Portraits of a Marriage (53 page)

The patrons here in New York are not that sort of writer. They don’t actually write anything, but immediately sell what they haven’t yet written. They earn a mint from books. They usually start arriving past eleven, when the nearby shows have finished. They soak up the drink, straight bourbons, every time. There’s a regular, a little fat guy, who must be a real big-shot writer, because he even has a secretary and a lot of hangers-on with him, who are all ears when he talks. Whenever he says something they’re all attention, like a congregation in church when the priest raises the host. I saw it with my own two eyes the time he thought of a title and the guy, his secretary, was straight on the line, selling it. He came back out of breath saying he had sold the title for two hundred thousand, a story his boss hadn’t yet written and had only just thought of, one he’d maybe write, if the inspiration came. Everyone
drank to the good news and when they left they left me twenty on the tray. That’s because big-shot writers are always surrounded by pals. There’s some really cute women in the gang too. If you really fancy writing I could introduce you to one of them.

I don’t read books myself, that’s not my thing. I’m happy enough to leaf through a good thriller, or the comics—you know, where the chick lies naked on the couch without a clue that her sexy days are over and her problems are just beginning. And her pimp leans over her, a knife in his hand, and there’s a talk bubble that says, “There’s nothing wrong with her, it’s just a bit of blood on her neck.” I like that kind of thing. Thrillers are good because the writers don’t smuggle in clever stuff—the reader gets it straightaway, without the crap.

Go on, relax, have another—your
bludimari
is there, right by your hand. The
boss?
Don’t worry about him. He’s there behind that glass door, in the back room. Yes, the guy with the glasses … He’s doing the accounts, not looking this way. Solid guy: a Mormon. No liquor, only warm water from a heavy-bottomed glass. And he won’t smoke—he’s above all that. He brought nothing from Utah, where his lot live, to New York, except his Bible and his Mormon ways, like having two wives. The second he picked up here, in Manhattan. Owns a chain of eight bars, two in Harlem. But our place here on the corner of Broadway is the smartest.

Because, you know, there are two theaters nearby. One where they sing and one where they just talk. Sometimes when they talk so much it gets to be a drag and the audience grow bored and walk out. I’ve not been in either so far, but one day I paid up a Franklin for the one that was all talk. Why shouldn’t I be an angel, I thought—you have to support art. Don’t know what angels are? People who finance a play. Investors. Drivers, hotel porters, headwaiters, they all want to be angels when there’s a play starting on Broadway. But this one was no good, I wasted a hundred. There was a lot of talking on stage—too much. It’s better when there’s some nice upbeat music, a high-kicking chorus and singers, that kind of thing. I’m not investing in writers or literature again. A man’s better off playing the numbers game. So you just wait and serve your turn in the garage.

You have to tighten your belt here, brother. It’s a wised-up world we
have here. You have to pay close attention, learn the ropes. This is my fifth year behind the bar. I am a proper mister now, a senior bartender. And I’m still learning. In this place, being close to Broadway and the theaters, what we get are chiefly highbrows. What are those? People with egg-shaped heads, their heads like duck eggs, all high forehead—and spots. There are some with big bushy beards too. They’re all clever. You wouldn’t believe how important they are. I listen to them from behind the bar and they stay till morning. They arrive about midnight when the others have gone, I mean those who come here for the atmosphere, candles behind red shades. Those who stay are all in the profession. They talk freely among themselves. I listen pretty hard, as you may imagine.

Because, you know, they’re a powerful, dangerous pack … the devil knows how they do it, but in some ways they are even more powerful than the padrone. Everyone is afraid of them. They could even destroy the president if they didn’t like him. Sometimes my jaw just drops when I hear them whispering together as to who’s in line for their version of the cement, or who they’re going to build up. Some of them come here from the night desk, guys who write social columns in papers. I hear them discussing who’s screwing who and in what position. That’s the free press for you; that’s freedom, they’re free to ruin those they don’t like. Then they write books about it, print them in editions of a million. It’s what they call culture, and it spreads. In every drugstore, in every subway station, in every supermarket, you find piles and piles of stuff like that. People like us can’t get their kind of knowledge: we need higher education. It’s an art, like drumming. The fact is, friend, I don’t get lit-ter-a-ture, but back in my hometown, in Mátészalka, I served in the local barracks and we’d occasionally visit what
we
called a house of culture to see the girls. All I say is that the cathouse at Mátészalka was a moral institution compared to what I hear about lit-ter-a-ture here behind the bar. Back home we knew what we were paying for, and once we made a deal the head man there might say, “Give us another ten, soldier boy, and she’ll take her top off too.” As I said, I know nothing about books, but I do understand cathouses. When I was a kid I was a regular myself. All in all I can’t say it was any worse than what they call culture now. These writers will strip for cash, exactly like the girls. I
mean the lady writers, not just the men … They’ll show you the lot, no knickers, from back, from front, whatever way you fancy it—if you pay. Culture meant something else to us in Zala. Papa bought the calendar once a year, and that was it. But my jaw just drops—I mean, just now I heard someone’s getting half a million for writing the memoirs of the guy who throws the switch in San Francisco. Or he writes up the confessions of a girl that used to be a guy, or how a girl
became
a guy, and that gets to be culture. Culture’s fancy work, brother—harder than drumming.

It’s possible that what the regulars talk about here in the bar doesn’t cover the whole field. There might be other kinds of writers in the neighborhood. I once overheard two guys who wandered in here talking in low voices about what this other kind of lit-ter-a-ture might be. The sort you don’t see much of. The kind you hear about only once the writer has shuffled off to the morgue, having topped himself in his misery. These two guys, who wandered in here by accident, couldn’t afford
bludimaris
but had to make do with beer. They were talking about books. They were puny little runts, scribblers of some sort, more like the guy Sweetheart was talking about in Rome. You didn’t have to look hard—even a blind man could see these runts were not about to be guests at the usual party. Maybe they were the real thing … And maybe there are more of them, only you never get to see them because they don’t hit the headlines, they’re out there drowning their sorrows. I mean, that’s what I understood as they muttered into their beer—that there were other kinds of writers. Guys who write poems, for example, who scribble in notebooks the way our great national poet Petőfi did. The devil knows. The only thing certain is that their kind don’t tend to come here.

Ah, the drums. Well, that’s sad, a real regret. It’s not that it isn’t a good
djob
, mixing cocktails in this bar. Like there’s a salary and free meals. And tips. I could quietly carry on here till I retire. But I don’t have it bad, anyway. I know a neat-looking Irish widow, a little secondhand, but friendly, if you get me? I have a car, an apartment, a TV. I even have an electric lawn mower out on the porch … no garden, but a mower’s good for status. The widow and I went to Florida last winter, spent two weeks, living like lords on the Riviera. I got to admit, financially, it was a good deal leaving home. But it breaks my heart when I think of the music. The freedom is better here, but what’s all that when
I can’t be a musician? It’s melancholy, you feel like an exile, like the patriot Kossuth felt in Turin.

It can’t be helped. Artists don’t forget, you know. Sometimes I remember how it was after the siege, sitting at my drums in the bar, putting my whole heart and soul into it, as God, and my talent, intended me to. That bar was in a house that’d been bombed out, but they got it in pretty good order. There was heating, atmosphere, Napoleon brandy, everything you need for a people’s democracy. I had a solid reputation and the new bosses needed drummers. The gig would start about ten, but it was four in the morning by the time I got home. That was in ’48 when the Commies took over culture. Business improved for a while. The new top guys came, throwing money about. Why not? They could do it. Everything belonged to the people, after all! Every so often some leftovers of the old order would stumble in, fancy dans who’d stowed away a few gold napoleons and now wanted to drink to forget. They were paying for their own funerals, telling sob stories about the past. But the boot was on the other foot in ’48 when the new bosses came in. If they were seen to be nursing hangovers, it was for the people’s sake.

Why did I leave when things were going so well for me? Long story, friend. I was like you, not cut out for finance. Then, one day, I discovered my place was in politics.

I tell you this in confidence, as brother to brother, you might as well know. After the liberation—I still get a sour taste in my mouth when I use that word—I stayed in Zala till ’47, then moved to Budapest. I lived a quiet life there, no trouble to anyone. I like my privacy, see. So we’d been liberated, and the local count skipped it over the border. He wasn’t altogether a bad guy, but he did happen to be a count.

Later, my old man—the one the Commies shoved into a collective on the rap that he was a kulak, just because he had four acres and a garden—my old man, he said the count was no good, but the way things turned out was no good, either. At least the count let you steal a little. But the new bosses, the guys in leather coats, who arrived in the village on a truck one day shortly after ’45, politely invited everyone into the council house, strong-arming anyone who seemed a little reluctant, and persuaded them to throw everything they had into the common kitty, both their own and the land that had been divided up since, not to mention the animals—into the collective with them all! The new lot
wouldn’t let you steal, because they did the stealing themselves. Shut your face, they kept repeating as they kicked your head in, everything belongs to the people now.

One day the minister drove through town, a guy trained in Moscow. He was an educated man, in charge of collectivization. Because that was the delicate term they used: “collectivization.” Well, this guy was good at it, because he’d spent the winter in Moscow and he saw at first hand how the numbers of kulaks had dropped to one million, because the comrades had collected their produce. But the old man and others explained that after collectivizing there wasn’t enough left in the granary for the winter. He stayed sitting in his car while he told us we shouldn’t complain and should understand that everything belonged to the people now. Then the minister went on to make a speech in parliament, demanding that any remaining craftsmen left in the village should also be collectivized, no matter whether it was the blacksmith, the carpenter, or the wheelwright, because they were all capitalists and exploiters, leeches who took money from the people. My old man was a smith too, shoeing horses and sharpening scythes all his life. It saddened him no end when he heard he wasn’t really a blacksmith but a leech on the people. And then they took away his work permit.

I can’t tell you the whole story, friend, not all at one go. It was a bad time. A friend of mine, who used to live in the village, had gone up to the capital just as the bright sun of freedom was dawning on us. One day he wrote me a letter. He used to play the flute so it broke your heart. That was the time they started “confiscating” corn from the count’s granary. Chicks were mad for his flute playing. He wrote to say he now played sax in a people’s democracy bar in Budapest, and that it might be an idea for me to come and join him because they needed a drummer. The old man swore a lot, the old girl cried. It was hard leaving them, but I felt the call of art. So I left.

Wait, the guests are arriving. Yes sir, Two scotch on the rocks, sir. You are served, sir.

Those two scotches are rogues, the pair of them. That one there, the one with the waxed mustache, is a faith healer, Christian style. He knows his business. The other one, the one with the sideburns, is an embalmer. If the faith cure doesn’t work, you go on to the embalmer. He prepares the corpse the way the relatives want it. I could listen to
them for hours when they talk about the next in line. Because there are various kinds of smile available. There’s the saintly smile. There’s the knowing smile. Then there’s the at-peace-now smile. The saintly is the most expensive. The at-peace-now is cheaper. It’s all done with paraffin, and there’s a proper tariff. They come in at midnight after work and regularly sink three scotches. They’re moderate, religious guys.

Back in Zala County where I used to live, washing corpses was done according to an old ritual. Here they do things differently … Pay them no attention, we can carry on our conversation. After midnight they’re not interested in anyone that’s still alive, it’s just their way of saying
gut’abend
. They’ll only be interested in you if you have paraffin to sell.

Where was I?

As I was saying, after ’47 I felt I had hidden my talents away long enough and took the train to Pest. There were four of us in the band: the saxophonist, the accordionist, the pianist, and me on the drums. I’m not exaggerating when I say that was a great time for me. The new democracy was still settling down. It was all a bit heady. I don’t even like to talk about leaving it: the thought’s like a vise round my heart.

Because it so happened one morning I got an invitation from the AVO, the security police. I should be at their headquarters in Andrássy út at nine, though the street was called something else by then. Go here, go there, go up the stairs, go to that numbered room. I was sweating when I read the letter, but then I relaxed, because I realized they don’t normally write letters to you, they just quietly come at dawn and ring. People, back then, were terrified of the doorbell. Bell-terror syndrome, we called it.