Switching on the light, Gyuri referred to his watch. Three minutes after three. Why was it when he wanted to wake up with punctuality he couldn’t but the seething rage inside always popped out at its self-appointed seething hour and why was it that when he wanted to feel awakened in the mornings he could never feel as fresh as he did now? He switched off the light and hoped for sleep to creep up on him. His freshness was undiminished when he heard the doorbell ring. His first thought was Hepp, but it was too early and too outrageous even for Hepp and he was in the clear with Hepp so there could be no justification for a dawn raid. Such a ring could only herald a really interesting misfortune amongst the neighbours. Murder? Rape? Cardiac arrest? Or was it the AVO? he thought sarcastically. His curiosity rubbing its hands with glee, Gyuri went to the door to find four plainclothes AVO men there. The plainclothes usually made them stick out as much as the uniforms since no one but the AVO could get proper clothes.
Everyone knew about the bell-shock, sweating away with the fear of arrest, but Gyuri had never felt important enough to be arrested. For an instant he believed they must be looking for someone else or that they had the wrong address; until they explained, not that they were arresting him, but that they had a few questions waiting for him.
Gyuri got dressed and left a note for Elek who was nowhere in evidence (warming up a widow somewhere no doubt).
Kovacs the concierge, an inveterate arsehead, was waiting, deeply disgruntled, to let them out and to lock up. Gyuri did manage to pick up a very faint sensation of satisfaction as he saw Kovacs fuming in his moth-eaten, cigarette-ventilated dressing gown, his hair floating in all directions.
The car wasn’t black, as tradition dictated, but a sort of pukey brown. This was a little disappointing since it was going to spoil the story he could relate when he got out in five, six, seven, ten years time, whenever. It was a short drive through empty streets. Gyuri was surprised in a way that something he had been fearing for so long should have come so inexplicably out of the black. Was he going to be coached for a show trial? Who was being stored in the clink these days? They seemed keener on Communists these days but there was always the need for a supporting cast.
Curiously, there was an element of relief. Now he had touched bottom. There was no need to fear being arrested when you’re arrested. What was the charge going to be? As far as Gyuri knew, considering the government to be a bunch of wankers wasn’t on the statute books. Why hadn’t they arrested him in ’45, in November, after the elections when he hadn’t anything to eat but did have a loaded revolver and had gone out into the streets in Elek’s overcoat to shout ‘Fifty-seven per cent’ with lots of other people? Why the Smallholders, a crowd of people with moustaches who liked going to church and waving loaves of bread, should have got fifty-seven per cent of the vote would have been a mystery if it hadn’t been for the Russians and baldy Rákosi’s party on the other side. Rákosi’s Communist Party, which only scored seventeen per cent, despite all sorts of largesse from Moscow and regular deliveries of prisoners of war to demonstrate Rákosi’s diplomatic skills. Rákosi had messed up that election, partly, because like everyone else in the Communist Party he couldn’t believe how disliked he was and partly because he’d only just unpacked the ‘build a Communist state’ kit that had been posted to him from the Soviet Union and was still reading the manual. ‘Fifty-seven per cent’ was a rather witless thing to shout in the streets, but it had been great, and the slogan was a portmanteau, replete with sesquipedalian imprecations and oaths against the Communists.
As Gyuri was led into the elegant interior of 60 Andrássy út, for some reason, the rumour about the head of the AVO’s wife came to his mind: Gábor Pétér’s wife was bruited to be lesbian with a strong penchant for triadic trysts. This salacious aside stepped aside as a young AVO officer (presumably the junior members and recruits got the night shift) who was Gyuri’s age, opened a folder and muttered ‘Fischer’ as if he were taking receipt of a consignment of desk lamps. The officer flipped through the file in a moderately annoyed fashion because it seemed to be virtually empty and lacking the crucial items he was searching for. Gyuri studied him and thought: if only I hadn’t been born with moral vertebrae, with intelligence, with dignity, I could be sitting there comfortably.
‘Your confession doesn’t seem to be here,’ remarked the officer with the clear implication that he was the only person in the building who dealt conscientiously with paperwork.
‘It had better be good, I’m not signing any rubbish,’ said Gyuri diving into the silence. On account of the dearth of menace in the proceedings (it was rather like a dentist’s waiting room without the magazines) and because he had the feeling it would be his last chance to crack a joke for a long while, he took the initiative. It would be the sort of story that would tickle everyone in prison.
The receptionist looked at Gyuri as if he had fouled the carpet, not stupid or boorish, but simply sad. He called to a colleague in an adjoining room. ‘One more. Fischer.’ The colleague came in with a clipboard he was consulting closely, professionally. He spent rather longer than one could expect it would take to scrutinise a single sheet of paper, even with very small print, finally he pronounced, ‘There’s no Fischer.’
‘Can I go home, then?’ asked Gyuri, feeling he had nothing to lose.
Both of them turned to him with a look that said it would be extremely unwise, extremely unwise to open his mouth again. The receptionist gestured at Gyuri. ‘What do you think he’s doing here? Waiting for a bus?’
‘I don’t care what he’s doing here. He’s not on the list. I’ve told people about this before, you know. We’re not the Hotel Britannia. Your name’s Fischer?’ he asked, addressing Gyuri.
‘Yes.’
He looked lengthily at the list again. ‘You don’t have any aliases or nicknames do you?’
‘No.’
The list was regarded again in the hope it would suddenly divulge a Fischer. ‘You are Hungarian, I take it?’ he asked scanning a violet piece of paper evidently intended for foreigners. Gyuri confirmed his nationality. ‘Well, I’ve got a Fodor, but that’s it, and there aren’t even any Fs on the foreigners’ list.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the receptionist, ‘just stick him downstairs.’
‘It does matter. What’s the point of having a fucking list if people’s fucking names aren’t on it.’
The receptionist seized the clipboard and eyeballed the list with an air of doubting the other’s ability to spot a Fischer even when there was one there. ‘Okay, just take him down.’
‘But we’re full up. I’ve only got the double left.’
Gyuri was led underground and shown into a cell which had a feeble member of the bulb family lighting it and which was predominantly full of gypsy. There were two benches in the cell, both of which were covered by the largest gypsy Gyuri had ever seen, in fact one of the largest people he had ever seen. Like Neumann, but with three or four pillows tied to him. How could anyone get that fat in Hungary? Apart from his striking collection of collops, the gypsy’s left fist had ‘bang’ tattooed b-a-n-g on the topmost phalanges of his fingers and his jowly face had a grid marked on the left side as if someone had been playing noughts and crosses with an exceptionally sharp knife. Gyuri wondered if the gypsy had ever contemplated a career in water-polo.
‘Hello,’ said the gypsy, withdrawing a division of thigh to expose some bench and stretching out a hand. ‘I’m Noughts.’ Then he added beamingly, ‘Pimp.’
Gyuri shook hands and introduced himself. He admired Noughts’s clarity of identity. How should he depict himself: basketball player? Railway employee? Student of life? ‘Fischer, Gyorgy, class alien.’