Tibor Fischer - Under the Frog

Jadwiga was again surprised to see him. ‘You take friendship very seriously indeed,’ she observed. They went to supper and the cinema which vacuumed Gyuri’s pockets clean. Posting a birthday card to her grandfather, Jadwiga asked Gyuri if his grandparents were still alive; this annoyed him slightly because she asked the same question during their first walk and thus it was obvious she didn’t store away everything he said in the way that he noted down her words for future examination, building up a dossier on her. ‘My grandfather was in what the Germans called Auschwitz. The Jews don’t like to mention how many Poles died there. My grandfather survived, I think, because he’s a persistent man: a very persistent man. He taught me the value of persistence too.’

Reviewing the proceedings, Gyuri was astonished how much pleasure could be had without taking off any clothes and with a moat of oxygen dividing him from the castle he wanted to storm. He had listened politely when she had made reference several times to her husband not writing dutifully enough to her, though this had been presented more as a general critique of men. The travel was a nuisance though. Gyuri wished they could provide a gymnasium in the train so he could do some athletic training. He opened an accountancy textbook and he and the print stared sullenly at each other for a while. The travel was eating up a lot of his time.

The next weekend he was spared the purgatory of hours of travel because Jadwiga came up to Budapest to visit some fellow Polish students, to whom in the end she barely said hello. It was an unusual situation for Gyuri. He had never shown anyone around Budapest before, indeed he had never had the inclination to do so. Jadwiga had only spent half-days in Budapest in transit to Szeged, so he had to shake his brains for an itinerary.

He took Jadwiga up to the Gellert Hill where there was the Statue of Liberty, a woman reaching out above herself with her arms at full stretch as if reaching for something on a top shelf. Into her grip had been lowered some amorphous burden, perhaps palm fronds, perhaps oversized laurels, certainly something of heavy significance weighing down on the sprightly dame, who nevertheless effected a transcendental expression.

You could see the statue from most parts of the city and from the statue’s foot you had a panoramic view of Budapest. The Statue of Liberty had been originally intended as a memorial to Admiral Horthy’s son, a fighter pilot who like most Hungarians of his age had died around the Don but before it had been erected there had been a change of government and of uniforms in the street. Purged of its dynastic and political past, charged up with the ideology of a new age, it had been stuck on top of the Gellert Hill to act as a spiritual beacon.

As a supplement to the Statue of Liberty, perhaps as an additional ideological boost to compensate for the statue’s ignominious beginnings, was a smaller, clumsier statue of a Soviet soldier, known locally, Gyuri explained, as the Unknown Watch-Thief.

Situated underneath the Statue of Liberty, less visible and not tampering with the skyline, the rather morose Soviet soldier, scowling from being left on duty for so many years, had an inscription: ‘From the grateful Hungarian people’.

‘I assure you the Poles are far more grateful,’ said Jadwiga.

Bánhegyi had, as always when he ran out of cash, dislocated his shoulder (he could dis-and relocate his joints at will), gone to the doctor, collected a cheque from the insurance company (despite the fact that he would be out on court bullying the ball the day after) and invited everyone to the restaurant at the Keleti railway station. Jadwiga impressed everyone with her Hungarian (Róka refused to believe she was Polish) and also with the way she dealt with an enormous plate of wienerschnitzel and a liberal portion of calf’s brains. Gyuri caught glances of admiration from the team and Róka in a state of extreme perturbation had to leave twice for ‘fresh air’.

Pataki had been quiet. His mutism amply expressed his high regard for Jadwiga. Gyuri would have been worried about the possibility of competition from Pataki were it not for his conviction that he was backed by destiny this time. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve drilled for the white oil yet?’ Pataki inquired. Gyuri snorted as an all-purpose reaction which contained amusement, denial, confirmation and contempt, hoping that Pataki would select whichever element would shut him up. Everyone else was evidently assuming that he had full access and this had been quite satisfying, since reputation is only one step away from the real thing. ‘I think you’re going to make it this time,’ Pataki appended.

As he railwayed down to Szeged the subsequent weekend, he tried to think of some good pretext to cover his trip, at the same time thanking providence that he worked for the railways which made such a long-distance liaison financially possible. Jadwiga didn’t seem surprised to see him nor did she bother to ask for any explanation of his presence in Szeged.

Gyuri had still not met Jadwiga’s room-mate Magda, but had developed a great affection for her solely on the strength of her absences. As they sat in the room, Gyuri wondered how to elegantly polevault from friendship into a more clasping form of love. He checked his watch. By six o’ clock, he resolved, he would be entangled in her garments or out. He had put in the miles. This deadline kept shifting steadily like the horizon as time progressed and he remained frozen in a posture of warm cordiality opposite her.

A clock’s far-off chiming entered quietly during a caesura in their conversation. ‘It’s eight o’clock and you haven’t pounced,’ she commented. ‘You men are such frail creatures.’

They closed in to fit their urges together. The main thing, he pondered, hugging her thankfully was that she felt it too; if he had made no inroads on her heart, that would have been unbearable.They clung to each other as if they were tumbling through outer space. Two supplementary conclusions made themselves comfortable in his thoughts: that by holding her he had captured everything he wanted in life and that he had got to the end of pleasure. ‘Switch off the light,’ she breathed. Just before he alighted on her in the darkness, she halted him, and from the bed she reached up to draw back the curtain; her naked body was instantly coated with moonlight. How did she learn that?

They sweated out the loneliness and after the gasps of surprise and exertion, prostrated themselves on each other. That’s something that can’t be wrenched from your possession, Gyuri reflected. Money in the unrobbable bank. Whatever happens now, I’ve won.

Jadwiga’s husband, it turned out, was a bastard.

On the orders of his ball-gripping lust, Gyuri kept looking out of the window, and just when he thought he was going to swoon with expectation, Jadwiga appeared. She was walking at a furious pace, he noted, a woman with a purpose, the weekly week-long separation eliciting the same concupiscent smouldering from her. One of her most endearing features was the way she would take her clothes off as if they were on fire, leaving them where they dropped, without a thought for any sartorial suffering that might occur, and plunging into bed as if it were a cool pond of water. The other women had, no matter how high the flame was under them, been fearful of creases and had taken time out to utilise a hanger or a chair to drape their attire.

Gyuri saw her shape through the smoked opaque glass of the front-door and he thought how lucky he was to have such a visitor. Virtually ignoring him, she made for the bedroom, casting off her dress and stumbling on her knickers, fell flat on her face on the bed. ‘Come inside,’ she commanded at the end of the crumpled clothes-trail.