Under the Frog

December 1944

The German soldier was trailing behind the others, clutching in his left hand a good portion of the intestines spilling out from an otherwise quite smart uniform. To Gyuri, he didn’t seem greatly distressed – it was rather as if the unTeutonic untidiness of runaway guts was far more troubling than any physical pain.

Of course, fussing or expecting any sort of sympathy or attention would have been a waste of time – like everything else sympathy and attention were running out. The Germans, pedestrian or motorised, still pretending that the war wasn’t over, were heading to the river and crossing over to the castle where it was rumoured they were going to hole up and fight it out with the rapidly approaching Russians. Gyuri had watched the Germans arrive in force, months earlier, when they had helped themselves to Hungary ’s government. The Germans had poured in with their heroic motorcycles and other items of snappy transport, swaggering around in beautiful leather coats.

The Germans weren’t looking so confident now, the prospect of getting mashed by the Russians not agreeing with them. It would have been fun to watch if it hadn’t been for the fact that the mashing was going to take place in Budapest. From the direction of the City Park Gyuri could hear the distant rumbling of artillery, the mighty footfalls of the Red Army.

Military training, even for fourteen year-olds like Gyuri, had been stepped up since the Hungarian High Command, having lost one army, was trying to get another to play with. Gyuri’s instructors had placed exclusive emphasis on running around a lot in gas masks and then crawling back and forth over some prime cow pats. ‘The Russians will be in big trouble if they try to defend themselves with cow shit,’ one of Gyuri’s fellow soldiers had remarked.

They were also shown the much-hailed ‘Panzerfaust’, the shoulder-launched antitank missile that was the latest secret weapon from the German scientists, and the piece of kit that everyone wanted to get their hands on. Their instructor had taken the Panzerfaust out of its box and held it out to them like some sort of talisman. ‘There it is, lads, the Panzerfaust,’ he had said, packing it back into its box so it could be taken off to be exhibited elsewhere and launching into a lengthy description of sundry hush-hush techniques for getting a truly first-rate shine on your boots.

Some of the duties were more pleasant. There had been a boom in requisitioning, presumably on the premise of doing your looting while you could. The notoriously stupid Hankóczy, who having made it to fifteen, was in charge, had led them on a stripping tour of properties in the Jewish quarter.

Supposedly searching for items that would help the war effort, Gyuri and Dozsa had an exceptionally good pillage in a pharmacy, recruiting lots of soap. Dozsa’s presence had been rather odd, since his father was Jewish and had been issued with a yellow star and one evening had been taken away. Gyuri had spotted him being escorted away, carrying one small suitcase. But a day or so later, Dozsa’s father had returned, and although he hadn’t been tap-dancing on the roof, he had been left alone.

Coming out of the pharmacy, Gyuri and Dozsa had heard a shrill protest from the other side of the street. From a fully-opened second floor window, a diminutive, but vocally powerful old lady unleashed a savage tirade against their appropriation of toiletries: ‘filth, termites, bloodsuckers. Have you no shame? Stealing like this in broad daylight?’ The woman had the appearance of being irritating on a full-time basis but Gyuri had been startled by the vehemence of her denunciations, which were surprising: against the background of wholesale export of Jewish families, the emptying of a pharmacy didn’t really rate a mention. Also Gyuri didn’t see why he should get the blame for the Nazi goings-on. Was the woman out of touch, or was it her pharmacy?

But she was very loud and very persistent. People stopped to watch the show. The most annoying thing, Gyuri suspected, was that she was right. Hankóczy had materialised and taken stock of the situation: ‘Right, Fischer, shoot the old bag.’ Gyuri had been issued with a vintage revolver, as a sort of official warrant, which he enjoyed wearing. ‘Go on,’ Hankóczy commanded in a senior, military sort of way. Gyuri pulled out the revolver from its holster. ‘Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!’ insisted the old lady, weary of the world, but Gyuri, after reflecting that at that distance he’d probably miss, had decided to be merciful.

‘Your mother, dear madam, was a whore,’ he had shouted belligerently. This massive and out-of-all-proportion rudeness had pleased Hankóczy even more than a round through the old girl would have. It had certainly blown her back into her flat, ripping apart her lace-curtain world. Hankóczy slapped Gyuri on the back approvingly but a creeping feeling of shame soon overtook Gyuri. You’re brought up to be polite to little old ladies, Gyuri thought, but all you want to do is to shoot them.

Tired of watching retreating Germans, Gyuri set off for home. He was curious about what war would be like close-up. Their first instalment had been yesterday, when he and Pataki were looking out from the tiny balcony that the Patakis had, a sort of a concrete slab that jutted out of the building. Pataki’s mother called them in for a few samples of the parliamentarian pastries she had been baking. A minute later, there was a faint thump and they went back to the balcony to see what it was, or rather they wanted to go out on the balcony, but they couldn’t because it was gone, seized by a long-distance Russian shell that hadn’t felt like exploding.

Gyuri had heard a similar story from Gergely. Gergely’s family were down in the shelter during an air raid and when it was over went back upstairs to their top-floor flat, opened the door, and found the whole flat gone. All that was left were the front door, its hinges and a view of dusty debris four floors down. ‘At least we didn’t have to bother tidying up,’ Gergely had commented.

Gyuri had also quizzed István about the war. István had spent three years on different fronts, always bringing back in an elder brotherly way some mementos for Gyuri: bullets, bayonets, helmets and one Russian revolver that sadly didn’t have any ammunition. ‘What’s it like at the front?’ Gyuri asked. István hesitated, uncharacteristically, and then replied: ‘You try to shoot first… otherwise it’s like anything else. Some people love it, some people hate it.’ Elek, who had been highly decorated the last time round, never discussed the war, but then he never discussed anything with Gyuri. Dealing with his children came as naturally to him as juggling pineapples. Gyuri had inquired once about the decorations, to which Elek had volunteered the information: ‘As a soldier in a war, you end up highly-decorated or dead, though some manage to overlap.’ The imminence of the Russians had coaxed one further military, paternal revelation from Elek, however: ‘Listen, if it comes to the point where someone is stupid enough to tell you to fight, just vanish and hide somewhere till it’s over.’

As Gyuri walked down Damjanich utca, he saw a limousine with army insignia parked outside number ten. Wondering if this signified anything for the family, Gyuri spotted Kálmán, one of István’s closest friends, now something influential at the High Command, wearing a fancy dress uniform. Kálmán was taken aback to see Gyuri and you could see him reviewing a number of approaches before going for the shortcut: ‘István’s back. He’s badly wounded.’

Inside the flat, Gyuri got a glimpse of István lying on the dining-room table, looking like an eleven stone steak. Elek was next to him with one of his old army chums, Krudy, a doctor who was taking instruments out of a black bag. Gyuri knew, although he knew that he shouldn’t know, that Krudy had made a fortune out of pussy, angel-making (conducting abortions) and reconstituting hymens to produce born-again virgins for the best families in Budapest. Just before Elek shut the door in his face, István, who had somehow noticed Gyuri standing there, shouted: ‘Sorry, I didn’t bring you back anything this time.’

When Kálmán returned with another officer, Gyuri was still floating around outside the dining-room. ‘We couldn’t find any anaesthetic,’ he said undoing his uniform, ‘this is going to take a long time. He’s got more metal in him than a cash register.’ During the intermissions in the surgery Gyuri learned from Kálmán that he had found out that morning that István’s unit had been strafed by Russian planes near Godolo, just outside Budapest. Kálmán had phoned Elek and they had gone out to search for István. It was a good thing, Gyuri realised, that his mother was away in the countryside getting supplies, otherwise Elek would be taking full responsibility for the Second World War.

Much later, Krudy came out: ‘Now we can start worrying about the Russians.’

In some ways István had been very lucky. They put him on the last train to get out of Budapest, moments before the Russians completely encircled the city. He didn’t have to spend six weeks in a cellar while the Russians and Germans argued over Budapest.

There were some consolations to living in a cellar, first-floor Noemi who had been unrequiting Gyuri’s love for some time was forced into proximity with him. But the diet of tedium, unwashedness and intermittent horsemeat was hard to take. It was also hard to think well of anyone with whom you had spent six weeks in a cellar. The only person to come out of the cellar episode with any credit was Mrs Molnár, venomous in peacetime but now that war had expunged the basis of her displeasure with society – namely the lead everyone else had in such fields as youth, pleasure and more expensive patisserie – sparked cheer and encouragement. Pataki had a huge supply of books and seemed content with the opportunity for a good read. Elek had sat stoically smoking cigarettes for as long as there were cigarettes. After that, he just sat stoically.

It was not long after Noemi had complained about not having washed in recent history, that the bleak observation of old Fitos, the head pessimist in a cellar strong in pessimistic competition, ‘Cheer up, when you think things have become unbearable, they are going to get worse’, came true. The Russians made their way into the cellar.

Depending on how drunk they were, they either removed the women to some separate room or they did it on the spot. They were fair. They didn’t just rape the young and attractive women but distributed the violations equally. It was a day when Gyuri was glad that he didn’t own a vagina.

The Russians took anything of value, anything portable; Gyuri even noticed one eyeing the huge boiler greedily.

Elek negotiated with them in German, as far as circumstances and linguistic abilities allowed. This rather boiled down to Elek translating the Ivans’ request for booty. The legendary fondness of the Red Army for wristwatches proved to be well-founded: everyone, including Elek, lost their timepiece.

The Russians left bouncily, doubtless feeling the cellar at number ten had been well worth the visit. Gyuri hadn’t been upset or concerned about his mother’s jewels or Elek’s watch; after all, Elek could buy replacements after the war. However, he was glad he had hidden his own wristwatch, a large Swiss model with so many dials he couldn’t remember what they were all for, around his right ankle, beneath the protection of a thick sock. ‘They didn’t get my watch,’ he reported to Elek, showing its concealed position. Elek stared at him in disbelief, slapped him around the head, took the watch and rushed out to give it to the Russians.

In the streets it looked as if it had been raining dead Russians. As Gyuri and Pataki wandered around they didn’t notice any dead Germans; perhaps the German horror of disorder had prompted them to tidy up as they retreated. All the corpses were frozen solid and many of them had left life in the most ridiculous postures. It reminded Gyuri of the pictures of the bodies from Pompeii, frozen in time by the lava from erupting Vesuvius, that István had brought back from his school trip there. Gyuri was looking forward to visiting Pompeii, mainly because of the more artistic murals, as István said the guide had labelled them, one of which reputedly featured a guy with a dick the size of an oar.

A lorry pulled up and before the idea of running away had even occurred to him or Pataki, a Soviet soldier jumped out, a fat Ukrainian peasant. (If he wasn’t one he should have considered that profession because he had the looks for it.) Waving his submachine gun, the davai guitar, in the winning way the Ivans had, he succinctly expressed his wish that they should load up some of his fallen comrades onto the lorry. Having made clear the task, the soldier set off for some investigative looting. For weeks after the fighting ended, they were quite accustomed to Russians strolling into the flat and liberating some item that caught their eye, anything from one of Elek’s suits to his Mother’s eau de cologne, usually consumed on the premises. There had even been one individual who had stayed for a long time trying to work out how you were supposed to drink from the toilet bowl.

Józsi joined Gyuri and Pataki and gave them a hand loading up the defunct soldiers. The floor of the lorry was frozen and you could slide the corpses along as if you were curling. There were some really ludicrous poses- one corpse had a hand cupped to his ear as if straining to hear something. ‘What’s that, Sergei?’ Pataki supplied the line. ‘The wrist watches are definitely in the next block.’ Another corpse they managed to get upright, and leaning him slightly against a wall managed to return a semblance of animation to him. Pataki sacrificed a last cigarette to give a more life-like appearance to the figure. ‘Sure, I’ve got a light,’ said Pataki holding a match to the cigarette inserted between cadaverous lips. From a distance it really did look a Russian soldier having a smoke. It was as they were trying to get one corpse to give a piggyback ride to another that they discerned, by the augmenting sound of swearing, the return of the soldier, who was rather angry to see that he didn’t have a lorryful of corpses and that Gyuri, Pataki and Józsi were slowly, sombrely, respectfully, gingerly and tenderly placing the mortal bits of a fallen hero on the back of the lorry. ‘Malenky robot, malenky robot,’ (a phrase everyone now knew meant ‘a little work’) he repeated furiously, ‘bistro! bistro!’, waving his gun to indicate the rapid tempo of work he desired; evidently, he had an important looting to attend. The remaining bodies in the vicinity went in faster than sacks of potatoes.

Having filled up the lorry, they were about to bid farewell when the soldier indicated, again through the eloquent means of the sub-machine gun, that they should clamber in the back as well. They thought about objecting, but very briefly. They got on board and watched as the lorry drove out to the City Park. It was an uncomfortable trip. ‘These stiffs are stiff,’ remarked Pataki.

They were taken into some administrative building where they were shown to the basement and locked in. An ugliness was noticeable in the atmosphere and because Pataki had some bean soup waiting for lunch, they decided to decamp. There was a small window that with great difficulty they could just about climb out of (another portion or two of horseflesh the previous week and they wouldn’t have made it). They emerged at the back of the building, without any Russians in view. After they had run all the way home, they didn’t set foot outside for a couple of days. Mr Partos from the first floor, who had ventured into town since he had had a tip-off about some milk, had disappeared that day. A week later he managed to get a message home from the cattlewagon he was in at Zahony, near the Hungarian- Soviet border, through the kind medium of a railway worker. He had been invited to do a ‘malenky robot’ by a Russian soldier, and obviously there was some mistake which he was confident he could sort out.

A lot of Gyuri’s fellow pupils had been killed, so the first roll call of school recommencing was rather grim. Annoyingly, none of the teachers had snuffed it. In particular, Gyuri had been hoping that Vagvolgyi would have copped a direct hit from some Russian artillery or an American bomber, but there he was, bald as a snooker ball, unsmiling, blocking Gyuri’s path down the corridor, patently expecting the project on Kossuth which was already a week late when the Russians had arrived to give Gyuri a breathing space. If anyone else had said: ‘I trust you used the extra time to broaden your background reading?’ he would have been joking. Vagvolgyi wasn’t. As Gyuri floundered in his explanation of how reading one more book on Kossuth’s American exile had prevented him from entirely completing his opus, Vagvolgyi shook his head with a wounded look. ‘Fischer, Fischer, this is deplorable. You can’t let a little war interfere with serious scholarship. You know our history. As a Hungarian you should be prepared for the odd cataclysm.’