Wiping his mouth with an embroidered napkin, Ladányi stood up briskly as if he had been having a quick snack between important engagements. ‘Well, we have to go now. God bless you all.’ Another hour of hand-kissing and loading up gifts onto the cart followed, but Ladányi resolutely insisted that they should depart since they had an opportunity of catching a train which would get them to Budapest in the morning.
By moonlight, Ladányi looked remarkably thin. Gyuri felt somewhat queasy during the bumpy cart-ride and he was astonished that Ladányi didn’t have any inclination to deswallow. It would be months, Gyuri was convinced, before he would want to eat again. Neumann broke the peregrinational hush: ‘Does that agreement really mean anything? Forgive me for saying so but Faragó looks as if he would roger his grandmother for the price of a drink, or even for free.’
‘Look,’ replied Ladányi, ‘what we did tonight was to act out a morality play. I was asked to come. I couldn’t refuse. I doubt if it will make any difference, not because of Comrade Faragó being probity-free, but because of everything else in the country. This was one night of miniature victory in what will be long years of defeat. I hope it will have some importance for the people in Hálás.’
‘How long do you think this will last?’ asked Gyuri, not sure that he actually wanted to hear the answer.
‘Not long,’ pronounced Ladányi. ‘I’d say about forty years or so. You have to wait for the barbarians to get old, to become soft barbarians.’
This wasn’t an answer Gyuri wanted to hear, particularly coming from Ladányi. ‘Time to leave the country.’
‘Not at all. Firstly, as I’m sure you know, it’s not easy to get out any more, and secondly, and I should point out this is not an idea patented by the Church, matter doesn’t matter. It’s not physical conditions that count, but your opinion of them. Take the farmer in the small village in the middle of China who is the happiest man in the world because he has two pigs and no one else in the village has got one. Living isn’t like basketball, it’s not a question of points, but what’s here.’ Gyuri saw Ladányi touch his forehead with his forefinger. ‘You only lose if you give up- and if you give up you deserve to lose. In basketball, you can be beaten. Otherwise you can only be beaten if you agree to it. You’re lucky, you’re very lucky. We’re living in testing circumstances; unless you’re very dull, you should want to be stretched.’
Thanks for the totalitarianism, Stalin. Gyuri doubted that he would enjoy a prison cell as much as Ladányi. ‘A ticket to Paris would be more fun,’ he retorted ‘Couldn’t I book a few prayers for that?’
‘I’ll be delighted to forward your request, but don’t be too specific, or you might get it. One should pray for the best. Maybe you’ll be happier here than in Paris.’
‘I’m prepared to take that risk. Anything to escape from record-breaking lathe-operators.’
‘Yes, this cult of the worker is a bit wearing. Ironic that it sprang chiefly from a fat, free-loading German academic who never had a job in his life, but just sponged off his acquaintances and who indulged in such very bourgeois practices as impregnating the chamber-maid. And so boring. People often overlook the work of a poor carpenter who chose fishermen as his company.’
They rattled on in the cart for a while.
‘The greatest irony about Marx’s influence is that his books are unreadable,’ Ladányi mused. ‘Perhaps his appeal lies in his unintelligibility, a sort of mysticism through statistics and the wages of textile workers. People will have a good laugh about it one day. But, unfortunately, there are people who believe it, not the ones who’ve joined now, but those who joined before the war, when the movement was illegal. They believe in it and as Church history amply shows crazy ideas can take a long time to die out.’
‘I think it’s a process I’d like to watch closely from a café in New York. I might even find it funny from that distance.’
‘Me too,’ chorused Neumann.
‘The desire to travel is part of your age. You’ve never been out of Hungary, have you? Be careful, people can become very fond of their prisons, you know.’
They arrived at the station in the nick of time to catch the train back to Budapest. Neumann, who had the priceless gift of being able to sleep on trains, bedded down in another compartment on some unclaimed seats, while Ladányi took out a book – the Analects of Confucius. ‘Is it any good?’ Gyuri questioned. ‘Life is too short for good books,’ said Ladányi, ‘one should only read great books.’ ‘How can you tell if it’s great?’ ‘If it’s been around for a couple of thousand years, that’s usually a good sign. This isn’t bad. Some of us younger ones have been told to study Chinese. Our superiors think it’s a growing market. Every year a Jesuit gets a letter containing his orders. I have a feeling they may be getting us out of the country. I think that’s wrong, but that’s where the vow of obedience comes in.’
Gyuri hadn’t been to church since he was fourteen when his mother dragged him to the Easter Mass. Naturally, he had attempted to get in touch with God on several subsequent occasions when he had thought he was going to die but always on the spot, away from church precincts. This was surely the real boon of a religious upbringing: it gave you a number to ring in emergencies, which was some consolation, even if no one answered. Gyuri had met with the various arguments for God’s existence from his partisans, proof through design (‘that’s what I call a well-made universe’), the craftsmanship of the universe (it did seem to be an awful lot of trouble for a practical joke) or Pascal’s way of looking at it, a hundred francs on God each way. But, all in all, the best argument he had come across for taking Jesus’s shilling was that the sharpest razor, Ladányi believed it.
When they reached Budapest, Ladányi thanked Gyuri and Neumann for their support. It was the last time Gyuri would see Ladányi. Gyuri had no inkling of that, but years afterwards, re-examining the scene, he suspected that Ladányi knew. ‘Don’t forget what I said about good books. And read the Bible occasionally. It’s had some good reviews, you know.’ Ladányi’s tone in this farewell admonition was not that of a salesman, or a friend recommending a good read, but rather that of a visitor handing a prisoner a loaf of bread with a file in it.
September 1949
It was as the tram was on the last stretch of the Margit Bridge that, from the corner of his eye, Gyuri logged the girl sitting on the edge of the railings, and then, the girl that wasn’t sitting there. There was nothing he and the others on the tram who had spotted the suicide bid could do. By the time the tram had stopped and they could have got back to the bridge, the young lady’s fate would be, one way or another, cleared up. It seemed a bit heartless to say ‘Well, there goes another one’ and to shrug one’s shoulders but apart from forming an audience, nothing could have been contributed by returning. People down by the river bank would be doing whatever samaritaning could be done. Besides, Gyuri was late.
Having a suicide dropped in his lap, would of course, be typical of his luck, especially when he was late for work. On the other hand, it would at least be an honourable excuse for tardiness. A sharp picture of the girl stayed with him – eerie how quickly a detailed portrait could imprint. She looked like a country girl, seeking a populous conurbation for taking the exitless exit and not really attractive enough to encourage diving in after her but then if she had been attractive enough to have hordes of men diving in after her, she wouldn’t have had to jump in the first place.