22 Kerék Street, 6th floor, flat 35, District III, Budapest
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Comrade József Dóra’s head was boiling.
In the year since he had become Mrs Pápai’s handler, all his machinations had been in vain; equally vain were his words of sometimes deliberately exaggerated praise,1 to which Mrs Pápai invariably responded with a sceptical smile, well aware that the value of the intelligence she’d provided thus far had been more or less zero.2 ‘I’m just a silly housewife,’ she would say, coquettishly, though it had become clear that she was far more cultivated than her handlers (she began each morning by listening to Yehudi Menuhin). She was happy to receive praise, true, but because she saw the whole thing as a question of give and take – and because in her reckoning, in matters important to her, she’d ‘suffered humiliating defeats’ – a bitter taste lingered in her mouth. Her requests in matters that, as far as she was concerned, had to be resolved by any means, were perceived as ‘denunciations’ in everyday speech, though that’s not how she saw it. She was a rigid advocate of the Party line, and in return she simply asked for the Party’s support. She didn’t think of the Party as something opposed to or alien to herself – no, to her the Party represented ‘God, Fatherland and Family’. True, it stood above her, and yet she had to defend it from attacks – at times it proved even more important than her family, which otherwise she held truly sacred. Mrs Pápai was mired in the ideology of the 1950s. In this she was unrelenting, even if not exactly uncritical. She had an affinity for every form of art; she was ready to help anyone who turned to her with a complaint; she helped an immense number of people, including some who didn’t deserve it; she spoke several languages; and she had a deep understanding of the troubles that beset both body and soul. As a practising interpreter she had contacts with people of all social classes, foreign and Hungarian alike, and her conversation was often beguiling. And yet in one particular matter she was unbending. It was this duality that Comrade Dóra couldn’t comprehend: on the one hand there was her wonderful sensitivity, her accommodating nature, her unbounded openness and curiosity in certain matters, especially those involving art – yes, that wildly romantic imagination. On the other hand, there were the inviolable, unshakeable dogmas Mrs Pápai had obviously sworn allegiance to. A chasm yawned within the soul of this network individual, the depth of which Comrade Dóra couldn’t begin to gauge.
Nonetheless, despite their divergent aims, the complicity between the lieutenant and Mrs Pápai had only grown over the past year, thanks perhaps to their regular meetings. Mrs Pápai felt she couldn’t tell anyone certain things, that she had to bury wounds she couldn’t speak of even with herself – including the deepest wound, which a rash marriage had driven only deeper. But her readiness to collaborate with the intelligence services was enhanced by the charm of the intrigue, and even if this charm had faded over the years, it still reminded Mrs Pápai of the adventures of her younger days, in the illegal movement – of vigils held till dawn in the prickly underbrush of an olive grove in the company of a heavily stubbled young man whose intoxicating scent of sweat mixed with the heady fragrance of orange and eucalyptus that arrived in waves with every thrust. As for the increasingly intimate conversations she had with the lieutenant – with whom, as time passed, Mrs Pápai became ever more open, almost suicidally so – they imparted upon their relationship the strange illusion of friendship. She shared her everyday concerns and thoughts with the lieutenant, not just the problems of her private life but also her increasing doubts about her work for him. Notwithstanding his obscure forebodings, Comrade Dóra didn’t cease to employ Mrs Pápai – no, despite his gathering sense that he should cut her loose, that it was high time to end this merciless flaying of a human being, as he expressed it – sometimes his heart ached as he gazed into Mrs Pápai’s agonized eyes! – he just couldn’t do it. This was his job, this was what he was paid to do. He couldn’t afford a fiasco. After all, the results of Comrade Beider’s previous handling of Mrs Pápa had been truly impressive. Comrade Dóra began to feel that Mrs Pápai – who sacrificed herself mercilessly in seeking to fulfil the department’s often ludicrously petty requests – did not deserve this fate.3 Her character sketches and brief observations4 about Nigerian, Tanzanian, Palestinian, Iraqi and Indian journalists who were studying at the International School of Journalism in Hungary were entertaining and sometimes demonstrated a deep insight into human behaviour,5 but so far not one such journalist had been snared. These journalists were distrustful,6 and each regarded his stay in Hungary as a holiday.7
At other times the lieutenant had easily shaken off his doubts about Mrs Pápai, but almost at the start of their budding relationship, back in March, he had been shocked to be handed a letter Mrs Pápai had written to the head of the School of Journalism – a letter Comrade Dóra had naturally received as well, and almost immediately, though he had not mentioned this to Mrs Pápai. True, Mrs Pápai’s mood had improved since. She is a woman of moods, thought Comrade Dóra, who had received special instruction in this domain, too, during training. Yes, he knew how to receive such outbursts of emotion with a blank expression, not to mention his experience as an interrogating officer, which was of considerable help when it came to managing the fluctuating emotions of network individuals. All the same, the words in that letter had harried him for days on the tram, in his official car, and even at home in front of the TV; for in it Mrs Pápai, it seemed, was toying with the idea of suicide. She spoke of sins that only her sadness could expiate. And God forbid Mrs Pápai should shoot off her mouth somewhere, only to ruin all the work they’d undertaken so doggedly! He’d gladly have shared the letter with his wife, but he couldn’t speak to her about his work. No, at most he could reply to her question, ‘Hard day at the office?’ with a curt ‘Yes’. And though lately the clouds had parted and Mrs Pápai was involving herself at the journalism school with renewed vigour, good cheer and her usual enthusiasm, her March letter was still a tragic cry for help. And so, as this story’s protagonist, she deserves to have it quoted now, just as she wrote it:
This letter is wholly personal in nature. It is addressed to you.
Not much explanation is needed for me to again say what is taking shape in my mind for a year now. I’m horribly depressed, the thought of death occupies me a lot. There’s no point in again chronicling the causes. A communist who has been through a lot understands his friends and those who share his convictions. Most of my energy is consumed by keeping my hapless husband alive; and so studying, continuing education and all the concentration needed for someone to remain fresh, has become nothing more than a wilted flower. And wilted flowers are usually thrown in the bin. This hurts much, because I know that regular study and freshness would still be possible – but the circumstances are terribly stubborn, not allowing this. So I must bid farewell to the institute and do penance for my depression somewhere else (like for sin). I’d really like to sink, to disappear. Maybe I will succeed.
As far as I know, Comrade Rév’s last class is on April 22. I think I could bid farewell then to the school, too, without undue attention.
My regards, with a true friend’s farewell.
Budapest, 31 March 1983
Where oh where was the shining smile of a year before? The melodic laughter, the cream puff, and the sweet cream smeared on the edge of Mrs Pápai’s mouth? The whimsical artistic nature, when all had seemed so playfully easy, and Mrs Pápai had headed to Israel to ferret out the secrets of the 30th World Zionist Congress? Precisely one year had passed since then, and because the next day would be Mrs Pápai’s sixty-first birthday, Comrade Dóra arrived once again with a lovely bouquet.
This could not be botched up.
‘Was this Pat Game very much in love with your brother?’ Comrade Dóra asked while putting on the table the bundle of letters he’d brought back, but as if it were an aside, as if he didn’t really expect an answer to his question. ‘They’re all here,’ he added, catching the inquisitive glance Mrs
Pápai cast at the envelopes sent from Canada and addressed to her. Mrs Pápai broke into a girlish smile, as if caught red-handed. She’d just poured hot water over the tea, Earl Grey, the fragrance of bergamot wafting up into the air as she now poured thick creamy milk into his cup from a plastic milk-bag with its snipped-open corner. Comrade Dóra didn’t like tea – and Mrs Pápai always made it too strong – but unless they met in the Angelika Café or the bistro at Kútvölgyi Hospital, where he could have Coffee, he invariably had to drink a cup of tea when visiting her. Now, waiting for it to cool, he watched in wonder as Mrs Pápai, casting etiquette to the wind, drank gluttonously, slurping with abandon. She didn’t even bother to stir the many spoonfuls of sugar, instead fishing them out with the teaspoon from the bottom of the cup, then crunching heartily away, meanwhile taking sips of the steaming hot liquid and emitting strange squelches, as if to cool her mouth.
‘I got used to this in London,’ she said with a kind, apologetic smile on looking up and meeting Comrade Dóra’s wide-open eyes.
‘Is someone in the family collecting stamps?’ he asked cautiously, for the stamps had been cut out of the envelopes. Mrs Pápai burst out laughing.
‘Everyone I know in the Aretz is crazy about pretty stamps!’ She spooned the remaining sugar out of the cup, swallowed it, and cast Comrade Dóra an expectant stare.
‘In the Aretz?’ he asked.
‘In Israel,’ Mrs Pápai clarified with an enormous smile. Aretz means ‘the land’ – or, by extension, home, country, as Comrade Dóra learned later from a dictionary, Israelis often referring to their homeland this way. She must have been a beautiful woman, Mrs Pápai. The lieutenant glanced around in search of the embroidered tablecloth he’d given her precisely a year earlier, but he saw it nowhere. He chose not to ask about it.
‘This Pat was very much in love with your brother?’
The cat-and-mouse game began anew. They loved this game, both of them. Like two gladiators, they took their places in the arena and watched each other. Over the years Mrs Pápai had mastered the art of giving the impression of frankness. Comrade Dóra on occasion had to pose to Mrs Pápai brutally indiscreet questions that, in principle, she was not obliged to answer. At such times he had to be on guard in case the network individuals became evasive. Mrs Pápai laid her cards on the table at once, opting to play a game called ‘complete candour’, at least it seemed that that was what she was doing, and she spoke to Comrade Dóra as candidly as, it seemed, a believer in a confession booth speaks to a priest.8 As for the lieutenant, he was always on his guard, for he could never be certain that what he heard was the complete truth. He had never had dealings with a Jewish woman before. If she’s regarded as the dumb one in the family, he thought, then Mrs Pápai’s family must be shrewd as anything. ‘I was the birdbrain and the beauty,’ she’d once quipped. Sometimes Mrs Pápai said things like this, whereupon Lieutenant Dóra would look down at his feet, taking care not to step into the lasso thrown before him. He was, after all, well aware that, ideally speaking, the relationship of the operative officer and the network individual was a paternal one of sorts, based on mutual trust and understanding. His job was to transmit the general behavioural norms, methods and methodologies necessary for the execution of assignments, and at the same time his words must have an effect on the network individual’s mind, emotions and will. That is what he’d been taught in school and what he’d applied successfully in the real world. As for Mrs Pápai’s beauty, she was still attractive even now – yes, she was undeniably pretty. A few years earlier she could even have been used in a honey trap in the operation involving the Israeli colonel with whom Mrs Pápai had presumably had an intimate affair in her youth. The possibility had in fact been discussed, for no avenue of attack could be discounted – no, this was a fundamental principle at Headquarters, for it had sometimes happened that a highly successful operation had blossomed from the seed of an idea initially dismissed as worthless. As for this particular plan concerning Mrs Pápai, owing to its budgetary implications, among other things, it had been shot down at a meeting of operative officers. Not to mention that they had been unable to unequivocally determine Mrs Pápai’s predisposition to sex in general. Having studied the files relating to her earlier activity, the lieutenant arrived at the conclusion that she was not nearly as naïve as she made herself out to be. In political matters she was uncompromising – no, she never tried to hide that – and when Lieutenant Dóra and the other comrades asked her to at least make a show of not being so, for this was the least that she, as a professional bearer of secrets, was expected to do, she rejected the idea in the strongest terms possible, with tears in her eyes. When, however, they pointed to the broader international and national context, she seemed to understand at once what they were getting at, and, at least temporarily, gave up her intractable demands. But she had experienced it as a defeat. The combination of openness and an unbending, maniacal fundamentalism was undoubtedly the weak point of this network individual,9 and substantially undermined her operative value.
‘Yes, you could put it that way. It is called true love.’
Comrade Dóra broke into a grin, which Mrs Pápai misunderstood. He’d suddenly recalled a definition of love he’d encountered during his studies as nothing other than – and these were the textbook’s exact words – an ‘emotionally coloured social tendency’. He recalled how, during a final viva – when his professor for an intelligence operations course had asked him about love with a serious face – he had been incapable of getting a word out straight and, indeed, had burst out laughing. Fortunately the examiner had a sense of humour, and Comrade Dóra was given an A. Mrs Pápai, having misunderstood the smile on the lieutenant’s face, added apologetically:
‘My brother was almost sixty, the girl only twenty-six. True, he was always a Don Juan, but this time he’d fallen in love. All this happened in the kibbutz, yes, it caught fire at once, a huge bonfire, love at first sight, and only those who didn’t want to didn’t understand. My brother had picked her out for himself on the second day from among the mid-nadvim, and one and a half years later he was dead.’
‘From among whom?’
‘The volunteers. His wife was a cold woman. She couldn’t even bring herself to administer the painkilling suppositories at the hospital. I myself had to press them into my dear brother’s bottom. He was in horrendous pain. Colon cancer.’
When Mrs Pápai uttered the words ‘horrendous pain’, it was as if she were cradling and caressing this pain, and Comrade Dóra had the feeling that she herself longed for similar agonies. But as an experienced nurse, one who had graduated from the American University in Beirut, she was able to speak with surprising objectivity of bodily matters.
‘I’m convinced that this flowering of love was a presentiment of his illness,’ Mrs Pápai said. ‘My brother was a very, very handsome man. Of course he was a Zionist. But with him, I couldn’t be angry about it. We never talked about politics. Everyone was in love with my big brother. Everyone.’
Comrade Dóra was always in awe of Mrs Pápai’s ability to express herself precisely without getting caught up in the throes of emotion. At such times it seemed that even her accent disappeared, and sentences emerged from her mouth in proper Hungarian. As an experienced nurse, she knew exactly what unfolds in the body when a person is dying.
‘Psychologists call this Torschlusspanik,’ Mrs Pápai quietly observed. ‘They visited me here in Budapest. That’s when I got to know Pat.’
‘Oh dear, the picture!’ Lieutenant Dóra exclaimed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a photograph in a plastic case. ‘I nearly forgot about it.’
The photograph was of a rather homely-looking girl – at least Comrade Dóra wasn’t exactly taken with her – blonde and with a pudgy nose. But he had to admit that her expression was brave and frank. Mrs Pápai took it from him, took it out of the plastic case, and cast it a gentle glance. She leaned the picture up against the vase, on the table, in which the flowers
she’d just received had come to life.
‘Pat. I think distance, too, played its part.’
‘Torshoeswhat?’ asked Comrade Dóra, reaching for his notebook.
‘Gate-shutting panic. When men sense that they no longer spark desire in every woman they cross paths with. That the music is over.’ Comrade Dóra began intently studying the edge of the rug while Mrs Pápai blushed. While she could be quite open about other people’s romantic or sexual endeavours, she could, at times, be just as reticent about her own feelings. Who knew better than Mrs Pápai what it was like when distance made love almost unbearable? And yet it wasn’t Tom, the ungainly British private, who now appeared in her mind’s eye in his bathing suit, in Alexandria, sitting on the railing at a beach resort, but Pápai – in his underwear, his hairy belly exposed, standing there on the chair he’d positioned in the bathroom, a rope around his neck, fixed to the gas pipe that ran along the ceiling – as he gazed at Mrs Pápai, who’d just torn open the front door, having raced home from work driven by a premonition of sorts.
‘She’s a smart girl, huh?’
Comrade Dóra cleared his throat, for that morning he’d only skimmed the rough translations one of his colleagues had thrown together. He knew Russian quite well, and he’d picked up a little German while stationed at the barracks in East Germany, but he could only babble in English, and this had hindered his career prospects, too, to an extent. ‘They couldn’t cheat me,’ he’d say, trying to impress his colleagues, ‘in any country, ever!’ But this was an exaggeration: in a foreign city he wouldn’t even have been able to ask, in English, where the train station was.
Something about these interminably long letters bothered him, but he couldn’t decide exactly what. Perhaps he should read them more carefully.
‘And, comrade,’ he said to Mrs Pápai, ‘you really think what she writes about her having access to the upper echelons of Canadian politics is true?’
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