Under the Frog

August 1950

They estivated outside Tatabánya.

The peasants out in the fields, on account of what they had endured or because of some innate earthiness, evinced no great surprise to see half a dozen naked and tanned figures strolling through their sunflowers. ‘Basketball players,’ they muttered.

Pataki was in the lead, wearing his sunglasses, striding out in his basketball boots, a map neatly folded under his arm. Although they got plenty of exercise at the training camp where Locomotive had been invited to act as resident sparring partner for the National team, they were full of kicks, and at Pataki’s instigation had gone out for an afternoon constitutional in order to ascertain that the surrounding countryside was as boring as it looked. So far it was.

Most of the vicinity was flat and obvious, but Pataki steered them to a distant clump of greenery, a copse on a series of mounds, with a huge patch of baldness on top. The view from this hillock corroborated their worst fears: the total absence of anything that could be loosely accounted exciting or notable in the neighbourhood. ‘So, gentlemen, there it is: the countryside. The place for those fond of vegetable antics. The abode of bucolic delights as celebrated by millennia of illustrious poets, who, in my opinion, were either heavily bribed by wealthy farmers eager to boost their standing, or gibberingly demented,’ concluded Pataki.

There was a rectangular stone some four feet high on the summit, which Pataki, having consulted the map, announced was an object of significant trigonometrical value. If it hadn’t been on the map, they probably wouldn’t have bothered; but how often do you get a chance to destroy a landmark? The stone was recalcitrant and astonishingly heavy, but with the help of a few sturdy branches as levers, they eventually upended it and had the pleasure of watching it robustly tumble down a good way. Feeling satisfied with their afternoon’s work sabotaging the Hungarian state, they headed back to the camp.

‘Has the new Hungary overcome the old three-layered class system of workers, bourgeoisie and nobility?’ Róka asked, swiftly providing the answer (before anyone thought he was posing a serious question). ‘Not quite. There are still three classes in the new Hungary: those who have been to prison, those who are in prison and those who are going to prison.’

On their way back, Pataki saluted with the map a young peasant girl whose face would have been ugly on a young peasant boy. Joke civility, Gyuri noted, but another week of the camp and the gauche, sack-wrapped girls would start looking like beauty queens.

Usually, tired after the day’s training, Gyuri would plunge into blackness as soon as he made contact with his mattress despite its high ranking in intractability. The training was demanding, and as always, Gyuri had to do twice as much as anyone else. Some people have athleticism handed to them on a tray, others have to sweat to get up to scratch. Hitting sixty push-ups had caused him dreadful suffering while Pataki could do it on demand while conducting a conversation on any theme you’d care to name. He had been born with explosives in his muscles, even his tongue.

When Gyuri returned from the first instalment of the morning’s training, a run around the lake, gasping from the blow of such a brutal introduction to the day, Pataki would be lazily bestirring himself, often having a contemplative cigarette on the porch of their hut. Pataki could get away with this, because he could always deliver on court. ‘I know life is unfair, I don’t dispute that,’ Gyuri would gasp, ‘but does it really have to be this sort of industrial strength unfair?’

Pataki’s rightful place was in the National team, not playing opposite them to give them a good workout. He had been invited to play with the junior squad years earlier when still at school, but was turfed out after a few months. Not for slackness in training or for any other basketballing deficiency but thanks to the light in Hármati’s eye. ‘She’s the light of my eye,’ Hármati would say in an exaggerated, overparental manner of his daughter, Piroska. Pataki’s falling out with Hármati, the coach of the National team, had its root in Hármati walking in when Pataki was deflowering Piroska on a horrifically valuable Louis Quinze chaise-longue that Hármati had personally plundered from the debris of a neighbouring and deceased family’s bombed flat. ‘It was the mess on the sofa that did it,’ Pataki maintained. However, Pataki’s charm and undeniable talents would have boomeranged him back after a nominal banishment had it not been for Hármati walking in again to discover Pataki having a foam bath with some highly-prized bath crystals brought back, by hand, from a trip to Italy, and with Hármati’s other daughter, Noemi. Fortunately for Pataki it was a flat designed with two doors to every room, and his speed enabled him to stay ahead of Hármati for six circuits of the premises, before he could gather up his garb and exit. ‘It’s bad enough being caught with your trousers down but when you have to dry yourself first…’ Pataki reflected later, adding, ‘I think it was the bath crystals that really upset him.’

Pataki had just found out about his speed one day and found it there whenever he needed it. If Gyuri didn’t run every day, he’d slow up and balloon; if he didn’t play ball every day, his edge would blunt but Pataki could wander onto court after a month in a Parisian restaurant and still be able to whizz down infallibly to dunk the ball in the basket. There had to be a good reason for Pataki to stir and training wasn’t one of them. ‘We’re not paid to train, we’re paid to win,’ was his reaction to Hepp’s supplications to hone his abilities. Hepp had no real choice but to put up with Pataki; he usually didn’t keep a close eye on him during training, so that his non-cooperation wouldn’t grate. On the other hand, Hepp had managed on one unforgettable occasion to persuade Pataki to run the 1500. Pataki must have had his mind on something else when Hepp had explained that the Locomotive athletics team was runnerless for the 1500 metres at an upcoming meet and had pleaded with Pataki to run it to avoid the ignominy of a no-show.

Gyuri was there on the day which introduced Pataki to effort. He could remember the uncomprehending shock that had appeared on Pataki’s face after the first lap and a half when it gradually became apparent to Pataki, that unlike shooting the length of a basketball court, the 1500 would involve that most daunting of things, labour. He came in fifth in a field of six, arriving at the finishing line with his customary collected features exploded into a morass of leering agony. After minutes of gasping for breath on the dearly-embraced ground, Pataki finally announced: ‘I thought I was going to die. These runners are out of their minds, how can they do this for a living? My track career is over.’

Gyuri had been very glad to witness Pataki stumble on a new world of experience, to see him dust off his will-power. Money, however, always got him going. The sprinters at the camp had already lost the more interesting portion of their worldly goods to Pataki as they always did when they challenged him. The sprinters, the 100 boys who trained with zealotic fervour, who stretched, bent, and twanged muscles for hours, who ran everywhere, lifted weights, ate carefully, and went to bed early and did nothing that didn’t further their aim of doing the 100 faster, couldn’t believe that Pataki could best them in a dash.

But he could, by challenging them to 50 metres. Sprinters who didn’t know Pataki joyfully stumped up the cash for the bet (and those who did know him stumped up petulantly) and then saw nothing but Pataki’s back. Over thirty metres he was so explosive, so swift, so straight out of the jungle, that no one could get close. By fifty, the professionals would have closed with him but they’d still be a sternum behind. The pattern, when Pataki, for amusement and not forints, had been dared to run the full hundred, was that before sixty the sprinters would have a nose ahead, by eighty they were clear and by the hundred Pataki could see their soles.

Rónai, an Olympic 100-metre bronze winner, was the one least able to come to grips with Pataki’s kick start. Year after year, he had been vanquished by Pataki at training sessions, at meets, on Margit Island and once inside the bar at the Opera. Fanatical, even by the whole-hearted standards of the sprinters, Rónai had the obsessive nature of a marathon runner. At the camps, he was a largely solitary figure who seemed to regard conversation as, at best, impinging on his training program or, at worst, blatant sabotage, and he could, to anyone not directly involved in the perfection of his leg movements, begrudge even a ‘good morning’. He would, even if waiting at a bus stop or in a queue for the cinema (not that he went very often), be bending and flexing muscles, or if refraining from using them would be plotting new techniques to lick them into shape.

Rónai was up before everyone else, in clement and inclement weather, trotting around, relishing the extra time he was putting in, that was putting him ahead of the others still in bed in Budapest and elsewhere, pushing himself and thinking about the next exertion. The world for Rónai was a conglomeration of various training possibilities that could enable him to load more ammunition into his legs in time for the ‘52 Olympics in Helsinki. Some of his mattress partners, miffed by his monomania, had let slip that when it came to bed, Rónai was less concerned with the merchant of pleasure knocking on his door, than in disciplining sets of muscles through a series of awkward and convoluted couplings that would last until he had counted out the required number of muscular contractions, the signal for a different constellation of brawn to come into service. ‘It’s so moving,’ one netball player recounted, ‘having gluteus maximus whispered in your ear.’

Rónai had lost heavily to Pataki, money, various edibles and a magnetic pocket-chess set he had obtained in London during the ’48 Olympics. He couldn’t leave Pataki alone; the very sight of Pataki lounging around made him twitch. He had come close to Pataki, very close, losing a number of runs by the breadth of a vest, and one even ended in a dead heat according to the adjudicators. But parity wasn’t good enough for Rónai. It wasn’t acceptable for him that a mere basketball player, who wasn’t even in the National team to boot, who was regularly to be found loafing around, gassing, playing cards, drinking Czech beer and being hunted by his coach, that such a ramshackle athlete could best a sprinter who hadn’t drunk a Czech beer since 1946. ‘Beer,’ he had pronounced publicly, ‘is for the weak. There are seven people around a campfire, they all put a hand into the flames. One by one, they pull back. The one who leaves his hand in the longest is the world champion.’ A man who never failed to exercise his ears before he went to sleep didn’t give up easily.

‘Quick, give me some cigarettes,’ Pataki would say when he saw Rónai approaching, lighting up two together to compose the veritable picture of the prodigal sportsman. Two weeks into the camp, Rónai had lost all his money and any objects of value, including a pair of remarkable German toe-nail clippers and a less remarkable phial of Bulgarian rose-water, though the judging of the races had been made more difficult, as after the first few defeats Rónai insisted on running after dark when no one else was likely to be about. It was always tight, Rónai at Pataki’s heels like a fleshed-out shadow, but the nipple-length losses were an awful gulf to Rónai, an abyss that became progressively more uncrossable.

One night Gyuri and Pataki entered the camp canteen to find Rónai entombed by empty Czech beer bottles, shouting out as if to the human race: ‘It’s too unfair. There’s no point. It’s all fixed.’ It had never occurred to Rónai that there were people who couldn’t be bothered to put a hand into the fire. It made Gyuri feel a lot better, and perhaps Rónai too, though he still kept losing to Pataki.

Predestination was not something to which Hepp subscribed. He was out to humble and humiliate Hármati’s National team and he had a suitcase full of plans to bring this about. ‘You’re probably too young to understand this,’ said Hepp addressing the team, ‘but the real tragedy of life, the most appalling fact you will have to face in this existence is that there is no substitute for hard work’ – and flourishing rolls of documents – ‘and using the right plan.’

The sight of Hepp threatening a Stalin shift of training threw a panic through the team – they had been counting on a month of sunbathing and exploring the plentiful cuisine prepared for the sportsmen and women representing the Hungarian nation. Pataki took Hepp aside: ‘Look, we get the message: you want to do the National boys?’ ‘Yes,’ conceded Hepp. ‘Okay, here’s the proposition,’ urged Pataki, ‘We’ll train hard, but, and the boys have asked me to approach you on their behalf, but if we can forego the above-the-call-of-duty stuff, we guarantee, I guarantee that at the last match of the camp, at the display when all the big cheeses are there, I guarantee that we’ll beat them. But, believe me, the team will fray if we overdo it. Remember what the water-polo player said at the brothel after he paid for eight girls, but only employed five, “This is ridiculous. I managed all eight this morning.’”

To universal surprise, Hepp entered into the Pataki pact. Pataki could be persuasive, of course. Aside from the effortlessness of his lying, he knew which key could open which person; he was the master locksmith of character. Take the way he had wriggled out of the copper wire fiasco at Ganz by claiming he had been borrowing some for a Lieutenant-Colonel in the AVO who had discreetly asked him to acquire some for various secret projects. ‘They’re conducting electrical experiments.’ The security people might well have caught a whiff of bullshit but who was going to take the risk of vexing a Lieutenant-Colonel, however infinitesimal the risk, over a bit of rotten wire? Pataki had walked away with a stern injunction to stick to proper channels.

Gyuri suspected that Hepp may have had other reasons, apart from Pataki’s cajolery, for acquiescing but Pataki had unwound Hepp, and given the rest of the team a summary level of activity (except for Gyuri who couldn’t afford to let any hour pass without exploiting it).

Gyuri was ushered out of sleep’s antechamber by a procession of loud bumps, which his ejected senses slowly situated as emanating from the bunk above him. Craning out of his bed, he realised that unless Pataki had suddenly developed a brilliant ventriloquist act and grown a large pale bottom, he had enticed some female company back to their hut. It was outrageous – here they were in a Communist dictatorship, on the verge of World War Three, in the middle of the night and Pataki had the gall to enjoy himself and invade his sleep.

‘God’s dick,’ was about all Gyuri could think of in his irate daze, not fully reconnected to his imaginative facilities.

‘There’s really no need to be polite,’ insisted Pataki, not missing a beat. ‘Don’t pay the slightest attention to us. Pretend we aren’t here. Feel free to carry on with your sleep.’

Not confident in the resilience of the bunkbeds in the face of love’s vibrations Gyuri threw his mattress onto the floor, where he would be a safe distance from any collapsing reposery. ‘If you tie a torch to it, you’ll be able to see what you’re doing,’ he counselled.

At dawn’s entry, Gyuri awoke, feeling more sleepy than when he had started. It was a morning he immediately recognised as one he wanted nothing to do with, a day that revealed itself, that flagrantly exposed itself as a day which wouldn’t allow him to get anywhere. Gyuri found himself thinking, without any side-dish of shame, about why he hadn’t joined the Communist Party. That was where his life had taken the wrong turn, he decided. Deciding where his life had gone wrong was something that took up a lot of his leisure time and he was convinced that he had pinpointed the chairman of the error board. If only he could send back a message to his younger self to sign up, if only he had accidentally walked into a Party office and inadvertently dropped his signature on an application form.

Now, of course, apart from the bad taste it would leave in his soul, his participation in the Communist movement would be as welcome as a bonfire in an ammunition dump. He had as much chance of joining as a blue whale had, assuming it could make its way to Budapest. But back in ’45 or ’

46, things were different. Hitler could have got a membership card then- the more the merrier. He could have got in, denounced his family background, vituperating Elek as a decadent bourgeois (which would have been fun), and with a bit of Lenin-spouting, the odd weekend being chummy with coal miners down a pit somewhere, he could have ended up with a comfortable, well-paid workfree job as a funksh somewhere, and with the accelerating rate of arrests and hangings, promotion couldn’t be avoided.

The Chinaman had stunned them all.

Gyuri had tried to get to know him, still curious about Red China. This was shortly after the thwarted visit to the Chinese Embassy. The visit to the Chinese Embassy had come a few weeks after the thwarted visit to the Ministry of the Interior, where he and Pataki had tried to get into the police. Getting into the police had originally been Pataki’s idea, but Gyuri warmed to it, thinking about all the people he could be rude to while in uniform. The police had a second-division basketball team and Pataki had the belief they could work themselves a niche there. All those policeman jokes were a deterrent but after deliberation, Gyuri felt the list of people he had prepared for harassment was worth it, and the prime factor was dodging military service, since they had got wind of a rumour that suggested Ganz’s workforce would no longer qualify for strategic exemption. No one had spelled out why they were turned down; they could only guess the police had found another source of first-division players or maybe the crippled and deformed status of their moral credentials had done in their prospects.

While he and Pataki were negotiating their transfer to Locomotive and wangling their places in the evening classes at the College of Accountancy, Gyuri, reviewing the options in case of severe emergency, had managed to find something preferable to self-mutilation to stay out of the Army: going Chinese. He had been thinking about Ladányi. He never had the chance to see Ladányi again after the feeding frenzy in Hálás, but he heard that he had been posted to China as predicted, just before the Communists had come into their own there. The only bulletin after that was that Ladányi was in Shanghai. He couldn’t have been there for long. The Chinese had got a bad case of socialism, but at least they didn’t have too many Russians. Not enough rice to go around.

Reviewing the state of China and speculating on Ladányi’s whereabouts (celebrating one-man mass in gaol, running a restaurant, correcting some mandarin’s ideograms?) Gyuri lighted on the idea of going to China. Red China was the first stop for the journalistic imagination; it was always getting slapped on the back every time you opened a paper or switched on the radio.

‘Let’s go con the Chinese,’ Gyuri proposed to Pataki. ‘If we get out there, it might lead to other things. And if it’s awful, well, it’s awful here and at least it’ll be Chinese misery.’ Anything seemed superior to homegrown misery. Gyuri argued they should go along in the guise of ardent admirers of the Chinese Revolution, avid to learn more about the achievements of people’s power in China and eager to start Chinese lessons. ‘With a border that big, it’ll be no problem walking out,’ Gyuri reasoned. Pataki had a look that alluded to the excellent rowing weather, but why not roll the dice?

The Chinese Embassy was in a quiet, elegant street just off Andrássy út, in what was the diplomatic quarter. Huge, ornate, opulent buildings that spoke of an unhurried lifestyle. How do you enlist for the diplomatic game? Gyuri wondered as he inspected the serenity and evident absence of work in the embassies. They had ruled out writing a letter or phoning: that left space for prevarication or refusal. The best would be to go along and put their feet in the door. The time of their approach had also been intensely debated, and they came to the conclusion that early afternoon would be most suitable.

The Embassy’s door was black and enormous and didn’t look like the sort of door that cared to be disturbed. It was a door that was meant to be seen but not knocked on, a door you walked past at a path’s distance. Unlike the Western embassies there wasn’t a policeman on guard outside, but the whole tenor of the facade was discouragement.

A sizeable bell was on duty at the side of the door. Gyuri pushed it once, manfully, for a very polite duration but didn’t hear any corresponding ringing inside. He waited for a very polite duration, hoping for signs of life. This process was repeated twice as passers-by passed by wondering what two young, smartly-dressed Hungarians were doing outside the Chinese Embassy. The bell obviously hadn’t been designed to be rung, so Gyuri gave a curt rap on the door, stinging his finger joints (there was no knocker provided). He continued lengthy intervals of polite waiting with painful knocking bouts. They were beginning to infer that the building was abandoned, when they noticed, from a first-floor window, an oriental visage peering out at them, having shunted aside a substantial lace curtain. Pataki and Gyuri acknowledged the watcher by switching on exemplarily polite and radiant smiles.

Nothing happened after this first contact for several minutes. ‘They’re busy learning Hungarian,’ offered Pataki, free to amuse himself since it hadn’t been his idea. ‘They’re scanning the phrase book for “Drop dead”.’ After an unreasonable length of time, the door was opened by a young Chinese man in a wearied suit, who greeted them in mechanical but correct Hungarian. ‘We’re fans of the Chinese Revolution,’ said Gyuri, ‘my friend and I have been stunned by the feats of the Communist Party of China. Could we come in to express our admiration?’

They were escorted to a luxurious reception room which only confirmed Gyuri’s respect for the diplomatic life. Another Chinese official joined them. He seemed to have rudimentary or no knowledge of Hungarian, since the door-opener kept handing him chunks of the conversation in Chinese. ‘We have been inspired by the example of the Chinese Revolution,’ proclaimed Gyuri, ‘as Mao Tse-Tung has said: “the Communist Party of China has brought a new style of work to the Chinese people, a style of work which essentially entails integrating theory with practice, forging close links with the masses and practising self-criticism.” It is this new style that in an internationalist, fraternal and scientific spirit we would like to study, first-hand for ourselves, in order to aid the development of a peace-loving socialism on a global basis.’

Oddly enough, no one laughed when Gyuri finished – Pataki must have been biting the insides of his mouth. Gyuri had done his homework. Pataki hadn’t. But this didn’t stop him: ‘Yes, as Comrade Mao said, “ Hungary and China are closely bound by common interests and common ideals.’” The good thing about Mao, like Marx, and in particular Lenin and Stalin, was that at some point or other, he had written or said everything from ‘I ordered the steak medium rare’ to ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ to ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’. Everything had passed their lips, so you couldn’t go wrong quoting from imagination.

Gyuri took the ball again, and reiterated their fervent desire to go to China, learn the language and study the newing of China. The two Chinese listened very soberly to the proposal, then the non-Hungarian-speaking one who exuded an air of seniority, spoke to the other briefly, and his words stumbled out through the other in clunking Hungarian:

‘Comrades, your ardour is highly commendable and we are greatly touched that our achievements in China have proved such an example to you. But as Comrade Mao has also said, as he has so aptly phrased it, building socialism must start in front of your neighbours, and it is better for you to carry on the struggle here in Hungary in your own way.’ There could be no doubt that in China the science of horseshit detection was not neglected or unknown.

Gyuri and Pataki were given a copy each of Mao’s poetry on their way out. They thanked their hosts profusely. They had spent no more than twenty minutes on Chinese soil. ‘I suppose if nothing else I can say I’ve been to China,’ Gyuri said. Out but in.

The Korean War had seemed promising too. Pataki actually phoned the Ministry of Defence, pseudonymously, from a public phone, to inquire whether there was any chance of being able to ‘go and fight those imperialist bastards’. The authorities, guessing the magnitude of these volunteers’ numbers, deduced that they would most likely be the fastest-surrendering soldiers in the history of warfare. Pataki was carefully given details of an anti-American demonstration where, he was assured, he would be allowed to uncork his righteous wrath.

‘Why are they fighting Communism in Korea, but not here?’ asked Pataki irascibly. ‘Are the hotels much better in Korea? Is it the superiority of the local cuisine? My only objection to the war is that it should be here and not in some rice-paddy in Korea. What have we done not to be invaded by the Americans?’

With this background in Far Eastern Studies, they were intrigued by the arrival of a Chinese basketball player at the camp. Hármati had presented him with great fanfare and to bursts of admiring applause. This first period of Hungarian-Chinese basketballing relations went well, but after that, despite the undeniable warmth, cordiality and curiosity on both sides, things slowed down somewhat, because whoever had arranged for him to attend the camp had either overlooked or forgotten that Wu, as he seemed to be called, spoke no Hungarian, no English, no German, no Russian or any other language of which anyone in the camp had a smattering. No one, of course, spoke any Chinese.

‘He probably thinks he’s in Moscow,’ observed Róka as Wu trotted about dribbling the ball respectably but unbrilliantly. No one had seen him arrive, and the purpose of his presence remained rather mysterious. Hármati, under questioning, denied having any foreknowledge of Wu’s provenance. ‘He’s Chinese, right? Or maybe Korean. Can you tell the difference? Or maybe he’s a Cambodian who likes long walks. Anyway, if he’s Chinese, we salute him as a member of the heroic Chinese people. If he’s Korean, we salute him as a member of the heroic Korean people. This is a sports camp, blown by the breeze of progress, we fraternally give him a basketball and let him run around in a correct, scientific and socialist manner on our court. If nothing else he’s going to learn that you’ve got to be a bit taller to play basketball.’ Wu could have easily fitted into five foot six.

Everyone liked Wu because, despite his virtually trappist existence, he was extraordinarily polite and cheery. He was the only person in the camp who energetically thanked the cooks for the meals they provided, giving vigorous bows of gratitude every time. ‘Things must be really bad back home,’ Gyuri remarked, since the only thing you could say in favour of the camp food was that it was there, and you could have as much as you wanted. Wu’s courtesy extended to the basketball court, where on those rare occasions when he unwittingly managed to get hold of the ball, he was too civil to refuse to hand it over to whoever approached him.

The sportswomen had invited all the sportsmen over to their half of the camp for an egg and nokedli evening. Despite the more important attractions, Pataki spent most of the evening launching strictures on the texture of the nokedli, how the wrong kind of flour had been used (which was strange since Pataki knew as well as anyone there was only one kind of flour available, flour flour, since Hungarian shops had adopted a philosophy of not taxing their customers with choice), that the water temperature had wavered, that the nokedli had been swimming for too long and the eggs applied at an inappropriate point, and generally indulging in a molecular appraisal of the method. Sensing scepticism at his culinary authority, Pataki then promulgated loudly that he would return the sportswomen’s hospitality by preparing a true fish soup, a genuine fish soup, the following week.

‘Why a genuine fish soup?’ queried Róka, ‘why not a sham one?’

‘I mean,’ Pataki responded superciliously, ‘a traditional fish soup, prepared in the proper way, as Hungarians have prepared it since time immemorial.’

‘But you can’t cook,’ Gyuri pointed out.

‘There are certain things that every man should be able to do and cooking a fish soup is one of them. It might be tricky getting some of the ingredients, but I will endeavour to do my best.’

‘Will it have some potatoes?’ enquired Katona.

‘No,’ replied Pataki.

‘But I like potatoes,’ remonstrated Katona.

‘So do I,’ retorted Pataki with one foot on the ladder of petulance, ‘I also like my basketball boots, but I wouldn’t put them in a fish soup. Potatoes don’t belong in a genuine fish soup.’

The day of the reception came near and Pataki, beseeched twenty-four hours a day to include potatoes, was getting truculent and also, although Gyuri could only suspect it, worried about his ability to cook fish soup. Fish soup would be something very difficult for Pataki to talk his way out of, since fish soup was either there or it wasn’t. But, somehow, Pataki had managed to round up the ingredients, so that as a minimum he had something to attempt to cook

‘Where are the potatoes?’ asked Gyuri.

‘There aren’t any,’ said Pataki, trying to look expertly at the fish he held, overdosed on air.

‘That’s not carp, is it?’ asked Gyuri.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Pataki, ‘it’s perch.’

‘Oh,’ said Gyuri exiting, ‘I didn’t know you could make fish soup with perch.’

In came Gyurkovics. ‘Where are the potatoes?’ he asked.

‘There aren’t any,’ reaffirmed Pataki, still working hard to give the appearance of preparing fish soup.

‘That’s not carp, is it?’ asked Gyurkovics.

‘No, it’s perch,’ was the terse response.

‘Oh,’ said Gyurkovics walking out of the kitchen, ‘I didn’t know you could make fish soup with perch.’

When Hepp came in and asked about the potatoes, Pataki calmly replaced on the cutting board the perch he had been considering, and enunciated forcefully: ‘I know what’s going on. I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get me worked up, but,’ he continued in a determined but un-irate tone, ‘I’m not going to let you.’

‘Okay,’ said Hepp, ‘but where are the potatoes?’

It was Demeter who won the bottle of reserve pálinka, when Pataki, at the fifteenth questioning, answered by attacking Demeter with a brace of perch. Having fired-off his perch at the swiftly retreating Demeter, Pataki stormed off into the countryside.

When Pataki returned to the camp (some hours later, Gyuri noticed; too late to make another stab at the fish soup) he found everyone gathering in the marquee as if for a fish soup soiree.

‘Come on,’ said Katona, ‘you’ve got to see this. I’ve managed to persuade Wu to do it.’

‘Do what?’ asked Pataki puzzled.

‘His numbers. It’s quite amazing, I caught him playing along with the radio the other day.’ Pataki followed Katona into the marquee where the entire camp seemed to be in attendance. Katona appointed himself master of ceremonies:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are very privileged tonight to witness a performer who has travelled thousands of kilometres to be with us. First of all, can I ask for some discreet lighting.’ The flaps of the marquee were closed to produce a fair penumbra. A stretcher was carried in with a figure hidden under a blanket. The blanket was lifted up to reveal a pair of Chinese buttocks. ‘Secondly, may I ask you to maintain absolute silence during the recital. Over to you, Mr Wu.’

The sounds commenced and though it took a few moments for the audience to latch on, they soon realised that Wu was farting out the Internationale. The audience, distinguished by its ideological unsoundness, despite the recent injunction for quiet, burst into spontaneous applause. Wu’s phrasing and stamina were astonishing and the Internationale was only the beginning. As the audience wondered what on earth he had been eating, Wu launched into a medley of tunes, concluding with ‘The Blue Danube’. There was a standing ovation.

Then the fish soup was served. Gyuri and the others could see that Pataki was itching to remonstrate about the salination or some other aspect of the soup, but he realised that his reputation could be irrevocably marred and he had to sit and take it. ‘It’s really rather good, considering where it came from,’ remarked Hepp to Gyuri. The origins of the soup were never revealed to Pataki: it had been tinned at the behest of an official at the Ministry of Agriculture who thought it would make a good export product to Britain, until someone reminded him that Britain was a capitalist country and as such couldn’t be the recipient of Hungarian fish soup. Indeed it transpired that all the countries likely to pay for tins of fish soup were capitalist, whereas their trading partners, the socialist countries, wouldn’t cough up a mouldy kopek. It was decided to divvy up the fish soup within the Ministry, so all the families of the staff experienced a fish soup bonanza. István had dumped ten tins with Elek, who would eat anything – except fish.

Playing for the railways had some benefits, including free deliveries.

Gyuri was looking forward to the end of the camp, since he was becoming preoccupied with seeing Zsuzsa again, and he was also looking forward to the end of the camp because Pataki wasn’t. Pataki wasn’t because he knew he had promised Hepp that Locomotive would win the match against the National team. Pataki didn’t show this, but his exuberance was steadily deflating as the day drew nearer.

As the Locomotive players sparred with them, it was a constant reminder to Pataki that the National team was the National team because it had the best players, drawn from the Army and the Technical University. Thoughtfulness clouded Pataki’s brow as he studied the opportunities for winning. The others had been quite content for Pataki to parley a truce with Hepp, for while losing the match would bring a certain general retribution, for Pataki it was going to bring intensely specific retaliation from Hepp, of whom it was said he bore grudges thirty years old.

Worrying about things wasn’t Pataki’s forte, so after a couple of introspections which didn’t hand over a solution, he chose to leave the action to the day.

The only thing in Locomotive’s favour was that the National team didn’t have much to lose. Although the supremos of the sports world would be at hand, no one was going to pay any attention to the result. In the outside world it wouldn’t count. ‘Why aren’t any of the buggers injured?’ Pataki lamented as he changed for the match, clearly having prayed for some disability since nothing else could provide victory.

The first half went well for Locomotive. At half-time, they were in the lead 32 to 26. It had been a lively session, played with one of Locomotive’s favourite leather balls, Vladimir. As one of the National team remarked to the referee, ‘Couldn’t we have another ball please? Pataki won’t let us play with this one.’ Gyuri had never seen Pataki run around court like that before. It was as if he were playing on his own, charging after the ball like a lunatic, in top gear all the time. His relentless acceleration paid dividends – he got the ball where others wouldn’t have, but Gyuri could see it was at a cost. Pataki was looking fully drained when the half time whistle blew.

‘Angyal!’ Pataki called out to Gyuri’s co-worker in Locomotive’s dirty tricks department. Angyal, who had been sitting it out on the bench, trotted over. His talent was to neutralise players in the opposing teams who demonstrated too great a facility at scoring baskets, by using a variety of techniques, never recommended by coaches, but extraordinarily effective – the backhand testicle-grab or the airborne elbow-jab to the face. Angyal was injured, he had sprained his ankle after administering a particularly devastating elbow to Demeny, Hungary ’s leading scorer, turning on the crimson nostril-taps. Leaning close, Pataki poured some words into Angyal’s ear, who then sauntered off.

‘What are we going to do?’ Gyuri asked Pataki. ‘You look a wreck. You’re not going to last the second half.’

Pataki smiled. ‘We just have to soldier on.’

The second half showed that Pataki had expended his fuel and lost his magical ability to corner the ball. Hepp remained impassively on the bench, aware as anyone else that the points were starting to snub Locomotive. The score was 33 to 32 to Locomotive when the shouts of ‘Fire’ were heard and someone ran in to call for help in carrying buckets of water to put out the blaze that was consuming the quarters of the National team. Hearing this, the National team to a man dashed out to save their hard-earned toiletries. They had been due to leave the camp that afternoon, and what with sifting through the ashes to find French shampoo and Italian soap, the match never resumed.

Hepp didn’t look happy about this, but more importantly, to everyone’s relief, he didn’t look very unhappy; he did also look as if he wouldn’t be listening to Pataki much in the future.

Boarding the bus that was to take them to the railway station, Pataki and Gyuri noticed Wu sitting beside the running track, looking as affable and out of touch as ever. ‘I don’t suppose anyone has told him the camp is over, or if they have, I don’t suppose he knows,’ Gyuri said. They collected Wu, since, if nothing else, they knew exactly where to leave him in Budapest…

He had met Zsuzsa a fortnight before the camp. She represented a change of tactic for Gyuri. He had been pursuing a number of attractive women, who far from considering docking had recoiled from his greetings as if his hello were a wielded knife. ‘Communism and celibacy, that’s too much,’ Gyuri had moaned. Rather like an injured player seeking a fixture in the division below to repair his pride, Gyuri had met Zsuzsa at a dance. Gangs of hormones, supported by a sense of desperation, had unearthed beauty from an unpromising surface. Even though they had only met three times, Gyuri had been unpacking the equipment, setting up the furnishings of affection and a good part of his time in Tatabánya was spent contemplating the ransacking of her fleshy treasures.

Gyuri went back home only long enough to spruce up and to verify his summered, youthful looks in the mirror. Staring at himself, he really couldn’t understand why women weren’t climbing in through the windows. He didn’t mind about totalitarianism at all as he sauntered over to Zsuzsa. ‘All you need is something to look forward to,’ he said to himself.

Zsuzsa’s flat had a phone but he felt like reappearing in person.

Zsuzsa was in, but was showing out a guest. In his initial shock, Gyuri couldn’t decide which was worse, that the caller was a strapping gentleman, the holder, probably, of a jaunty dong, or that he was also owner of a blue-flash AVO uniform. A professional, not like the poor green sods conscripted to tramp around the borders and shoot any decamping capitalists, foreign spies or general bad lots seeking to flee the gains of the people. Even without the blue uniform, they would still have looked at each other as if they were being introduced to a dog log.

What further incensed Gyuri was that Zsuzsa was unaware of the monstrosity of inviting a blueboy home, even when he pointed it out to her. ‘Elemér is sweet,’ was about all Zsuzsa would say as Gyuri fulminated about the iniquities of the AVO. Under interrogation, Zsuzsa explained that Elemér had entered the scene by apprehending Bodri, Zsuzsa’s dog, when Bodri had inexplicably succumbed to the call of the wild in the park and spurned Zsuzsa’s implorings to return. ‘He ought to be good at collaring,’ riposted Gyuri.

The other great disappointment he suffered that evening was the realisation that Zsuzsa was heavily involved with stupidity. Her occupation (florist) should have warned him but Zsusza, although she inhabited Hungary, didn’t seem to live there. She didn’t understand what was going on, she hadn’t noticed what was going on and couldn’t grasp what Gyuri was saying. Gyuri also noticed that her nose was looking too large that evening but on the other hand he couldn’t help being envious of her total lack of contact with 1950. She had an airtight insulation of dimness.

‘Have some tea,’ Zsuzsa insisted. She was still pleased to see Gyuri and didn’t pay any heed to his ravings and didn’t comprehend what upset him on either the masculine or ethical plane. Gyuri enumerated the AVO’s privileges, their special supplies.

‘That’s not true, Elemér was just saying he has to work very long hours and he needs to earn extra money by translating articles from Pravda to help look after his mother.’ Gyuri realised it was like trying to demolish a house by throwing a glass of water at it and a strong sense of familiar futility descended on him like a cage. He had a good look at what was on his plate and he didn’t find his appetite stirred. This was going to be, he sensed, another fine addition to his collection of failures. He could see the title of his autobiography: Women I almost slept with. Not kissing and telling. ‘1950 was a good year, I almost slept with four women: a heroic production increase, under strict Marxist-Leninist principles, from 1949, when I almost slept with two women.’

He had an expired affair on his hands, but he was going to have to prop up the cadaver, as troops might do in a trench with fallen comrades to dupe their enemy into thinking they still had greater numbers to fight. The complication was that the following Friday, Locomotive was having its annual party, the summit of its social gatherings, and Gyuri knew that he would sooner face a firing squad than attend without a companion, and unfortunately Zsuzsa was the only representative of her sex willing to even talk with Gyuri. If Zsuzsa didn’t go with him, no one would.

Elemér was removed from the conversation but this eviscerated their badinage severely and with a reminder about the Locomotive festivity, Gyuri took his leave and reflected deeply on the absurdity of living in a country more than half full of women (demography being on his side since the erasure of the Hungarian Second Army in 1944) and being unable to transact some romantic commerce. Standing in the tram, with the passengers packed as tightly as cigarettes in a carton, centuplets in the oblong womb of the tram, even with the backs of three other citizens coupling with him, Gyuri felt sappingly lonely. Crushed, but lonely. How do you find people you can talk to? There should be a shop. And once you’ve found people you can talk to, how do you hang on to them?

He devoted a lot of his spare time over the next few days to internal lamentation and some deft self-pity, cassandraing about the flat, looking at himself in the mirror and asking: ‘Ever had one of those lives where nothing goes right?’ But on the Tuesday night he found himself awake. Mental eructations growled up clearly from the cerebral digestion. It was three o’ clock in the morning, the hour favoured by the back-seat drivers in his cranium for interrupting his sleep. Whatever was bothering him would be thrust up, and although he couldn’t name the issue, a strong discontent was emanating from his cerebral colon.

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.’

‘What have they got you in for?’ Noughts inquired.

Gyuri reflected. ‘Nothing really.’

‘If it’s nothing, they’re going to throw the book at you. I reckon they have a quota of ten-year sentences they need to fill. One of my mates in Nyiregyhaza got taken in a few weeks ago. “Nothing personal, Bognar,” they said, “but we have to put someone down for a ten-year stretch, and we know you wouldn’t mind too much, being a stinking gyppo and that. Just sign the confession so we can go home.’”

Noughts was in for obstructing the course of justice. Two AVO men were chasing a kid who had let down the tyres on their car, when they tripped over Noughts who had been recumbent in a stairwell dead drunk after a protracted wedding celebration. Noughts’s lack of consciousness was why he hadn’t been able to implement his usual escape technique: ‘The policemen these days aren’t as well made as they used to be. You just have to sit on them to hear them snapping.’ The terriblest threats of retribution had been issued to Noughts because it had required two arrest teams and a butcher’s van to bring him in.

‘I can’t say I’m looking forward to a stretch. The prisons have really gone downhill,’ complained Noughts. He had been, he elucidated, in most of Hungary ’s penal institutions, including the infamous ‘Star’ prison in Szeged, where Rákosi once spent fifteen years. Rákosi had had a satisfactory library, a cell to himself and an international campaign to obtain his release. Progressive intellectuals from all over Europe had sent telegrams of protest to Hungarian Consuls. Gyuri had seen one from the West Hull Branch of the Friends of the Soviet Union in an exhibition about Rákosi’s life. The telegram had spoken of their ‘emphatic disgust’ at Rákosi’s conviction. Gyuri had reflected that he might well feel more friendly towards the Soviet Union if he lived in West Hull. He had also looked up ‘emphatic’ in his English dictionary, since it was a word he hadn’t come across before. Odd that the progressive intellectuals were so silent about the abounding convictions in Hungary now. Gyuri also had the presentment that progressive intellectuals in West Hull, or anywhere else, wouldn’t be sending any telegrams on his behalf but then Gyuri was ill-disposed towards them anyhow for saving Rákosi from the death-penalty.

‘The bread and dripping were outstanding,’ said Noughts continuing his reminiscences about the ‘Star’ prison. ‘It was worth it for the bread and dripping alone.’

Noughts’s soliloquy went on, encompassing other gaol delights, which were punctuated with an exhortation to Gyuri that whenever he got out, one year, two years, ten years, he should hasten without delay to Noughts’s sister who could habitually be found around Rákóczi tér. ‘There’s nothing like it for getting it out of your system.’

The main difference between prison and being out in Hungary, Gyuri ruminated, was that in prison there was less room. That was about it. Less room and a strong smell of unbathed gypsy. As compensation for the ammoniac tentacles growing from Noughts, there was, at least, no portrait of Rákosi in the hall.

Still enjoying a burst of aplomb, Gyuri couldn’t help reviewing the various outcomes of his incarceration, all of which contained generous helpings of more incarceration, pain and pain’s subsidiaries. Gyuri liked to think of himself as quite tough and self-reliant which was why he didn’t like to find himself in circumstances which might amply demonstrate that he wasn’t.

On the wall, someone had scraped ‘I am a member of parliament’: this statement didn’t seem to be worth the trouble on its own – presumably it was an aposiopesis, produced by the author’s untimely removal from the cell. Underneath, in a different style, with a different sharpish instrument, someone had inscribed, ‘I am a member of Újpest football club.’ There was also in faded pencil (remarkable since Gyuri had had all his portable personal and impersonal items removed, as well as his belt and shoelaces) ‘If you can read this, you’re in trouble.’

Well, thought Gyuri, here I am under the frog’s arse. Under the coal-mining frog’s arse indeed, at the very bottom of existence. Nothing could make things worse. Was he going to be entitled to any of those things in life that were accounted as worthwhile or enjoyable? He was twenty. Was he going to get out in time to grab any of the things worth grabbing? Without great satisfaction, he inspected the ledgers of his years. When the venerable poet Arany had reached eighty, according to Pataki, he was asked how he viewed the peaks of his celebrated life, a legend-creating poet, revolutionary, seer, national hero and ornament! ‘A bit more tupping would have been nice’ he replied. This pronouncement hadn’t made it into Arany’s biography. The prospect of having his willy in dry dock for a decade was only marginally less alarming than having all his bones broken or dying unpleasantly, or indeed, pleasantly.

Noughts got tired of his discourse on penal cuisine and the merits of his sister and reclined for some sleep. ‘This can’t go on much longer,’ was revealed on the wall behind him, underneath which, with the true Hungarian desire to have the last word, someone had written ‘It already has’. Would there ever be a new round of Nuremberg trials? Gyuri wondered. Would he be around to see them? What would the AVO say in their defence? ‘We were only obeying ideals.’

It was hard to judge the passage of time, but it seemed to Gyuri that a day had gone without any change or incursion into their cell, apart from the odd commotion at the judas-hole when they were scoped by the guards. There was no sign of food although Gyuri’s appetite had scarpered. ‘It’s my fault they’re not giving us anything to eat,’ apologised Noughts, ‘they can’t bear the sight of a fat gypsy.’

Having got to the point where he was strapped in, mentally steeled, ready to look a ten-year sentence in the face with equanimity, Gyuri was released.

Judging by the light outside, it was the following morning. No one had said anything in the way of explanation. He had been summoned, given back a portion of his personal effects (not his shoelaces or small change). Gyuri hadn’t taken the trouble of inquiring about the whereabouts of the missing items or the wherefore of his manumittance. Outside, he felt so pleased to see Budapest, Budapest looked so effervescently active, that he half-wished he could be arrested more often.

He was coming to terms with his deliverance when he noticed Elemér, the dogcatching mailed fist of the proletariat, step up to him. Elemér, who was smoking a dawdling cigarette, had clearly been expecting him. ‘Any time,’ was all he said before he walked off. The shock was such that Gyuri had no time to kill him before he vanished. His anger expanded steadily and so intensely he thought the rage was going to pop his skull. Trembling with anger, he made his way home on the tram, and if anyone had so much as brushed against him by accident it would have resulted in an instantaneous, furious, bone-crushing, onslaught.

At home, he discovered the note he had left on the kitchen table for Elek, looking unread. Where was the old goat? he wondered as he ripped up the note. Elek entered at that moment, sniffed and commented ebulliently on Gyuri’s malodorous condition after the AVO’s cold sauna: ‘Communism doesn’t prevent washing, you know.’ Gyuri never told anyone.