by Alan Duff
Hello, Pál. Szabó Attila. Is your mother of the kind who would make you carry a handkerchief?
Not even my mama makes me do what I don’t feel like. But then out conjures a handkerchief. That grin. Help yourself.
As I wipe my bloody nose, I feel certain this stranger will be my friend. Perhaps fate’s replacement for the brother I have just lost. Pál Pogány, Attila Szabó. Even our names ring together. The first test I will give him will be to tell of my friend János now in a Siberian prison.
We ask where each hangs around, our questions loaded, trapsprung. But answers are right for us to arrange to meet next week — Why not tomorrow? — all right, tomorrow, make it across the river up at the Fisherman’s Bastion? No, plain-clothes Ávós hang around there, hoping to catch locals engaging in illegal communication with the handful of foreign visitors to our country. We’ll make it below Cave Church, across from the Gellért Hotel.
I have Béla to sort out first.
WHERE WERE YOU, I thought you were with me, I was running to get a weapon, there were three of them, did you go the other way, have you seen them, what happened to your nose, did they get you, your knuckles are bleeding …?
He goes on like this, as if an outpouring, or a vent for high nerves about something, being guilt. I follow him to our room where all our shared memories are, he’s changing by the moment, talking rapid-fire without knowing what questions he asks. For he’s not giving me a pause to answer them. I am seeing someone I thought I knew change before my eyes.
I don’t ask him, Béla, why did you run away? I don’t yell coward at him. I just stand in the doorway, aware of the time, that Mama will be home first, by seven, and Papa as late as nine, since those classified X have less of the minimal rights other workers have. I wait for Béla to start truthful explanation, or say sorry. But he says nothing. Just sits on the edge of his bed, mutters about homework being a three-hour chore, and inside has me laughing at the sight of him pretending now to be buried in study.
Finally I say, Béla, remember when we used to go to Heroes Square when Papa was in prison?
When he doesn’t even lift his head at that, I know I’ve lost him. Yet still I find I must keep talking, as I remind him — or me — of the sustenance, the comfort, we used to take from gazing up at the copper statues of some of our great heroes. The men who led the Hungarian people into the Carpathian Basin from the east: István, our first king, László, Kálmán, András, Béla IV. Do you remember, Béla, what we took from these figures of our proud past? As if these copper shapings were real men, and living in our time.
Then I quote the only words of poetry I remember, they’re by Petőfi, who helped inspire the 1848 Uprising: We swear unto thee — that slaves we shall no longer be!
Now I see my own brother, a prisoner of his own lacking.
Béla, do you remember our father telling us of one of Rákosi’s speeches, how he’d break the will of those who have liberal thought? Is that not why Papa was sent to prison? Because they were trying to break his will?
You mean broke it.
He speaks for the first time. And it sounds like an even worse sentence than our father’s imprisonment, that they should have succeeded in breaking his will.
Anger wells up, So who broke you? I ask.
He gives me his eyes for the first time. They’re dulled with fixed thought. The system, little brother. The system did.
The way he says it, I want to punch his face. Of course the system. And never the system. Or else we are all dead — the living dead. My brain feels like live wires fizzing out of control. I feel violence coming on.
The system? How do you mean, when it is the same for all of us? Why you and not me, or others? And who says our father is broken? He didn’t come home in their fucking uniform, did he? He didn’t come home spouting Communist propaganda.
Again he shrugs. Again the dull glaze over his eyes. You’ll find out in the next couple of years, five at most, Attila dumb Szabó, that the system is, as they teach us in science, an irresistible force.
But today they were just bully boys, a little older than us, but schoolboys still. And they aren’t sons of Ávós, just the brothers of a kid you bullied first. They weren’t the system. The system doesn’t get inside you and turn you into a coward — you do it yourself.
The glazed eyes stare back, like a fish dead too long. The system taught me I must survive. I thought you’d be running with me. We would have come back at them, on our terms.
Here are my terms: I hold up my fists, the knuckles and tops of both hands are streaked with blood. I defended the honour of our family name, Béla Szabó. Survive you say?
One day, brother of mine, you are going to die a violent death.
Maybe. Better than living a coward’s long life.
I remember Papa used to talk like that.
I’m Attila, not Sándor.
I came home to grab a weapon to defend the same family name.
Liar. You didn’t.
I did. I’m a Szabó, too — just a cleverer one. Three against one are bad odds, especially when they’re older.
One older Béla Szabó against one of those boy’s kid brothers is bad odds, too. You started it.
The kid had been giving me mouth for weeks.
So you hit him.
Look, Tilla, I am not afraid. Not of fighting. I want you to know that …
His mouth speaks the lie riddling his eyes, the lie draining the blood from his face. He could be the first boy I hit today, who knows if his moment of truth has arrived. But I cannot bear to look at him like this. I walk out.
Our father told us courage is its own reward and cowardice its own punishment. I saw in my brother’s face he is being punished, even if he doesn’t know it.
Next I’m looking at my face, in the bathroom mirror, the lick of hair I copied from Béla and have carefully cultivated to match his. I lift the scissors and cut the piece of hair off; it drops to the floor, like an inferior opponent felled at my feet. Béla, you are no longer my hero. You’re like tears — over.
I find in Pál Pogány a boy as angry as I. We have similar family circumstances, except his father has yet to be released and his older siblings have all left home. But he’s burning like I am at living like this; we talk for endless hours.
At home my family has come apart at the seams, being Papa, and me and Béla; poor dearest Mama who has to pay everyone’s price. Papa is like a zombie. My once full vessel of respect for him is nearly dried up.
Pál and I talk about one day fleeing Hungary to Austria, just a stowaway boat trip up the Duna to Vienna. Easy if you don’t count the armed border crossings, a long gaol sentence if we’re caught, our families suffering retribution.
We’ll go further, we dream, to England, America, Australia, to places we’ve heard described on Szabad Európa Rádió as rich and happy because they’re free. Where citizens, unbelievably, have State-guaranteed rights, and every adult can vote.
In the privacy of his bedroom, since mine is occupied by a brother who betrayed our family ideals, we pretend to have seized Magyar Rádió and broadcast to the nation that there are now free elections, no more Communism, no more State control.
Twice his mother has burst into his room and begged us not to fool around like this, what if the neighbours overhear? What if their flat is under Ávós observation on account of Pál’s father in prison and my father not long released? But she won’t stop us.
The city streets become our home instead; we learn every side street and alley, unknowingly training ourselves for being hotly pursued. Rooftops become another world for us, as means to get from one point to another in a hurry. Finding ways up, by fire escapes, inside buildings like burglars, through doors, down passageways, up stairs looking for the way to the roof.
We take turns at playing the pursuer and the pursued. It feels so real that we are both guilty of going too far by making the pursuer take a dangerous route over tiles that have not known human weight for mayb
e a century or more. Leaping from one building to another, finding chimneys that crumble in our hands and tiles dangerously slippery with moss. Finding what the wind blows there, or workers have dropped, discarded: paper, rags, pens, washers, nuts and bolts, sad items of children’s clothing — as if they came up here to find solace — condoms, gouged initials in a tile. Once we came across a middle-aged drunk, in make-shift shelter of scaffolding pipe and a canvas tarpaulin, who raved incoherently at us, whilst we laughed at him and danced our way across his pitched tile backyard.
In the buildings we dare to trespass inside, we hear couples arguing, families yelling, weeping, physically fighting; and like a connecting thread, always a couple humping, making that softly moaning sound being gladly lost, or in another world shutting out all others.
Trespassing one day over the river in a three-storey tenement in Buda, we are confronted by a burly man who is going to have our guts. But Pál’s charm and my returned murderous look have him changing his mind. Telling us we’re lucky he doesn’t go fetch his gun and shoot us dead, which straightens us up. Instead he invites us into his flat for hot water, grumbling that it ought to be coffee any dignified man offers his guests. Soon he’s talking politics way above our heads. But then he hits our mutual raw spot in speaking of Rákosi’s master plan to gaol dissidents, intellectuals, the bourgeois class, writers, on and on the list goes. Calls it the master plan of a madman. Warns that Rákosi’s plans include the majority of youth in this country, since he knows from history that youth have usually led the revolts.
First Rákosi will break the spirit of the parents, then he’ll go all out against the youth. Then the man — who has not introduced himself, nor asked our names — goes and gets his gun, being a semi-automatic pistol of clunky, square-edged design. But to me, and I see Pál, too, it’s a beautiful sight, except he won’t even let us hold it. It would be more addictive than a woman, boys.
Then he ends the conversation abruptly because he says to talk more will have us all in a fury and we might do something reckless. Says goodbye and makes us promise never to see him again. I ask why and he says he was young once and does not like being reminded. But more than that, we have the look of fate on our faces. This is the day my desire to have a gun is conceived.
On weekends we walk for hours, or sit in Pál’s bedroom and talk. We laugh at knowing we’re just kids trying to figure out this crazy world, yet both most serious in agreeing we’re with this sense of fate — we chorus in remembering our political friend.
Did that guy mean ill-fated? Pál wants to know.
Yeah, ill-fated. I am at one with my friend. But we’ll make some Ávós ill-fated with us.
We’re kids, too, giggling at nothing, acting stupid, ogling at pretty girls, wondering how long we’re going to have to wait before our sexual longing is satisfied, asking each other why don’t we do something about it this instant. Yet where, and how and with whom, in this city of girls not exactly spilling over with zest for life and love.
At school I’m studying the pro-government teachers obsessively. I want to unlock why it is they can support a regime so violently unjust. If I can somehow get an understanding, then, my instinct tells me, I’ll gain better means of survival. By knowing my enemy, I might one day get to be part of defeating him.
One thing is clear: most teachers have weak personalities. I know not why, only that it is a common trait amongst virtually all of them. As if they are afraid of being any other in even our Communist-restricted life. My instincts tell me don’t trust them, not because they are teachers, but because the profession attracts weak types.
Each class I sit in, I tell myself this man, this woman, they would not speak out against injustice, stand up for truth, for they know they could not bear the consequences. They are not all like this, a few are good people, strong, with principles. But I trust my instincts and know what my eyes observe.
I observe classmates who are pro-authority, and who we call baby snitches. Now I see why the man in Buda told us of the danger of youth to Rákosi, for those of us against him and everything he represents.
But still, we must be careful of making even the smallest remark out of the ordinary, for there are shadow snitches and smiling snitches, and those with no faces who can do so much harm to us.
At Russian language class we are in nearly unified, seething, voiceless resentment at this accursed, ugly tongue shoved down our throats by a Russian lover. At times our hatred is a living, palpable force greater than the sum of our parts. When I feel any leader amongst us could jump up and bellow revolt! Let’s revolt, to our classmates, and the teacher would be dead on the floor in seconds, the classroom wrecked, and riot a wildfire spreading from school to school. At times it’s felt but a gesture, a shout away (from me I hope) from turning into an all-out revolution. Then something will happen, the principal will come in and call out for someone, and by his tone we’ll know if it’s Ávós-related, and usually it is so we slump as one, sighing resigned defeat back into our Russian lessons: Menya zavut … my name is — our name is acceptance. Our name is defeat, subjugation. Fuck the Russian Communists, fuck all authority.
PÁL AND I COME UP with this idea that, to understand the enemy, we must study a likely type who’ll grow up as a State employee. Our target is a bully at my school. His name is Gábor; he hangs out in a small pocket of city park not far from school. In front of his mates, noticeably smaller, I invite him around the corner for a fight. His fear is so clear it could manifest as having wet his pants on the spot. Pál tells the other kids if they come to watch the fight they’ll be fighting him, too. We don’t want witnesses. We want understanding.
The bully’s face is exactly like that of the boy I hit first of the trio a few months back. It’s autumn and a mist has come up from the river a little earlier than usual, more like wisps of thin smoke swirling at our feet, as his mouth starts quivering.
He asks, What have I done to you, Attila Szabó? I have never had any trouble with you.
Pál steps up beside me. What did you say to my friend, arsehole?
We’ve planned this out. Never has this boy been so closely observed by two such unlikely peers.
Pál and I have discussed over and over, of how we might start to understand from this fledgling why the Ávós are like they are. We figure they’re of lower intelligence, and by the uniformity of faces, they’re a species by themselves. Though even youths like us can deduce that those at the top are of higher intelligence, if bereft of morality.
But first I want to expose this bully for the weakling he is, and I hit him hard. And what tiny courage he had is gone in the instant. Even the blood dribbling out his nose looks more pinkly diluted than real blood. I hit him again, and wish Pál hadn’t told the guy’s mates to stay away, as I want them to witness this reduction of their hero, how easily he crumbles, turns to clay before our eyes.
Now he’s ours. We take him along the Duna embankment, under Szabadság Bridge. The insult to name a bridge Liberty, or freedom, when we know no such thing.
We bombard Gábor with questions, what he thinks about, dreams of, desires, everything and anything, even to asking how many times he masturbates a day and who and what he thinks of.
Afterwards we sit in Pál’s room and write down a list of Gábor’s responses. And we try to draw conclusions from it, calling it The Interview, in hysterics at ourselves. Which brings a moment of realisation, that as interrogators we’ve acted like Ávós ourselves. But no, that can’t be, we’re in denial next.
I suggest to Pál, I think Gábor will end up in the ÁVH because he thinks people will respect him then.
No, liked. He told us, he wants people to like him. And as they don’t, he wants revenge. Remember how his face changed when he said he thought about every kid who ever disliked him crawling on their bellies, one day, begging his forgiveness?
Yes, and he said he’d never forgive them.
We asked him if he’d ever had desire to be in the ÁVH. He said
for sure and even more, to end up an Ávós officer, but not in plain clothes as then people wouldn’t recognise and be fearful of him.
I dream of wearing a colonel’s stripes on my shoulders, Gábor the would-be Ávós said. And Pál punched him then and so did I. We couldn’t hear this any longer.
His masturbation thoughts were not on the prettiest girls at school, or the sexy older girl neighbour, but of fucking begging kids’ mouths, coming all over their sorry faces, of masturbating in laughing glee as someone he hated writhed and screamed in a scalding bath. Which got him more punches from both of us.
If he opens his mouth about this, we promise him, we have relations and friends ready to hurt him.
At nights I lay awake, trying to figure the nature of the Ávós beast. The lesser being of my disgraced older brother is in the bed right by mine. Our ignoring of each other is as darkly profound as our love was bright. Yet inside my heart still hurts. And I hope he hurts for me.
I think the teachers at school are more for the Rákosi regime than against. Though it might well be they’re paying lip service lest they end up arrested and gaoled or even executed. I must be so careful myself of observing them, in case they put my name to the Ávós. Pál is doing the same at his school; we meet several evenings a week and most weekends to talk over our observations.
One Sunday we find ourselves up at the Lady of Liberation monument atop Gellért Hill, overlooking all of Budapest and far out into the plains. The Communists erected it to celebrate liberating us from the Nazis. Some liberation.
Pál has just finished doing a funny walk to imitate a pompous Secret Policeman so intent on his own importance he walks smack into a tree. We’re laughing dangerously loud but don’t care. I make out like the dictator Rákosi, standing beneath a tree making a boring speech about how good Communism is for the people, even though they’re miserable and half-starving. And then I make as if someone is dragging me up by the throat, acting out a gargling, mortally choking Prime Minister, lynched by the people.