Even in the artistic circles of Budapest, where the entry fee was egomania, Gáti had tantrummed his way to prominence. However, for some reason he had interpreted Pataki’s presence as homage, as a tribute from one eager to learn the secrets of documentary filming from a master, and Gáti warmly took him under his wing although Pataki would far sooner have been rowing. ‘It’s a shithole, this place,’ Gáti said, surveying Zsámbék. ‘I think I voted here in ’47. Mind you I voted everywhere in ’47. How many people can say they voted sixty times in a general election? These three-duck hovels all look the same though. Me and the Second District Communist Youth Committee, we spent the whole day driving around, voting. Bloody tiring, democracy.’ They were standing in the office of the collective farm. Feeling it was time to do some directing, Gáti shouted out of the window at the cameraman who was contemplating various angles: ‘Janos, I want you to capture that feeling of historic achievement, okay?’ Then he returned to glugging rows of local wines. ‘Rule number one: know what you want. Rule number two: good casting. Good casting does all the work for you. I’ve already got the centre character, Uncle Feri. He’s the village elder, as it were, who’s been through decades of suffering, hunger, exploitation etc., etc., but who in his contented old age can comfortably beam on the gains of the people, happy in the knowledge that future generations will never know want or hardship, thanks to the application of scientific socialism etc., etc.’ Gáti emptied the glasses of wine as if pouring them down a sink.
‘Uncle Feri’s the perfect candidate. I found him when I came down last week. Research… research is everything. This yokel is perfect. He’s got a moustache that must be half a metre long. He oozes earthy wit, rustic swagger. Everyone’s Uncle Feri. He thinks he doesn’t want to do it but I’ll make a star of him.’ There were only a couple of glasses left. ‘And remember, rule four: you can never talk too much to your cameraman.’ Gáti leaned out the window: ‘Janos, you finished?’ To Pataki: ‘You’ll go far. You know how to listen.’ To the chairman of the collective farm: ‘Great. We’ll take the lot.’
His arm avuncularly around Pataki, Gáti went out to the fields for key shots. ‘Where’s our Uncle Feri?’ he shouted.
‘Uncle Feri is gravely ill,’ explained the chairman. He had rounded up a selection of aged, gnarled peasants for Gáti to choose from. ‘You see,’ said Gáti to Pataki in what was probably a failed whisper, ‘people always interfere. They all think they know best. They all think they’re film directors. Come on, where’s the coy old bugger?’
The chairman, the mayor and the Party secretary all explained in succession, very apologetically, that old Feri really was very ill and wouldn’t he be satisfied with another, carefully approved, suitably decrepit codger? Gáti just laughed and ordered to be taken to Feri’s abode where the priest was timidly administering the last rites.
‘Cut that out, or we’ll have you nicked,’ said Gáti, who was joking, but it looked to Pataki as if the priest had shat himself. ‘How are you, Uncle Feri?’ said Gáti, giving him a hearty slap which produced no noticeable reaction since Feri was too busy dying. ‘He looks fine to me,’ Gáti pronounced, but the cameraman and Pataki had to laboriously carry Uncle Feri out because none of his body was in working order. Even if Uncle Feri had wanted to issue instructions to his legs, they wouldn’t have paid any attention.
Gáti strode on to find a good spot while Pataki, the cameraman and the chairman transported Uncle Feri who was light as peasants went but still an uncomfortable burden. ‘This is it,’ said Gáti, surrounded by burgeoning husks of corn. ‘This filmically says it all,’ he announced as the peasant-porters struggled up.
‘Yes,’ interposed the chairman, ‘but this doesn’t belong to the collective. This belongs to Levai. He jumped out of the window at the meeting when everyone had to sign over their land.’
Gáti wasn’t bothered. Fortunately, there was a wooden gate they could leave Uncle Feri leaning against, since his legs wouldn’t have supported him.
‘Okay, roll,’ called Gáti. ‘Now, Uncle Feri, how old are you?’
Uncle Feri didn’t say anything- he seemed to be concentrating on breathing.
‘How old is he?’ Gáti asked the chairman.
‘I don’t know. Seventy something.’
‘Okay, so, Uncle Feri,’ continued Gáti, ‘how does it feel to see the achievements of the new Hungary?’ Uncle Feri still failed to respond. Gáti tried another question: ‘Uncle Feri, how do you feel gazing on the wonderful changes that have taken place here in Zsámbék?’ Uncle Feri remained mute. Pataki had no doubt that if Uncle Feri had had the power of locomotion he would have walked off by now. But all he could manage to do was to cling onto the gate. Gáti patiently let the camera turn, waiting for Uncle Feri’s views. After a minute or so, Uncle Feri started to cry.
‘This is great,’ exclaimed Gáti, ‘he’s moved to tears by the successes of people’s democracy. Get a close-up. We can write into it.’ Pataki found Gáti’s explanation unconvincing and reasoned that Uncle Feri’s weeping was caused by his dying in a field, on camera.
According to Pataki, Uncle Feri survived his moment of posterity but not for long. Well-mannered, he waited till he was returned home before pegging out while Gáti loaded up the van with crates of wine, reiterating ‘Did you see that moustache?’
Knowing what you wanted helped a lot, reflected Gyuri.
What are your ambitions?’ Makkai had asked him the first time he had gone to him for English lessons when he had revealed to Gyuri that, at the age of four, he had been placed on a bareback horse in (as Makkai claimed) the traditional Magyar fashion to test his fortune and fortitude. The question had made Gyuri realise that he didn’t have any ambitions as such, just a wish- to get out. It seemed embarrassing somehow not to have ambitions, a sort of lack of social grace, an ignominious shortcoming. Something like billionaire or ruler of the planet would be nice though. He wouldn’t refuse that. Perhaps his failure to have gone shopping amongst the stalls of ambition was due to Elek’s forgetting to place him on a saddleless horse when he was four.
Gyuri had been hoping that the slob would remain asleep and overshoot Szeged, but with the same precision the driver of the train used to bring the carriages alongside the platform, the slob timed the moment to eject from sleep. By this stage, Gyuri was the only one left in the compartment, the others having fled under the relentless bombardment of zeds.
He didn’t know much about Szeged but he knew enough, when the slob asked the way to the centre of town, to send him helpfully in the opposite direction.
Treasuring the miniature revenge, Gyuri set off to look for Sólyom-Nagy to fill up the time until the party in the evening.
The search for Sólyom-Nagy meant a lot of crisscrossing the university, making repeated treks to his room and asking randomly for his whereabouts, of which everyone denied all knowledge. By a process of elimination, eventually, Gyuri made his way to the library.
The university library had a duly grave, library-like dumbness, still with the sediment of millennia. Most libraries with their accumulated letters gave Gyuri an oddly reassuring sentiment. It’s okay, the books encouraged wordlessly, we’re here. Out there it might be lunacy piled up to the heavens, rubbish on the rampage, the havoc of mediocrity but we have no truck with stultiloquence; in here, it’s fathoms of culture, the best of the centuries. The Zelks sifted out, the poetasters and bores, the platitude-salesmen booted out. The invertebrates of the past, desiccated, powdered, crumbled, blown away, leaving only the bones of those with spines, those who were fortunate enough to have been backboned before Marx so they had no opportunity to cast aspersions on him and cast themselves into lectoral exile as a result.