Under the Frog

by Tibor Fischer

  ‘We’re here to protect you from hooligans and reactionaries,’ the officer protested.

  ‘Where are the hooligans? Where are the reactionaries?’ It was an intriguing exchange, but Gyuri had had enough current affairs for one day. Going up the stairs, he met Jadwiga coming down.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said sternly.

  ‘Time flies when you’re having a revolution.’

  Inside, Elek greeted them with the news that Imre Nagy had formed a new government. ‘I’m pleased for him,’ said Gyuri, ‘but if you’ll excuse us, there are some urgent aspects of Hungarian-Polish relations to consider.’

  * * *

  Why shouldn’t things be conducted in comfortable conditions? thought Gyuri, glad that he had obtained a fully-qualified bed from Pataki as his farewell present. Worn out by history, worry, fear and his conjugal work, he was reclining into sleep when Jadwiga said apropos of nothing:

  ‘We are winning. It will be Poland next.’

  He loved her craziness. Did it really matter what went outside the bedroom where they had established a bad-free zone? ‘Who knows, maybe even the Czechs will do something?’ Jadwiga continued, recounting her day out in the revolution and how she had come to Budapest. On Saturday, the students at Szeged University had held a meeting, as was suddenly the fashion, to discuss the pervasive iniquity of things. ‘It was the first time in my life I’ve seen anything that could even loosely be called democratic. Strange that I had to wait twenty-two years to see someone saying what they thought in public; there was something almost improper about it. So we voted to withdraw from that Communist-guided student union and to set up our own. I told them we had to do it. I remembered what you said about fighting all the way. That pushed me.’

  Gyuri strained his memory but he couldn’t recall any such dictum.

  The Szeged students had then voted to send a delegation to the university youth of Budapest to urge them to do the same. Jadwiga had arrived in Budapest on Monday night but hadn’t wanted to come and break the back of Gyuri’s sleep by saying hello at four in the morning. She had then been touring the collapse of the Party’s power. While Gyuri had been sheltering behind Stalin, she had been at the Corvin cinema, with one of the best seats in town to watch the fighting. Gyuri related his various encounters with Soviet tanks.

  ‘Were you afraid?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he lied, choosing a tone of cool indifference to the lethal nature of Soviet armour but not one of scorn, since he didn’t want to overdo it.

  ‘I wasn’t afraid either,’ she said. Not for the first time, Gyuri registered that Jadwiga was much braver than he was. A soul as firm as her breasts, beauty and fortitude, Venus and Mars in one. And her bravery was a self-fuelling, independent, detached bravery, the sort that would work alone, in the dark, in the gas chamber. What is she doing with me? Gyuri could envision rustling up some bravado if there was an audience or some support, but the sort of solo bravery that exists even though there is no one to witness or mark it was, he knew, beyond him.

  Could doing brave things make you brave, as push-ups made you stronger? Was courage bone or muscle? Something that was meted out at birth or something that was up to you?

  They vacated the bedroom to merge the food Gyuri had bought into an omelette. After they had eaten, Jadwiga went out of the kitchen and reappeared with a submachine-gun, the classic davai guitar, which she placed on the table. ‘Do you have anything to clean this with?’ she asked. Gyuri caught Elek looking at him with vast amusement.

  * * *

  The only thing that would have been more unlikely than a revolution, thought Gyuri arriving at the British Embassy with a folder full of AVO documents showing that a British diplomat had been spying for the AVO, would have been my arriving at the British Embassy with a folder full of AVO documents showing that a British diplomat had been spying for the AVO.

  He rang the bell. After a suitably dignified pause, the door was opened, Gyuri was pleased to see, by Nigel. ‘Good morning,’ said Gyuri in his floweriest pronunciation. ‘How are you, Nigel? Do you know if the Ambassador is free?’

  ‘Actually, he’s a Minister Plenipotentiary, but don’t let that stop you.’ Gyuri had no idea what Nigel was talking about but didn’t want his status as a star English speaker to be diminished. He had met Nigel three days earlier, during the heaviest of the fighting. The agreement had been that anything moving down the Nádor utca would get it. They had a heavy machine-gun set up ready to rip, which was hogged by a surly, burly coal miner from Tatabánya, who didn’t like anyone coming anywhere near it. ‘I was a gunner in the Army, all right? I know how to use this thing. I don’t want anyone messing around with it, I don’t want anyone fucking it up.’

  He didn’t take any breaks and he urinated on the spot, because he didn’t want to let go of the machine-gun or let it out of his sight. When the car appeared, the miner immediately misfired the gun, which was just as well since it gave everyone time to distinguish the Union Jack tied sloppily to the bonnet of the car. The car trundled up respectfully to their position, and as the miner continued to swear, to curse the quality of Soviet manufacturing standards and to eject cartridges left, right and centre, Nigel had got out and said cheerfully, ‘Good afternoon. Is there by any chance anyone here who speaks English and who knows the way to the British Legation?’ Gyuri had earned this conversation.

  Nigel had the elegant garb of a top spy, a rising diplomat: someone, in short, well worth getting to know. But in fact he said he was an aspiring opera singer, studying in Vienna. With a friend, he had driven to Budapest to deliver medical supplies. There was no one else who spoke English, but even if there had been they wouldn’t have had a chance. Gyuri took charge, exulting in every well-spent forint of his English lessons. ‘And how do you like Budapest, Nigel? Let me escort you to the Embassy. And do tell me what you think of Viennese women.’

  A week after the start of the revolution it was all over, barring the history-writing. To Gyuri’s amazement, to everyone’s amazement, and no doubt most of all, to the Russians’ amazement, the part-timers of Budapest had beaten the Red Army. True, a lot of the Russians hadn’t been very eager to fight, most of them had been based in Hungary for some time and seemed to understand what they were being asked to do and that they weren’t combating international fascism or the Hungarian underworld but the populace of Budapest. Indeed the only Russian Gyuri had seen who was wholly enthusiastic about trigger-pulling had been a Russian deserter he had met at the Corvin who had been fighting his former colleagues.

  But the main problem for the Russians, who had been counting on the AVO to pull their weight, had been that, without proper infantry support, their tanks had been bizarrely vulnerable in the streets of Budapest. People simply waited for a tank to pass and then for the price of a good drink, lobbed their petrol bomb on the rear of the tank, where the burning fuel would be sucked in through the ventilation grilles of the T-34s and into the engine, turning the occupants of the tank into charcoal sticks; those fast enough to avoid being burned were shot as they clambered out.

  Imre Nagy formed a new new government, one this time with a few people who hadn’t been in the Communist Party. Ceasefire. Exultation. Hungarians had fought their way to paradise.

  Along with many other curious folk, Gyuri and Jadwiga had taken a look in the White House, which appropriately enough for a revolution looked as if it had been turned upside down, all the drawers and shelves emptied as people indulged their prurience or just enjoyed themselves making a mess. ‘You always choose the most romantic places for outings, Gyuri,’ she remarked. The first document Gyuri picked up to read was a file detailing the blackmailing of a British diplomat who had been apprehended smuggling gold and then moulded by the AVO. Gyuri grabbed the file and headed for the British Embassy, pleased that he had found a bridge to more civilised parts, leaving Jadwiga to studiously read, slowly and carefully the way she always did, from the vast anthologies of turpitude.

  With rema
rkable speed and ease, perhaps because of a good word from Nigel, perhaps because of the informality of the times, Gyuri was shown in to see the Ambassador, who received the file with courtesy. He puffed on his pipe, manifestly at home in the revolution and pored over the first few pages. ‘Ah. Dawson. Yes,’ he thought out loud.

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Fischer. It’s very kind of you to bring this round.’ It took fifty seconds; Gyuri was out almost as fast as he had got in. He hadn’t been expecting anything in particular, though some gold bullion, a British passport, a job offer, something like that would have been quite acceptable. A little excitement and incredulity as a minimum. The Ambassador showed him out as if he had just return a stray button from the Ambassador’s overcoat.

  In the waiting-room, next to the entrance, Nigel was chatting with a man whom Gyuri had met before, The Times correspondent. Gyuri had been excited to meet him because The Times was The Times, and also because everyone knew that their foreign correspondents worked for British Intelligence, although the correspondent did a good job of disguising it. In fact his behaviour was rather dim. Brilliant cover. Gyuri admired professionalism. There was also a broad, military figure who looked as if he would be happiest inspecting rifles, who sure enough, was introduced to Gyuri as the military attaché.

  ‘What do you make of the new government?’ asked The Times, presumably looking for some good quote.

  ‘It’s fine. I approve of it, while it lasts.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Russians will be back.’

  There was gentle British scoffing at this statement. In the few days he had been dealing with live Brits, Gyuri had rapidly become attuned to how the British had reached a level of civilisation where they could clearly tell you how stupid you were, without actually having to say so; that’s what cricket and centuries of parliamentary democracy could do for you.

  ‘The Russians have given an undertaking to leave. I saw Mikoyan in the parliament with my own eyes, the man was in tears over losing Hungary,’ explained the correspondent. ‘They’re leaving. They have no choice.’

  Gyuri had had the same argument that morning with Elek who was cock-a-hoop over the news. ‘I told you this couldn’t go on much longer,’ Elek had said. Gyuri summoned up a simplified, profanity-free version of his thesis for British consumption.’I know the Russians have lost one fight. They are leaving. But I do not believe they will say: “Oh. You want to be independent. We’re so sorry we didn’t understand that you didn’t want us here.” They will return.’

  There was more quivering of stiff upper lips in amusement at the wary Hungarian who had no grasp of the international situation. ‘No,’ pronounced the military attaché, ‘they’re finished here.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said The Times, ‘I’m willing to bet you five pounds that they don’t come back. You can give me a few Hungarian lessons when I win.’

  ‘I hope you do win,’ said Gyuri.

  Jadwiga had told Gyuri to meet her at the Corvin and going there he stopped on the Körút to buy a newspaper. A Soviet corpse was still lying there, an unusual sight now, since the dead had been mostly packed away out of sight. Something metallic glinted on his wrist. It looked familiar: an Omega watch, like the one the Red Army had relieved him of back in ’44, exactly the same model. He undid the strap, and looked on the back of the watch. There were the initials Gy. R ‘Thanks very much for looking after it,’ he said, pocketing the watch.

  Walking across to the newsagent, a shout stopped him. It was Róka. ‘Hey class alien! This is what you want,’ he said, handing Gyuri one of the stack of papers he was nursing. ‘Kill anyone interesting?’ he enquired. ‘Not really,’ Gyuri replied, ‘but I was being choosy.’ Róka had spent most of the livefire time chasing a lorryload of AVO who were keen on surprise atrocities; they would flip open the flaps on the lorry’s rear and blast away at anyone in view, male or female, young or old, unarmed or unarmed. Róka’s crew had missed them several times by seconds. The story ended with the AVO being last seen motoring in the direction of the Angyalföld. ‘They couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes,’ Róka obituarised. The paper that Róka had handed over was entitled The Truth. ‘I’m working on the editorial committee,’ he explained proudly. ‘Oh, before I forget, Hepp wants everyone out at the club at Hepp-time, Monday morning. He says we’ve wasted enough time.’ With a parting injunction to look up Gyurkovics, who had managed to get himself put in charge of the distribution of a vast amount of processed cheese from Switzerland, Róka carried on down the street dishing out his journal to anyone willing to take it.

  Gyuri had never thought he would ever in his life earnestly want to read a Hungarian newspaper. Newspapers were now teeming with the sort of increases that could normally only be found in the production figures of Communist enterprises.

  The old papers had changed, they had received editorial transplants and new ones were springing up like mushrooms. They weren’t much good but you did have the novel sensation of wanting to read what they had to say. You couldn’t tell before you read the paper what would be in it; now you got all those things that hadn’t been there for nearly ten years, opinions that weren’t the Party’s. Casting his eye over The Truth, Gyuri read some soggy new poetry, some exhausted old poetry and some articles about the 23rd which hardly counted as news. It was still a pleasure to read.

  After the fighting, the tidying up. Everywhere, shattered glass, masonry and martial litter was being victoriously swept up by the city-proud populace. Soviet wreckage was being pushed out of roads so that traffic could circulate properly. Everyone was on their best behaviour as if the Revolution was an honoured guest they wanted to impress with their hospitality and civility. A bubble of decency had risen out of the earth’s core and burst in Budapest. Peasants were driving in from the countryside with their carts to distribute food to whoever they came across, dishing out sacks of potatoes, apples, marrows, some late melons. In a broken jewellers’ window Gyuri saw a note explaining that the contents had been taken to the flat above for safe-keeping. There were cardboard boxes on pavements marked ‘for the fallen’, overflowing with banknotes contributed for the dependents of the dead.

  The worst fighting or the best fighting depending on how you felt about it had all been around the Corvin Cinema. The Corvin Cinema was not a very salubrious or comfortable cinema, as a cinema it wasn’t much to brag about, but as if with astonishing forethought, it couldn’t have been better designed for street fighting. The circular cinema was surrounded by a ring of flats with lots of convenient alleyways in and out.

  But the Corvin had not been the only streetfighting club. All over Budapest they had jack-in-the-boxed. Even around the Corvin, there had been stiff competition: the Prater utca school, just behind the Corvin, and, just across the road, on the other side of the Űllői út, the Kilián Barracks, the home of a ‘C’ battalion, a collection of soldiers considered by the authorities to have no commitment to the cause of Communism, who had been down for even more than the usual excessive ditch-digging and road-laying and who generally had a menial, unpaid, unfed time and who had been particularly interested to hear about the Revolution.

  As if that wasn’t enough, running parallel to the Űllői út which had been the major route into Budapest for the Soviet troops, was the Túzoltó út, a ludicrously narrow street which had sired its own warriors, known locally reasonably enough, as the Túzoltó boys, who had pulled off one of the neatest coups of the fighting, known locally as the Túzoltó massacre. Seeing that his comrades were having nasty, mainly fatal, accidents on the Űllői út as they came to look for hooligans and reactionaries, a Soviet tank commander had made the decision to go down Túzoltó út. Five tanks had gone in, but none had come out.

  ‘We got the first tank and we got the last tank,’ one of the participants (a leading water-polo player) had related to Gyuri. ‘So the other three were stuck there. They weren’t going anywhere. We had a break for lunch and then we finished them off.’ So
gorged was Túzoltó út with bits of Soviet tanks that the boys had to move their operations to another street.

  When Gyuri arrived at the Corvin, as always there were lots of groups congregated outside the cinema; the necessity to be out on the street hadn’t diminished. People wanted to see history with their own eyes. The anti-tank gun was still out by the entrance with a sign ‘retained by popular demand’ propped up on the barrel; people were still carrying their weapons, despite the call for people to start handing them in. Jankó, the commander of the Corvin’s single anti-tank battery, was hobbling about on his wooden leg and didn’t look as if he would be paying heed. He had a rifle in his hand, a greatly-prized AK-47, the latest Soviet assault rifle, slung over his back, a holstered pistol and a bayonet peeking out of the top of the boot on his good foot. Indisputably a man who was afraid of missing an opportunity of killing some Russians, Jankó had certainly done a faultless job on the anti-tank gun, six tanks burst open like popcorn, one shot apiece. Not surprisingly in a man with such homicidal proficiency and a knack for the gadgets of death, he had a mean set to his face. Gyuri could imagine him working as a rat-catcher, getting a kick out of killing small mammals, until larger, more Soviet ones came along.

  Jadwiga, true to form, was nowhere to be seen where she should have been seen. Gyuri glanced in at a few of the meetings that were taking place, but he couldn’t see her. Now the fighting was over, people were doing one of two things, either holding meetings or painting the old national insignia on everything. The meetings, initially bracing and euphoric, were lurching towards tedium. The absence of free association had been wearing, but it was like not reading a book for five years and then trying to read five at the same time to make up. Creedal orgies, nationwide.