(excerpt)
Imre Nidosi was enjoying his food. He said that from now on he would come and visit the district regularly, that is if the Brothers didn’t mind.
“Not at all,” came the answer, chorused by male and female voices alike, and in the end even Miklós Dési Dregán nodded his approval.
“What you up to these days, then?” asked Dénes Bokor, “I imagine they’ve given you something to do as well!”
“It’s a task that suits me well, but a very hard one,” replied Nidosi. “I’ve been put in charge of manpower at the Budapest Municipal Thermal Springs and Baths Authority.”
“Congratulations, Brother! That’s a wonderful field.”
“Yes, of course. Of course it is. But sometimes I think it would have been better if they’d put me in charge of a proper factory somewhere, anywhere…The people I have to contend with here…Oh, Brothers, if you knew…Now that all the Nationalist parties and other organisations are finally joining forces and we have to have meetings in every institution and take a joint roll-call of everyone, now it turns out how few of us Nationalists there were – and are – in the thermal baths and spa hotels! Barely anyone responds to my fliers, and all the while I can see their glee and their schadenfreude in their faces: ‘well, what are you going to do now, you little pipsqueak?’ I go into a room and greet them, regulation salute, palm held high, and it’s only in the very rarest case that they return my salute. Can you imagine? ‘Perseverance!’ I say, and they reply ‘Good morning,’ and smile slyly. And I can hear them whispering behind my back in the corridors, and what’s worse, giggling. Because all the gentlemen are still there, the doctors. I go out to visit the Széchenyi Baths. In that place with its enormous staff, I don’t meet a single member of our movement! And you can see why – the director’s a Communist. The chief engineer’s a Communist. The way the staff look at me has me clutching my pistol in my pocket.”
“We can go and get them one of these days. You write up a list and we’ll go pick them up. And then have a little dip. Combine business and pleasure.”
“That’d be nice, but they’re all protected from on high. I’ll give you an example. There’s a Colonel called Kecskeméti at the General Staff in Veres Pál utca who sees to it that Director Szűcs, theoretically one of my staff, doesn’t get called up for duty. In return, the Colonel gets a free pass to the baths and half a kilo of butter a week. The head of the OMTK, Kertész, gets the butter for Szűcs and his cronies, as well as a number of other gentlemen in City Hall. Look, here’s the sort of thing I type out to put up on the notice boards around the place. Only I haven’t got any thumbtacks to put them up with.” Nidosi showed Bokor a bunch of papers:
“THE GERMANS, WHETHER MEMBERS OF THE PARTY OR NOT, ALL GREET EACH OTHER WITH A ‘HEIL HITLER’. WHILE I AM IN CHARGE OF THIS INSTALLATION, NO MATTER WHAT THE MAYOR SAYS, THE OFFICIAL GREETING FROM THIS DAY ON WILL BE:
PERSEVERANCE! LONG LIVE SZÁLASI!
ANYONE WHO DOESN’T LIKE IT WILL LEARN IT SOMEPLACE ELSE, WHERE THE WORK IS HARDER.”
“Very good,” said Bokor, handing back the typed sheet. “Listen, we’ve got all sorts of things coming in to us these days, the stuff we bring in from people’s flats. I’m sure there’ll be thumbtacks somewhere in there, too. When we’ve finished eating, we can go have a look in the storage room.”
Nidosi felt at home in the district; he and Bokor saw eye to eye in everything. He got his thumbtacks. Two boxes, to boot. But he still didn’t feel like leaving for the next stop on his usual daily tour of inspection, the Gellért Hotel. Father Kun hadn’t arrived yet, but they said he would definitely get there by early evening at the latest.
“I was reading in Összetartás that Father Kun’s off to the front. I really got close to him in the months I spent in Pasarét and I’d like to say a proper goodbye to him.”
“It’s not definite that he’s leaving us,” replied Bokor. “Everyone in the district is very attached to him. Obviously, and understandably, primarily the Sisters, but the Brothers too. Absolutely everyone! We’re doing our best to convince him to stay with us.”
In the afternoon, the interrogations were once again in full swing in the Defence and Retribution section’s room. Nidosi followed the activities of the Twelfth District members with interest. Bokor was up on the Svábhegy in the morning, discussing important opportunities for co-operation, and while he was there, picked up a few tricks from the experts there. For instance, you get two guys, make them stand up, face to face like lovers, and make them punch each other in the face. When Bokor was visiting, it was a Member of Parliament and a factory owner doing it – two fully-grown, paunchy, balding men. Bokor was in stitches when he told us about it. There’d been two bankers staying in the cellar in Városmajor utca, they’d first tried it out on them. The way their fat faces resonated! And they only got puffier and puffier from the blows. The brothers all laughed.
Then Nidosi said that he’d had an idea and he wanted to try it out. Was that all right? Bokor nodded, of course it’s all right!
The head bath-attendant took out one of his boxes of thumbtacks – they were no ordinary tacks, either, the sort whose tips always get bent or snap off, but proper engineering ones, and laid them out on the floor, close together, points up. It took a few minutes to show, but he’d arranged them into an Arrow Cross. From then on, he didn’t even have to explain his idea…They brought in a Jewboy and told him to undress. When he was done, they sat him down with his back to the Arrow Cross. Then Nidosi barked: “Lie down!”
It was one thing that thumbtacks would penetrate his flesh, but these engineering tacks went as far as the bone. If they stepped on him, gave him a good trampling here and there, they’d go in all the way. And then you could stand him up, once you’d splashed some water over him if he’d fainted, and show him off. They liked that, they did it several times in a row. They tried it belly down as well, making the pricks lie on the nails chest first, and then of course, they tried it on women too.
The boys in the Twelfth District developed a genuine affection for Nidosi. And vice versa. Although, to be precise, this was something more than affection: this was a bond for life, come what may. And it was sealed in fresh blood.
They had the first prisoner from Terézváros! Not a Jew in hiding, nor a political, but given the current circumstances, someone no less dangerous. It was a profiteering shopkeeper. As the District started making itself at home in Andrássy út 47, they were short of almost everything. For instance, the Sisters would be making bread and lard, but they didn’t have any paprika to sprinkle on top. Two Brothers went out to find a shop. It being Christmas, everything was closed, so they roused up a local shopkeeper, saying it was a matter of life and death. She did have paprika, but when she told them the price, they got angry and brought her in.
It was Megadja himself who took her in hand. After all, he was a colleague. Good luck to her, trying it on with him! He knew exactly what things cost.
The basement was being transformed into cells in double time, so they had somewhere to put the profiteer, and there was room for another couple of prisoners, but they were trying to make sure that the sizeable corner building’s entire basement could be transformed into cells. Even this shopkeeper was a case in point that the local Party members had not taken their responsibilities seriously enough.
They had to put things in order!
The steelworker’s brother twitched every time they slapped the woman, and at all the shouting, but he quickly relaxed and then listened to the screams with excitement and pleasure.
Beating up a grown-up…and a woman at that! It turns out it was possible, and in fact pleasurable, and a service to the fatherland to boot!
There were others, too, waiting for Dénes Bokor. But Robi was paying attention and at a convenient moment indicated that they wanted to have a word with him in private.
It was no mean feat enduring a handshake from the head of the Defence and Retribution section. Some people felt shaken just by the way he looked at them. In the very depths of their souls. But Robi had been right, and they’d take the steelworker’s brother in as one of their own.
“All I’m going to say is: from now on, respect yourself!” All there was left was to show him around and introduce him to everyone.
Translated by Thomas Cooper