A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  We moved on, but after a few steps there was another halt, an unanticipated bottleneck, and we could only shuffle forward, almost in place, progress reduced to barely a crawl; in front of the Album of Smiles photo studio an immovable throng of people was jamming the broad curving sidewalk and the roadway itself was blocked by abandoned streetcars, but the crowd showed no signs of impatience.

  In front of the lit-up window of the photo studio, a slight woman in a raincoat was standing on a crate; actually, all that could be seen was the slender silhouette of a female figure rather high up, because only her feet were blocked by the bobbing heads of her listeners, straining to hear; her immobile body seemed tense with anger, she was throwing her head back, shaking it, turning and thrusting it in all directions, piercing the air as with a dagger, as if she were yanking all her movements out of her chest and belly; her long hair streamed, collapsed, floated around her, and she didn't fly away only because her stubborn defiance kept her feet glued to the crate. Szentes jabbed my leg with his wooden drawing board, urging me to look: he was taller than I and noticed the woman first, but just then Stark began reading off a list of demands from a handbill he had fished out from under a forest of feet: "Five: away with obstructionists; six: down with Stalinist economics; seven: long live fraternal Poland; eight: workers councils in factories; nine: agricultural recovery, voluntary cooperatives; ten: a constructive plan of action for the nation"—we could barely hear the woman's voice, but Stark interrupted his reading and, as if this were the most natural thing in the world, joined the woman by mouthing the words along with her, "... as they sink into hell, with mast and sail broken, in tatters hang . .." and it did not surprise me, on the contrary, it filled me with warm waves of satisfaction that the patriotic poem so well known to all of us was being recited by a relative of mine— the woman on the crate was my cousin Albert's ex-wife, from the town of Győr—to whom about a year and a half earlier I had wanted to run away, somewhat foolishly but with a confidence in her that had no real basis, just to escape from my own home and my parents.

  However silly this may sound, I'll say it: the moment I heard her, I was reassured that I wasn't alone in this crowd with my special personal and family history, that everybody was here with his or her unique situation, and these peculiarities could not challenge or doubt one another, for then all the feelings that had become common to us would have had to be challenged, too, so it didn't even occur to me to go over to her or to tell the others that I knew her, it remained my own pleasurable little secret and ultimate proof that I was at the right place; little Verochka— as my mother waggishly called this budding actress—was up there declaiming her poem and I was down here, one of the marchers; she was as much entitled to her place as I to mine, even if I refrained from shouting with all those who now had every right to shout, like Szentes, for example, who, knowing full well who my father was, had lit into me during an argument just a few weeks earlier—purple with rage and ready to strike, he screamed into my face that "we lived in a chicken coop, d'you hear? in a chicken coop, like animals!"—or like Stark, who lived near here, in Visegrádi Street, but was now choosing not to go home, who also a few weeks earlier had offered to let me use his drawing pen when the item was unavailable in the stores, but because their apartment was locked, we had to go to the synagogue next door to find his mother, a cleaning woman there, who came with us and opened the door of the ground-floor apartment where the table was already set for two, with only a tiny pot on the stove; my embarrassed protestations notwithstanding, I had to eat my friend's mother's lunch, because she let me understand, with infinitely refined humility, that she knew who my father was; nevertheless, we all got along, each of us carrying his own burden, and I had the right to feel what the others felt, especially since no one had challenged it; in any case, I earned this right, even if my own particular situation seemed to contradict it, because I most carefully distinguished between the concepts of revolution and counter-revolution and did so from the moment I recognized Verochka in that woman on the crate, and because I was neither uninformed, insensitive, nor stupid; I was sure, I knew, that this was a revolution, that I was in the middle of it, in the middle of a revolution which Father, if he were here, would surely recognize; and I also knew he couldn't possibly be here, I had no idea where he could be, he probably had to be hiding somewhere, much to his shame, but if he were here he would tell me that this was exactly the opposite of what I thought it was, he'd call it a counter-revolution.

  The words "revolution" and "counter-revolution" occurred to me in their precise, clearly understood forms, guiding me through the thicket of emotional distinctions and identifications that until then had seemed terrifying, stifling, and hopeless, two words whose meaning, weight, and political significance I had learned so early, so precociously, from the conversations and debates among my father and his contemporaries, yet I want to stress that at that moment—and for me this was the revolution—I thought of these words not in their terms, not as a pair of antithetical political concepts borrowed from their vocabulary, but as something intensely personal, as if one of them was his body and the other my own, as if, each of us with his own word, we were standing at opposite ends of a single emotion generated by a common body; This is revolution, I kept repeating, as though I were saying it to him, uttering the word with dark vengeance, gratified to get even with him for everything, not quite knowing what, to which he could respond only with his own word, the very opposite of mine, and therefore I did not feel any distance between us, did not feel that he was removed from me but just the opposite: his body, caved in on itself, stooped, looking pitiful ever since my mother's death, that body the mere sight of which had evoked my fear of dreadful futility, his broken body in which—even after the previous June, after the public disgrace of being suspended for his role in some political trials— he had managed to find enough defiant energy to conspire with some suspicious characters he now called friends, that body was, strange to say, as close to me as it had been when as a small child I had climbed on his beautiful naked body, completely naked and pretending I was part of his dream, and, driven by a secret desire to discover our sameness, reached between his thighs; now I was more cool-headed, knowing well that, physical identity notwithstanding, differences were differences; and here I was, marching with these people I hardly knew yet felt to be brothers, for somehow they meant the same to me as Krisztián had, whose father was killed in the war, and Hédi, whose father was taken to a concentration camp, and Livia, who had to live on scraps from the school kitchen, and Prém, whose father was a drunken fascist, and Kálmán, who was branded a class alien on account of his father, and Maja, with whom I had searched for evidence of treason in Father's papers so that she and I, deceived by our innocence and gullibility, could immerse ourselves in the filth of the age, an abomination that could not be forgotten, something we must still try to put behind us; while marching with these people I presumed their fear, call it worry or concern because I knew what they might be up against, having read the faces of my father's friends gathering at our house; at the same time I also had to fear for Father's racked and tense body, which had grown wild with fever, had to protect it from the flood I was becoming a part of, but knew that I no longer could, knew that I didn't want to resist my own erupting emotions.

  We pressed ahead, jostled our way out onto the boulevard.

  Defining myself in terms of concepts—my grandparents' strict moral concepts that regulated emotions and passions to fit their middle-class way of life, my parents' more elusive ideological and political concepts—was a not unfamiliar exercise expressing well the kind of upbringing I had, and so it was natural that the self-definition with which I tried in this crowd to separate, indeed sever myself once and for all from my father, quickly changed me back into a small child, for my concern about him, the child's need to identify with him, sympathize with and understand him, proved to be the stronger bond, since ultimately it was with his concepts of myself that I had to jus
tify being here, in this crowd, now, in this situation—or was it our shared grief over Mother's death? as we were finally thrust through the bottleneck and began to run to catch up with the people in front of us—the most elemental need in a crowd is to close ranks—my stuffed schoolbag kept knocking against my legs, my drawing board and long T-square flapping awkwardly from side to side, subtracting something from the revolution, reminding me of my helplessness and confusion, trying to make me admit that this was not for me; each tug and knock seemed to be tapping out this message as rhythmically as they had tapped out revolution just minutes earlier; I felt I had to get home, if only to be rid of these bothersome objects; no problem, I kept telling myself, we were moving in the right direction, I was running among people who did not appear to be bothered by thoughts like mine; I'll get across Margit Bridge somehow, I told myself, and then get on a streetcar, though I was sure I wouldn't find Father at home.

  What also seemed reassuring in this plan was that my home was far away, well outside this area that was becoming dangerous even emotionally, up on the hill, far above the city.

  And I guessed right: he turned up only a week later, and until then we had no news of him, not even a telephone call, nothing.

  It happened on a late afternoon while I was standing with Krisztián in front of our garden gate; it was on the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth of October, and we were discussing the makeup of the new government— no, it was the twenty-eighth, now I remember, because I had a loaf of bread under my arm, it was the day the bakeries reopened, a Sunday, the first time Kálmán's father's bakery had fresh bread again; Krisztián was telling me how he had managed to get back from Kalocsa, giggling nervously as he told the story, and I knew that the giggles were meant to cover up our efforts not to talk about Kálmán; the year before, after a long struggle, Krisztián had gotten into a military academy; his greatest wish had always been to become an officer, like his father; they happened to be in Kalocsa, on fall maneuvers, when the revolution broke out, and the cadets were simply let go, right in the middle of the field; of course, they had to get rid of their uniforms, because people kept mistaking them for members of the National Security Service, and it was right about then that suddenly Krisztián said, Look, there's your father! and sure enough, down by the hedges, where our garden adjoined the restricted area, Father was hurling himself over the fence.

  Embarrassed and blushing over his embarrassment, Krisztián said goodbye; I'd better be going, he said with a last giggle, and I understood well that he didn't want to witness this clandestine homecoming, so he left quickly in the descending dusk, and that was the last time I ever saw him; in the meantime, Father was hurrying up the hill, but instead of cutting across the lawn he followed the curving path of bushes along the edge of our garden and came up under the trees; from a slight jerk of his head I could tell he had seen me; he looked not at all the way I had imagined him during those anxious days of his absence, and I knew, as somebody once told me, that nothing ever is the way we imagine it; he was wearing somebody else's clothes: under a thin raincoat he had on a light summer suit, crumpled and ragged-looking and spattered with mud though it hadn't rained for a week; his face was covered with heavy stubble, and I would say it was almost calm except that his body seemed soft, turned light and pliant by some curious inner excitement that was neither fear nor bewilderment, there was something of a wild animal's resilience and sprightliness in him, and I also noticed he had gotten even thinner over those past few days.

  The white summer suit was the first thing I touched, even before he had a chance to kiss me, an involuntary move, and I don't know how one's eyes can distinguish one white summer suit from all other white summer suits, but I was quite certain that he had come back wearing János Hamar's suit, the same suit János Hamar had worn when he came to see us straight from jail the previous spring, the suit he'd had on when years earlier two strangers had asked him to step into a black limousine in front of the Office of Restitution, the same suit in which he knelt by Mother's bed five years later, only hours after his release; this meant that he and Father had been together, again, and he must have lent Father his suit, must have helped Father, maybe helped him hide out, perhaps they even fought together in that armed group Father and his friends had organized a few months ago; when I abruptly extricated myself from the embrace of this summer suit, I happened to say something that prompted him to slap me twice in the face; he hit me unerringly, the movements of his arm and hand loose, coldly, with a force that nearly knocked me over—but more about this later, I told Melchior, it wouldn't make sense just yet.

  I was talking to Melchior's eyes.

  One of his hands was grasping mine on a leather strap, and with his other hand he was holding another strap, so that his raised arms opened wide the wings of his coat, shielding our faces, our hands, the secret gestures of our forbidden love from the other passengers; our faces were very close, close enough to feel each other's breath, but I was talking not to his face and certainly not to his mind but to his eyes.

  And not even to a pair of eyes; what remains with me is the image of a single enormous eye hovering in the breath of my own words, a single beautiful eye, obliging yet twinkling with an inner urgency, and also concealing its light of comprehension each time it blinked, resting, waiting behind the beautiful fluttering membrane of its lid, seeming uncertain, groping, and suspicious; and each time it reopened, it would spur me on, impelling me to forget all the small details because he wanted to see the larger perspective; as it was, there were too many things to take in at once: not only did he have to imagine unfamiliar characters, orient himself in unknown locales, reconcile uncertain time frames, follow a very personal, therefore disjointed account of events which up to then he knew only from rather generalized historical descriptions, but he also had to contend with the unpleasant addition of my linguistic lapses, to deduce from my excited, often incorrectly used phrases just what it was I really wanted to say.

  It had happened the previous summer, I told Melchior, about three weeks after Father had been suspended from his position as state prosecutor: one Sunday morning about thirty guests arrived at our house, filling the street outside with their parked cars, all men except for one young woman who came with her father, a glum, sickly-looking, elderly man who, rocking in a chair, said not a word during the entire meeting, waving his hand once to silence his daughter when she was about to say something.

  I made use of a little family byplay to sneak into Father's study, where the assembled men were smoking, standing about in small groups, arguing or simply chatting; they seemed to be old friends having one of their get-togethers; alter a short while Father stepped into the kitchen to ask Grandmother to make coffee, but as luck would have it, Grandfather was there, too, and before Grandmother could respond with a reluctant but obliging yes, Grandfather broke their years-long mutual silence and, turning red and gasping for air in sudden irritation, told Father that unfortunately Grandmother had no time to make coffee, as she was on her way to Sunday services, and if Father insisted on offering coffee to his unexpected guests he should serve them himself.

  Father had indeed made his request as a boss would do to his secretary, so the response caught him by surprise, all the more so since it was perfectly obvious that Grandfather wasn't refusing an innocuous request on Grandmother's behalf but simply found it distasteful to have any close contact with that group of men; It's all right, Father stammered, he appreciated the concern, and as he hurried out of the kitchen, pale with anger, he did not notice me tagging along, or maybe the unpleasant interlude made it difficult for him to object to my presence.

  In any case, I positioned myself near the door leading to my room, where the young woman in her attractive dark silk dress was leaning somewhat uncomfortably against the doorpost.

  I could tell from Father's vigorous yet controlled stride, from the sharp thrust of his stooped shoulders, from his hair falling over his forehead, or perhaps from the determined air with which h
e pushed his way through the smoke-filled room, that he was getting ready for something extraordinary, something he'd had his mind set on for a long time; he shoved his armchair out of the way, took his desk keys out of his pocket, opened a drawer, but then, as if suddenly uncertain, did not pull it out but slowly lowered himself into the chair and turned toward the company.

  The sight of this change in his movement and the look in his eyes spread like a tremor throughout the room; some of the men fell silent, others lowered their voices, still others looked over their shoulders and purposely finished their sentences or even began new ones, while Father sat motionless, staring vacantly into the air.

  And then, with a motion that started slowly but suddenly turned quick as lightning, he yanked out the drawer, grabbed something inside, and, with his fist, from which the grip of the pistol was sticking out, shoved the drawer home, pulled his hand back, and slammed the pistol down on the empty desktop.

  One loud bang, followed by silence, an offended, pitiful, dazed, indignant silence.

  Outside, the trees stood still in front of the open windows, and one could hear the intermittent hiss of the sprinklers, the water hitting the lawn.

  Someone laughed nervously into the silence, a few uncertain laughs followed, there was a very young army officer there, maybe a colonel, a round-faced, smiling man with a blond crewcut who in the stunned silence stood up, leisurely took off his gold-braided uniform jacket, and, smiling amiably, laid it over the back of his chair; a general shouting began, but the officer, as if hearing nothing, quietly sat back down on his chair and in the general uproar calmly began to roll up a sleeve of his white shirt.

  Now they were shouting at Father, pleading with him to stop this nonsense, addressing him by his Party code name. Millet, letting him know how well they realized what he was doing, how they sympathized with his outburst, however hysterical and irrational, but he ought to stop it and come to his senses.