Read Online Under the frog by Tibor Fischer - Free Book Online Page A

but Elek treated life largely as a spectator
sport.
    This lack of remorse and of pleading to rewrite the script
could be accounted in some quarters as admirable, but Gyuri found himself
unable to applaud: ‘How does it feel to have one of the most sat-on arses in
the universe?’ he inquired after a very forlorn day. Elek shrugged: ‘My father
lost everything,’ he said, as if this were a lucid explanation, appending by
way of conclusion, ‘You’ll dig me up when I’m gone.’
    Gyuri hadn’t seen much of his grandfather. Memories of his
grandfather’s visits in his furthest childhood had two components: nice cakes
he wasn’t allowed to touch and a bullet-headed, dangerous-looking old man who
kept asking who Gyuri was. His grandfather had, according to Elek, stood surety
for a friend’s gambling debts. The friend had been unable to pay and instead of
doing the done and honourable thing, passing a bullet through his brains, went
off to Berlin to open a Hungarian restaurant, leaving grandfather to fork out.
But if nothing else Elek and grandfather had handled fortunes. Somehow Gyuri
feared that he wouldn’t be given a fortune to lose.
    Nevertheless, Elek’s snap pauperdom had certain benefits for
Gyuri. Having a father who had stepped down from life meant there was no
friction over the exam business. Elek had never been excessively concerned
about Gyuri’s schoolwork; sometimes Gyuri wondered if Elek knew which school he
was attending. In a rare and ephemeral flare of studiousness, Gyuri once asked
Elek to test him on some Latin verbs. ‘Do you know them or not?’ Elek had
queried, and when Gyuri had responded that he thought that he did, Elek had
retorted: ‘Then why do I need to test you?’
    Still, Gyuri reflected, as he shaved in the first of his
preparations for his evening out, at least he only had to sit one subject again
to get his matriculation certificate. Next door, while he decapitated his
bristles, he could hear Mr Galantai repeatedly complaining about the
nationalisation of the factories which really must have been exercising him
since it had happened some months ago. ‘This is too much – it can’t go on much
longer.’
    Gyuri had no doubt that things would go on for some time
yet. Enough to get him in the Army. This was the sole encouragement to study – and it was a truly major carrot. No pass, no university. No university, yes
Army. Yes to years of not eating, standing out in the rain, digging ditches,
not seeing anyone you knew, anyone you liked, prison with salutes and worse
beds. People preferred to commit suicide before being conscripted as it was
more agreeable to die at home in comfort, rather than truncating your arteries
in some dingy barracks.
    It was a good thing that mathematics was the only remaining
weight threatening to drag him down into all that; after all there had been
many fails nuzzling up against him in the exams. Hungarian literature had been
a real case of digging himself out of the grave. Luckily, Botond had been
conducting the oral examination, albeit with a couple of other teachers who
didn’t like him as much, or probably at all. The set text was Arany’s Toldi. Either he had never had a copy or he couldn’t find it but the evening before,
when Gyuri had resolved to read a bit, his sudden desire to read Arany was
foiled so he turned up dutifully at the exam to collect a fail.
    Botond was sitting with his feet up on the table. The other
teachers’ faces were strongly broadcasting that this detracted from the decorum
of the occasion but Botond was the head of the Hungarian Department and what
was more was unchallengeable in Hungarian literature. He had read everything
twice, and when it came to poetry could recite nearly every published verse. If
you were lucky, if something sparked him off, he would enter a Hidassy-like
trance and declaim flawlessly for twenty minutes, giving the class a
much-needed break. As befitted someone deeply implicated with art, Botond