Under the Frog

by Tibor Fischer

  The political attaché and the military attaché strolled up to where Nigel had set up his shoe-cleaning business.

  ‘Kadar has finally resurfaced. He’s been broadcasting from somewhere saying he’s established a workers-peasants’ government which has invited the Russians to tidy up. I’d love to count the number of workers and peasants in his government,’ remarked the political.

  ‘Who’s Kadar?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘Was Minister of the Interior under Rákosi. Home-grown Communist as opposed to the Muscovites. Was also a Minister in Nagy’s latest government but he seemed to get tired of it and disappeared a few days ago.’

  ‘Anyone know where he’s been?’ asked the military attaché.

  ‘Somewhere safely Soviet, I’d venture. He’s probably spent the week trying to think up a new configuration of socialist/ worker/party to name his new outfit. But he’s stuck with the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which Nagy thought up. I suppose all the variants have been used up.’

  ‘Mmmm. I suppose it’s time to earn the King’s shilling,’ said the military attaché, stepping out into the Revolution.

  * * *

  You don’t get any braver, you just get tired, bored with fear, thought Gyuri as he scrambled over the wall to land in the Kerepesi Cemetery. He and Kurucz ran through, dodging gravestones and undergrowth. Where were the others? Gyuri wondered. Looking back, he could see the Mongols coming over the wall.

  The return of the Red Army relied largely on troops from Central Asia or some slant-eyed part of the Union. Unlike troops who had been stationed in Hungary and had some idea what was going on, Gyuri had heard the Mongols thought they were fighting at the Suez Canal. They certainly didn’t mind killing people.

  Kurucz signalled that they should make a stand. Gyuri still had enough energy to savour the irony of having a shoot-out in a cemetery; very convenient for the people who had to clean up afterwards. The Mongols moved cautiously, as if expecting American paratroopers to open up on them at any moment. All day Gyuri had been hearing stories about American paratroopers arriving all over Hungary, particularly in places where they weren’t needed. Well, if they didn’t hurry up, it would soon be over.

  A lot of Party people are buried here, Gyuri noted, hoping he could find a cadre tombstone to shelter behind so that it would get shot up.

  Kurucz gave their pursuers a magazine’s worth, really working their cardiovascular systems, maybe nicking one of the yellow bastards. He and Kurucz fell back a few yards further to a gigantic mausoleum, a sort of mini-history of architecture, composed of a dozen different styles, perhaps to cover any changes in fashion up to Judgment Day. It looked awful but must have cost a fortune. ‘In memory of the Gerebend family’ read the inscription. The Gerebend family are going to take some punishment, thought Gyuri.

  He and Kurucz were both short of ammunition. Kurucz still had one grenade but that was it. They could start throwing rocks after that. The Mongols argued loudly about their strategy, a long way off. After a few minutes, one of them appeared, crawling on his belly, weapon cradled in his arms in the textbook manner but out in the open. Did he think he was invisible? It was insulting.

  Gyuri felt a flash of anger on his emotional palate. He’d missed his targets all morning but with his last two rounds he hit the serpentine Mongol. The Mongol turned out to be a screamer, expressing eloquently in a universal language how painful it was to be shot.

  There was more hurried, Asiatic consultation and then from a wide front came small arms fire, chipping away at the Gerebend family’s final abode. Gyuri could tell Kurucz wanted to hang around and try and gouge their eyes out but he indicated they should leave. It was easy. They left the cemetery while the shooting continued with a bit of perfunctory grenade-lobbing. The Mongols would be there for hours before they realised they had used the back door.

  ‘I’m going down the Űllői út,’ said Kurucz.

  ‘You won’t come back,’ said Gyuri, noting by the sound of his voice he was hysterical. He wouldn’t have believed he had enough vigour for that. The Űllői út was a preview of the end of the world, a little localised armageddon. It was safer firing a revolver in your mouth.

  ‘I lived like a worm for a long time,’ said Kurucz, although Gyuri couldn’t envisage Kurucz doing so. ‘I’m glad I can die like a man. Where are you going?’

  ‘Out West. Austria,’ replied Gyuri.

  ‘You won’t come back either.’

  Gyuri threw away his empty gun. If he needed another gun, he could pick one up off any street-corner, and carrying one didn’t do you any favours. ‘The Red Army won’t forget about its outing in Budapest,’ said Kurucz. ‘It’s been… well, people will write about us.’

  Clinging to walls all the way home, Gyuri crashed into the British military attaché, recessed in a doorway, observing the proceedings. The way Gyuri greeted him in English made the attaché realise they were acquainted, though he obviously couldn’t place Gyuri. ‘Awesome, these new tanks,’ he said gesturing at a herd on the other side of Hósök Square, ‘those new guns too, formidable rate of fire.’ Gyuri nodded because he was unable to add anything to the conversation. He merely smiled politely in the way one does when one’s country has been invaded by interesting new tanks. The attaché was carrying an umbrella, Gyuri observed, as all Englishmen should.

  At home, the flat was empty. Elek had, along with everyone else in the block, taken refuge in the cellar, just as they had done during the siege in ’44. In a final act of defiance and rebellion, Gyuri climbed into his bed and slept indefatigably for the next twenty hours in truly passive resistance.

  * * *

  He was woken by István moving around in the lounge. István was taking down a landscape picture off the wall, an oil painting so ghastly that it had been snubbed by legions of plundering Soviet soldiers and even when they had been starving Elek had been unable to find anyone willing to take it off their hands for a few forints. ‘A tank put a machine-gun round through our still life,’ said István. ‘Ilona insisted that I find something to replace it. Been fighting, have you? I can tell you, you look frightening enough.’

  Gyuri rummaged in the kitchen for food, out of reflex rather than hunger. ‘Where’s Jadwiga?’ asked István. The look that Gyuri gave him made everything plain.

  Gyuri started putting on layers of clothing. When he got to his overcoat, he reached into a pocket and put Jadwiga’s effects, some identity cards and rings, on the table. He kept the passport. ‘I need a favour. When things get settled, could you send these to Poland?’ Grabbing his scarf, he said to István. ‘I’m off. Have a good life and so on.’

  Hamstrung by sadness, it was a long walk. Dear God, thought Gyuri, does it really have to be like this? It was colder than usual for November, and it seemed much blacker at six than it should have been, as if the Russians had imported extra darkness with themselves and dawn had given up. There weren’t many trains running, but the Keleti Station had a train, greatly over-subscribed, getting ready to leave. It wasn’t a train taking people anywhere in Hungary, although nominally it had a Hungarian destination. Although no one said so, everyone knew it was the slow train to Vienna.

  The centre of the city had quietened but as the train chugged out of Budapest, passing Csepel Island, explosions could be heard. Csepel, always referred to officially as ‘red’, since it was inhabited exclusively by industrial workers, was the last part of Budapest to hold out. They had a munitions factory. They had anti-aircraft batteries so powerful they could be used to turn most tanks into Swiss cheeses. Their own leaders had told them to give up. They had been instructed to go to hell. Huge columns of smoke had hung immobile over the island all day as if pinned there. People who lived in Csepel had a reputation for tenacity, toughness and an implausible degree of violence second only to Angyalföld.

  There were two people on the train that Gyuri knew. The first, Kórodi, who lived at the other end of Damjanich utca. Gyuri hadn’t seen him for years despite his prox
imity, and it was ironic to bump into him in a dash to see if the border was still open. Clutching his violin-case like a life-belt, Kórodi was very pleased to see Gyuri. ‘Haven’t seen you for a long time,’ said Gyuri sitting next to him in the buffetless buffet car.

  ‘No one’s seen me for a long time,’ said Kórodi laughing. ‘I’ve spent all my time practising. Fourteen hours a day sometimes. No evenings without a violin. No romance. No long baths. No trashy novels. No good novels. I may not be the greatest violinist alive, but I’ve been the hardest working. I cut everything out, because I knew, I knew one day I’d get out and then it would all be worth it. Those lazy bastards in the West won’t know what hit them.’

  ‘The streets may not be paved with gold,’ said a part of Gyuri’s mind responsible for repartee.

  ‘You know what? I don’t care if they’re paved with turds.’

  Gyuri’s other acquaintance was Kurucz. Looking for a seat, Gyuri hadn’t recognised him immediately because most of his face was swathed with bandages. He was leaning on a crutch. What Gyuri could see of his face looked awful, worse than some of the corpses that had been lying around for a couple of days. They didn’t acknowledge each other at first, the old caution having silently returned but an hour out of Budapest, Gyuri noticed Kurucz having a cigarette in the corridor. They had enough space for a hushed conversation.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Gyuri.

  ‘I got killed,’ said Kurucz, speaking with the mellowness of someone who hasn’t eaten or slept for days. ‘Near the Rákoczi út. We were surrounded. Ammunition gone. Have you ever tried to kick a tank in the balls? There was a chance if we surrendered we might live. Not that we were expecting much. There were twelve of us, mostly lads. They lined us up on the spot, shot us and tossed a couple of grenades in for good measure. I was hit in the neck and I don’t have much left ear left. Not to mention a generous helping of shrapnel. It must have looked bad, thank goodness. Next thing I knew I was in a flat being patched up, thinking what lousy wallpaper heaven has; the people who helped me said I was the only one alive.’

  They stared at the blackness outside the window. Solid gloom, a sinister aspic. No features from outside made it through.

  ‘Did we kill too many? Not enough?’ asked Kurucz speaking apropos of the AVO and the Party. ‘They always seem to find replacements. Quislings, shits, like hope, spring eternal.’ Kurucz had done a spell of military service at the border; he offered to take Gyuri through a very green part of it.

  * * *

  Elek, bored in the flat and not eager to find out if he had a job to go to at the hospital, greeted István warmly when he appeared.

  ‘Have you seen Gyuri? I’m getting worried. I managed to buy his favourite cakes. Can you imagine in the middle of all this, the patisserie’s back at work?’

  István sighed at Gyuri’s untidiness. ‘He’s gone,’ he said. That November there was no need to say more.

  ‘Just as he was getting interesting,’ remarked Elek.

  People got off the train at different points once it reached Western Hungary, depending on how they saw their escape. There were families with two, three or even four children and innumerable suitcases, solitary voyagers, couples just carrying each other’s hands, and even a farmer who had voiced intentions of trying to smuggle his prize pig out. There was an atmosphere of a grim holiday excursion.

  Kurucz seemed to know what he was doing, although well on the way to being dead. This, at least, saved Gyuri some thinking. He couldn’t be bothered to be afraid; the events had quelled his terror, if at great cost. They walked slowly towards the border, warily appraising any other figures, most of whom shunned them with as much alacrity and distance as they did. The plan was to get within a kilometre or so of the border, wait till dark, then move.

  There was a thin carpet of snow. Why did it have to be so cold? Gyuri had thought he would remain unmoved by his circumstances but the cold was coming through loud and clear. He wasn’t at all hungry. Nothing like death to dispel appetite; he couldn’t even imagine wanting to eat. He would have happily traded some cold for hunger. However, he couldn’t really complain. Kurucz, who had so much more material to work with, hadn’t grumbled once.

  ‘They’ve taken up the mines, haven’t they?’ asked Gyuri almost as an afterthought, recalling that as an act of friendliness towards Austria, an announcement had been made that most of the fortifications and minefields would be removed.

  ‘Yes, the minefields should have been taken up,’ said Kurucz, continuing, ‘but can you tell me one thing that’s ever been done properly in this country?’

  Towards dusk, according to Kurucz, they were in sight of Austria. There were just trees and snow on all sides. Austria looked remarkably like Hungary. Waiting in the woods, it was so chilling that Gyuri lost touch with several extremities. Circling around to prevent himself completely freezing up, Gyuri stumbled across three bodies, lightly covered with snow: two women, one boy. His emotions, he discovered, were as numb as his fingers.

  The moon was fullish, which wasn’t very encouraging. But, probably because of the cold, they could see the huge light of fires where shadowy sentinels of unknown nationality were gathered, beacons which drew them away. Gyuri and Kurucz moved very unhurriedly, very carefully, but still tripped up and stumbled a lot on a surprisingly uneven border. They were especially circumspect when they reached an open strip which was presumably the former minefield. Although his feet had become very uncommunicative, somehow Gyuri suddenly felt there was something unfield-like under his right foot. He seized up completely.

  Eventually, in a tiptoeing whisper, Kurucz, anxiety and anger split fifty-fifty, asked ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I think I just trod on a mine.’ Gyuri had deduced by the thin light that he was standing on what resembled an unearthed mine, finally, he walked on, surmising that if the mine was going to explode it would have already done so. Soviet rubbish.

  They found a barn. It was no warmer than outside, but it at least gave them the possibility of believing it was. Gyuri spent a few hours in attempted sleep, quivering with cold and misery. As soon as there was a suspicion of dawn, he went out to piss. He could hardly find his dick, it had been so reduced by the cold.

  ‘Right. Let’s find somewhere warm,’ said Kurucz as soon as there was enough light to navigate by. Looking back, Gyuri could see that they were out, because of a faraway row of guard-towers behind them. He was out. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he started to cry. He walked half backwards, as best he could, so that Kurucz wouldn’t see.

  Tears, in teams, abseiled down his face.

  Tibor Fischer

  ***

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