by Sándor Márai
Because, you know, they’re a powerful, dangerous pack … the devil knows how they do it, but in some ways they are even more powerful than the padrone. Everyone is afraid of them. They could even destroy the president if they didn’t like him. Sometimes my jaw just drops when I hear them whispering together as to who’s in line for their version of the cement, or who they’re going to build up. Some of them come here from the night desk, guys who write social columns in papers. I hear them discussing who’s screwing who and in what position. That’s the free press for you; that’s freedom, they’re free to ruin those they don’t like. Then they write books about it, print them in editions of a million. It’s what they call culture, and it spreads. In every drugstore, in every subway station, in every supermarket, you find piles and piles of stuff like that. People like us can’t get their kind of knowledge: we need higher education. It’s an art, like drumming. The fact is, friend, I don’t get lit-ter-a-ture, but back in my hometown, in Mátészalka, I served in the local barracks and we’d occasionally visit what we called a house of culture to see the girls. All I say is that the cathouse at Mátészalka was a moral institution compared to what I hear about lit-ter-a-ture here behind the bar. Back home we knew what we were paying for, and once we made a deal the head man there might say, “Give us another ten, soldier boy, and she’ll take her top off too.” As I said, I know nothing about books, but I do understand cathouses. When I was a kid I was a regular myself. All in all I can’t say it was any worse than what they call culture now. These writers will strip for cash, exactly like the girls. I mean the lady writers, not just the men … They’ll show you the lot, no knickers, from back, from front, whatever way you fancy it—if you pay. Culture meant something else to us in Zala. Papa bought the calendar once a year, and that was it. But my jaw just drops—I mean, just now I heard someone’s getting half a million for writing the memoirs of the guy who throws the switch in San Francisco. Or he writes up the confessions of a girl that used to be a guy, or how a girl became a guy, and that gets to be culture. Culture’s fancy work, brother—harder than drumming.
It’s possible that what the regulars talk about here in the bar doesn’t cover the whole field. There might be other kinds of writers in the neighborhood. I once overheard two guys who wandered in here talking in low voices about what this other kind of lit-ter-a-ture might be. The sort you don’t see much of. The kind you hear about only once the writer has shuffled off to the morgue, having topped himself in his misery. These two guys, who wandered in here by accident, couldn’t afford bludimaris but had to make do with beer. They were talking about books. They were puny little runts, scribblers of some sort, more like the guy Sweetheart was talking about in Rome. You didn’t have to look hard—even a blind man could see these runts were not about to be guests at the usual party. Maybe they were the real thing … And maybe there are more of them, only you never get to see them because they don’t hit the headlines, they’re out there drowning their sorrows. I mean, that’s what I understood as they muttered into their beer—that there were other kinds of writers. Guys who write poems, for example, who scribble in notebooks the way our great national poet Petőfi did. The devil knows. The only thing certain is that their kind don’t tend to come here.
Ah, the drums. Well, that’s sad, a real regret. It’s not that it isn’t a good djob, mixing cocktails in this bar. Like there’s a salary and free meals. And tips. I could quietly carry on here till I retire. But I don’t have it bad, anyway. I know a neat-looking Irish widow, a little secondhand, but friendly, if you get me? I have a car, an apartment, a TV. I even have an electric lawn mower out on the porch … no garden, but a mower’s good for status. The widow and I went to Florida last winter, spent two weeks, living like lords on the Riviera. I got to admit, financially, it was a good deal leaving home. But it breaks my heart when I think of the music. The freedom is better here, but what’s all that when I can’t be a musician? It’s melancholy, you feel like an exile, like the patriot Kossuth felt in Turin.
It can’t be helped. Artists don’t forget, you know. Sometimes I remember how it was after the siege, sitting at my drums in the bar, putting my whole heart and soul into it, as God, and my talent, intended me to. That bar was in a house that’d been bombed out, but they got it in pretty good order. There was heating, atmosphere, Napoleon brandy, everything you need for a people’s democracy. I had a solid reputation and the new bosses needed drummers. The gig would start about ten, but it was four in the morning by the time I got home. That was in ’48 when the Commies took over culture. Business improved for a while. The new top guys came, throwing money about. Why not? They could do it. Everything belonged to the people, after all! Every so often some leftovers of the old order would stumble in, fancy dans who’d stowed away a few gold napoleons and now wanted to drink to forget. They were paying for their own funerals, telling sob stories about the past. But the boot was on the other foot in ’48 when the new bosses came in. If they were seen to be nursing hangovers, it was for the people’s sake.
Why did I leave when things were going so well for me? Long story, friend. I was like you, not cut out for finance. Then, one day, I discovered my place was in politics.
I tell you this in confidence, as brother to brother, you might as well know. After the liberation—I still get a sour taste in my mouth when I use that word—I stayed in Zala till ’47, then moved to Budapest. I lived a quiet life there, no trouble to anyone. I like my privacy, see. So we’d been liberated, and the local count skipped it over the border. He wasn’t altogether a bad guy, but he did happen to be a count.
Later, my old man—the one the Commies shoved into a collective on the rap that he was a kulak, just because he had four acres and a garden—my old man, he said the count was no good, but the way things turned out was no good, either. At least the count let you steal a little. But the new bosses, the guys in leather coats, who arrived in the village on a truck one day shortly after ’45, politely invited everyone into the council house, strong-arming anyone who seemed a little reluctant, and persuaded them to throw everything they had into the common kitty, both their own and the land that had been divided up since, not to mention the animals—into the collective with them all! The new lot wouldn’t let you steal, because they did the stealing themselves. Shut your face, they kept repeating as they kicked your head in, everything belongs to the people now.
One day the minister drove through town, a guy trained in Moscow. He was an educated man, in charge of collectivization. Because that was the delicate term they used: “collectivization.” Well, this guy was good at it, because he’d spent the winter in Moscow and he saw at first hand how the numbers of kulaks had dropped to one million, because the comrades had collected their produce. But the old man and others explained that after collectivizing there wasn’t enough left in the granary for the winter. He stayed sitting in his car while he told us we shouldn’t complain and should understand that everything belonged to the people now. Then the minister went on to make a speech in parliament, demanding that any remaining craftsmen left in the village should also be collectivized, no matter whether it was the blacksmith, the carpenter, or the wheelwright, because they were all capitalists and exploiters, leeches who took money from the people. My old man was a smith too, shoeing horses and sharpening scythes all his life. It saddened him no end when he heard he wasn’t really a blacksmith but a leech on the people. And then they took away his work permit.
I can’t tell you the whole story, friend, not all at one go. It was a bad time. A friend of mine, who used to live in the village, had gone up to the capital just as the bright sun of freedom was dawning on us. One day he wrote me a letter. He used to play the flute so it broke your heart. That was the time they started “confiscating” corn from the count’s granary. Chicks were mad for his flute playing. He wrote to say he now played sax in a people’s democracy bar in Budapest, and that it might be an idea for me to come and join him because they needed a drummer. The o
ld man swore a lot, the old girl cried. It was hard leaving them, but I felt the call of art. So I left.
Wait, the guests are arriving. Yes sir, Two scotch on the rocks, sir. You are served, sir.
Those two scotches are rogues, the pair of them. That one there, the one with the waxed mustache, is a faith healer, Christian style. He knows his business. The other one, the one with the sideburns, is an embalmer. If the faith cure doesn’t work, you go on to the embalmer. He prepares the corpse the way the relatives want it. I could listen to them for hours when they talk about the next in line. Because there are various kinds of smile available. There’s the saintly smile. There’s the knowing smile. Then there’s the at-peace-now smile. The saintly is the most expensive. The at-peace-now is cheaper. It’s all done with paraffin, and there’s a proper tariff. They come in at midnight after work and regularly sink three scotches. They’re moderate, religious guys.
Back in Zala County where I used to live, washing corpses was done according to an old ritual. Here they do things differently … Pay them no attention, we can carry on our conversation. After midnight they’re not interested in anyone that’s still alive, it’s just their way of saying gut’abend. They’ll only be interested in you if you have paraffin to sell.
Where was I?
As I was saying, after ’47 I felt I had hidden my talents away long enough and took the train to Pest. There were four of us in the band: the saxophonist, the accordionist, the pianist, and me on the drums. I’m not exaggerating when I say that was a great time for me. The new democracy was still settling down. It was all a bit heady. I don’t even like to talk about leaving it: the thought’s like a vise round my heart.
Because it so happened one morning I got an invitation from the AVO, the security police. I should be at their headquarters in Andrássy út at nine, though the street was called something else by then. Go here, go there, go up the stairs, go to that numbered room. I was sweating when I read the letter, but then I relaxed, because I realized they don’t normally write letters to you, they just quietly come at dawn and ring. People, back then, were terrified of the doorbell. Bell-terror syndrome, we called it.
I gathered up all my papers: my certificate to show I was a qualified musician, and another to testify I was a faithful son of the people. Plus the local certificate to say my sympathies were on the good side in the war. I’d got these papers together in plenty of time. There were guys I worked with who could vouch for my sympathies, who themselves were on the good side. I had a clutch of other papers too, but those were from before, complete with stamps and photographs … I didn’t think this was the occasion for them. I flushed those papers straight down the john. I had an old revolver, a six-shooter, one of my brothers left behind when he went to “pursue his studies” in the West in ’45. I’d long ago buried that at the end of the yard. I thought it best it should rest there, because if the AVO did a search and found it, I’d be heading for the bone yard. So I put everything in as good an order as I could, then, one morning, set off in the direction of the Opera, to security HQ.
I passed the Opera and read on the posters that they were doing a piece called Lawherring or something that night, complete with orchestra. Well, brother, I thought, you’ll never get to see Lawherring if the AVO break you. It was a sad thought, because despite being a proper musician I’d never been to the opera. There wasn’t anything of that kind back in Zala—no one ever sang from a score. But there was nothing I could do about it, I just trudged on toward dreaded old number 60. It was with a heavy heart because no one ever said it was a breeze being invited to number 60. I’d never been there before myself, but I’d heard that the fascists used to call it the House of Loyalty. Well, kiddo, I said to myself, you might be walking into history right here. I had no idea what was waiting for me. Will they be thinking I’m clean, or has someone grassed me up? I was trying to work it all out. If I got six months, I’d manage fine. I swore to myself I wouldn’t panic and that I would watch every word I said, because nothing could be worse than dropping the wrong word at the wrong moment with these guys—it would be a bad mistake.
I had the feeling I was at the turning point of my life. A guy in a flat army cap was at the gate to check my summons, and he sent me upstairs. Another uniform told me to sit on a bench in the corridor. So I sat down meek as a lamb and looked around me, with a degree of curiosity, not so much as I thought would be noticed.
There was a lot to see. There’d been an early-morning change of shift—you could see it was an all-night job for the comrades. Everyone wore uniforms of the kind our soldiers did a few years back—say, three years before. The leather belt was the same, only the armband was different, that and the braid. The faces were familiar too, guys from really poor backgrounds … I thought I’d seen one or two of them before. But my stomach was all cramped up: it was like I was sleeping after a really heavy meal followed by a glass or two more than was strictly necessary. I gazed openmouthed, as it was the first time I’d seen something like this close-to, with my own eyes. What it told me was that that famous thing highbrows call “history”—well, things don’t really change: in fact they’re always exactly the same. I sat on the low bench taking it all in, glancing up and down the corridor, watching busy comrades going about exactly the same tasks as their brothers had done three years earlier.
The comrades’ job was to escort whoever was next in line to the right interrogation room. Some of them needed escorting because they couldn’t walk. It seemed they must have got a bad pain in their feet overnight in the middle of some official conversation. So they needed support, which the guards offered by grabbing them under the arms. There were a few who went on their own feet, but not many. It was, believe me, deadly quiet along the corridor, but sometimes you could hear noises, like the sound of a scream in the middle of a polite exchange of ideas. Even so, screams behind closed doors were better than silence, because silence might suggest that the conversation was pretty well over—that some poor guy had run out of debating points.
It was half an hour before they called me in, and it was another hour before I came out. They didn’t escort me; they didn’t need to support me under the arms. I went on my own two feet, head held high. An hour earlier I had no idea what was in store for me. I was a different man coming out an hour later. Believe it or not, I’d been given a job.
I walked home slowly as if I’d drunk a little too much last night and was having to tread very carefully in the morning. One deliberate step, then another deliberate step. I went straight to my pad on Klauzál tér, the square where I’d been living six months. It was a joint tenancy, because in my situation, I couldn’t afford a pad alone. The guy I shared the bed with did day shifts from early in the morning, going out to Rákos on the shuttle service. The bed was empty and I lay down with my clothes on. I felt like the life had been kicked out of me. I stayed there till dark.
It all came back in pieces. It was like when you take a pill to make you sick up what you don’t need. When they invited me into the room I imagined I’d find some huge, barrel-chested goon there just itching to beat me to a pulp. But that’s not how it turned out. It was not some crude hulk but a guy with withered legs, quite old, with horn-rimmed glasses. He wore no uniform, just plain clothes, and he spoke quietly and politely, smiling all the way through. He offered me a chair and a cigarette, just as they do in thrillers, like a detective before a grilling. I saw my cadre papers lying on the desk in front of him, and noticed how he’d leaf through them now and then. But it wasn’t a close examination—he was just picking up a point here and there with his finger. It seemed he’d already read and mastered it all. He softly asked me to tell him, if I didn’t mind, what I was doing in ’44.
I had to think quickly. Keep your cool, I thought, let him see you’re no chicken. I took the papers I’d prepared from my pocket—they were all officially stamped with the proper stamps. All I said was that I’d never been disloyal to my nation.
He seemed to be happy w
ith that answer, nodding, as if he expected no less of me. Then, still gently, in a thin little voice, he asked me if I knew anyone in Budapest who had served in the Arrow Cross, the fascist militia.
What?! I gasped. Me? Know militia? What kind of militia? Like a police force? Like the Wild West?
He saw I was no fool and started reassuring me. Fine, he said, fine, he won’t ask me any more about that, since he could tell I was sensitive about the militia. But he’d still like to know if I knew anyone in this beautiful cathedral city of ours who might have escorted people of a different religion down to the Danube at dawn in the winter at the end of ’44. Women, children, old people?
He looked at me so hard it was like being stabbed in the eye with an old lady’s knitting needle.
Well, I really sweated then. I took a gulp and told him straight that I was in Zala at the time and I didn’t even know where exactly the Danube was then. And, I added, quietly and modestly, yes, I’d heard that there were regrettable excesses in Pest at the time.
When he heard this he opened his mouth and watched me the way a shortsighted hen looks for grain. He said nothing for a while, just blinked a few times. Then he cheered up. He looked so cheerful he was like the virgin whose tits have just been tickled.
“You’re a wise man, Ede,” he nodded. He gave a sigh and added, by way of acknowledgment, “ ‘Regrettable excesses’ is good. You have a way with words, Ede.”
I confessed that Ede was just my professional name, that I was Lajos at home. He waved that aside as if to say it didn’t matter. “Ede or Lajos, you are a man respected among your peers,” he said. I could tell he was sincere. I felt the guy was respecting me. He clicked his tongue and rubbed his palms together; then he threw away his cigarette and spoke in a changed voice. He was still gentle, but his horn-rimmed eyes never left mine. It was no longer knitting needles but proper needles squeezed under your nails.
