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.