Under the frog (13 page)

‘No,
regrettably, comrades, we don’t have the time,’ Sulyok apologised, ‘The
imperialists don’t rest; remember we have to harden our work discipline.’

‘Why
not harden a horseprick up your arse?’ commented Tamás, not too softly, as he
and Gyuri strolled back to the electrical engines. Loud enough to be heard, but
quiet enough for Sulyok to be able to ignore it. Tamás could get away with this – who wanted to die? Tamás was incredibly good at killing people; he had a
couple of Iron Crosses and an Order of Lenin to prove it.

He had
been a great hit during the war, in a number of armies, starting with the
Hungarians. He didn’t mind being dropped alone behind enemy lines, not eating
anything but the odd rat whose head he had to bite off, sitting in puddles that
were thinking about becoming ice (the little finger on his left hand had been
peeled off by frostbite) and killing Russians until the cows came home. He was
an enthusiast of the knife. ‘You know,’ he confided to Gyuri, ‘people don’t
like being stabbed.’ After one mission, when he had spent two months dodging
around behind Russian lines without resupply, he had been captured (no
ammunition) and offered a job on the spot. ‘Killing Russians or killing
Germans, you think I give a toss?’

Tamás
was, Gyuri guessed, heading for forty, but he still had the sort of hard,
well-defined muscles that would have socialist realist painters fighting for
space. He was in charge of insulating the parts of the electrical engines that
needed insulating. Gyuri didn’t understand it really, but since he really didn’t
do anything, it didn’t matter. Tamás hauled the heavy parts up by chain and
then immersed them in a vat full of chemicals which insulated the copper.
Despite having been in attendance for months, Gyuri had no idea what the
chemicals were or how the process worked. This was because Tamás did
everything, while Gyuri watched him intently. It was supposed to be dangerous
work and was by the standards of Ganz, well paid; i.e: you had change in your
pocket after you had eaten.

What
Gyuri was paid for boiled down to listening to Tamás’s adventures, recent and
ancient, which Tamás would recount without a break as he hauled electrical
engines up and down. Tamás had a lot of adventures, chiefly because he didn’t
seem to sleep very much. He had no fixed abode and looked on renting a room as
a waste of money. He slept the three or four hours he needed in some only very
noisy part of the factory (as opposed to an unbearably noisy part) curled up on
the floor, springing out of his slumber fresh and zestful. Most evenings,
however, he didn’t need to sleep at the factory because of an amorous
entanglement or transnocturnal carousing.

Tamás
had a unique view of Budapest in terms of the women he had slept with and of
the kocsmas he drank in; this topography he would share with Gyuri during their
work. A routine Tamás monologue: ‘Yeah, I was over by “The Blind Drunk Blindman”,
they do a great Czech beer there. Anyway, I hadn’t been there since I was
giving cock to the French Ambassador’s wife’s maid, and it’s just opposite to
where I was delivering my dick to the wife of the gypsy violinist who used to
play in “The Overflowing Ashtray”, that was the violinist I had to stab, not
the one who tried to pay me to keep his wife; she was the one I met behind the “You
Can Even Make Wine From Grapes”. That was a great place, you know, I had a
marvellous evening there with a Bulgarian girl. I didn’t speak any Bulgarian,
she didn’t speak any Hungarian. But then you don’t need to, do you? She had a
place that was almost above the “Why Is The Floor Pressing On My Nose?”. I didn’t
get out for days.

‘So, I
was in “The Blind Drunk Blindman”, they were giving me some of the under the
counter pálinka, they say the Germans wanted it for their rocket program, when
I noticed some really small bloke in there with a good-looking woman. They were
sitting next to this group of dockers. Anyway, this bloke leans over to the
dockers who are mothering this and mothering that, and says very professor-like
“Would you mind not swearing in front of my wife?” You have to admire his
bottle but getting upset about swearing in “The Blind Drunk Blindman” is a bit
like going into a grocer’s and being shocked by the vegetables. I can see the
guy is going to get more kicked around than a football at Ferencvaros on a
Saturday afternoon, so I tell the barman to hide away a bottle of the special
pig-trough pálinka for me because there isn’t going to be any unshattered
glass in a moment and I get over at the right moment to wish one of the dockers
the best of health with the boot as he’s giving the guy’s wife’s tits a
courtesy squeeze.’

This
episode was representative of Tamás’s evenings, leaving behind five unconscious
dockers and two others earnestly searching for their earlobes. ‘They weren’t
going to find them, because I swallowed them. Good protein – learned that
behind the Don. The police turned up. Think they were thinking about charging
me, because the guy I was helping out suddenly choruses up: “That’s him, I saw
the whole thing. He’s the ruffian who started it.” Still, the police knew they’d
look good and stupid in court explaining how I’d attacked ten dockers. ’Course
they took me in for questioning, but they only asked one question: “Where’s the
pig-trough pálinka?’”

Perhaps
for Gyuri’s benefit, Tamás was always fastidiously precise about the location
of the women with whom he was consorting.

Thus,
Gyuri knew as well as his own address that Tamás’s separated wife lived halfway
up Kossuth út in Kobányá, between the ‘Short Dipsomaniac’ and the ‘Tall
Dipsomaniac’.

Tamás
also went to great pains to underline that his son, who was ten, got ‘the best
pocket money’ in Budapest. Tamás did the work of three people and was
remunerated accordingly. As he calculated his pay packet (an hourly event) he
would include the information about the superlative status of his son’s pocket
money. Tamás’s herculean exertions were a further reason why Gyuri didn’t need
to do much (although Pataki who was employed in the section where the copper
wire was spun out had absolutely nothing to do but remark: ‘Hey, look at that
wire getting stretched’).

But,
from time to time, Tamás would create a task for Gyuri.

‘Get a
new blade for this hacksaw,’ Tamás requested, which pleased Gyuri as that would
fill up the time until lunch. He set off for the stores as slowly as he could
to make the most of the trip. When he got there, he was surprised to see a ‘Do
not disturb’ sign which looked as if it had been borrowed thirty years
previously from a luxury hotel. Inside, the storemaster, who was the Party
Secretary of that section of Ganz, was playing cards with three confederates.
Gyuri had barely got his foot across the threshold when, without looking at him
or noticeably moving his lips, the storemaster said firmly but without rancour:
‘fuckyourmother’. This was said as such an aside, so mechanically, that Gyuri
felt it couldn’t have been related to his entry. So he asked: ‘Sorry to
interrupt, but…’

The
storemaster wheeled on him: ‘May God and all his holy saints fuck you!’ he
exclaimed in what seemed a deplorable lapse for an avowed atheist and a
historical materialist. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Fischer.’

‘Okay,
you’re fired and on your way out stick a horseprick up your arse,’ said the
storemaster dismissing him in an enraged tone before turning back to his
comrades in cards. ‘Can you believe this? You can’t get a minute’s peace in
this place.’

Returning
to his electrical engines, Gyuri pondered the question of whether Gombás, his
protector, was in a stronger position than Lakatos, the wing Party Secretary,
and if he were fired, did he care that much? He tried to kid himself, but then
realised that he did care. Ganz might be bad, but it wasn’t Army bad.

Tamás
was surprised to see Gyuri returning empty-handed. ‘He said that he was too
busy and that I’m fired,’ Gyuri reported.

‘He
does have a cruel sense of humour, that Lakatos,’ said Tamás setting off with
the blunted hacksaw. Continuing to meditate on his predicament, Gyuri resolved
to alert Gombás immediately to the threat to his employment and went up to
Gombás’s office.

Gombás’s
secretary wasn’t there. Neither was Gombás. After repeated polite and clear
knocking in order to ensure that he didn’t accidentally spoil a ‘training
session’, Gyuri found Gombás’s office to be vacated. He stared at Gombás’s
black telephone. The idea of picking up the receiver and putting a call through
to abroad, somewhere, anywhere West, sneaked into his mind. He toyed with the
idea of just doing it, of placing a call, just to hear them say ‘Hello’ or ‘Good
morning’, just to hear the sound of abroad, the crackle of free air, the
ineffable language of out. The prospect xylophoned excitement along his spine.

He
enjoyed toying with the idea for a few minutes, knowing for a variety of reasons,
first and foremost, a lack of guts, he wouldn’t attempt it but he fully
savoured the opportunity. He imagined picking up the receiver and asking in a
Gombás-like voice for New York, Paris, London, Berlin even Cleveland, Ohio. It
was five of the best minutes he had spent for a very long time.

Then he
restarted his worries on getting the sack. Where was Gombás? Had he embarked on
a talent-scouting tour? Would he be in the army before Gombás paid another
visit to his office? Going back to the shopfloor, Gyuri bumped into Pataki
sauntering down a corridor, bouncing a basketball on the floor and off the
walls, wearing his sunglasses. Presumably he had run out of wire to watch.
Gyuri recounted his problems while Pataki bounced the ball furiously around a
portrait of Rákosi. ‘I always envisaged you as a military man,’ said Pataki
with the total lack of sympathy only a close friend could muster. ‘No, don’t
laugh. I’ve never seen anyone who can rival your genius for digging trenches.
In recognition of your trench-digging alone you should make General. And I hear
military service is being extended to three years, that should give you plenty
of time.’ Pataki then moved off into the offices to dazzle dazzleable young
women with his dribbling skills.

Even
though he was highly exercised about his own perils, Gyuri couldn’t suppress a
pang of anxiety about Pataki who wasn’t slowing down his disregard. He had
always been the one to get them into trouble, the self-evident, self-incriminating
trouble such as the scout camp where they had drunk all the communion wine,
all
the communion wine at Pataki’s
suggestion. There had been no hope of getting away with it. Father Jenik had
been justifiably furious, but since there had only been three days of the camp
left, there had only been three days of real wrath and punishment. This camp
could be longer…

Bearing
two new blades, Tamás reappeared. ‘I told you he was pulling your leg. He’s a
good lad, old Lakatos. He wouldn’t let me leave without giving me this carton
of cigarettes. I didn’t want to take them, but he really pressed me.’ Tamás
gave Gyuri two packets.

Then it
was lunch. The weather was a muscular sunshine so most employees went out into
the yard to eat whatever they had managed to lay their hands on. Zsigmond and
Partos, the two priests, were sitting next to each other, dealing with their
bread and cheese, conversing in Latin, polishing their only remaining Catholic
weapon. No one paid any attention to them any more. The workers were quite
accustomed to the strange workfellows that had descended on them. Priests,
accountants, diplomats, cartographers, nobility, all undextrous to a man.
There was a great campaign going on for ‘sharing working methods’. Posters,
films, exhortations in print and in person were undodgeable. One of the
newsreel versions of this appeal that Gyuri had seen featured a seasoned old
worker, complete with the beret that was the hallmark of proletarianness, who
having ignored the frustrated bunglings of the fresh-faced youth on the lathe
next to him, reads the ‘Free People’ editorial on the imperativeness of sharing
working methods. The old worker is forthwith struck down with shame at his
laxness. Instantly, he rushes over to introduce the boy to the delights of
advanced lathe-turning.

This
was essentially the Party saying: you’d better train each other because we’re
not going to spare the time or cash to do so. While everyone in the works would
rather have been dead than carrying out what the Party had urged, if for no
other reason than not wanting to waste valuable earning-time, they had provided
guiding help and encouragement to the newcomers who had been dropped into the
midst of the factory without knowing how to do the job, and often not even
knowing what the job was. They were silently acknowledged as domestic exiles.

Gyuri
was warmly greeted by Csokonai, who was sitting scribbling away furiously on a
mess of sheets on his lap. Csokonai had been a lecturer at the University, an
expert on international law, a decent man, if tiresome in anything but the
smallest doses, who looked on Gyuri as an ally. Having noted that Csokonai had
a bulging bag of crisp apples, Gyuri sat down next to him, amazed at what he
would do for a good bite. Csokonai was in a incessant state of fury with only
slight adjustments in the volume. He had explained to Gyuri several times,
firmly gripping him by the wrist (with prodigious force for a skinny lawyer): ‘They
replaced me with an idiot. An
idiot.
An
idiot.
A man who knew nothing, nothing. You must believe me.’
Csokonai would repeat this just to leave no doubt that he wasn’t using idiot as
a figure of speech, but as a purely technical term. Gyuri always agreed
adamantly, because he wanted his wrist released and because he found it
plausible that some cadre who had flicked through the paperback edition of
Lenin on International Law had got Csokonai’s job. Over sixty, Csokonai was too
old to take it; he couldn’t even attempt to roll with the punches. Most of his
lunchbreak was spent compiling further violations of national and international
law and principles. ‘I’ve really got them now,’ he snarled. ‘They’ll pay, they’ll
pay. This nonsense can’t last forever and then they’ll pay.’