Siege 13

by Tamas Dobozy

  “My Hungarian isn’t that bad,” I snapped.

  My father sighed. “Mainly it was an excuse. I wanted to see Holló. How he’s holding up. People are really starting to boycott the place now,” he said. “Ílona’s been phoning around, paying house calls, getting everyone agitated. Holló showed me where someone threw a brick through the window.”

  “Is he upset?”

  “No,” my father said. “He doesn’t seem upset at all. It’s like he was expecting or even enjoying it in some way. You know what he said?” I waited. “He said he had half a mind to let whoever it was come in and destroy the place. To show them they’d miss it way more than he would.”

  “Yes,” I said, quietly. “He’s probably right.”

  “Of course he’s right!” my father yelled. “Those idiots are all going to miss it. What do they think, Ílona’s going to come in and take over and make everyone happy like Holló does?” He snorted. “She’s called a general meeting,” he said. “You know she’s going to ask you to be there. And if you’re not able to prove what she’s been saying there’s going to be trouble.”

  “I know,” I said, my voice firm with the decision I’d made.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Because,” and his voice dropped to a whisper, “you could leave, you know. There’s no reason for you to go through with it. You could take another semester, write something else. You could even take some time off, go somewhere.”

  “Like where?” I asked.

  “Your mother and I were thinking of your uncle’s place in St. Catharines. Sanyi would love to have you. You could spend the summer there.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think that would work for me.”

  There was a moment of silence on the other end. “No,” he said. “I guess you’re right.” I thought I heard him whisper something about Éva—or was it Ílona?—but his voice was too soft to hear.

  Neither of us knew how to continue.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I said.

  “Sure,” he answered, his voice distant. “Sure, sure.”

  I went to the Szécsényi Club early the next morning, dragging my feet along the sidewalk, up the steps, through the front door, to find Holló in the library looking absently through a series of books and magazines. His makeup was smeared, as if he’d put it on while standing in a moving train. He nodded hello, forced out a smile, and indicated the stack of books with his hand.

  I nodded back and looked at them, half a dozen journals, a novel, a book of poems, and, most amazingly, a journal written during the 1950s—in the original. “Wow,” I said, despite myself, paging through it, noting the dates, the archaic handwriting, stopping to read the pages Holló had marked with sticky notes, then looking back at him in shock, and sitting down to read the entries, all dating from 1953, by Antal Balogh, a novelist who’d fearlessly petitioned the censoring of his work. The entries detailed his meetings with Holló, whose inability (or unwillingness) to change the verdict understandably infuriated Balogh, who spent pages describing their meetings, and exactly what he thought of Holló and the whole Ministry of Culture. It was a remarkable document, irreplaceable, and I was so amazed by it I completely forgot Holló was there, until he said, “If you don’t need these, I can put them away.”

  I looked at him, unable to respond, and put down the journal on top of the other material Holló had gathered for me, like some kind of death wish on the old man’s part, wanting to create as total a case against himself as he could. “If you don’t want them,” he said, “if they’re extraneous . . .” Behind Holló’s careful words I could hear what was really going through his mind: If you’re too scared to go through with this, if you aren’t brave enough to do me this favour . . .

  “No, I’ll use them,” I answered, reaching for the journal again. “How did you get this?”

  He smiled. Good. “Antal Balogh committed suicide early in 1954,” he said. “His mother delivered that to me,” he nodded at the journal, “in person.”

  The way he said it, so easy, I wondered if I’d heard correctly. “What did you do?”

  Holló stood there impassive, not a twitch to betray what he was feeling. “Nothing,” he said. “There was nothing I could do, except have her arrested.” He laughed bitterly. “But I let her get away with it.” Holló closed his eyes. “Balogh’s books, his novels”—his nostrils widened—“they were really beautiful. Sentence by sentence. I can still remember some of them.” He opened his eyes. “I forwarded them to Adriána. They were destroyed.” You have to do this for me. I’m tired of keeping this to myself.

  “I see,” I said. But I didn’t see, not at all, only Holló standing there in all his terrible peace, and I wondered if Balogh’s mother had seen the same thing, his passivity, his refusal to take action, his feigned optimism, and whether it had sent the same shudder, half rage, half hopelessness, through her.

  “Well, I’ll leave them then,” he said. “Your paper is due in a week.” We’re going all the way.

  “Yes,” I said, but I wasn’t looking at or even speaking to him then, I was lost already, back in that rush of words Balogh had written during the fall and winter of 1953, so close to his suicide but still taking care to make sure his story came out right, each word in its place, each breathless clause brimming with invective, a magical current that must have finally run dry, because I couldn’t see why anyone who wrote this well, regardless of whether he was published, would quit life, as if it should have been enough, his sheer talent, his genius, even if he was its only witness.

  In the days that followed I didn’t see Éva at all, nor anyone else, as I raced my thesis to the finish line. It was, I now realize, a way of avoiding people, anyone who might speak to me about Holló. I sat in the club’s library writing and writing, taking apart the sources, putting them back together, perfecting the transcript of the interview.

  Éva and I did speak once on the phone. She understood that I needed to get this done, though there was an extra anxiety there too, something she wasn’t saying, but when I asked what it was, Éva said we could talk after the thesis was finished.

  Sometimes Holló would come into the room, completely unconcerned with what I was doing, moving around the furniture with his duster or vacuum or cloth as if the place had gone strange, he no longer lived there, had no idea how dirty it was, cleaning the same places over and over. He, too, was desperately waiting for me to finish. Like Éva, he wanted it over with.

  But of all of them, Ílona was the most impatient. At ten o’clock, the night of the twenty-eighth, she pulled up to the curb as I was walking home, motioning for me to get in. “Szerbusz,” she said, stinking of booze, patting the seat beside her. I looked back along the road, then at her. Ílona scowled. “I need to speak with you,” she said. I glanced over my shoulder at the club, feeling sick, and shook my head.

  “But I don’t need to speak with you,” I finally said.

  She smiled tightly. “That’s right. All you need to do is listen.” The car idled noisily, Ílona shaking her head free of some drunken lassitude, trying to make her words, what she was going to say next, sharp and to the point. “Éva loves you,” she said. “She really does.” She leaned so far toward me across the passenger seat her head was almost outside the door. “You know I’m telling the truth. And you know, too, that if she does love you, then what I think doesn’t matter.” The leather of the car seat creaked. “It’s taken me a long time,” she continued. “But I’m prepared to acknowledge that.” Her eyes glinted with street light. “I’m prepared.” I waited there on the sidewalk. “You can walk home if you like.” She shrugged, leaned back, gazed out at the sky. “It’s a nice night. Early summer.”

  I heard trees rustling along the street, saw the city’s light and smog turning the sky a hazy orange, distant office buildings glittering to the sky, smelled a summer almost fresh enough to make me forget I was in Toronto. When I looked back, Ílona was staring over the steering wheel as if she meant to go, thou
gh the passenger door was still open.

  “You’ll get it,” I said. “He’s practically forcing me to give it to you.”

  “Oh? Why do you think that is?” she asked, still gazing out the windshield.

  “Because he’s as sick of you as I am,” I said. “Of all of you.”

  “Well, it’s not really about what he wants, or what we want, is it? It’s about what’s right.”

  I slammed the door, and continued walking, and it was several minutes, long after I’d rounded the corner, that I heard the roar of her car as it blew by me along Harbord.

  The first thing I did on getting home was call Éva, who answered on the first ring, strange noises leaking into the mouthpiece that suggested she was somewhere else, not at home, and I could swear there was a bird crying somewhere in the background.

  I told her about my encounter with Ílona. For a while Éva said nothing, the silence on the other end broken by that same piercing cry.

  “Where the hell are you?” I asked.

  “The tree fort,” she answered. “There’s a nest up here somewhere. I think I’m disturbing it.”

  “Oh,” I said, not surprised that she’d be up there, even at that time of night.

  “She bought my plane ticket,” Éva finally said. “She just went ahead and did it.”

  “Plane ticket?”

  “To Hungary,” Éva said. “It’s still two months to graduation, but she bought it anyhow. I leave July first.” She waited before continuing. “She says it’s my graduation present.”

  “You’re not going to go.” I’d intended it as a statement, but the way it came out, so hesitating, it might as well have been a question, and I wondered why I hadn’t said, “I’ll follow you,” instead.

  Éva waited again. The birds screamed. “It’s only for a year. You’ll be done your thesis and have your degree. You could visit me,” she finished, supplying the words I should have said.

  “You’re not going to go,” I repeated, trying for more emphasis, though because of the repetition it ended up sounding strange, accusatory.

  Her voice hardened as well. “Sure. It’s always up to me, isn’t it?” she hissed. “If you’re so willing to put an end to this why don’t you ask me to move in with you? Right now. I’d do it, you know.” By now, she was shouting into the phone. “We could be done with my mother once and for all.”

  “No, that’s not it.” I wanted it to sound like I was pleading. “It’s all going to work out. This is just your mother’s way of threatening me so I’ll expose Holló. Once I do that, she’ll cancel the ticket.”

  “No! You don’t get it!” she said. “This is not about Holló.” And with that the phone went dead.

  7.

  But it was about Holló, nothing but, and Éva’s mistake (or so I thought at the time) was in thinking it could all be separated out—my thesis from Ílona’s vendetta from our relationship—but they were all strung together like a series of explosives. To tamper with one was to tamper with the whole.

  The next day, April 29, I called the Szécsényi Club and asked Holló what he’d no doubt been expecting me to ask ever since he’d told me the story of Adriána. It was a special favour I wanted, something that went against the one rule of his library, and for some reason I lied (even though I knew Holló was perfectly aware of what was going on), saying the examiners wanted to see not only my paper but the rest as well, every one of the sources I’d used, especially the issue of Piros Krónika, as well as the pamphlets and articles and of course Balogh’s memoir, since none of these were available from the university library. They needed to make sure my bibliography was legitimate.

  In reality, the examiners didn’t want to see any of it. Like most professors in that situation, all they wanted was to get it done with, to read my thesis as quickly as possible, ask a bunch of questions during the oral defense, then give me a grade—as painlessly as possible—and not think about it for one second more. It was really Ílona who needed to see my sources, and Holló knew it.

  Which is why he was silent only for a second on the phone, and then, in his unhurried way, he said it wasn’t a problem, he’d make an exception in my case, provided I returned everything within a day or two. “I’m sure nobody will come around looking for those particular books,” he said.

  I told him I’d be over later. I couldn’t hide the anger in my voice, almost snarling. I was doing exactly as he wanted, all his dirty work, and he didn’t have to lift a finger, just sit there watching Ílona jerk me around, knowing I was too invested in keeping Éva to do otherwise. I suppose that was the worst of it, Holló relying on exactly the same motivation Ílona was relying on, as if they were working together, as if they’d colluded in bringing me to this impossible choice—Holló or Éva.

  I went to bed after that, thinking I’d go to the club later in the day, pick up the stuff, and deliver the essay to the university tomorrow, right on schedule. I was putting it off, I knew that, disconnecting the phone, climbing between the sheets, covering my head hoping I’d awaken to find the dilemma gone. It was a sweaty sleep, and I spent more time waking than dreaming, always just below the surface, fighting ripples of anxiety. Then I was up, into my clothes, long before I’d planned it, and out the door.

  Holló was waiting for me when I arrived. He entered the front hall as soon as I stepped across the threshold, a large box in his arms.

  He was not smiling, he did not say hello, but he didn’t look unhappy either. He was just neutral, standing with the box as if he was hoping I’d relieve him of it so he could get on with the day.

  He held it out, arms fully extended, and I stood there, unable to take it. He thrust it at me again. “It’s what you came for,” he said, and his face was terrifying, all that makeup blurring my vision, only this time it wasn’t coming back together, it was sliding apart in an ooze of pigment and oil and powder.

  “I gave you a lot of chances to get out of this,” Holló finally said, though it seemed to me, oddly, like an apology.

  “I know,” I said, confused.

  But the moment I took the box and held its weight, Holló’s face resolved itself, losing any sign of weakness or passivity, as if he’d known all along it would come to this, the troubles of the last few weeks, confirming some impression he’d formed on human nature long ago. His nonchalance, his easy acceptance, these weren’t because he thought he could count on anyone’s loyalty, mine or that of the people in the club, or even on the smooth course of Ílona’s malice, but because my betrayal, the herd mentality of the membership, the dark egotism of Ílona, was exactly the world as he knew it. For him it had been inevitable, all our actions beyond our control, and he’d prepared carefully for it.

  I can’t remember whether I was angrier with Holló for misleading me, or with myself for feeling so relieved, holding that box, at having the choice taken away.

  “Don’t you ever feel bad about what you did?” I asked. “Not even for a second?”

  Holló shrugged. “Ask yourself, how many books have you reread in your life? I’ll bet you’re always looking for the next one, aren’t you? Just like the rest of us.” He waited for my response, but there was none. “The great thing about writing,” he whispered, “about art, is that you can always make more of it. It’s not like I destroyed the recipe for antibiotics.”

  “It’s not just the books,” I said, stunned by the coldness of his answer. “People put their whole lives into their art. It’s not just paper, film, whatever you want to call it, you were destroying!”

  “Anyone,” he said, stepping toward me, “who mistakes life for a book, who thinks his life ends when his works end, is an idiot. Not one word of it will last, not one. And the moment is everything. I learned that very clearly back there.”

  There were so many responses to this I couldn’t make a sound. Instead, I shifted the box to one hand, unable to stop looking at him.

  “But this one I did for you, not me,” Holló continued. “You don’t understand
the sacrifice now, what I’ve given up, what’s been lost here, and not just by me, but you will later.”

  He spoke as if he’d taken a terrible risk, as if one day I’d realize the danger he’d faced so I could learn the lesson he’d wanted to teach, that one day I’d come around to thanking him for freeing me from Éva, and Éva from me, for she had been secondary all along—to my thesis, to my relationship with Holló, to my need to prove myself to her mother—though I’d only appreciate the salvation long after, when it became clear Éva would not return from Hungary and I would not follow her there, when Ílona’s vendetta was dismissed for the lack of proof only I, with my research and thesis, could have provided. It may have been an imperfect peace at the Szécsényi Club, but it was still peace, and it depended on nobody having to know, nobody being irrefutably confronted with, who and what Holló was. For Holló it meant survival itself, and that’s exactly what he was, what he’d always been—a survivor—and I finally understood that our responsibility to others sometimes requires us to bury knowledge, even destroy it, though we’ve been told, over and over, that there’s nothing worse.

  But I wasn’t thinking of that then, only of what I’d lost, Éva and my thesis and my father’s respect, and I turned with the box and left Holló and walked in the direction of my parked car, down Harbord Street. After a block I peeled back the flaps and spilled it, the ash of books and pamphlets and the memoir and my essay, all of it irreplaceable, poured out onto the sidewalk.