A Book of Memories (103 page)

I remember only one instance when I couldn't come up with a credible explanation. But even this experience, jolting as it was, did not break my will. The incident did expose me, yet I was not about to give myself away. I've been a practicing liar ever since, a prevaricator and concealer in matters small and great. I can't help it, but it is with considerable indulgence that I observe the transparent duplicity of my fellow humans in their search for unequivocal truths. But now I'd like to relate the incident.

From my readings about the art of war I knew that logistics units were just as important to the success of an operation as were armaments, preparedness, and the morale of the front-line troops. It's important that every soldier be equipped with the best available weapon and that he be convinced of the necessity of having to fight, but it's just as important that supplies follow each phase of the operation like clockwork. We had to gain experience in this area, too.

We spent unforgettable summer days at the Ferencváros railroad station and the Rákos switchyard. The trainmen tried to chase us away more than once, and they were rough about it, too, but we sneaked back every time. The railroad tracks, winding through the stations and branching off to different destinations, the switches, turntables, and signals, all parts of a coherent system almost like a living organism, are still vivid in my memory. The knowledge I picked up there had a lot to do with the tense social relationship between the railwaymen and the track repairmen. If we managed to attach ourselves to a maintenance crew, we had it made for the rest of the day. We drank their watered-down wine, ate their bread, their bacon, and enjoyed the shy, fatherly affection and interest shown us by these lonely, silent, middle-aged men who worked and lived far from their families. If supervisors or a group of engineers came by, they'd just grumble: Come on, men, you know better than to bring your children to the workplace. Only vagrants and professional criminals knew better than we how easy it was to move around in a freightyard. From their towers, controllers see only busy, purposefully scurrying ants. They never bother to check the number, color, or size of these ants. And you can easily leave the colony. Just make sure you avoid the switchmen's booths, the kind of loose-limbed way of walking that might suggest loafing, and running accidentally into any supervisors.

We also took rides now and then. Of all our activities there, the most exciting, and riskiest, was climbing into one of the cars of a freight train about to be assembled. Then we really had to pay attention to what was happening between the control tower and the assemblers. We could board only from the side away from the tower, but once we were inside, the commands issuing from the tower would tell us what would happen next. After the instruction from the tower
—nothing but the car number followed by the destination number—we heard noises of jostling and jiggling around the buffers and connecting cables, all accompanied by colorful cursing, and then silence. That was the time to find something to hang on to good and tight. It was hard to tell when, but the jolt would come. Not a big one—yet. The truly great pleasure always makes you wait for it.

Two hard bodies clink, giving the car its initial momentum on the open track. It starts rolling slowly, sluggishly, and maybe it is held up a little by a switch thrown at the last minute. If the car comes to a complete halt, there's real trouble. Frustrated yelling from the tower, cursing from down below, because the entire train has to be moved to give the errant car one big push. More grousing and screaming and yanking, but once the train gets rolling, the pleasure is so great you can't even comprehend what's happening to you. The uniform acceleration due to the weight and direction of an inert body, slowed only by surface resistance, hurls you irresistibly and at staggering speed toward the next moment.

We loved the tremendous, thunderous impact, which was followed by smaller, gentler bumps. If it was no longer safe to jump off, we'd go for a ride. Generally, they would just shunt the newly assembled train off to a sidetrack, but it happened sometimes that it was sent immediately on a regular run. That morning the train we were on started out for Cegléd; it was picking up speed fairly rapidly, it was too late to jump off. It slowed down once in a while but didn't stop. We weren't too concerned
—it wasn't the first time this had happened—maybe just a little more jittery than usual. At one point when the train was again slowing down, Prém gave the alert sign. I jumped first, he was right behind me. As I landed, one of my legs sank knee-deep into a pile of rubble, while Prém neatly tumbled down the side of the embankment. But the momentum of the jump was still propelling my body forward. To this day the memory of that moment is crystal clear. The bright sunshine, the sight of his freely rolling body, and the bone cracking in my trapped leg—whose sound couldn't be heard in the noise of the passing train yet which I did hear. Then fast-approaching rocks. The way I smack into them, face first. We were done for. All our secrets exposed. Even in my pain, descending like a terrifying gray curtain, I had only one thought, that my clumsiness was unforgivable. Prém dug me out and wanted to carry me on his back. Whimpering, I begged him not to touch me anywhere. As it turned out later, my left arm and two of my left ribs were only cracked, but the pain on that side was more intense than in the open fracture of my right leg. Blood was pouring from my head and face. And to make matters worse, we were in the middle of nowhere. Not a soul, not a vehicle or a house anywhere. Just flat, scorched grazing land, a cloudless sky. He had to go for help. My only consolation was that he didn't lose his head.

By the time I was being rolled toward the operating room, a dozen figures in white were running alongside us. That's when I said goodbye to him. I heard one of the medics say: You wait here for the police, son.

When I came to, I could peep out with only one eye from the thick bandage on my head. I was in a cast, and my whole body was wrapped in white. A nurse was sitting on my bed. Her face was like a huge, beating white heart. She was humming and mumbling, trying to sing to me; she made me drink, she was stroking me and wiping me with a wet cloth. She was working hard, fussing over me. I must have looked pitiful, in need of comforting, for she kept singing that everything was all right, everything was just fine, and soon everything will heal, get better, be good as new. Only I mustn't move around too much. I should just tell her if I was becoming nauseous or had to pee. She'll stay with me until my mother comes, no need to worry.

Until then I hadn't thought of my mother. But from that word, just as from the ether-soaked mask they had put on my face in the operating room, everything grew distant and feather-light, though I felt myself very heavy, and then everything went dark.

As if kicking my way to the surface of some terrible dream, I woke up to realize that my body was cooling off and if that kept up I would definitely die. I was wrapped in wet sheets. I heard the nurse's soft voice: It's all right, it's all right. My temperature had shot up, she was bringing it down. But it seemed that changing the sheets over my naked limbs didn't help much, the fever kept slipping back from under the cast and the bandages. After a while, however, the temperature did subside, and I still remember that when she covered me with a dry sheet, quite pleased with herself, I was sorry I couldn't show off my naked body to her anymore.

Judging by the lights and by the noises in the ward, it must have been early afternoon. Luckily, my mother hadn't come yet. Later I had another attack of high fever, and by the time she got it under control, it was evening. The nurse told me she had to leave, her shift had ended, someone else was taking over for her. I don't know why she was so touched, she couldn't have seen much of my face. Maybe it was a gesture I made. Or maybe she could sense, even through the thick bandages, that I had never entrusted myself so unconditionally to another human being. Hardly any time went by and she was back. As soon as she appeared in the doorway, I ventured to say that she was right to come back. Why, she asked, was there anything wrong? No, nothing, I said. And I really felt that I was regaining my strength and was seeing clearly with that one eye. Then why did I say it? Because I needed her, I said. We reached for each other's hand at the same time, and she blushed. I was twelve years old and she perhaps ten years older.

We don't need to imagine how people close to us will behave. Certain situations always bring with them the appropriate form of behavior. Until the end of our lives we keep repeating identical gestures, and this is very reassuring for those around us. With this in mind, I was preparing myself for my mother's arrival.

The ward was full of white mummies like myself, lying strapped to their beds. I somehow wanted to dissociate myself from them. They wheezed, moaned, snored, groaned, and they stank. I had my back propped up with big pillows. I asked the nurse to turn on the overhead reading lamp, to take the bedpan out from under me, and to bring me a newspaper. I watched her slipping in and out of the room. But I was in too much pain and couldn't read with my one good eye long enough for my mother to arrive while I was still in this position. I dozed off. When I opened my eyes again, to my great surprise, it wasn't my mother I saw at the door but a she-devil dressed in my mother's clothes. Just as she was barging into the room and heading straight for me. This I didn't expect. With her arms outstretched she flew into me, her handbag hit me in the face, she seized my shoulders, and if the nurse hadn't hurled herself between us, she would have given me a thrashing then and there. And she had never raised a finger to me before. Never. Now the two of them were scuffling right on top of me. While in a voice choked with rage the she-devil was screaming, What did you do? What did you do again? the guardian angel, her voice a falsetto, kept shrieking, What are you doing? Don't touch him! You're crazy! Help! It suddenly turned light, blindingly light in the ward, and in an instant everyone was up and yelling, but very quickly it was all over. The she-devil vanished, evaporated, and my mother broke down, sobbing, on my bed. The nurse let go of her. She then checked my cast, felt my healthy as well as my bandaged parts, made everyone go back to bed, giggled nervously, told them everything was all right, turned off the light, and, grinning at me one last time, left the ward.

In a situation like this, the most sensible thing a child can do is to explain to his parent what he has done and why. He must confess all his sins, reveal at least a third of his secrets, and with a show of contrition gain her forgiveness. Still, it didn't even occur to me to give us away. I was convinced that Prém would tell the police only what was absolutely necessary. Perhaps the reason for my decision was that for the first time in my life I was caught between two women. This stormy scene had made me realize that Mother was not just my mother but also a woman. I had never thought of this before. One woman was sobbing on my bed, the other giggling as she circled my bed. As if she were gloating over my being in the clutches of a madwoman.

Still sobbing, my mother kept repeating her questions, hovering around the most critical problem of my life. I had to make a decision about my own independence. Using my good hand and the arm in the cast, I turned her crying face toward me. I was angry with her, I wanted to steer her away from this sensitive area, but in a way that wouldn't hurt her too much.

She could have come sooner, I said.

But she just got home. A policeman was there, waiting for her. A policeman.

I've been lying here all day with not a bite to eat.

She raised her tearful eyes to me.

I said I wanted some sour-cherry compote.

Sour-cherry compote? she asked incredulously. Where would I get you sour-cherry compote?

In the meantime, though, her tear-filled eyes regained their old familiar look: compliant and somewhat frightened, a widow's look. I managed to change her back into my mother.

Today I know that it was I who killed the woman in her.

I need not emphasize that this life, our life, was different in every way from my friend's life. Although there was a brief, and for my development decisive, period in our youth when, like him and his girlfriend Maja, we also caught the fever of counter-espionage. Prém and I called it reconnaissance. We had to penetrate enemy territory, then clear out unnoticed. We invariably chose apartments and houses whose occupants we didn't know. We thought it more honest this way. Friends whose houses we may have entered we wouldn't have been able to face afterward. We'd reconnoiter the garden, pick out the deserted room, find the window accidentally left ajar or the shutter that could be forced open, the door that just had to be pushed in, and then select the object to be removed. One of us did the job while the other covered him.

We never kept anything. The objects we took as evidence of our ability were later slipped back. At worst, we'd throw them back, or place them by the door or on the windowsill. Documents, clocks, paperweights, pens, pillboxes, seals, cigarette cases, the oddest knickknacks went through our hands this way. I remember a lacquered Chinese music box and a very pornographic statuette with movable joints. There isn't a jealously guarded secret of my love life that I can recall more vividly than I can these objects. We violated the defenseless lives of strangers
—and exposed, unsuspecting, silent apartments. This was the point at which our community of two passed the boundaries of the permissible. At the very thought of an operation our stomachs would tighten, our eyes glaze over, our hands and feet shake, our insides rumble shamelessly, and in our nervous agitation, not once, we moved our bowels in plain sight of each other.

I believe that the moral value of an act can he physically measured in one's body. Such measurements are taken by everyone and in every moment. And the unit of measurement is nothing but the peculiar ratio between urges and inhibitions. For action results not only from urges attributable to instincts but from the relationship of inhibitions, attributable to upbringing, to these urges. Character makeup, social attitude, inherited aptitude, and family origins all look for their proportional share in any action we take. To repeated denial of such proportional sharing, the body reacts with fear, perspiration, anxiety, in more serious cases with fainting, vomiting, or diarrhea, in the most serious cases with actual organic dysfunction.