Under the Frog

by Tibor Fischer

  ‘No, regrettably, comrades, we don’t have the time,’ Sulyok apologised, ‘The imperialists don’t rest; remember we have to harden our work discipline.’

  ‘Why not harden a horseprick up your arse?’ commented Tamás, not too softly, as he and Gyuri strolled back to the electrical engines. Loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough for Sulyok to be able to ignore it. Tamás could get away with this – who wanted to die? Tamás was incredibly good at killing people; he had a couple of Iron Crosses and an Order of Lenin to prove it.

  He had been a great hit during the war, in a number of armies, starting with the Hungarians. He didn’t mind being dropped alone behind enemy lines, not eating anything but the odd rat whose head he had to bite off, sitting in puddles that were thinking about becoming ice (the little finger on his left hand had been peeled off by frostbite) and killing Russians until the cows came home. He was an enthusiast of the knife. ‘You know,’ he confided to Gyuri, ‘people don’t like being stabbed.’ After one mission, when he had spent two months dodging around behind Russian lines without resupply, he had been captured (no ammunition) and offered a job on the spot. ‘Killing Russians or killing Germans, you think I give a toss?’

  Tamás was, Gyuri guessed, heading for forty, but he still had the sort of hard, well-defined muscles that would have socialist realist painters fighting for space. He was in charge of insulating the parts of the electrical engines that needed insulating. Gyuri didn’t understand it really, but since he really didn’t do anything, it didn’t matter. Tamás hauled the heavy parts up by chain and then immersed them in a vat full of chemicals which insulated the copper. Despite having been in attendance for months, Gyuri had no idea what the chemicals were or how the process worked. This was because Tamás did everything, while Gyuri watched him intently. It was supposed to be dangerous work and was by the standards of Ganz, well paid; i.e: you had change in your pocket after you had eaten.

  What Gyuri was paid for boiled down to listening to Tamás’s adventures, recent and ancient, which Tamás would recount without a break as he hauled electrical engines up and down. Tamás had a lot of adventures, chiefly because he didn’t seem to sleep very much. He had no fixed abode and looked on renting a room as a waste of money. He slept the three or four hours he needed in some only very noisy part of the factory (as opposed to an unbearably noisy part) curled up on the floor, springing out of his slumber fresh and zestful. Most evenings, however, he didn’t need to sleep at the factory because of an amorous entanglement or transnocturnal carousing.

  Tamás had a unique view of Budapest in terms of the women he had slept with and of the kocsmas he drank in; this topography he would share with Gyuri during their work. A routine Tamás monologue: ‘Yeah, I was over by “The Blind Drunk Blindman”, they do a great Czech beer there. Anyway, I hadn’t been there since I was giving cock to the French Ambassador’s wife’s maid, and it’s just opposite to where I was delivering my dick to the wife of the gypsy violinist who used to play in “The Overflowing Ashtray”, that was the violinist I had to stab, not the one who tried to pay me to keep his wife; she was the one I met behind the “You Can Even Make Wine From Grapes”. That was a great place, you know, I had a marvellous evening there with a Bulgarian girl. I didn’t speak any Bulgarian, she didn’t speak any Hungarian. But then you don’t need to, do you? She had a place that was almost above the “Why Is The Floor Pressing On My Nose?”. I didn’t get out for days.

  ‘So, I was in “The Blind Drunk Blindman”, they were giving me some of the under the counter pálinka, they say the Germans wanted it for their rocket program, when I noticed some really small bloke in there with a good-looking woman. They were sitting next to this group of dockers. Anyway, this bloke leans over to the dockers who are mothering this and mothering that, and says very professor-like “Would you mind not swearing in front of my wife?” You have to admire his bottle but getting upset about swearing in “The Blind Drunk Blindman” is a bit like going into a grocer’s and being shocked by the vegetables. I can see the guy is going to get more kicked around than a football at Ferencvaros on a Saturday afternoon, so I tell the barman to hide away a bottle of the special pig-trough pálinka for me because there isn’t going to be any unshattered glass in a moment and I get over at the right moment to wish one of the dockers the best of health with the boot as he’s giving the guy’s wife’s tits a courtesy squeeze.’

  This episode was representative of Tamás’s evenings, leaving behind five unconscious dockers and two others earnestly searching for their earlobes. ‘They weren’t going to find them, because I swallowed them. Good protein – learned that behind the Don. The police turned up. Think they were thinking about charging me, because the guy I was helping out suddenly choruses up: “That’s him, I saw the whole thing. He’s the ruffian who started it.” Still, the police knew they’d look good and stupid in court explaining how I’d attacked ten dockers. ’Course they took me in for questioning, but they only asked one question: “Where’s the pig-trough pálinka?’”

  Perhaps for Gyuri’s benefit, Tamás was always fastidiously precise about the location of the women with whom he was consorting.

  Thus, Gyuri knew as well as his own address that Tamás’s separated wife lived halfway up Kossuth út in Kobányá, between the ‘Short Dipsomaniac’ and the ‘Tall Dipsomaniac’.

  Tamás also went to great pains to underline that his son, who was ten, got ‘the best pocket money’ in Budapest. Tamás did the work of three people and was remunerated accordingly. As he calculated his pay packet (an hourly event) he would include the information about the superlative status of his son’s pocket money. Tamás’s herculean exertions were a further reason why Gyuri didn’t need to do much (although Pataki who was employed in the section where the copper wire was spun out had absolutely nothing to do but remark: ‘Hey, look at that wire getting stretched’).

  But, from time to time, Tamás would create a task for Gyuri.

  ‘Get a new blade for this hacksaw,’ Tamás requested, which pleased Gyuri as that would fill up the time until lunch. He set off for the stores as slowly as he could to make the most of the trip. When he got there, he was surprised to see a ‘Do not disturb’ sign which looked as if it had been borrowed thirty years previously from a luxury hotel. Inside, the storemaster, who was the Party Secretary of that section of Ganz, was playing cards with three confederates. Gyuri had barely got his foot across the threshold when, without looking at him or noticeably moving his lips, the storemaster said firmly but without rancour: ‘fuckyourmother’. This was said as such an aside, so mechanically, that Gyuri felt it couldn’t have been related to his entry. So he asked: ‘Sorry to interrupt, but…’

  The storemaster wheeled on him: ‘May God and all his holy saints fuck you!’ he exclaimed in what seemed a deplorable lapse for an avowed atheist and a historical materialist. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Fischer.’

  ‘Okay, you’re fired and on your way out stick a horseprick up your arse,’ said the storemaster dismissing him in an enraged tone before turning back to his comrades in cards. ‘Can you believe this? You can’t get a minute’s peace in this place.’

  Returning to his electrical engines, Gyuri pondered the question of whether Gombás, his protector, was in a stronger position than Lakatos, the wing Party Secretary, and if he were fired, did he care that much? He tried to kid himself, but then realised that he did care. Ganz might be bad, but it wasn’t Army bad.

  Tamás was surprised to see Gyuri returning empty-handed. ‘He said that he was too busy and that I’m fired,’ Gyuri reported.

  ‘He does have a cruel sense of humour, that Lakatos,’ said Tamás setting off with the blunted hacksaw. Continuing to meditate on his predicament, Gyuri resolved to alert Gombás immediately to the threat to his employment and went up to Gombás’s office.

  Gombás’s secretary wasn’t there. Neither was Gombás. After repeated polite and clear knocking in order to ensure that he didn’t a
ccidentally spoil a ‘training session’, Gyuri found Gombás’s office to be vacated. He stared at Gombás’s black telephone. The idea of picking up the receiver and putting a call through to abroad, somewhere, anywhere West, sneaked into his mind. He toyed with the idea of just doing it, of placing a call, just to hear them say ‘Hello’ or ‘Good morning’, just to hear the sound of abroad, the crackle of free air, the ineffable language of out. The prospect xylophoned excitement along his spine.

  He enjoyed toying with the idea for a few minutes, knowing for a variety of reasons, first and foremost, a lack of guts, he wouldn’t attempt it but he fully savoured the opportunity. He imagined picking up the receiver and asking in a Gombás-like voice for New York, Paris, London, Berlin even Cleveland, Ohio. It was five of the best minutes he had spent for a very long time.

  Then he restarted his worries on getting the sack. Where was Gombás? Had he embarked on a talent-scouting tour? Would he be in the army before Gombás paid another visit to his office? Going back to the shopfloor, Gyuri bumped into Pataki sauntering down a corridor, bouncing a basketball on the floor and off the walls, wearing his sunglasses. Presumably he had run out of wire to watch. Gyuri recounted his problems while Pataki bounced the ball furiously around a portrait of Rákosi. ‘I always envisaged you as a military man,’ said Pataki with the total lack of sympathy only a close friend could muster. ‘No, don’t laugh. I’ve never seen anyone who can rival your genius for digging trenches. In recognition of your trench-digging alone you should make General. And I hear military service is being extended to three years, that should give you plenty of time.’ Pataki then moved off into the offices to dazzle dazzleable young women with his dribbling skills.

  Even though he was highly exercised about his own perils, Gyuri couldn’t suppress a pang of anxiety about Pataki who wasn’t slowing down his disregard. He had always been the one to get them into trouble, the self-evident, self-incriminating trouble such as the scout camp where they had drunk all the communion wine, all the communion wine at Pataki’s suggestion. There had been no hope of getting away with it. Father Jenik had been justifiably furious, but since there had only been three days of the camp left, there had only been three days of real wrath and punishment. This camp could be longer…

  Bearing two new blades, Tamás reappeared. ‘I told you he was pulling your leg. He’s a good lad, old Lakatos. He wouldn’t let me leave without giving me this carton of cigarettes. I didn’t want to take them, but he really pressed me.’ Tamás gave Gyuri two packets.

  Then it was lunch. The weather was a muscular sunshine so most employees went out into the yard to eat whatever they had managed to lay their hands on. Zsigmond and Partos, the two priests, were sitting next to each other, dealing with their bread and cheese, conversing in Latin, polishing their only remaining Catholic weapon. No one paid any attention to them any more. The workers were quite accustomed to the strange workfellows that had descended on them. Priests, accountants, diplomats, cartographers, nobility, all undextrous to a man. There was a great campaign going on for ‘sharing working methods’. Posters, films, exhortations in print and in person were undodgeable. One of the newsreel versions of this appeal that Gyuri had seen featured a seasoned old worker, complete with the beret that was the hallmark of proletarianness, who having ignored the frustrated bunglings of the fresh-faced youth on the lathe next to him, reads the ‘Free People’ editorial on the imperativeness of sharing working methods. The old worker is forthwith struck down with shame at his laxness. Instantly, he rushes over to introduce the boy to the delights of advanced lathe-turning.

  This was essentially the Party saying: you’d better train each other because we’re not going to spare the time or cash to do so. While everyone in the works would rather have been dead than carrying out what the Party had urged, if for no other reason than not wanting to waste valuable earning-time, they had provided guiding help and encouragement to the newcomers who had been dropped into the midst of the factory without knowing how to do the job, and often not even knowing what the job was. They were silently acknowledged as domestic exiles.

  Gyuri was warmly greeted by Csokonai, who was sitting scribbling away furiously on a mess of sheets on his lap. Csokonai had been a lecturer at the University, an expert on international law, a decent man, if tiresome in anything but the smallest doses, who looked on Gyuri as an ally. Having noted that Csokonai had a bulging bag of crisp apples, Gyuri sat down next to him, amazed at what he would do for a good bite. Csokonai was in a incessant state of fury with only slight adjustments in the volume. He had explained to Gyuri several times, firmly gripping him by the wrist (with prodigious force for a skinny lawyer): ‘They replaced me with an idiot. An idiot. An idiot. A man who knew nothing, nothing. You must believe me.’ Csokonai would repeat this just to leave no doubt that he wasn’t using idiot as a figure of speech, but as a purely technical term. Gyuri always agreed adamantly, because he wanted his wrist released and because he found it plausible that some cadre who had flicked through the paperback edition of Lenin on International Law had got Csokonai’s job. Over sixty, Csokonai was too old to take it; he couldn’t even attempt to roll with the punches. Most of his lunchbreak was spent compiling further violations of national and international law and principles. ‘I’ve really got them now,’ he snarled. ‘They’ll pay, they’ll pay. This nonsense can’t last forever and then they’ll pay.’

  What Csokonai was doing was extremely dangerous and Gyuri had no intention of frequenting him any longer than was necessary to obtain an apple or two. The other week, a worker who had either too much pálinka or hardship had suddenly burst out with: ‘They say that under Horthy, Hungary was the land of two million beggars. Well at least under Horthy it was just the beggars who were beggars and not the whole sodding country. I can’t feed my family on this.’ A black car had been waiting for him outside the gates. ‘We have a few questions. It’ll only take five minutes.’ No one had seen him since, but then no one had ever seen again those people whom the Russians had invited for ‘malenky robot,’ a little work five years ago.

  Being an old-world courtesy fiend, Csokonai handed over three apples which Gyuri could only bring himself to refuse once. Mulling over how egg-shell thin dignity was when your belly was yelling, Gyuri returned to work to find Sulyok talking to Tamás: ‘Listen, Tamás, we need a little favour, we’re having some comradely difficulties.’ It took Sulyok some time to spit it out, but the problem was this: there was only one place manufacturing the machine tools Ganz needed and for some reason – enmity, superior bribery, incompetence, kinship, the machine tools were being shipped to other factories, not to where they were needed at Ganz, where despite Stakhanovite book-cooking, the Three Year Plan was not being fulfilled. ‘Tamás, could you go over there and explain in a constructive, fraternal and socialist manner the absolute dire necessity for some urgent supplies to aid the intensification of the Three Year Plan fulfilment situation?’

  ‘You want me to hijack one of their deliveries, right?’ asked Tamás.

  Taken aback by this uncomradely language, Sulyok winced, but didn’t blab anymore. ‘Yes,’ he said, handing over a set of lorry keys. ‘Take Gyuri and some of the other lads if you need.’ It’s all about having the right skills for the right task, Gyuri thought. You can read Lenin on International Law, but no amount of reading Lenin on ambushing and highway robbery could help you if you didn’t know the business.

  Tamás picked up Palinkas, another well-known pugilist, and an apprentice jaw-breaker, Bod. As they were pulling out by the front gates, Gyuri noticed Pataki, apprehended by two security men who were unwinding a long length of copper wire from underneath his shirt. Smiling, Gyuri waved, looking forward with keen anticipation to hearing how Pataki could talk his way out of that one.

  Tamás dropped everyone off, one by one, wherever they wanted to go, before putting his foot down on the accelerator to head off to the Zuglo where the machine tool factory was located. ‘Don’t worry, I can take ca
re of it on my own,’ he said to Gyuri with an expectant grin on his face, slipping his knife in between his teeth.

  At home, Gyuri found Elek still parked in his armchair, but entertaining Szocs, his former doorman who came monthly to pay his respects. Szocs was the only one of Elek’s old staff who made the effort to seek him out and he was made welcome because of that and also, more saliently, because he always brought a package of food from his farming cousins. His mother had always complained that Elek showered his staff with holidays and bonuses, though as Gyuri recalled, Szocs, who had been on duty outside Elek’s office, had never copped any of the goodies.

  Szocs was inescapably stuck in cheerfulness but went up a jubilation or two when he saw a younger Fischer. ‘How are you, Gyuri? Settling down yet? Thinking about getting married?’ Gyuri knew he was at the age when everyone was immensely inquisitive as to what he was doing with his willy, so he was prepared for this sort of inquiry from his seniors; he was as keen to be castrated as to get married but he laughingly denied major romance with good grace. Someone who had come halfway across Budapest to deliver food was entitled to question away. Gyuri discerned an opened package of goose crackling, and started to make arrangements digestively.

  Looking down the finger he was pointing at Gyuri as if down the barrel of a gun, Szocs remarked: ‘You’ll know when you find the right one, you’ll know.’ Gyuri nodded concurringly as one does towards someone who has mustered goose crackling. ‘I knew the moment I saw my wife,’ he said chuckling. This surprised Gyuri because he had only seen Mrs Szocs once, and his first, last and lasting impression was of consummate ugliness; he had always imagined that Szocs married her out of charity, or that their wedlock was a further symptom of Szocs’s chronic misfortune rather than elective affinities. Szocs’s life was one of round-the-clock calamity: an orphan, he had been shipwrecked as a cabin-boy, lost the use of one eye from an infection, lost his toes from frostbite in a Russian prisoner of war camp, lost both his children in the great dysentery epidemic of 1919. You just had to laugh. There was surely more disaster in his past, but unusually for a Hungarian with such promising material to draw on, Szocs was very niggardly in passing out the details of his years.