Where were Revai, Rákosi and the others? Gyuri wondered. Where were all those bastards, the beloved favourite sons of the people? The Russians probably had them tucked away in the basement of their Embassy, in storage for future necessity, labelled ‘spare dictators’.
The last book Gyuri turned to was in English, Eastern Europe in the Socialist World by Hewlett Johnson who was supposed to be the Dean of Canterbury. The book was a paean to the Socialist order. Either the book was a forgery, or else the Dean must have been caught wanking off small boys in Warsaw and blackmailed into writing this, thought Gyuri, because no one could be stupid enough to write things like this of their own volition.
It was the largest park in Hamburg, full of ducks, but he still couldn’t manage to catch one. Ducks were brainier and faster than they looked and Pataki was disadvantaged by having to keep looking over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t arrested. He was sure there would be some by-law protecting German ducks from hungry refugees. He tried improvising traps with string and dry bread, he tried netting them with his overcoat, he tried a straight grab and wring. As it got dark, Pataki resigned himself to dining on boiled eggs again. He had explored all the options for cooking eggs and somehow boiled seemed the least dispiriting. Eggs were far better than nothing but after months of unrelenting eggs, non-egg edibles had deployed an unprecedented fascination.
But, as he strolled past an off-licence, Pataki snapped and resolved to blow a little money. Two beers to celebrate the Revolution. There was one pinguid German in front of him at the counter who stupidly seemed to be buying more beer than he could possibly carry. As the man struggled to find a way of managing his impossible load, Pataki was about to ask for two bottles of beer, when a hand landed on his shoulder. He turned to see a long-haired figure behind him say in German: ‘I’m a Hungarian, let me buy you a drink.’ Insane? Drunk? Uncontrollably gregarious? Just Hungarian?
‘I’m Hungarian too, and I’ll let you buy me a drink,’ Pataki responded in the mother tongue. His host was called Kineses and he was evidently a man used to going to great lengths for company. His room was virtually above the boozery, so they repaired there to drink. Kineses was very pleased he didn’t need to employ his appallingly accented German and that he could really get loquacious. Kineses had been in West Germany for over three years. He had done some work as an artist’s model, but a vogue for abstract expressionism had dried up most of his employment and he was now working as factotum in one of the liveliest brothels. ‘It was all very German. There was an interview. They asked whether I had any previous experience of working in a knocking-shop. They were perfectly serious; they were terrified of taking on unqualified help. What do you do?’
‘I’m the head of the postage-stamp acquisition department in a bank,’ replied Pataki. ‘I’m the one they send down to the post-office.’ They drank to the revolution.
‘I tried to go back yesterday. Got as far as the Austrian border,’ said Kineses. ‘But the Austrians wouldn’t let me in. They were convinced there were enough Hungarians in Hungary. Mind you, I don’t know why I wanted to go back so badly when I think of the trouble I had getting out. I had to waltz through the minefields. What about you?’
‘My personalised railwagon. You must have wanted to get out quite badly to go out that way.’
‘I didn’t have much choice really. That always makes things easier. You see, I’d walked out of a place called Recsk, a labour camp.’ Kineses outlined the inspiration behind Recsk. ‘Lots of people helped with my escape. It took us months to scrape together a guard’s uniform. It was very cheeky, very dramatic. A big brass neck, a dark winter evening, bored, dim guards and I was out. I just walked out. There was no hope of staying at liberty in Hungary so I knew I had to leave.
‘We all thought it important that the world should know about Recsk. I memorised everyone’s name, their date of birth, occupation and the city they lived in. I was working on the addresses when the uniform was completed.’
‘So what did the world say?’ asked Pataki.
‘Nothing much. Walk out of a labour camp, that’s heroic; walk out of a labour camp and walk through an Iron Curtain and you’ll find you’ve walked round the moral globe and it’s not heroic, but extremely suspicious. Everyone was very polite, but I had the impression they thought I was on a payroll somewhere in Moscow.’ (Pataki remembered his debriefers: ‘Ach, Herr Pataki, we understand you are saying you were sent out by the AVO but we have been told by people who were sent out by the AVO that people who are sent out by the AVO are told to say that they have been sent out by the AVO.’ The meeting had been a stalemate; he was staying in the country but without a generous salary from the security services.)
‘Are you going to go back?’ Kineses inquired.
‘When I leave, I leave.’
‘You don’t think I should tell him?’ Jadwiga asked.
‘No. Best not to interfere in that sort of emotional traffic,’ Elek answered.
‘But there can’t be any doubt; the documents were very clear.’
Elek looked unhappy. ‘The documents might have been very clear. But you didn’t really know Pataki. He was as fast off the court as on. His sun-bathing stunt outside their front door would have been a hard one to talk his way out of but he’s slippery. The AVO might have thought he was working for them, but he probably agreed just to get out.’ He lit a long-saved cigarette. ‘And I bet he got an advance out of them.’
It was the artillery that woke them up. Faraway, but forceful. Gyuri looked out of the window. Darkness, stillness. No sign of dawn or the Russians but both were coming. Switching on the radio, they heard Imre Nagy announce the obvious attack by the Russians and state that Hungarian forces were fighting. This was followed by an appeal for help from abroad. He got dressed, since misfortune had to be faced in trousers, the juices in his stomach can-canning.
‘We must go to the Corvin,’ said Jadwiga. Gyuri really didn’t want to go to the Corvin. He wasn’t at all pleased at being right. Being right, he discovered, doesn’t necessarily do any more good than being wrong. He had thought he had been angry before but he realised his previous rages had only been false starts compared to his present anger. Thanks to the Red Army, he was going to explode, but he didn’t want to fight. He was trembling from a mixture of ninety per cent fury and ten per cent fright. He wanted to suggest going to the border, but he knew Jadwiga wouldn’t listen. He suggested it anyway, knowing he would regret it more if he didn’t. ‘Let’s go to Austria,’ he said.
‘You don’t mean that,’ she retorted.
They ran out into the streets, Jadwiga carrying her favourite gun. There were few people, and those that were out, whether armed or unarmed, didn’t seem to know what to do. He tried to keep the thoughts submerged because he didn’t want them to come into the world because they wouldn’t help but he couldn’t keep them down; they floated up to the surface. We’re going to lose. We’re going to be killed. They bobbed around in his mind. The other people looked to Gyuri as if they were holding down the same prompts. Stealthily, they reached the Körút, which Gyuri suddenly recognised as the street where he was going to die. ‘I feel safe with you,’ said Jadwiga cocking her weapon, which was intriguing because Gyuri certainly didn’t feel safe with himself.