Tibor Fischer - Under the Frog

When Kálmán returned with another officer, Gyuri was still floating around outside the dining-room. ‘We couldn’t find any anaesthetic,’ he said undoing his uniform, ‘this is going to take a long time. He’s got more metal in him than a cash register.’ During the intermissions in the surgery Gyuri learned from Kálmán that he had found out that morning that István’s unit had been strafed by Russian planes near Godolo, just outside Budapest. Kálmán had phoned Elek and they had gone out to search for István. It was a good thing, Gyuri realised, that his mother was away in the countryside getting supplies, otherwise Elek would be taking full responsibility for the Second World War.

Much later, Krudy came out: ‘Now we can start worrying about the Russians.’

In some ways István had been very lucky. They put him on the last train to get out of Budapest, moments before the Russians completely encircled the city. He didn’t have to spend six weeks in a cellar while the Russians and Germans argued over Budapest.

There were some consolations to living in a cellar, first-floor Noemi who had been unrequiting Gyuri’s love for some time was forced into proximity with him. But the diet of tedium, unwashedness and intermittent horsemeat was hard to take. It was also hard to think well of anyone with whom you had spent six weeks in a cellar. The only person to come out of the cellar episode with any credit was Mrs Molnár, venomous in peacetime but now that war had expunged the basis of her displeasure with society – namely the lead everyone else had in such fields as youth, pleasure and more expensive patisserie – sparked cheer and encouragement. Pataki had a huge supply of books and seemed content with the opportunity for a good read. Elek had sat stoically smoking cigarettes for as long as there were cigarettes. After that, he just sat stoically.

It was not long after Noemi had complained about not having washed in recent history, that the bleak observation of old Fitos, the head pessimist in a cellar strong in pessimistic competition, ‘Cheer up, when you think things have become unbearable, they are going to get worse’, came true. The Russians made their way into the cellar.

Depending on how drunk they were, they either removed the women to some separate room or they did it on the spot. They were fair. They didn’t just rape the young and attractive women but distributed the violations equally. It was a day when Gyuri was glad that he didn’t own a vagina.

The Russians took anything of value, anything portable; Gyuri even noticed one eyeing the huge boiler greedily.

Elek negotiated with them in German, as far as circumstances and linguistic abilities allowed. This rather boiled down to Elek translating the Ivans’ request for booty. The legendary fondness of the Red Army for wristwatches proved to be well-founded: everyone, including Elek, lost their timepiece.

The Russians left bouncily, doubtless feeling the cellar at number ten had been well worth the visit. Gyuri hadn’t been upset or concerned about his mother’s jewels or Elek’s watch; after all, Elek could buy replacements after the war. However, he was glad he had hidden his own wristwatch, a large Swiss model with so many dials he couldn’t remember what they were all for, around his right ankle, beneath the protection of a thick sock. ‘They didn’t get my watch,’ he reported to Elek, showing its concealed position. Elek stared at him in disbelief, slapped him around the head, took the watch and rushed out to give it to the Russians.

In the streets it looked as if it had been raining dead Russians. As Gyuri and Pataki wandered around they didn’t notice any dead Germans; perhaps the German horror of disorder had prompted them to tidy up as they retreated. All the corpses were frozen solid and many of them had left life in the most ridiculous postures. It reminded Gyuri of the pictures of the bodies from Pompeii, frozen in time by the lava from erupting Vesuvius, that István had brought back from his school trip there. Gyuri was looking forward to visiting Pompeii, mainly because of the more artistic murals, as István said the guide had labelled them, one of which reputedly featured a guy with a dick the size of an oar.

A lorry pulled up and before the idea of running away had even occurred to him or Pataki, a Soviet soldier jumped out, a fat Ukrainian peasant. (If he wasn’t one he should have considered that profession because he had the looks for it.) Waving his submachine gun, the davai guitar, in the winning way the Ivans had, he succinctly expressed his wish that they should load up some of his fallen comrades onto the lorry. Having made clear the task, the soldier set off for some investigative looting. For weeks after the fighting ended, they were quite accustomed to Russians strolling into the flat and liberating some item that caught their eye, anything from one of Elek’s suits to his Mother’s eau de cologne, usually consumed on the premises. There had even been one individual who had stayed for a long time trying to work out how you were supposed to drink from the toilet bowl.

Józsi joined Gyuri and Pataki and gave them a hand loading up the defunct soldiers. The floor of the lorry was frozen and you could slide the corpses along as if you were curling. There were some really ludicrous poses- one corpse had a hand cupped to his ear as if straining to hear something. ‘What’s that, Sergei?’ Pataki supplied the line. ‘The wrist watches are definitely in the next block.’ Another corpse they managed to get upright, and leaning him slightly against a wall managed to return a semblance of animation to him. Pataki sacrificed a last cigarette to give a more life-like appearance to the figure. ‘Sure, I’ve got a light,’ said Pataki holding a match to the cigarette inserted between cadaverous lips. From a distance it really did look a Russian soldier having a smoke. It was as they were trying to get one corpse to give a piggyback ride to another that they discerned, by the augmenting sound of swearing, the return of the soldier, who was rather angry to see that he didn’t have a lorryful of corpses and that Gyuri, Pataki and Józsi were slowly, sombrely, respectfully, gingerly and tenderly placing the mortal bits of a fallen hero on the back of the lorry. ‘Malenky robot, malenky robot,’ (a phrase everyone now knew meant ‘a little work’) he repeated furiously, ‘bistro! bistro!’, waving his gun to indicate the rapid tempo of work he desired; evidently, he had an important looting to attend. The remaining bodies in the vicinity went in faster than sacks of potatoes.

Having filled up the lorry, they were about to bid farewell when the soldier indicated, again through the eloquent means of the sub-machine gun, that they should clamber in the back as well. They thought about objecting, but very briefly. They got on board and watched as the lorry drove out to the City Park. It was an uncomfortable trip. ‘These stiffs are stiff,’ remarked Pataki.

They were taken into some administrative building where they were shown to the basement and locked in. An ugliness was noticeable in the atmosphere and because Pataki had some bean soup waiting for lunch, they decided to decamp. There was a small window that with great difficulty they could just about climb out of (another portion or two of horseflesh the previous week and they wouldn’t have made it). They emerged at the back of the building, without any Russians in view. After they had run all the way home, they didn’t set foot outside for a couple of days. Mr Partos from the first floor, who had ventured into town since he had had a tip-off about some milk, had disappeared that day. A week later he managed to get a message home from the cattlewagon he was in at Zahony, near the Hungarian- Soviet border, through the kind medium of a railway worker. He had been invited to do a ‘malenky robot’ by a Russian soldier, and obviously there was some mistake which he was confident he could sort out.