My Happy Days In Hell

by György Faludy

  I saw my grandfather’s house at Zsolna, the flat-roofed yellow house with the pub in the front. Snow was falling in the square, a sleigh was standing before the door, the guests beat the clinging snowflakes from their boots and overcoats and in the sparkling cold both men and horses blew gin-scented steam from their noses. Then I was in the sleigh. I saw Laszlo Fényes wrapped in his black cape and myself at his side, huddling close to the warmth emanating from his body. We were on our way to Hatarujfalu, to Simon Pan’s house. I heard the sharp tingling of the bells, the thud of the horses’ hoofs, as we flew across the wooden bridge over the River Vag. Then the picture changed. Stinging, icy snowflakes were dancing madly in the sharp wind over the graveyard on the bank of the River Hudson. Six men were carrying Laszlo Fényes’s coffin; behind it Rustem Vambéry, and Paul Kéri in black, and myself in American army uniform. We kept our heads bent because – grown men that we were – we were ashamed of our tears. But all the time I was only a spectator, I saw myself from the outside, as a stranger, as if my soul were ready to go on its separate way and I were practising the parting with my body.

  Later the weather grew milder and the wind abated. I was trying to recall one of Andersen’s tales, the Ice-Princess, but I remembered only the icy wind that had made me shiver at the time, after reading the story. How much I once loved Andersen’s cool, intellectual im-agination! The moving picture rolled on. Eva, the young actress, love of my student days in Vienna, was walking at my side in the deep snow. The fog that had settled over the landscape was so dense that I had to hold on to her hand so as not to lose her. From the pine forest covering the mountainside up to the alpine plateau only a few dark green, threatening shadows loomed in the fog. The shadows of death – I thought now. I had the same thought nineteen years ago, on the day of Hitler’s ascent to power, the day we were walking up that alpine plateau. On the next square of film I was kissing Valy among the ruins of the Acquincum amphitheatre. I was suddenly deeply moved; I forgot her hysterical outbursts and remembered only what an honest, selfless, diligent and loving wife she had been, and how beautiful. Then I was walking with Suzy in the Municipal Park on Stalin’s seventieth birthday. She had just come from Party school and I had a poem against Stalin in my pocket which I had written the same afternoon and now dared not show her. A torchlit procession was coming along György Dozsa Avenue in Constantine the Great’s honour – we saw it from among the trees. Suzy looked on happily – and I shivered. Not because of the procession, but because the heavy boots were treading on our love. Suddenly I realized that the double portion of bread had not remained without effect: my dreams were becoming increasingly rational.

  The snow-storm broke after lunch. Again I saw myself skating as a child, on the ice of the artificial lake in Budapest. On the other side the muddy snowpile had frozen into bumpy little mountains of ice at the foot of the dark, mysterious, low arch of a wooden bridge. There were no lamps there and no one ever went there to skate. I closed my eyes and sped, full speed, into the darkness. On the next square of film I saw one of the favourite poets of my youth, François Villon, whose poems I had so successfully translated into Hungarian. He too was walking in the snow. He had been condemned to death and then exiled from Paris and was now wandering towards Meung along the banks of the Loire. His pocket, like mine, was filled with fleas instead of bread. But had the snow ever stood so deep on the Orléans highway? Not in our days; but in the Middle Ages the winters were colder than today. I wondered why? Was it possible that the Gulf Stream had made itself felt only after the discovery of America? Then I saw the beautiful, fair Ulla Winblad driving her gig at a crazy speed towards a pub on the seashore. At her side Bellmann, the poet, with a bottle of aqua vitae between his knees, the way Lorsy used to hold a wine bottle. Was there an era more beautiful than the Swedish rococo? The ice over Lake Melar split with a noise like the uncorking of a bottle of champagne. After dinner the pony stood in the snow outside the pub, while Ulla lay fully naked on the bed upstairs, covering with her beautiful hand the only part of the body a rococo lady is ashamed of on such occasions: her face. The poet was leaning out of the window to close the shutters. His eyes met those of the jealous pony and the pony stamped its feet in impotent rage. Then I saw Michnai of the high forehead, treading the deep snow on his way to Vienna. He disappeared, then reappeared again between the tall heaps of snow with huge, white-painted radio-microphones hovering above his head like lilies of the valley.

  And now, I thought to myself, I shall fling down the shovel and start walking, like Szuha, the notary. My knees are trembling and the bottle of aqua vitae slips from my hands. Why hold on to life? I am only tormenting myself. I see Stalin standing before a giant refrigerator, his hand on its handle. This is where he puts his victims after kicking them in the face and spitting on them. How many million in that refrigerator? Am I in it too? Objectively they have already refrigerated me; subjectively, however, I am just being frozen.

  Suddenly my vision turned inwards; I no longer saw myself from the outside. It was I, myself, who was wandering in his ragged prison uniform in the sparkling sunshine along the snow-covered highway, climbing upwards, always upwards. Hundreds of woolly clouds hovered about me and, behind the clouds, angels with submachine-guns. Funny that I hadn’t realized it till now. I am dead. I died a moment ago, Friday afternoon. The Neighbour promised that I would be admitted to Heaven this very day.

  I was so delighted with the idea that I opened my eyes. The sun had indeed broken through the clouds. I tried to dominate my vision and give it at least some reality. Ten minutes ago I died on the Cross and Christ has promised me that I will be admitted to Heaven. It is to Heaven this new road leads, like every terrestrial road, not to Rome, though at times through Rome. There is nothing surprising in its being bordered by barbed-wire fences and guarded by soldiers: it is probably very crowded sometimes. It is prohibited to leave the road, everyone is obliged to follow its curve, no suicidal short-cuts across the snow!

  When I reached the Gate of Heaven I beat it with my fists. I knew that I had landed myself in a pretty difficult situation. The Great Neighbour would not arrive for another forty days, first he went down to Hell to free my friends, Socrates and Plato, and then he would spend a few more weeks on Earth. I had only his oral promise to repeat, no document to prove it. I hoped that St Peter would credit my words but suddenly it occurred to me that even Peter had twenty more years to spend on Earth as an Apostle and would arrive only in Nero’s days, while now Tiberius was Emperor. And Heaven was empty, like the summer resorts in winter: I was the first guest.

  What are the angels doing at such times? They were probably spring-cleaning. I was about to turn away, certain that no one would open the Gate when suddenly I saw Bandi Havas stepping out from the gatekeeper’s lodge. My heart leaped with joy.

  ‘Have you become an angel, Bandi?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be impertinent,’ he replied coolly. ‘True, at the time of the Great Rebellion I sided with Lucifer, but later I made a public self-criticism and was forgiven. I was fired from the office but got this job as a gatekeeper. So as to be under constant surveillance …’ he finished, blushing.

  ‘And your thoughts, dear friend? Are they always loyal?’ I asked with murderous irony.

  He looked at me out of bloodshot eyes and wiped his sweating forehead. But he made no reply. I asked him to open the gate for me but he shook his head.

  ‘You were a social democrat,’ he said with unconcealed hostility. ‘You need a document to get in here.’

  ‘Then give me something to eat, at least. I haven’t had anything for three days.’

  ‘The party’s eyes see everything,’ he said, looking severely at a point near my navel. ‘You have three portions of bread in your belly. Sorry.’

  He backed slowly towards the lodge.

  ‘The party is omniscient and omnipotent,’ he mumbled. ‘It smokes out the heretics and excludes the unbelievers from the Celestial Empire.’

  He tur
ned his back on me and entered the lodge. Only in the last second did I notice that a stump was protruding from his jacket between his shoulder blades. They have cut off his wings; that is what he had been trying to hide from me.

  I sighed deeply, stuck my shovel into the snow and sat down. I was just thinking that I would starve to death there, before the Gate of Heaven, when Egri clapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘We thought you had escaped from us,’ he said, and blushed because he realized the double meaning of what he had said.

  They were all waiting for me in the dusk. The brigadiers shouted and we were on our way back to the camp. Egri and Földvary took my arms and someone was pushing me from behind with his palm on my back. All I had to do was move my legs like a rag-doll. In the square between the barracks Helvetius took over and while he was leading me to my bunk he told how a huge consignment of food had arrived during the day. Beginning with the day before yesterday our bread ration was to be six hundred grammes instead of four hundred and the arrears would be distributed immediately. Our oil ration would be doubled and instead of roasted barley we would, henceforth, be given real coffee with milk. In addition there would be bacon and jam every day and also other measures were expected.

  ‘This means that Michnai got through,’ I said, collapsing on my bunk. But while I went through the daily, automatic motions of exhaustion I realized that I was cheating because I was no longer exhausted at all.

  ‘Tonight I shall tell you about the Swedish Rococo,’ I cried after Helvetius.

  During the next hour they distributed food every ten minutes. The bread arrears for the previous two days, our dinner, a bunch of onions for everyone, three times twenty grammes of bacon, jam, and the bacon ration for the next day. North-Eastern Inrush put the jam into his shoe-shine box and hung the strips of bacon on the beams. Several men followed his example, to insure themselves against the next period of starvation. When Egri arrived with our bacon rations he looked at me questioningly.

  ‘Eat up everything immediately,’ I ordered and stuck the bacon in my mouth.

  Later the political officer came in to deliver a short speech. The destructive elements who believed that the régime intended to exterminate us were mistaken – he declared. The building of socialism demanded many sacrifices, there was no food even outside. Still, they had improved our food and if we did good work there would be further concessions. While he talked he looked now at Todi, now at myself, as if he were trying to convince us. We were sitting on our bunks with our legs crossed and looked through him. I kept my eyes on his larynx, which was quite an effort. Here and there people were sobbing.

  The next day Acs ordered several of us to remain in the barracks on the grounds that we were too weak to work. We sat around the stove all day long, creating wonderful delicacies: pease-pudding on toast with jam on top and such like. Sunday, for the first time in a year and a half, they gave us a day off. Towards evening it was rumoured that Michnai was in Munich and had spoken over Radio Free Europe. He was said to have broadcast almost the complete list of the inhabitants of the camp, named the informers and nachalniki and given the names of the camp commander and the detectives. He had spoken with admiration about Todi and me without, however, giving any details, which was very wise of him.

  Due to Acs’s kindness I also spent the following days in the barracks. Wednesday night, unexpectedly, because hitherto we were allowed to shower only on Sunday, we were ordered to line up before the bath house.

  ‘Cyclon B,’ said Fürst, who had returned from Auschwitz in 1945.

  ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ replied Toni Rainprecht, former smallholder county lieutenant, with an arrogant smile that made him look like a naughty old cardinal.

  Gabori, who since his days at Dachau never permitted himself to be dragged into anything blindfolded, went to investigate and returned with the reassuring information that Hans Arse was in the shower room, there was no danger.

  And, indeed, the colonel was standing inside the door of the shower room with his small Zeppelin-shaped medical bag hanging on a nail behind him. As we filed slowly by he pinched and kneaded our bottoms like a housewife when buying a goose. My friends explained that this was how medical examinations were conducted in the Soviet Union. The Russian physicians established three categories according to the hardness of the bottom: the first category was those fit for work, the second those fit for light work, the third those who must no longer be made to work because they would die in a few days anyway.

  When my turn came Hans Arse pinched my bottom and although I turned away my face in disgust, he recognized me.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he asked kindly, ‘have you recovered from your concussion?’

  To my surprise he put me in the second category, but Acs, who was standing next to him with the list of names, put a Roman three after my name. Hans Arse, by the way, gave proof of some liberalism in his interpretation of the Soviet method, in that he established not three but four categories.

  Those in category four were moved to a separate barracks the next day. They were allowed to stay away from work for several weeks. I was assigned to a very light job but even the others were no longer driven as hard as before. Since our food had been improved there was not a single death. Soon a new political officer arrived in the camp and the camp commander was replaced by a major. The new camp commander introduced the eight-hour work day, gave us Sunday off and limited the power of the nachalniki. As a result he was called the Good Major and the former camp commander the Bad Captain. Gabori, however, declared that the AVO officers had not changed but had only had new orders; that our ‘bad captain’ was now a ‘good captain’ in another prison and our ‘good major’ had until recently been a ‘bad major’ elsewhere.

  I studied Knocke’s newspaper rags even more thoroughly than before to find out the cause of the changes. But there was no explanation in the papers during the first half if 1952; not a single sign this side or beyond the Iron Curtain that would have explained the new situation. I had nothing else to fall back on other than my theory that Michnai had succeeded and was now in the West. But then why had it taken him so long?

  The following, rather bearable period of my captivity was soon over. One afternoon, towards the middle of the summer, we were working on the hill near the punishment cells. We were building new hanging gardens, several hundred metres long, in front of the staff headquarters. The AVO officers loved flowers, particularly the detectives coming down from Budapest who stopped by for an hour or two to question one or another of the prisoners, usually in connection with some new victim. Before they left they would send a prisoner to the chief gardener, Professor György Sarospataky, asking for ten or twelve dozen roses. Sometimes the detectives were accompanied by an MVD officer. The Russians always went down personally for the flowers and asked the professor politely for ‘a pound of roses’, or ‘two pounds of lilies’. In exchange they handed him a few long-tipped and extremely smelly Russian cigarettes.

  We too got our cigarettes from AVO officers, usually several packets. Our men usually came to the Matra mountains at week-ends, and invariably questioned Egri or Gabori. Never me. After half an hour of desultory conversation they asked my friends, off-hand, if they knew this or that poem of mine. They offered a packet of cigarettes for a written copy of the poem. Usually they asked for my poem to Suzy or some other non-political poem written at 60 Andrassy Street – they didn’t know about the political ones. Gabori would reply, without moving a muscle in his face, that he did not know my poems, nor was he acquainted with me. Thereupon the officer would offer two packets of cigarettes, then three, four, five. At five Gabori gave in, for our small circle was provided for. I was very glad that there were so many poetry-loving AVO officers. Until then I had believed that the fate of my poems written in prison depended on whether we survived or not; now I knew that if no one else, at least my murderers would see to it that my work outlived me.

  On that very warm summer afternoon I was working on one of th
e flower beds with Antinuos at my side. Or rather, I stuck my hoe into the soft ground and moved my arms as if I were working while I spoke about the mystical Persian poets. I was just about to begin on Mewlana Djelaleddin Rumi when I suddenly noticed that the pure perfume of yellow carnations blooming before the punishment cells – a perfume that I felt not to much in my nose as on my palate, like the memory of some delicacy seasoned with clove – was defiled by the odour of cheap scent. We smelled the AVO guard before he saw us, but as he was coming out from one of the guard’s barracks he might have been watching us for quite some time.

  The guard was a puny, tiny little man with grey-green, blinking eyes, hanging, red cheeks and a wrinkled forehead, so that he looked like a premature baby or an old, old woman although he couldn’t have been over twenty. In the camp he was know as Little He-Devil. He took me to the punishment cells, pushed me into a dark one and put on the light. He followed me in, gave me a good beating, then departed. I thought they would let me out in the evening, for it had become a custom for the AVO guards to beat the prisoners in the punishment cells. One of the reasons for this was that the Good Major did not like his men to do their beating in the open; another, that the guards were dressed in warm woollen clothes and preferred to do such jobs in a cool place.

  I remained in the dark cell for two whole weeks. The warders didn’t hurt me but twice a day Little He-Devil would appear and beat me until I bled. He beat me standing on tiptoe, his tongue protruding from between his rotten teeth. Each time he asked me my profession, the name of my mother, the day of my birth and the reason for my arrest. To the last question I always gave a noncommittal answer. On the eighth day my shirt was so stiff with blood that it felt like sailcloth and I wondered all day how I could get rid of Little He-Devil.