When, at Faragó’s suggestion, they switched to chocolate ice cream, Gyuri knew it was all over.
Ladányi and Faragó had warmed up with a couple of litres of bean soup before moving on to the main course – fried chicken – its consumption meticulously measured on the scales. ‘We in Hálás have always been famous for our fried chicken,’ Faragó rambled on, ‘and now under socialism, the fried chicken is even more fried.’ He reached for a plate of slender green tubes. ‘The paprika is optional,’ he announced loading a couple into his mouth.
Three kilos into the chicken, Faragó began to sweat, though whether this was due to gastronomic exertion or the calorific effects of the paprika it was hard to judge. He was also beginning to look uneasy, perhaps because it was dawning on him that the reports of the Jesuit’s unearthly wolfing had some foundation. Faragó was oozing effort while Ladányi was methodically and calmly stripping drumsticks with such ease that he hadn’t taken the trouble of dialling his willpower yet.
‘I’m just going to shake the snake,’ Gyuri informed Neumann. He was becoming increasingly anxious about losing contact with several outposts of his body. Draining two of the four glasses of pálinka awaiting his attention, he made his way out of the csárda into the sheltering darkness and voided the burning liquid from his mouth in an aerosol flurry to dodge some of the enormity of Hálás’s hospitality. A standard peasant, an elderly gent with the inevitable black hat that peasants had stapled to their heads and a massive handlebar moustache, came to join him in watering the planet. ‘Good evening, sir,’ said the peasant, causing Gyuri to note that only countryfolk could be so courteous while airing their dick. Conversation turned to Faragó as Gyuri was in no hurry to go back in and be the victim of further largesse; he was curious about Faragó’s track record. ‘I hear he did some appalling things during the war?’
‘You don’t want to know, sir. Some things should never be repeated, just forgotten. Satan himself is his coach.’
Gyuri waited outside as long as he could without triggering a search party and re-entered to find Ladányi and Faragó crossing the ten kilo mark, Faragó in discomfort, Ladányi still emitting a lean, keen look. A barrel of pigs’ trotters in aspic was dumped in front of Gyuri and he wondered how on earth he was going to eat any. ‘You didn’t like the smoked goose, did you?’ asked one woman accusingly and woundedly, although Gyuri estimated he had had six respectable helpings. Neumann next to him wasn’t saying much, but he wasn’t demonstrating any signs of suffering (however, he had sixteen stone to upkeep). The village must have gathered every bit of food for ten miles around. Gyuri could only regret that his stomach wasn’t up to it, that it had left its office, put up the ‘out to lunch’ sign and wasn’t doing any more business.
To round off his other distasteful qualities, Faragó had a bad cold and as he handed over his handkerchief to the deputy Party secretary to place on the stove to dry, Gyuri felt another surge of sympathy for the villagers. They had a straightforward, soily existence which if you liked that sort of thing could be quite pleasant. No wonder they were filled with hatred for Faragó; bewildered by their misfortune, it was like having a plague of locusts or a dragon deciding to set up home with you. ‘Why us?’ the elderly peasant had implored. ‘A whole world to be a stinking horseprick in and he’s never lost sight of Hálás. Why?’
The eating had now long since left pleasure behind. It was no longer a question of appetite, but a question of will, which was why Gyuri knew Ladányi would win, and knowing Ladányi, would end up recruiting Faragó as an altar boy. Conversion. It was funny how people could, while changing completely, remain the same. Fodor, at school, for example, for whom getting into trouble had not been a by-product of his activity but his sole activity, who had been almost as much of a nuisance as Keresztes, had, without warning, got a bad attack of the Holy Ghost. At first there was a suspicion that it was an elaborate and unfunny stunt, but Fodor was so unswerving in handing out leaflets to remind how Jesus wanted a word, that everyone realised that he had gone evangelist for reaclass="underline" preaching was his latest irritation tool. Fodor caught Gyuri hanging around in a corridor one day. ‘Jesus Christ came to be your saviour, He died for your sins. You must acclaim Him and surrender to His teachings,’ Fodor urged, and then continued, more quietly, really savouring the next bit, ‘you’ve been warned now. You’ve had the message, you’ve got no excuse. If you ignore it, you’ll burn. In hell. For eternity.’ Fodor had then marched off with a satisfied air. This was the appealing part of the job for Fodor, going around with a sawn-off version of the scriptures and looking forward to the infidels being infinitely ignited. Gyuri had also seen Fodor in the Körút, on a soap-box, giving a sermon to the unheeding passers-by, a glint of delight in his eye at the prospect of the mass fry-up that was coming. Fodor didn’t want anyone to be able to reach for some mitigation when they stood in the pearly dock, saying no one had explained the Nazarene contract to them. Then Fodor could chime out: ‘Liar! Liar! I told him, I told him. Let him burrrnnnn.’
What had befallen Fodor in the end, whether he had grown weary of his sadistic evangelism, Gyuri didn’t know. Gyuri had last seen him at a school trip to the cinema where they had been locked in. You could tell it was a Soviet film when they locked you in. The school had taken over an enormous balcony in the cinema which descended in a series of plateaus. Fodor had vaulted over what he had thought was the edge of one of these sections, in fact the end of the balcony. Just before he disappeared from view, there had been a nanosecond’s worth of expression on his face: why isn’t there any balcony here?
Along with a couple of others, Gyuri had selflessly volunteered to take Fodor and his broken legs to hospital, thereby avoiding the feats of Sergei, who single-handedly repulsed the invading Germans in between repairing his tractor to produce a bumper harvest. Either for fear of ridicule or in pursuit of fresh souls, Fodor never returned.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’ Faragó observed to Ladányi, with the implication that Ladányi was unfairly reserving energy for eating. Even if Faragó had had more fight, the switch to chocolate ice cream was the end. A large chicken’s weight behind Ladányi, Faragó had chosen the sweet to which Ladányi was most partial; Ladányi’s nickname in the troop, ‘Iceman’, came from his mythical disposal of chocolate ice cream, in the days before he had signed up with Jesus. Gyuri wondered whether Ladányi had mentioned to anyone back at Jesuit headquarters that he was popping down to the countryside to out-eat a Party Secretary. However laudable the goal, in an atmosphere of austerity where quips such as ‘Isn’t that the second meal you’ve had this week, Father?’ abounded, this sort of indecorous gourmandise, however much a part of Christian soldiering, must have run the risk of some gruelling rosary work.
‘What would you like me to say?’ inquired Ladányi politely, keeping a spoon full of ice cream from its destination. The whole village was craning forward now, as Faragó was visibly floundering, gazing with resentment at his bowl of ice cream.
‘As the saying goes,’ said Faragó fighting for air, ‘there isn’t room for two bagpipe players in the same inn. We, the working class… we, the instrument of the international proletariat… we will defend the gains of the people…’ Here Faragó jammed, fell off his chair and as if gagging on his propaganda, spilled his stomach on the floor. It looked very much to Gyuri like a job for the last rites.