The shelves served up the freedom to travel, thousands of escape hatches into countries, eras that Lenin had never heard of and that had never heard of Lenin (‘What happened in 1874?’ Róka had asked him the day before, coaching Gyuri for his Marxism-Leninism exam. ‘1874?’ ‘1874!’ ‘No idea.’ ‘Lenin was four’). Entering a library was always cleansing (as long as you didn’t tamper with anything published after 1945), though Gyuri could never settle down there because after a quarter of an hour or so he would break out into fidgeting, yearning to scratch his backside or stretch his legs, have a coffee, do anything but read. However vehemently he strove to immerse himself in his books, to hold his academic breath, he invariably had to come up for interludal air. When it came to studying he was a sprinter.
Then there was the trouser barking. The discipline and decorum of libraries were somehow great catalysts for the cultivation of amorous propensities. It was exactly because libraries weren’t supposed to be about sex that they were. Gyuri would sit down, soak up a few lines, and then, there she would be. No matter how empty it was, every library seemed to be provided with a young lady. No matter how fascinating the accountancy textbook he was reading, the entire crowd in Gyuri’s control-room would throng around the newcomer. The staid background of a library boosted the pulchritude of even the plainest girl to unbearable levels.
The speculation would begin. Would putting this in that affect the rest of her life? Would you need a machete to work your way through the sub-navel jungle? Density of the venereal grass was a tiresomely recurring theme, the irrigation of the delta, the borders of the areolae. The panel would raise the same questions again and again, until the curiosity made him ache and he was out of breath. If only he could have diverted some of this torrent, he would have been the president of a medium-sized country somewhere. It was perpetual motion. It might slow down but it never stopped. He would sit in the library and the quim styles would rotate: the doormat? the black sheep? the winter tree? the pom-pom? the paintbrush? the chainmail? His vision would tunnel down to mons size.
Ascending the various levels of Szeged University ’s library, Gyuri kept on not seeing Sólyom-Nagy. He remembered that Attila József had been a student there, this making the staircases fractionally more interesting. For some reason Pataki had been very angry about József. Gyuri had caught Pataki kicking a volume of his poetry about. József had been so insanely poor and insane that he had no choice but to become a poet. So poor he couldn’t even afford to starve in a garret and so insane he had thrown himself under a train at a good age, thirty-two, though some might quibble that thirty-two was the outside limit for a young and tragic death, especially since his life had been so unremittingly awful it was hard to understand why he had waited that long.
József had also been the only person with any character, and certainly the only one with any feeling for the Hungarian language, to join the Communist Party, which he had done, driven by an incurable loneliness, in the thirties when the Party was illegal. He had been expelled almost immediately for having the temerity to think, saving himself from iniquity and saving the Party’s record of unblemished imbecility.
Sólyom-Nagy cast his absence all over the library. Passing one studious lady with a window-seat, Gyuri’s gaze dovetailed with hers and he realised it was Jadwiga, the Polish girl he had met the week before, slightly obscured now by glasses. Having exchanged mute greetings Gyuri moved on to check a few remaining biblionooks, full of books, devoid of Sólyom-Nagy. Sólyom-Nagy wasn’t such riveting company but what was he going to do until the evening?
He retraced his steps to where Jadwiga was reading behind fortifications of books, thinking that if nothing else Solyom-Nagy and university life should provide enough conversational substance to cover a coffee. Jadwiga agreed to Gyuri’s suggestion and spent a few moments packing away the paraphernalia of study with a thoroughness that caused Gyuri much envy. Bookmarks went into the books, pencils into a box, the books joined stacks and the notes were herded together into a pack, then all the academic utensils were brought together into a neat heap. Jadwiga took her coffee breaks seriously.
In the café, they split up, Jadwiga holding down a table while Gyuri went off to queue for the coffees. When he returned with them, the second chair had vanished from the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jadwiga, as if waking from sleep, ‘I didn’t notice anyone take it.’ The café was full and Gyuri had to wander around to filch a seat. Some pale fresher who was guarding a set of chairs lost one to Gyuri, who was looking sufficiently dangerous and violent as a result of his early rising not to meet with any protest.
‘So, is Sólyom-Nagy a good friend of yours?’ Gyuri inquired.
‘No,’ Jadwiga smiled mischievously, ‘I don’t have many good friends.’
She was studying Hungarian literature. She measured out the conversation, enough to cover politeness but no more. Gyuri had to squeeze inquisitorially to picture her background. Her Hungarian was frighteningly good, with only the slightest accent, almost deliberately maintained to give a little exotic charm; it was merely a reminder that she shouldn’t be mistaken for a Hungarian. Because it was true and because praising women had never done up any buttons, Gyuri said:
‘Your Hungarian is better than most Hungarians. I think you must also have the distinction of being the only non-Hungarian to learn Hungarian this century. What made you do it?’
‘My father was here during the war. It’s a family interest.’ There had been hordes of Polish soldiers passing through Budapest during the war, Gyuri recalled, escaping from one front to go and fight on another. Hard, determined men, upset that they were momentarily unable to kill anyone and puzzling over who should be first on the slay-list, the Germans or the Russians. Oddly enough in a region where nations spent most of their time trying to figure out which of their neighbours they hated the most, the Poles and the Hungarians were centuries-deep friends. There was even a couplet, available in both languages, commemorating how much the two nations enjoyed putting the boot in and drinking together. It seemed a bizarre desire to go to Hungary to learn the language, but on the other hand, he had tried to get to China, and even Poland, red as it was, would have made a change. He had been chosen for the fixture in Gdansk the year before, his smiling face had been on the publicity poster but he had again been refused a passport. Even Hepp had been surprised by that. Still, Gyuri certainly felt that he could do something to further Hungarian-Polish relations. Mentioning the party that was being co-sponsored by Sólyom-Nagy, Gyuri asked Jadwiga if she would be going.
‘I haven’t been invited,’ she said, adding to further extinguish Gyuri’s overture, ‘I’m not very keen on parties.’ After allowing a seemly period to elapse after the consumption of her coffee, Jadwiga rose to resume her studies. Gyuri accompanied her, on the off-chance that Sólyom-Nagy had surfaced in the library, though this, he had to concede, was unlikely, unless it was a question of Sólyom-Nagy smuggling out a few valuable books to find new lives with fee-paying owners.
He left the building without Sólyom-Nagy but with Jadwiga’s room number at the student hostel which she had imparted with only the slimmest hesitation. It never did any harm to know where intriguing Polish women were located. She was, he guessed, nineteen, twenty, but she had a spiritual weight well in advance of her years and a flirtation technique that was superb in handing out the sparsest of clues.
Gyuri wandered around Szeged, not seeing Sólyom-Nagy at all. Szeged, as Hungarian towns went, was quite large: it took five minutes to walk from one end to the other, but it was still peculiar that he hadn’t bumped into Sólyom-Nagy. Had he got the date wrong? Was Sólyom-Nagy in Budapest? When in doubt, have lunch – which he did standing up in a butcher’s, working his way through a csabai sausage with bread and a miserable mustard that marred his gusto. After lunch, he decided to have another lunch, after which he returned to the university to prowl for Sólyom-Nagy. He did the now familiar circuit of the dormitory, the grounds, the library.