. . . a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.
Ecclesiastes 3:7
Contents
Epigraph
I. Mrs Pápai
The Birthday
The Attempt
London, 1962
Under the Buda Castle
Budapest, District III, 22 Kerék Street, 6th floor, Flat 35
She Ends Her Activities
II. Bruria and Marcell
III. Something More
Acknowledgements
I
Mrs Pápai
The Birthday
Mrs Pápai arrived at the meeting right on time. The gentlemen were fifteen minutes late, for which they humbly and repeatedly apologized before greeting Mrs Pápai with a bouquet of flowers on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday. All of this occurred on Batthyány Square. The gentlemen were still apologizing when Mrs Pápai, with a flick of her hand, brushed aside any further protestation, and with a disarming smile, an unmistakable accent and a melodic voice, which together accentuated the charm of her pronouncement, said among the swirling snowflakes (which, by the way, the report neglected to mention): ‘May this be the biggest problem, gentlemen.’ True, she in fact addressed the gentlemen as ‘comrades’. But in the interests of the solemnity this story merits, let us stick with ‘gentlemen’, which is, after all, more in keeping with the compliments the men extended alongside the lovely bouquet.
The formalities over, the little coterie, as agreed in advance, headed off along the edge of the square towards the patisserie situated beside or behind (depending on perspective) the twin-spired church and below the square, in the basement, evoking the time before the great floods, when the basement was at street-level. On hearing Mrs Pápai’s tinkling laughter, even the river’s grey spume seemed to cheer up momentarily – yes, even Hokusai might have envied the slanted curtain of huge snowflakes falling on the grey-silver water of the Danube. At that very moment, Tram 19 embarked on its journey along the river towards the Chain Bridge from its terminus behind the concrete cube of the subway station, its ear-piercing rattle drowning out Mrs Pápai’s laughter.1
Not that Mrs Pápai cut such a strikingly elegant figure, with a colourful winter cap knitted from thick wool pulled down over her forehead and a rather plain-looking, beige winter coat – the product of the Red October Clothes Factory – that wasn’t quite the latest model either. She wore a simple pair of flat-bottomed shoes; her sole item of jewellery consisted of her glittering emerald-green eyes, twinkling with speckles of grey and blue. As if she deliberately hadn’t bothered with her looks. ‘Ach! It’s not how you look, gentlemen, not what you wear that makes a man!’ she would have said, had she been asked. In fact, her unobtrusive appearance was well suited to the occasion. Certainly, Mrs Pápai hadn’t told the gentlemen that today was her birthday, taking pains to let everyone around her know ‘not to make a fuss’: she didn’t care for ceremonies, for needless celebrations. ‘Oh dear, there are much, much more important things than this in the world! People starving, people without shoes, people dropping dead all over in diseases and wars.’
And yet a bit of uncertainty did float around Mrs Pápai’s date of birth, though the three gentlemen couldn’t have known this. From time to time her birthday fell on the first day of a famous moveable feast, and in her childhood, her family – which back then was still at times strictly observant – celebrated Mrs Pápai’s birthday on this double holiday, sometimes for days on end, depending on the mood at home, for the lighting of candles, as is well known, lasts for eight days, and Mrs Pápai’s parents, yielding to their bohemian, artistic inclinations, sometimes departed from the original, prosaic date; for the little girl’s arrival, which in fact fell on 3 December, brought them just as much joy as the famous holiday itself. And it was because of the moveable feast that Mrs Pápai’s mother – whose memory was by no means infallible, and who was famously coquettish and of a passionate nature – sometimes gave the wrong date when asked for it in colonial and other offices, of which, because of the dual administration, there were irksomely many, needlessly rendering the lives of immigrants that much more difficult. Yes, on the spur of the moment all she could recall was that her daughter’s birthday was at the time of Hanukkah, and this presumably explains why, in various documents, Mrs Pápai’s birthday is listed by turns as one of several days – 1 December, 2 December, 3 December, and, in one instance, even 6 December! This was enough to justify, for Mrs Pápai, given her professed nonreligious frame of mind, the indifference, even antipathy, she felt towards her own birthday.
But the gentlemen could have known none of this.
So Mrs Pápai descended the short but steep flight of steps to the Angelika Patisserie, escorted by the three gentlemen, Police Lieutenant Colonel Miklós Beider (renderer) and Police Lieutenant Dr József Dóra (receiver), not to mention Police Lieutenant Colonel János Szakadáti (sub-department head).2 That this did not resemble a prima donna’s entry onto the stage was thanks solely to the fact that two of them, Dóra and Szakadáti, in accordance with the rules of a conspiracy, lagged discreetly behind. But the surprises were not over yet. Having descended the steps, they were now sitting in a comfortable booth, though not before the three gentlemen had vied for the honour of helping Mrs Pápai to remove her winter coat, Miklós proving the most deft. As soon as the coat came off Mrs Pápai’s shoulders the three gentlemen took in for a moment the bygone beauty of the no longer young, not so tall woman before them. It was conjured up by the shapely hips and full bosom whose loveliness had been revealed in its entirety by seaside photos – photos that, by the way, were unknown to these gentlemen – especially in those taken in the after-glow of sunset, which only enhanced her magnificent twilight silhouette and the profile of her radiant face, whose beauty stemmed as much from its exquisite proportions as from Mrs Pápai’s unconditional love of life and cheerful character.
That these exotic pictures had been taken in the course of conspiratorial rendezvous of a different sort would surely have piqued the three gentlemen’s imaginations, had their provenance come up, but the conversation did not touch on what had happened in those bays hidden in the shadows of the cedars of Lebanon, where ladies and gentlemen of diverse nationalities and religions had swum and flirted; had had their pictures taken in the company of donkeys, waterfalls and the Mediterranean Sea; and had discussed the most important tasks of the local Party organization while the world war raged to their north.
So, once all four had gathered in the Angelika on this day, taken their seats in the booth, and had a chance to look over the menu, the three gentlemen said ‘espresso’ to the server in unison, while Mrs Pápai ordered an Earl Grey tea, which back then counted as the height of luxury. However, citing her full waist, she declined a pastry, despite the encouragement of the senior of the gentlemen, Miklós, in his warm baritone voice: ‘The French cream-cake here is simply exceptional, sensational,’ he declared. ‘My grandson can eat two in one sitting, and that’s not to mention the poppy-seed-filled—’
‘Flodni, ah . . . That’s some sort of Jewish thing, right?’ Comrade Szakadáti blurted out before falling silent on noticing Miklós’s and József’s disapproving stares. Miklós, who had known Mrs Pápai the longest, continued to praise the pastry wonders of the Angelika – which, he insisted, were famous in distant lands – until Mrs Pápai, after prolonged hesitation, finally let herself be talked into consuming a cream puff. The resulting war between the tiny fork and the cream puff left fine dabs of cream at the edges of Mrs Pápai’s lips, which she licked off while laughing heartily, occasioning numerous droll remarks from the gentlemen.
As for the gentlemen, even if they did desire something sweet, they were acutely aware of the meeti
ng’s budgetary implications,3 and while the office had granted them free rein, they knew that a bit of self-control never hurt. Before the cream puff even arrived, József, who was about to cause Mrs Pápai immense delight, chose a moment of silence – a moment of the sort that often occurs in such cosy settings, when everyone senses, after the meaningless generalities are done with, that it is now high time to get down to business – to produce from his suitcase a splendid folk-embroidered tablecloth4 wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a pink ribbon. In unison all three gentlemen – Miklós, János and József – once again wished Mrs Pápai a happy sixtieth birthday, for, as previously noted, this day of rendering and receiving was, it so happened, precisely that.
And yet the conversation, to the great dismay of the three gentlemen, did not go according to plan. This was due not only to the somersaulting of the upper part of the cream puff over the marble table and the smear of cream on the edge of Mrs Pápai’s lip, to which József (in his capacity as the receiver), after a moment’s hesitation, boldly called the comradina’s attention. No, it had more to do with something Mrs Pápai blurted out after her interlocutors had detailed the rather complex tasks she was to be assigned; after she had repeated them word for word, reassuringly, like a star pupil,5 having taken no notes, thus proving her exceptional memory, which the torrent of rich detail in her earlier reports also bore witness to; after Miklós had ‘rendered’ Mrs Pápai to József; and after Miklós, being the ranking officer, had waved to the waitress to bring the bill and had even produced his fat wallet. At that moment Mrs Pápai, in a sharp, piercing voice resembling the call to prayer sung by a muezzin from a minaret, and at which all three comrades pricked up their ears, suddenly announced, ‘I think it not worth me doing this longer. No, no longer must I do this.’ The air around the table froze as Mrs Pápai added, more quietly but in the same sharp falsetto, ‘And not at all because I do not agree with our common goals.’
The three gentlemen sat there stone-faced. As the waitress approached with a cheerful smile and a not so modest bill in her hand, Miklós, police lieutenant colonel that he was, raised his right index finger into the air, stopping her in her tracks. At first he thought he’d ask the waitress to return shortly, but then, perceiving the turn the situation had taken with exquisitely honed instinct, he realized that doing so would simply draw attention to them, violating the unwritten rules of a conspiracy. So far, in the half-full Angelika on this early afternoon, the merry gang had fortunately raised no eyebrows. The Neighbourhood’s office workers, who were fond of dropping by for a coffee or a beer at midday or after a tiring day of work, were engrossed in their own conversations; and of course, in the corner, the requisite lovers were cuddling, busy staring into the deep reflections in each other’s eyes.
Just then Comrade Beider, with the intuition of a much-decorated general, signalled to Mrs Pápai – with the single word ‘Later!’ hissed through clenched teeth – that having risked this advance she would now be well advised to retreat. It has to be said that Mrs Pápai got cold feet on seeing Miklós’s hardened face, whose convivial glaze had melted away in an instant, and she could have sworn she heard the grinding of his teeth, too. As a good communist she understood at once that she mustn’t say so much as a word, even if the bitter disquiet that had been whirling inside her, suffocating her since 1975,6 was ready to erupt.
When the waitress finally left, Miklós looked at Mrs Pápai, as did János and József, with no little apprehension. ‘I,’ said Mrs Pápai, ‘have so far fulfilled your not so easy at all requests more times than I can count in the service of People’s Democracy. In doing so I have cast aside serious personal problems – and more than once I also made specific recommendations to you. And even when you replied to my recommendations with words like “wonderful”, “thank you”, “remarkable”, “exquisite”, “splendid”, “superb”, “yofi”, no, not even then did anything happen, not a thing. And despite these words of yours praising recommendations of mine, or maybe because of them, these days you do not even look me up, as if I am gone from this world. Well, why should I think this work important if, when I say or recommend something, no one is interested in me? When they only pretend? But when they need something, why then, like that – poof – you expect me to get up and go. Among comrades I don’t think this is, how to say, comradely. In conditions like this I don’t see the meaning of my work, and the only reason I keep doing it anyway is because I trust that the change will bring an upswing in our common endeavours.’
When Mrs Pápai’s outburst had ended, the three gentlemen sat there for a moment like scolded schoolboys. They weren’t prepared for this sort of thing: recruited agents were not in the habit of telling off their handlers. Miklós, though, who’d seen a lot in his time, rose to the occasion. ‘Dear Comrade Mrs Pápai,’ he began diplomatically, ‘lately in particular we’ve had a great deal to take care of, and if you’ve read the news carefully you’ll be able to imagine how many problems and difficulties we face, and at a time like this it must be understandable that there are certain priorities—’
Mrs Pápai was not so easily appeased, however, and brazenly interrupted: ‘When you ask me to translate articles I disagree with deeply – filthy reactionary articles that bring suffering to me when reading and that I then disagree with even more deeply – sometimes word-for-word translations that make my stomach sick, even more because my Hungarian is not so good, so I need help, but I get no help from no one except maybe my son only, but I can’t rob his time all the time, and I don’t want for him be dragged into this . . .’
The longer she talked and the angrier she became, the more it was that charming grammatical errors began to pepper her meandering speech, that consonants were misplaced and suffixes enjoyed unintended lives of their own. For their part, the gentlemen were greatly entertained, and when Mrs Pápai apologized, explaining that drafting her reports at night by hand was sheer torture for her, Miklós interrupted: ‘These grammatical errors, these minor stylistic missteps, dear Mrs Pápai, make your reports all the more credible. I can tell you that they make a refreshing change from the headache-inducing grey sea of words I have to wade through every day. I remember how exceptional your very first report was – a debut performance, so to speak – six years ago, when you travelled with your son to visit your family. It was a virtuoso performance, a beautiful piece of prose, a little gem, when you described how you returned to the port of Jaffa for your bags.7 It wasn’t me you wrote the report for, but Comrade Mercz made a point of coming to my office and reading it aloud, and even back then I noticed what a brilliant observer had written it, and, well, I haven’t forgotten how touching it was when you wrote that the dock workers “flopped down on the bags in the ship’s stomach” – not the ship’s belly, comrade, but its stomach! – and that “American young people were very thoroughly inspected, inside-out” – “inside-out”! – and that the inspection was “quite supercifial”. Well, I burst out laughing. It made my day.’
Mrs Pápai, knitting her brows, interrupted Miklós once more: ‘But I, no matter how hard I do so, do what you ask, write the reports, translate the articles. And I do so urgently, putting all other things aside, and then I am a good comrade. But if I ask something, why then I’m a little mouse, the lowest jook, crawling in dust.’
‘A jook?’ Comrade Beider asked, perplexed.
‘Cockroach,’ Mrs Pápai snapped in reply. ‘Now you want me to shorten my trip. Even if I do, for what gratitude? My warnings, you toss those in the rubbish. My ideas aren’t worth damn.’
Police Lieutenant Colonel Miklós Beider now looked conspicuously at Police Lieutenant József Dóra, renderer to receiver – yes, here was his chance to prove that he was up to the task, that he possessed the requisite psychological sensitivity to handle, if not in fact guide, Mrs Pápai, whom in these moments all three men secretly admired all the more, for her passionate outburst had made her young again.
‘Dear Comrade Mrs Pápai,’ József said in a warm vo
ice, ‘my goal, and perhaps at this meeting of ours I have proved this with a thousand signs, is that trust be established between us once again. Trust that endures despite the occasional hitch. For our goal – the struggle for justice – we share in common.’ Tactfully he alluded to the folk-embroidered tablecloth, which, even if he hadn’t bought it using his own money, had not been an obligatory means of greasing the palm of a so-called ‘secret colleague’. Comrade Dóra did not suspect for a moment that Mrs Pápai would in turn give the tablecloth away as a gift, while she was already thinking that it would be perfect for her relatives in Tel Aviv, whom she would see on this trip to be paid for by her employers, a trip whose objectives – and Mrs Pápai was well aware of this – were completely beyond her; for though she would do all she could, she hardly stood a chance of gaining admittance to the World Zionist Congress.
Truth be told, she was secretly happy about this, for every fibre of her being recoiled at the ‘nationalist ranting’ she would have to listen to there, and she would at least get to spend time with her loved ones, to whom the embroidered floral motifs from eastern Hungary’s Great Plain would bring much pleasure. For her part, Mrs Pápai had no affinity for objects whatsoever, and at the first available opportunity would get rid of them; or if not – she wasn’t one to throw things away – they would vanish into some nook or cranny. As far back as her childhood she’d learned from her mother that objects mustn’t be fetishized – her mother who, even though the family was by no means rich, regularly invited children from the street into their home and made them hot cocoa with whipped cream, and more than once, on a whim, gave them something that belonged to her daughters, a pair of shoes perhaps or a dress. And if she noticed her children’s faces sink into despair, she would give them an impromptu lecture on communism, which, she insisted, would before long shine its light upon humanity, and which they must be exemplars of. No, Mrs Pápai did not care for objects: her eyes had glimmered at the sight of that birthday gift, yes, but – etiquette shmetiquette – they did so only as she contemplated what a fine gift this gift would soon make.
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