Under the frog (20 page)

Pataki’s
awareness latched on to Gyuri as he approached. Just for a shaving of a second,
there was a general alarm, a call to action, a glimpse of consternation bolting
around the corner. If Gyuri hadn’t known Pataki from the age of four, these
fleeting, mostly subcutaneous movements couldn’t have been noticed. As it takes
a trained expert to judge a counterfeit banknote, so it took a Pataki expert to
detect the counterfeit cool, to detect the thinnest recoil, a proton of shame,
as if he had been caught extracting his dick from a herbivore.

The
reason for Gyuri’s amazement was that Pataki never went shopping. Never. For
certain masculine accessories such as clothes etc., yes, but then that sort of
shopping wasn’t done in a shop but by cajoling acquaintances to produce the
required item through barter, bribery, blackmail or begging. Even when Pataki
was at a more malleable age, at six or seven, he had stubbornly refused to run
out to the shops, no matter what the incentives or threats. Though Pataki had
never publicly proclaimed it as a policy decision, there was a clear
implication that going to the shops was one of the things you didn’t do, that
it was an infringement of rowing time, a blight on male dignity. When Gyuri
went off to collect the dress from Angyalföld, Pataki had said nothing, but his
silence was eloquent:
you’re my friend, so I won’t dwell on this deplorable
lapse, this sad weakness.

Pataki
was the chief exponent of ‘snatch the snatch’, of amatory hitting and running
for the rowing-boat. Gyuri didn’t have the black and white evidence yet, but he
had the feeling that Pataki’s waiting for some cheese was a sign of doctrinal
collapse, that his mulierosity had got him distaffed.

‘How
was the Army?’ Pataki greeted him, impeccably casual, as if they were meeting
in the sports hall and not at the cheese-counter. ‘I hope they offered you a
generalship?’

‘It was
everything you’d expect,’ said Gyuri unable to contain himself and going for
the jugular question. ‘Doing some errands for your mother, are you?’

‘No.
Bea asked me to get a few things for lunch,’ replied Pataki. It was Pataki, in
one way, at his greatest. The flawless tones of mundane, routine queuing, as if
he were simply standing in a queue talking about standing in a queue and not
utter capitulation, the unbridled massacre of a young lifetime’s precepts.

So it
was Bea.

When
Pataki had been thrown out of the College of Accountancy it hadn’t come as a
surprise to anyone concerned. He had only found out about the exams by
accident. He was walking past the College when he had been overcome by the need
for a leak and he had fortuitously discovered the exam lists on his way to the
gents. He had pleaded with Gyuri to remind him of the subjects he was supposed
to be studying – was it the light industrial inventory course or the advanced
cost analysis? He was so far gone, even cheating couldn’t have helped him.

Pataki
had then rapidly obtained a place at the College for Theatrical and Cinematic
Arts. Ironically, this hadn’t been for the outstanding performance that freed
him from the clutches of the Army, which had snapped him up the minute he had
been jettisoned by the College of Accountancy. He had feigned a dud cartilage
which required him to walk around with an inflexible leg, all the time, for six
weeks, a marathon acting feat that demanded rigorous verisimilitude twenty-four
hours a day, thespianism without respite – though it was true that the
potential savagery of the non-commissioned critics was a great encouragement in
maintaining a correct impaired cartilage posture. A friendly doctor whom István
had lined up removed a healthy cartilage from Pataki’s right knee and he got
his discharge from the Army. Before his knee had time to heal properly Pataki
was in at the College of Theatrical and Cinematic Arts to study photography and
thus exempt once again from military service.

Bea’s
existence had been gradually revealed, more by Pataki’s absences than her
presence. But Pataki was finally caught, having informed everyone that he was
going to get some developing agents, in tandem with Bea on a bench overlooking
the Danube.

Gyuri
and Róka spotted them as they were completing a run around Margit Island.

The
vigour of her hello, the choreography of Bea’s movements, the mellifluousness
of her voice that made every syllable stand on its own feet, the projection of
her posture would have convicted Bea of being an apprentice actress, without
the production of her student identity card. Discovering Bea and Pataki on the
bench was rather startling because Pataki’s stated policy was that sitting
around on park benches was for simpletons or failures.

‘You
don’t mind if we join you?’ said Gyuri sitting down on the grass next to the
bench. He and Róka fastened onto Pataki and Bea, surmising that this would be
of some hindrance, embarrassment or annoyance to Pataki, whose demeanour was
one of affability as if there could be nothing more natural and agreeable than
all of them sitting there watching the Danube. ‘Been saving up for my present,
have you?’ asked Gyuri, taking advantage of Pataki’s corneredness to remind him
about the non-appearance of his birthday present, then ten days overdue. Pataki
writhed, too briefly for anyone but a seasoned Pataki-watcher to behold, and
then handed over, to Gyuri’s surprise, a neatly wrapped volume (it must have
been wrapped by someone else). ‘We were just out shopping for it,’ said Pataki.
There was no doubt it was intended as Gyuri’s birthday present but Pataki’s
reluctance in handing it over soon became understandable.

The
present was a book,
Hungarian Writers on Mátyás Rákosi,
a volume issued to commemorate
Rákosi’s sixtieth birthday in March. ‘It’s what I always wanted,’ said Gyuri,
using one of his subtlest sarcasms, since only minimal irony was called for.
The anthology was self-evidently not only something Gyuri didn’t have the
slightest interest in, it was a gift that he had no more intention of taking
home than he had of sticking a serrated blade through his palm. Pataki had
probably bought it to read himself and catch up on the latest in literary
goings-on.

The
book was a collection of pieces by leading Hungarian writers which might as
well have been titled
Arse-Licking in
35
Variations.
The only real literary ability called into action was
to minimise the degradation and shame in composing a panegyric on the bald
orang-utan who happened to be Prime Minister and the first Secretary of the
Hungarian Working People’s Party. You could imagine them sitting around in the
comforts of the Writers’ Union saying to each other: ‘No, no, Zoli, I’m not
distinguished enough to make a contribution to the book. I’m sure Józsi or Laci
can knock out something.’

Bea was
attractive, though by no means the fairest to be Patakied, and her theatrical
nature prompted Gyuri to read out the first work from the book, a poem by
Zoltán Zelk. Zelk at his best was well, appalling. Curiously, Pataki, normally
merciless in his critical judgements on poetry, always went easy on Zelk,
although he had claimed he could train any reasonably intelligent dog to
compose better verses than Zelk, by picking out words from a hat.

‘Comrade Rákosi is sixty,
No other words required,
If I write it down,
You’ll know instantly,
Comrade
Rákosi is sixty.’

Perhaps
because of Gyuri’s skilful inflections in reading, Róka started to cry with
laughter. Mastering his mirth, he was handed a stanza by his muse: ‘Comrade
Rákosi is an arse, no other words required, if I write it down, you’ll know
instantly, Comrade Rákosi is an arse.’

‘Oh,
don’t be unfair,’ chided Bea gently ‘Rákosi’s a good old soul, he’s why I
joined the Party.’ This only added fuel to the fire. Both Gyuri and Róka
laughed to the point of pain, doubled up on the ground, much to Bea’s
puzzlement, since she hadn’t intended to be funny, since she wasn’t joking.

Pataki
made good their escape before any offence occurred. ‘We’re going to the cinema.
We’d better be off.’ He and Bea sauntered away to the bus stop. Bea’s parting
words made it clear however that she was quite genuine in her admiration for
Rákosi. ‘He’s done a lot of good for this country.’ Róka was quite shocked– although
he was indiscriminate in assisting women with their orgasms, this bounty was
coupled with an austere, petrous morality that forbade any form of intercourse
with the Party. Bea struck Gyuri as someone who hadn’t thought too much about
Rákosi & Co. – as someone who hadn’t thought too much about anything. For
her the Party meant social occasions, meetings, songs, speeches, set texts.

‘What
is he doing?’ Róka asked
persistently, largely rhetorically.

‘Isn’t
it about time the Party showed him a good time?’ replied Gyuri, flicking
through the homage to Rákosi, wondering whether he could find anyone stupid
enough to barter something for the book. There was only one bona fide cadre in
Locomotive– Péter, a peasant lad from Kecskemét, who was bullishly in favour of
the new order as well anyone might be who had been rescued from a region where
the most dramatic event was the sluggish production of oxygen by the local
verdure. Peter was always attending courses, radiating optimism and socialist
zest for life. He would have been ideal for one of those photographs where
young Hungarians look on proudly and wistfully at the brand new achievements of
people’s power. Moreover, Peter was always ferrying around books such as
Stalin: A Short Biography
(‘not short enough’, others
would remark) and in moments of leisure he would work his way through
ponderously underlining passages that he deemed to contain bonus significance.
Might Peter be willing to exchange some of those delightfully tasty objects
that he received from his solicitous relatives for this outstanding literary
work?

‘But,’ said Róka, ‘what is he
doing
?’

Róka’s bewilderment might have been greater if he had known that Pataki’s father, an
accountant who had wandered into social democracy, had spent 1951 tied up in an
AVO basement. Pataki’s father had only told Pataki and Pataki had only told
Gyuri. Gaspar had been picked up in the regulation fashion in January, asked to
come to Andrássy út as a witness.

His
suspicions had been aroused when they tied him up from shoulder to toe in a
sort of all-encompassing rope strait-jacket, a hemp cocoon, and deposited him
in an unlit basement for what was probably a week. After that he was unwrapped
in an interrogation suite, punched in the mouth and admonished:

‘Confess
something. Surprise us. Entertain us.’

All
Gaspar could do was to say there must have been some mistake and then emit a
few ouches as they tried to punch-start him into admission. He was thrown back
into the basement with the verdict: ‘Who arrested that boring bastard?’ He
stayed there for the rest of the year, eating by pushing his face into the
billy-can that was introduced from time to time into the cell. He felt like an
envelope waiting to be opened in someone’s in-tray. There were dribs and drabs
of conversation he heard emanating from outside: ‘Don’t you need a social
democrat, Jeno?’ ‘What do you think this is, 1950?’ ‘What about an accountant?’
‘Well, I certainly don’t need one. You’ve been greedy again, haven’t you?
Remember what Belkin said, never arrest more than you need, it just creates
paperwork.’

Every
six weeks or so, Gaspar was taken for a wash. On one occasion he shared a
shower with someone who looked remarkably like Janos Kadar, the former
Communist Minister of the Interior. He even sounded like Kadar. ‘How much
longer can this go on?’ asked the Kadar lookalike. Gaspar hadn’t been able to
think of anything to say in the circumstances.

Finally,
just before Christmas, someone came into the basement, untied him and said, ‘Piss
off, we need this cell.’ Luckily for Gaspar one of Budapest’s five taxis was
passing outside (‘I get most of my trade here,’ the driver had informed him),
as the walk from the basement to the street had bankrupted his muscles.

Never
an outgoing fellow in the first place, Gaspar had become even more
armchair-bound than Elek, flattened by the physical ordeal, by the shame of
imprisonment and the additional humiliation of having been adjudged too dull to
be stuck into a conspiracy.

To the
boys, Pataki presented his relations with Bea with a bluff ‘The Party has
screwed me, now I’m screwing the Party’, but now, as he waited with Pataki for
three decas of Anikó cheese, Gyuri realised it was all over. On the one hand,
he wished he had his diary with him so he could pencil in whole months’ worth
of vilification, mockery and needling. The quality of the material that he had
struck in finding Pataki with a shopping basket promised an almost unlimited
quantity of ridicule, from one-liners to epic-length denunciations. ‘There I
was, walking down Thököly út…’. On the other hand however, Gyuri felt
sorrowful. Pataki had assumed heroic status in the battle of the sexes,
invincible, unconquerable, immune to the ailments that floored others, and here
was the mighty mightily fallen, ozymandiased with a shopping-basket. Pataki
had become a mortal.

Huge
jars of pickled gherkins lined the walls of the shop, lording it over smaller
jars of apricot conserve. Any level surface in the shop had these crammed glass
jars. They were what you could find all over Hungary, in all the one-room
shops: pickled gherkins and apricot conserve. If you liked pickled gherkins and
apricot conserve a lot, you were in the right country. Abundant pickled
gherkins and apricot conserve were quite an accomplishment, Gyuri mused, as
Hungary got on with the second half of the twentieth century.

That
was the sort of organic stagnation, displayed stasis, obedience under clear
glass that they would like from people, stacked in their homes, products that
didn’t require attention, that wouldn’t be troubled by the languors of the system
of distribution, that would just exist docilely on the shelf until needed.