Istvan Balogh and Peter Szigeti were individuals of great courage. Each name is completely masked; in the case of Szigeti even incidents had to be changed lest he implicate others. Each story was corroborated by other intellectuals, who supplied some of the masking materials.
Csoki, Little Chocolate Drop, was a very brave young man, and he said, “Sure, put my real name in the book! I want them to know what I did to their rotten system!” When after hours of discussion I learned that he had a mother and brothers remaining in Budapest, I prevailed upon him to change his mind; but he insisted on inserting one telltale incident, “which,” he said, “will let the gang know I got out all right, and they’ll tell my mother.” I think most of what Csoki told me was true, and I used only the Kilian Barracks part of his wild days. But the facts of that attack, and General Maleter’s part in it, have been substantiated by four other soldiers who were there and by one of the critics. I was glad when Csoki told me he thought he would go to America. He’ll fit into a Boston jitterbug hall or a chili parlor in Dallas without any difficulty, and ten years from now he’ll own a garage and vote Republican.
Zoltan and Eva Pal were composites made up by three attractive young couples, two of whom I had met at Andau. Each of the six young people was terrified lest he be identified in Budapest and cause the torture of his parents. I spent many hours with these couples and feel sure that all of what they said was true, but the most poignant story they told me I did not use. At the end of one long interview with two of the couples I happened to notice that neither of the young wives was wearing a wedding ring, so with no embarrassment, because one suspects such tricks, I said, “You really aren’t married, are you? You just came out together and made up these stories, didn’t you?”
All four looked at me in amazement and said, “We … we can’t prove that we’re married. But we are.” Then one of the wives said to her husband, “Oh, yes! You have that paper.” And he produced an official paper of some kind which at least referred to him and his wife as a married couple.
“Why did you ask such a question?” he inquired.
“Because I notice that neither of you girls has a wedding ring,” I said.
“In communism,” the girls explained, “young couples like us can’t afford wedding rings.”
But later I saw that the third couple, which I used for another part of the story, had a wedding ring, and the wife said, “Well, a couple could manage to buy a ring if they were very religious … and gave up other things.” So some couples have rings.
Imre Geiger, the dead-end kid with the cigarette and the rifle, I picked up just after he had crossed the border at Nickelsdorf. I saw him come swinging down the middle of the railroad tracks, and why he was not shot I do not know. He was a delightful boy to talk to, and he wanted me to use his real name, but he too had parents and friends who could be hurt, and since he was so deeply implicated in the latter days of the fighting, we both agreed that maybe he should remain anonymous.
Gyorgy Szabo, the man from Csepel, is one of the finest human beings I have ever met. He had documents to prove most of his story and a stamp of authenticity on his face that humbled all of us who talked with him. Others corroborated his story in all details, except the conditions of his leaving, but many of those details have been altered purposely in my account.
The Hadjok family, of course, were a tremendous family of that name. I met them at the bridge, then at the restaurant where Mrs. Lillie Brown rescued them. I saw them later in Vienna and was so suspicious of any children nine and thirteen who knew as much as they did that I questioned them in private. There can be no question of the authenticity of this story.
Mrs. Marie Marothy is also a real name, at her request. The coal miner, whose story of his American suit appalled everyone who heard it, dared not use his name for family reasons, but he had satisfactory credentials and his story was corroborated by others.
That leaves the tragic characters who appear in the account of the AVO man. Ferenc Gabor was so terrified by the retaliations he had witnessed in Recsk that we avoided his real name even in our notes. His particular story of Recsk could have been an invention; Recsk itself was not. It existed and in the form that I relate. The story of the world-champion athlete was to me particularly doleful because it was delivered so simply. I insisted upon a documentation of his athletic record, upon seeing the bullet wounds, checking his story of slave labor, and further evidence on his report of Major Meat Ball. Unfortunately for him, it was all true. Tibor Donath, the AVO man, is, as I stated earlier, a reconstruction for which I am solely responsible. He is founded upon a great deal of research, some confidential papers, and the question that I asked every Hungarian who mentioned the AVO: “You tell me the young people of Hungary were so patriotic and brave. But here are pictures of fifteen AVO men. They’re all young. And they’re all Hungarians. What about them?”
Patiently we would then build up a portrait of the AVO men that this Hungarian himself had known—the AVO man at the corner police box, the AVO man in the factory, the AVO man who checked residential blocks, the AVO man at Recsk, the AVO man who would beat and kick a coal miner for thirty-three days because he didn’t like the man’s suit, and the AVO man who would set out to break a woman’s hand and knock her teeth out. I think I can visualize an AVO man.
I would point out one additional fact. Many of these people I personally helped lead out of Hungary. I met them on the wintry canal bank at Andau, I helped them across the bridge. There was no selection operating in my choice of the Hungarians with whom I talked. For example, I met my finest interpreter standing a hundred feet inside the border a few minutes after he reached freedom.
I found my stories by the operation of pure chance, and after I had talked with hundreds of Hungarians, after I had painstakingly discovered that their stories interlocked and substantiated one another, I came to two conclusions.
First, it is entirely possible that everyone I met told me nothing but lies, but there is a rule of probability which says that an investigator should accept a plausible theory if its rejection entails an obvious absurdity. If you want to say, as the Russians will, that all these stories were inventions, then you must also say that nearly two hundred thousand Hungarians who fled to Austria convened somewhere along the way and agreed upon a monstrous lie, which they all remembered in exact detail. And that is an absurdity.
Second, when I had studied the evidence, and when I had carefully reminded myself of A. Mitchell Palmer and the Creel committee, I decided that perhaps I was taking a risk, but that if I didn’t—in view of the risks my Hungarian informants had taken—I would henceforth be ashamed to walk among free men.
TO ALBERT ERSKINE
BY JAMES A. MICHENER
Tales of the South Pacific
The Fires of Spring
Return to Paradise
The Voice of Asia
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Sayonara
The Floating World
The Bridge at Andau
Hawaii
Report of the Country Chairman
Caravans
The Source
Iberia
Presidential Lottery
The Quality of Life
Kent State: What Happened and Why
The Drifters
A Michener Miscellany: 1950–1970
Centennial
Sports in America
Chesapeake
The Covenant
Space
Poland
Texas
Legacy
Alaska
Journey
Caribbean
The Eagle and the Raven
Pilgrimage
The Novel
James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook
Mexico
Creatures of the Kingdom
Recessional
Miracle in Seville
This Noble Land: My Vision for America
The World Is My Home
&nb
sp; with A. Grove Day
Rascals in Paradise
with John Kings
Six Days in Havana
About the Author
JAMES A. MICHENER, one of the world’s most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the best-selling novels Hawaii, Texas, Chesapeake, The Covenant, and Alaska, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.
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