––––––––
‘Sign here.’
‘What is it?’
The squat man with a peaked AVO cap too small for him handed George a pen. ‘Your pledge that you’re not to say or write a single word about your time here,’ he said, leaning back in his chair.
George duly signed his name on the line, not bothering to read the lines of text above it, and realised he hadn’t held a pen for almost four years. How cumbersome it felt, yielding this pen, how spindly his writing.
The AVO receptionist glanced at his signature and filed the sheet of paper into a manila folder, George’s name writ large on its cover and the ominous X engraved in the box denoting his category. ‘One thousand, three hundred and seventy days.’
‘What?’
‘How long you spent here – three months short of four years. Less than most, you’re a lucky man.’
George felt far from lucky. He took his crutch that had been leaning against the office wall.
‘Right then, you’re a free man,’ said the receptionist, folding his arms and grinning with self-satisfaction, as if he was the one responsible for granting George his freedom. ‘Show him out,’ he said, nodding to a typically burly security guard.
‘Can’t I have a belt or something?’
‘What for?’
‘My trousers; they’re too big for me now.’
‘Do I look like a gentleman’s outfitters? Sod off out of here.’
Two minutes later, George found himself on the pavement outside the prison walls. You’re a free man, he said aloud, repeating the receptionist’s words. But, he knew, he’d never be a free man while that X remained pinned to his file – excluded from work, accommodation, or any form of state help.
He was coming out in the same set of clothes as when he went in, one thousand, three hundred and seventy days previously – a cream-coloured, linen summer suit. (He remembered how the AVO men had allowed him to change after he’d been stretchered off the football pitch.) He held onto his trousers for fear they’d fall down, the jacket hung round his shoulders now like a shawl, his shirt ballooned at his waist with loose fabric. The cold breeze bit into him. The linen suit was not designed to withstand the cold March wind. How strange the world looked – the buildings looming high, the cars and trams whizzed pass on the roads, the length of the streets stretching into the distance, the hoards of people going about their business, a blur of strangers, no one sparing him even a second glance. How strange and how frightening. Part of him wanted to run away, to escape back to the confines of his cell, to hide behind the thick steel doors. It was all too much, too bewildering all at once. He wondered how he must look to all these people – a gaunt man in a filthy linen suit, leaning on a crutch, his hair bedraggled, his beard scraggy and unkempt, his trousers falling down. Budapest’s answer to Robinson Crusoe.
He searched his pockets, remembering the few florins he’d left but of course, the money was not there. He hadn’t expected it to be. He had no choice but to walk across town to his parents’ apartment in this cold.
Adjusting his crutch, he started to walk holding onto his trousers. After only a few minutes, he had to stop, exhausted. The crutch was a crude thing and the unfinished wood left splinters in his hand. He leant against a garden wall and tried to steady his breathing. This was going to take longer than he’d thought. Summoning up his will, he focussed on the pavement in front of him and started again.
After an hour and a quarter, he arrived at the foot of his parents’ apartment block. He sat down on a step shivering, less from the cold and more from the physical effort of getting here. His fingers bled, the sweat on his forehead seeped into his eyes, his fringe was plastered onto his skin. But he felt no self-pity. For he was outside, going where he wanted to go under his own free will, this was freedom, this is what he’d dreamt about for over three and half years – for one thousand, three hundred and seventy days. He would have smiled but for the effort of doing so. He was now only minutes away from his mother, his father, a bath, a shave, proper food, and a bed. These were the things that dreams are made of. He only hoped the lift was working.
As he stepped out of the lift onto the fourth floor, his nose was hit by the various cooking smells emanating from behind the closed doors; a mish-mash of ingredients and aromas; an olfactory assault that left him feeling faint – how rich it all smelt, so overpoweringly strong, so beautiful.
He knocked on the door and braced himself for his mother’s screams. He braced himself too for the shocked sense of anti-climax – he remembered all too well the day his father came home. The door swung open but instead of his mother, a tall, thin man in a vest stood there, unshaven, a cigarette stuck to his lip. The two men gaped at each other; George noticed the tuft of chest hair poking out of the man’s vest. ‘Well?’
‘I... I was looking for my parents.’
‘Bit old to have lost your parents.’ He laughed at his own joke.
‘Lorenc. Mr and Mrs Lorenc.’
‘Never heard of them,’ he said, closing the door.
‘No, wait, please. I... I used to live here –’
‘Well, I live here now, along with half of bloody Budapest –’
‘Who is it, Thomas?’ The woman’s shrill question came from within.
‘Some...’ He eyed George up and down, ‘some bloke looking for people called Lorenc.’
A moment later, a woman with a thin, swan-like neck was standing behind the man in the vest, peering over his shoulder at George. ‘Lorenc, you say? They lived here before but got booted out. Exiled out East. Maybe Russia. Some even reckoned Siberia.’
George swallowed, his eyes fixed on her but saw nothing.
‘This is their son,’ said the man by way of explanation.
‘Oh. You’ve been away too by the looks of it.’
He appreciated her interpretation. ‘I couldn’t bother you for a piece of bread, could I?’
The man stepped out into the landing, pulling the door half-shut behind him. ‘Sorry, pal,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t take it personal but if the others in there see us talking to you... well, you know.’
George nodded. He knew his appearance stuck him out as a Class X: he was untouchable, unsafe to be seen talking to. ‘Thank you anyway,’ he said.
He returned to the lift, the sound of his crutch echoing down the corridor, his mind as numb as his body. As he waited for the lift to ascend, a hand touched his arm. ‘Here, take it, quickly, put it in your pocket.’
He turned as the swan-necked woman ran barefoot back to her apartment. ‘Thank you,’ he mouthed, clutching in his hand a large chunk of bread.
*
Back out in the street, he sat down on the same step as before and hungrily tore into the bread. To his surprise (and gratitude) he found a small hunk of cheese in the middle. He sighed with pleasure as the food hit his stomach – what a relief. He chewed slowly, making the most of each morsel – a habit he picked up in prison.
How strange it was to be away from it all – the endless hours of cold and darkness without books, cigarettes or company, forced to remain standing for eighteen hours a day, the continuous glare of the light bulb. How liberating not to be spied on every few minutes through the judas hole, not to feel one’s brain rotting away.
Two trains of thought competed in his mind – to ponder the fate of his parents, or to work out what to do next. A fresh gust of wind cut through his suit. What about his team-mates? Kosak – now where did he live? He’d once been to his place but couldn’t, for the life of him, remember where. Bordas? No. Ignotus? Yes. Yes, he couldn’t recall the name of the block but he knew the street, and it wasn’t far.
Twenty minutes later, he was standing outside Ignotus’s door. The block had been easy to identify once he’d found the street. He just hoped for better luck this time.
To his relief, the giant goalkeeper answered, his hair longer than George remembered, his beard almost as unkempt as George’s. But it was Ignotus all right. ‘Milan?’
‘Yeah, what of it?’
‘It’s...’ He felt faint, the exhaustion of so much walking, the heaviness in his feet.
‘By George, it’s George...’
*
George had no idea how long he’d slept for but when he opened his eyes, he saw that the darkened room was full of people. Perhaps he’d interrupted a party. But no one seemed very gay. In the corner, on a ragged settee, a woman breastfeeding; next to her a bald but young-looking man sat smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. A number of others milled about, an older man with a toilet roll; a woman carrying two mugs of tea.
‘Your friend’s awake,’ he heard someone say.
Milan was staring out of the window. He approached George with a smile, ‘Welcome back,’ he said. ‘You’ve been asleep all day and night.’
Heck, thought George, he could feel it in his back. ‘What happened?’
‘Guess you must have fainted, or something. You seem to have a habit of doing that.’
‘It’s good to see you, Milan.’
‘And you, my old friend.’ He shook his head in a paternal sort of way. ‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘Come on, you need a bit of a clean-up.’
*
It felt incredible to be wearing a fresh set of clothes and a proper coat, to be properly washed, to have a full stomach and to feel clean shaven. A week later and the ex-centre forward and goalkeeper were sitting on a park bench, away from the apartment, away from flapping ears.
‘It’s hell. You think it was bad when you were around but it’s a lot worse now. There’re not enough places to go round any more, not since Rakosi’s Five-Year-Plan kicked in. We’ve had a whole migration from the countryside, people with no work because of collectivisation. But they know they’ll find jobs in the cities with Gero’s huge industrial drive under way. OK, it pays peanuts but it’s better than nothing. So the bloody communists simply allocate people to places. No matter you’ve already got ten to a two bedroom apartment.’
‘Couldn’t you appeal?’
‘What and get kicked out altogether? No, too risky.’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘When did you get out?’ he asked, blowing out a cloud of blue smoke.
‘The day I knocked on your door.’
‘You poor sod, you looked awful. Still do, really.’
‘They deported my parents. Don’t know when. You remember the last game? My father had only just come back from a stretch. He was in a dreadful state – far worse than me. I only have to contend with the leg. But he was ill – ill from the inside, you could see it. He wouldn’t have survived exile. The train journey alone would have killed him. My mother was strong. I only hope she was strong enough.’
The thought occurred to him that he had nothing to remember them by – no photographs, no letters, nothing at all. He remembered when Kosak’s mother died, how he’d spent hours going through her belongings, sorting things out, things to keep, things to donate or pass on to relatives and friends. How cathartic a process it must be, thought George, allowing the memories to come back, breathing in the familiar smell still so clearly impregnated in her clothes, reading her thoughts committed to paper, seeing her handwriting. But George had none of this, not a single memento to latch onto, or souvenir to treasure. Nothing. They may as well never have existed. They lived only in his mind and once he was gone, there would remain not a single trace of them, save some disparaging AVO file – not much to show for two lives.
‘What’s happening to the country, Milan?’
‘They’re squeezing us, that’s what’s happening. No one talks, no one writes, no one thinks; in fact, no one dares do anything; we all do as we’re told. All their promises, these promises of a utopian future, it’s all bull; they know it, we know it. Our wages have gone up by fifteen per cent – they put great store by that but what they forget to say is that at the same time food prices have gone up some eighty per cent. It’s impossible to buy anything now, even if you’ve got the cash, because there’s nothing in the shops to buy. The country’s broke. We sell our exports to the Soviets at ridiculously cheap prices and import stuff back at the highest rates. I’m telling you, George, it’s a mess, one big fucking mess.’
‘It can’t go on like this.’
Milan threw his cigarette on the ground. ‘What do you propose?’
The two of them sat on the bench, huddled in their warm coats, and watched as the cigarette end fizzled out on the gravelled path. The park was empty, no couples walking by, no boys playing football, simply a grey expanse of manicured grass and forlorn-looking trees. Somehow, George had expected more from freedom. ‘What happened after the game?’ he asked.
‘You scored from the penalty and then fainted. They came on, carried you off on a stretcher and we never saw you again. After that, we carried on with the last three minutes, the ref blew and that was it – one-one. Bordas also disappeared.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘No. One by one we were hauled in for a chat and that was scary enough, but I don’t think they could be bothered with all of us. I was all right; I’d let in that goal, after all. It was a good shot but I had it easily covered.’
‘So, they’d got to you as well?’
‘Yeah, chap called Beke. You don’t forget things like that. He came round to the apartment once, with his assistant. Face like a lemon. They were the good old days, when there were just the two of us. All that space to ourselves, what luxury; problem is, we never appreciated it at the time.’
‘What happened to your wife?’
‘She upped and left one day. About two years ago. Took the kids and disappeared. Haven’t heard from her since. So, what are you going to do now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You need a job. Category X?’ George nodded. ‘I reckon we could get round that. How old are you now?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Yeah but the body of an eighty-year-old. How’s the foot?’
The memory shot back into sharp focus – the dingy office with the one light bulb, the threadbare carpet, three heavies pinning him down on the ground, a fourth towering over him, mallet in hand, a devilish grin plastered on his lips, positively salivating at the prospect. He remembered being unable to control the shaking fear, knowing there was no one to help, that his cries would go unheeded. How terrifying it is to be totally at the mercy of men who mean to do you the utmost harm. Then the whoosh and the almighty pain as the hammer smashed into his calf bone, the sickening sound of splintering bone, his screams unrecognisable to his own ears. Then the second blow, further down the leg, the third, the fourth, each blow lower until the mallet reached his foot and a hundred delicate bones smashed. The tears soaking his face, the all-encompassing pain, the utter helplessness of not being able to move, not knowing when the terror was going to stop, whether it would ever stop. ‘Not so bad,’ he lied.
‘How long will you need the crutch?’
‘Not long. Some days, I can do without. The cold doesn’t help, though.’
‘It was the foot that scored the goal?’
George nodded. Doubt you’ll be scoring any more goals for a while, comrade. And with that they’d left him, whimpering, wishing to be dead, the cheers of the football crowd echoing in his mind, teasing him in its adulation, Bordas slapping him on the back, the gaps between his teeth showing beneath his smile, Good lad, well played, bring on the Soviets, eh?; Beke’s voice, Give yourself an off day; we all have an off day occasionally. So many voices, so many cheers, so much pain.
‘Come on, George, you look pale all of a sudden, let’s get you back.’
*
Three months later, George was ready for work. A connection of Milan’s found him a job as a lathe operator in a munitions factory; a thirteen-hour day spent under a banner that proclaimed Our five-year-plan is a great blow to the capitalists. He needed to work, to repay Milan’s kindness, to prove to himself that he was ready to slot back into life and face the world. Milan had shared all his food, his wardrobe, and had been willing to forgo his bed but George preferred to sleep on the floor, a bed was too soft for him. It was a prison habit that was never to leave him. After his first month at work, George received his first pay packet. He almost wept with joy. Even though it was barely enough to feed himself, it was something, a start.
The work was hard, the conditions hot and unpleasant. One didn’t dare think at work in case someone saw into your thoughts – the factory workers were outnumbered by a multitude of trade unionists, administrators, foremen and factory policemen. For weeks no one spoke to him – it was unusual for an ex-convict to get a job so quickly after release, so his fellow workers assumed George was in the pay of the AVO, a stooge sent to spy on them. Once, when he turned up late, he faced the army of bureaucrats who took great pains to admonish him for his tardiness. By late morning, a picture of a stone-age man had been plastered up on the work’s notice board with George’s name under it, and with a speech balloon coming from the caveman’s mouth: Today I helped the Imperialists. But George didn’t mind because it earned him the trust of his workmates. Another time, he donated the entire contents of a monthly pay check to buying ‘Peace Bonds’, a voluntary contribution that brought the threat of arrest if one didn’t comply.
Each day, after fighting his way home on the perpetually-crammed tram system, he returned from work covered in grime, his nose blocked up, his hair plastered with dried sweat. He returned to an apartment that was akin to a never-ending rush hour, with people he hardly recognised coming and going, queues for the bathroom, squabbles over food, constant noise and unpleasant smells. If this was co-operative living, he’d rather take his chances and live a life of a hermit. At least, prison offered silence, even if it was sometimes crudely interrupted. But George never complained because however bleak it seemed, the AVO receptionist had been right after all – he was a lucky man. When he thought of so many of his prison friends carted off for forced labour, working sixteen hours on empty stomachs for nothing but survival.
One evening when the apartment bustled with so many people it seemed the floor might give way, George decided he couldn’t bear it for another minute. He needed a drink. Milan was on night shifts so he went alone. The self-sufficiency he had learned from years of incarceration was proving to be a plus. The first bar he tried was beyond his price – full of high-heeled women in pretty frocks and men with glistening hair and bulging pockets – this was the sort of place for AVOs and their devious associates.
Lowering his sights, George found a smaller, cosier bar in a backstreet behind Rakosi Avenue. Ducking his head under the low doorframe as he entered, the heat hit him. A fog of smoke gathered under the low ceiling, a pianist played gently in the corner, glasses clinked as people drank and laughed under the red-tinted lights. At the far end, away from the street, he found a couple of empty tables. Ordering a red wine, he sat back and opened a packet of cigarettes. The smoking habit was new to him and he still felt a bit of a fraud whenever he indulged. The waiter plonked his wine on the table. The tangy taste pricked his tongue as he gulped it down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He ordered a second and by the time he’d drunk half of it, he already felt a little dizzy.
He remembered the bottle of wine his mother had saved, and opened on the day Mark Desci had appeared.
He often found his thoughts wandering back to his parents. They would have been arrested as a direct result of his own downfall – he knew that but every time the thought passed through his mind, he felt a familiar tightening in his stomach. How long did they have before they came for them? His mother must have known. Had she tried to protect her husband? And what happened to her man, the talent scout, the provider of dreams, the deliverer of nightmares? Were they still alive? His father, he knew, couldn’t be, but of his mother, he didn’t know. How hard it is to live with so many questions. But they were gone and nothing was left of them, not a single hint to their existence. He never had the chance to say goodbye – no forwarding address, no funeral, no headstone. Only the memories and the questions. Too many unanswerable questions.
The pianist had increased his volume, playing jaunty tunes George didn’t recognise. The wine had lost its novelty. He took another sip but decided in future, he’d stick to the beer. Rising from the table, he wondered where the toilets were.
Glancing over his left shoulder for the gents, he didn’t see the woman approach from the right. The squeal of pain as she stood on his battered foot brought the bar to a halt – the piano stopped mid-song, voices broke off conversations.
‘Oh my word, I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, her face creased in sympathy. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I... yes, fine.’
‘Did I hurt your foot?’
‘No, no, it’s just a bit delicate, that’s all.’
‘Well, if you’ll excuse me...’
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ He’d said it quickly, not thinking about it. He certainly didn’t expect her to say yes.