Under the Frog

by Tibor Fischer

  When Hálás learned that Faragó had signed up to become the local Communist Party Secretary following the changing political wind, it was decided to stop messing about. Faragó was dragged out of his house in the dead of night, dead drunk, a dead weight. His hands were tied behind his back, a rope was thrown over a branch, a noose attached to Faragó’s neck. He was hoisted up, the branch snapped and Faragó’s yells drew a passing Russian patrol that came to investigate.

  The outcome of this nocturnal suspension was that Faragó ended up with a blister necklace and a revolver as he sensed there were people who didn’t entirely approve of him.

  ‘I shoot,’ Faragó had announced in the csárda, ‘and I’m not even going to bother asking any questions afterwards.’ This statement came after the death of the villager credited previously with the six-fold ventilation of Faragó.

  The cause of Ladányi’s return was a small vineyard of two hectares well away from Hálás that produced a wine so acrid that Faragó was almost the only person who would drink it. This vineyard had been left to the Church (probably maliciously) although it barely earned enough income to have the altar dusted.

  Faragó as first secretary and mayor of the Hálás-Mezo megyer-Murony community had decreed that the vineyard should be removed from the charge of the pushers of the people’s opiate and handed over to the hegemony of the proletariat. The village turned to Ladányi because he was someone who had been to Budapest, who had seen the innards of books, because he had breathed his first lungfuls in Hálás, because he was a fully paid-up member of the Society of Jesus and because he had broken the fifty-egg barrier.

  Although he had left the village fifteen years ago and had only been back for one weekend in the interval, Ladányi was still big news and a source of immense pride. How many other places could boast that the village Jew had become a Jesuit? And then there were the reports that meandered back, as Ladányi made his way through his law studies at university, of the omelette jousts and of Ladányi’s participation in the goulash wars that had broken out at the end of the thirties in Budapest ’s restaurants. Ladányi was six foot two and this copious frame in conjunction with a,student’s appetite created an enormous parking space for edibles. He started to pay for his studies and his mother’s upkeep by taking part in eat-outs with a side-bet going to the greatest devourer. His first contests were on the student circuit where the wagers merely covered the cost of the food consumed (usually dittoed three-course meals) but his unflinching digestion soon took him to the big time of the New York Cafe where leading journalists would be hard at work stretching the human capacity for eating omelettes. When Ladányi polished off a forty-five egg omelette with a couple of kilos of onions and ham thrown in for flavour, devastating the drama critic of the Pester Lloyd, who had thrown in his napkin at thirty-eight, Hálás knew all about it. When Ladányi with his custom-built cutlery was invited to Gundel’s to test the new hyperstrength goulash, which was eventually billed as ‘even Ladányi only had three bowls’ and had been certified by the Technical University as containing 30,000 calories, Hálás had all the details (if a month later). When circus strongman Sándor the Savage thought he could take Ladányi with drum cakes, everyone had a good chuckle about that and the Stradivarius violin Ladányi had won.

  But Ladányi had hung up his knife and fork, having broken the fifty-egg barrier for the second time, after the editor of the Pesti Hirlap dropped dead on the opposite side of the table, his cardiac arrest not unconnected with the forty-six eggs’ worth of omelette he had just consumed. This abrupt prandial demise and Ladányi’s realisation that he wanted to join the Order brought his gastronomic career to an end, without diminishing his fame in Hálás. So when Faragó heard that Ladányi was coming to plead for the vineyard, he simply issued the challenge ‘Let’s eat it out.’

  The population of Hálás was hardly past four hundred, according to Ladányi, and despite the cold and pluvial weather, most of them were gathered outside in the rain waiting for the Jesuit-laden cart to arrive.

  It was, Gyuri comprehended, the highest accolade you could get. ‘Now I know what the nineteenth century was like,’ he thought. The best thing about visiting a place like Hálás was that it made you very grateful for living in Budapest. Gyuri hadn’t been out of Budapest seven hours and already the charms of electricity, pavement and a greater choice of genetic material were becoming overpowering. For a day, when he got back to Budapest, he would be very happy. Feeling he had grown to the dimensions of a tycoon or a film star, Gyuri stepped off the cart and watched his best shoes (not much to brag about, but the most powerful in his sartorial arsenal) disappear in mud.

  They were shown into the csárda, a wooden affair, with a stove in the centre dispensing a little heat into the interior, which was really going to be warmed by the crowd outside funnelling its way in. Ladányi held a whispered confabulation with the village priest in a confessional, sombre manner. As Ladányi’s retinue, Gyuri and Neumann took the brunt of the local hospitality. This, of course, had been in Gyuri’s mind when he agreed to come to Hálás: the countryside meant unrestrained food. They might go short of excitement, but not of eats. Gyuri had firm intentions of swallowing along with Ladányi as long as he could and if people insisted on pressing presents of foodstuffs on them when they departed, Gyuri could put up with that.

  The scale and ferocity of peasant cuisine could be overpowering if you were out of training. Gyuri knew how the breakfasts alone could put feeble urban dwellers in hospital. At Erdóváros, the summer he was thirteen, when Gyuri had been entrusted to one of the local families, they poured him a generous pálinka for breakfast along with a brick of fat garnished with a dash of paprika. Thinking well of their liberality, he drank the pálinka before walking out the door into the ground. It had taken his legs hours to remember how to walk but his stomach only a few minutes to evict the solid elements of his meal. That sort of morning fuelling was tolerable only if you had grown up on it and if you had a day in a field ahead of you. Even as an athletic thirteen year-old, harvesting for an hour had given him so much pain in so many places that all he could do was lie in the field and pray for an ambulance, while the heavily pregnant woman who had been working alongside him kindly offered to go and get him a drink.

  The hospitality was unleashed straight away. Gyuri hadn’t seen so much food, so much good food since the point when the war had got noticeably war-like, and it was quite possible that he had never seen that much food in an enclosed space ever before. The depressing thing was that he wouldn’t be able to make up for five years’ going hungry in one evening, however hard he tried. Even the expansive Neumann was looking awed by the food, since people had unmistakeable designs of inflicting several servings on them. If Gyuri tried to slow down his consumption, the villagers who had appointed themselves his personal troop of waiters would hover around and if he ate up, the consumed items would be swiftly replaced. Within half an hour of mastication commencing, Gyuri was already seriously worried about parting company with consciousness: surrounding his enormous plate, which had grown a stalagmite of sausage, cured pork, pig cheese and boxing-glove-sized chunks of bread, were two glasses of wine, one red, one white, two glasses of pálinka, apricot and pear, and two glasses of beer in case he got thirsty. Behind him he could hear enraged villagers fighting to get to his side so they could pour out more of their pressings and distillations.

  Ladányi was also offered some refreshment and a selection of food but noticeably halfheartedly. No one wanted to wear out his alimentary muscles. He was principally occupied in giving his hand to be kissed by the queue of people that had formed to pay its respects. Ladányi was far from pleased about this, Gyuri could tell, but the villagers’ veneration was reasonable enough, bearing in mind that there were university professors who were terrified of Ladányi, who would duck into doorways to avoid a searching question from Ladányi, a question that would home in on their ignorance. The story Gyuri had heard was that when Ladányi collected his law d
egree the faculty offered to throw in a doctorate to save everyone’s time.

  The concurred time for the blow-out had been five o’clock, but Faragó and his sidekicks didn’t show up till half past. Ladányi’s request to Gyuri for him to come to Hálás to manage any violence hadn’t been made out of concern for his own safety. ‘The villagers would protect me, and that’s exactly what I don’t want. If things turn nasty, I’d like someone from outside, who won’t have to stay there.’ However Gyuri’s apprehension about roughhousing was completely subsumed in his amazement at Faragó’s appearance.

  ‘No one’s going to believe us,’ Neumann whispered to Gyuri who concurred with a nod. No amount of assertions that what they were saying was strictly in the bounds of veracity would help, Gyuri knew, when he saw Faragó walk in; no one back in ’ Pest would believe them. Faragó rolled in with two lanky lackeys, a pistol tucked into his waistband. His hue was so ghastly that Gyuri could imagine corpses being dissected by medical students looking fresher. Faragó was drunk. He stank. His suit, a pinstripe, looked as if it had been buried, circa 1932, and only dug up the day before; in any case it clashed with the string vest he had on underneath. His tie was the most successful part of his outfit; it made an eyecatching belt.

  The hatred that rose when Faragó entered was so solid, so sinewed, Gyuri was surprised that Faragó was able to walk in. He realised he was going to be treated to something special that evening.

  It was hate at first sight for Gyuri which made him reflect that Faragó must have taken the villagers on an almost endless argosy to undreamed-of lands of human anger. This was the absolute zero of human turpitude. He deserved to be exhibited, but it was probably for the best that he was shackled to Hálás. ‘I thought we had it tough,’ observed Neumann taking in Faragó, ‘but the rest of the country should write a thank you letter to Hálás for keeping him here.’ Gyuri had been teasing Ladányi on the train down about how the Church should surely adapt and adopt a forgiving attitude to Faragó and gladly renounce worldly possessions. Smiling quietly, too capable to be caught red-handed with any unjesuit emotions, Ladányi had replied: ‘Whether or not we should have such properties is a good question, as is what should be done with them, but they shouldn’t be handed over to bandits. And while our Lord did enjoin us to turn the other cheek, it should be borne in mind that he never met Faragó.’

  ‘So the black beetle has come to be crushed by the people’s power?’ roared Faragó, missing the chair he had been aiming to sit on and vanishing from sight. Installed in the chair with the assistance of his seconds, he continued his welcome address. ‘As first Secretary of the Hungarian Communist… the… er… the Hungarian Working People’s Party of the Hálás-Mezómegyer-Murony community and as mayor and as Chairman of the ‘Dizzy with Success’ collective farm, in the words of Comrade Stalin, reporting on the work of the Central Committee to the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU(B).’ Here Faragó petered out ideologically, paused and having run out of things to say, reached for his pistol to illustrate a point and shot himself in the leg. To general disappointment, it was the wooden leg.

  ‘And,’ Faragó resumed, ‘and in a scientific manner, with a bolshevik tempo, I’m going to eat you into the ground.’ He snapped his fingers and the proprietor of the csárda approached the table and erected an enormous balance with scales. ‘They used that in the Békés county fried-chicken championships,’ someone interjected in Gyuri’s ear, as the proprietor measured out two vast bowls of steaming bean soup for the kick-off. Ladányi had said nothing more than ‘good evening’ so far, while Faragó continued to glasshead, letting everyone see his thoughts. ‘You’re trying to impress us, aren’t you? You think you can carry on sucking the blood of the people, you leech in a dog collar?’ Here Faragó halted as his eye chanced upon the village gypsy standing in the front row with a good view of the proceedings. Emitting a thoracic-cleaning rasp, Faragó then expectorated a slab of phlegm so huge and forceful that the unsuspecting gypsy was knocked sideways. ‘No gypsies,’ Faragó elaborated. Which Gyuri found odd since Faragó looked more gypsy than the village gypsy, with an extended stomach of such paunchity you might think he had a huge watermelon stuffed under his vest; his nose had gone in for extra growth as well, hanging like an overripe raspberry. Gut and conk were unimpeachable witnesses to Faragó’s feasting in lean times; he saw himself as an omnivore, as a megalovore, for whom eating was a measure of virility. Faragó had no doubt he would leave his opponent stalled on the first course.

  Ladányi said grace and Faragó retaliated by clenching his fist and growling the communists’ salutation: ‘Freedom!’. It was obvious who the crowd was backing on this occasion, Gyuri thought, as the two contestants started to shovel in the bean soup but it wasn’t always easy to sort out who to back in the Rome vs. Moscow conflict. The Church in Hungary was heading for a kicking indisputably. Mindszenty, the Cardinal, was stuck in a nick somewhere in Budapest, while they adjusted the charges to get a good fit (Gábor Pétér, the head of the AVO, had been a tailor): spying for the Americans, plotting to bring back the Habsburg monarchy, breeding Colorado beetles, sneering at socialist realist novels. And they must have had the survivors from the scriptwriting teams from Hungary ’s prewar film industry on contract to concoct the evidence, because no policeman could invent as fantastically as that.

  It was hard to sympathise with the Cardinal, Gyuri reflected, because Mindszenty was a buffoon, however wronged. The Catholic Church in Hungary wasn’t topheavy with brilliance. It would be so nice to have a real choice, fumed Gyuri. It was like Hungary being between Germany and the Soviet Union. What sort of choice was that? Which language would you like your firing squad to speak? In these circumstances, of course, a brilliant Cardinal might not be any more useful. Being clever and far-sighted wasn’t always of use. Does it help being the clever pig on the way to the abattoir?

  Stupidity could be quite advantageous now and then. Mind you, stupidity (with which he was well-equipped) hadn’t done Mindszenty any favours either. If you’re falling off a cliff, the quality of the brains that are going to get dashed doesn’t hugely count.

  When Gyuri discussed the position of the Church, Ladányi was grave but not worried but it was very hard to imagine Ladányi worried about anything. Being burned at the stake would all be part of a day’s work for him, even if other clerics would jib at the prospect. It was hard to imagine Father Jenik, for instance, gearing up for martyrdom, much as Gyuri liked him. Jenik firmly held to the philosophy of getting the best out of things: why had God created first-class hotels if he didn’t intend us to use them? Just after the Russians had tied down Budapest, Jenik had taken the entire scout troop out into the countryside. The hundred kilometre trip had taken two days by a train that had gone so slowly that, when one of the younger boys had fallen out of the open-doored wagons, one of the older boys had plenty of time to climb down from the train roof, rescue him and throw him back on. Jenik had led the troop to a village where he had some tenuous kinship, and had begun to spin a yarn, relying heavily on hyperbole, expounding at length the horrors and degradations of war and how sadly the tender youths in front of them had been marked. Jenik wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t doing anything to restrain misunderstanding. Father Jenik, who had been laughing all the way down on the train, and whom Gyuri suspected as the original begetter of Ladányi’s camel jokes, had become sombre and pained. His discourse on the ordeals of war had been rolling along for quite a while before Gyuri realised that Jenik was talking about the troop. Jenik had his hand on Papp’s shoulder as he conjured up the tortures of hunger and deprivation. Papp did look as if he had been constructed out of knitting-needles glued together, shudderingly thin and haggard, despite the fact his father was a butcher and he and his family got more meat than all the carnivores in Budapest zoo. Tears had peeped out of peasant eyes, and until Hálás, Gyuri had never eaten so much at one go. That night he had had the firm belief he would never need to eat again as long as he lived, and he wandered ar
ound in the dark, keeping his legs moving in a desperate attempt to festinate digestion and to eschew puking, to grind down the anvil in his stomach.

  However, in other ways Father Jenik was the traditional avuncular priest, always rolling up your sleeve to check your spiritual pulse, working his way through the club regulations: attendance at mass, confessions, observance of holy days. Ladányi would never mention religion, unless you brought it up or it cropped up naturally in the course of conversation. There was no badgering, no impresario-like push to get bums on seats, no ticking off a list with Ladányi. He seemed unconcerned whether you turned up or not and this was what was so pernicious. Gyuri had dropped church much in the same way as he had stopped believing in Santa Claus; there came a point where it was impossible to take it seriously. And that was what was so worrying about Ladányi. He was so clever, he had a bird’s eye view of everyone’s actions – even Pataki wouldn’t try modifying reality with Ladányi, because Ladányi would have read your diary before you’d written it. Gyuri couldn’t help feeling when he was doing something totally trivial like cleaning the bathtub or buying some groceries that it was all part of some master-plan, that cleaning the bathtub and buying groceries were all part of Ladányi’s machinations (it was just that he was unaware of it) and that one day he would wake up wearing black with a white collar.

  Perhaps because of his order, perhaps because of his Ladányiness, Ladányi operated quietly. The summer before, in an excess of compliance, Gyuri had offered Katalin Takács to pick up her new dress from the dressmaker. It was bruited by her changing room companions that she had no pubic hair. So he journeyed out to the dressmaker, helping to dress the girl he wanted to undress to verify the canard about her cat.