George Konrad - A Guest in my Own Country

Was that all? They were happy to get rid of him so cheaply.

So Miklós drove from factory to factory, gathering up emissaries of the workers’ councils, and that very day saw the formation of the Greater Budapest Workers’ Council in Újpest. At the founding assembly Miklós made liberal references to Marx, Heine, Shelley, and Ady, but before he had finished they thanked him for his efforts and begged him to let them pursue their own ideas. Miklós was not in the least offended.

When, eight years later in Paris, I asked him about those events, he reminisced with amiable humor. After leaving the workers, he tried to bring György Lukács, the philosopher, together with Imre Nagy, the democratic Communist prime minister, hoping the symbolic collocation of their names would be a message in itself. I believe Lukács was named Minister of Culture, and I reminded Miklós about Lukács’s previous stint as Minister of Culture during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. When Lukács held the post in 1919, he ordered the pubs closed, a move that did nothing to increase the popularity of the regime. Another reason the move bewildered me was that the philosopher enjoyed a good tipple.

Rum played the primary role in my consumption of alcohol. I would take it with a double espresso at the Saint Stephen Ring Casino Café, where a full-breasted baroness made the coffee, a former Social Democrat MP recently released from an internment camp let you grab his unusually long earlobes for a forint, and an occasional click of heels came from one of the corner tables (a monarchist message immediately following a Polish émigré’s references to Dr. Otto Habsburg, rightful heir to the Hungarian throne).

For a day or two I served as bodyguard to the psychologist Ferenc Mérei, then patrolled the public squares of Budapest with my machine gun at the ready and visited a few editorial offices. I would hang up the long, heavy, dark-blue coat I had bought for a pittance at a consignment shop and use the next hook for the machine gun, as if it were an umbrella. Freed from this double burden, I enthusiastically presented plans for the revitalization of our journal.

Stopping at a café for something strong — the woman at the piano had an absolutely perfect, towering, platinum-dyed hairdo, as if these were the most halcyon of days — I watched a group of people rush past, a man out in front, the others in pursuit. They gunned the man down on some cellar stairs.

Walking through the halls of the university, I ran into Miklós Bélády, a beloved teacher of mine. We stopped for a moment face to face.

“Humanists with machine guns?” he said.

“These are changing times,” I responded. “Better to be on the safe side.” It was unclear to either of us what I meant. I had read Marx’s thoughts on “realistic humanism.” One protects one’s family and oneself if one must.

I headed home to listen to the radio and read Erasmus and Tolstoy. In front of the Horizont Bookshop I had found a copy of Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, Youth in the trash and removed it from the other books, most of which had been burnt to ashes.

It had not taken long for piles of refuse to accumulate in the streets. The streets were also full of posters demanding the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops in the strongest terms. Nor was it enough for them simply to leave the country: they were to ask the pardon of the heroic Hungarian people, which they had ruthlessly dishonored with their recent invasion and unjustifiably extended stay, recalling in our memory the havoc wreaked by Russians in 1849.

On my way home I stopped off at the Writers’ Association, where things were buzzing. You could feel a sense of importance emanating from the directorship as they prepared a public statement. It had to be at once brassy and silky, sonorous and deathly — a masterpiece, in other words.

Trucks coming in from the countryside had brought a bit of nourishment for the intellectual leaders, the conscience of the nation, behatted men who were good at pressing against wall or fence the moment they heard a burst of fire. In any case, a nice little package slid into my bag. Down in the restaurant writers were debating how far back to go: 1949? 1948? 1947? 1945? Even further? The day the Germans marched in? Was there an acceptable starting point? Or perhaps this day of revolution marked the dawn of a new era. This very day, with its giddiness, its swagger, its display of the dead. Liberation goes hand in hand with murder.

A stocky fellow made a triumphant entrance, his face flushed with glory: he had managed to shoot two Soviet soldiers and write two stories. His boyish pride suggested he now considered himself a man: he had gone from student to killer.

A reporter had heard that the Soviet tanks were pulling out. Another had heard precisely the contrary: railway workers had sent word that they were rolling in on wheels. He said the Old Man — meaning Imre Nagy — had just waved his hand at the news.

In the café on the corner of my building I heard a man in a Persian-collared overcoat assuring all and sundry that Konrad Adenauer was on his way, though the bearer of glad tidings had added “on a white horse,” which turned them into a moronic fairy tale. The neighborhood’s high-class whore, a former language teacher and genuine polyglot, was outraged that the swimming pool she visited daily had been closed. She also asked in stentorian tones whether anyone at the café had read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando , because she had not yet decided whether she cared for it or not.

Before I could open my door, two other doors popped open, and that era’s masters of information retrieval, the concert violinist and the filling station attendant, stormed me with their questions. Theirs was a resplendent new friendship. One moment they would feel the flush of victory, the next they would predict a house-to-house roundup, the men beaten and the women raped. And what would they collect now? Wristwatches again, as during the war?

Late on the evening of 4 November the art student — her name was Éva Barna — and I were standing guard with machine guns at the University’s Humanities Division. Once in a while a tank came rumbling down Váci Street. That was the banal part. The important part was Éva’s beauty, her striking, deep voice, and, most of all, what she said. She had read Camus’ Mythe de Sisyphe in the original; I had not. A mean-spirited jealousy moved me to make some ironic remarks about Camus. Éva emigrated that December and eventually met Camus and corresponded with him. Between Éva and Camus stood only travel expenses; between Éva and me the Iron Curtain.

Vera made some phone calls. What she heard was enough for her. She had no desire to see the fallen, burned, or hanged sons of whatever nation; she longed only to leave and live among more reliable peoples: she would go to Paris to teach English and Russian, giving us something to live on; she would rent an apartment, set everything up, and I would follow. She said I should stop being so difficult.

On 11 November, after the defeat, Miklós Krassó and my cousin Pál Zádor told me they were leaving the next day and asked me to go with them. They had assured my passage. They showed me my name on the document. Their story was that we were going to persuade others to return home.

I refused. I said it couldn’t be as bad as before. I would hold out. I would outlast the leaders. I had no wish to be swept into the great outflow; I wanted to know what was going on here, in these streets. It was an unfinished story, and I refused to tear myself away from it.

Among Biblical heroes I found Jeremiah particularly appealing: he knew in advance what would be — he prophesied the fall of the Hebrew commonwealth — and all he asked of the victor was that he be allowed to mourn his city and his people on its ruins.