Temptation Page 4

  All of a sudden, I found myself in front of the school. It was teatime, and the children were chasing around in the yard outside. Most of them had thick slices of bread spread with lard or jam, but had forgotten about them, they were so deeply involved in their games. They were charging round like mad, and only stopped for a moment now and then so they could, panting and on the fly, quite casually take a bite or two of their bread. I, meanwhile, was almost faint with hunger.

  What would Sándor Rózsa do? I wondered, and all at once, I knew what I had to do. I spat juicily from the side of my mouth so the children would know who they were dealing with, and with slow, dignified steps, made my way into the yard.

  I was not yet going to school myself. The children must have thought I was looking for someone, and in a way, they were not wrong. I was looking for a victim. Not without a little nervousness, I must admit, for the boys were a good deal older than me, but beggars can’t be choosers, and finally I made up my mind. My victim was standing in the far corner of the yard, leaning against a lone acacia tree, picking away at his bread and jam with a melancholy, bovine face. He must have been a year or two my senior, but his bread was big, while he was small, so I said to myself: now or never, and headed towards him. When I got behind him, I snatched the bread from his hand, quick as anything, and was away. The clueless boy didn’t even know what had happened to him. By the time he started bawling, I was back on the street, so he could bawl away for all I cared.

  I tore out to the outskirts and started feasting in the shadow of a hawthorn bush. I liked the bread and jam, and I liked the excitement. This was more like it! I said to myself. This was a real, Sándor Rózsa-type adventure. I laughed, loud and full-throated. I was pleased with myself.

  I decided never to go home again. I was afraid that the old woman might throw another dish at me, and my backside was still stinging from the first. But as it started to grow dark, so my spirits, too, began to wane. I may well have been a faithful follower of Sándor Rózsa’s, but I was none too keen on the darkness. I headed home.

  The house was already sleeping. The dog wasn’t a problem; all it took was one nod and it heeled very nicely, like a low-level functionary. It was a pitch-black, moonless night, and all was still. I climbed noiselessly over the fence. Luckily, the room in which we children slept had been built on to the house later, and, clearly for reasons of economy, the old woman hadn’t made a connecting door. The entrance was from the yard. I pressed the handle down slowly, gingerly. The door opened silently, and I was inside.

  The children were deep asleep. Eight children slept in that room, myself included, which was, at most, five metres long and four metres wide. Whenever I entered from outside, I was always forcefully struck by a stomach-churning stench that made your head hurt, and every night for fourteen years, it took me a few minutes to get accustomed to it. I can still smell that incredible scent now, a quite extraordinary and complex mix of people, food, the mouldy odour from the perpetually damp walls and the constant stink of the privy attached to the back wall.

  There were no beds. We slept on straw on the beaten-earth floor, huddled close. I had no shoes, so I didn’t have to bother with those. I lay down in the straw just as I was and pulled the heavy horsehair blanket over me. Now that I finally felt safe, I was once more tormented by hunger, which—it seems—fear and the excitement of the evening’s adventures had suppressed till now. I couldn’t get to sleep.

  As I was lying there like this, the straw suddenly stirred beside me.

  “Béla,” whispered a childish voice. “You asleep?”

  It was Gergely, a boy in his second year of elementary school.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he whispered. “Here.”

  He pressed a slice of bread and a bit of kolbász into my hand. My stomach almost sprang out of my body in joy, but I made sure Gergely didn’t notice. I accepted his gift like the Treasury accepts taxes. I didn’t so much as say thank you. I ate it all without a word, lay back in the straw and in a dry, businesslike voice, I asked:

  “Who d’you want layin’ out?”

  The idea that someone might give me a crust of bread and a bit of kolbász just because they knew I was hungry hadn’t even occurred to me.

  This Gergely was almost two years older than me, but he still had me beat up his “enemies” for him. He was the capitalist among us. His mother came to see him every Sunday, since she was in service in the neighbouring parish, and always gave him a krajcár or two. Gergely was therefore rolling in money, and could afford to have others beat up his enemies for him. He was a lanky, very blond boy with a girlish face, and a famous liar. There were always blue semicircles under his eyes, and I knew why.

  As to who he wanted me to beat up, he didn’t tell me for some time. The question, it seems, had caught him unawares; he must have been expecting more elaborate negotiations. But eventually, he did pour out his heart after all.

  “Adam,” he grumbled. “That ginger beast got me from behind again.”

  “As if he had to get you from behind,” I said, not so much out of disdain for Adam, but more out of business considerations. “He’s enormous.”

  “He’s big, but he ain’t strong.”

  “Not strong? Why you scared of him, then?”

  “All right . . . he’s strong, but he ain’t that strong.”

  “Strong or not so strong,” I said, putting an end to the debate, “I ain’t layin’ him out for a bit of kolbász!”

  “I’ll get you more tomorrow. And there’ll be money come Sunday.”

  I didn’t reply. I’d been planning something since the outskirts, and it was on my mind again.

  “Can you write?” I asked all of a sudden.

  “ ’Course. What d’you want?”

  “A letter.”

  “Who to?”

  “My muther.”

  “On account of the old woman?”

  “Yeah, the old witch.”

  “Hm . . .” grumbled Gergely. “Not so simple. Not easy, that, writing letters, not easy.”

  “Think it’s easy thumping the ginger boy?”

  “Writing a letter’s harder. Thump two of ’em.”

  I could see he wanted to blackmail me, damn him.

  “You’ll be the second!” I said.

  He thought about that for a bit.

  “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll write your letter. Be out in the field midday tomorrow.”

  “Who? The old woman?”

  “Nah, Adam! Always takes the little path along the hill.”

  “Just wait your turn with Adam!” I said. “Write the letter first. G’night!”

  With that, I turned my back on him and, job well done, went straight to sleep.

  The letter really did get written next day. Gergely brought a little third-year with him with a face like a turkey’s egg, and they wrote it together, with much sweat and toil. I don’t think I sweated as much laying out that “ginger dog” as those two boys sweated over that letter. Many years later, I found it among my mother’s affairs. It must have made quite an impression on the poor thing for her to have kept it so carefully. It read:

  Dear Misses Anna,

  This is Gergely, second-year elementary student from old Rozi’s, you may rimember me, and I’m righting now because Béla asked me to right, to tell you that your loving son, Béla, he’s hungry. Cos the old woman dont give him to eat. Cos the old woman says Misses Anna ain’t sent her munney. So please send the munney, Misses Anna. Please send it right now because the old witch wont give Béla to eat till then, and whats Béla to do if he ain’t got nothing to eat, tell me that? Yours, with deep respect (your loving son also sends grate respects).

  Patriotic Greetins,

  Gergely

  Second-Year Elementary Student

  And so the letter was done; but letters need stamps and the stamp cost twenty fillérs. Only paltry, inflationary fillérs, but in those days I wasn’t familiar with the fin
er points of economic theory. In my world, twenty fillérs was still twenty fillérs, and twenty fillérs was an inconceivable sum. It wasn’t an amount I could have scraped together before, much less now, when I had to feed myself as well! The old woman wasn’t playing around. I knew that if she saw me, she’d hurl the first thing that came to hand right at me, so I no longer showed up at meals.

  The first day I managed to get by somehow. The boys, after I threatened them each individually, secretly sneaked me a bite or two of their lunch and supper. But the next day, the old woman discovered the scam and anyone she found with food in their pockets, she gave a good hiding.

  “Ungrateful bastards!” she screamed as she did each time she was angry with them, and from then on would not leave the table till the boys had finished eating.

  The boys, I think, weren’t really sorry. Children don’t like to share their food with others, especially when they’re not getting all that much themselves. I didn’t eat a thing for twenty-four hours, and when you’re six that kind of thing is apt to make you dispirited.

  I grew wilder. I stole whatever I could, I blackmailed whoever I could, and I fought whenever anyone paid me. But I still couldn’t fill my belly, because there weren’t fights every day, and how much can you steal in a village? It was no use going after poultry, so that left fruit. But down our way the peasants didn’t leave the fruit to idle on the tree, so I ended up whacking it off the branch still green or picking it up, half rotten, from the dusty road. I was permanently hungry as a wolf, and money never stays in a hungry man’s pocket. As soon as I got hold of a couple of fillérs, I ran straight to the shop to buy bread, and so that twenty fillérs just didn’t seem to want to come together. Over and over I swore that when I got hold of some money I wouldn’t spend it, but the second I got hold of any money, I did spend it, over and over. Meanwhile the letter, which I had buried in a little box, just lay in the ground like a corpse and couldn’t get on its life-saving way.

  Sunday was my last hope. After protracted negotiations, I had agreed with the boys that they would give me whatever krajcárs they managed to get out of their mothers, and I would work it off, like the serf works off his potatoes for winter. But even your guardian angel can’t help you when your path’s been crossed by a black cat. On Sunday, the entire country poured with rain and the mothers didn’t come, only Gergely’s, a little later, when the weather had cleared. Gergely told her why I needed the twenty fillérs, but his mother only gave me ten.

  “I’d give you the whole twenty, so you could buy that measly stamp,” she said, “but what can I do when I don’t have that much myself ?”

  She said that with such warmth and kindness that I had to believe her, but I still searched her little Gergely after she left, just to be sure she hadn’t slipped him something on the sly. She hadn’t, worse luck.

  I put the ten fillérs in a little matchbox, and so I wouldn’t be tempted again, buried it beside the letter. I still needed another ten fillérs.

  The next day, it looked like my luck was in. The old woman had herself driven to the neighbouring parish and Gergely immediately told me the good news. I sneaked home. I knew that Mr Rozi always had a sleep after lunch. He was that sort of a man. Even at harvest time when the other peasants were working every hour that God sent, he would, the moment the church bells rang noon, amble home, have his lunch, and have a good sleep.

  So I hid behind the stables and waited. About half an hour later, Gergely appeared.

  “The old man’s snorin’,” he whispered.

  The old man was a famous snorer. He used to erupt with such enormous snorts in his sleep that unless you were deaf, you could hear him in the street.

  I sneaked up to the open window and peeked cautiously in. It was a fine, warm autumn, and the old man wasn’t wearing his jacket yet, only a waistcoat. It hung there, enticingly, on the back of a chair. Silent as a cat, I climbed through the window and, with my heart beating terribly, petrified by every noise, I searched it. I found six fillérs, pocketed them, and climbed back through the window as quick as I could.

  “Just four to go!” I exclaimed victoriously to Gergely. “And that letter’ll be off to Budapest.”

  I was feeling very confident. Those last four mangy krajcárs would be no problem, I thought, and decided to bury the six fillérs, so as to avoid any possible temptation. I was only waiting for Gergely to leave, because I didn’t want anyone to know where the money was hidden—not even him. But Gergely was all wound up from the adventure, and in his excitable state he started blabbering so much, it took me a good hour to get rid of him.

  It was about two by then and I hadn’t eaten anything all day. All of a sudden, I was seized by such an overpowering animal hunger that, casting all better judgement aside, I ran to the shop and spent every last one of the six fillérs.

  So I was back to square one.

  What’s going to become of me? I wondered bitterly. If I always ate the price of the stamp, the letter would never be sent, my mother would never send money, and I would never get anything to eat.

  “Oh, for the . . .” I said, launching into an endless, filthy tirade of swearing, and burst loudly into tears.

  One day, I got so hungry that I approached a Jewish peddler on the outskirts of the village.

  “Pleeeease, mister,” I said in a chanting, pleading voice, the way I’d heard professional beggars do it, “pleeeease spare a bit of change, I’m sooooo hungry!”

  I would never have dared risk this with someone from the village, but this was just a ragged Jew, and back then even a six-year-old knew that “that was different”. The White Terror was in its heyday and this kind of wandering Jew could count himself lucky if he made it through a village without a beating. He was almost touched that I was asking him for money instead of shouting the usual “dirty Jew” at him. He didn’t hesitate, but reached straight into his pocket, dragged out a fistful of change and, lifting his shaky hand to his myopic eyes—he had the drooping, perpetually teary eyes of an old dog—found me five fillérs.

  “Schlaaachte zaytn,” he intoned with a sigh. “Schlaaachte zaytn.”

  Then he patted my head and wandered on, the embodiment of sorrow.

  I really did bury those five fillérs, though by that time I had got so weak with hunger that even on cool days I was bathed in sweat, my eyelids always felt heavy and whenever I sat down, I fell straight asleep.

  In my desperate state, I had a wild idea. I waited for the maid to take the leftovers from lunch out for the dog, sneaked over to the doghouse, and made them mine. The dog was an old, loyal pal, and he never made so much as a sound when I snatched the dish away from him. He just watched me with his weak, bloodshot eyes full of incomprehension. I felt sorry for our Komondor, but I felt more sorry for myself. I went to the privy, locked the door, and ate everything on that plate that was edible.

  From then on, I lived on the dog’s dinners. I had a good stomach, but it wasn’t made of iron. One night, I woke to an appalling grumbling in my bowels. I got the runs so badly that I hardly dared leave the privy for three days straight. That was the only place I felt safe, for in the yard I had the constant fear of the old woman spotting me, and in the street, the fear of getting caught short. So, unless someone chased me out, I would sit for hours in the outhouse, my head lolling down onto my chest, nodding off now and again. I was not doing well, to say the least. But, like everything in life, this state, too, had its advantages: a dubious advantage, but an advantage nonetheless. I wasn’t hungry any more.

  When my stomach improved, I decided to get hold of the missing five fillérs come hell or high water. I was in luck, and got a commission for a fight, my client promising me five fillérs. The boy I had to beat up was a scraggly little lad who didn’t belong to any gang, so the money was as good as mine.

  “That letter’ll get to Muther soon enough!” I boasted to Gergely when I left home to wallop the scraggly little lad.

  But I didn’t end up walloping him. Somethin
g terrible, something unbelievable happened. That scraggly little lad ended up walloping me. Before, I could have laid him out with one hand, but now he wiped the floor with me, and how! I could kiss the five fillérs goodbye, of course; all I had got out of it was a good hiding.

  The runs had been torture, I was unbearably hungry, but what was all that compared to my shame? So much for my rep, so much for the stamp, so much for everything. I ran out beyond the village, threw myself down into the grass and sobbed as if the sky had fallen in.

  “What’s to become of me?” I cried. “What’s to become of me?”

  6

  SUDDENLY, I HAD A BOLD IDEA. I sneaked home, dug up the letter and the fifteen fillérs, and ran to the post office.

  The blonde, moon-faced young lady who ran the post office was all alone in the sleepy room that smelt of mouse droppings. I stood to attention before her, but I was so nervous I couldn’t speak. The young lady smiled.

  “What d’you need, son?” she asked.

  “Please, miss, please,” I managed to say at last, “send this letter for me!”

  She glanced at the letter and counted my little collection of krajcárs.

  “You’re five fillérs short,” she said. “The stamp’s twenty.”

  “I know, miss, I know,” I said, determined to see it through no matter what, “but what can I do when I only got fifteen?”

  “You went and spent the other five on sweets, didn’t you?”

  She said that in a very schoolmistress-like way, and at the word “sweets”, she furrowed her brows. Dear, sweet God, I thought to myself, if I had five fillérs to spare, I’d spend it on a crust of bread.

  “I ain’t had no sweets, miss,” I sighed, and felt my tears welling up.

  “Oh, don’t cry!” said the young lady, and smiled again. “Did you lose it, then?”

  I thought if she liked that idea so much it made her smile, then it was best to leave her to it. So I nodded yes.

  “They give you a hidin’ at home?”