by Alan Duff
Béla has somehow acquired three loaves of good fresh bread, normally available only to the privileged class. My contribution is spek, smoked bacon fat, which was always my father’s favourite. I stole it from a State food store and very nearly got caught. Had to run for it, pursued by some employee eager to please his masters.
I have ready by the plate Papa’s deer-antler knife, handed down several generations, father to son. He used to tell us it symbolised our family pride, our family tendency for defiance. Papa’s ritual was to put one end of the spek in his mouth, hold the other and slice it off close to his mouth, a lot faster if his sons were watching, followed up with his deep bass chuckling. Now the knife sits untouched on the table and he has picked up the spek and bitten a piece off. I feel let down, how could he not have gone straight for the knife?
Two years of planning what we would say to each other, and all we get is strained silence, the deadening presence of a man who seems dead inside, if his fish-like stare is to go by. He hasn’t even uttered our mother’s name, Ilona.
Finally, Grandma Lili speaks. Well, your condition says it was a nightmare. So how do we start the healing, my beloved son?
Healing? He comes forward in his chair, mouth open, stops chewing. Healing what? I am not ill. Just lost some weight that’s all.
No, my son, that is not all. You have come home shed of more than kilos — (and muscles, I want to remind them). Look at you. Go to a mirror, see what they have done to you.
Mother, I do not wish to look at myself in a mirror. Don’t talk to me like a child when I am almost forty years of age. I will be fine.
There is more than tension in his voice, it’s in his teeth, we can hear them grinding together. He’s come to the edge of his chair and the edge of some internal cliff. I fear he might fall off.
I have just come home from gaol, what do you expect? A man in a suit back from Paris? Freshly back from a stroll down a Viennese boulevard? Try cleaning up dead men’s shit-soiled trousers.
I am his son — his favourite, whether he admits it or not. I don’t mind he’s all out of kilter, what could we expect? I don’t mind if we soon have to listen to him with our mother sexually — it’s been two years. But I need to know if he’s come home whole — no, not whole, that can’t be. We’ve seen enough come out of gaol and not a few out of their minds. I want to know he’s on the mend.
Papa? I go to tell him it’s all right, that we understand, but he gets up and leaves the room; the feast hardly started. And the women are crying again, Béla is tearful. Except I’m in that place where tears don’t fall; and those being shed around me don’t even register as anything except a minor irritation. Maybe even triggering my contempt.
Béla and I escort Grandma home on the tram, to the ugly, raw concrete building they moved her and Grandpa to a few years ago, in industrial Pest. Grandpa is too ill to have welcomed his son back. Some welcome it turned out to be. Gran mumbled and wept the whole way in front of a quarter-full tram.
On the return journey, I refuse to be solicited by Béla’s asking eyes what I think of Papa’s condition. I am safe in my new world. Where pain doesn’t reach.
That is how I can take what we hear happening in the bedroom, where we were conceived ourselves, an act that sounds the opposite of conceiving child, or love-making. We’re not stupid, we knew that is what they would do, which was why we were quick to offer to escort Grandma home, even though she hardly needed our company; she is tough despite her tears. We thought they’d do the business then. Maybe they did and he’s doing it again. I-will-not-cry.
What the hell’s he doing to Mama, Tilla?
(I have no idea.) Getting used to sharing a bed, I guess.
That’s not a sharing we’re hearing, it’s — he’s hurting her.
I know. I think he’s taking it out on her (and she’ll endure. Mothers always do.) Are you crying?
Yes, he’s crying. And I don’t blame him. We’ve never heard this before, it’s quite impossible. Not our papa, not Sándor who would not even retaliate if a man his physical lesser struck him. The Sándor Szabó we know would not hit a woman and do whatever sexual distress he’s causing his beloved Ilona. (But I will not cry.)
If I did cry, then when I was through I’d go to my father and tell him, Don’t hurt our mama anymore or I will kill you. I, your beloved Tilla, will kill you.
Fuck, a stranger is in our home.
Who is this beaten man in our house? How I am starting to despise him. Why didn’t he roar at his gaolers that he is Szabó Sándor, a fighter, a warrior, whom they’ll never break but never?
What did all his words, his teachings, mean in my twelve-year lifetime, to end up looking like this? Look at him: brown hair turned grey, and a year off forty. But it’s what’s missing in the eyes that says it. It’s like a neon sign reading: THEY BEAT SÁNDOR SZABÓ.
He brought us up on the teaching: anyone hits you, hit him back ten times. So why aren’t his knuckles all scarred and busted up from smashing back at his gaolers? Why has he stopped, virtually, talking?
Papa, Papa, please come back the man you were. If you talk to me I’ll remind you of what you taught us, as I know they’ve done something to your memory. Look how you move about like in a dream.
Then the letter came from the Interior Ministry and we all knew what it was, but you opened it and shrugged and gave this strange smile and said, It’s formal then: I’m X classification. You could have been saying you were going out for a walk, as if it hardly mattered. Yet in the long, heaving sigh you gave forth it could not have mattered more. To be told you were no longer a man, no longer a worthy citizen, as if already they haven’t done enough to you.
X. My father is classified X, his family, therefore, with him. We’re on their books, on the ÁVH blacklist. We’re just another family they intend destroying, but they will never destroy me; I’ll take my refusal, my screaming fury, into the grave they end up putting me in. I’ll die but then I’ll never die. Somehow I’ll keep my hatred alive and come back at all of you.
Why do they do this to a man, when already they’ve sucked the life juices out of him? Why don’t we, the Hungarian people, rise up and revolt? It’s been done before in our history, many times. Petőfi and Bem did it, rose up against the Austrians in 1848. Why can’t we, a century later, rise up, too?
The letter informs him that three days from its date he is to report for work at a factory in Csepel, a big industrial area. He doesn’t read this out, our mother does, snatching the letter from him and reading it with clenched teeth and brimming eyes, that cold, impersonal way they write, even though they’re causing a man, his family, so much anguish.
My father shrugs and says, Oh well, I did every miserable, lowly chore there is. They can’t hurt me any more.
When they’ve already more than hurt him.
My mother’s had enough. Sándor, we don’t know what they did to you in there because you won’t tell us, not even I, your faithful wife who suffered every moment in there with you.
Then she seems to grow taller, rises up on her toes to near match my father’s height, and says, But whilst you’re in this house, you owe to us, to yourself, the promise that you’ll come back fighting again. I don’t care how long it takes, just as long as you promise it will happen.
And she steps right up to him, like a man challenging another to a fight. Do you hear me? I said: Do you hear me?
(Papa, your manhood is on the line here. Please grab it, even if at first by promise alone. Please, Papa, think of me, your son, whom you brought up to be the warrior.)
No, he doesn’t hear her. Yes, he does. We can’t be quite sure, for he’s one moment nodding, next shaking his head. And blinking as if about to step into the sunlight of some ineluctable truth, but he’s too afraid to come out of the shadows.
(Come on, Papa, roar at Mama that you hear her. Raise one of your mighty fists and promise you’ll have us witness it beating some fucking Ávós to a pulp. Let’s go find one and slit h
is fucking throat. We’ll learn how to make home-made bombs and blow some up in their car.)
But he says nothing, just turns away and walks so slowly we don’t at first realise he’s moving. I find myself laughing hysterically, and saying, He’s only gone away to find the right words for the promise. I tell you.
Yet, inside, my laughter is weeping and my teeth are gnashing. What boy’s wouldn’t if he’s just lost his father a second time?
BAD NEWS COMES in waves. A few weeks after my father’s return, the Ávós came to my school and took my closest friend János Örkény away. Three grown men marched into the class to arrest one teenage schoolboy. They were wearing the pale-blue uniform the minions have to start off in, until they graduate to the plain clothes, and the distinctive brown leather shoes that signify membership of the élite of State terrorists.
Their arrival electrifies the classroom and they know it. Standing there, thinking we believe their menace means the substance of each man, when these are not men — I can see weakness, inadequacy, low intelligence oozing out every pore. And I ache to return with my own baleful stare at their slow eyes. I ache to get up and start punching every smarmy face.
I see those who look fearfully away, and the cowards. I see the eyes of sons and daughters of government officials signalling that their families are on the State side; those who sit smugly safe because their fathers are high-up officials.
I see the Jewish boy’s eyes on fire with desire to be one of these Ávós officers, the power, the revenge it will gain him. I see the girls giving out the only weapon they possess, sexuality, the slut’s you-can-have-me look. I see them all, my classmates, and then I see my dear friend, János.
At his desk beside me, János whispers out the side of his mouth, Tilla, I think my father’s activities have done for me. Calmly. Like a man.
Then he stares at the Ávós, as the one in charge murmurs questions at the teacher — we are in a history class and learning about the glorious growth of Communism — and the teacher points out my best friend. She is Judas in a skirt. And my brave, courageous friend, gives back a smile, then looks at me and says, Did you hear my name called?
(Yes, it was your name: Örkény János. But it should have followed with calling you hero. Defender of truth, like all your warrior Örkény family are. Not traitor of the State now arresting you.)
The teacher nods gravely, with that glazed, disowned expression; in the instant, this young mid-twenties woman has gone from attractive to ugly. No, more than ugly: heartless. And I was close to breaking the promise to myself of never shedding tears again.
The trio of Ávós eyes fell on poor János, like beasts given their meal.
Goodbye, Tilla, he said as he stood up so abruptly his chair fell backwards and the rattle was like rifle shots. The sound shook the hero’s classmates more than his being arrested. He strode to the front of class and said, I am János Örkény. What have I done wrong? I am just a schoolboy.
A schoolboy of thirteen. Tall, lean, tough, and anti-authority like me; we used to talk for hours of being gangsters with our own Budapest territories. We’d start off in District V, dubbed Chicago — after the American city and era of gangsters — where even the Communists couldn’t break the culture of unruly, wild residents who controlled the whole city’s illegal activities. From the Chicago district we’d rule all of Budapest, then the provinces. But we’d be good gangsters, hurt only those who deserved it, we’d give the people our version of democracy, which we have heard about from illicit listening to Szabad Európa Rádió.
We’d grow up and overthrow Rákosi’s government. Cut off the fat dictator’s head and parade it through both sides of the city, Buda and Pest, separated by the Duna, to cheering, adoring crowds. Our soldiers would all be young like us, for only youth has retained an indomitable spirit in this land so long oppressed by the different regimes. Every revolution has figured youth fighters.
Or we’d start at the top: Stalin. Catch a train to Moscow, travel on false papers; on the train knock off a couple of sleeping Soviet officers, take their pistols, don their uniforms, hurl the corpses off, use János’s learning of Russian (far better than mine) to bluff our way right into the heart of the Kremlin. Stalin’s office. Tell him in Russian, then Hungarian, Joe baby, you are fucking dead. End it using Russian pistols.
Oh, how excruciatingly exciting, how impossibly dangerous would be this mission. And yet never did we think we were just fantasising.
A week later, risking a visit to János’s house, since I cannot bear not knowing his fate, his mother tells me what has happened. János, his older brother and their father pleaded guilty before a court to anti-State activities, namely attending an illegal public rally where speakers questioned Rákosi’s Five Year Plan. Instead of a glorious mission to Russia to assassinate Joseph Stalin, my friend ends up sentenced to twelve years in a Siberian prison.
He is thirteen. In twelve years he’ll be twenty-five, and how unrecognisable will he be then? (If I am alive myself.) What horrors will he suffer before he crumbles? How can anyone stand this?
For two days I fight against my promise never to cry again — I mustn’t. I mustn’t. Or another part of my will washes out with the tears.
I find myself at our spot under Elizabeth Bridge where we used to spend hours together. The river is a muddy, swift passing, I don’t remember ever seeing it clear. Like life never has been.
Finally, howling breaks from me; I hear my weeping as a metallic scream against the steel underside of bridge. Of course it would be that, even my broken promise of unrestrained grief, my crying is drowned out by the reverberating boom of trucks going overhead. Doubtless they are Soviet trucks. Or else our own lorries freighting Hungarian produce to our Soviet rulers. Rage’s voice was never more insistent that we do murder together. But since we can’t, tears must do.
Then I go to a home that has a husband and wife in bitter argument. If I stop to hear each side’s case, I fear I will take Mama’s. So, I leave them to it and go into my room and wish we had money to afford a camera so I could look at memories of me and János, the good times we had, the secrets we shared, the dreams we thought would just be a matter of time.
I would have photos of Mama and Papa when they were happy and we boys were, too, despite life being what it was. Staring at the ceiling I lie on my bed, shutting out their yelling voices, until Béla comes in and says without saying, they’re fighting again. When they rarely fought.
Why, if they’re going to yell about something, isn’t it against the State? It should be shrieking from both their lungs and then when they’re finished, love each other.
He blames her, not for the imprisonment, but for everything about her existence. She could cook better. Why doesn’t she bring home whole chickens? Why doesn’t she steal legs, thighs, put them down her panties instead of letting male hands down there? Listen to the arsehole the way he talks to my mama like that. He accuses her of joining the other side. (How could you, Papa? Mama would rather die than betray any of us.) Who is she fucking at work? Who and how many men did she fuck while he was away — not away. In gaol. To add guilt to her misery. Inflicting the same injustice that happened to him, of charging an innocent.
She’s to blame for his X classification. When she screams at him to explain how, he falls into a dark silence. So she asks him how many homosexual experiences he had in gaol. And he lunges at her, and she yells he’s a fucking coward, and he calls her a slut.
And the cause of all this, the State, the entire fucking Hungarian population for allowing it to become like this, they’re all out there, in this capital city, in every city and small town, cowed and subjected, subjugated, suffering, when they should be having secret rallies everywhere to do something about it.
I have to shut my ears or I will stab him with his own heirloom knife, I swear. Why not say what we already know, that a complete arsehole has come home to us? They took a good man and sent him back soiled goods.
To hell with you,
Sándor Szabó, you could have been stronger.
I WATCH HIM with the match-box, thumbing open one end, preposterous-sized fingers — larger for the weight he’s lost — in practised dexterity removing a single match-stick, the bulbous head scratching against the striker strip and flipping, flaming, the way of the cigarette waiting in his mouth. He’s over by the window; footsteps in the flat above remind us we’re never to ourselves, nor free of possible eavesdroppers.
He could be in a prison cell, staring out at that which he cannot have: freedom. He has it and yet the classification dictates that he doesn’t. And can never have. He’s X. For branded. And he looks it.
The light falls on his face, as he presses closer to the flame, eyes lost in pinched skin, face in brief flaring illumination except the cheek gouges in their own shadow, which only food nourishment will push out again. Who is this man?
I want to ask what it was they did to him that has changed him so. He’s missing several front teeth, but he hasn’t said how. We know he fears for listening devices secretly installed in our flat, in every flat in our building, from our ground floor to the top fourth. Every footfall and unusual sound is the Ávós come to arrest him, the whole family. Then exclude Mama because he’s not so sure about her now. Shit, Papa, don’t make me lose more respect for you.
I need to understand this. Of the process of reducing a man so. And since he won’t talk about it, I need to study this reduced being, so to get fully, completely, the picture of my own one-day possible defeat. Or, rather, the means to resist defeat. I must look at him, this near-extinguished fire, to know how to keep my own flame alive. Since going to the other side is incomprehensible.