‘The bread and dripping were outstanding,’ said Noughts continuing his reminiscences about the ‘Star’ prison. ‘It was worth it for the bread and dripping alone.’
Noughts’s soliloquy went on, encompassing other gaol delights, which were punctuated with an exhortation to Gyuri that whenever he got out, one year, two years, ten years, he should hasten without delay to Noughts’s sister who could habitually be found around Rákóczi tér. ‘There’s nothing like it for getting it out of your system.’
The main difference between prison and being out in Hungary, Gyuri ruminated, was that in prison there was less room. That was about it. Less room and a strong smell of unbathed gypsy. As compensation for the ammoniac tentacles growing from Noughts, there was, at least, no portrait of Rákosi in the hall.
Still enjoying a burst of aplomb, Gyuri couldn’t help reviewing the various outcomes of his incarceration, all of which contained generous helpings of more incarceration, pain and pain’s subsidiaries. Gyuri liked to think of himself as quite tough and self-reliant which was why he didn’t like to find himself in circumstances which might amply demonstrate that he wasn’t.
On the wall, someone had scraped ‘I am a member of parliament’: this statement didn’t seem to be worth the trouble on its own – presumably it was an aposiopesis, produced by the author’s untimely removal from the cell. Underneath, in a different style, with a different sharpish instrument, someone had inscribed, ‘I am a member of Újpest football club.’ There was also in faded pencil (remarkable since Gyuri had had all his portable personal and impersonal items removed, as well as his belt and shoelaces) ‘If you can read this, you’re in trouble.’
Well, thought Gyuri, here I am under the frog’s arse. Under the coal-mining frog’s arse indeed, at the very bottom of existence. Nothing could make things worse. Was he going to be entitled to any of those things in life that were accounted as worthwhile or enjoyable? He was twenty. Was he going to get out in time to grab any of the things worth grabbing? Without great satisfaction, he inspected the ledgers of his years. When the venerable poet Arany had reached eighty, according to Pataki, he was asked how he viewed the peaks of his celebrated life, a legend-creating poet, revolutionary, seer, national hero and ornament! ‘A bit more tupping would have been nice’ he replied. This pronouncement hadn’t made it into Arany’s biography. The prospect of having his willy in dry dock for a decade was only marginally less alarming than having all his bones broken or dying unpleasantly, or indeed, pleasantly.
Noughts got tired of his discourse on penal cuisine and the merits of his sister and reclined for some sleep. ‘This can’t go on much longer,’ was revealed on the wall behind him, underneath which, with the true Hungarian desire to have the last word, someone had written ‘It already has’. Would there ever be a new round of Nuremberg trials? Gyuri wondered. Would he be around to see them? What would the AVO say in their defence? ‘We were only obeying ideals.’
It was hard to judge the passage of time, but it seemed to Gyuri that a day had gone without any change or incursion into their cell, apart from the odd commotion at the judas-hole when they were scoped by the guards. There was no sign of food although Gyuri’s appetite had scarpered. ‘It’s my fault they’re not giving us anything to eat,’ apologised Noughts, ‘they can’t bear the sight of a fat gypsy.’
Having got to the point where he was strapped in, mentally steeled, ready to look a ten-year sentence in the face with equanimity, Gyuri was released.
Judging by the light outside, it was the following morning. No one had said anything in the way of explanation. He had been summoned, given back a portion of his personal effects (not his shoelaces or small change). Gyuri hadn’t taken the trouble of inquiring about the whereabouts of the missing items or the wherefore of his manumittance. Outside, he felt so pleased to see Budapest, Budapest looked so effervescently active, that he half-wished he could be arrested more often.
He was coming to terms with his deliverance when he noticed Elemér, the dogcatching mailed fist of the proletariat, step up to him. Elemér, who was smoking a dawdling cigarette, had clearly been expecting him. ‘Any time,’ was all he said before he walked off. The shock was such that Gyuri had no time to kill him before he vanished. His anger expanded steadily and so intensely he thought the rage was going to pop his skull. Trembling with anger, he made his way home on the tram, and if anyone had so much as brushed against him by accident it would have resulted in an instantaneous, furious, bone-crushing, onslaught.
At home, he discovered the note he had left on the kitchen table for Elek, looking unread. Where was the old goat? he wondered as he ripped up the note. Elek entered at that moment, sniffed and commented ebulliently on Gyuri’s malodorous condition after the AVO’s cold sauna: ‘Communism doesn’t prevent washing, you know.’ Gyuri never told anyone.
August 1952
It had only been a month but if he never achieved anything else in his life, that month would be achievement enough.
The camp had been at Böhönye but they had been met at Pécs rail way station by the sergeant-major who had been specially selected to shape up the university students during the four weeks he had charge of them, to mould them into lusty officers. The sergeant-major was in no way perturbed by the centuries-old tradition of sergeant-majors being sadistic, aggressive and very loud. From the start, he was out to prove he could be far worse than anything they might have imagined.
‘We’re going to be fighting World War Three soon,’ was his opening gambit. Like all soldiers he wasn’t too enamoured of peace – it didn’t give the military the respect and resources it considered it so richly deserved. But a peace which was simply a build-up to a world conflict was something the sergeant-major could stomach.
‘You are turds. Unspeakable turds… whom I am obliged to transmogrify into barely useful turds. My philosophy: my philosophy is to make life for you so unpleasant you will find war an agreeable recreation, a bit of light relief, and that you will die in a manner that will not disgrace the fine traditions of the Hungarian Army.’ (Which is about all Hungarian armies have ever managed to do, Gyuri thought.)
‘I expect some of you will be committing suicide. Indeed I will consider my work a failure if some of you turds don’t try a bit of wrist-slashing. And if you don’t do the job properly, we’re willing to help; attempted suicide is punishable by death.’ To be fair to the sergeant-major, he at least looked as if he knew something about soldiering: large, vigorous, confident, gnarled, the sort of person you were glad was on your side. A bastard but a competent bastard. ‘It’s all right, having a shaky officer when you’re in barracks,’ Tamás had told Gyuri at Ganz. ‘It’s not important there if it takes him two hours to find out which way up the map should be, but when you get to the front, you need someone good, or you get jacked. We had one officer called Kocsis. The funny thing was he had always wanted to be an officer, he came from a military family but even after going through the Ludovika, he couldn’t direct piss into a bucket, let alone direct a military operation. Within an hour of getting us to the front, he got us pinned down, and he was killed straight away by some Soviet who got through our defences, infiltrating brilliantly in a Hungarian uniform, speaking fluent Hungarian and having lived in Budapest for thirty years.’