Szabad

by Alan Duff

  Pálfia Péterné Aranka? he had said in formal manner, first of the married name, the husband he robbed her of. I am Colonel Friss, Secret Police. I wish to have a word with you.

  Details she does not mention. That the deed has been done is written all over her face, hollowed out her cheeks, pulled down the edges of her mouth, turned her eyes glassy and distant. Like someone covering pain.

  Zoltán is his first name. Zoltán Friss, who has caused this hollowed-out face that is looking at me, trying to find a false smile, then knows it can’t and so tries a defiant expression instead. But that also fails, and I expect tears will come and yet am glad when they don’t. Not yet.

  She begged him to respect that she loved her husband. But he stood in silence and nodded, as if indeed he did understand. Then he told her, Life is tough. You either survive or you don’t. He said he would do her a favour, give her twenty-four hours to consider what use loving a dead man was and he would be back to hear her answer.

  The next night, at exactly the same time, he was the same polite man whose unforceful knock at her door she’d answered. Before I come in, he said, tell me what you concluded.

  Attila, my answer was to leave the door open and turn back inside.

  She weeps silently. I am not sure what to do. I get up and go to her, put a hesitant hand on her shoulder, then take her in an awkward embrace, since this is beyond my experience, a friend forced to succumb to rape by the man who has murdered her husband. And such a pleasant face he has, too. We will see how pleasant the day he faces us. (Her flesh is warm to my embrace and not suited to wanting a man dead.)

  MY LIFE HAS changed, reduced to the single event — being the same over and over — of what goes on four floors above me. I have learned to predict many of his visits, so attuned to my dear friend’s suffering.

  There is a rough pattern, for he visits only at night after dark, an hour, two or three, before the Ávós stake their usual claim on the night. He arrives in a staff vehicle, which sometimes waits for him or else picks him up at an appointed time.

  His presence, when he is in our building, is that of an invisible haunting, since I have no intention of being seen by him, the better to be the one who kills him when opportunity comes. My observation is but two occasions of brief glimpse when he had left the building and was getting into his car.

  My ears, eyes, entire existence is tuned to when one Colonel Zoltán Friss will enter the building. I know, I know, each time she is going through this; I feel suddenly cold, or highly irritated, or desperately sad, or with a sense of great urgency that I must be back in my building, even if helplessly several floors below.

  I think of means to murder all the time. But I can’t risk being out in the common areas of our building as much as I want to set eyes on him, at Aranka’s express insistence I must not let the man see my face. Besides, we are both agreed that he will surely know of the presence of my father in the same building. We can’t give him any further cause to be interested in me.

  Friss has warned her that his men know of his visits, so nothing had better happen to him. He has even commented that his colleagues are jealous of him — jealous! As if she beds with him for his own charms and qualities.

  Sometimes I cannot bear to be in the building when he is upstairs. I head over to Pál’s, even though his mother, raising her family of three on her own with her husband still in gaol, is fervently Catholic. Her house is filled with images, paintings and little plaster statues of the Madonna, which once made me want to escape.

  Now, the same house fits perfectly as a place of refuge from what my friend Aranka goes through, with its prints of crucifixion paintings in frames, draped with beads, with Jesus himself nailed to the cross throughout the house, in case anyone forgets. There are Bibles here and there, and symbols of worship and the stamp of Mother Mary, Madonna the blessed Virgin, spelt with a capital. Even in the kitchen, above the gas cooker, that serene holy image is there. She has become Aranka’s image, that serene face of institutionalised, idealised virginity, being woman unsoiled, and yet somehow still representing my widowed friend suffering regular rape.

  It could be this very reverence for motherhood, even a virginal one, for women therefore, that brings me here to Pál’s. The images his mother venerates have become something of a comfort to me. I look at the Mary image and transpose on it Aranka’s face, and so she — She, Aranka — suffers no more. Here I can turn her into Mary, or Mary to her, either way it’s one of pureness. I can reverse the sexual violation she suffers with an opposite state. One that can never be tainted, nor soiled, even in the act of its physical happening.

  Rage, Rage’s thoughts of murder, have no place before Mary’s image. Rage has no right in this house, this sanctuary, this place of God.

  But can I forgive?

  Besides Pál’s mother, Margit, is not such a pleasant woman: too close to her religion, too dependent on it, and with too many memories kept of a husband who was ripped out of their lives. She worries for her son’s association with me, that I am leading him astray. She doesn’t know her own son; he is with same mind and desire for freedom as I. I wonder where her God is who could let us suffer so, not least Aranka.

  I stand listening at her door, to the panting of a male in sexual activity, every breath I sip lest I miss the moment of hearing the ultimate betrayal that she, the raped, gives back her own pantings — of joy.

  I listen for the sounds of faith, ideal, hope to come crashing down. Since nearly everything and everyone good I have known has come crashing down the same. If she expresses even a survivor’s joy in this diabolical act, then I will know all has failed, and so then murder will out. Rage will rule this building, even though it will bring everyone’s house down with it. That is the state I’m in, how life has got to this most darkly gloomy point.

  I have put such store in this poor woman, my burdening of the female species, as if they have not already borne far more than their share. She is carrying the burden for my father, what he could not bear. She carries it for all of us, I’m sorry, good widow.

  But then I will carry my share, as long as the pact stays intact. (So don’t cry out, Aranka, except in pain, in despair. Don’t let go even with involuntary joy, now that this coupling is a familiar, and a mind could not really be blamed for rationalising an unbearable act.)

  She does not make any sound, no female echo of his male pleasure, no cry of pain or despair; just silence. Silence louder than thunder in the moments between his grabbed breaths. (We will kill you slowly, Friss.)

  When the moment of climax comes, the male moaning in her ears and mine, I know then that a man blind to himself, heedless to her, can still take his pleasure at expense of her pain. Or he would have moaned differently, of guilt escaping, self-loathing showing. She would have heard him beg forgiveness in her ear, words crying from his spent form asking her to forgive him. Instead, he moans in pure joy, deaf to her answering silence.

  Then I trudge heavily down the stairs, legs hardly able to bear my weight for the trembling that takes me all over. Even weakens my desire to murder, as if he has claimed that, too.

  I stand inside our closed front door, listening for his departing steps down the stairs, for the vehicle arriving, which is timed so precisely. Like a military operation.

  I wait till he is gone, the building front door closed quietly, and soon young Lenke’s light footsteps down the stairs, her child’s knock at our door. Innocence come to announce it’s own death. I delay a few moments before I answer her knock lest I startle her with being stood vigil by the door.

  Lenke is eleven, and much too wise and knowing for her years. I did not know her until Aranka befriended her, nor her parents except to say hello. I look at this child and see myself, but of longer ago than the difference in our years. But then again I don’t see me, I was never this pure. Not that I recall.

  Aranka says she is not well, she will see you tomorrow, Lenke says. (What has he done to her? Is she under some threat? But I
must see her.)

  We have a key to each other’s apartments. Should I use mine later, check on her without her knowing? Next time I’ll hang around outside, get his face in the flesh, close up; find means to follow him home, somehow fool his driver into giving me Colonel Friss’s address.

  I feel little better than the Ávós rapist, inserting the key into the lock and too silently for my own comfort, as if I am the next violator.

  Aranka? Aranka? I know I’m calling in barely a whisper, since I should not be using the key in this circumstance. It was for emergencies, we agreed.

  It seems darker than I remember, and I know her place well enough. The light outside is spring bright, yet still it seems as though through a gauze of shadow.

  Through the kitchen, it smells of cooking oil, paprika and — disinfectant. In use right now. She’s been cleaning. She isn’t unwell. Why am I not calling her name again, perhaps I am ashamed, should have waited until invited.

  I walk directly into her eyes, her gaze up from the floor. And I know this is not meant for my eyes, for anyone’s eyes. That I have over-stepped the mark — no, I have hurled myself way beyond it and into some deepest private space that could not be less my own. (Attila Szabó, you can hang your head for ever in shame.) I have walked in on a moment of such truth my head is spinning. I must look away and yet I can’t, or I mustn’t, or I won’t.

  Her eyes are of one caught in a moment of truth and, yes, starkest vulnerability. This is a child. Yet one so weary of the world she hardly registers my presence.

  Sorry. I’m so sorry, Aranka.

  I start backing out. (She had a hand in that bowl — I can even see it is chipped around the rim and there is rust coming through. I can see her entire pubic area. She was douching herself.)

  Don’t go, she calls, in a voice that seems as though from a floor below, barely registering as speech. She remains in the same position, though her knees have drawn together to achieve some kind of modesty. And that dark hair a frame around the face of a most poignant subject.

  Eyes look unblinkingly up at me. Don’t leave, Tilla. You are here now. Turn your back if you must. But don’t go.

  I don’t turn my back — I can’t.

  She stands up. I have seen my mother naked, and Klaudia in a different sense. But this, this is a different sight: I am torn between self-revulsion for the sexual desire flooding me, and wanting to cover her nakedness from all male eyes, never gift them with sight of her naked again, including my own. I want to fuck her, hold her, clothe her for ever, protect her and murder the man who brought her to this, all at the same time.

  Now aware of the disinfectant smell overpowering the air, I look at the enamel bowl and ask the question with my eyes.

  She answers yes with a nod.

  Her lips move, they say: I cannot become pregnant to him. My child was to come from an act of love — to my husband I had thought. Now, I guess no child.

  (Don’t say that. You’re grieving now, but it heals, eventually.) I can see she is in pain down there; the disinfectant must be burning.

  In denial of any pain one Zoltán Friss can inflict on her, Pálfiané Aranka, still most happily wed in her mind to a good man. I must respect that and remember it, always. Or for as long as it takes — and maybe never will — for her to move on.

  She takes up the towel on the floor to cover herself. I know not what to say or do next. Until her lips break apart in this kind of odd expression, for it trembles so, and she says in the clearest voice: Come, dear young friend. Hold the widow Pálfia in her time of need. Bring me your comfort, sweet boy. Please give me comfort.

  WE’RE IN JÓSKA Street, the area they call Chicago. Pál tells me it’s a bit scary being here, with every eye either mistrusting, hostile or soliciting. But I tell Pál not to worry, we’ll be okay. We have an address and a name to ask for. (And for some reason I feel as if I am home here.)

  A street vendor approaches, he looks too rough to be selling a fold-out two-page newspaper, clearly printed on an underground press. He bellows a headline, but we’re too preoccupied to hear. Not till Pál grabs my arm and says, Listen.

  Read all about it, Hungarian citizens! Polish citizens have taken to the streets in protest against Communist oppression! Riots in the city of Poznan! Reforms demanded!

  We buy a copy. Seems Polish citizens took to the streets of a town called Poznan and stood firm against Soviet tanks trying to remove them. Polish Secret Police reacted violently to this 24 June revolt of a week ago.

  Pál reads the article out loud over my shoulder: The Polish government has capitulated to most of the reformists’ demands. It is seen as a victory for the ordinary man and woman in the street, who have suffered under Communism and government oppression sanctioned by the Soviet Communist masters —

  Enough. I’ve heard enough to know that what we do today is prophesising our own history. I take us on a fast, inspired stride to the basement address. Soon we come away with guns, three pistols, German-made semi-automatics. One each, the other for the person whose savings paid for them: Aranka.

  I’m a liar to my friend Aranka, a diabolical would-be killer, as I wait for sound of the vehicle arriving and then the Ávós cunt’s footsteps. My shooting hand and the gun have become closest conspirators; I know its cold feel, how the metal eventually warms in the hand. I understand the movement of its weight, the extra strength required to lift it at speed and keep it trained steadily at a target I have nominated at groin height — for the first shot. I have been told of the jolt to expect just after I’ve pulled the trigger.

  I’ll do the business up in Aranka’s flat, shoot out his genitals, and then we’ll finish him off together.

  I’ve told no one of my plan, even though it’s suicidal and worse, is certain to bring death to my family. For I have lost reasoning power. Rage is like a fire out of control since I acquired the gun. I can’t stop thinking about it, taking it out of its hiding place inside a cut I’ve made in my mattress with my father’s deer-antler knife. I want revenge. I want to kill, to give them a taste of their own medicine.

  Except my victim fails to arrive; night after night, turned to two weeks, and no sign of him.

  I am failing everything at school, so obsessed have I become and anyway disinterested. Why succeed when the government decides what you’ll make of your qualification or lack of? Even Pál’s company

  I am avoiding, making excuses. I want Zoltán Friss. Then I read in the Szabad Nép newspaper, a special 19 July edition, the announcement that Rákosi has been summoned to Russia once again, but first declared his resignation. He’s been replaced by another of his ilk, Gerő. So, now I know why Friss has kept away, it must have been in the wind, with Krushchev publicly denouncing Stalin as a tyrant, that Rákosi would cop some of the backlash, too. The Secret Police, being Rákosi’s muscular arm, will have been the first to hear the whispers.

  This news acts like a vent for my blind anger. When I tell my father that this time Rákosi is well and truly gone, he looks disbelieving and soon leaves the house. He returns half an hour later with two bottles of liquor and sits himself at our tiny table and starts his drinking with a toast. To Rákosi’s permanent residence in hell!

  Naturally, Aranka is most glad at Friss’s absence, though she does not believe it is going to be for long. We go for an aimless stroll that takes a meandering path through the city, past Parliament as it happens or unless we chose without having to say.

  It is a beautiful city and yet could not be inhabited by a more dour, grimmer lot of citizens, lined in queues for bread and other staples, several hundred metres long. Misery on their faces, and worse: hopelessness has sucked the vitality from them. Only in the youth, the younger adults, do we see a fire still burning.

  At any given point we see foot patrols, young punks trying to prove they’re dangerous, older ones wallowing in a power they’d otherwise never have. There are Ávós in patrol cars, slowly cruising with windows wound down, elbows out, men in sneering contempt
of ordinary citizens. This one wishing he had his gun.

  We come home to my father out on the street drinking with two other men, street dwellers by their appearance, singing made-up verses, insulting Rákosi’s bald head, his short legs, ugly features.

  I tell the drunks to take their leave and bustle my father inside and into bed to sleep it off. He insists he knew exactly what he was doing and that he chose two drunks as company to symbolise that all citizens ought have basic rights.

  Sure, Papa, but firstly the right to live to fight on your better days, I tell him.

  And he smiles and says from his bed, I like that. Son, I like the way you put that. Then promptly falls asleep, the slumber of a drunk, and a man broken by greater powers. (I don’t blame you any more, Papa. I don’t. And maybe I’ve been too hard on Béla. They’ve turned me sour, like they do everyone. I’m sitting in judgement on my own family.)

  WE’D RACED OVER the Liberty Bridge and Pál had won — just. A black limousine, a Russian Zis, glides almost noiselessly off the bridge. Pál beats me again by spitting, Fuck you at them. Though hardly that loud.

  I say, hey Pál? Did you just hear the Soviet general in the back say what a beautiful part of Russia this is?

  We turn down the embankment, laughing, discussing what and who we’ll do with our guns again.

  An overworked, overloaded tram rattles towards us, full of women mainly, with grim, lack-lustre eyes, or of barely veiled resentment, and always the company of pre-school children, a mother’s perennial responsibility. Even from the street we see how they hold their children tight, as if in mortal fear someone in authority will come along and snatch them away.

  The tram stops near us, and as we approach I glance up and happen into the eyes of a child, a girl of about eight, nine. Dark rings under her eyes make her as if haunted. I’m so taken by the girl I stop, but the tram moves on and I’m left staring across the river at the hills of Buda, at a coal barge heading downstream, at the sprawl of university buildings where fools think they’re preparing for a good life ahead. And Aranka has told me there is more and more talk of reform coming out of there.