My Happy Days In Hell

by György Faludy

  Titus Banvölgyi, a lanky, pink-faced, freckled, angry and cranky lawyer, had been interned in 1946 for various fascist crimes he had never committed. The AVO confiscated his excellent library and his beautiful art treasures, and threw his wife and small children out of his apartment. His communist judge friends left no stone unturned to get him freed – for instance, they held a regular trial in his case, hearing over one hundred witnesses, and found him not guilty. And when it became evident that not even the Hungarian communists could help him, they turned to the Soviet Embassy and had him released from Kistarcsa. During the first week of his return to civil life, Banvölgyi found out who had his library, who shared in his art treasures and which AVO officer had taken the flat from his wife. Then he sent a petition to the Supreme Court, asking for the restitution of his books, art treasures and apartment, damages for the thirty-two months of internment he had suffered and a set of false teeth to replace the real ones that had been knocked out of his head. A few days later he was taken away in a curtained car by detectives who began to kick and hit him as soon as he was in the car. An hour later he was thrown, half dead, into our train to Recsk. Unlike the other prisoners Banvölgyi was constantly harping on his grievances.

  ‘And what would you do, Titus, if they released you again?’ his fellow-prisoners asked him.

  ‘I would immediately send a petition to the Supreme Court,’ he lisped with his toothless mouth. During his one week of freedom he had had his remaining teeth pulled, but was arrested before he could pick up his plate from the dentist.

  Marton Dobrai had been a faithful communist, had held a high position in a bank and was, in addition, a party functionary. One evening, at the time of the Rajk trial, two detectives searched his flat. They were looking for foreign currency, cut open the chairs and mattresses with a razor but found nothing.

  ‘Never mind, we’ll take you in anyway,’ they told him and, instead of taking him by car, as was usual, they put him on a streetcar like an ordinary thief. At Széna Square, where they had to change to another line, Dobrai escaped from the detectives in the crowd. He spent the night at the house of a friend and in the morning he set out towards the Austrian border. He was arrested and taken to 60 Andrassy Street. The interrogator asked him what had caused him, a man of excellent position, of high party function, with a villa and a car, to try to abscond? Dobrai explained that he was driven to this step by his unlawful arrest. There was nothing left for him to do but to try and get away. His interrogator then asked him to describe the two detectives who had searched his house, and when he was given the description broke into merry laughter. They had been false detectives.

  Most of these stories, of course, harmed not only the AVO’s prestige but our own as well, and this was probably why my fellow prisoners kept them brief and rarely mentioned them again. To put up with our fate, the work, the filth, the prospect of starvation, it was absolutely necessary that we should be able to look upon ourselves as tragic heroes, but the reasons and circumstances of our arrests prevented us from doing so. The moronic AVO officer who sincerely believed that the hand of the enemy could be detected everywhere, even in a meteorological report, shifted the cheap absurdity of his utter stupidity on to the victim whom he arrested. The initials of the social democrats arrested on the same day – from Otto Beöthy, Parliament librarian, and Péter Csaplar, chairman of the trade-union council, to Egri, myself, Garamvölgyi and Gabori – ranged without irregularity from A to G, so we could not even pretend that we had been arrested because of our acts. It was obvious that the AVO had simply lifted out a batch of names from an alphabetical file.

  At the same time we felt that we were pretty ridiculous ourselves. Until the day of our arrests ninety-five per cent of us had not been declared enemies of the régime. Most of us had regarded it as something like a storm that would, in time, abate, while others, who at first had believed in it enthusiastically, had waited with fading illusions. Looking back on it, our former life did not seem very heroic either. All of us had had to find some sort of a modus vivendi with the régime. Those who were arrested earlier despised us because everyone regarded collaboration with the régime as discrediting after he himself had been arrested. We became ridiculous in our own eyes because we had tolerated, even supported, the régime which laid the traps in which it caught us.

  Though I found most of the stories revolting and humiliating I went on collecting them fanatically, the way one clings to a fixed idea which one knows that it is unreal. In my student years I used to hop out into the hall on one foot to fetch the mail, expecting that I might be rewarded for this effort by a letter from my beloved of the moment asking me to a rendezvous. Often I walked in the street, stepping carefully on every second paving stone because I imagined this would bring me luck, although I knew very well that luck had nothing to do with paving stones. This was how I collected the stories: hopelessly, yet with a very real and exact purpose. ‘When I go back to the West,’ I thought, ‘and try to describe my experiences, I shall meet with almost insurmountable difficulties.’ I knew very well that the things I was going through were unimaginable, improbable or even suspect to people in the West because they were irrational. And the Westerner’s love of comfort, lack of imagination, horror of moral indignation – his determination to protect his inner peace and put his conscience to sleep – would act against his crediting my story. I remembered that five years ago, in New York, I too would have doubted the veracity of such a book or at least I would have believed the allegations to be exaggerated. Even now, living the experience I hoped one day to describe, I constantly doubted its reality. If I believed in anything, it was in these stories; or rather, I stopped disbelieving them after I had heard the first few. At the tenth, twentieth, I saw that they not only characterized the régime but were utterly uninventable, because to invent them would have required Aeschylus’s psychological insight, Shakespeare’s imagination and Maupassant’s art of story-telling. I thought that these stories would be the main proofs of my book’s authenticity – and this saddened me considerably because until now I always judged books by artistic value and not by authenticity.

  The roll call was over. I took off my jacket and trousers and sat on my bunk, waiting for the lights to be put out. The serious conversation had to wait until darkness; now we stuck to lighter subjects. Gabori, Egri and Garamvölgyi had settled down round me; our two somewhat more distant neighbours, Ödön Berzsenyi and Florian Wrangel, reclined on their mattresses and listened with interest to what we were saying. With his delicate, oval face, his melancholy, narrow, greying moustache and his strong nose, Berzsenyi called to my mind the Hungarian noblemen of the past century who, after 1825, stood up for the rights of the common people and in more than one case gave their lives for their serfs, but who would never have imagined shaking hands with them. With his reticence, good manners, wit, well-concealed haughtiness, generosity, liberal views and conservative habits, all of which made him as different from his Horthy-general father as it made him like his more distant ancestors, he was, from the very first moment, close to my heart. My friends had some difficulty overcoming their distrust of him.

  Florian Wrangel’s ancestors had belonged to the guild of honey-cake and candle-makers in the township of Esztergom ever since, a thousand years ago, the first Hungarian king made Esztergom his seat and invited German artisans into the country. When he spoke he lowered his eyes and, apart from his slowly writhing lips, the only bit of his body that moved were his big toes, calling attention to the pointed, thick and yellow nails, like the claws of a vulture. He was twenty-five or twenty-six but there was nothing young about him except his beautiful eyes. With his powerful, square forehead and powerful, square jaw, his terrifying nose in the depths of which scarlet flash-bulbs pulsated as if he were wearing his tonsils in his nostrils, he looked exactly like a film villain. An ideal villain, of course, because he was far too clever and far too demoniac to suit Hollywood. But had he lived a few centuries earlier and had there been a
film industry then, he would have been the star of the studio owned by the Borgia family, in which Sigismondo Malatesta was the producer and Hieronymus Bosch van der Aachen painted the sets.

  Florian was equally versed in pastry-making, strategy, archaeology, astrology and magic. He prepared our horoscopes in his head and could talk just as instructively about whether at Cannae, in 216 BC, the Romans or the Carthagians stood with their backs to the sea, as he could about the general customs of the second Roman legio auxiliaris stationed in Hungary, or about Kepler’s famous horoscope – printed in book form – that foretold Wallenstein’s death to the hour, even to the minute, many years before the warlord’s murder.

  My acquaintances warned me over and over again that Florian was one of the most dangerous informers in the camp. I had always suspected it but did not fear him. His attachment to me – a perverted and penetrating mixture of intellectual hunger, humility, subconscious homosexuality and frantic adoration – was so strong that I knew he would sell his own mother before he betrayed me. Though he showed the authorities a cermonious obedience, whenever he caught sight of me he broke all the rules and began to tell me the story of his life. Berzsenyi, who had spent two years in the same cell with him at Kistarcsa, told me that of Florian’s espionage stories not a word was true. Wrangel had been arrested by Lieutenant Toth – also from Esztergom – out of vengeance because he had seduced the beautiful prostitute who supported Toth. But when Florian saw that everyone had a story, he too invented one for himself – a story which grew more terrible every time he told it.

  Now Florian was telling us how, immediately after the declaration of war, in December, 1941, he had sent espionage reports to the Americans on his radio transmitter. I figured out that at the time he could not have been over sixteen, and glanced questioningly at Berzsenyi. He glanced back at me with a melancholy look that seemed disproportionate. I knew he was terribly tired of Florian’s stories, but there must have been another reason. Perhaps he was hurt because I had never asked him for his own story, though we had lived side by side for over three months. I thought I was being tactful, but he may have read a lack of interest in my silence. So now I touched Wrangel’s shoulder and asked him kindly to stop talking, he could go on with it next time. Then I turned to Berzsenyi and told him how sorry I was never to have heard the story of his arrest, and how I had felt I should wait with this question until we became friendly enough for him not to regard it as an intrusion.

  Berzsenyi sat up on the mattress and his expression changed. He began to speak, without introduction or transition, calmly and smoothly, like someone who had prepared and rehearsed his story carefully, many times, waiting for an opportunity to tell it. Every sentence was well rounded and delivered with a great economy of words.

  ‘I was a lieutenant in the Hungarian army,’ he began, giving me a friendly smile. ‘In the summer of 1943 our battalion surrendered to the Russians in the bend of the River Don. Officers, men, all of them. I was taken to a Russian prisoner-of-war camp but only for three days. On the third day I was summoned to the camp commander. Two Soviet soldiers pushed me into a car and we drove on and on and on. We drove for almost a week and then, one day, stopped before a huge building. I was led into a great hall with a pink marble floor. From there I was led into a room also decorated with pink marble. A pink marble bench ran along the four walls and a rococo chandelier hung from the ceiling. A powerful, deep-chested woman entered the room carrying a tray piled high with salmon, caviare and ham sandwiches. She put it down in front of me and gave me a friendly pat. “Go on, eat, batyushka,” she said, “you won’t see food again!” “Where am I?” I inquired, my mouth full of caviare. “Where? At the Moscow headquarters of the NKVD,” the fat woman replied readily, and winked at me.’

  ‘Speak louder!’ Judge Rigo whispered from the bunk below and, to give his request more weight, he kicked our mattress.

  ‘Not long after that I was taken up to the room of a Soviet Colonel. He asked me to sit down, offered me a cigar and vodka, then asked for my personal data. Name? Ödön Berzsenyi. Profession? Lawyer. Address? Budapest, District IV, 4 Kigyo Street, Apartment 1. Rank? Lieutenant. Mother’s name? Born where, etc., etc. The Colonel put down everything I said, then he looked up and said:

  ‘ “We shall release you immediately if you relieve your conscience and admit what we know anyway. Confess that you are Major Schultze, the notorious German agent.”

  ‘ “But Colonel,’ I replied indignantly, “I don’t know a word of German! Here are my papers: I am Ödön Berzsenyi, lawyer, from Budapest. In the Don bend our entire battalion surrendered …”

  ‘ “Confess that you are Major Schultze, the notorious German agent.”

  ‘ “I am Ödön Berzsenyi, lawyer, from Budapest.”

  ‘ “Take him away,” the Colonel ordered.

  ‘The next day I was again taken before the Colonel. This time he offered me neither cigar nor vodka but made me sit down before he asked: “Who are you?”

  ‘ “Ödön Berzsenyi, lawyer, Budapest, District IV, 4 Kigyo Street,” I replied.

  ‘ “Confess that you are Major Schultze, the notorious German agent!”

  ‘ “I am Ödön Berzsenyi …” I tried again.

  ‘ “Take him away!” the Colonel cried.

  ‘On the next day there was neither cigar nor vodka, and he did not offer me a chair.

  ‘ “Who are you?” he asked me, so curiously that it might have been the first time.

  ‘ “Ödön Berzsenyi, lawyer, Budapest, 4 Kigyo Street, Apartment one …”

  ‘ “This is your last opportunity. Confess that you are Major Schultze, the notorious German agent.”

  ‘ “Why don’t you stop this idiocy?” I asked angrily.

  ‘ “Take him away!” the Colonel yelled. Two of his men loaded me into a lorry and we drove and drove and drove. After a few days we arrived at the prison in Archangel. They led me into the right wing of the prison, along a corridor from which eighteen cells opened on one side, eighteen on the other, and at the end of the corridor they pushed me into cell No. 37. The next morning …’

  At that moment the bolt on the barrack door was pushed open and a voice called my name:

  ‘Faludy!’

  I pulled on my trousers, stepped quickly into my boots and smiled at my friends, who sat petrified on their bunks. When someone was denounced by an informer it was usually at this hour, before the lights were put out, that he was called out and beaten up, kicked around and made to crawl in the mud. Two weeks before, Porpak, the old and sick former police colonel, had been beaten so badly that he became deaf in his left ear. I wondered who had informed on me. Perhaps I over-estimated Florian’s attachment to me?

  I tried to appear calm and unconcerned while I walked out between the two rows of bunks. Outside, the dog-sergeant was standing, resting his back against the barrack wall. We called him dog-sergeant because he had arrived in the freight-car bringing the police dogs, though he had nothing to do with them. He was a smiling, fair-haired young man, the only AVO man who never hurt anyone.

  ‘Are you Faludy?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘Come closer. Closer still.’

  His breath smelled of goulash, wine and cigarettes. He had been drinking red wine, not white. I too leaned my back against the wall. The fur of his cap tickled my forehead. ‘How can he hit me standing so close?’ I asked myself.

  ‘We had a Villon recital at the camp headquarters this evening. Did you write those poems?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, rather uncertainly, as if I had not really adapted Villon’s poems myself, but had only always pretended to have done so.

  ‘I’ve brought you your royalties,’ the dog-sergeant said, handing me an apple – a red Jonathan apple so big that I could hardly put it in the pocket of my blouse.

  ‘The poems were beautiful. Eat that apple. And if someone asks you why I called you out, tell them I slapped your face. Goodnight.’

  It was dark in the barracks when I got back, but wh
en I climbed on to my mattress a light beam from the watch-tower’s searchlight fell directly on my friends through the small, barred window near the ceiling. Egri offered me a whole cigarette, as was usual on such occasions. Garamvölgyi was lying on his stomach, twitching convulsively, Florian was crying soundlessly, Gabori was sitting up straight, his hands balled into fists, and Berzsenyi lay still with his arm over his eyes. Though I was glad that I had not been beaten I was also a little ashamed of it because all my friends – with the exception of Garamvölgyi – had undergone very severe beatings. At first they wouldn’t believe my story but the evidence of the apple convinced them in the end. We cut it into six equal parts with Gabori’s sharp knife made from a large nail, and then I asked Berzsenyi to go on with his story.

  ‘I was telling you,’ Berzsenyi began in a shaky voice, as if the wonderful sweetness and aroma of the apple slice had gone to his head, ‘I was telling you how they led me along the corridor of the Archangel prison. There were eighteen cells with even numbers on one side, eighteen with uneven numbers on the other, and at the end there was a cell bearing the number 37, and this is where they put me. The next morning I was taken to the office, where I was received by a female NKVD lieutenant. She asked me for my personal data. I told her I was Ödön Berzsenyi, lawyer, Budapest, District IV, Kigyo Street, lieutenant, battle on the Don, etc., etc. The young lieutenant looked at me: