‘What the heck is defatigation?’ asked Egri.
‘Death by starvation. But communist etiquette forbids us to call anything by its name.’
For a while we worked in silence, but finally Egri gave voice to the opinion that if Szuha died, it was his own fault. He who exchanges his bread for cigarettes, dies. We do not exchange our bread for cigarettes, consequently we shall not die. After this syllogism he suggested that we light a cigarette at the next turn, at the fire Talian had built for himself. This was the only legal means of stopping work for a moment, the only excuse the AVO tolerated. We had to urinate with the shafts of the stretcher in our hands and its rope around our neck, like horses, and if we received permission to defecate we had to climb down the slope and squat on a pole laid over a trench on the edge of the forest where an AVO man by the name of Dücskö hid among the trees watching our behinds to make sure we hadn’t come down merely for a rest. If he caught someone cheating he would kick his bottom black and blue.
The half cigarette put me in a better mood and on the way back I recalled some of my forgotten loves: Diane de Poitiers and the fair Lucrezia Borgia as she looked in the fresco on the wall of Pope Alexander VI’s room at the Castle of St Angelo; Baudelaire’s great love, the courtesan Madame de Sabatier, Titian’s Diana, Giorgione’s Venus, Furini’s Magdalen… The lizard was still there, relaxing in the sun. We knelt down in the inch-thick snow and I continued my day-dreaming. I had been talking happily for about fifteen minutes when I was suddenly struck by the idea that as far as I was concerned, these imaginary women were no more attainable than living ones – that I was but a ghost at a lovers’ tryst. I weighed scarcely ninety pounds, my ribs stuck out like an old, neglected garden fence on which my heart drummed wildly, like a desperate fist. Eight weeks or ten, and we would all be dead.
‘That’s all,’ I said curtly. ‘These are the portraits I once loved.’
The sunshine, however, was far too beautiful, the lizard flicked out its long, narrow tongue, the clay beneath the snow clung tenderly to our knees and Egri did not understand my sudden change of mood.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘then talk about Aragon’s book. What was it that moron said about the superior morality of the communists?’
‘What did he say?’ I thought automatically. I closed my eyes and suddenly Aragon’s face emerged before me as I had seen it twelve years before in Paris. It was a rather attractive face and I felt an overwhelming desire to make it look squarely at the truth. What shall I tell him if we meet again? Won’t it be time wasted to talk to him at all? But my feelings were too violent, my imagination too extravagant, to stick to one subject for long. Suddenly, behind Aragon’s features I saw the Place de la Concorde, cars going round and round the fountain, girls, foreigners sitting in taxis, hurrying students with books under their arms and again the cars going round and round the Concorde, regardless of whether I was alive or dead. Behind my closed lids my eyes embraced the Place de la Concorde, focusing on the Obelisk, and all the while I felt the unusually warm December sun on my face like the pressure of a light hand. And then I caught a whiff of patchouli, as sharp and cruel as if I had stuck my nose into a bottle of ammonia.
My eyes flew open and I met Egri’s horrified glance. It was too late. Dentures was advancing towards us along the quarry face. He dug his pink, pointed nose into the air and gaped at us with his rounded lips. Although I was badly frightened I suddenly recalled where I had seen this medieval face before. It was in the paintings of Dutch masters. He looked like one of the Roman soldiers under the Cross. Not one of the evil-faces, throwing dice for Christ’s cape, but one gaping in the background, bored and indifferent.
He was swinging a hatchet in his hand but didn’t say anything. This, as we knew, was a dangerous sign. If only he would shout! If only he would abuse us! But no. This meant that he would kick us in the belly, beat us to a pulp, kick us again. In our terror we forgot to rise. Yet we knew that staying on our knees would only incense him further.
He was almost upon us when, suddenly, he caught sight of the lizard. He came to a halt before the desk-shaped blue rock, about two yards from where we were still kneeling in the snow. He had his profile towards us so that we could watch his face breaking into a wide, happy grin. It was obvious that he had never seen a lizard before. He gazed at it avidly, curiously and with evident satisfaction.
Spellbound by this unexpected development we remained on our knees. We were exhausted and, besides, we knew that Dentures could take in only one phenomenon at a time, two were too much for him. Either he watched the lizard and we were safe, or he abandoned the lizard and it was too late anyway.
The sergeant gaped at the lizard enthralled, his open lips trembling. His usually stiff, straight back relaxed; he bent slightly forward and his beautifully cut greatcoat was furrowed into deep wrinkles around the shoulder-blades. I was strangely moved. Until that moment I had never discovered a single human trait in the man. He had seemed an indifferent brute; and there he was now, bending over the lizard like a scientist over his microscope. He is acquainting himself with the phenomena of the world – I thought to myself – even if only with an animal; but this attention, this deep absorption, may be the forerunner of thinking.
Suddenly the sergeant raised his hatchet and with a flick of the wrist – his lips still extended in a wide, enchanted smile – he cut off the animal’s right foot. A scarlet half-sphere appeared in the opening of the wound, became elliptical and began to swing softly to and fro like a soap-bubble. Then it burst and the blood gushed forth like red oil-paint pressed from a tube. The lizard turned its head and examined its mutilated limb curiously, uncomprehendingly.
I felt Egri’s shoulder go tense. What could I do to stop him? If he hurled himself at the sergeant it wouldn’t help much if I threw myself between them. Egri was ten times as strong as I.
‘Don’t die for a lizard!’ I whispered in a voice so low that he could not possibly have heard me. Perhaps it was better so, for hadn’t we both long ago come to the conclusion that one would rather die for a lizard than for an ideal. Besides, the wounding of the lizard moved me more deeply than Szuha’s death, and I was certain that Egri shared my feeling. Thus it was not the words that mattered. I concentrated all my energy on the movement of my lips, I willed him to understand that his life was at stake. He stared at me for a moment, then his body relaxed.
Dentures gaped at the bleeding animal for a few minutes then raised his hatchet for the second time. He swung it not from the wrist but from the elbow and with a single, expert blow severed the animal’s left foot. The tiny paw flew off the blue rock in a wide arc and dug a small hole in the snow immediately before us. The lizard dropped its head on the rock as if it were giving up the hopeless struggle.
The moment it collapsed Dentures straightened up and the three deep creases in the back of his coat smoothed out without leaving a trace. He turned to us and looked at us for a moment with unseeing eyes. We did nor move. Our knees ate deep into the soft clay like the nose of a blown-up tank. Time enough to rise – I told myself – when he starts yelling. Then he would strike me or, if he liked, kick me down the slope. I might break my arms or legs and lie on my back for six weeks at the infirmary. This prospect was so pleasing that I forgot everything else and gazed absentmindedly into the snow that clung like a collar of frilly white lace to our knees.
The sergeant, however, did not yell. He turned his back on us and walked towards the quarry face where, in the blue-tinged shadow, the snow was harder and deeper. He stooped and with both palms began to sweep the snow into a neat pile between his straddled feet. From the heap he moulded a beautiful, big snowball. When it was finished he lifted the almost perfect sphere in both hands and gaped at it in awe. Then he turned, aimed carefully and with a startled expression on his face threw the snowball at me. Then he smiled a charming, boyish smile because the ball hit the exact spot he had aimed at, it no more than brushed my shoulder then flew on, in a wide arc, towards the precipice.
/> We were still on our knees when Dentures turned and walked away along the quarry face. He described a complete half-circle of approximately twenty yards’ radius, approaching us again from the other side, walking on the very edge of the precipice. He advanced with rapid, springy steps on the uneven ground. Behind his waist the mountain chains of northern Hungary were etched sharply, clearly, into the limpid air. The gun-holster wobbling at his side seemed to be sledging up and down the hills and slopes of the Gömör–Szepes ore-mountains, the dull, grey metal of the butt peeping out from under the leather flap. He walked on the edge of the precipice with his profile towards us. But behind that profile there were no more mountains: the vibrating, resigned blue of the winter sky served as a background to his face. His pointed, pink nose sniffed the air, his mouth, as always, was gaping. He appeared an allegorical figure, eating and swallowing, swallowing and eating the blue sky not only symbolically but in fact. For a second the white peak of the High Tatra flashed between his platinum-coloured teeth like a mound of vanilla ice-cream, then he had swallowed that too and walked on towards the guard-hut to fry himself some bacon for lunch.
On that day dusk was like dawn: above the thinned-out forest the sky enveloped us like an egg-shaped rather than a spherical cupola made of translucent blue crystal. Our working day was over and we were marching down the slope with heavy logs on our shoulders to be cut up into firewood and sold by the guards. The two men walking before me argued about the way to make egg-nog. Musilla, a tiny, elderly social democratic office worker, insisted that he used to put the eggs into the alcohol, shell and all. His wife had suffered from tuberculosis and the doctors advised him to give her as much calcium as possible.
‘So I gave her egg-nog,’ Musilla explained. ‘There were the shells of twenty-four eggs in every litre of it.’
‘You are nuts, Musilla,’ said Uncle Torma, an old welder whom the AVO had arrested because he had asked, at a party meeting, whether this was already socialism or whether it would become even worse. ‘You never made egg-nog at home, you went to the pub and bought a bottle.’
‘I swear to you that I made it myself. I washed a dozen eggs and put them in alcohol, where they dissolved, then …’
‘Calcium doesn’t dissolve in alcohol.’
‘Why shouldn’t it? I bet you it does. If I lose I’ll pay you the day we get out of here.’
‘But not in egg-nog!’ Uncle Torma laughed. ‘I refuse to drink that slop. Let’s make it ten litres of Balaton white wine.’
I fell back. I hated egg-nog as much as Uncle Torma but now I would have lapped it up. Not only my stomach, but my whole body craved food. I saw myself sticking ten fingers into the sticky egg-nog, then my foot, which left a round, squelchy print in it as if I had stepped in wet sand. Egg-nog was flowing on top of Mount Kékes where, in the wake of the setting sun, yellow puddles collected among the trees. Resin – like egg-nog – hung from the hollow of a pine tree I passed.
Wrangel and Berzsenyi, whom I overtook to get some intelligent conversation, were on the same subject, discussing questions we usually dismissed contemptuously, under the heading, ‘take a fireproof dish’. Fortunately they were not exchanging recipes.
‘When I get home,’ Wrangel was saying with feeling, ‘I shall ask my mother to prepare my favourite dish, risotto à la Milanese. Forty pounds of it, in a bucket …’
‘Disgusting,’ Berzsenyi exclaimed. ‘I am all for quality foods. The first evening out I shall invite three of my friends. I shall buy eight woodcocks, put them in pairs into the bellies of four partridges, into two pheasants, the two pheasants into a hare, roll the hare in strips of bacon and bake it. I shall serve stewed quince with it and Chablis. But first there will be a cheese soufflé …’
Poor Berzsenyi, I thought, has no idea that there is neither Chablis, nor woodcock, nor partridge, nor pheasant to be had outside; if he is lucky he will get a couple of hares. I fell back again because I heard Egri’s voice behind me. He was arguing in a rather arrogant manner with a young man by the name of Fürst whom he despised as he despised everyone who had lost his religion but still held on to theology.
‘Try to live without an ideology,’ he shouted at him, ‘perhaps you will succeed. And if you are not interested in what Faludy has to say about the Platonic idea, you have only to remain on your bunk at night.’
‘But I am interested!’ replied Fürst in melancholy tones. ‘The trouble is only that I find him to be a reactionary. I myself am a materialist.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I am ashamed to tell you, but as far as I am concerned, a dixie full of sticky, dirty boiled beans in my belly means more than all of Plato’s ideas.’
‘All right,’ Egri said, ‘but in that case, be consistent.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Inform the sergeant that we are having reactionary conversations in the evenings and ask for your reward: a dish of beans. Be materialistic to the end, brother!’
I was about to intervene on Fürst’s behalf – he was gazing at Egri with stricken eyes – but Egri took pity on him and began to explain that our nightly discussions had only one purpose: to save us from becoming like animals.
‘Besides,’ he added, again in an arrogant voice, ‘it is silly of you to belittle our conversations. These conversations immunize us against typhoid and pneumonia. This, naturally, is something you will never understand because your brain is paralysed by ideology. Believe me, you and your materialism will soon be buried in a lime-pit and we shall still be talking over your grave.’
I was again about to intervene, but we had reached the wood-pile at the inner gate where we had to unload our logs, and I lost them in the crowd. It was not so much that I wanted to defend Fürst; what was more important to me was to rebuke Egri for his demagogy, because I felt in a way responsible for his arrogance. True, I had quoted the Barbarian king’s words from Plato’s Charmides: ‘certain conversations cure the soul’, but I had never said that conversation protected the body against typhoid bacilli.
At the entrance to the barracks I came upon Joska Borostobi, a county official, who, if Doctor Acs was right, would be one of the first victims of starvation in spite of his strong, large body. He was one of the most intelligent members of our nightly discussions whom I liked particularly because he always spoke briefly but to the point. Whenever we wanted to go to sleep he begged us to talk a little longer and came out with new, exciting subjects.
‘I should like to talk to you alone, George,’ he said, drawing me to the barrack wall. I looked into his face. It appeared calm, as always, but it seemed to me that his calm was self-imposed, artificial. It had changed within the last twenty-four hours, but I could not have explained what the change was. His gaily pointed moustache, his provincial pink cheeks were the same, but his jaws seemed stiffer than usual when he spoke and the light in his eyes, instead of radiating from the centre of his pupil, seemed diffused all over his eyeball.
He said that he liked me and had always been deeply interested in our nightly conversations. His sentences were much more elaborate than usual and so was my reply. While we talked I looked around me. On the other side of the stream, about a hundred and fifty yards away, forty or fifty people were waiting by the infirmary for medical attention. Most of them sat in the snow, some leaned their sagging shoulders against the wall. In front of the barracks five men were washing themselves from head to foot in the snow. Usually I was the sixth and I could hardly wait to take my place among them. I lifted my nose, and tried to guess from the smells coming from the kitchen what we would have for supper. At noon it had been cabbage, worth no more than three hundred calories. If only they gave us noodles or beans!
Meanwhile Borostobi was speaking solemnly. ‘George,’ he said, ‘I have decided not to take part in the conversations any more. Last night, while you were talking about the Platonic ideas, I suddenly realized that I had lost interest in intellectual matters. Don’t blame me, blame circumstances… I thin
k that in future I shall sleep more and think less. I shall live the life of the algae. At least until things improve,’ he added uncertainly.
I looked at him quickly and suddenly it occurred to me that this man was close to death; Not for physical reasons – there Doctor Acs was wrong – but because he had resigned himself to the thought of death. I was tempted to call him a coward but I remembered that a few minutes ago I had wanted to rebuke Egri for his transcendentalism and lo, I was in the same boat with him. Borostobi stood quietly, obviously waiting for me to talk him out of his decision but I hardly noticed him. Was it true that he who would not talk about Plato had to die? Did reciting Keats’s poems immunize one against bacilli?
Borostobi disappeared and the evening star shone bright above the barracks. I must be going mad – I thought – and went in for my washbasin. This time, however, even the icy water failed to refresh me.
It was the night for clean shirts. Every sixth man was given six clean shirts to distribute, and I was one of them. Usually my friends could hardly wait for their clean shirt but now they lay apathetically and I too was far too tired to move. We had dehydrated potatoes – nylon potatoes, as we called them – for supper which, according to the experts, contained no more than three hundred and forty calories. We were almost desperate, most of all Garamvölgyi who had only recently lost his job as swineherd when two of his pigs died of starvation. It was fortunate that the Blond Murderer, supreme master of the pigs, had been a waiter before entering the political police, so that he simply dismissed Garamvölgyi instead of punishing him for depriving the pigs of their slop. Thus Garamvölgyi had only made the acquaintance of hunger during the last weeks and it made him hysterical. In addition he was beside himself with rage because ‘his sex thoughts were deserting him and he was beginning to feel like a capon’. We others had become used to this state of affairs long ago.
I lay for a while without moving; the overcoats hanging from the beams threw large shadows in the poor light from the single, weak bulb. Looking out from under half-closed lids it seemed to me as if Death by Starvation in person were sitting on the opposite bunk with its large, domed baby-head and its legs crossed, like a Buddha. I thought I should get off my bunk and try to change Borostobi’s mind for him; it was my duty, but then I recalled five lines from Rilke:
My Happy Days In Hell Page 50