Doctor Criminale (16 page)

That night I slept very peacefully (and also entirely singly) in my bed somewhere in the middle of the great River Danube. In the morning I woke early, and looked out of my window. There were
sweatsuited joggers already jogging on the tracks outside, towelled bathers already on their way to their sulphurous pleasures. Fishermen fished, birds dipped and darted, long low Russian
cruiseboats slid by on the river, to-ing and fro-ing between here and the Black Sea. I picked up the telephone and dialled my number again, and this time someone answered: ‘Hollo
Sandor.’ ‘I believe you can help me,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said. ‘I haven’t explained what it is yet,’ I said. ‘No, but I can help
you,’ said Hollo Sandor. A little mystified, I explained that I was a British television film-maker working on the subject of Bazlo Criminale, and that I should like to consult him. ‘A
film?’ he said, ‘Everyone makes a film in Budapest now. We are so cheap, of course. Now we are Paris, now we are Moscow, now we are Nice, now we are London, now we are Sydney,
Australia. Never of course Budapest, I think they make films about Budapest in Prague. Very well, you like us to meet about your film?’ ‘If you can give me the time,’ I said,
‘I imagine you’re very busy.’

‘For you I find the time,’ Hollo said, ‘Let us meet at noon at the Petofi statue on the Danube prospect. He is our great poet, you know, so everyone will tell you where it is.
By the way, you are on expenses?’ ‘Yes, I am,’ I said. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘Then I think we will go somewhere very nice. I know all the places. I will see you at
Petofi.’ I went down to the lobby for breakfast, and found there young men from several different and competing film teams, who were packing into vans and trailers the actors and extras, the
clapperboards and cameras, the blondes and redheads, that even I knew were the stuff of a television shoot. I imagined our own team coming out to do the same in a few weeks or months. Our Criminale
project was not at all unusual. As Hollo had said, these days everyone was shooting films in Budapest.

When I had taken breakfast, I caught the tram into Pest, and found myself walking round a city where, it was very clear, history had been changing very fast. Almost all the street names seemed
to have been struck out with red lines, and new names set up either above or below. Karl Marx Square, where I got off the tram, was evidently no longer Karl Marx Square. I did, though, discover one
more enduring monument. Here in the square was Gustave Eiffel’s splendid little West railway station, as fine as I had hoped. I had not come into it because its trains went east, into the
Puszta and to Transylvanian mystery. It was probably from here that Bram Stoker’s innocent Jonathan Harker started, when he chose to take his unfortunate summer holiday in the land of Vlad the Impaler, in the book whose hundredth anniversary was due, like so much else, very shortly. What he
would not have seen in those days was the new addition that had been made to the building. Tucked onto Eiffel’s station was the emporium of McDonald’s Hamburgers, a handy meat dish that
might have saved Count Dracula a lot of trouble.

I turned and walked along the fine boulevard of the Lenin Ring, now no longer called the Lenin Ring, but Terez Korut. Here the stucco and balconies were pitted with bullet holes, perhaps from
the war, perhaps from the Hungarian uprising; the shops below sold Sony Walkmen and Mannesmann computers, as well as stamps, marzipan, and flaky pastry. In a mahogany and marble café of
perfect style, where nothing – not even the contents of the sugar bowl – seemed to have changed since the turn of the century, I sat down among lovers and old ladies in big fur hats and
had good coffee and ice-cream, in a world where it seemed Marx, Lenin and their friends had never been. Then it was time to make my way down to the Petofi statue on the Danube prospect, evidently
one of the few surviving statues in Eastern Europe, and wait for Sandor Hollo.

When I found him at last, he was not at all what I expected. I had imagined a small, intense philosopher, probably carrying a worn leather briefcase and engaged in abstruse thought. Instead a
young man in a dashing white raincoat, blond highlights tinted into his dark hair, passed me by three times, glancing over significantly in what I assumed was erotic invitation. Finally he walked
directly over to me and held out his hand. ‘You are Franz Kay?’ he asked. ‘No, it’s Francis Jay, actually,’ I said. ‘Jay or Kay, it makes no different,’ he
said, ‘Unless you are Kafka. I am to me Hollo Sandor, to you Sandor Hollo. It makes no different either. What is a name? And so you like to talk to me about your film.’ ‘I was
told you could help me,’ I said. ‘I think not here,’ he said, glancing at the crowd, ‘Excuse me, but old habits die hard. In any case I know a very nice place over in Buda for your expenses. Don’t worry, I have a good car, by the way.’ ‘Fine, then, let’s go,’ I said.

‘One moment,’ he said, ‘Before we leave our excellent Petofi, one small lesson in Hungarian. Look across the river. Do you see those two hills?’ Yes, I did indeed.
‘On Gellert Hill, on the left, do you see the monument with the winged victory on the top? That is our monument of grateful thanks to the Russian soldiers who liberated us so kindly. Put up,
of course, by those Russian soldiers. And now, on Castle Hill, to the right, do you also see a great white building?’ I did. ‘That is our monument of grateful thanks to the American
people who sent us so much of their precious Coca-Cola,’ said Hollo, ‘Put up, of course, by those same American people. It is the Budapest Hilton. In Hungary we have learned one thing
very well. History is either one of these, or the other. This year we are all for the Hilton. Why not? Isn’t a bed and a minibar better than a tank? You agree?’

Hollo nodded gravely to me and led me over to his car, a shiny red BMW with racing stripes and rear spoiler, which he had parked flamboyantly right across the pavement. ‘Ultimate Driving
Machine,’ he said, ‘Please get in. By the way, you can smoke in here. This is not the West, it is a free country.’ I sat in the low front seat, and Hollo scorched off, round the
square and up over the Elizabeth Bridge, dodging between clanging yellow trams and slow chugging Trabants. Over on the further bank of the river, he pointed to a large decorated piece of concrete
that stood among the trees. ‘Piece of the Berlin Wall,’ he said, ‘They sent it to us because we opened our borders and let out the Germans. You know here was where the great
change started. The
Wende
, they call it, the turn. Oh, do you like to buy some, by the way? I can get you very good pieces, the real thing, there is a lot of fake wall around now. Also
Russian tank-driver hats.’ We began zigzagging up the great Buda hill, around the vast restored castle. I looked at Hollo, who was changing gear joyously on every bend. ‘Are you really
a teacher at the university?’ I asked.

He looked at me and laughed. ‘Believe me, if I drive this, I don’t do that,’ he said, ‘Do you know how much a university teacher gets in my country? Maybe one-sixth of
what you would make in the West. No, I am a juppie.’ ‘What is a juppie?’ I asked. ‘You don’t know?’ he said, ‘Very mobile young businessman.’
‘Oh, a yuppie,’ I said. ‘You didn’t notice my red braces?’ he asked, and began patting items in the car, ‘CD player, equalizer, central lockings, even Filofax.
We have seen on television here your “Capital City” and know how it is done.’ ‘Well, very nice,’ I said. ‘And how is your Iron Lady?’ he asked, ‘Very
well, I hope. Still for the free market?’ ‘She resigned from office a couple of days ago,’ I said, ‘I just read about it on the train.’ ‘You get rid of
her?’ he asked, ‘No, I don’t believe it.’ ‘It’s been eleven years,’ I said. ‘Nothing,’ said Hollo, ‘Okay, please, send her here quick. We
love her, we need her. Better than these ones we have here, with twenty heads and only half a brain.’ ‘Unfortunately I don’t think it’s allowed,’ I said. ‘Of
course not, national treasure, not for export,’ said Hollo, ‘Now here we get out.’

We had driven up to the top of the hill, through tree-lined streets past fine merchants’ houses, and now we stopped somewhere between the Saint Matthias church and the Budapest Hilton,
which between them dominated the heights. ‘Over here, Fisherman’s Bastion, you have heard of it?’ asked Hollo, ‘It is what everyone remembers of Budapest.’
Fisherman’s Bastion was the delightful concoction of battlemented walls and fairytale turrets I had been looking up at from my hotel window below. From it you had, in turn, a fine view over
Margaret Island, the traffic of the flowing Danube, the spread of Pest, the Parliament Building, the power station, the high ugly workers’ highrise blocks in the distance, and then the plain
stretching out beyond. Near us, artists and potters, embroiderers and woodcarvers, sold their wares, and a moustached Magyar musician in baggy white trousers played his pipes. ‘Ah,
yes,’ I said, ‘It’s called one of the great views of Europe, and it is.’

‘Charming, yes,’ said Hollo, lighting a cigarette, ‘And now you see our trick. Here we have built a great European city, two in fact, one old and one new. Our only problem is
our European cities are not in Europe at all. Budapest is Buenos Aires on the Danube, all a pretend.’ ‘How is it a pretend?’ I asked. ‘First, nearly all these buildings were
not designed for here at all,’ said Hollo, ‘See there our lovely Parliament, down by the river, which hardly meets, by the way. The architect loved your House of Commons, so he made us
one. The Chain Bridge, built by a Scotsman in a kilt. Eiffel from France made the railway station. Our boulevards are from Paris, our coffee houses from Vienna, our banks are English, the Hilton
American. You see why they make films here, we are everything. And this old castle, Fisherman’s Bastion, from which nobody has ever fished, by the way, was built as a fantasy at the turn of
the century. So you see it is Disneyland, and we are Mickey Mouse.’

‘I think it’s a magnificent city,’ I said. ‘I too,’ said Hollo, ‘A great unreal city. You know two million people live in Budapest, and every one is a
European, when they are not being Magyar nationalists. All are artists, intellectuals, actors, dancers, film-makers, great athletes, fine musicians. Unfortunately just for the moment, they drive a
taxi, but one day . . . Then go out into the Puszta, and you will see Europe has stopped. The peasants have carts with horses, there are men in sheepskins herding flocks of ducks. Or look down the
Danube a little, you will find great marshes and old women squatting by the river, washing clothes in the mud. That is Hungary. Two million intellectuals, eight million peasants, and only one thing
in common. Barak palinka, peach brandy. So let us go and have some palinka, and you can explain me your film.’ Hollo led me down from our viewpoint and back between the Cathedral and the
Hilton, into a smart square beyond. Fine merchants’ houses with great rounded coachdoors surrounded the square, and Hollo went into the courtyard of one of these. Then he opened a door, drew
aside a curtain, and ushered me inside.

What lay inside was a small smart restaurant, the Restaurant Kiss. In a small tank beside the entrance black and silver fish of various edible species gasped tragically into our faces; a few
neatly dressed diners sat at pleasant tables in small booths in the room beyond. Hollo tapped the side of the tank and said, ‘Fogas, from our lakes, you must try it. But first palinka.’
A waiter in an embroidered short jacket served us. ‘To your good health and your fine hospitality,’ said Hollo, proudly displaying his red braces and blue striped shirt, ‘May
there be plenty more of both. So you make a film about Criminale Bazlo. How can I help?’ ‘Well, I have to tell you I was expecting to meet a philosopher,’ I said. ‘I was
that once,’ said Hollo, ‘Not any more. Don’t you know philosophy is dead? Not a thought in the world. Marxism-Leninism killed it here, Deconstruction in the West. Here we had too
much theory of reality, there you had not enough. Now I do not expect to think the world into shape. I am not like Hegel, you remember. “So much worse for the world if it does not follow my
principles.” No, now I am a pragmatist and I do something else.’

‘What do you do?’ I asked. ‘I just told you about the
Wende
, the big change,’ said Hollo, ‘You know once, in the DDR, there was a very great academy.
Hundreds of professors who were such fine thinkers and theorists they did not even have to teach any students at all. They wrote great works, Marxist aesthetics, Marxist economics. Now there is no
DDR, no Marxist aesthetics, no Marxist economics. So what do we do with all these fine professors? Not much, you know. They must begin all over again, like children, thinking the world right from
the beginning. They cannot even teach. That was the
Wende
, you see. And I am a
Wendehals
. A changer, I am a changer.’ ‘I see,’ I said, ‘And what do you
change?’ ‘The world and myself,’ said Hollo, swirling the palinka in his glass, ‘How do I explain? I fix things.’ ‘What things do you fix?’ ‘When the
world changes, it seems everyone needs something,’ said Hollo, ‘Do you like a nice apartment in the Valley of Roses, a little biscuit business in Szeged? Do you like a phoneline to the
West, a fax machine from Vienna? Maybe you like a tram company from Csepel, or a small share in pornography business at Lake Balaton? I can fix. And when you make your film here, and you need
back-ups, transports, locations, hotel rooms, contacts, I can fix that too.’

‘That could be useful,’ I said, ‘But before that you were a teacher of philosophy at the university, yes?’ ‘At Eötvös Lorand, yes,’ said Hollo,
‘I taught Marxist theory, socialist correctness.’ ‘So what you do now is very different,’ I said. ‘A bit, but not exactly,’ said Hollo, smiling, ‘You see,
Marx believed in the great historic progress of materialism. Unfortunately he did not know how to make it work. I know a little bit how to make it work.’ ‘And Bazlo Criminale,
wasn’t he at the university too?’ I asked. ‘Yes and no,’ said Hollo, ‘He taught a little, but he was famous member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, so we did not
see him very much.’ ‘But you knew him well?’ ‘Not exactly,’ said Hollo, ‘In those days you knew nobody well. It was wise to know people only a bit.’
‘So you taught here at the university, but then you went to Vienna?’ I asked. ‘After Marxist theory, socialist correctness, wouldn’t you?’ asked Hollo. ‘So it
was that easy?’ ‘Well, it was arranged,’ said Hollo, ‘With help and a little influence such things are often arranged.’