No Live Files Remain

by Andras Forgach

  The point was, in any case, that the subject must not have even the faintest suspicion that they were being coerced. Of course, in Mrs Pápai’s case coercion was unnecessary. True, they had not told her that they had long since re-classified her,3 but she didn’t need to know this – after three years of trouble-free co-operation she must have come to suspect that this certainly wasn’t child’s play, and, besides, what was the difference between a ‘secret associate’ and a ‘secret colleague’? A question of nuance, really, but an individual’s moral sensitivity had to be considered. No one is eager to snitch voluntarily; or, rather, those who are eager represent the dregs of humanity, though of course one must do business with such people too. Though it became clear early on that Mrs Pápai was an avowed Party member (there were such odd birds in the world), she undertook her increasingly frequent trips, which were not without risk – Shin Bet was, after all, no doubt the world’s most formidable intelligence service – above all so that she could visit the father she so adored. And then she had her crazy husband around her neck; a husband who, previously – the lieutenant colonel had conscientiously pored over his three thick dossiers when the matter of employing Mrs Pápai was first considered – had operated pretty erratically until, one fine day, he went mad. A man of many talents, that much was beyond question – he spoke seven languages fluently – but he was too careless and unpredictable. Most of his reports might just as well have gone in the rubbish bin had it not been necessary to bind them into his work dossier. What’s more, despite being a practising journalist, he told them hardly a thing, and his handler’s repeated observation was that in the conspiratorial flat where they met, words had to be pulled out of him like teeth, and when the words did come, he’d recount the same story differently on every occasion. And when Mrs Pápai let them in on her husband’s well-developed paranoia, the telling phrase, à la Talleyrand, nearly slipped from the lieutenant colonel’s mouth: that at least in this case it can be determined that the objective circumstances validate the subjective state of mind, that the base determines the superstructure, as old Marx said.

  Of course, the point wasn’t that the reports should always be useful, but that they had to be manufactured nonetheless, and the lieutenant colonel wasn’t so fond of this, the industrial aspect of his work. But if the factory kept churning out its wares, something nice came off the production line every now and then. And of course an informant had to be kept busy, could not be neglected, and had to feel watched. But Pápai, despite the seven languages he spoke and his apparent enthusiasm for the work, was, in his babbling way, an atrocious spy, descending easily into arguments with anyone and unable to co-operate with those who didn’t share his political convictions.

  Unfortunately, the same was partly the case with Mrs Pápai, which rendered her no more reliable than a ‘lottery ticket’ as well, as Comrade István Berényi cynically observed at a meeting. She had to be weaned off the habit, if at all possible, of placing her convictions above her work.4 She made no attempt to hide her antipathy towards the Jewish state – on the contrary, that is essentially what motivated her – and so had to be patiently guided to separate her personal convictions from her service to the cause, the opinions of the network individual from the interests of the socialist movement.

  More than once the lieutenant colonel had taken her to task about this, but naturally without questioning her entrenched worldview, which was itself a matter of anthropological interest – he had rarely met a Jew who loathed the Jewish state – her homeland no less – with a vehemence that was almost a caricature of itself.5 Mrs Pápai always took care to correct him when the lieutenant colonel suggested that she’d been born in Israel – ‘Not in Israel, but in Palestine,’ she’d nervously interrupt, at which he couldn’t help breaking into a smile. This hurt Mrs Pápai, but the lieutenant colonel did not regard what he saw as a rigid and childish distinction as all that significant. On one occasion, he spent some ten minutes slapping his knee and laughing over a sentence in one of Mrs Pápai’s reports,6 but he decided not to press the issue; not even to satisfy his own curiosity would he call the secret colleague’s attention to her logical stumble. But he would have been quite keen to know how Mrs Pápai would have replied to his not entirely innocent query: ‘What on earth led you, comrade, to conclude that “there probably is such a feeling”?’ It was not that he couldn’t sympathize with Mrs Pápai. Even he had doubts and obsessions that were contrary to his work, but he would have been unable to perform his duties satisfactorily were he to heed these Siren calls. Still, even with all her contradictions and her excessive toeing of the line, Mrs Pápai was an ideal ‘client’, one who had been inexorably thrust into their arms by her rather topsy-turvy financial affairs, her children’s muddled and deviant worldviews, and the need to ease the entry into Hungary of her many relatives in Israel. Of course the lieutenant colonel spoke with Mrs Pápai about these things only in passing, and he never asked her about her family affairs; as needed, he adjudicated on this or that visa application. But when Mrs Pápai gushed forth with complaints,7 he commiserated wholeheartedly with all she had to say, all the while racking his brain to figure out how the hell he could encapsulate this useless and marginal information into a necessarily compound but nonetheless succinct phrase in the report he would have to write. Was there any valuable fact or titbit to be gleaned from the heap of information that came his way? ‘Trifles have gigantic consequences,’ Lieutenant Colonel Volkov had said in Moscow, but that might have been said by Talleyrand as well. All the same, such forays into personal matters occurred rarely in the course of the lieutenant colonel and Mrs Pápai’s meetings, which focused mostly on her duties as a network individual, duties she carried out with the utmost zeal.

  A black-and-white picture from 1951 bears witness to the fact that the building at 45 Podmaniczky Street – no doubt to welcome the celebrating throng marching towards Heroes’ Square on May Day – was decorated, between two large and two smaller red flags, and above the inscription THE PEOPLE’S PARADE FIGHTING FOR PEACE, with portraits of Lenin, Rákosi and Stalin, though Rákosi’s was somewhat smaller than those of his Russian and Georgian colleagues.

  By 1978 the building had been the headquarters of the Interior Ministry for more than a quarter of a century – initially the State Protection Authority (ÁVÓ) had been based here, and in 1951, when the Interior Ministry moved here once and for all, the name of the street was for a time changed from Podmaniczky to Rudas. But on that June morning in 1978, at any rate, neither the lieutenant colonel nor the boy knew it had been in this very room – in which their own intimate conversation would unfold8 – that the far-right politician Gyula Gömbös’s secretary, who bore a striking resemblance to the lieutenant colonel’s secretary, had typed up the speeches her boss – Admiral Horthy’s sometime ally and a future prime minister – gave from 1920 to 1928 as president of the Hungarian National Defence Association (Hungarian acronym: MOVE). For back then, that narrow passageway in the back of the room had led to a closed-off, still-domed area of the great hall, which the Freemasons had abandoned along with the rest of the building with the communist takeover in 1919.

  So it was into this spacious space that Gömbös settled, which became his office, his young henchmen passing the time by mocking the hall’s Egyptian-style frescoes, which were, as they put it, ‘spittingly Jewish’. But for some odd reason, Gömbös – years before he was obliged to rein in his radical anti-Semitism as a condition of his ascendancy to the throne of government in 1932 – would not allow the frescoes to be either covered or removed. More than once his secretary caught him, deep in thought, staring at the art nouveau-style Egyptian reeds on his office wall, as if touched by some metaphysical force radiating from those ancient images.

  The Freemasons had in fact been sent packing from the building on 19 March 1919, two days before the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s hundred-day reign began and well before the White Terror that followed. And then – just two days later, on 21 Marc
h – the Hungarian Soviet Republic seized the whole of the Grand Lodge. Gömbös’s far-right organization, MOVE, took over the building on 14 May 1920, and on 18 May (by which time communist leader Béla Kun had escaped to Moscow) Interior Minister Mihály Dömötör outlawed the Freemasons. In September 1923, Interior Minister Rakovszky – who, ironically, was the son of a previous grandmaster of the Hungarian Freemasons – ordered the registry of deeds to transfer ownership of the building to the Civil Servants’ National Medical Benefits Fund. (Hungary’s real estate mafia was alive and well even back then.) In the late Twenties Gömbös left the organization he had cofounded, but his men, a number of whom later emerged as prominent members of the fascist Arrow Cross Party, remained in the building, which became their base for raids against Jews, and the Freemasons’ former cellar an ideal storeroom for their loot.

  The siege of Budapest was still underway in February 1945 when those Freemasons who emerged from air-raid shelters all around Budapest requested that the Provisional National Government return their Grand Lodge to them. In the euphoria of freedom following the war the request was granted. But the new government recommended that the Freemasons reach an agreement with the National Peasant Party under which the latter, which had earlier moved into the building, could remain.

  The Freemasons’ extensive network of contacts had paid off splendidly. Renovation of the building began in September 1946 thanks to both local donations and American funding. As the work started, the Freemasons insisted that the building be vacated; the National Peasant Party begged to differ. Reluctant to admit defeat the Freemasons went so far as to apply for recognition of the Grand Lodge as a national monument – in order, that is, to reacquire the right to do with the building as they pleased. These were financially trying times, but nonetheless the work progressed smoothly. One of the biggest problems was flooding from groundwater, the solution being to treat the symptom: the basement was filled with rubble. On 15 March 1948 – the centennial of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution – a formal ceremony was held to mark the opening of the newly renovated first-floor workshop.

  This idyllic state of affairs did not last long. In early June 1950, József Révai – one of the founders of the Hungarian Communist Party – issued a fierce diatribe against the Freemasons, and on the 12th the ÁVÓ raided the Grand Lodge, seizing the premises. With that, the building’s fate was sealed.

  * * *

  From the deafening and quite unexpected silence that descended, perhaps even plummeted upon their conversation right from the start – a silence that was in fact his own – the lieutenant colonel sensed that the young man seated across from him would be a tougher nut than most to crack. An air of inviolability and invulnerability enveloped him, radiating from his compliant smile, and there was an aura of profound solitude, which the lieutenant colonel – he couldn’t do otherwise – began to respect. Because of this, in the course of their conversation his sentences became – he found he couldn’t help it – less certain of themselves, and his words of caution – intended to sound unrelenting, steely and menacing – softened like butter in his mouth before he spoke them.

  The time allotted for the meeting was soon up, but the lieutenant colonel was still racking his brain for something from Talleyrand with which to impress the kid. He has no family of his own. Perhaps he never will have one, the lieutenant colonel thought dryly as he noticed that the lad’s eyes bore a striking resemblance to Mrs Pápai’s. This filled him with a sort of hope, and yet he still could not penetrate the silence. The lieutenant colonel had already stood from behind the table, passport in hand – he didn’t seem much taller than when sitting – and was proffering the passport towards the boy when he looked up, straight into the boy’s grey-blue eyes, and said, with a fervency that surprised even him, ‘Coffee should be black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.’ When he finished, his face was red. ‘Talleyrand,’ he added. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ In that moment it struck him that he’d made a colossal mistake. ‘Ah, Talleyrand,’ said the kid with a wide grin. ‘This is the beginning of the end.’ To which, as in a game of chess, the lieutenant colonel replied immediately with another quote: ‘It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.’ ‘That’s actually Fouché,’ the lad responded nonchalantly while taking the passport from the lieutenant colonel’s hand. ‘He was Napoleon’s Minister of Police.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Stefan Zweig wrote a book about him. It’s a must-read.’ ‘Who wrote a book about him?’ The lieutenant colonel was utterly confused. ‘Thanks, but I don’t want any. My brother is waiting outside.’

  The lieutenant colonel, reeling slightly, as if waiting only for this magic word, now gathered himself. ‘Please . . .’ he began to say, surprised at the almost pleading tone seeping into his voice. Meanwhile he thought (and he would have gladly sunk into the earth with shame), We’re just like two lovers in a French film, at a train station – his eyes were misty, his breathing laboured. But he quickly pulled himself together. ‘Please,’ he said resolutely, ‘don’t mention the subject of our conversation to your brother. Will you do this for me?’ ‘Of course,’ said the boy, who looked back once more before stepping through the doorway.

  The lieutenant colonel stood there, already half turned away, as if with one eye on a person in the rear of the room whom only he could see, before vanishing from the boy’s view as he closed the door behind him.

  ‘What do you say, Gyuri?’ he asked Captain György Ocskó, who now emerged from the passageway. Ocskó, who was in civilian clothes, lit a cigarette. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I think you could have been harder on him.’ ‘Harder?’ asked the lieutenant colonel, casting Ocskó a perplexed stare, ‘I’m glad I managed to make any sense at all.’ ‘Was he really so mesmerizing?’ The lieutenant colonel paused before asking, ‘Think he’ll check in after his trip?’ ‘I have no idea,’ said Ocskó, who then shouted for the secretary: ‘Marika, coffee!’

  Marika entered the room from the opposite side; from between the safes, that is, through a hidden door that opened noiselessly. ‘Shall I make it now?’ she asked. ‘Wait a sec, comrade,’ came the lieutenant colonel’s throaty reply, at which Marika’s eyes opened wide. That the lieutenant colonel had called her ‘comrade’ was a very bad omen.

  London, 1962

  Pápai was nervous.

  A little boy, his nine-year-old son, was firmly in his grip as they walked down Finchley Road in Hampstead, if it could have been called walking: the boy trying to keep up with the rhythm of the long and unpredictable strides of his dad as they passed small shops and a crowd waiting in line at a bus stop. The smell of fish and chips enveloped them, and then they were walking past the dark throat of an Underground station, which seemed to be gobbling up and spitting out so many people at once. Approaching their destination, the man held his son’s hand so tightly that the little fingertips were crimson, as if blood might spurt out from under the nails at any moment. Despite the pain, the boy didn’t dare utter a word. Immersed in thought, not even noticing the passers-by, Pápai rushed along the pavement with long, nervous steps, dragging his son.

  And he was singing.

  Catching the eye of other pedestrians, the boy kept his silence, knowing very well that it was not always advisable to speak and that at times it was best to remain silent. At their crowded home in Buda, and here in Hampstead, in the long hallway of the cosy flat in Elm Tree house, Pápai’s children had become used to jumping like grasshoppers out of his path whenever Pápai – gnashing his teeth, clenching his fist, hitting the air, mumbling indecipherable words – fought with his invisible enemies.

  He had many enemies.

  Wherever Pápai looked he saw people intent on destroying him. Perhaps it began with losing his father when he was four. Those tall men in the room, all in black, looking at him. The heavy, jaundiced, ice-cold hand of his dad on Pápai’s head. But Pápai was no egotist. What bothered him more was that the great cause he was fighting for was in constant danger of being defeated. The gre
at cause of mankind. And he was alone, terribly alone.

  And he was singing.

  ‘Dad,’ said the boy almost inaudibly. ‘If you sing, they’ll think you’re an idiot.’

  He wanted to bite off his tongue; he immediately regretted it – why had he said it? The huge man – his overweight father, whom the boy adored, and whom he dreamed of becoming just like, just as disorderly, capricious and funny, and who only a moment ago had been singing a happy little song – froze instantly in the middle of the street, his left leg mid-step. His face contorted, and squeezing his son’s hand ferociously, he shouted at him, causing some people to stop, turning their heads left and right, to discover where that raucous cry came from.

  ‘How dare you call your father an idiot?’

  His face livid, his lips trembling, Pápai left his son alone in the middle of the traffic on Finchley Road and never turned back. Tears started to well in the boy’s eyes as, unable to move, he stared at his dad’s crumpled, windblown mackintosh slowly vanishing in the distance among the nameless people of the early afternoon, all those big grown-ups living in Hampstead and doing their shopping before going home to watch Coronation Street.

  Yes, Pápai was nervous.

  * * *

  He had every reason to be nervous. That morning he had risen at five o’clock to get to the tiny Fleet Street office of MTI, the Hungarian News Agency, on time. He had to read all the newspapers at breakneck speed to be able to type a short report for his colleagues in Budapest by seven. He couldn’t get there early enough: his colleagues were liable to call at impossible hours and they always made outrageous demands; for they wanted to stab him in the back, they wanted to annihilate him, they wanted to prove that he was lazy, incompetent and unprofessional. He’d show them who was lazy, incompetent and unprofessional! He typed with two fingers as fast as he could, never looking at the keys, like a virtuoso pianist. He savoured the physicality of it: putting the typewriter down anywhere and conjuring up the perfect expression at a furious pace. And he did not lack the phrases and idioms a credible journalist needed in his new homeland at this time. His ideological pedigree was impeccable. Who was better than him? Who? He’d built up his life from scratch for the third time – no, for the fifth time – from scratch, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, from the ruins of a terrible war he’d watched from the sidelines with all the cunning in the world – with every advantage that a solitary, charming fellow with good looks and a fast tongue could muster.