A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  In love, in love, the woman groaned with his every move inside her; all my life I've been in love, and still am, even in prison, that's why I survived, because I never stopped being in love, with him, only with him, I never even thought about you, it was always him, you I only used.

  Well, use me.

  I always have.

  It's also possible that all this didn't happen quite this way.

  But one thing is certain: early on the morning of Christmas Day, 1956, the man walked down that dark, rubble-strewn trail and reached the well-lit railroad tracks at the point where the commuter train makes a sharp turn just before entering the Filatori Dam station.

  The woman waiting in the window was about to turn her eyes away, there was nothing more to see, when she saw him turn around, pull something from his pocket, and look up, probably trying to find her window.

  This became his last wish, that she should see it.

  He shot himself through the mouth.

  She called me child, but talked to me as if I were not a child, and neither man's son.

  From the hints she dropped I could more or less figure out what must have happened between them, though it was much later that I deciphered the meaning of her words; but my childhood experiences did give me some understanding of what is meant by hopeless love.

  You're the only one I can say this to, child, she said to me; I didn't tell him that I couldn't be the wife of a murderer.

  I couldn't become your stepmother.

  If there is some sort of god somewhere, he'll forgive me; honor must be important to him, too.

  He knew it two days in advance; he had plenty of time to warn me.

  I wouldn't have run away; if they had asked me to, I probably would have turned myself in on my own, because I've always done everything for them; but not like that.

  No, not at that price.

  My mother earned her living with her body, you know; she was pretty and she was a whore, but she was also a miserable consumptive, a poor man's whore; if she had to, she sold herself for pennies, yet she taught me that you must have your honor.

  And if no one ever taught you that, I'll teach it to you right now.

  They broke down my door, dragged me out of bed, slashed all the upholstery with knives, though they knew better than anyone they wouldn't find anything, and if they did, it would be something they had planted there themselves, because I gave everything, my whole miserable life, to the cause.

  And yet I didn't give them anything; they exist only if there is some sort of god, and there isn't.

  If I gave anything, it was to myself; so whatever happened to me, I brought it on myself.

  They handcuffed me, woke up the whole building on purpose, wanted everybody to see that even a member of State Security had something to be afraid of; they blindfolded me and got me downstairs from the fifth floor by kicking me all the way, making sure I hit the wall at every landing.

  They took him away on Easter morning, in 1949.

  The day before, I talked to your mother on the telephone; she told me the forsythia in your garden was in bloom, wasn't it wonderful? we were both ecstatic, spring was here, we chattered away on the phone, even though she also knew.

  She knew what was waiting for me in the next three days; I knew it, too, yet it was more than I could imagine.

  But I will tell you all about it, child, everything, step by step.

  I've never told anyone, and I still can't, I'm still in their clutches; but now I will tell you, I don't care what happens.

  I was never a big fish.

  She was in charge of the day-to-day maintenance of secret locations used by State Security; she had to make sure that the furnishings and special equipment were in proper order, and that the houses were cleaned, well heated, and the staff well fed.

  My rank was much higher than my actual position; the only reason they hauled me in was that they wanted at least one defendant who was involved with the practical end of the operation; I was needed to complete the picture.

  She was still sorry she didn't just mow them all down, shoot all the bastards when they came for her.

  I had time to reach for my pistol, but I still thought it was all a mistake, a misunderstanding that could easily be cleared up.

  They couldn't trick me again, that's for sure.

  They watch my every move, you know; I'm on all their lists.

  They won't take me back, but I can't leave for good either.

  Where would I go, anyway?

  The only thing my neighbors know is that I did some time.

  But they could start spreading the word anytime that I was still one of them.

  She raised a finger to her mouth, stood up, and motioned me to follow her.

  We went into the bathroom, which was filthy; she flushed the toilet and turned on all the faucets; there were piles of dirty laundry everywhere.

  Giggling, she whispered into my ear that she wouldn't buy their poison from them.

  Her lips tickled my ear, her glasses felt cold against my temple.

  Luckily, her neighbor knows the score, goes to a different food store every day, she'd never bring milk from the same place twice.

  Milk is the easiest to put the stuff in.

  When they let her out, they gave her this apartment because it was bugged already.

  She turned off the faucets and we went back to the living room.

  All right, now listen, all of you, hear the things you all did to me.

  I will tell this child everything.

  I was like a fly caught by a huge warm hand.

  For once you'll hear me out, hear what you've all done to me.

  From that moment on she wasn't talking to me, and I also felt as if the two of us were not the only people in the room.

  They took her away in a car, the ride was long.

  Afterward, judging by the sound, they lifted the grating off a sewer or some other trapdoor and on steep iron stairs led her down what may have been a large water tank.

  It couldn't have been any of the houses under her care; this was special treatment, then, to make sure she didn't know where she was.

  They waded through knee-deep water, climbed a few stairs, and then they locked her up behind a steel door.

  She could hear no sound; she tore off the blindfold with her handcuffed hands and hoped her eyes would get used to the dark.

  A few hours must have passed; wherever she reached she touched wet cement; the space she was in felt enormous and every little move produced an echo.

  She tried to determine at least the height of the ceiling, so she started yelling.

  Later, the steel door opened, people came in, but it remained as dark as before; she tried to get out of their way, but they followed her; there were two of them, they were closing in, she heard the swish of truncheons; she managed to avoid the blows for quite a while.

  She came to on a silk-covered sofa.

  She thought she was dreaming and in her dream she was in a baroque mansion; she didn't know where she was.

  Her instincts told her to pretend she was still asleep; gradually she remembered what had happened to her.

  The handcuffs were gone, and this confused her; she sat up.

  They must have been keeping an eye on her from somewhere, because the moment she did, the door opened and a woman came in carrying a cup.

  It seemed to her that it was late afternoon.

  The tea was lukewarm.

  She was grateful to the woman for bringing the tea; but as she sipped it, she noticed an odd look on the woman's face, and the tea tasted strange.

  The woman smiled, but her look remained cold; she seemed to be very intent, as if waiting for some reaction.

  She knew they tried out all sorts of drugs on people here; this she still remembered, but as she tried with her tongue to locate the strange taste in the tea, her mind went blank.

  The first thing she remembers after that was a feeling of being very ill; everything was huge and blo
ated; as soon as she looked at something it began to swell, and from this she concluded that she must be running a high fever.

  And all sorts of loud sentences were screaming inside her head.

  It seemed to her that she was talking but that she screamed her words, and every word hurt so much she had to open her eyes.

  She saw three men standing before her.

  One of them held a camera; the moment she budged he started clicking, and after that he wouldn't stop.

  She screamed at them, she demanded to know who they were and what they wanted from her, and where was she, and why was she sick; she wanted to see a doctor, wanted to jump out of bed, which was some kind of low couch next to the wall in a large sunlit room full of mirrors; but the three men didn't say a word, they kept out of her way, and the one with the camera took pictures all the time she was having this fit of anger.

  First she lost the feeling in her legs, she collapsed, but managed to hold on to a chair; she wanted to grab the camera, but the man photographed that, too.

  Then the other two fell on her, punching and kicking, while the third one kept clicking away.

  This happened on the second day.

  On the third day they pulled her up from the water tank on a rope; she was blindfolded again, and she kept knocking against the iron stairs, but she was glad, because at least she knew where she was, she knew for sure, she heard them slam the steel door.

  A long journey followed; they gave her no food or drink, they didn't let her go to urinate; she was so weak she made in her pants.

  First she heard the crunch of gravel under the tires, then an iron gate creaked open and they pulled into a closed space, presumably a garage, where the car quickly filled up with the smell of gasoline and exhaust fumes; then with a huge bang they slammed the door shut.

  She was overjoyed.

  Because if they were going to take her down a winding staircase now, and then along a narrow corridor, where linoleum covered the stone floor to muffle footsteps, and if they were going to shove her into a cell that was like a woodshed, then she knew exactly where she was.

  Then they must have brought her back.

  Then she was in the house in Eötvös Street, the house she herself had picked out and where she'd supervised every alteration; and then everything was all right, and soon she'd be surrounded by familiar faces.

  There was a winding staircase, but no linoleum; there was a woodshed, she could smell the freshly chopped wood and the sulphur smell of coke briquettes, but what her bound hands touched was a damp brick wall.

  She was lying on something soft; she kept falling asleep and waking up.

  Her lips got so puffy from thirst she couldn't close her mouth; she had no more saliva left, her tongue was sticking to raw, swollen sores.

  She tried to relieve the hot throbbing pain by pressing her face against the damp bricks, but there wasn't enough moisture there for her dry tongue.

  After a while she managed to work the blindfold loose.

  No, it wasn't that house, after all—and then there was no hope.

  Very high up she noticed a windowlike opening covered with a plain piece of cardboard; around its edges some light and air seeped through, which meant there was no glass.

  In the wall she discovered the sharp edge of a rusty hook; on that she rubbed and scraped the rope used to tie her hands together until she managed to undo it.

  Now she had a piece of rope, but it wasn't long enough for a loop and a knot; and besides, there was no place to fasten it.

  In her sleep she heard soft music, soothing, lovely music; she was sorry to wake up, but the music continued; it wasn't as lovely as before, more like regular dance music.

  She must be hallucinating; she knew that thirst could drive a person mad; she'd lost her mind, then, but not completely, if she was aware of it.

  All right, then, she'd gone mad, she just couldn't figure out when it happened.

  She even knew she was going to have another fit of anger, she felt it coming on; she was fully aware and felt that she was throwing herself against the wall, and although she had no strength left, she went on slamming herself against the wall.

  The music was coming from outside; it got much cooler in the cellar, and no light at all filtered in from anywhere.

  It had to be evening.

  But she couldn't decide anymore when she was sleeping and when she was hallucinating and seeing images that weren't really there, because the music turned into a little stream in the wall, the trickle became a flow, a flood—a burst pipe, she thought—turning into a roaring, rumbling waterfall; she almost drowned.

  The next moment, or a half hour, or two days later—she wasn't sure anymore—she woke up thinking that everything was all right; with her finger she was trying to scoop out wet plaster from the spaces between the bricks.

  She even managed to clamber up all the way to the window, but just at that moment the music started playing again and that made her fall back.

  But she didn't give up; she tried once more, and with the tip of her finger, with her nail, she reached the edge of the cardboard over the opening.

  The cardboard was fastened to the wall, but she kept jabbing and prodding it until she moved it, and then it simply fell down.

  She looked out on a terrace lit by colorful Chinese lanterns; people dressed for the evening were dancing to this same music, and on a staircase leading to a dark garden two men were talking in a foreign language with a beautiful young woman.

  She wore a colorful print dress, her expression seemed serious.

  If after a short while they hadn't come for her and walked her up the same staircase, and if the two men and the young woman hadn't let them pass as casually as they did, and if she hadn't been led across the dance floor on the way to another part of the same house, then she would still be convinced that this garden party with the Chinese lanterns was one of her hallucinations.

  From the smells, the overheard foreign words, the look and shape of ordinary objects, she surmised that they had taken her across the border, and they were somewhere near Bratislava.

  First they showed me your father's signature; I had to read his official testimony, and then a statement by János Hamar confirming the accuracy of that testimony.

  Two men sat facing me in comfortable armchairs.

  I told them this wasn't true.

  They acted surprised; why wouldn't it be true, they said, and chuckled, and interrupting each other, they kept making pointed and vulgar references to my relationship with both men.

  Either they are lying or you tortured them, too, or they've gone mad; there's no other possibility, and that is all I have to say about this.

  There was a glass of water on the table in front of them.

  One of them said, We've prepared a statement, if you sign it, you may drink the water.

  I told them there was no interrogation, no statement, how could I sign anything?

  The other man gave a signal and I was dragged out through a side door.

  As soon as the door closed behind us, they started beating me; they shoved me into a bathtub, poured hot water on me, struck me with the shower head, called me a spy, a traitor, and said, Now you can drink all you want, you slut.

  When I came to, I was in the cellar, but they soon dragged me upstairs again.

  Not much time could have passed, because my clothes were still sopping wet and I could still hear the music.

  This time they didn't lead me across the terrace but up the spiral staircase, through the garage, and into the garden; we probably used the main entrance this time.

  They brought me to a very small room with only a large desk and a chair in it.

  A blond young man was sitting behind the desk, by the cozy light of a lamp; even from here the music could be heard.

  As soon as I walked in, he jumped up and seemed quite happy to see me, as if he had been waiting for me for a long time; but he greeted me in French, asked me to sit down in French, and expres
sed his indignation in French that contrary to his strict instructions I'd been treated this way.

  From that moment on everything would be different, that he could promise me.

  I asked him why we had to speak in French.

  The odd thing was that he sounded pretty sincere, and I let myself be a bit hopeful, that maybe I was in good hands, after all.

  He spread his arm apologetically and said that French was the only language we had in common and it was very important that we understood each other well.

  I insisted on knowing how he knew I spoke French.

  Come on, Comrade Stein, we know everything about you.

  When your friend was released from jail, in May 1935, and he confessed to you that the secret police got him to work for them, you neglected to report this very significant fact, didn't you? the two of you left for Paris and returned only after the German occupation, with false passports, on Party instructions, if I'm not mistaken.

  That's almost how it happened, except my friend was not recruited by any kind of secret police, and he didn't confess anything to me, consequently I had nothing to report, and we went to Paris because we were out of work, we had nothing to eat.

  Let's not waste time on meaningless quibbles, he said, let's get to the point.

  It was his solemn duty to convey a request, and it was only a request, nothing more, made by Comrade Stalin himself and addressed directly to Comrade Stein.

  It consisted of only six words:

  Do not be stubborn, Comrade Stein.

  She had to think a long time, because on this third day nothing could happen that would still strike her as improbable; and as she kept looking at the face of this blond young man, she realized that this was the request she'd been waiting for all her life.

  If this is truly how things stand, she said, then Maria Stein would like Comrade Stalin to know that in the given circumstances his request cannot be granted.

  And the blond young man was not at all surprised by her reply.

  He leaned all the way across the table, kept nodding and staring at her for a long time, and then, in a very quiet, very threatening voice, asked if Maria Stein really believed they could find anyone crazy enough to deliver such an impertinent message.