The present was a book, Hungarian Writers on Mátyás Rákosi, a volume issued to commemorate Rákosi’s sixtieth birthday in March. ‘It’s what I always wanted,’ said Gyuri, using one of his subtlest sarcasms, since only minimal irony was called for. The anthology was self-evidently not only something Gyuri didn’t have the slightest interest in, it was a gift that he had no more intention of taking home than he had of sticking a serrated blade through his palm. Pataki had probably bought it to read himself and catch up on the latest in literary goings-on.
The book was a collection of pieces by leading Hungarian writers which might as well have been titled Arse-Licking in 35 Variations. The only real literary ability called into action was to minimise the degradation and shame in composing a panegyric on the bald orang-utan who happened to be Prime Minister and the first Secretary of the Hungarian Working People’s Party. You could imagine them sitting around in the comforts of the Writers’ Union saying to each other: ‘No, no, Zoli, I’m not distinguished enough to make a contribution to the book. I’m sure Józsi or Laci can knock out something.’
Bea was attractive, though by no means the fairest to be Patakied, and her theatrical nature prompted Gyuri to read out the first work from the book, a poem by Zoltán Zelk. Zelk at his best was well, appalling. Curiously, Pataki, normally merciless in his critical judgements on poetry, always went easy on Zelk, although he had claimed he could train any reasonably intelligent dog to compose better verses than Zelk, by picking out words from a hat.
‘Comrade Rákosi is sixty,
No other words required,
If I write it down,
You’ll know instantly,
Comrade Rákosi is sixty.’
Perhaps because of Gyuri’s skilful inflections in reading, Róka started to cry with laughter. Mastering his mirth, he was handed a stanza by his muse: ‘Comrade Rákosi is an arse, no other words required, if I write it down, you’ll know instantly, Comrade Rákosi is an arse.’
‘Oh, don’t be unfair,’ chided Bea gently ‘Rákosi’s a good old soul, he’s why I joined the Party.’ This only added fuel to the fire. Both Gyuri and Róka laughed to the point of pain, doubled up on the ground, much to Bea’s puzzlement, since she hadn’t intended to be funny, since she wasn’t joking.
Pataki made good their escape before any offence occurred. ‘We’re going to the cinema. We’d better be off.’ He and Bea sauntered away to the bus stop. Bea’s parting words made it clear however that she was quite genuine in her admiration for Rákosi. ‘He’s done a lot of good for this country.’ Róka was quite shocked- although he was indiscriminate in assisting women with their orgasms, this bounty was coupled with an austere, petrous morality that forbade any form of intercourse with the Party. Bea struck Gyuri as someone who hadn’t thought too much about Rákosi & Co. – as someone who hadn’t thought too much about anything. For her the Party meant social occasions, meetings, songs, speeches, set texts.
‘What is he doing?’ Róka asked persistently, largely rhetorically.
‘Isn’t it about time the Party showed him a good time?’ replied Gyuri, flicking through the homage to Rákosi, wondering whether he could find anyone stupid enough to barter something for the book. There was only one bona fide cadre in Locomotive- Péter, a peasant lad from Kecskemét, who was bullishly in favour of the new order as well anyone might be who had been rescued from a region where the most dramatic event was the sluggish production of oxygen by the local verdure. Peter was always attending courses, radiating optimism and socialist zest for life. He would have been ideal for one of those photographs where young Hungarians look on proudly and wistfully at the brand new achievements of people’s power. Moreover, Peter was always ferrying around books such as Stalin: A Short Biography (‘not short enough’, others would remark) and in moments of leisure he would work his way through ponderously underlining passages that he deemed to contain bonus significance. Might Peter be willing to exchange some of those delightfully tasty objects that he received from his solicitous relatives for this outstanding literary work?
‘But,’ said Róka, ‘what is he doing?’
Róka’s bewilderment might have been greater if he had known that Pataki’s father, an accountant who had wandered into social democracy, had spent 1951 tied up in an AVO basement. Pataki’s father had only told Pataki and Pataki had only told Gyuri. Gaspar had been picked up in the regulation fashion in January, asked to come to Andrássy út as a witness.
His suspicions had been aroused when they tied him up from shoulder to toe in a sort of all-encompassing rope strait-jacket, a hemp cocoon, and deposited him in an unlit basement for what was probably a week. After that he was unwrapped in an interrogation suite, punched in the mouth and admonished:
‘Confess something. Surprise us. Entertain us.’
All Gaspar could do was to say there must have been some mistake and then emit a few ouches as they tried to punch-start him into admission. He was thrown back into the basement with the verdict: ‘Who arrested that boring bastard?’ He stayed there for the rest of the year, eating by pushing his face into the billy-can that was introduced from time to time into the cell. He felt like an envelope waiting to be opened in someone’s in-tray. There were dribs and drabs of conversation he heard emanating from outside: ‘Don’t you need a social democrat, Jeno?’ ‘What do you think this is, 1950?’ ‘What about an accountant?’ ‘Well, I certainly don’t need one. You’ve been greedy again, haven’t you? Remember what Belkin said, never arrest more than you need, it just creates paperwork.’
Every six weeks or so, Gaspar was taken for a wash. On one occasion he shared a shower with someone who looked remarkably like Janos Kadar, the former Communist Minister of the Interior. He even sounded like Kadar. ‘How much longer can this go on?’ asked the Kadar lookalike. Gaspar hadn’t been able to think of anything to say in the circumstances.
Finally, just before Christmas, someone came into the basement, untied him and said, ‘Piss off, we need this cell.’ Luckily for Gaspar one of Budapest ’s five taxis was passing outside (‘I get most of my trade here,’ the driver had informed him), as the walk from the basement to the street had bankrupted his muscles.
Never an outgoing fellow in the first place, Gaspar had become even more armchair-bound than Elek, flattened by the physical ordeal, by the shame of imprisonment and the additional humiliation of having been adjudged too dull to be stuck into a conspiracy.
To the boys, Pataki presented his relations with Bea with a bluff ‘The Party has screwed me, now I’m screwing the Party’, but now, as he waited with Pataki for three decas of Anikó cheese, Gyuri realised it was all over. On the one hand, he wished he had his diary with him so he could pencil in whole months’ worth of vilification, mockery and needling. The quality of the material that he had struck in finding Pataki with a shopping basket promised an almost unlimited quantity of ridicule, from one-liners to epic-length denunciations. ‘There I was, walking down Thököly út…’. On the other hand however, Gyuri felt sorrowful. Pataki had assumed heroic status in the battle of the sexes, invincible, unconquerable, immune to the ailments that floored others, and here was the mighty mightily fallen, ozymandiased with a shopping-basket. Pataki had become a mortal.
Huge jars of pickled gherkins lined the walls of the shop, lording it over smaller jars of apricot conserve. Any level surface in the shop had these crammed glass jars. They were what you could find all over Hungary, in all the one-room shops: pickled gherkins and apricot conserve. If you liked pickled gherkins and apricot conserve a lot, you were in the right country. Abundant pickled gherkins and apricot conserve were quite an accomplishment, Gyuri mused, as Hungary got on with the second half of the twentieth century.