‘You were in jail?’
‘Only for a few days. Bribery’
‘Bribery? Who did you bribe?’
‘No, the problem was I hadn’t bribed anyone. They were very upset.’
‘Look, Pataki’ll be in for more than few days.’
‘It’s very hard to work out why people do things. Back in Vienna, when I was in the Army, one of my friends ended up in a furious row over something trifling. The positioning of napkins in the officers’ mess – something like that. But he challenged this other fellow to a duel. We all took turns trying to get them to call it off. Apart from the chance of someone getting killed, duelling was furiously prohibited and droves of careers could have dropped dead like flies. The thing everyone was terrified of was losing face, so I put my arm round him and said “Józsi, this is a stupid misunderstanding. Grown men don’t behave like this. Honour’s honour, but you can’t shoot a fellow officer over a napkin.” I thought I was doing a good job when he looked at me and I can still remember this vividly, he was so passionate. “No,” he said to me. “You don’t understand. I want to blow his brains out.” Nothing to do with the napkin, of course, just the usual traffic jam on the thigh of a Viennese fraulein.
‘I’ll talk to Pataki if you want but I don’t think it’ll make any difference. These lunacies-in-waiting are usually readied well in advance, like all the best off-the-cuff remarks. It was the same with me resigning my commission; it had all the appearance of an extempore fed-upness but it had been in training for a considerable while. That was my problem with the Army, I just couldn’t take it seriously and that’s what they couldn’t forgive me for. I suppose people in any profession who don’t carry the due reverence are in trouble. But the whole military was a joke. Every time they get something good going they throw it open to the amateurs anyway and then a natural soldier sticks out like an oak in a meadow.
‘I’ll talk to Pataki if you want. But I’ll be surprised if he’ll listen. You never did.’
But that evening Pataki was nowhere to be found for dissuasion, so, at the appointed time they gathered on the Margit Bridge. Bokros had a pale, posthumous look since he wasn’t going to gain however the day went. He implored Pataki to refrain from his task. If he’d offered the bike, that might have tilted it, but he didn’t. ‘Better stay here’ Pataki suggested, entrusting Gyuri to look after the shortly-to-be-forfeited motorcycle.
‘This could take some time,’ Pataki said, trotting off towards the White House with the ease of a ruthless athlete. He was wearing his black tracksuit, until he reached the embankment adjacent to the Ministry.
From their vantage point on the bridge, Gyuri and Bokros watched as Pataki reduced his attire to Locomotive-style basketball boots. He looked tanned, relaxed and even from hundreds of metres away his muscles had precise definition. A superb musculature, Gyuri thought, recalling how Pataki had been in line to be the model for the naked proletarian Adonis-figure on the back of the new twenty-forint note. They had been looking for a striking example of the new Hungarian might and the artist had gone for Neumann who made a much more towering symbol of resurgence, justice and truth, of socialist invincibility and grit, and perhaps because Pataki had asked for money. ‘They’re not getting my pecs for free.’
All around the building there were guards. People weren’t exactly encouraged to walk past the Ministry. While on the one hand, the AVO felt it only right to have ostentatiously lavish headquarters by the Danube, the drawback to having a headquarters was that people knew where to find you, which obviously made the AVO slightly uneasy.
The guards were drowsy and clearly not accustomed to doing their job. Pataki had drawn up to the main entrance before they became noticeably stirred and perplexed by this challenge to workers’ power. Then one of the guards had the idea of chasing Pataki and the others thought this might be worth trying and followed his example. The guards were well armed, but not well legged. By judiciously using his acceleration, Pataki zipped ahead of them, dodging any newcomers, maintaining a few tantalising metres between himself and his collection of pursuers. He spurted round the corner of the Ministry taking a wake of guards with him, leaving the frontage of the White House deguarded, motionless and summery.
After a longer time than seemed possible, Pataki reemerged from the rear of the building and made his finishing line his starting point where he had left his tracksuit, looking satisfied that he had encircled the White House with his buttocks as his uniformed retinue caught up with him. The guards having apprehended Pataki’s unhidden hide were uncertain what to do. Finally a blanket and then a police van swallowed Pataki.
‘Oh, well,’ Bokros summed up. ‘The engine needs a rebore anyway.’
Most of the Locomotive team had decided to visit relatives in the countryside, to take lengthy hikes in the hills, or to reside at someone else’s address for a few days. Gyuri waited for the retributional spill-over at home, braced for interrogation and ready with a four-dimensional denial.
Five days after Pataki had blasted the White House with both his buttocks, Gyuri returned home to find Pataki about to take a shower. He was a bit stinky and his hair needed combing but otherwise he looked remarkably intact. ‘I hope you’ve brought your own soap, you free-loading bastard,’ Gyuri remonstrated and then unable to combat his curiosity any longer: ‘What happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ Pataki shouted from the shower ‘What do you mean, what happened?’
Pataki was soaping himself and Gyuri could see Pataki wasn’t going to give him the story just like that. ‘I thought the talent scouts from the AVO signed you up.’
‘Oh, that. Isn’t it obvious? I’m insane. Would anyone sane run naked around the Ministry of the Interior? You’re looking at an escaped lunatic. Could you fix me something to eat? We nutters eat the same sort of thing as you sane people.’
Pataki came into the kitchen, reading a letter which had been posted just before his escapade. The letter was from the Ministry of Sport informing him that his application for a scholarship abroad had been turned down. A slogan had been rubber-stamped further down the page, below the terse refusaclass="underline" ‘Fight for Peace’.
‘Look at this,’ said Pataki waving the letter in disgust. ‘How can they expect me to live in a country where they put idiotic rubbish like this on every letter? I’m off.’
Pataki for some time had been trying to raise the subject of getting out. This had meant that Pataki talked about it while Gyuri was in earshot. The subject had become fascinating for Pataki, chiefly because Bánhegyi had been moved to work in the international freight department of the railways. Bánhegyi, like all the Locomotive players, wasn’t actually required to work, but when he popped in to collect his wages he had access to all the information. It was an extremely hazardous way to get out, but then there were only extremely hazardous ways to get out. If it hadn’t been for Jadwiga, if Gyuri had been on his own, he would have given it a go, but he wasn’t willing to expose Jadwiga to the risk, although knowing her, she wouldn’t refuse. He had something to lose. Pataki should have taken up the offer in ’47.
Pataki insisted that they should hunt down Bánhegyi. ‘I feel like leaving before the doctors catch me.’ Providence was evidently in the mood to grant Pataki his wish because they found Bánhegyi just returning from a dislocation-certifying session with the doctor. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there are trains going out but I can’t be sure where the trains are going to. They chop and change the forms a lot.’ Bánhegyi wanted to wait a few days to study the opportunities, but Pataki wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Thinking about it isn’t going to make it any easier,’ he said. So at midnight they went down to the sidings and breaking the seal on a freight-wagon, prized it open. It was full of shoes. ‘Shoes are risky,’ said Bánhegyi, ‘they can go East or West.’