Under the frog (4 page)

They were also shown the much-hailed ‘Panzerfaust’, the
shoulder-launched antitank missile that was the latest secret weapon from the
German scientists, and the piece of kit that everyone wanted to get their hands
on. Their instructor had taken the Panzerfaust out of its box and held it out
to them like some sort of talisman. ‘There it is, lads, the Panzerfaust,’ he
had said, packing it back into its box so it could be taken off to be exhibited
elsewhere and launching into a lengthy description of sundry hush-hush
techniques for getting a truly first-rate shine on your boots.

Some of the duties were more pleasant. There had been a boom
in requisitioning, presumably on the premise of doing your looting while you
could. The notoriously stupid Hankóczy, who having made it to fifteen, was in
charge, had led them on a stripping tour of properties in the Jewish quarter.

Supposedly searching for items that would help the war
effort, Gyuri and Dozsa had an exceptionally good pillage in a pharmacy,
recruiting lots of soap. Dozsa’s presence had been rather odd, since his father
was Jewish and had been issued with a yellow star and one evening had been
taken away. Gyuri had spotted him being escorted away, carrying one small
suitcase. But a day or so later, Dozsa’s father had returned, and although he
hadn’t been tap-dancing on the roof, he had been left alone.

Coming out of the pharmacy, Gyuri and Dozsa had heard a
shrill protest from the other side of the street. From a fully-opened second
floor window, a diminutive, but vocally powerful old lady unleashed a savage
tirade against their appropriation of toiletries: ‘filth, termites,
bloodsuckers. Have you no shame? Stealing like this in broad daylight?’ The
woman had the appearance of being irritating on a full-time basis but Gyuri had
been startled by the vehemence of her denunciations, which were surprising:
against the background of wholesale export of Jewish families, the emptying of
a pharmacy didn’t really rate a mention. Also Gyuri didn’t see why he should
get the blame for the Nazi goings-on. Was the woman out of touch, or was it her
pharmacy?

But she was very loud and very persistent. People stopped to
watch the show. The most annoying thing, Gyuri suspected, was that she was
right. Hankóczy had materialised and taken stock of the situation: ‘Right,
Fischer, shoot the old bag.’ Gyuri had been issued with a vintage revolver, as
a sort of official warrant, which he enjoyed wearing. ‘Go on,’ Hankóczy
commanded in a senior, military sort of way. Gyuri pulled out the revolver from
its holster. ‘Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!’ insisted the old lady, weary of the world,
but Gyuri, after reflecting that at that distance he’d probably miss, had
decided to be merciful.

‘Your mother, dear madam, was a whore,’ he had shouted
belligerently. This massive and out-of-all-proportion rudeness had pleased
Hankóczy even more than a round through the old girl would have. It had
certainly blown her back into her flat, ripping apart her lace-curtain world.
Hankóczy slapped Gyuri on the back approvingly but a creeping feeling of shame
soon overtook Gyuri. You’re brought up to be polite to little old ladies, Gyuri
thought, but all you want to do is to shoot them.

Tired of watching retreating Germans, Gyuri set off for
home. He was curious about what war would be like close-up. Their first
instalment had been yesterday, when he and Pataki were looking out from the
tiny balcony that the Patakis had, a sort of a concrete slab that jutted out of
the building. Pataki’s mother called them in for a few samples of the
parliamentarian pastries she had been baking. A minute later, there was a faint
thump and they went back to the balcony to see what it was, or rather they
wanted to go out on the balcony, but they couldn’t because it was gone, seized
by a long-distance Russian shell that hadn’t felt like exploding.

Gyuri had heard a similar story from Gergely. Gergely’s
family were down in the shelter during an air raid and when it was over went
back upstairs to their top-floor flat, opened the door, and found the whole
flat gone. All that was left were the front door, its hinges and a view of
dusty debris four floors down. ‘At least we didn’t have to bother tidying up,’
Gergely had commented.

Gyuri had also quizzed István about the war. István had
spent three years on different fronts, always bringing back in an elder
brotherly way some mementos for Gyuri: bullets, bayonets, helmets and one
Russian revolver that sadly didn’t have any ammunition. ‘What’s it like at the
front?’ Gyuri asked. István hesitated, uncharacteristically, and then replied: ‘You
try to shoot first … otherwise it’s like anything else. Some people love it,
some people hate it.’ Elek, who had been highly decorated the last time round,
never discussed the war, but then he never discussed anything with Gyuri.
Dealing with his children came as naturally to him as juggling pineapples.
Gyuri had inquired once about the decorations, to which Elek had volunteered
the information: ‘As a soldier in a war, you end up highly-decorated or dead,
though some manage to overlap.’ The imminence of the Russians had coaxed one
further military, paternal revelation from Elek, however: ‘Listen, if it comes
to the point where someone is stupid enough to tell you to fight, just vanish
and hide somewhere till it’s over.’

As Gyuri walked down Damjanich utca, he saw a limousine with
army insignia parked outside number ten. Wondering if this signified anything
for the family, Gyuri spotted Kálmán, one of István’s closest friends, now
something influential at the High Command, wearing a fancy dress uniform.
Kálmán was taken aback to see Gyuri and you could see him reviewing a number of
approaches before going for the shortcut: ‘István’s back. He’s badly wounded.’

Inside the flat, Gyuri got a glimpse of István lying on the
dining-room table, looking like an eleven stone steak. Elek was next to him
with one of his old army chums, Krudy, a doctor who was taking instruments out
of a black bag. Gyuri knew, although he knew that he shouldn’t know, that Krudy
had made a fortune out of pussy, angel-making (conducting abortions) and
reconstituting hymens to produce born-again virgins for the best families in
Budapest. Just before Elek shut the door in his face, István, who had somehow
noticed Gyuri standing there, shouted: ‘Sorry, I didn’t bring you back anything
this time.’

When Kálmán returned with another officer, Gyuri was still
floating around outside the dining-room. ‘We couldn’t find any anaesthetic,’ he
said undoing his uniform, ‘this is going to take a long time. He’s got more
metal in him than a cash register.’ During the intermissions in the surgery
Gyuri learned from Kálmán that he had found out that morning that István’s unit
had been strafed by Russian planes near Godolo, just outside Budapest. Kálmán
had phoned Elek and they had gone out to search for István. It was a good
thing, Gyuri realised, that his mother was away in the countryside getting
supplies, otherwise Elek would be taking full responsibility for the Second
World War.

Much later, Krudy came out: ‘Now we can start worrying about
the Russians.’

* * *

In some ways István had been very lucky. They put him on the
last train to get out of Budapest, moments before the Russians completely
encircled the city. He didn’t have to spend six weeks in a cellar while the
Russians and Germans argued over Budapest.

There were some consolations to living in a cellar, first-floor Noemi who had been unrequiting Gyuri’s love for some time was forced into
proximity with him. But the diet of tedium, unwashedness and intermittent
horsemeat was hard to take. It was also hard to think well of anyone with whom
you had spent six weeks in a cellar. The only person to come out of the cellar
episode with any credit was Mrs Molnár, venomous in peacetime but now that war
had expunged the basis of her displeasure with society – namely the lead
everyone else had in such fields as youth, pleasure and more expensive
patisserie – sparked cheer and encouragement. Pataki had a huge supply of books
and seemed content with the opportunity for a good read. Elek had sat stoically
smoking cigarettes for as long as there were cigarettes. After that, he just
sat stoically.

It was not long after Noemi had complained about not having
washed in recent history, that the bleak observation of old Fitos, the head
pessimist in a cellar strong in pessimistic competition, ‘Cheer up, when you
think things have become unbearable, they are going to get worse’, came true.
The Russians made their way into the cellar.

Depending on how drunk they were, they either removed the
women to some separate room or they did it on the spot. They were fair. They
didn’t just rape the young and attractive women but distributed the violations
equally. It was a day when Gyuri was glad that he didn’t own a vagina.

The Russians took anything of value, anything portable;
Gyuri even noticed one eyeing the huge boiler greedily.

Elek negotiated with them in German, as far as circumstances
and linguistic abilities allowed. This rather boiled down to Elek translating
the Ivans’ request for booty. The legendary fondness of the Red Army for
wristwatches proved to be well-founded: everyone, including Elek, lost their
timepiece.

The Russians left bouncily, doubtless feeling the cellar at
number ten had been well worth the visit. Gyuri hadn’t been upset or concerned
about his mother’s jewels or Elek’s watch; after all, Elek could buy replacements after the war.
However, he was glad he had hidden his own wristwatch, a large Swiss model with
so many dials he couldn’t remember what they were all for, around his right
ankle, beneath the protection of a thick sock. ‘They didn’t get my watch,’ he
reported to Elek, showing its concealed position. Elek stared at him in
disbelief, slapped him around the head, took the watch and rushed out to give
it to the Russians.

* * *

In the streets it looked as if it had been raining dead
Russians. As Gyuri and Pataki wandered around they didn’t notice any dead
Germans; perhaps the German horror of disorder had prompted them to tidy up as
they retreated. All the corpses were frozen solid and many of them had left
life in the most ridiculous postures. It reminded Gyuri of the pictures of the
bodies from Pompeii, frozen in time by the lava from erupting Vesuvius, that
István had brought back from his school trip there. Gyuri was looking forward
to visiting Pompeii, mainly because of the more artistic murals, as István said
the guide had labelled them, one of which reputedly featured a guy with a dick
the size of an oar.

A lorry pulled up and before the idea of running away had
even occurred to him or Pataki, a Soviet soldier jumped out, a fat Ukrainian
peasant. (If he wasn’t one he should have considered that profession because he
had the looks for it.) Waving his submachine gun, the davai guitar, in the
winning way the Ivans had, he succinctly expressed his wish that they should
load up some of his fallen comrades onto the lorry. Having made clear the task,
the soldier set off for some investigative looting. For weeks after the
fighting ended, they were quite accustomed to Russians strolling into the flat
and liberating some item that caught their eye, anything from one of Elek’s
suits to his Mother’s eau de cologne, usually consumed on the premises. There
had even been one individual who had stayed for a long time trying to work out
how you were supposed to drink from the toilet bowl.

Józsi joined Gyuri and Pataki and gave them a hand loading
up the defunct soldiers. The floor of the lorry was frozen and you could slide
the corpses along as if you were curling. There were some really ludicrous
poses– one corpse had a hand cupped to his ear as if straining to hear
something. ‘What’s that, Sergei?’ Pataki supplied the line. ‘The wrist watches
are definitely in the next block.’ Another corpse they managed to get upright,
and leaning him slightly against a wall managed to return a semblance of
animation to him. Pataki sacrificed a last cigarette to give a more life-like
appearance to the figure. ‘Sure, I’ve got a light,’ said Pataki holding a match
to the cigarette inserted between cadaverous lips. From a distance it really
did look a Russian soldier having a smoke. It was as they were trying to get
one corpse to give a piggyback ride to another that they discerned, by the
augmenting sound of swearing, the return of the soldier, who was rather angry
to see that he didn’t have a lorryful of corpses and that Gyuri, Pataki and
Józsi were slowly, sombrely, respectfully, gingerly and tenderly placing the
mortal bits of a fallen hero on the back of the lorry.
‘Malenky robot, malenky
robot,’
(a phrase everyone now knew meant ‘a little work’) he
repeated furiously,
‘bistro! bistro!’,
waving his gun to indicate the rapid tempo of
work he desired; evidently, he had an important looting to attend. The
remaining bodies in the vicinity went in faster than sacks of potatoes.

Having filled up the lorry, they were about to bid farewell
when the soldier indicated, again through the eloquent means of the sub-machine
gun, that they should clamber in the back as well. They thought about
objecting, but very briefly. They got on board and watched as the lorry drove out
to the City Park. It was an uncomfortable trip. ‘These stiffs are stiff,’
remarked Pataki.

They were taken into some administrative building where they
were shown to the basement and locked in. An ugliness was noticeable in the
atmosphere and because Pataki had some bean soup waiting for lunch, they
decided to decamp. There was a small window that with great difficulty they
could just about climb out of (another portion or two of horseflesh the
previous week and they wouldn’t have made it). They emerged at the back of the
building, without any Russians in view. After they had run all the way home,
they didn’t set foot outside for a couple of days. Mr Partos from the first
floor, who had ventured into town since he had had a tip-off about some milk,
had disappeared that day. A week later he managed to get a message home from
the cattlewagon he was in at Zahony, near the Hungarian– Soviet border, through
the kind medium of a railway worker. He had been invited to do a
‘malenky robot’
by a Russian soldier, and obviously there was some mistake which he was
confident he could sort out.