Kovách had spent most of his teenage years in Moscow, smuggled there from Nazi Germany by his father, named Kovách, so he knew exactly what he was talking about. But no comments and interruptions would stop André Rott.
It’s a very interesting technique, the way they blunt the edge of any statement just as soon as they make it, while sharpening every potential conflict to the extreme — in other words, the way they play off everyone against everyone else.
As if he were saying to the other two, careful, take a good look at where you stand.
If you’re right, I’d be the happiest person in the world. The man who had been looking impassively out the steamy rain-swept window spoke sternly, in a rather chilly way, without visible emotion. He turned back and looked hard into the eyes of the man drying himself as if he wanted to petrify him. Then we would still have a few years, maybe we could come up with some ideas, maybe we could square the circle. But it’s not possible, André, you know yourself, my sweet, it’s just not possible, nobody has a patent on modernizing the dictatorship of the proletariat. And nobody ever will. It cannot be improved and it cannot be accelerated; all one can do is draw the sad conclusions.
Even you can’t square the circle, put in the blue-eyed man.
By birth, all people are indeed equal, which is a fine thing, but they are also greedy animals, which is in painful contradiction to the basic idea of the dictatorship of the good.
He spoke quickly, protecting himself from the other’s self-satisfied nakedness, whose effect on him he could not completely ignore. Somehow, he always wanted to speak faster than one can in Hungarian. Hungarian is a slow language, and his consonants kept piling up. Of the three men, he had the strongest accent.
If there is a shortage of something, their reaction is to collect more of it. The theory of equality has its own shadow.
The other two would have been ready to laugh at this, but hearing such seriousness, they thought it better to remain cautiously silent. They feared that this might turn out to be a settling of accounts with the entire socialist movement.
I’d like to remind you of the Harriman Report.
What Harriman Report, what are you trying to say, André Rott asked indignantly.
You know damn well there isn’t any competition and there won’t be any, either; at most, a little hurry-scurry. You won’t make me swallow this dumb text of yours. There will be war. Any other prognosis is empty rhetoric.
Well, even so, what does the Harriman Report have to do with it. You’ll pardon me, but you’re talking apples and oranges. Unless you’re thinking of the Ethridge Report.* And except for Republican senators, nobody enjoyed reading that. It was the work of a witty journalist, what else would you expect, written with a rhetorical intent. And if I too may express myself rhetorically, I’d advise you not to take on the role of offended oracle.
Sorry, but I am thinking of the Harriman Report. Competition is possible only between sides of comparable abilities, we can accept this as a realistic axiom, and that is why there will be a war. Obviously, you refuse to acknowledge what Hansi has been trying to tell you so patiently. We are not in Moscow, we are not in London, it is completely irrelevant in this cunt-size country’s cunt-size capital—dans ce trou à rats, in this rathole — what your dear comrades are scheming about. At most we have to suffer them silently. Boredom is what’s killing us. We must admit we have drifted out to the edge of the world. But even from here you can see with your naked eye that war is unavoidable. For you, it’s better to think on this scale, better for everybody, everybody knows it, everybody dreads to admit it, everybody’s looking for appropriate reasons, pretexts, bunkers, and escape hatches for it.
Please don’t go on with these unbecoming statements, I beg you, my dove, said the prematurely gray Kovách, interrupting, wanting to pacify. András fears him more than he fears war.
What you call competition is really only preparedness, desperate preparation, the third man continued more loudly, to override the other’s voice. He wouldn’t let interruptions stop him. You can’t possibly draw any far-reaching conclusions from that terribly boring, totally uninteresting paper. And in case you have, please then tell me what is the difference between my beloved father and you.
None. None, he shouted, excited by his own thought. Neither of you can let go of your social utopia.
I’d really like to know what you’re talking about.
What he is trying to grab from the right, you grab from the left.
Are you done, André Rott asked. The strength and edge of his voice were not part of their friendship.
No, I’m not done yet, came Lippay’s quick, dry answer.
But his unusually sharp tones alarmed all three of them and something upset their customary cheeriness; they became hesitant.
Rott and Kovách often argued; they felt almost duty bound to go at each other; it would have been hard to imagine a reconciliation in their ways of thinking. Professor Lehr’s son, on the other hand, very rarely voiced an opinion about abstract political subjects. He’d rather listen and wait; sometimes, as an impartial moderator, he summarized aloud what had been said, thereby reducing the increased friction between the debating sides. Now he surprised them with his bitter combativeness. They sensed big trouble again if he resented their well-intentioned prank and could not forgive them for it. By criticizing the strictly confidential paper, Rott had probably gone too far in railing against the powerful, generally hated professor. He provoked something in the third man that he himself did not want to hear. The dying professor’s name was listed among the authors of the confidential document. Of course, he had gone as far as he did in his critique and taken the risks he had because on many previous occasions they had all slated the professor. Ágost Lippay lived under the same roof with him, but he left out the German part of his double family name in order to reduce the chances of being identified with Professor Lehr, whom oddly enough, despite his having Hungarianized his name in his youth, everyone referred to by his German name.
Don’t be angry with him, little Ágo said, breaking the uneasy silence. Kovách, whose real name no one knew except his present company, said, this is what’s on Prince Andrei’s mind, this is his leftist leaning. His prick hangs to the left. Even his balls dangle well to the left, you can see for yourself.
It’s not realistic to hold forth on great-power competition, Lippay continued in the same dry tone, as if he hadn’t heard Hans von Wolkenstein’s appeasing banter. The more realistic question is whether there’ll be any difference between the front and the home front and, if there won’t be, how supplies and reinforcements might be assured. If in the new kind of warfare everything is part of the battlefield, a no less vital question would be what sort of bunkers should be built for the civilian population, and where, how large and to be used for how long, for god’s sake. No government can build bunkers big enough. I don’t give it more than three weeks before they’ll announce the acceleration of work on the subway system.
Is that so, responded Rott in his cabin, calmly and quietly. His reputation was inviolable; the other man knew less than he did and did not grasp his intentions; moreover, Lippay’s words indicated that in his desperation he’d probably given up. But at least he had done nothing irreparably stupid. As if to wipe his ears, Rott lifted the towel to cover his body because his bashfulness returned. You’re afraid of a nuclear war, eh kid, he added pensively; now he was thinking of something entirely different.
For many long moments, they had been looking only into each other’s eyes and nowhere else; compared to this, nothing else had any meaning, neither what they were saying nor what they kept to themselves. They could not let go of each other. André Rott’s pitch-black wet hair fell on his forehead, he knitted his thick eyebrows almost distrustfully, and his dark eyes, adorned with lively long and curvy eyelashes with which he managed to convince and enthrall so many people, did not let go of Lippay’s always shining yet piercing countenance, radiating either wounded pride or rebuke, a look that usually frightened off the very people he hoped to win over to his cause.