A Book of Memories

by Peter Nadas

  I was toilet-trained by means of the most frightful prohibitions. I learned that I must perform one of my most basic life functions, relieving myself, in complete secrecy, alone, never in the company of others. The taboo was so strong I knew it could never be violated with impunity. Rules of sexual conduct seemed far more lenient in comparison. How profound and unavoidable the urge must have been for me to violate that prohibition. For I did violate it, we both did. For others there had to be a war, a state of emergency to do the same. Yet our conscience didn't trouble us, because it was not the cultural norms concerning toilet-training that we wanted to breach, just as nations don't go to war to squander the treasures of their moral sanctuaries. We lived in days of illusory peace, and we simply wanted to prepare ourselves for the day when we'd have enough experience and resolve to carry out the greatest reconnaissance mission. The ultimate proof of our preparedness would be the execution of an actual plan. If, for instance, we could penetrate the area near our house guarded by killer dogs, barriers, barbed-wire fences, and heavily armed men. If we could do it unnoticed, effortlessly, without getting hurt, like master spies. Unlike my friend and Maja Prihoda, we weren't trying to expose spies, we wanted to become spies ourselves. To spy out that quintessential enemy territory whose very existence and unfathomable character brought into question the validity of our own existence. But for this cold-war operation we didn't, couldn't possibly, have the necessary courage—just as my friend and Maja ultimately shrank from denouncing their own parents. For that we would have had to break the seven seals of the darkest secret and do something that the country itself, sunk in a stupor of peace, could not do. And this was the greatest shame we all shared.

  But I couldn't give up the idea of doing something like that.

  It was autumn when I wrote this last sentence. There are sentences I have to put down so I can cross them out later. The truth is, I'm not happy with that sentence. Still, I can't cross it out, strike it from my heart. It's spring now. Months go by. I do very little else. I've been trying to figure out why I couldn't give it up. If I knew, I wouldn't have to write it down, or I could just cross it out. What I've been really thinking about is why I still can't give it up. Why I'm ready for the most humiliating compromises just so I won't have to give it up. Wouldn't it be more dignified to bow to irrevocable facts than to wallow disgracefully in the filth of obstinacy? Why am I so afraid of my own filth when I know that it's not just mine, and at the same time why do I shudder to look into a mirror that reflects only my own image, after all?

  If memory serves, we broke into ten or twelve apartments. That's quite a lot. And we had to take a crap on eight or ten occasions—enough to fix the experience indelibly in my mind. But what was the point of devising the most impossible tasks for ourselves, and piling one senseless crime on top of another, when we both knew very well that we were after something else? And we didn't need to talk about it either. Helpless and dejected, we hung around the fence of the restricted area. Trying to make friends with the guards. Did small favors for them, which they repaid with spent cartridges. We kept wondering how we might render the watchdogs harmless. We even asked the guards. There's no way, they said. But no amount of clever maneuvering could make us equal to the task, because what we were demanding of ourselves, in fact, was that our courage, strength, resourcefulness, and determination match the brute force that this untouched and untouchable restricted area had come to symbolize.

  I remember well our last clandestine operation. I was trying to climb out through a small pantry window when a shelf laden with preserve jars gave way. It happened on Diana Road, in a villa surrounded by a high brick wall. Luckily, I was able to avoid falling on the bottles, which rained down with a terrific racket. I held on to the windowsill and took a look under me. The indescribable sight still haunts me. Green pickles plopping on and mixing with sticky jam, marinated yellow peppers sliding and rolling all over the tile floor. And more jars and bottles falling onto this soft, squishy mess, shattering one after the other.

  My life does not abound in memorable turning points. Still, this moment of long ago I ought to consider as one. I felt I had to seek other, different means of action, and without ever again derailing any of my desires.

  I was always an excellent student. Moreover, I was blessed with the diligence and perseverance of a teacher's pet. But my adaptability and pleasing appearance kept me from becoming thoroughly dislikable. I am one of those few who actually mastered Russian in school. My mother and I had visited all my father's fellow officers and soldiers who were returning from Russian POW camps. It was while listening to their stories that I decided to make a serious effort to learn Russian. In this I took after my mother, emulating her grim, obsessive ways. If she could learn the true story of my father's disappearance and death, she would get him back. This is what she must have felt, and this feeling took root in me. And since I was preparing to become a soldier, I hoped I'd be able to investigate the circumstances of his death exactly where it had happened. German I had to learn twice. The first time, it was acquiring a language nobody spoke anymore. Among the books we inherited from my grandfather was a two-volume leather-bound set with a mysteriously simple gold-embossed title on its spine: On War. The margins were filled with my grandfather's notes, in Hungarian, written in his tiny, crabbed, but quite legible hand; the book itself was printed in Gothic letters. I had to acquaint myself with this book, because I thought that from it I could also learn everything there was to know about war.

  In December 1954, on the last day before winter break, as I recall, a sizable delegation of grim-looking men showed up at our school. They arrived in huge black automobiles. They all wore dark hats. From our classroom window we saw the hats disappear in the doorway downstairs. All teaching ceased. We had to sit in silence. Footsteps echoed in the corridors, never just one but several pairs of footsteps, and then silence again. Some people were being led somewhere. Not a peep out of anybody, hissed our most hated instructor, Klement, when somebody would stir to change position. The door opened. The janitor called out someone, barely whispering the name. Footfalls. Then the waiting: will he come back? After a short while the student would come back, looking pale, and sidle into his seat, followed by our curious stares, and the door would close again. Trembling lips and ears rubbed red told us that something must have happened. Something was going on. But the most unlikely people were taken out; I saw no pattern, so I could draw no conclusion.

  Nevertheless, after a while I had the feeling we were being surrounded.

  Klement had a huge bald head with tiny watery blue eyes. A stomach the size of a barrel. He weighed at least three hundred pounds. He carried a small cardboard valise. Now he was sucking candy, clicking his tongue, and smacking his lips in the silence. With deep moans and long wheezing sounds he kept himself busy with himself. He'd pull up his socks, which had slid down to his swollen feet. Or he'd open his sorry little valise, check his bunch of keys, then close the valise, but you could tell he was still thinking about it. He kept scratching his nose. Pinched something from it with his nail, examined the extract intently, then smeared it on his pants. After cracking his knuckles for a while, he kept sliding his rings over his pudgy fingers. Or he'd clasp his fingers over his stomach and twiddle them, with the thumbs always touching a little as they circled each other. He was like a living, breathing machine. He'd raise his bottom slightly, pull a handkerchief from his back pocket, unfold it, bring up phlegm and spit it into the hanky, and then, as if to guard some rare treasure, carefully refold the handkerchief. It wasn't excitement that deliberate cruelty evoked in him but the most voluptuous sense of self-satisfaction. So from his behavior we could only surmise that we were in trouble, worse trouble than ever before.

  My mind was whirling like a windmill grinding grain. To all the questions they might have asked, I answered with a definite no. Looking straight into their eyes, I'd deny everything, even things that by their standards would be helpful to me. I would even deny knowing
Prém. And deny poisoning the dogs, though we never went through with that. He wasn't being called yet, and neither was I. The only reason such a deathly silence could be maintained for so long was that this wasn't the first time. Nobody dared ask to go to the toilet. About two years earlier they had found a little poem on the wall of the third-floor boys' bathroom, written in the style of one of our classics: "Don't ask who said it, Lenin or Stalin, it's all the same. If you're up to your neck in shit, hold on to the rising standard of living. It might've been Rákosi who said it. So make him your guiding star." I didn't quote it in metric feet because the authorities weren't interested in poetics either. They could always find something if they wanted to. So how could anyone think of going to the bathroom at a time like this? Two years before, the investigation had lasted two whole days. They interrogated everyone, lined us up, took writing samples, photographs, searched through schoolbags, pockets, pen cases—we couldn't easily forget that.

  I couldn't control my anxiety. Prém and I caught each other's eye, but he didn't have much to grin about either. I could go on vehemently denying everything, but it wouldn't help. I felt as if I were perfectly transparent. As if anybody could read my thoughts. As if I couldn't hide myself, not even behind myself. I don't want to bore anyone with an in-depth analysis of this state, but I would like to say something about the useful experience I gained while in this situation.

  If someone has to be afraid of his own thoughts, because he must fear other people's thoughts, then he'll try to substitute his own evidently dangerous thoughts for those of others. But no one is capable of thinking with somebody else's brain, for the thoughts thus produced are merely his own brain's assumptions about how others may think about the very same thing. So not only must he eliminate the telltale signs of his own thought process and pretend to be second-guessing somebody else's thoughts on the subject, and then substitute these for his own, but he must also eliminate the uncertainty that this substitution is based on a mere assumption. And if one is forced to make one's brain play this game long enough, one will no doubt learn a great deal about the mechanism of thinking, but the real danger is that one can no longer distinguish between one's assertions and assumptions.

  At least an hour and a half went by. When my name was called, I felt utterly unprepared. Still, I was glad I could spring up and at last go somewhere. Just then, Klement threw another piece of candy into his mouth. The janitor was standing in the doorway. But Klement, while shifting the candy with his tongue and smacking his lips, said to me, "You, Somi Tot, you can really count yourself out." I was crushed by his comment. It implied that I couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the terrible crime, of which he of course had full knowledge. Yet the pitying tone of his comment couldn't have implied that I was therefore off the hook. It couldn't have, even if there was something vaguely encouraging and even kind about it, an acknowledgment of my high standing in the class. He smashed to smithereens the system of assumptions I had constructed during the past hour and a half. I felt the way I had in the hospital when the nurse, out of sheer kindness, mentioned my mother. In the ruins of my system of assumptions and defenses, there was no other assumption to cling to. Besides, there was no time to go over all my calculations in the light of the new data provided by Klement. All things considered, my feet were carrying me rather steadily. Like those of a fleeing animal, through the only possible opening, straight into the trap.

  We passed through the empty teachers' room, and when the office attendant threw open the door to the principal's office, nothing could have topped my astonishment. The razor-sharp blade of the guillotine had already chopped off my head. I died. But my eyes were still peeking out of the sawdust-filled basket, I could see that what was waiting for me on the other side was not horrible but rather bright, festive, and friendly. An alfresco breakfast. Picnic on the hillside. A stag party with the smell of fine Havanas.

  The moment I entered I was addressed in Russian.

  The door behind me closed, but all the doors of the principal's apartment, adjacent to his office, were wide open. Through these huge, elaborately ornamented, brown double doors you could see all four connecting rooms of the spacious flat with its heavy furniture and thick carpets. It was much later that I got to know the works of Hans Makart, a Viennese court painter, but his crowded interiors, filled with draperies, statues, plants in deep reds and browns, always reminded me of this improbable moment. We knew from Livia, the janitor's daughter, that the former principal, who had been summarily dismissed and later deported from the capital, had to leave all his possessions behind. In the farthest room two young girls, our current principal's daughters, were playing on the carpet. The rooms were brilliantly lit by the morning sunshine and its rays reflected from the snow outside. For a second I even caught a glimpse of the principal's graceful wife flitting across the flood of light. Somewhere a radio was playing, I heard very fine, very soft music.

  A bright-faced young man sitting behind a large carved desk in the shadow of oversize philodendrons and potted palms asked me how I was. From his appearance and accent I could tell he was addressing me in his native tongue. The other gentlemen were sprawled out comfortably, in jolly disarray, in easy chairs and straight chairs that had been kicked away from their regular spots. The principal, as if indicating that he wasn't really part of this group, was leaning against the warm tile stove with a forced little smile on his face. Enveloped in the undulating cloud of smoke, they had wineglasses in their hands, some were munching on canapés or enjoying coffee and cigarettes. None of this would have suggested an official visit if it hadn't been for a few ominously strange-looking sheets of paper lying on the table, on shelves, and even on the floor near the chairs.

  In answer to the question, a single Russian word came to my lips. I even remembered that I had come across this expression in one of Tolstoy's fables. I didn't just say, I'm fine, thank you. I said, Thank you, I feel splendid. This made some of them laugh.

  What a smart lad you are, said the man who had first addressed me. Come closer, let's have a little chat.

  A straight-backed upholstered chair was waiting for me in front of the desk. I had to sit down, which meant that now all the others in the room were behind me.

  I didn't know what might happen. I had no idea what sort of examination this was. But while he was asking his questions and in my blissful ignorance I kept answering them without difficulty, I felt I was on the right track. Yes, the track was right, but where was it leading me? Suddenly it got quiet, a tense silence. Their satisfaction made it very tense.

  I was already sitting when the bright-faced Russian asked me if it was snowing today.

  I answered that it wasn't snowing today, the sun was out, but yesterday quite a bit of snow fell.

  Then he asked me about my grades and acknowledged my reply with a satisfied nod. Then he asked what I would like to be when I grew up.

  A soldier, I said without hesitation.

  Splendid, the Russian shouted, kicked his chair out from under him, rounded his desk, and stopped in front of me. He is our man, he said to the others, and then holding my face between his two hands, he told me to laugh. He wanted to see if I could laugh.

  I tried. But probably didn't do a great job, because he let me go and asked if somebody in the family spoke Russian, from whom I could have learned it so well.

  I said my father had learned to speak it, but then I got stuck, because I shouldn't have said that.

  Your father? He looked down at me inquiringly.

  Yes, I said, but I never knew him. I learned from books.

  He thought he didn't hear me right. What was that, I didn't know him? he asked, amazed.

  All my resolve, my dissemblance, and my hope got caught in my throat. I was still trying to smile, at least that. He died, I said, and managed not to burst out crying.

  And then, in the silence behind me I heard a slight stir, the rustling of paper; somebody was evidently turning the pages of a book or notebook; of cou
rse I didn't dare turn around, though the Russian was also looking in that direction.

  The principal came over, holding our open grades book in his hand, and with his finger pointed to something he apparently had already shown to the others. In little black boxes next to our names our class origins were noted in red letters.

  The Russian cast a fleeting glance at the rubric, returned to the desk, sat down, and with the desperation of a disappointed lover buried his face in his hands. What was he to do with me? he asked.

  I didn't answer.

  In a louder voice, almost rudely, he repeated the question in Hungarian.

  I don't know, I said quietly.

  Do you think you could be worthy enough to speak the Russian language, he asked, again in his mother tongue.

  This made me think not all was lost. I was very anxious to win back his goodwill.

  Yes, I groaned in Russian.

  He said I could go.

  Less than a half hour after they had left, word got around that those who had passed the test would get to go to Sochi, in the Crimea, on a winter vacation. I had never before begun a school holiday in such a foul mood. I squeezed that yes out of myself in Russian, yet I remembered my voice sounding rather decisive and soldierly. I would have liked to hear myself with their ears, because if I could be sure I did all right, then I could forget about my betrayal. I had no desire to go on any winter vacation, and anyway, as the days passed, the likelihood of that grew more and more remote. But I avoided Prém. I didn't want to play with him anymore.