Károly Szalay Years in Love and Blood An Historical Novel About the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 Translated from the Hungarian by Peter Ortutay

By Ortutay Peter

The strikes were still going on in the plants and factories. More than half of the workers' children weren't going to school yet. There were substitutions all the time, because many of my colleagues were absent. I didn't even know why. It was cold in the classrooms, because the Polish coal hadn't arrived. There were lots of police officers with armbands, army officers and former ÁVH officers in the streets patrolling in plain cloths, in half-uniforms. The news from the Melbourne Olympics came from very far away and, as a matter of fact, it didn't interest me at all. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember whether the Olympic games had started or not when I was still at home. All my memories of those days are so blurred. The daily events lost their importance. Sometimes I called on the Szentiványis. I slept in Jóska's ramshackle atelier several times, and one or two of his models, I wouldn't say they were quite whores, they weren't, took the hook. Then Halupka showed up again, self-confident, victorious, with a gun on the belt around his fat hips. He had also become a member of the armed forces

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ortutay Peter
• Release date: Nov 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370507948

Ortutay Peter

Rövid önéletrajz:1942. július elsején születtem Ungváron. A középiskolát szülővárosomban végeztem. Rögtön az iskola után egyetemi felvételeim nem sikerültek, így két évig sajtolómunkásként dolgoztam a Peremoha gyárban. Aztán behívtak katonának... a szovjet hadseregbe, ahol három évet húztam le angyalbőrben.1964-ben felvételiztem az Ungvári Állami Egyetem bölcsészkarára, és angol szakos egyetemista lettem. 1969-ben diplomáztam. Még ugyanabban az évben (sőt korábban) Balla László főszerkesztő felajánlotta, hogy dolgozzam fordítóként (majd újságíróként) a Kárpáti Igaz Szó magyar lapnál. Kisebb megszakításokkal a nyolcvanas évek elejéig dolgoztam az Igaz Szónál. 1984-ben költöztem Budapestre. Angol nyelvtanár lettem az Arany János Gimnáziumban, majd a Kandó Kálmán főiskolán. Az ELTE bölcsészkarán doktoráltam angol nyelvészetből, és a tudományos fokozatomnak köszönhetően 1991-ben az Egri Tanárképző Főiskola főigazgatója megkért, hogy legyek a főiskolán az angol tanszék vezetője. Három évig voltam tanszékvezető, aztán előadó tanár ugyanitt.1998-tól 1999-ig az Ohiói Állami Egyetemen (Amerikai Egyesült Államok) is tanítottam egy rövid ideig. Az Egri Gárdonyi Géza Ciszterci Gimnázium tanáraként mentem nyugdíjba 2004-ben.Nyugdíjazásom előtt és után nyelvészeti tudományos munkákat publikáltam, írogattam, szépirodalmat fordítottam. Eddig hat vagy hét műfordítás-kötetem van, főként F. Scott Fitzgerald amerikai író novellái és színművei, valamint Mary Shelly Mathildá-ja, mely fordításomban először jelent meg magyarul. Közben sikerült lefordítanom angolra Szalay Károly (alternatív) Kossuth-díjas írónak az ötvenhatos magyar forradalomról írt Párhuzamos viszonyok című regényét, mely a United P. C. Publisher kiadó gondozásában Parallel Liaisons címmel jelent meg külföldön.

Book preview

Chapter One

I will never forget that night.

I was tossing about in bed and thought I was wide awake, but nightmares worse than sleeplessness tortured me. I saw a dismal and endless steppe, the Hungarian puszta, with its dry reeds hard as bone, grass withered to the stem, the soil with its familiar soda crusts, and those rattling, thorny, devilish thistles, the tumbleweeds, driven to and fro by the hot wind. My lips were chapped, my throat dry as dust, specks of sand sharp as a needle pricked my eyes. Then I saw myself standing in front of a sheep-pen, and Gabi's mom, stooping and crying desperately, tearing her shirt, mourning her dead daughter lying on a bier in the house. I went in and saw in the semi-darkness no bier, only Gabi's golden brown, sun-burned long thighs spread wide, with her hips arranged to help the stocky village guy on her stomach penetrate. Then I saw her jerking and heaving her hips, her whole body like a butterfly swimmer, uttering sharp little screams from under the groaning and moaning guy lying on her. I rushed out into the open air, and the crazy red-hot sun, the wind, hot as a sirocco, the glowing and quivering air of Feketepuszta almost knocked me down. I woke up, and felt my dick was hard as hell, at the point of coming, still I was unable to come. I have never had wet dreams and the crazy libido made my throat dry. There was perfect chaos in me, a mixture of jealousy and lust, doubt and certainty.

It was half past two in the morning. I set the alarm clock to wake me up at half past three, but I knew I could not fall asleep again, so I switched it off. No use waking Saca, I thought. He was snoring mercilessly by my side. His puffing and blowing made the curtains float. I was looking at the ceiling. Sometimes a colored spot or two, perhaps the souls of unburied dead, slipped through it. Other, more practical people, might say they were just the reflections of the colors of cars rolling along the street: light-blue, light-red, dark-brown. Then again the pictures of the Hungarian steppe: floating, scarce blades of grass, stalks of weed dry as skeletons, and then all of a sudden a vision of Fenyves, head of the department at the university, appeared before my eyes as a sadistic commanding officer of a concentration camp, with a most wicked face made very big by the distorting mirror of the ghost castle in the City Park. He poked at me with his index finger with nails that were always dirty, shrieking at me: you swindler, you liar, you deserve no teacher's desk, you have nothing to do in a big industrial town like Csepel. And so on, without end. I didn't feel my feet, they were sort of stuck in the mud, and Fenyves was panting straight into my neck. I stumbled, my job assignment notice was in my hand, and he was trying to grab me. He snatched the paper out of my hand and crumpled it.

I woke up sweating.

It was only twenty-seven or twenty-six minutes to three. Time was crawling. I knew I must not fall asleep, because I could miss the army jeep. Still, somehow, I fell asleep again.

Saca woke me up. He was standing in his outgrown (or shrunk in washing) pajamas, and was shaking me with his big, hairy, reddish paws, while stamping his bare feet on the floor. Obviously he urgently had to piss.

God, I overslept!

I jumped out of bed, just splashed some cold water on my face and rushed into the kitchen, had a slice of bread with nothing, drank a gulp of water, and slammed the door after me.

Still on the staircase I heard him open the little peeping window on the door and shout after me.

Hey, how are you getting back? Don't you need some dough for the train? And wouldn't it be much better to validate your job assignment at the city council first? …You can make love to Gabi later on in the county. She won't go anywhere. No fear, the move is for good. Nowhere for those chicks to go from there. … I can go down for you. Gabi'd be delighted to have me, too. No sweat.

… and he guffawed, the empty staircase reverberating it in the early morning.

I was stamping nervously at the tram stop, the fifty-nine tottered down—annoyingly slow—as if gliding on my nerves. It took long minutes to grind to a halt, and still more to leave.

You know the rest. When I arrived at Kálvin Square, Jancsi Tóth and his buddies had already left. Their patience had run out. They were just turning out towards Üllői Út, and you stood there alone doing something in front of the jewel box of a church, but I didn't want to talk to you. So I shambled cautiously away on the other side towards the old Franz Joseph Bridge, and it was just then that I noticed that the turuls perching on the peaks of the pillars are actually lifting the bridge, like some net, to the sky, and the middle of the bridge bent above the water in a big span … A crazy idea: birds sitting on a bridge … and lifting it.

Here I interrupt Csarody's memoirs.

The other day I called up Saca.

Hello, I said.

Who the bloody hell are you, calling at eleven o'clock in the morning?

Hajagos speaking.

Hajagos! he said. Good heavens! Are you still alive? Don't you think that that's a luxury nowadays?

I'd like to ask, please, if you can recall a summer dawn long ago?

A summer dawn? I can recollect no dawns at all, not even this one today. You are mad. You are exactly as insane as Csarody was thirty years ago.

It's just him I want to talk about. I just recalled the day when Csarody got his job assignment and was about to leave for Feketepuszta the next day with Jancsi Tóth to see Gabi!

I don't remember. How can I remember such things? Since then at least thirteen thousand dawns have dawned on me, so how can you expect me to remember one single dawn of Csarody's when I've forgotten all of mine?

Well, then let me help you remember. Jancsi Tóth, their classmate, was an inmate of a forced labor camp in Feketepuszta, the place to which Gabi's family had been deported. And on the very day when Csarody managed to fake his way to a teaching assignment from the Ministry of Culture all of a sudden Jani Tóth popped in unexpectedly.

Yes, something rings a bell.

They wanted to leave very early the next day, but Csarody was late. They would have met at Kálvin Square, but the jeep didn't wait…

Yes, something rings a bell, but faintly.

He rushed, but didn't make it. At first he overslept, then was in a fluster … You woke him up …

"Yes, yes, now I remember something, but I have only a very faint inkling of it. I woke up first, then noticed with surprise that the alarm clock was turned off, and I could hardly rouse Csarody, he was so fast asleep. Yes, yes … He was late, and I told him to rush, shake a leg, it was a special occasion, I said, to go and see Gabi. At that time, just after graduating from the university and before starting to work, he had absolutely no money. I might have said something to him about taking advantage of the opportunity, they would take him to Feketepuszta for free, and that he would be out of luck, if not now then never, since he was penniless, had no money for the train fare, and besides it would take him two days to get there by train, whereas only half a day by car. And then I told him, or rather asked him, if he knew what grand sex one might have out there in the middle of a bottomless desert, where the whirlwinds blow and the burnt-out grass rustles. But he was unable to come around, sat long minutes on his bed, staggered leisurely to his feet … I pleaded, yes, told him categorically that if he didn't want to go, then I would, and screw Gabi for him … He washed and dressed slowly, walking around somehow very strangely, I was angry, I also wanted to wash up, then he struggled with the teapot, made toast unreasonably, and was looking for the papers, for his job assignment …for hours … Well, I remember even asking him what the heck he needed a job for. Did he want to teach the sheep, or perhaps the hoodlums guarding the deportees in Feketepuszta. I noticed his slow reflexes, or rather his slow-motion—like the movies.2 …

But let's change the topic. I'm not interested in Csarody's once-upon-a-time early morning ejaculations. … If he didn't even take the pains to write anything, or to send a card from the arse end of nowhere, let him be full of shit, his asshole bunged.

All right, I said,how are you doing?

Shit! Couldn't you choose a more boring topic than that? Kills me. Are we never going to get together once again? Must tell you frankly, I miss Csarody's brilliant idiocy, and hopefully you could compensate rather nicely, or let's say partly, for this lack …. I mean as far as idiocy is concerned.

Say something about yourself. I dodged his old adolescent banter.

Nothing to say. Fewer and fewer ejaculations, more and more idiots around me since I became an academician.

Still, how are you getting on? Say something more concrete.

More concrete? Up to the chin in shit. Is that a sufficiently in-depth medical diagnosis?

In-depth, indeed, I said, out of sorts, and put down the receiver.

And then I buried myself again in Csarody's manuscript. He wrote:

I was looking at the turuls and had a splitting headache, in the back of my head. My brain was throbbing. Probably all this is because of the drink I had the night before, I thought. I could never stand watered-down alcohol, and who knows what the cheap wine was mixed with. Those days it was pretty often that one heard about alcohol-poisoning, caused by industrial alcohol, but the newspapers never mentioned such things. Only Stalin, Rákosi, the great superior Soviet Union setting an example for the world, and the socialist emulation of workers and farmers. The rest was deep silence. No robberies, murders, thefts, accidents, alcohol-poisoning, absolutely nothing … Saca was right, I thought. I must go straight to the council to register my job assignment. Maybe it's already late. Maybe they've employed somebody else instead of me already. I was shivering with fear. What if they found out that I had lied in the ministry to get an appointment? I would never survive. Now I was sticking to my diploma, to the profession of a teacher as a madman, a torturing wish pestered me to sit in front of the children at the teacher's desk, I had no such desire before, but now I was ready to rush to the big city. But it was still early. I had twinges in the eyes, the roof of my mouth was as dry as tinder, and with the tip of my tongue I could feel white fur on my lips.

As I had a splitting headache, it felt good to get on the Rapid at Boráros Square, I pressed my forehead to the cool window-pane, and in agony caused by the pain splitting my skull, I muttered something to myself: I'm probably traveling with the last waves of people, corpses of people, your corpses of people, consequently with rubbish, nonsense and garbage,.. Oh, what morbid and senseless puns! Yes, I'm at my wit's end, can contrive nothing new, have no fresh ideas at all … It was Bóka, my most beloved professor, who said once: Csarody, your fault is that you are always worrying about things too much! There's no heaven-sent lack of inhibition in you which one needs for creation! …that lack of inhibition which so skillfully assists as an experienced midwife in the production of mental products. Your self-control is tightly tailored, Csarody! You stifle, bottle up in yourself the good stuff together with shoddy goods. You are unable to write even two paragraphs freely, light-heartedly….

The train was rattling towards Szabad Kiköto.

One needs insolent self-conceit in order to create—Bóka's words reverberated in my ears—and to make the work successful still more: the efficiency of a mafioso. Just take a look! What hustle and bustle, impertinent amateurishness, sly lackey servility, a beating of the drums, standing on the alert everywhere to be the first to see if Mihály Farkas or Révai makes a sign. Rákosi doesn't even need to make a sign, they make signs for him, and all brown-noses at once make their mouths sound as a flute to blow rhymes. All so many dwarfish poetasters, similar to the well-known János Hazafi Veray, but he at least didn't ask Uncle State to give him some small change for his dilettantism… Oh, dear God, whether Bóka knew that he himself was in as supine a submission to the powerful as all the others, just some means in the hands of comrade sour-faced Révai for instance, that he also fidgeted as a lackey in front of him, waiting for his infallible statements to fulfill, and that he picked quarrel precisely with those individuals who later set him aside and never fidgeted as lackeys? There's of course another approach to this. Yes, he waged a war against Illyés, László Németh, Tamási, writers, who were set aside and oppressed at that time…. However, was it not a greater risk to disagree with them than with those who were guarded by arms and everyday orders? Did Bóka feel who the really great ones were even under the spell of power? He had to feel that Révai, Márton Horváth and those who lick their boots cannot be his real counterparts to take issue with, they were merely the bacilli of history. Their greatness and the greatness of the appointed geniuses were very transitory. … It is the mercilessness of the age that drowned Bóka's huge talent … and there's not a single bubble left after it on the surface. It all occurred to me on the banks of the Loire … But now, as I am meditating about him and his deeds, I must perhaps also confess that still his spirit, wit, knowledge and vivid character must have at that time somehow contradicted the mediocre ideology that infected one's soul, broke one's spine and put knowledge to a witchcraft trial. And I am afraid that ideology is still alive, lies in hiding like a shifty pathogen, and is looking forward to erupting, to attacking us again …

The morning sun was shining brightly some thirty-five years ago as I got off the Rapid at the main square in Csepel. It was early. I loafed about in St. Imre Square—it was not renamed somehow, and then at eight o'clock sharp I knocked at the door of the public education department of the city council.

There was a slender woman of about thirty-five, very lovely, with a pretty face and all, sitting at the desk and looking at me with her green eyes so dreamily and fancifully as if I had shown her not my assignment papers, but my check-book instead, and not in this cold unfriendly council office stinking of tobacco but in a brothel, say, in the famous Magyar Street. She took the paper from my hand bending forward, and I could see her two longish firm breasts through the opening of her white blouse. I also bent forward, staring insolently into the opening, taking delight in the color of her skin passing from brown into yellowish-white below, and in the dark nipples naughtily winking upwards.

Comrade, did you come here to teach or to stare? she asked, and her eyes turned into glaring green as of a snake's. Jesus, I thought, what could her eyes be when she was coming? But now she was not coming at all, but sneered with her mouth tightly closed, and looked at me sternly.

Sure, to teach, I said, but with the secret thought that maybe my other abilities will not have to be neglected.

I'd be glad, she said,if you practiced your other abilities elsewhere, and not here at the city council where we represent the power of the working people.

Now that I can express my thoughts freely, I'd say that the circumstance that lead beauties like her to chatter such gross political banalities was one of those many sins of the system that were almost equivalent to violations of law.

She became kind of moody, out-of-sorts actually, and I started thinking she was not going to confirm my assignment. She looked at the paper as if I had offended her. Oh, this emancipation stuff again, I thought, but then she looked up at me and said, I'll go and see Comrade Dénesfalvi, he's Director of the Public Education Department, she said, mentioning the title all in capital letters of course.

It definitely seemed to take an ominous turn. I looked around in the room getting cold feet at the possible outcome of the affair, and in the corner to the right I noticed a young girl, a typist of about sixteen, with long, very fair hair. She was staring at me with a bone pale face and transparent blue eyes, such as I have never seen. She was filing her nails, but because of her stare she must have misfiled a little, straight into the the quick of the nail, and she hissed.

Are you free tonight? I asked, and was myself surprised at how speedily I tried to bowl these two unfortunate women over, one by one.

The girl blushed, and went on staring at me, wondering now not only with the eyes but also with her mouth, which she opened round. Good heavens, I thought, did I get into a nunnery? But the padded door opened, and there he was, Comrade Dénesfalvi. He was a tall, athletic man with broad shoulders and a brush-like mustache, with firm facial features, slightly grayish, wavy pompadour, as if straight from the barbers, fingers fat as sausages, thick hair on the back of his hand and forearms which the short-sleeve shirt left very visible. Under his open shirt his thick chest hair, turning gray, was also visible. In Kecskemét Pufi would say his pullover has slid up like the Killer's (as we called Laci Keleti).

Comrade Holczer has not signed your appointment here, he said.

No, he's on vacation, I lied, covering my horror. I spoke to him on the phone. He said not to wait for him in order to get the signature. It's more important to start working.

I know, he said. He went to the Soviet Union the day before yesterday. He didn't mention your name. But he is a good friend of mine, and we agreed that he would send good comrades to me, so I am glad to welcome you here. You are a Party member, of course.

Not yet, I said off-hand, and tried to stress the yet unreasonably.

Aha, I see. I can understand Comrade Holczer's idea. He wants us to develop our cadres in-house. Yes, I see, he muttered, and sat down at the desk where earlier the woman with those exciting tits had sat. Then he thumbed over a sort of diary, looked at the still irate woman standing behind his back, and said, Well, let's send him to the school on Szigeti Károly Street. We need history teachers there. Besides, he will teach Hungarian, too. Unfortunately he can hardly do anything with French.

I wanted to say something, too, but he paid no attention to me, turned to the typist, made her fill out a paper, signed it, and handed it to me.

Good luck then, comrade. he said, not waiting for an answer. He went back to his office, and took the sulky woman with him.

I was left alone again with the girl.

So, what's the answer? Are you free? I asked.

At that time I was pushy and eager in my late adolescent sexual state of mind to an extent that retrospectively is almost ridiculous and comical. If I look back at those years, I have the feeling I constantly lived somewhere in between, namely between the legs of two women. Unfortunately this transition period was more lengthy than necessary; but after all, my God, those happy expectations, full of hope, were more fun than a not very successful consummation today. (Csarody's post-puberty has lasted almost up till now. And I envy him a little for this. I am not fond of the stern, wise and boringly ripe adults we usually call frozen fruits, who try to conceal their impotence with political principles or by pretending bitter seriousness or idiotic hypocrisy. Hajagos' note.) So the girl was sitting behind her typewriter, her translucent white skin sparkled in the sun, her pale blond hair haloed her white little face, the unhappy, sad, tormented little face of a martyr. She was the exploited, thin, sickly little girl working fourteen hours a day, as in the times of the English industrial revolution, a syrupy sugary Dickens heroine. Still there was something erotically attractive in her, or maybe I was the type who could be sexually aroused by everything that was part of a female, a mouth, legs, breasts, not to mention all the other sexual conveyances.

My idea is that sometimes the not very beautiful women are more attractive, more erotic than the pretty, lovely, shapely ones. A very well proportioned girl with an ugly face, or vice versa, a lovely but slightly plump, ripe woman from time to time makes me more horny than perfection. That puny little girl with her clumsiness, her thin arms, tiny breasts, pointed, bony little knees… Now you ask me how come I knew her knees were pointed, so I know it because after work we went out, but there was nothing between us, although I took her out to the banks of the Danube not far from Királyerdő, somewhere close to it, and on the warm and yellow sand, lying on my back, I unbuttoned her blouse, and forced my hand into her tight panties, and caressed, with the palm of my hand, her swelling vagina, and the soft spare hair on it, and touched with my finger her labia—but then she burst into sobbing. I hate hysterical women, they either make me angry or throw cold water on me.

Now why on earth are you crying? I asked rudely. You behave like a virgin in a nunnery.

I hate being raped all the time, she said sobbing.

Fuck! I thought. One must beware of women who are obsessed with the false thought that everybody craves to rape them. This dangerous disease must be cured, like TB. And as a matter of fact I have never heard any brilliant woman say that; only sick-looking, yellow flowers think so. Then, when irate and swearing I turned away from her, she tried to dry up her tears and apologize. She stammered, still sobbing and gasping, how in the paper plant, where she worked as a typist in the wage accounting office, first some Kenéz brother or other had raped her at lunch-time, and then the whole bunch felt like doing the same. Of course she didn't dare report to the police, because they were a dangerous gang who could take revenge on her father, her little sister or brother.

Then, after having delivered this neo-realistic Italian grandguignole, she managed to calm down somehow, and started muttering something about her education, she continued studying she said, wanted to become a doctor, therefore she went to high school after work, and that I'd rather not cherish any hopes because she had already made up her mind to become a doctor, and she stuck to her guns. She can't love me.

So I was just sitting in the sand, drooping and gradually growing flaccid, and calming down, with the head of my dick hanging sadly above the sand, becoming more and more mad with myself because of my immediately being moved on hearing all kinds of sentimental love stories dribbling with syrup and honey and about little girls being raped instead of impaling them with the appropriate rigor on my personal stake.

We walked towards the main square. It was already dark when we got to the church. She said she didn't want me to walk her home because the Kenéz brothers would cut my face with a razor, they don't joke around, and she waited until I got on the Rapid, and waved to me with a white handkerchief. As in the movies. Now you can ask me why the hell do I have to recall all this, why does this dull adventure come to my mind, we had such ones every day, twice a day, after all I didn't even kiss her properly; her lips were closed, cold and thin, lost in the grip of my mouth, and perhaps her kiss smelledof garlic even, I think. I should have sneezed, but I didn't want to hurt her. So why did it come to my mind in spite of all that? If I tell you now, in addition, that after this I met her only once, and even then we didn't talk, we didn't make love, then you'll understand positively nothing. The truth is I didn't even know the girl's name, she simply occurred to me, sometimes I pitied her, felt sorry for her, and sometimes I had a strong wish to have her, with all the indiscoverable secrecy of a sudden sexual desire, with its illogic, I should say. Yes, later on it often happened that on getting down from the Rapid I started running after some thin girl with waving blond hair because I thought it was her, or I had hoped she would wait for me outside the school, or that she was sitting in the glass booth at the stop, and on seeing me would throw her arms around my neck, and in her eyes tears would glitter. I was unable to get rid of what she told to me, that she was raped, and that she confessed it to me weeping, but with resignation, and that this neglected poor working girl with dirty nails had decided: she would become a doctor. I cheered her. And I also imagined that maybe once I would be in her hands, and as I lay there on the operating table she would recognize me with her big surprised eyes. To make a long story short I often thought about her in those days, I lived with her shadow, with her memory. I don't even remember the names of all the women I went to bed with, women who were gratefully moaning into my ears when they were having an orgasm, or pretended to have an orgasm, and if I had to make a list, then I could recollect perhaps only a fourth of them.

But I cannot forget this girl. I don't know why. In those years she constantly lived in my thoughts, and her image, similarly to some other women's flesh and blood body, left a lasting trace in me. More precisely. I myself don't understand it either. Why was it that until October 1956 I couldn't forget her. Since then, when I met her for the second time in the last week of that very month I have all the reason never to get rid of her memory. But I am going to speak about that later on, in due time.

The next day I went again to the city in order, perhaps, to see the girl, or perhaps I really wanted to take a look at the school I was assigned to work at.

As I got off the Rapid, a frightful heatwave met me. There was a wind, too, a hot desert wind, blowing the sharp grainy specks of sand into my mouth, my eyes, it pricked into my flesh, it stuck to me, it stung. I had dreamed about this savanna heat, this cruel African simoom the day before, and now I really felt it.

The school was easy to find.

It was on a street at the edge of the city. The street was not paved, just yellow sand covered it, and locust trees stood on both sides. The building had a vaulted gate, vaulted windows, and a vaulted corridor looking at a wide yard covered with gray pounded slag. The gray yard, rough as sandpaper, bordered on the neighboring lots, and was separated from them by a light wire fence; on one of the lots there stood a little house hardly bigger than a woodshed, in front of it a free-standing fire-place, a white stove, a Bulgarian vegetable garden, and a hen-house: a farm in the capital. On the other there was a woodlot of locust, transparent from one point because the rows of trees were straight as a slow parade march. A third fence separated the yard from Erzsébet Road. And the wind, walking freely through the woodlot, picked up, whirled the loose grains of the slag, sprinkled them over the open corridor, pressed the alluvial deposit into the classrooms. The air, the desks, the tables, the floor were full of dust, but the walls were freshly whitewashed. The doors, the window-frames were dark brown, the planked floor of the classrooms was freshly oiled, and there was a shiny iron stove in each of the rooms.

I walked through the whole school, from one room to the other, because the whole building, the doors, the windows were all wide open to the world, and the smell of petroleum, of the sulfuric smoke of bad quality coal, the bitter smell of perspiration, the penetrating stink of wet boots, the smell of sweaty feet like that of rotting cheese, they were all whirling in my nostrils. I know you would say that then I was indulging in daydreams. Of course I was, how on earth could a school not be aired out in the stubbornly fluttering wind and draft? Only it's good sometimes to dream, if not exactly of the Szigeti Károly Street school in the capital, or of the suburban school of the capital, if you please, but of the the school which I went to some fifty years ago in the county, in the small town or small town suburb, and to recall the nose-tickling torrent of scents from the dark cellar storeroom of the street corner grocer's, of the strange, mysterious little Uncle Schwarz, whose skin was as yellow as that of a Japanese, where the smell or stink of the concentrated eastern spices and the petroleum, of the big, brown, hard washing soap (that he cut into pieces with the help of a wire) made a wonderful, intoxicating mixture with the penetrating anise scent of the sponge toffee, lemon drops, rubble chocolate, and black liquorice, also known as licorice.

I found the janitor's wife in the teachers' room. She was dusting the place, in vain, because dust was hovering everywhere. I told her I was the new teacher. God preserve you, she muttered, and wiped her hands on her apron, but in spite of that she stabbed her elbow at me instead of a handshake, and smiled. She was a massive woman with a round face, sort of a Kun, self-conscious and always humble, but with a free-and-easy, sincere kind of friendliness of people who manage to worm their way from the humble birth of domestics into state offices, which disappear here and there, too, and no longer exist. Track watchmen, official servants, gatekeepers, ushers, janitors tossed about in this open-hearted friendliness and official consciousness and severity, from which only the arrogant lack of consciousness and bad behavior replacing manners have remained today. Just take a look around, she said encouragingly, and showed me with surprising knowledge and love the equipment store of the physics lab, the old instruments from the past century. She showed me the teachers' and students' library enclosed in a glass wardrobe, and I had the impression that this simple woman was walking up and down in these rooms, among the skulls, bird-skeletons, stuffed cockatoos, hares, ducks, deer and God knows what other animals, under the maps on the wall, the oil printings of historical paintings of the last century as if everything that was exhibited there belonged to her; she smoothed out with love the crumpled edge of a poster. Our birds that are evolutionarily adapted for swimming and floating on the water surface. That protective concern for the old days—and I think this was quite understandable and natural—is an everyday phenomenon nowadays on this side of the Leithe. But not beyond. This school, however, still had a master in the person of the janitor and his wife; I can remember that if a piece of plaster disintegrated somewhere, the next day the man plastered it up, minding the paint, too, so that its color was not very different in contrast, glued the map if it was torn somewhere well before the teacher started to mend it. But all this seems to be wonderful in my eyes only today. Then it was natural. In my sleeveless white shirt, inherited pants made from bourette linen, twisted around my waist because they were loose-fitting, in my sandals, I was walking in the schoolrooms like a haughty English colonial officer, I needed only a cork-helmet on the head, and listening to the simple-minded little woman's chatter impatiently and with scorn, and could hardly stand her. Me fathead.

Then I killed some time in the main square, tried to get into the city council, but the porter didn't want to let me in, so I circled around the building, perhaps the little blond girl might look out one of the windows. I got tired, the hot pavement was melting the thin soles of my sandals, then I gave it up. I consoled myself with the thought that, anyway, the girl was not good for anything, although I would have been happy if I could just walk with her hand-in-hand or embracing her shoulders, and just talk to each other. At the very most I would kiss her softly on the stem of her ear. This proved to be a good method sometimes, some women and girls were sensitive to it and melted. The exultation caused by my snatching the job posting was over, I found life aimless, which happens to men in their youth only, when they are full of possibilities, hopes, wishes and real success. Now that we are walking out on everything, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of looking at our grotesque reflection, of not taking into consideration the tiny possibilities, the most insignificant success, even if it is not bigger than a morsel. Success? I mean just the smallest possibility of success, a maybe success. I went home, although I didn't have a great mind to go home, greeted Maris in the kitchen, but it would have made me mad if I had to talk to her, and I didn't feel like playing a game of chess with Saca either.

There was a letter waiting for me on the desk. Longish, stringy writing, as sharp and resolute as herself; the characters of absolute expediency and rationality. My mother's handwriting. I sat down on the bed, spread my legs, and lying on my back stared at the ceiling.

I didn't even open the thick envelope.

There was a knock at my door.

Maris, as if she felt that something was wrong—and, really, I do not fully understand my state of mind at that time even today,had just slipped a letter to me and then slouched out of the room. The address on the light-yellow envelope was in a fine, soft, oval, woman's handwriting. I didn't recognize it, it couldn't be Gabi's, it could hardly have come from Feketepuszta with its fine civilized way. I ripped open the envelope and was hit by a pleasant scent, familiar to readers of 18th century belle-lettres.

My dearest Kristóf,

We, Tódor and me, but most of all me, miss you like hell. Would you please condescend to show your majestic face here so that we can bathe in its splendor? Your ever faithful girlfriend: J.

Chapter Two

Maris watched me leaving the house with concern, because as I swept by her in the narrow hall she was spun round like a top. I rushed down the stairs. I was running away from something, as a rule I was running away a lot in my life, which habit, I believe, belonged to the twentieth century and not to me alone. Although if I start thinking about it, then and exactly at that point I had no reason to run away.

Rózsadomb, Rose Hill. Everything is quiet, nothing moves. I am walking up Ady Endre Street; and I believe I can perfectly recollect that evening, too. There was something unusual, strange in the environs, and it took me some time to guess what it was. The gardens, the streets were dark, the windows curtained, yes, yes, some two years ago on a similar summer evening people were sitting on their terraces, light poured out from the open windows, one could hear the sounds of music from here and there, plates, knives and forks clattered; common, everyday neighbourhood sounds, as natural as the whistle of a thrush, or the chirp of a cricket.

Looking back at my life it consisted not of January, February 1949, or March, April 1953, but of Julia 2, Maria 5, Klára 19 or Sylvia 30—figures to be replaced by the number of times we necked or had sex. (It's a joke that nowadays boys are only petting or screwing. We banged, boffed, checked the oil, dipped our wicks, fucked the pants off her, got it up, gave her the time, had a poke, had a shag, had our bananas peeled, knocked her, nutted her, porked her, pulled her, slipped it to her, stuffed her, and a lot of other expressions were also in common use. Mór Jókai allegedly knew about three hundred such expressions and used them to describe the quality of lovemaking.) One of the wonders of the Hungarian language is not only that it makes a difference between love (szeretet) and love (szerelem), but also that any verb expressing making, activity or creation can be applied to love making, depending on its length and quality. And for what is spoiled Hungarian uses the verb prefix 'el' (away). For banging is not just a serial production, there are as many of them as many seconds with the same girl. And if it is different, then the word should also be different. Can you remember? Those days we read in a French magazine that European sexologists went to India to study customs of lovemaking, and collected around twelve hundred positions. We were not able, even after having racked our brains for days, to figure out more than fifty or sixty. And anyway they were only varieties of the same six or seven basic positions.

Then I had no idea that Juliann, the wife of my best friend of childhood, would mean more to me later than the best friend himself.

Fear was nagging me on Rózsadomb—those were my thoughts then, and strangely enough this fear, this introversion, like lights turned down to a mere glimmer in the rooms, in the hearts, and in the minds, made for an appearance of tranquillity and peace in the moment. Long ago we used to call a bluish dawn l'heure bleu, and now we said that it was the hour of the secret police, the ÁVO, and what big difference there was between this blue and that blue. I can remember the rhyme I made up at the time, and recited to Juliann. It went like this:

Fear like yellow death

sits on the fence

and woe to him

the ÁVO finds in bed

because they give him a sock

and he'll shit on the spot

As kids we used to ring somebody's doorbell and then run away. The people were annoyed, of course, swore, scolded us.

Maybe a naughty brat would get a candy if it turned out the bell-ringer was just a naughty brat.

Juliann didn't jump with fright when I rang the bell. The door was open. She was sitting in a white bathrobe on the lukewarm terrace of the house. It smelled of cigarette smoke. She didn't stand up, so I bent over to kiss her face as was our habit. She threw her arms around my neck, and her embrace suggested a clinging wish to be sheltered. Her embrace was so forceful, so heated, so decisive, that I lost my balance and that must have been the reason for my mouth's getting to her thick, wet, soft and hot lips, and then I had to disentangle myself from her embrace, embarrassed, awkward and ashamed; an idiotic situation. I thought she might misunderstand, and not daring even to look at her, I found an armchair, a yellow fabric garden chair, and drawing it closer to her, blinking and croaking, I settled myself down. My face was on fire and my pants could scarcely contain my manliness. Juliann pretended not to notice anything, but I could see the white skin on her face blush, and her eyes stared at me with feverish glow. We didn't say anything for a long time. It's madness, I thought, I have known her for ages, and now all of a sudden, unexpectedly, touching her mouth turned me on and caused such a mind-boggling libido that my balls almost burst. In order to make you understand my position at that time, I have to say something about Tódor. Just imagine between the two great wars a well-to-do small town, with farmers, traders, physicians, lawyers who before the Treaty of Trianon lived in a bustling rhythm, built houses, travelled in the world, went to the theatres, to art galleries, were doing small business. My dad was a minor and poor official, but he went to see light operas in Vienna, operas in Salzburg, and often travelled to the carnival in Venice. If my auntie had a cough, she immediately rushed to the Mátra Mountains, the playboys of the town went to Budapest to enjoy the music halls and cabarets. Before 1914! This airy free life with lots of travel stopped in one fell swoop after the first war. What remained was the dull atmosphere of a small town, sultry misery, a standstill in building and business activities. And all of a sudden a tall, black-haired, good-looking young man full of daydreams appeared in this small town. He sang Kálmán and Lehár light opera arias at charity parties of the Emericana, with Cio-Cio San and God knows what all, then acted with the artists of the local theatre as a guest star, and it was said that he was exchanging letters with Gigli, and was going to Italy to continue learning and to conquer the world with his beautiful tenor voice. At least Kecskemét was conquered by him. He was a necessity worker, copied livestock documents for free in city hall four hours a day in the hope there would be a vacancy somewhere and he would get a job. At that time almost half of the officials in the offices were necessity workers' without a job and pay, and it was not very often that the queue jumped forward promising a job with a magic nomination. Tódor was also the victim of this hidden unemployment, he had a job but no pay. There was a heap of army officers, clerks, and civil servants without a job in the country. The successor states drove them away, first from Transylvania, Upper-Hungary and elsewhere, and with this they exported unprecedented misfortune into the rest of the country. Nevertheless Tódor was a star, a comet in our small town. He was received in the most exclusive high society circles. He was the favourite of the prelate when he let loose his enormous tenor in the choir of the big church, and the little choirmaster Szennai pounded the keys of the organ with all his might, and the bell-ringer pumped the organ with the weight of his huge fat body floating up and down. There were heavenly services in the church's baroque-rococo nave, and the believers had the feeling they were flying up into heaven on the wings of Tódor's voice. On Sunday mornings Tódor was also invited to the church lunch, where only the banker and the school directors (of course not from the protestant boarding school), the owner of the fish cannery, but not the vagabond nazi, who bought the Jew's business taking advantage of the rivalry in the war and later managing to escape with it into Switzerland in time. But to be truthful the Jewish manufacturer could not be invited either, and not because of racial prejudices, but because these lunches were considered to be a continuation of the religious ceremony for church-goers. At this ceremony the lower class church workers like Sylvester Kalapos, the efficient sponsor of the the church men's group, a bulky little man with a big double chin and bowling ball head, was also not invited. He was immeasurably rich, but herded his geese himself in his green village waistcoat, little rimless hat, sitting at the edge of a ditch, his invalid leg thrust forward, his hooked stick over his shoulder … well, but I am wandering from my subject. Tódor was welcome in my aunties' house, too. He bustled about my aunts, about the daughters, he always bustled about girls, and if he could only have married into a more or less well-to-do farmer's family I think he would have readily given up his Italian studies, his singer's career and his ambitions to conquer the world. But Tódor could be only a dining-room decoration in the houses of the families of our town, just like the fashionable, four foot tall African servant carved from wood and daubed in different colours that held an ashtray in his outstretched hand and could be found in the drawing rooms of every high society family in the town, like the plumber Feldman's lavatory sink and bathtub ashtray, which had the trick that when you turned the tap it emitted fire to light the cigarette, and when you pulled the tiny chain of the water tank a cigarette emerged from the sink. So Tódor was just such an ornament, but in a peculiar position. Contrary to the African servants he was not made of wood, and screwed with the utmost zeal and extraordinary satisfaction every high society lady and miss, every village maid and working girl—if they were worth it. He screwed not out of some working class fury but simply because he liked screwing, and had absolutely no moral qualms preventing him from this kind of activity. Tódor was loved by all the women, regardless of class. And we children also admired him because he played football and table tennis with us, ran with us, played ball and chess in the beating sun, and didn't even look up when a woman trembling like a meat jelly or a lanky adolescent girl, hungry as a shark, stepped over him, flirtatiously tilting with the toe of her high-heeled shoe Tódor's knight or bishop. Much to their chagrin he didn't care a rap about women when he played with us. Obviously this superior self-assurance was one of the sources of his charm and captivating power. Not a single husband of a pretty wife, or a rich farmer smelling of fat, or an official thin as an earthworm, or a manufacturer with a shining face could be dead certain and exclude the possibility of Tódor's sleeping in his bed with his wife or daughter, or with both, or even with both at once. This factor of constant uncertainty made the lords of money and power in the town sort of supercilious. They unctuously called him Tódorka, patted him on the shoulder, praised his last performance in the theatre, not surprisingly those who had a deaf ear to music encouraged him the most, saying that his voice was developing, and when he left to study with Benjamino Gigli he should let them know and they would give him some provisions for the journey. That was but natural, art must be supported, but the husbands, regardless of whether they were getting fat on welfare or working for starvation wages, probably would have preferred to see him go to the devil.

But they didn't dare to say a single word because if they had displayed even the shadow of suspicion that they were jealous of the boy, they would have become ridiculous for once and for all in the small town. For there the people could guzzle, make love, work, but also make fun of each other a lot. Well, that's not quite on the mark. They made fun not only of each other, but of everybody. Of Béla Kun or of Horthy, with no preference. But they always made fun of those who were presently on top, and never of those who were no longer up there, who had disappeared from the arena of power. Nowadays the situation has changed a little with us. Leaders who have disappeared can probably count on getting a comical waxwork, but while they were in power …

Tódor was an idol for us children, too, because, despite the fact that he was fifteen or even more years older than us, he never let us feel the difference. He was a partner, a helpful friend, and knew everything. (He was the best Subbuteo player, he scored fantastic goals on the swimming pool pitch in Széktó.) And he read a lot. Today I still cannot understand how he managed to get the best books, and learned Italian, and in the streets or on the promenade he greeted the Italian teacher, an ugly old spinster, with a gracious low bow and Italian baloney, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had taught Tódor some Portuguese or perhaps Esperanto instead of Italian; who on earth could tell in Kecskemét at that time what language it was? Only the beautiful Katie Sárosi, a modern, sporty, muscular, blue-eyed blonde, a heroine of syrupy American movies, who after 1945 to our greatest regret and heartache married a boy from Italy.

In 1945 fate favoured Tódor. He joined the Socialist Democratic Party and had a position there, but at the same time he studied music and singing at the college, with his hair already turning grey, as a destitute of the past regime, a persecuted pauper, who hadn't studied earlier because of the old class barriers. He appeared on the stages of the Budapest music halls and playhouses, he got minor roles in light operas, was a success at times, and there were some who saw the future János Sárdi in him. Then in 1948 the tide turned. He became not only a suspicious social democrat, but the propagator of the bourgeois pseudo-culture, even a mole of the clerical reactionaries. His singing in the churches, the Sunday morning lunches at the prelate were not forgotten, but after