A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  As becomes evident from my friend's confessions, I wasn't a quiet, retiring child. As an adult, too, I am very active, although I'm tempted to consider my urge to keep busy, sometimes reaching the point of frenzy, to be one of my darker traits, even if others envy this seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. What spurs me on is not a desire to win or to succeed but rather the indolence and inertia that thrust my immediate and not so immediate environment into a state of permanent defeat. And since there are so many more defeats than victories in one's life, I haven't had much opportunity to withdraw into a state of quiet contemplation. I don't like to use big words, but I'll say that our sorry national history, piling failure upon failure, defeat upon defeat, is partly to blame. For when confronted with seemingly impossible situations, tasks that are clearly beyond our resources, we don't even consider the possibility of regrouping our forces, but with a fool's defensive cautiousness we avoid the issues, put them off, pretend they don't exist, or with almost masochistic pleasure proceed to enumerate the reasons why rational solutions are simply not in the cards. This petty cunning irritates me no less than our fatalistic air of superiority. I believe that playing for time, lying low, waiting it out, is a justified tactic only in situations that hold out the prospect of solution; in the absence of such prospects the question of what can or cannot be done, and why, is futile, though it is as familiar to me as it is to the rest of my compatriots. When there is a solution, delay is superfluous, and when there isn't, talk is a sheer waste of time. But my annoyance and irritability seldom prove to be reliable counsel. In my feverish activity I myself pile error on error, stumble from defeat to defeat. And all the while, and not without a measure of arrogance, I keep telling myself that even a blind hen will find a seed if it keeps knocking around with its beak long enough.

  But if between two erroneous decisions or two defeats I still manage to achieve some kind of breakthrough, then the feeling of surprise makes me retreat. At times like that I have to decide whether my success is the result of a correct decision or merely a stroke of luck. I observe, I weigh things, I distract myself and others, I become despondent and helpless and long for solitude. I look for something to read and, all of a sudden, softly lit corners in cozy, familiar rooms become very important.

  In my childhood, during lulls in my fight for freedom, in my personal cold war, I studied photographs and military maps and browsed through dictionaries; as a young man I experienced in these periods, having grown timid with success, my casual conquests blossoming into tense love affairs, and I'd disappear for weeks and hole up in warm little nests with the unlikeliest girls; later, when I was a married man, the so-called periods of success got me started on quiet and carefully arranged but all the more persistent bouts of drinking.

  My aversion to cowering and useless arguments, my propensity for acting recklessly, and my inability to handle success must all stem from my basic character makeup, which can balance feeling and thought so as to neutralize each other, but since I traveled a great deal and spent a lot of time in foreign countries, and therefore had a chance to realize that elsewhere I would probably have turned out differently, I feel that any attempt at discovering the character of a nation in something other than the particular traits of an individual is a very risky undertaking. We are all variants of the same thing. Variants determined by character, sex, family origin, religion, and upbringing. If someone, while still a child, wants to find his place in this community, he will select ancestors with the characteristics that seem most striking, but there is no personal characteristic that is not yet another version of the national character, and so, in reality, the child is selecting for himself only certain variants.

  I chose two variants of the same dynamic character type: the hedonistic, social-climbing version in my grandfather and the ascetic-heroic variant in my father. They seemed as different as night and day. Their fates had one thing in common: they both died in wars that for their nation ended in defeat and had catastrophic consequences. My grandfather was thirty-seven, my father thirty-four when they lost their lives. They were united by their untimely passing, and this single connection between them made me decide that while death, most naturally, stands above all else, it doesn't have to mean the end of life. My mother grew up with one parent and was a widow when she raised me. Victory is probably a good thing, but one can also live with the misery of defeat. It was in line with this tradition that my own variant developed; and it is probably with this variant in mind that my son and daughter will choose their own.

  I am thirty-seven years old. Exactly as old as my grandfather was when he lost his life in one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. To lose one's life without losing life itself—a good trick, only how to do it?— that's what I'm thinking about now. My friend's been dead for three years. It's nighttime. I'm busy measuring different sorts and periods of time. It's drizzling outside, a fine spring rain. The pearly drops on the large windowpanes are illuminated by the friendly glow of my desk lamp, until they get too heavy and fall. I think of my children and wonder when I will have to let them go for good. As if I am somewhat surprised that I have had this much time with them and that I still have some left. Here I am, sitting in this book-lined, slightly disorderly—just the way I like it—quiet, nocturnal room. Moments ago some bad feeling or unpleasant dream must have startled my wife out of sleep, because she got up and came, or rather staggered, out of the bedroom. I followed her with my ear as she groped her way through the dark hallway, went into the kitchen, drank something, I heard the glass clink, and after taking a long look into the children's room, she went back to bed, her footsteps softer and steadier. When she opened the children's door, I followed her not with my ears but with my nose. I could smell the sweet fragrance of the children, and not even with my nose but with my flesh, my bones. No doubt my wife is even more powerfully aware of this sensation than I am. She doesn't look in on me. Although we haven't said a word about it, I know that ever since I started going over this manuscript she's been as restless again as she was when, sitting at the same table, I used to spend my time alone, drinking. She fears for our children.

  We couldn't have been more than ten years old when my friend Prém and I decided we were going to be soldiers. My dead friend portrays Prém as subjectively as he does me, and sees some kind of erotic mystery in our relationship. True, he views Prém with petulant aversion rather than affection. I am not nearly as well versed in psychological analysis as he was, so I have no way of judging how accurate his conclusions are. But I certainly don't want to give the impression that I am biased in this regard and would therefore reject his particular interpretation of our relationship out of hand. If two human beings are of the same sex, their relationship will be defined by the fact that they are. And if they are of different sexes, then that will be the decisive factor. That's how I feel about it, and for all I know, I may be insensitive on this issue, too.

  Prém and I have remained the best of friends to this day. He didn't become a soldier; he is an auto mechanic. And, like myself, a settled family man. If you're looking for faults, well, maybe his tax returns are not quite above reproach. A few years ago, exactly at the time my friend returned from Heiligendamm and I gave up my lucrative job as a commercial traveler, Prém opened his own shop. While the two of us went spiritually bankrupt, Prém got rich. When something is wrong with my car we fix it together, on Sunday afternoons. Prém is an absolute terror tracking down a malfunction. In the way we huddle in the greasy pit of his workshop, or rub against each other while sprawled under the car, making contact as we handle parts of a lifeless mechanism, in the way we curse and quarrel and fume or, in perfect agreement, we acknowledge the other's move to be perfect, just right—in short, in the way we enjoy each other's physical presence, there is undoubtedly something ritualistic that goes back to our childhood bonding, and it must reawaken in us the need for such bonding.

  As children we made a pact and sealed it with our blood, though I no longer remember w
hat prompted us to do it. With a dagger that belonged to my father we pricked our fingers, smeared the blood on each other's palm, and then licked it off. There was nothing solemn about this. Maybe because there was no real gushing of blood. We were embarrassed about our ineptness. Still, sealing our mutual aspirations with blood proved to be our deepest and strongest bond. What others used words for, we entrusted to the language of our bodies. And I am convinced the body has words that have nothing to do with eroticism. For the sake of an end to be achieved, we turned our body into a physical means. But our bodies had the goal in mind, not each other. And what reinforces this conviction is that it never occurred to us to consider each other a friend. To this day we call each other buddy, which to me—because I've been infected by intellectual self-consciousness—sounds a little phony, but which to him, precisely because of the differences in our background and social position, is a word that carries a most important distinction. He has other people for friends. But when it comes to straightening out his petty though by no means unprofitable financial indiscretions, he can always count on my professional guidance.

  For us to become soldiers, we knew we had to outsmart the existing social order. Actually, neither of us could have picked a worse profession. I was the son of a captain on the general staff of the prewar Hungarian Army, and his father had been a fanatic fascist. My father fell on the Russian front. His father laid his hands on confiscated Jewish property, served a five-year sentence after the war, and then, six months after his release, was relocated to a camp for undesirables—much to his family's relief. The reigning spirit of the new age, in its shrewd cynicism, conveniently blurred the distinction between two lives that were predicated on ambitions and values that could not have been more different. We were both considered children of war criminals. Unless we wanted to appear stupid or insane, we had to keep our plan secret. And we didn't talk about it even to each other; after all, we didn't want to be soldiers of the Hungarian People's Army, just soldiers in general.

  But all this needs some explanation.

  Up until the mid-1950s, I could still hear members of my family voice the seemingly pragmatic and well-founded view that the English and the Americans would soon relieve our country of the Soviet Union's military presence. And the fact that in 1955 Soviet troops did withdraw from Austria kept these expectations alive, up until November 4, 1956. I considered my family's situation outrageously unjust, but with a child's unbiased sense of reality I also noticed that people around me did not really believe what they were telling each other. When my aunts and uncles discussed these matters, their fear and self-deception made their voices nervously thin and hushed. I had an aversion to these distraught and fretful tones. I must admit, therefore, that for lack of a real choice I would have wanted to become a soldier in the People's Army. Still, I had to realize my ambition without betraying my family. And in my morally dubious ambition, the example of my grandfather's life came to my aid.

  As the fifth among a village schoolmaster's eight children, my grandfather had only two opportunities to utilize his exceptional mental abilities, already apparent in early childhood: a military career or the priesthood. As he was an irascible, unruly child, a priestly vocation was out of the question. His military ambitions were at first blocked by my greatgrandfather's unshakably nationalist, anti-Austrian sentiments. In his stubborn opposition he went so far as to prevent Grandfather from joining the Hungarian Territorial Army, even though the language of command in that force was Hungarian, and according to the historic Compromise of 1867 with Austria, the Territorial Army could not cross the Hungarian frontier without Parliament's approval. It's still a joint army, he grumbled, and no son of his would rub elbows with traitors. Then, in the heat of an argument, my grandfather said to his father, If you won't let me join up, I'll run away and become a professional dancer. For that he got two huge slaps on his face, but the next day he also got the necessary paternal consent. He graduated with distinction from the Military Academy of Sopron.

  In short, we were preparing to be good soldiers in any Hungarian army, and to that end we put ourselves through the most difficult tests possible. With knapsacks filled with rocks, we went on long marches in the most sweltering summer heat. In winter we'd crawl in ditches filled with icy water. We had to learn to climb any tree and jump off the tallest one. With no clothes on, we'd cut through thorny bushes, and we wouldn't go home to change even if our clothes got sopping wet or stiff with ice in the freezing cold. I am neither hungry nor thirsty, neither cold nor hot, I am not afraid, I feel no fatigue, disgust, or pain. These were our basic principles. We frequently sneaked out late at night, and without first designating a meeting place, we had to find each other. In doing that, the functioning of our instincts was truly remarkable. We slept in haystacks or stayed up all night, especially in the snow, experimenting with ways of avoiding fatal frostbite. And on the days following such exercises we'd show up in school as if nothing had happened. We challenged each other to see who could hold his breath longer. We repeated the experiment under water. We took care of each other, not with the warm attention of lovers but as two people guided by mutual interests. We learned to creep silently over dry leaves, to imitate birds. We built a snow bunker, packing it so hard we could light a fire inside. We lifted weights, climbed rocks, ran on the toughest terrain, dug trenches. We designated no-food or no-water days, or ate and drank the most outrageous things. Lapping up water from puddles, eating grass or raw eggs snatched from nests were not unusual assignments. Once, I made him eat a slug and he had me swallow an earthworm fried on a spit; these, too, were only tests, not acts of cruelty. Naturally, our bodies were always bruised and covered with scabs, our clothes were in tatters; Prém was often beaten at home, and I had to resort to all sorts of artful lies to comfort my worried mother.

  I remember only one instance when I couldn't come up with a credible explanation. But even this experience, jolting as it was, did not break my will. The incident did expose me, yet I was not about to give myself away. I've been a practicing liar ever since, a prevaricator and concealer in matters small and great. I can't help it, but it is with considerable indulgence that I observe the transparent duplicity of my fellow humans in their search for unequivocal truths. But now I'd like to relate the incident.

  From my readings about the art of war I knew that logistics units were just as important to the success of an operation as were armaments, preparedness, and the morale of the front-line troops. It's important that every soldier be equipped with the best available weapon and that he be convinced of the necessity of having to fight, but it's just as important that supplies follow each phase of the operation like clockwork. We had to gain experience in this area, too.

  We spent unforgettable summer days at the Ferencváros railroad station and the Rákos switchyard. The trainmen tried to chase us away more than once, and they were rough about it, too, but we sneaked back every time. The railroad tracks, winding through the stations and branching off to different destinations, the switches, turntables, and signals, all parts of a coherent system almost like a living organism, are still vivid in my memory. The knowledge I picked up there had a lot to do with the tense social relationship between the railwaymen and the track repairmen. If we managed to attach ourselves to a maintenance crew, we had it made for the rest of the day. We drank their watered-down wine, ate their bread, their bacon, and enjoyed the shy, fatherly affection and interest shown us by these lonely, silent, middle-aged men who worked and lived far from their families. If supervisors or a group of engineers came by, they'd just grumble: Come on, men, you know better than to bring your children to the workplace. Only vagrants and professional criminals knew better than we how easy it was to move around in a freightyard. From their towers, controllers see only busy, purposefully scurrying ants. They never bother to check the number, color, or size of these ants. And you can easily leave the colony. Just make sure you avoid the switchmen's booths, the kind of loose-limbed way of walking that might
suggest loafing, and running accidentally into any supervisors.

  We also took rides now and then. Of all our activities there, the most exciting, and riskiest, was climbing into one of the cars of a freight train about to be assembled. Then we really had to pay attention to what was happening between the control tower and the assemblers. We could board only from the side away from the tower, but once we were inside, the commands issuing from the tower would tell us what would happen next. After the instruction from the tower—nothing but the car number followed by the destination number—we heard noises of jostling and jiggling around the buffers and connecting cables, all accompanied by colorful cursing, and then silence. That was the time to find something to hang on to good and tight. It was hard to tell when, but the jolt would come. Not a big one—yet. The truly great pleasure always makes you wait for it.

  Two hard bodies clink, giving the car its initial momentum on the open track. It starts rolling slowly, sluggishly, and maybe it is held up a little by a switch thrown at the last minute. If the car comes to a complete halt, there's real trouble. Frustrated yelling from the tower, cursing from down below, because the entire train has to be moved to give the errant car one big push. More grousing and screaming and yanking, but once the train gets rolling, the pleasure is so great you can't even comprehend what's happening to you. The uniform acceleration due to the weight and direction of an inert body, slowed only by surface resistance, hurls you irresistibly and at staggering speed toward the next moment.

  We loved the tremendous, thunderous impact, which was followed by smaller, gentler bumps. If it was no longer safe to jump off, we'd go for a ride. Generally, they would just shunt the newly assembled train off to a sidetrack, but it happened sometimes that it was sent immediately on a regular run. That morning the train we were on started out for Cegléd; it was picking up speed fairly rapidly, it was too late to jump off. It slowed down once in a while but didn't stop. We weren't too concerned—it wasn't the first time this had happened—maybe just a little more jittery than usual. At one point when the train was again slowing down, Prém gave the alert sign. I jumped first, he was right behind me. As I landed, one of my legs sank knee-deep into a pile of rubble, while Prém neatly tumbled down the side of the embankment. But the momentum of the jump was still propelling my body forward. To this day the memory of that moment is crystal clear. The bright sunshine, the sight of his freely rolling body, and the bone cracking in my trapped leg—whose sound couldn't be heard in the noise of the passing train yet which I did hear. Then fast-approaching rocks. The way I smack into them, face first. We were done for. All our secrets exposed. Even in my pain, descending like a terrifying gray curtain, I had only one thought, that my clumsiness was unforgivable. Prém dug me out and wanted to carry me on his back. Whimpering, I begged him not to touch me anywhere. As it turned out later, my left arm and two of my left ribs were only cracked, but the pain on that side was more intense than in the open fracture of my right leg. Blood was pouring from my head and face. And to make matters worse, we were in the middle of nowhere. Not a soul, not a vehicle or a house anywhere. Just flat, scorched grazing land, a cloudless sky. He had to go for help. My only consolation was that he didn't lose his head.