. Two years earlier he had wanted to enter a religious order but the church authorities had refused him because they considered him too stupid. Musza then went to work, but with his earnings he bought Bibles which he distributed at railway stations among the travellers. For this he was arrested. At night he walked about in the barracks barefoot, noiseless. He gave a large part of his bread and rations to those who asked for it. I soon discovered that those who asked were usually spies, informers, and the thieves who robbed the haversacks of their neighbours. I sent Gabori to Musza to tell him to give his food not to scoundrels but to the old and sick, like Porpak with his serious heart condition or the paralytic Uncle Horvath. Gabori returned from this mission shaking his head.
‘Well, what did he say?’ I inquired.
‘He does not consider himself called upon to determine who is a scoundrel and who isn’t,’ Gabori replied. ‘He will go on giving to those who ask for it.’
Since then my admiration and regard for Musza had grown continually. Although this feeling was mutual we never talked to each other; neither of us saw much purpose in such talks. He showed respect for, but no interest in, my stories, my philosophy, my witticisms; exactly as I reacted to his prayers.
With my other neighbour, Toni Vojacsek, I had even less to talk about, although I did nor share my companions’ disdain for Toni. His face, though pink-cheeked and pimply, resembled Musza’s as though they were brothers: brothers of whom one had become a monk and the other had fallen into depravity but had preserved, even in his depravity, an original animal innocence. Toni boasted to everyone about having been a safe-breaker, not as if he were particularly proud of it, but only as if he, too, wanted to have something to boast about. Turning innocent blue eyes on his interlocutor he would explain that there were still a good many safes in Budapest waiting for him. He would tell at length where these safes stood, how he intended to fool the police patrol and disconnect the alarm, and how thick a wall he would have to dig through. Many of the political prisoners found it humiliating that we had to share our daily life with ordinary criminals, but Toni met his fate with resignation and his attitude to us was a mixture of esteem and contempt: he regarded us as madmen who had sacrificed our lives for a hopeless and incomprehensible cause.
He never understood – and didn’t particularly care – why he was shut up with us. They had caught him entering a Budapest textile factory with intent to rob. He had tried this branch of the profession only for fun. One should always stick to one’s speciality, as he often said. When they arrested him he was convinced that he wouldn’t get more than a month, but to his surprise he was accused of sabotage. The length of cloth he had tried to steal was destined for the Soviet Union. There was nothing he could say in his defence but that he was of proletarian origin. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment because, according to the verdict, he had executed the robbery at the instigation of the American embassy to destroy friendly relations between Hungary and the Soviet Union.
Toni had described the safes waiting to be broken into so often that it was beginning to bore me. In addition he admired and trusted me to such an extent that he asked me every time we talked: ‘Tell me, brother George, will I ever be a free man again? Say yes; you are the only one I believe.’ He would look at me with such entreaty in his innocent blue eyes that in spite of my conviction to the contrary, I promised him again and again that he would soon be free to break into all the rich safes waiting for him. However, I should not have liked to repeat this encouragement as publicly.
So I decided to talk to North-Eastern Inrush. It was a good moment to have the names of the various cloud formations, the cyclone and anticyclone, wind-speeds, and such explained to me. I had neglected this side of my education and I could have found no more suitable teacher among the nine million inhabitants of Hungary than North-Eastern Inrush.
He was standing in the first line, next to Egri. He was a kind, mild man with a huge head and a powerful chin which covered his neck and part of his chest. He was also the smallest inhabitant of the camp, almost a dwarf. His real name was Géza Toth – Uncle Géza as we called him – and he had been one of the heads of the Meteorological Institute. He owed his arrest to the fact that in the meteorological report edited by him he had promised, one day ‘soft Western breezes’ and on the next had foretold an ‘inrush of icy cold air from the North-East, the direction of the Soviet Union’. The next day he was arrested by the AVO ‘because of imperialist propaganda smuggled into a meteorological report, espionage activity and vilification of the Soviet Union.’ Staff Colonel Valér Czebe, who had worked in Military Intelligence and was arrested two days after Uncle Géza, told us that on the day in question a Soviet division had arrived in Hungary simultaneously with the ‘inrush of icy air’ and this coincidence had caused Uncle Géza’s doom. We took good care never to mention this coincidence to the old man for fear it might drive him to despair.
North-Eastern Inrush bore his fate with admirable calm. Climatically the Matra region is Hungary’s most interesting spot, with unexpected cloud penetrations and other meteorological phenomena that delighted him. The inadequate nourishment sufficed for his tiny body, he loved work and found every trade absorbing. In the forest he looked like a leprechaun, or one of the seven dwarfs come to life, wielding some giant tool, a saw or an axe, while throwing sharp glances at the clouds. He was continually busy even in the barracks, making a shelf above his bunk, smoothing it with sand-paper and painting it green. He collected all sorts of objects, which he arranged on his shelf in order – as he used to say – ‘to feel at home’. Only at night did he sometimes sit on his bunk with his heavy head in his hands. Once I asked him what he was meditating about. He told me that he had left his wife in an extremely expensive five-room apartment. He had no doubt that his friends gave his wife sufficient money to pay the rent, but how, if they let him go in five or ten years, would he pay them back?
Three months earlier, on our first evenings in Recsk, our conversations had been restricted to a few minutes after the lights were put out, and of my three listeners two would soon fall asleep. Only Garamvölgyi would stay awake, having fed copiously on slops. Kunéry, the former officer who had tried to pick a quarrel with us on the way up because of the Goddess Isis, protested loudly that we were disturbing him, and others warned us benevolently against trying to maintain our intellectual interest. And yet, strangely enough, the number of my listeners grew so rapidly that I had to submit the newcomers to a severe screening. The other unexpected phenomenon was that in spite of the increasing lapses of memory caused by slow but constant loss of physical strength, our intellectual thirst was growing so that we always talked for at least an hour. When it became known that they were doing the same in the other barracks, our example was followed by many.
Except for myself, the prisoners had completely lost interest in the story of each other’s arrests. Only new arrivals were asked to tell their stories, briefly, as part of the ceremony of introduction, and we stuck to this custom because it was severely forbidden. The AVO explained that telling our stories was equivalent to the betrayal of state secrets and punishable by an extra fifteen years’ imprisonment, and anyway, if we persisted, they would simply beat us to a pulp.
The la
rgest groups were the social democrats – usually old trade-union men, strike leaders, who could not get used to having to serve the interests of the state instead of those of the working class; former army officers who had gone over to the Russians in 1944 and believed that they would be able to organize an independent Hungarian army; the leading men of the different parties whom the communists had asked in 1945 to organize local smallholder or social democratic cells and who, three years later, had been arrested for having done so; kulaks, who were made to disappear in order that their lands might be expropriated, and poor peasants who were appointed kulaks, so that when the real thing was lacking they in turn could be made to disappear; so-called undisciplined workers from large factories who were arrested in order to frighten their fellow-workers; and élite workers who were arrested to frighten their fellow-workers even more. Then there were smaller groups – for instance, almost all the officers from sea-going ships, arrested for espionage; peasants and artisans of Serbian extraction from the environment of Pécs who had participated in the banquet given by Rakosi when Tito visited Hungary, arrested for high treason; and some thirty men from the village of Battonya, from the notary to the swineherd, arrested for conspiracy against the state. What had happened in Battonya was that the schoolmaster was a member of an anti-communist movement called Sword and Cross. In order to obtain funds for the movement he had made the parents of his pupils buy from him stamps with a sword and a cross on them, and the parents, not knowing what they were buying but unwilling to antagonize the teacher, had complied. One night the AVO surrounded the village and searched every house. They arrested everyone in whose house they found one of the sword and cross stamps – and if someone confessed to a stamp collection they arrested him anyway, without a search.
There were, however, cases that didn’t fit into any category but were interesting in themselves – for instance that of Gyula Fazekas, veterinary surgeon from Paks. He had been arrested by the AVO and interrogated about alleged friends whose names he had never heard. They beat and tortured him for three whole weeks. Then, one night, an AVO colonel came into his cell and told him that, unfortunately, they had made a mistake and it was not he but another Gyula Fazekas they were looking for. However, in the state he was in it was impossible to set him free. This he must understand. So he was sent to Recsk.
A big, strong peasant by the name of Macza had served in the Foreign Legion and had later opened a pub in Oran. He made his pile and in 1947 decided to return to Hungary and buy his parents some land. He was cautious, however, and arriving in Paris asked the redheaded Councillor of the Hungarian Legation whether it was safe for him to go home. The Councillor (in whom I could not help but recognize Bandi Havas) assured him that he would be received with open arms and that he would be very happy in socialist Hungary. Macza was arrested at the frontier as a French spy and robbed of the ten million francs he had on him. For three years he was kept in utter isolation at the Kistarcsa camp so that neither his parents nor his wife, who had remained in Oran, knew what had happened to him.
Ajtai – the carrot-nosed young man who had travelled in the same freight-car with me and had told us from the clicking of the switches where we were – had been a railwayman in Hatvan. In 1949 there was a demonstration in Hatvan in favour of Cardinal Mindszenty who was already in prison. Ajtai and his brother, also a railwayman, got back to Hatvan a few hours after the demonstration, and were arrested at the station. They were accused of having participated in the demonstration. Both men showed their papers which proved that they had just returned from a fourteen-hour journey to the other end of the country. ‘Then it was your harlot wives who participated in the demonstration,’ the AVO man said. ‘We are both unmarried.’ ‘Never mind,’ replied the lieutenant, ‘now you will remain unmarried for good.’
Engineer Hugo Koch was appointed by Rakosi himself as general manager of the nationalized Meinl colonial produce stores. One day his chauffeur Galba was driving him along the Gödöllö highway. As they reached the worst hairpin bend of the country, three huge cars, coming from the opposite direction on the wrong side of the road, stopped directly before them. The second car disgorged Rakosi in person. When he recognized Koch he embraced him, begged him to excuse his retinue for their irregular driving, sent his regards to Mrs Koch and climbed back into the car. The first car, then the second, drove away, but the third remained. From it descended four AVO men who arrested both Koch and his driver Galba. They were taken not to AVO headquarters but to the court of law where both were accused of planning an attempt on Rakosi’s life. Koch, however, was permitted to hire a lawyer. After talking to his client the lawyer went to see Rakosi at party headquarters. On hearing the story Rakosi turned purple with fury, thanked the lawyer for warning him and promised that his client would be free within two hours. Five minutes later, as the lawyer was leaving the building, he too was arrested and taken to Kistarcsa. Koch was tried by a fat, pink-faced judge called Rigo who, to everybody’s surprise, brought a verdict of not guilty. When Koch and his driver left the court building they were again arrested by the AVO. At Kistarcsa Koch met his lawyer, who remained there while Koch and Galba were brought to Recsk. They lived in the barracks next to ours and slept side by side. The judge Rigo, on the other hand, slept next to North-Eastern Inrush, directly below me.
Gabor Szarka, commercial attaché at Ankara, did excellent work at his post. The summer before, shortly after he had closed a very important business deal between the two countries, he was called home. His Turkish friends advised him to embezzle the money and remain in Turkey but he, though he was rather scared, returned to Hungary. To his surprise he was awarded high government distinction, offered a four-week holiday at an exclusive resort at government expense and then given orders to return to his post. However, at the Hungarian border he was taken off the train. The AVO lieutenant who arrested him kept calling him a treacherous swine and an absconder, whereupon Szarka showed him his diplomatic passport and letter of credit.
‘If you dare refer to these again I’ll make you eat them!’ the lieutenant shouted.
‘It took me two hours to eat them,’ Szarka concluded his story. ‘I never knew how difficult it was to eat a passport.’
Janos Cseri, a peasant lad of twenty, was arrested at the pub. His friends, with whom he was having a few drinks, sang old, forbidden soldier songs, like: ‘I am Miklos Horthy’s soldier …’ etc. Cseri wasn’t aware of this because he was lying under the table, dead drunk. His friends were taken to the local police station, given a good beating and released, but Cseri was sent up to Budapest to the AVO. His internment order, that he always carried on his person, was a masterpiece. ‘Janos Cseri was arrested in a pub together with his friends who were singing anti-democratic songs. Although it was proven that, owing to the high degree of his intoxication, Cseri did not participate in the singing, it can be presumed that had he been sober he would have done so. On the basis of the above I intern Cseri for six months for state security reasons. Lieutenant-Colonel Marton Karolyi.’ Beneath, the date: December, 1948. That was exactly two years ago.
Gyula Mauthner had worked in the country’s largest factory, the Weiss Manfred Works at Csepel, and was, on the side, a spy of the local AVO. The summer before, the AVO told him to write down the names and addresses of social democratic workers and employees who were known for their anti-communist sentiments. Mauthner put down the names of the twenty-four people he disliked most (regardless of their party affiliation) and at the bottom of the list signed his own name. The Csepel AVO branch made him put the list in an envelope and sent it on to the Budapest AVO. Three days later a prison van stopped before his house; when he climbed in he saw that the twenty-four men he had denounced were already there. All twenty-five of them landed at Recsk. The twenty-four amused themselves night after night by wrapping Mauthner in a blanket and giving him a good hiding. After a while Mauthner confessed what he had done. Surprisingly, instead of beating him to a pulp, the ironfounders took pity on him and hence
forth left him alone.
Ferenc Wittipp was a design engineer at a factory making precision instruments. One summer afternoon, as he was on his way home, he was pushed into a car and taken to Andrassy Street. When they told him with what sabotage action he was charged he smiled with relief. The Soviet Union had ordered gun sights from his factory. They had enclosed a design. Wittipp had examined the design and observed that there were a few obvious errors in it. He corrected the errors, informed his superiors of the corrections and, at the same time, informed the Ministry in Moscow, which replied in a letter dripping with gratitude. His investigator, to whom he explained what had happened, nodded. This, precisely, was the sabotage. He should have manufactured the gun sights according to the design sent from Moscow. Did it never occur to him, the investigator asked, that perhaps the Soviet Union had planned to send those guns to one of the people’s democracies, to Hungary, let us say? Wittipp was struck dumb by this question. There, now I’ve got you – the investigator had triumphed. You corrected that design because you knew the guns were intended for the Hungarian army and you were in contact with a conspiracy of army officers who planned to attack the Soviet Union. This is why it was so important to you that the guns should shoot straight.
Professor György Sarospataky, the scientist, with his broad, bushy, soot-black moustache, who had been in the same cell with me at Kistarcsa, was sent to a biological congress at Bucharest. The Czechoslovakian delegate said that in Southern Slovakia there was a plague of scale insects. He blamed the Horthy régime which, when during the war Southern Slovakia was temporarily Hungarian, had badly neglected the care of orchards. In his reply Professor Sarospataky declared that the Hungarians had taken over the Southern Slovakian orchards in a very neglected state in 1938, and to this effect he quoted the official statistical data of the Czechoslovak Statistical Bureau from 1937. He added, however, that there was not much point in digging up past mistakes; it was much more important that close co-operation be established between the two neighbouring states because if one neglected insect extermination, the orchards of the other also suffered. On this they all agreed. The following afternoon, however, he was taken off the train at Biharkeresztes, at the Roumanian–Hungarian border. An AVO sergeant informed him that he was under arrest because he had arranged a chauvinistic scandal at the congress, in order to sabotage international co-operation.
My Happy Days In Hell Page 45