‘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.
He knocked on Jadwiga’s door. He heard the sounds of occupancy. ‘I missed you,’ he said as she opened the door. She scrutinised him for a long second, then admitted him. ‘I hope you like tea,’ she said, ‘because that’s all I can offer you.’ As a veteran of impecuniosity, Gyuri immediately read penury in her room. It was clinically smart, causing Gyuri to admire once again the miraculous ability women had to automatically instil order, having that morning stumbled through various items on his bedroom floor, items which had certainly been there when he had started his accountancy studies.
It was as Jadwiga picked up a kettle to boil the water that Gyuri received two co-nascent bulletins from the back-room boys. One thought, how elegant and graceful she was, how she made picking up a kettle touchingly, triumphantly erotic. Optically revisiting her bosom, arms and legs, he appreciated how lithe and athletic she was. Lucky: she had the sort of slender age-resistant frame that would provide the same conjugal scenery at forty as at sixteen.
The second thing that barged into Gyuri’s attention was the certitude that he wanted to marry her. That was surprising. He had never felt wedlockish before; indeed the idea of an additional bond to Hungary, anything that would make his flight less streamlined, was anathema. So this was what it felt like. But here it was, unannounced, without any warning, no throat-clearing – the notion that he wanted to get married, as precisely defined and as urgent as a craving for chocolate cake. Was he going crazy? He pondered this development while Jadwiga boiled the water on the gas ring down the corridor. Old Szocs had been right.
On the wall was a roughly-hewn wooden crucifix, the sort of thing a pious peasant with time on his hands would do. Maybe Stalin was dead, maybe this was 1955 after all, but this was tantamount to having a two-metre marble horseprick deposited outside the Rector’s office. Clearly, it wasn’t just Jadwiga’s breasts that were firm. Gyuri welcomed the audacity, but wondered whether there would be theological tape interfering with the expedition down south?
In a way, Gyuri regretted having the tea and the rather wretched biscuit that Jadwiga offered him since he had the feeling he was consuming half her worldly goods; the tea she had had to scoop out of the bottom of a tin and the biscuit, he suspected, had been stored up for a special occasion, which he wasn’t. An offer of supper, as long as he could find a ridiculously cheap restaurant, was doubly required.
‘Could you help me with the window?’ she asked. ‘It’s a bit stuffy in here.’ She was standing by the window, pushing against its stuckness. How did she do it? The request couldn’t have been more exciting if she had asked him to take off all her clothes. The window didn’t need that much persuading, but even if it had been nailed down, it would have been shooting open, Gyuri was experiencing such vigour.
Jadwiga still wouldn’t relent on the party, or having supper. ‘I’m behind with my work,’ she said steadfastly. This refusal didn’t bother Gyuri unduly. Intuitively, he sensed that it wasn’t powered by a desire to extricate herself from his company. Her regimented books testified to her earnestness. Unusually for someone at university, she was interested in her studies. The biscuit, lone and sagging as it had been, prevented Gyuri from being discouraged. He felt their lines were converging, not staying parallel. This was love at the first cup of tea.
He withdrew to let her study for a while and to craft some advances. Sólyom-Nagy was now back in his room. He apologised for his absence owing to several trips to collect fluid supplies for the evening.
The party was held at the Theatre. Gyuri who had thought he had seen professionally debauched festivities in Budapest had anticipated a more provincial level of bacchanalia but he had to concede that that night in Szeged was nothing but arrestable and immoral behaviour. It was indisputably the fastest social event he had ever attended. There was a hip-bath on stage in which Sólyom-Nagy mixed what he billed as the largest cocktail ever fashioned in Hungary, a triumph of socialist planning involving Albanian brandy, ice cream, vodka and other things that no one could or would identify.
Within half an hour of the hipbath opening for business, there were people unable to prise themselves off the floor. Gyuri had only one small glass which he sipped pensively and he was very glad he hadn’t emptied it down his neck like the others. It already seemed to him that the stage had grown a vicious slope.
Agnes was there, whom Gyuri hadn’t seen for years. That was the problem with a small country: you were always walking into your past. Gyuri had heard that she had gone to Szeged to study. For a lengthy period of time Gyuri had asked her out. Pataki had been squiring her best friend, Elvira. Gyuri asked, Agnes ducked. ‘She always goes out with the friend of whoever’s going out with Elvira,’ Pataki had encouraged, insisting that Agnes had already indicated her approval of Gyuri’s merits.