Under the frog (18 page)

Everyone
knew about the bell-shock, sweating away with the fear of arrest, but Gyuri had
never felt important enough to be arrested. For an instant he believed they
must be looking for someone else or that they had the wrong address; until they
explained, not that they were arresting him, but that they had a few questions
waiting for him.

Gyuri
got dressed and left a note for Elek who was nowhere in evidence (warming up a
widow somewhere no doubt).

Kovacs
the concierge, an inveterate arsehead, was waiting, deeply disgruntled, to let
them out and to lock up. Gyuri did manage to pick up a very faint sensation of
satisfaction as he saw Kovacs fuming in his moth-eaten, cigarette-ventilated
dressing gown, his hair floating in all directions.

The car
wasn’t black, as tradition dictated, but a sort of pukey brown. This was a
little disappointing since it was going to spoil the story he could relate when
he got out in five, six, seven, ten years time, whenever. It was a short drive
through empty streets. Gyuri was surprised in a way that something he had been
fearing for so long should have come so inexplicably out of the black. Was he
going to be coached for a show trial? Who was being stored in the clink these
days? They seemed keener on Communists these days but there was always the need
for a supporting cast.

Curiously,
there was an element of relief. Now he had touched bottom. There was no need to
fear being arrested when you’re arrested. What was the charge going to be? As
far as Gyuri knew, considering the government to be a bunch of wankers wasn’t
on the statute books. Why hadn’t they arrested him in ’45, in November, after
the elections when he hadn’t anything to eat but did have a loaded revolver and
had gone out into the streets in Elek’s overcoat to shout ‘Fifty-seven per cent’
with lots of other people? Why the Smallholders, a crowd of people with
moustaches who liked going to church and waving loaves of bread, should have
got fifty-seven per cent of the vote would have been a mystery if it hadn’t
been for the Russians and baldy Rákosi’s party on the other side. Rákosi’s
Communist Party, which only scored seventeen per cent, despite all sorts of
largesse from Moscow and regular deliveries of prisoners of war to demonstrate
Rákosi’s diplomatic skills. Rákosi had messed up that election, partly, because
like everyone else in the Communist Party he couldn’t believe how disliked he
was and partly because he’d only just unpacked the ‘build a Communist state’
kit that had been posted to him from the Soviet Union and was still reading the
manual. ‘Fifty-seven per cent’ was a rather witless thing to shout in the
streets, but it had been great, and the slogan was a portmanteau, replete with
sesquipedalian imprecations and oaths against the Communists.

As
Gyuri was led into the elegant interior of 60 Andrássy út, for some reason, the
rumour about the head of the AVO’s wife came to his mind: Gábor Pétér’s wife
was bruited to be lesbian with a strong penchant for triadic trysts. This
salacious aside stepped aside as a young AVO officer (presumably the junior
members and recruits got the night shift) who was Gyuri’s age, opened a folder
and muttered ‘Fischer’ as if he were taking receipt of a consignment of desk
lamps. The officer flipped through the file in a moderately annoyed fashion
because it seemed to be virtually empty and lacking the crucial items he was
searching for. Gyuri studied him and thought: if only I hadn’t been born with
moral vertebrae, with intelligence, with dignity, I could be sitting there
comfortably.

‘Your
confession doesn’t seem to be here,’ remarked the officer with the clear
implication that he was the only person in the building who dealt
conscientiously with paperwork.

‘It had
better be good, I’m not signing any rubbish,’ said Gyuri diving into the
silence. On account of the dearth of menace in the proceedings (it was rather
like a dentist’s waiting room without the magazines) and because he had the
feeling it would be his last chance to crack a joke for a long while, he took
the initiative. It would be the sort of story that would tickle everyone in
prison.

The
receptionist looked at Gyuri as if he had fouled the carpet, not stupid or
boorish, but simply sad. He called to a colleague in an adjoining room. ‘One
more. Fischer.’ The colleague came in with a clipboard he was consulting
closely, professionally. He spent rather longer than one could expect it would
take to scrutinise a single sheet of paper, even with very small print, finally
he pronounced, ‘There’s no Fischer.’

‘Can I
go home, then?’ asked Gyuri, feeling he had nothing to lose.

Both of
them turned to him with a look that said it would be extremely unwise,
extremely
unwise to open his mouth again.
The receptionist gestured at Gyuri. ‘What do you think he’s doing here? Waiting
for a bus?’

‘I don’t
care what he’s doing here. He’s not on the list. I’ve told people about this
before, you know. We’re not the Hotel Britannia. Your name’s Fischer?’ he
asked, addressing Gyuri.

‘Yes.’

He
looked lengthily at the list again. ‘You don’t have any aliases or nicknames do
you?’

‘No.’

The
list was regarded again in the hope it would suddenly divulge a Fischer. ‘You
are Hungarian, I take it?’ he asked scanning a violet piece of paper evidently
intended for foreigners. Gyuri confirmed his nationality. ‘Well, I’ve got a
Fodor, but that’s it, and there aren’t even any Fs on the foreigners’ list.’

‘It
doesn’t matter,’ said the receptionist, ‘just stick him downstairs.’

‘It
does matter. What’s the point of having a fucking list if people’s fucking
names aren’t on it.’

The
receptionist seized the clipboard and eyeballed the list with an air of
doubting the other’s ability to spot a Fischer even when there was one there. ‘Okay,
just take him down.’

‘But we’re
full up. I’ve only got the double left.’

Gyuri
was led underground and shown into a cell which had a feeble member of the bulb
family lighting it and which was predominantly full of gypsy. There were two
benches in the cell, both of which were covered by the largest gypsy Gyuri had
ever seen, in fact one of the largest people he had ever seen. Like Neumann,
but with three or four pillows tied to him. How could anyone get that fat in
Hungary? Apart from his striking collection of collops, the gypsy’s left fist
had ‘bang’ tattooed b-a-n-g on the topmost phalanges of his fingers and his
jowly face had a grid marked on the left side as if someone had been playing
noughts and crosses with an exceptionally sharp knife. Gyuri wondered if the
gypsy had ever contemplated a career in water-polo.

‘Hello,’
said the gypsy, withdrawing a division of thigh to expose some bench and
stretching out a hand. ‘I’m Noughts.’ Then he added beamingly, ‘Pimp.’

Gyuri
shook hands and introduced himself. He admired Noughts’s clarity of identity.
How should he depict himself: basketball player? Railway employee? Student of
life? ‘Fischer, Gyorgy, class alien.’

‘What
have they got you in for?’ Noughts inquired.

Gyuri
reflected. ‘Nothing really.’

‘If it’s
nothing, they’re going to throw the book at you. I reckon they have a quota of
ten-year sentences they need to fill. One of my mates in Nyiregyhaza got taken
in a few weeks ago. “Nothing personal, Bognar,” they said, “but we have to put
someone down for a ten-year stretch, and we know you wouldn’t mind too much,
being a stinking gyppo and that. Just sign the confession so we can go home.’”

Noughts
was in for obstructing the course of justice. Two AVO men were chasing a kid
who had let down the tyres on their car, when they tripped over Noughts who had
been recumbent in a stairwell dead drunk after a protracted wedding
celebration. Noughts’s lack of consciousness was why he hadn’t been able to
implement his usual escape technique: ‘The policemen these days aren’t as well
made as they used to be. You just have to sit on them to hear them snapping.’
The terriblest threats of retribution had been issued to Noughts because it had
required two arrest teams and a butcher’s van to bring him in.

‘I can’t
say I’m looking forward to a stretch. The prisons have really gone downhill,’
complained Noughts. He had been, he elucidated, in most of Hungary’s penal
institutions, including the infamous ‘Star’ prison in Szeged, where Rákosi once
spent fifteen years. Rákosi had had a satisfactory library, a cell to himself
and an international campaign to obtain his release. Progressive intellectuals
from all over Europe had sent telegrams of protest to Hungarian Consuls. Gyuri
had seen one from the West Hull Branch of the Friends of the Soviet Union in an
exhibition about Rákosi’s life. The telegram had spoken of their ‘emphatic
disgust’ at Rákosi’s conviction. Gyuri had reflected that he might well feel
more friendly towards the Soviet Union if he lived in West Hull. He had also
looked up ‘emphatic’ in his English dictionary, since it was a word he hadn’t
come across before. Odd that the progressive intellectuals were so silent about
the abounding convictions in Hungary now. Gyuri also had the presentment that
progressive intellectuals in West Hull, or anywhere else, wouldn’t be sending
any telegrams on his behalf but then Gyuri was ill-disposed towards them
anyhow for saving Rákosi from the death-penalty.

‘The
bread and dripping were outstanding,’ said Noughts continuing his reminiscences
about the ‘Star’ prison. ‘It was worth it for the bread and dripping alone.’

Noughts’s
soliloquy went on, encompassing other gaol delights, which were punctuated with
an exhortation to Gyuri that whenever he got out, one year, two years, ten
years, he should hasten without delay to Noughts’s sister who could habitually
be found around Rákóczi tér. ‘There’s nothing like it for getting it out of
your system.’

The
main difference between prison and being out in Hungary, Gyuri ruminated, was
that in prison there was less room. That was about it. Less room and a strong
smell of unbathed gypsy. As compensation for the ammoniac tentacles growing
from Noughts, there was, at least, no portrait of Rákosi in the hall.

Still
enjoying a burst of aplomb, Gyuri couldn’t help reviewing the various outcomes
of his incarceration, all of which contained generous helpings of more
incarceration, pain and pain’s subsidiaries. Gyuri liked to think of himself as
quite tough and self-reliant which was why he didn’t like to find himself in
circumstances which might amply demonstrate that he wasn’t. 

On the
wall, someone had scraped ‘I am a member of parliament’: this statement didn’t
seem to be worth the trouble on its own – presumably it was an aposiopesis,
produced by the author’s untimely removal from the cell. Underneath, in a
different style, with a different sharpish instrument, someone had inscribed, ‘I
am a member of Újpest football club.’ There was also in faded pencil
(remarkable since Gyuri had had all his portable personal and impersonal items
removed, as well as his belt and shoelaces) ‘If you can read this, you’re in
trouble.’

Well,
thought Gyuri, here I am under the frog’s arse. Under the coal-mining frog’s
arse indeed, at the very bottom of existence. Nothing could make things worse.
Was he going to be entitled to any of those things in life that were accounted
as worthwhile or enjoyable? He was twenty. Was he going to get out in time to
grab any of the things worth grabbing? Without great satisfaction, he inspected
the ledgers of his years. When the venerable poet Arany had reached eighty,
according to Pataki, he was asked how he viewed the peaks of his celebrated
life, a legend-creating poet, revolutionary, seer, national hero and ornament! ‘A
bit more tupping would have been nice’ he replied. This pronouncement hadn’t
made it into Arany’s biography. The prospect of having his willy in dry dock
for a decade was only marginally less alarming than having all his bones broken
or dying unpleasantly, or indeed, pleasantly.

Noughts
got tired of his discourse on penal cuisine and the merits of his sister and
reclined for some sleep. ‘This can’t go on much longer,’ was revealed on the
wall behind him, underneath which, with the true Hungarian desire to have the
last word, someone had written ‘It already has’. Would there ever be a new
round of Nuremberg trials? Gyuri wondered. Would he be around to see them? What
would the AVO say in their defence? ‘We were only obeying ideals.’

It was
hard to judge the passage of time, but it seemed to Gyuri that a day had gone
without any change or incursion into their cell, apart from the odd commotion
at the judas-hole when they were scoped by the guards. There was no sign of
food although Gyuri’s appetite had scarpered. ‘It’s my fault they’re not giving
us anything to eat,’ apologised Noughts, ‘they can’t bear the sight of a fat
gypsy.’

Having
got to the point where he was strapped in, mentally steeled, ready to look a
ten-year sentence in the face with equanimity, Gyuri was released.

Judging
by the light outside, it was the following morning. No one had said anything in
the way of explanation. He had been summoned, given back a portion of his personal
effects (not his shoelaces or small change). Gyuri hadn’t taken the trouble of
inquiring about the whereabouts of the missing items or the wherefore of his
manumittance. Outside, he felt so pleased to see Budapest, Budapest looked so
effervescently active, that he half-wished he could be arrested more often.

He was
coming to terms with his deliverance when he noticed Elemér, the dogcatching
mailed fist of the proletariat, step up to him. Elemér, who was smoking a
dawdling cigarette, had clearly been expecting him. ‘Any time,’ was all he said
before he walked off. The shock was such that Gyuri had no time to kill him
before he vanished. His anger expanded steadily and so intensely he thought the
rage was going to pop his skull. Trembling with anger, he made his way home on
the tram, and if anyone had so much as brushed against him by accident it would
have resulted in an instantaneous, furious, bone-crushing, onslaught.