It wasn’t pretty. Two hours before Sergei Milnikov’s much-anticipated Hungarian hockey debut, his backup’s backup, UTE’s third-string goalie, Attila Ambrus, was holed up in the bathroom of his apartment, puking his guts out. An hour earlier he’d gone out dressed as a clown. That was the kind of week it had been. Nauseating and not that funny.
It started the previous Saturday night. Just as Attila was about to hit the pelt road to Transylvania, his Romanian border guard contact told him over the phone that neither he nor any of the other border guards with whom Attila had arrangements would be able to honor those accords any longer. They had all been fired in a huge scandal he would probably read about in the next day’s papers, something to do with whether they shot a trucker because he was unwilling to pay the extortion surcharge or because he was reaching for a passport that in a certain light resembled a Tokarev 9mm.
It took a couple of days for the reality to set in. Attila’s pelt career was over. So were his days as a Parker pen salesman, not that he would miss it; he hadn’t been very motivated about hawking office supplies recently, but he’d liked to keep some merchandise in the car should he stumble upon someone in need of a tablet. But on Sunday someone had broken into his car and stolen everything. Now on top of his other debts, he was out 50,000 forints’ ($650) worth of frilly paper and fountain pens, nearly the cost of replacing his shattered car window.
By the time Milnikov showed up at the UTE training facility on Tuesday, it was difficult to say which UTE goalie was more miserable. The Russian champ nearly broke down in tears when someone let slip that the ragtag outdoor rink he was suffering through his first practice on—in a poorly timed driving rain, no less—was the same “stadium” where the team’s games were played. Attila, meanwhile, was promising to pummel anyone who found it a laff riot that he was yet again the third-string goalie, behind Milnikov and the regular netminder, Gábor Gézsi. After practice Milnikov went to sulk alone in one corner of the locker room while Attila set up a receiving line in another as Pék, Gogolak, and a couple of other teammates all filtered by to remind him about that borrowed money he didn’t have. Oh, and that morning Attila had received word that the deal for his citizenship papers had fallen through; that his $1,300 wasn’t going to be returned didn’t require explication.
The dilemma Attila faced on Wednesday was not for the restless or ruminative: he could be piss-poor and potentially beaten bagman silly by week’s end or he could be stinking drunk in an hour. He chose judiciously. As Bill Clinton of Hope, Arkansas, raised his right hand to a Bible on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Attila Ambrus of Csíkszereda, Romania, resolutely foraged through a discount wig bin at Budapest’s 4 Tigers Chinese flea market. He couldn’t stop thinking about tomorrow, either. It would be quick and easy, he figured, pouring himself another whiskey back at his apartment. He was going to rob the post office down the street, the same place he’d taken Ninny from upstairs at least a dozen times before she’d died the previous October. Everyone in Hungary paid his bills at the post office, cash only. And a lot of people kept accounts there, like at a bank. But there was no security guard, no camera, and little chance of a working alarm system. He would enter in disguise, wave around the fake gun he’d just bought at the flea market, ask for the money, then walk—not run—out the front door, hail a cab, and go home.
When he woke up, spinning, the following morning—Thursday—Attila was excruciatingly unable to formulate any better ideas about how to recoup the money he needed to pay his debts by the Saturday deadline. And after a grueling workout session—aside from having to face a roster full of creditors, Bubu kept pestering Attila to challenge Milnikov to a goalies’ leg-sit duel—Attila went straight home and started drinking again.
It wasn’t as if he’d never stolen anything before, though he’d assumed when he got to Hungary that those days were over. But if he’d been wrong, which he was now willing to consider, he had to be right about this: he could never be caught again. He could still smell that musty Csíkszereda basement slammer where he was treated to an almost daily beating with a police baton and a few stomach-turning trips down a hill stuffed inside a wooden wheel. And on his left arm, he carried an eight-inch scar from an incident at the juvenile detention facility that he had blocked from his memory.
Attila spread a piece of paper across his writing table. On it, he drew a map of the neighborhood and then a detailed diagram of the post office, a small linoleum-floored room with three glass-encased teller windows built in solid molded wood. From the street schematic, he determined the best escape method to be a stroll down the block and into the tunnel where the no. 61 tram stopped on its way to the west-ernmost hub in Buda on the M2 subway line, Déli station.
His stomach hurt. He sat down on the pullout bed he hadn’t folded up since the previous week. There wasn’t any hockey practice in the morning because tomorrow was a game day, so he had all night to get in the mood. He wasn’t sure if he could go through with it. But as the evening wore on and the bottle of whiskey drained, his fears receded along with his thoughts of Judit, and his mind settled on a simple, sensible idea: the money sitting in that post office wasn’t the government’s money, it was the people’s money. Our money. The politicos had had more than their fair share. And as long as Attila didn’t hurt anyone in the process, he reasoned, the only harm that could come from his grabbing a piece was if he was caught doing so. Where the hell was that map? He picked up a red Parker stylograph and drew a dotted line marking his preferred escape route.
The only mirror in Attila’s studio apartment was in the bathroom, down a hallway from the small, square living quarters. He spent the next several hours spinning around the corner of the hall with the toy pistol in his right hand, saying, “Freeze!” to his reflection. It was his Travis Bickle “You talkin’ to me?” moment, if slightly less convincing. At the flea market, Attila had bought dress shoes three sizes too big in case the police checked for footprints, and half the time he twirled around the hall toward the mirror he tripped and fell into the wall before he could spit out his line.
It was morning already when he hatched the notion of shaving his normally scruffy face and leaving only a mustache, which he darkened with some mascara Judit had left in his bathroom. God, he thought, taking a look at himself after rosying his cheeks with her rouge and lipstick, what time was it? He still had to do his hair. He yanked the shade off his desk lamp and set it on the bed. Then he grabbed a long, curly brown-haired wig and threw it over the shade. He poured himself another drink, pulled his chair up to the bed, and, with a tube of gel he’d bought at the market and a pair of scissors he’d appropriated from a kitchen drawer, began styling.
Fortunately, he’d bought more than one wig.
Attila startled awake and looked at his digital alarm clock: 3:30. In half an hour, the post office would close for the weekend. He jumped up and began trying to pull on his pants, then misbuttoning and rebut-toning his shirt. He could never tell what kind of weather it was outside because his basement apartment had only one small window way up in the top corner of the kitchen. He selected an all-purpose black raincoat from his nearly bare wardrobe, then stepped to the front door and craned his unrecognizable head into the hallway to make sure no one was on his way down the stairs in search of a screwdriver. Fortunately, the coast was clear, because—as he soon realized—the shoulder-length straight brown wig he’d fallen asleep in was now jutting out on one side like a Mohawk. A comb-thru proved useless. Irritated, he stomped back to the freestanding closet, fished out a bright red ski hat with floppy ears and a pointy top, and yanked it down over the wig.
Outside, it was Romanian-childhood overcast and UTE-bleacher cold. The boulevard gurgled with slow-moving vehicles; the sidewalks hiccupped with winter-wrapped citizens—some carrying sacks of groceries with which to cook a warm, paprika-spiced dinner, others the knowing smile of someone about to trade his layers for a waist-tied genital apron and let his ass hang out at the nearby Gellért or Rudas
bath-house. Then there was Attila, cursing himself for drinking so much, as he stumbled down the street on his way to knock off the post office.
His intended target was on the east side of the wide boulevard, about ten blocks north of his apartment, nestled between an interior-lighting shop and an ABC supermarket in a row of one- and two-level storefronts. Attila slowed as he approached the post office to get a good look through the glass door at how many customers were inside. Then he walked quickly to the corner, where he stopped, turned, and began counting patrons as they went in and out. Time, he could only assume, was limited; he’d forgotten his watch. Just when the customers appeared to have vacated the premises, he received a good sign. The post office’s only male employee stepped outside without a coat and hurried into the crowded butcher shop farther up the block.
Attila had to will his legs to move. His oversize shoes felt like heavy clogs. Even with two pairs of thick socks, he felt every slap his loafers made on the cold, hard cement. Finally he reached the post office and tried to push open the door. But it wouldn’t move more than a few inches.
“Sorry,” came a woman’s voice from the other side. “We’re closed.”
He looked up. It was Mrs. Geromos, the woman who’d sold him lottery tickets and had helped Ninny fill out her payment receipts and forms.
“But I have to mail this letter to my girlfriend today,” Attila pleaded, hoping she wouldn’t recognize his voice.
“Sorry, you’ll have to come back on Monday,” she said, giving the slightly ajar door another nudge.
Attila shoved his foot between the door and the frame. Mrs. Geromos was starting to object when he followed it with his shoulder, busting the door open and knocking her back into the room. “Freeze,” Attila said, stepping inside, but the gun was so small that he couldn’t find it in his pocket. Finally his fingers settled on the utensil, and he pulled it out and thrust it into the air. “This is an armed robbery!” he declared, half expecting to hear the opening beats of a well-paced musical score.
Mrs. Geromos looked more annoyed than afraid. Institutional robbery didn’t happen very often in Hungary. And whatever this guy with the schoolyard ski hat and toy gun thought he was doing, he was making her late for her weekend. Attila, bowing his head so Mrs. Geromos wouldn’t recognize the parts of his thickly made-up face not covered by his hat and earflaps, motioned for her to go around through the wooden half door to the back. He followed, high-stepping so as not to trip over his shoes again.
There was only one other employee in the office, and by the time Attila got around to the other side of the counter, she was hiding under her desk. “Why are you doing this?” the voice asked when the feet appeared at her station.
Was there a silent alarm? Was she stalling? “Shut up,” Attila said. “Please.”
He pulled a yellow and blue duffel bag with the Joe Camel insignia emblazoned on the side out of his other coat pocket and began rummaging through the cash drawers. A lot of small bills and worthless coins. When he finished with the drawers, he asked, “Where’s the safe?” since that’s what they did in the movies.
The woman pointed at a small steel box on the floor the size of a Bundt cake. He nodded. She opened it. Empty.
It suddenly felt like a month since he’d knocked Mrs. Geromos over with the door. Perhaps he should go. “Don’t move,” he yelled, backing up with his two-dollar cap gun raised. He returned to the front and let himself out into the cold air, then pulled the glass door closed behind him. A combination lock was produced from his pants pocket, and he bolted the door shut as if he were an employee. Just walk, he told himself. He got about ten steps down the sidewalk when he heard a window slide open and two women’s voices scream, “Robber! Robber! Catch him!” That did it. Attila took off like the Chicky Panther toward the train station tunnel, where he chucked the wig and hat into a trash can and, still running, eliminated most of his mustache with a disposable Gillette and saliva. He kept up his sprint past the station’s oven-warm bakery, an overstuffed antique-book store, and back through the wintery apartment-lined residential side streets to his building, where he bounded inside his flat and promptly puked.
For the first time, the Whiskey Robber had struck.
Attila’s three minutes of work in the post office netted him 548,000 forints (or about $5,900). And even though he’d been sick afterward, he’d made it to the stadium in time to watch Milnikov’s victorious 4–2 debut over Alba Volán from the bench. He’d even joined the team at the smoke-filled Thirsty Camel afterward, where he had bought the second, third, and fourth rounds. He couldn’t help himself. He was ecstatic—perhaps too much so, he worried on his way home. But despite his pronounced upward mood swing, none of his teammates seemed to have the slightest idea that anything was amiss with their third-string goalie. To them the Chicky Panther was bananas. Nothing to see here.
With the proceeds from the robbery, Attila paid off his debts, repaired his broken car window, and surprised Judit, who had recently complained about her billowing thighs and ass, by offering to pay for liposuction. Attila also got Bubu, who was now in catastrophic debt himself, to accept Attila’s offer to buy back his TV, stereo, and VCR at a quarter of their value. With all the suspicious money spinning around, Attila’s brief bout of solvency was hardly newsworthy—even, unfortunately, to him. Except for the fact that he got his tenuous existence back in order, almost nothing changed for Attila. Over the next few weeks, Milnikov helped UTE to a decent 18–8–2 record, but the team was once again eliminated in the semifinals of the national championship series. And when the season ended, Attila found himself in a familiar place. He was almost broke.
In the mornings he drove up to UTE for weight training and conditioning workouts, which were now run by his friend George Pék, who had taken over the coaching duties while General Bereczky tried to shake some money out of the Interior Ministry to hire a new coach. The rest of Attila’s days were free, and he wasn’t sure what to do with them. He and Karcsi kicked around ideas for starting a videotape rental, car importation, or furniture-repair business. Bubu wasn’t around much; it seemed he was always taking care of something quickly. Sometimes, if the team manager Gustáv Bóta invited him, Attila went to play tennis at the Interior Ministry club, where he envisioned one day being not only a member but the reigning club champion. Already, in only his first year playing, he’d become one of the club’s best players.
During the evenings Judit wasn’t tutoring English, she and Attila went to the movies with her friends—lawyers and business professionals with regular paychecks and a command of English, who seemed to Attila knowledgeable about everything. Occasionally they even took him along to the “American night” cocktail parties sponsored by the U.S. companies at the ritzy foreign-owned downtown hotels. One time at the Hyatt, Attila won the top prize (a six-course dinner for two) in a Hungarian sports trivia contest. But no one seemed interested in networking with a Transylvanian hockey goalie. Attila knew he wasn’t like them, but he kept dressing in suits and spending his money as if pretending for long enough might make it so. He began reading the newspapers and promised Judit, who still thought his pelt business was thriving, a trip to an exotic surprise location. Anywhere sounded good to him; he’d never been on a plane before.
On the nights Attila didn’t stay at Judit’s, he whiled away his insomnia in his sparkling red Opel, acquiring another kind of education. Budapest’s narrow downtown streets thumped with hypnotic bass beats emanating from basement-level techno clubs. At traffic lights, vendors stood draped head to toe not with newspapers but with every variety of porn publication imaginable. Outside the neon-lit casinos near the Hungarian Science Academy, women in unbuttoned black mink coats over bikinis handed out drink tickets for the establishments whose call Attila could avoid only by staying inside his car.
Some nights Attila would turn a familiar corner and find himself on a street he’d swear he’d never seen. Stereo and discount-furniture stores that had opened only months ear
lier were zapped and reopened as computer and imported leather joints the next. Ferenc Liszt Square, famous for its cafés, now had another claim to fame: across the street stood the world’s largest Burger King.
The traditional, intellectual Eastern European cultural scene—opera, classical music, folk dance, art film, satirical theater—was supplanted by new movie theaters showing foreign films such as The Untouchables and the bank heist thriller Point Break. Some started referring to the changes Hungary was undergoing as the amerikanizácioa or Americanization, as if it were a state of consciousness that had been intravenously introduced. As with a Happy Meal or a Peanut Buster Parfait, most people knew it wasn’t good for them, but it also wasn’t easy to turn down when dangled in front of their faces.
Meanwhile, day by day, protective fences and security cameras were being installed around buildings and warehouses. In the first five months of his tenure, the new Budapest police chief had his car stolen. Twice. Hungary’s suicide and alcoholism rates soared. Among those who took their own lives in 1993 were twelve of the thousands who had been lured into a failed Ponzi scheme to raise and sell ringworms.
Disillusionment with capitalism’s side effects was hardly unique to Hungary. The former Soviet republic of Ukraine, which abuts northeast Hungary, watched inflation hit 10,000 percent in 1993. The cost of a loaf of bread sometimes doubled from one day to the next. In Poland, which like Hungary was offered up by Western pundits as a model of democratic transition, a group of protesters marched on the U.S. embassy in Warsaw with signs reading, “We are gradually becoming Los Angeles blacks, living in poverty among luxurious hotels and shining supermarkets.” Yet the highest measured level of discontent in the first several years of the postcommunist era was not among the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Russians, or the Romanians. It was in Hungary, purportedly the most progressive country of them all, where by 1992, more than 40 percent of the population concluded that they preferred communism to the so-called free market capitalism that they were, according to the Western press, enjoying.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber Page 9