by Alan Duff
It’s a hand-width space of double windows, and I must be careful of the noise when I open them. I let in cold March air and an exchange out on the street. One I am immediately familiar with: Ávós with someone they’ve accosted.
I hear Péter Pálfia say, Please, sir, I am appealing to your good sense, to understand how I must be feeling right now, standing out here like this, home from a sixteen-hour shift, to be stopped by you like a common criminal. Can you at least hear me on this?
No. You hear us. We do not arrest common criminals. That is ordinary police business. We are the Secret Police, in case you are as stupid as you sound. We arrest enemies of the Hungarian State, Pálfia. Do you get that? Enemies of the Hungarian Motherland, Pálfia Péter.
The way he says the name: I know he’s been chosen. His file has been freshly stamped as: Investigate or Arrest or Liquidate.
Enemy of — me? Me, an enemy of my motherland, are you — sir, with due respect — with greatest respect, but I am no enemy of the State. I am a patriot. I would die for my country.
Really? Which version of it? The present version? Or do you have another Hungarian State in mind that we don’t know about?
Look, sir, the only Hungarian State I have in mind is the daily states of Mr and Mrs Pálfia making it through another day. I’m no political activist, I don’t even know any. Well, sure I am not happy with aspects of this government. But that’s okay, isn’t it? We’ve all got the right to be not happy. It’s not against the law, is it?
Isn’t it? How can you say that when unlawful activities are born of such perceived — rather misperceived — unhappiness? Do you think happy citizens break the law, betray their nation?
(Listen to this cunt’s logic, to his twisted thinking. Listen, Attila Szabó, and know these are your avowed enemies.)
I shut out his continued questioning of poor Péter. Worry for Aranka, is she next? Will she know this is going on? Should I get up those stairs to tell her, get her out onto the roof? These fools would never guess.
The Ávós inquisitor re-intrudes on my thoughts. Pálfia, Pálfia, you protest too much. Innocents don’t protest, they are in outrage. They splutter and are pictures of utter disbelief. A few so much so, we let them go. For we are also human, you see.
(You hear the Ávós liar, Attila? He’s human. Next he’ll be saying he’s got a wife, too, like Péter. That he has children and he has feelings just like normal citizens. But you don’t, Ávós man.)
I listen to this increasingly one-sided exchange and know I’m listening to a type, it may even be a sub-species. And I’m taking in every word and how he constructs his sentences, the tone he uses, and how he’s going to conclude this. I’m absorbing it because my mind is saying I must remember this, I must remember this. As if it were a major life lesson.
The Ávós man keeps cutting short Péter’s protests, his perfectly reasonable argument. Then I think I can discern a motive in the man’s questioning, something’s not quite right, but can’t put a finger on it.
I hear him say wife, and mention her beauty being out of context for this building, this area. Péter Pálfia comes right back at him, that they know only too well why he and his wife live here, it is on their file that a government classification ordered them here, so why beat about the bush?
What crimes have we done other than being born to our parents? We’re punished because of what we were born. Is that fair, I ask you?
It’s gone quiet. The question has caused it. He should not have put it that way; now they probably feel he is guilty of insolence, of a threat to their power. I should have warned Aranka.
Up on my toes I can see a group of them cross the street, the last being a man in a smart trench coat; so he must be the leader and the one asking the questions. A lorry billows exhaust in wait. The leader turns briefly and looks up at our building. I barely catch his face, don’t know if I’d remember it.
Then he’s turned away and issuing instructions. This is their world, this is their country, these are their hours, from eleven p.m. till four a.m. When we do not even have the basic right to draw breath, not if they decide we don’t. I’m sure they get the gas supply turned down to dim the street-lights to add to their menace. I think these Ávós oafs think about menace and murder and cruelty all the time. They see the night streets, their government position, their powers, the dimmed lighting, the cars and lorries, the listening devices, the files, all as props to a play in which they are acting the only lead parts.
Two minions are shoving Péter Pálfia unnecessarily, as he is hardly putting up resistance — quite the opposite. He’s trying to co-operate, but most of all reason, with them. Which is a fool’s way with these people. They’ve not come to reason, but either to see you in gaol or pack you off to Siberia.
The canvas flap at the rear of the lorry lifts, by someone inside; like a door opened for a doomed man to be shoved through, never to return again.
I’m up on a kitchen chair at the window; the street-lights have a river mist dimming them, which dances around the gas-glows like tiniest night flies. I can hear Péter Pálfia turn his protest into an extended groan, and I expect him to look up one last time at his upstairs window, maybe with a night light glowing, his wife’s candle in the window. The lorry drives off.
Does Mrs Pálfia know what has happened? Is she staring down in horror at her beloved being taken away? Will she come running out screaming protest? I should be there with her, but something makes me stay put.
I hear movement, look up, it is my parents at the doorway. Mama’s face says she’s heard it and knows only too well the outcome. Papa acts like he’s been arrested again, but now he’s struggling to find the same tough man of the first time. I am looking at him hoping, praying, he will find himself again, even as I despair for my friend Aranka. She and my father seem to be one and the same person: if one — my father — comes right, then it will be okay for Aranka.
But my father drops his eyes, then his head; he’ll not be contributing to any solution here, not that Mama and I have hope ourselves. I tell Mama I must go to Aranka, but she is adamant no. It is a woman’s job, this is the affair of wives of the gaoled.
Papa’s in the kitchen slugging down home-made liquor. For a moment I hate him. But not when he turns, and the eyes looking at me are not so much pathetic as mutely crying for what used to be, for the man he was. (Oh, Papa.)
I wait outside our door and can hear then see Mama give her comfort as they come down the stairs. Doors are opening on every floor, it echoes with whispers in asking tone: Who is it this time? I can just hear them: Look, it’s the good-looking woman, her husband’s been taken away. How wrong we were. But who can blame us? We have to be careful who to trust.
I know this has been done to them, from living under this regime. Done to all of us in our different ways. But still, I hate my neighbours. Or those I know who are the gossips, the spreaders of hearsay, who turn half-truths into sworn facts. They are the defeated older generation, two generations defeated. They will never liberate us, we younger ones must do it ourselves — but how? my mind screams. Someone, tell me how?
Mama brings her into our flat. For a moment our eyes meet and I feel myself about to release a flood of tears. But I mustn’t and I cannot and will not. I-will-not-cry.
EVERY MORNING AT seven-thirty she leaves the building. Not for her place of work, but to be first at the doors of the many government departments where she must go to find her husband’s fate.
I can’t induce her to talk to me, other than say she has managed to get two weeks off work on a feigned illness, knowing that if she is found enquiring after her husband they can find her guilty of economic treason.
Then one day I come home to a note telling me to be upstairs at her flat at a certain time of evening. I find her with dark smudges under her eyes, a scooping out of olive flesh like a dark bruising. I hear of the terrible frustration of trying to find her husband’s whereabouts, what has happened to him.
Deali
ng with pitiful little men, in cardigans and trousers halfway up their ankles, she says, and the gall to be looking at me with certain eyes, when they’re not fit to shine my husband’s shoes. They tell me, not here, wrong department, wrong sub-department, wrong building, not this address — even though I’ve been given it — try another. Go from one to the other, it is just a game to them.
Finally my two weeks runs out and I have to go back to work. Can you imagine, trying to work with all that hammering and clattering, of working-class fools and their bad-taste humour, their dulled sensibilities, but not their fault — O, Attila, I fear I will go insane with not knowing of my Péter.
I don’t realise till back at my flat that she did not weep. As angry, as shattered as she is, she does not weep.
Nor does she when she comes in to tell us one early morning: I have heard. My Péter is dead.
An Ávós in officer’s uniform called to tell her. He seemed very understanding for an Ávós. The body will be released tomorrow. The Ávós fellow said I should be grateful for the State’s generosity in paying the funeral costs of someone suspected of treason. Only then does she weep, in the arms of my mother, does the widow Aranka Pálfia.
At the cemetery graveside she made a dangerous outburst: told the gathering that we should all use this officially approved murder to do something about it. You could hear the collective gasp, see the shift of disassociation. I looked around to find the faces giving away their betrayal of this distraught woman. Many amongst them were highly likely to be informers, if not on the government pay roll, then in petty jealousy of the beauty of this newly classified widow. I saw the hurried departures of even her few friends and even fewer family members, disavowing a widow in her grief sure to be, soon, the late Aranka Pálfia.
No one has seen Aranka for several weeks. Though we know she’s not moved away, or people would say. My mother says she is probably working long hours to try and start the healing. I wish she would ask me to help.
Now I’m sitting at her small, round dining table, she sent a young girl, Lenke, who lives in the flat opposite her to invite me. She’s agitated, with restless, troubled eyes and I take mine to look at the pine table, bleached of colour, of life and almost grain, like a hand with fading fingerprints. Her rigid, veiny hand, as pale as death, lies stiffly on the table, the other, pushing imaginary wisps of hair off her forehead.
This is not the face I have come to adore, it’s like the table, bled of life. For a long time she sits like this, silent, as if unaware of my presence. Her breathing is steadying itself, a forced calming.
Then she reaches into a small handbag, hanging off an adjacent chair, the one her husband probably sat in, and pulls out a small white envelope, takes from it a photograph. Places it on the table, turned my way.
Is that who you saw arrest my husband?
I go to say that I wouldn’t recognise the man I saw, but then this is him. I am certain it’s the same man.
I nod yes and say it. And, for some reason, know that this same face is going to be in this apartment, in that bedroom, taking the place of the husband he murdered.
I look at the photograph: it’s not a cruel face, rather that of a calm man, a man in control. I could imagine him pushing his child on a swing in a park, in measured pushes; hear him in quiet, civilised conversation. Being the organiser at his job, in his home, at some club he belongs to; organiser of us, the citizens from whom he extracts his entire meaning. He’s a man who dares to look proud of himself, he has aquiline features, pale eyebrows, a rather full, friendly mouth in just a hint of a smile, over some private amusement. A man you might easily imagine as being quite kind. There’s no cold amusement of a regular killer of men. Not a high-ranking member of an élite killing force, but like the man next door, the good neighbour, the one you can trust — well, almost, but not fully.
So this is what will stand in that doorway when she answers the knock — and it will not be harsh rapping, but a gentle knock — not a salivating creature from hell. Just an ordinary-looking man with a polite but assertive smile. A smile that will barely conceal the grin of a lover; this is what my instinct is telling me of this man. A lover not of her choosing, could not be more far from it. One she would never choose, not even if her husband had never existed. So for that, I want to kill him.
But I must take eyes away from his photograph since it does not urge killing. He could not look less the villain.
How did you get this photo? I ask. How did you know where to start?
Grief got it for me, she says quite matter of fact, and yet in deadly earnest.
I guess it did. But grief can bring its own end, too, my father used to tell us.
Perhaps. It can also bring revenge. One day. How old are you now, Attila?
Seventeen next birthday. (Why does she ask?)
Could you kill a man?
The question should never have been asked; I’m close to being offended. How many could I kill?, you should have asked. How many Ávós?
I am making sure. Most people say but they do not do.
Aranka … (Should I tell her what my instincts are telling me?)
You have something on your mind?
This man, in the photo, have you met him yet?
Yet? No. Not as yet. Her reply is as loaded as my instinct is.
I am sure you are going to.
How do you know this?
I just sense it.
You rely on this inner sense of yours a lot, don’t you?
Should I not?
She smiles — a surprise, but a welcome one. Don’t ever stop relying on it. No doubt it will keep saving you in the interesting life you have ahead.
Me? No. How can that be in this country? Tomorrow might be my turn to be arrested, sent off to Siberia like my friend János.
My instincts are also strong. Trust me, your life will be long and interesting. And — Except she does not finish it. I don’t think it was going to be a compliment either.
Now her face is dark again. I keep glancing at the photograph. So does she. He is an Ávós officer.
Yes.
Do you know where he lives?
You won’t be going to his home to kill him, even if I did know the address. Besides, who says you have been offered him?
He asked Péter many questions about you when he took him away. Aranka, how did you find him?
I have a friend who is a cleaner in the Secret Police offices. She took dire risk to do this. If I am responsible for her death then I shall not be able to live with myself. Though not that I’d be giving up her name, even if they tortured me.
He wants you …
Yes, she nods without saying. Then shakes her head. No, he does not want me — he wants to possess me. Like a trophy. A reward for his ruthlessness.
You’ll let him?
I’ll have no choice. Not to begin with. But it will be a reversal, you’ll see. I’ll give him what he thinks is joy. Then I’ll take every drop of life from him when the time is right.
Never have I seen more resolved eyes. She gets up. Draws to full height. I have one more thing to say, Attila Szabó.
I stand up, too. And wait for that beautiful angel to speak. But her stern look has her looking more like one of my teachers.
It is going to be bad enough to be forced to share my — she flicks a glance away, back to me, full gaze boring into me — my marital bed, she says, in barely a whisper.
I say, What? When I know only too well.
Please don’t want the same.
Her eyes read mine — not that my inner thoughts would take much reading over the two years I’ve known her.
But you’re my friend — and just widowed.
Yes, but still.
Still what? I’m digging my own hole deeper, can’t help myself. I feel like I’ve been exposed.
She just stares.
Yes, Mrs Pálfia, I say. Hoping that didn’t sound sarcastic, biting back. Of course I will respect you.
I might be
young, but I’m still a man. Maybe Klaudia’s a kind of love. I need affection. I need woman. And when I go to Klaudia’s bed once more, I know she has learned to need me.
IT IS LIKE waiting for her to be tortured. I can’t stay still, or find sleep for anticipating every sound as being his, the Ávós officer’s.
I go out into the streets with Pál, or on my own, and stay past a sensible hour. Pál, dear friend Pál, risks himself with me but tells me, Don’t be a fool, lingering on into their terror hours, it will only make them more suspicious.
In our roaming we have found their exclusive social haunts, the food stores full of the best and freshest, meat cuts to salivate over, fruit and vegetables gleaming with colour and freshness, arrays of smoked and cured meats, the bakeries for their use only. Look at their fat wives shopping in exclusive clothing shops, high fashion from Paris and Rome, supping tea and coffee in exquisite cafés, copies of the women their husbands have kicked out, reclassified, gaoled and murdered. Restaurants that cater only for them, the privileged ruling class.
They have book stores that stock only Communist and Soviet literature, or works by Hungarian authors who are sycophants and apologist bootlickers of the Communists. We’re two poor boys with noses pressed against their window-panes never to gain entry. Though I do often wonder what would I do if I peered into one of these windows and saw him, the man in the photograph.
On returning home there’ll be my father, still up drinking his cheap, home-made liquor bought on the black market, though on occasion he is normal —at least by the standards we have had to reinvent for him — but I’m too scared to ask if he has heard or seen any coming and going of a certain Ávós officer. He might blurt it out to the wrong ears.
I lie in bed until sleep finds me, then I am awake as if I’ve never slept, and even still feeling I dozed too long, with guilt in case that foul deed against Aranka took place whilst I slumbered.
He does come. Standing at her door with, she tells me later, that same little smile as in the photograph. He had knocked firmly but not in the typical Ávós fashion like death hammering.