The favour was a double goodwill since the dressmaker lived in the Angyalföld, off the Váci út. It was said that when the American Liberators had carpet-bombed Angyalföld at the end of ’44 by mistake as they searched for the factories on Csepel Island, no one had minded because no one could tell the difference. It was also maintained that both the Waffen SS and the Red Army had stayed out of the Angyalföld because they hadn’t wanted any trouble.
Although Gyuri knew Budapest well, he had never ventured into the Angyalföld and was flabbergasted to discover that the stories were true. Having quit the tram, he passed people lying in gutters, like piles of autumnal leaves in smarter quarters, booze having severed their relations with the known universe. As he walked along, he was regarded with an unconcealed hatred by groups of natives milling around; reflexive dislike and aggression he had experienced before but never with such cannibalistic fervour. Gyuri had considered, before setting out that morning, pocketing a knife on account of Angyalföld’s notoriety but as he turned the corner into Jasz utca, he couldn’t help noticing two men fighting with what could only be described as cutlasses, long heavy swords of the type favoured by Hollywood pirates. A semi-circle of barefoot spectators were monitoring, not greatly impressed by the quality of the hacking. Carrying a knife wouldn’t have helped, the result would have been that he would have had his knife stolen as a supplement to getting stabbed, and a good knife like everything else was hard to get in those days.
Gyuri had lots of time to ruminate on how his untimely, unremarked demise on the streets of the Angyalföld would be due to his yearning to let his gaze ski down Katalin’s smooth slopes, killed by curiosity about a bald cat. He had also ruminated on his way up to the fifth floor, how people he visited always lived on the fifth floor of liftless buildings. The dressmaker, a sprightly lady of eighty plus, clearly of the work-twelve-hours-a-day-till-you-drop variety, and who was cosily unaware of what went on in the rest of Angyalföld, congratulated Gyuri on the cut of his trousers. The trousers were the last pair of Elek’s Savile Row trousers, indeed the only fully-qualified trousers that Elek had left, lent to Gyuri since Elek had come to the conclusion that he wasn’t getting out of bed that day, or that should he rise, he wouldn’t be progressing beyond the armchair. The dressmaker bustled away to prepare the dress for its journey while Gyuri reflected how sad it was that she couldn’t bequeath her industry to him.
It was as he rushed back to the tram that he chanced on Ladányi talking with some of the Angyalföld’s denizens patiently listening to him. They patently considered Ladányi as someone who had stepped down from the moon. Ladányi seemed slightly peeved at being caught in the act of doing good, but he accompanied Gyuri to the tram and reluctantly disclosed that he haunted Angyalföld before the first mass of the day. It was the sheer lunacy of his faith, Gyuri thought, that enabled Ladányi to leave with all his physical workings intact. Greatly relieved at having emerged from Angyalföld with his functions uninhibited, Gyuri was waiting outside the Nyugati station to change trams to deliver the dress, when a group of five youths his age came up and one, without any preamble, with a pair of scissors, swiftly cut the tie Gyuri was wearing, the last of Elek’s silk ties, the last of Elek’s ties and the only tie then residing in the Fischer household. The trimmer then handed over the snipped sections to Gyuri with the invocation: ‘Cerulean’.
At that point Gyuri recalled there was a vogue in Budapest, particularly amongst those who went round in fists of five, for prowling the boulevards with a pair of scissors to amputate ties and then to say ‘cerulean’. The tie hadn’t been a great tie, the design hadn’t really been to Gyuri’s taste and there had been of late a painfully visible soup stain on it, but the desire to punch the scissor-operator in the mouth had been quite breathtaking in its intensity, especially since he was clearly expecting Gyuri to have a laugh over the dividing of his tie. Gyuri thought how much he would enjoy punching him in the mouth, then he thought how much he wouldn’t enjoy getting it back as a fivefold minimum. He resorted to what he hoped was a look of contempt. The five got on the next tram remarking how some people had no sense of humour.
* * *
When, at Faragó’s suggestion, they switched to chocolate ice cream, Gyuri knew it was all over.
Ladányi and Faragó had warmed up with a couple of litres of bean soup before moving on to the main course – fried chicken – its consumption meticulously measured on the scales. ‘We in Hálás have always been famous for our fried chicken,’ Faragó rambled on, ‘and now under socialism, the fried chicken is even more fried.’ He reached for a plate of slender green tubes. ‘The paprika is optional,’ he announced loading a couple into his mouth.
Three kilos into the chicken, Faragó began to sweat, though whether this was due to gastronomic exertion or the calorific effects of the paprika it was hard to judge. He was also beginning to look uneasy, perhaps because it was dawning on him that the reports of the Jesuit’s unearthly wolfing had some foundation. Faragó was oozing effort while Ladányi was methodically and calmly stripping drumsticks with such ease that he hadn’t taken the trouble of dialling his willpower yet.
‘I’m just going to shake the snake,’ Gyuri informed Neumann. He was becoming increasingly anxious about losing contact with several outposts of his body. Draining two of the four glasses of pálinka awaiting his attention, he made his way out of the csárda into the sheltering darkness and voided the burning liquid from his mouth in an aerosol flurry to dodge some of the enormity of Hálás’s hospitality. A standard peasant, an elderly gent with the inevitable black hat that peasants had stapled to their heads and a massive handlebar moustache, came to join him in watering the planet. ‘Good evening, sir,’ said the peasant, causing Gyuri to note that only countryfolk could be so courteous while airing their dick. Conversation turned to Faragó as Gyuri was in no hurry to go back in and be the victim of further largesse; he was curious about Faragó’s track record. ‘I hear he did some appalling things during the war?’
‘You don’t want to know, sir. Some things should never be repeated, just forgotten. Satan himself is his coach.’
Gyuri waited outside as long as he could without triggering a search party and re-entered to find Ladányi and Faragó crossing the ten kilo mark, Faragó in discomfort, Ladányi still emitting a lean, keen look. A barrel of pigs’ trotters in aspic was dumped in front of Gyuri and he wondered how on earth he was going to eat any. ‘You didn’t like the smoked goose, did you?’ asked one woman accusingly and woundedly, although Gyuri estimated he had had six respectable helpings. Neumann next to him wasn’t saying much, but he wasn’t demonstrating any signs of suffering (however, he had sixteen stone to upkeep). The village must have gathered every bit of food for ten miles around. Gyuri could only regret that his stomach wasn’t up to it, that it had left its office, put up the ‘out to lunch’ sign and wasn’t doing any more business.
To round off his other distasteful qualities, Faragó had a bad cold and as he handed over his handkerchief to the deputy Party secretary to place on the stove to dry, Gyuri felt another surge of sympathy for the villagers. They had a straightforward, soily existence which if you liked that sort of thing could be quite pleasant. No wonder they were filled with hatred for Faragó; bewildered by their misfortune, it was like having a plague of locusts or a dragon deciding to set up home with you. ‘Why us?’ the elderly peasant had implored. ‘A whole world to be a stinking horseprick in and he’s never lost sight of Hálás. Why?’
The eating had now long since left pleasure behind. It was no longer a question of appetite, but a question of will, which was why Gyuri knew Ladányi would win, and knowing Ladányi, would end up recruiting Faragó as an altar boy. Conversion. It was funny how people could, while changing completely, remain the same. Fodor, at school, for example, for whom getting into trouble had not been a by-product of his activity but his sole activity, who had been almost as much of a nuisance as Keresztes, had, without warning, got a bad attack of the
Holy Ghost. At first there was a suspicion that it was an elaborate and unfunny stunt, but Fodor was so unswerving in handing out leaflets to remind how Jesus wanted a word, that everyone realised that he had gone evangelist for real: preaching was his latest irritation tool. Fodor caught Gyuri hanging around in a corridor one day. ‘Jesus Christ came to be your saviour, He died for your sins. You must acclaim Him and surrender to His teachings,’ Fodor urged, and then continued, more quietly, really savouring the next bit, ‘you’ve been warned now. You’ve had the message, you’ve got no excuse. If you ignore it, you’ll burn. In hell. For eternity.’ Fodor had then marched off with a satisfied air. This was the appealing part of the job for Fodor, going around with a sawn-off version of the scriptures and looking forward to the infidels being infinitely ignited. Gyuri had also seen Fodor in the Körút, on a soap-box, giving a sermon to the unheeding passers-by, a glint of delight in his eye at the prospect of the mass fry-up that was coming. Fodor didn’t want anyone to be able to reach for some mitigation when they stood in the pearly dock, saying no one had explained the Nazarene contract to them. Then Fodor could chime out: ‘Liar! Liar! I told him, I told him. Let him burrrnnnn.’
What had befallen Fodor in the end, whether he had grown weary of his sadistic evangelism, Gyuri didn’t know. Gyuri had last seen him at a school trip to the cinema where they had been locked in. You could tell it was a Soviet film when they locked you in. The school had taken over an enormous balcony in the cinema which descended in a series of plateaus. Fodor had vaulted over what he had thought was the edge of one of these sections, in fact the end of the balcony. Just before he disappeared from view, there had been a nanosecond’s worth of expression on his face: why isn’t there any balcony here?
Along with a couple of others, Gyuri had selflessly volunteered to take Fodor and his broken legs to hospital, thereby avoiding the feats of Sergei, who single-handedly repulsed the invading Germans in between repairing his tractor to produce a bumper harvest. Either for fear of ridicule or in pursuit of fresh souls, Fodor never returned.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’ Faragó observed to Ladányi, with the implication that Ladányi was unfairly reserving energy for eating. Even if Faragó had had more fight, the switch to chocolate ice cream was the end. A large chicken’s weight behind Ladányi, Faragó had chosen the sweet to which Ladányi was most partial; Ladányi’s nickname in the troop, ‘Iceman’, came from his mythical disposal of chocolate ice cream, in the days before he had signed up with Jesus. Gyuri wondered whether Ladányi had mentioned to anyone back at Jesuit headquarters that he was popping down to the countryside to out-eat a Party Secretary. However laudable the goal, in an atmosphere of austerity where quips such as ‘Isn’t that the second meal you’ve had this week, Father?’ abounded, this sort of indecorous gourmandise, however much a part of Christian soldiering, must have run the risk of some gruelling rosary work.
‘What would you like me to say?’ inquired Ladányi politely, keeping a spoon full of ice cream from its destination. The whole village was craning forward now, as Faragó was visibly floundering, gazing with resentment at his bowl of ice cream.
‘As the saying goes,’ said Faragó fighting for air, ‘there isn’t room for two bagpipe players in the same inn. We, the working class… we, the instrument of the international proletariat… we will defend the gains of the people…’ Here Faragó jammed, fell off his chair and as if gagging on his propaganda, spilled his stomach on the floor. It looked very much to Gyuri like a job for the last rites.
Ladányi didn’t seemed worried. ‘There are some documents Father Orso has ready for you to sign, I believe,’ he said. The village priest crouched down and offered a pen to Faragó who was sprawled on the floor as if he were thinking about doing a push-up. Saturninely he scrawled a mark on the paper, and, supine, was lugged out inexpertly by the rest of the party cell, limbs lolling.
During their post-micturition conversation, the elderly peasant had also told Gyuri: ‘Take the most rotten individual imaginable and there will always be someone, usually very stupid, but not always, who’ll say no, no, he’s simply misunderstood. Misquoted. Even with murderers, when they write about them in the newspapers, they have a wife or a mother who says he’s not bad, he’s a lovely boy when you get to know him. You ask anyone here to say anything in favour of Faragó; ask people who’ve known him all their lives to say one thing to his credit, just one courtesy, one thank you, one favour – you’ll find the people of this village as quiet as melons in long grass. His own mother, if Faragó was waiting to be executed, would only say things like “Make that noose tighter” or “Is it permissible to tip the hangman?’”
Wiping his mouth with an embroidered napkin, Ladányi stood up briskly as if he had been having a quick snack between important engagements. ‘Well, we have to go now. God bless you all.’ Another hour of hand-kissing and loading up gifts onto the cart followed, but Ladányi resolutely insisted that they should depart since they had an opportunity of catching a train which would get them to Budapest in the morning.
By moonlight, Ladányi looked remarkably thin. Gyuri felt somewhat queasy during the bumpy cart-ride and he was astonished that Ladányi didn’t have any inclination to deswallow. It would be months, Gyuri was convinced, before he would want to eat again. Neumann broke the peregrinational hush: ‘Does that agreement really mean anything? Forgive me for saying so but Faragó looks as if he would roger his grandmother for the price of a drink, or even for free.’
‘Look,’ replied Ladányi, ‘what we did tonight was to act out a morality play. I was asked to come. I couldn’t refuse. I doubt if it will make any difference, not because of Comrade Faragó being probity-free, but because of everything else in the country. This was one night of miniature victory in what will be long years of defeat. I hope it will have some importance for the people in Hálás.’
‘How long do you think this will last?’ asked Gyuri, not sure that he actually wanted to hear the answer.
‘Not long,’ pronounced Ladányi. ‘I’d say about forty years or so. You have to wait for the barbarians to get old, to become soft barbarians.’
This wasn’t an answer Gyuri wanted to hear, particularly coming from Ladányi. ‘Time to leave the country.’
‘Not at all. Firstly, as I’m sure you know, it’s not easy to get out any more, and secondly, and I should point out this is not an idea patented by the Church, matter doesn’t matter. It’s not physical conditions that count, but your opinion of them. Take the farmer in the small village in the middle of China who is the happiest man in the world because he has two pigs and no one else in the village has got one. Living isn’t like basketball, it’s not a question of points, but what’s here.’ Gyuri saw Ladányi touch his forehead with his forefinger. ‘You only lose if you give up- and if you give up you deserve to lose. In basketball, you can be beaten. Otherwise you can only be beaten if you agree to it. You’re lucky, you’re very lucky. We’re living in testing circumstances; unless you’re very dull, you should want to be stretched.’
Thanks for the totalitarianism, Stalin. Gyuri doubted that he would enjoy a prison cell as much as Ladányi. ‘A ticket to Paris would be more fun,’ he retorted ‘Couldn’t I book a few prayers for that?’
‘I’ll be delighted to forward your request, but don’t be too specific, or you might get it. One should pray for the best. Maybe you’ll be happier here than in Paris.’
‘I’m prepared to take that risk. Anything to escape from record-breaking lathe-operators.’
‘Yes, this cult of the worker is a bit wearing. Ironic that it sprang chiefly from a fat, free-loading German academic who never had a job in his life, but just sponged off his acquaintances and who indulged in such very bourgeois practices as impregnating the chamber-maid. And so boring. People often overlook the work of a poor carpenter who chose fishermen as his company.’
They rattled on in the cart for a while.
‘The greatest irony about Marx’s infl
uence is that his books are unreadable,’ Ladányi mused. ‘Perhaps his appeal lies in his unintelligibility, a sort of mysticism through statistics and the wages of textile workers. People will have a good laugh about it one day. But, unfortunately, there are people who believe it, not the ones who’ve joined now, but those who joined before the war, when the movement was illegal. They believe in it and as Church history amply shows crazy ideas can take a long time to die out.’
‘I think it’s a process I’d like to watch closely from a café in New York. I might even find it funny from that distance.’
‘Me too,’ chorused Neumann.
‘The desire to travel is part of your age. You’ve never been out of Hungary, have you? Be careful, people can become very fond of their prisons, you know.’
They arrived at the station in the nick of time to catch the train back to Budapest. Neumann, who had the priceless gift of being able to sleep on trains, bedded down in another compartment on some unclaimed seats, while Ladányi took out a book – the Analects of Confucius. ‘Is it any good?’ Gyuri questioned. ‘Life is too short for good books,’ said Ladányi, ‘one should only read great books.’ ‘How can you tell if it’s great?’ ‘If it’s been around for a couple of thousand years, that’s usually a good sign. This isn’t bad. Some of us younger ones have been told to study Chinese. Our superiors think it’s a growing market. Every year a Jesuit gets a letter containing his orders. I have a feeling they may be getting us out of the country. I think that’s wrong, but that’s where the vow of obedience comes in.’
Gyuri hadn’t been to church since he was fourteen when his mother dragged him to the Easter Mass. Naturally, he had attempted to get in touch with God on several subsequent occasions when he had thought he was going to die but always on the spot, away from church precincts. This was surely the real boon of a religious upbringing: it gave you a number to ring in emergencies, which was some consolation, even if no one answered. Gyuri had met with the various arguments for God’s existence from his partisans, proof through design (‘that’s what I call a well-made universe’), the craftsmanship of the universe (it did seem to be an awful lot of trouble for a practical joke) or Pascal’s way of looking at it, a hundred francs on God each way. But, all in all, the best argument he had come across for taking Jesus’s shilling was that the sharpest razor, Ladányi believed it.
Under the Frog Page 8