The Incorrigible Optimists Club (23 page)

9

I
mré was weeping and there was nothing to be done. In actual fact, he was not weeping, but tears flowed whenever he spoke about Budapest.

‘There's no point in getting yourself into such a state,' said Tibor, putting his arm round his shoulder to comfort him.

I also tried to make him feel better. Imré had that look of blank astonishment of those who are having nightmares with their eyes open. In his mind's eye, he could see the besieged Corvin cinema, where students were making Molotov cocktails on an assembly line, machine-guns were firing at civilians taking refuge beneath the arcades and amongst the heaps of tangled corpses. He could hear the growl of the tanks' tracks make a whooshing sound on the asphalt and the uncomprehending yells from the desperate crowd.

‘I had a friend at the Corvin cinema whose name was Odon,' said Imré, ‘and he climbed up onto the tanks like an acrobat, hurled his lighted cocktail at the turret and jumped down before the tank caught fire. He knocked out two dozen of them on his own. I don't know what became of him. We fled from the cinema when they began firing at it.'

Every man commits a certain number of errors in his life. He searches and finds good or bad reasons for them, often excuses or pretexts. The worst of all reasons is the discovery of his profound foolishness. After the tragic events that had brought bloodshed to Hungary, Tibor, Imré, and the majority of their one hundred and sixty thousand compatriots who had fled the country, asked themselves the same question: were the Hungarians imbeciles? Had they mistaken their desires for realities? Were they like credulous children? Could they have avoided this catastrophe that had killed twenty-five thousand of them? How could they have underestimated their enemy to this extent? On each occasion, after endless discussions, and having gone over the various phases of the rout, they concluded that it was unavoidable. For Imré, there was no
room for doubt. The blaze had not been lit spontaneously. But nobody had understood how it had ignited. Someone had certainly blown on the embers. During the preceding months, Radio Free Europe, which broadcast in Hungarian from Austria and was picked up in virtually the whole country, had not ceased encouraging the Hungarians to rebel, promising that help would come from the West. The people must show its determination and rise up. They could count on the support of the European nations and of the Americans, whose bases in Germany were less than an hour by plane from Budapest. Millions of Hungarians had listened to this broadcast and had become convinced that the Western armies would help them free themselves from the Soviet yoke and that they should revolt. The young and the students took advantage of the indecision of the leadership of the communist party, and later the temporary retreat of the Soviet troops, which was interpreted as confirmation of Radio Free Europe's theories. To begin with, they were dead scared at having dared to revolt. After 23 October, the fear had vanished. They felt as though they were reliving the revolution of 1848. The country wasn't being led and nor was the revolution. For a brief week, Hungary was in the hands of the rioters and liberty had been achieved. There was no organization and great confusion reigned. They could pull down the statue of Stalin without being fired upon. The French and the British, bogged down in the Suez crisis, had no more intention of intervening than did Eisenhower, who was thinking only about his re-election. Radio Free Europe, which was financed by the CIA, could not give a damn about the Hungarians.

‘The majority of peoples on this earth have been hoodwinked either by the Russians, or by the Americans,' said Imré, sniffing as he explained to me. ‘We're the only ones to have been conned by both of them. Never listen to the rubbish they tell you on the radio.'

Imré was weeping because the world had changed. At the Club, consensus was rare. They liked to quibble and squabble. Nowadays, there was no recurrence of the events that had taken place in Budapest. On this, they were all agreed. The Hungarians had died in vain. Those who said nothing were annoyed they could produce no counter argument. All
the signs, both positive and objective, were leading inexorably towards democratization.

‘It's irreversible,' Vladimir explained.

The grim kind of communism, that of the rigged trials, the camps, the KGB and Stalin, was in the process of disappearing, just as ice melts in the sunshine and day follows night; these two allegories being those used by Vladimir and Pavel respectively. Tomasz mentioned the chrysalis that becomes a butterfly and Gregorios the pain that goes with childbirth. Whatever images were used, they all led to one conclusion. In that glorious summer of 1961, communism was changing. At last! Thanks to Little Father Khrushchev, writers and poets who had been shot or had vanished in the camps were rehabilitated. With him, there was hope. In the countries of the East, free newspapers with independent journalists were flourishing. People weren't arrested or imprisoned when they suggested getting rid of absurd and authoritarian projects or restoring a degree of liberalism to the economy, or when they spoke of democracy, free elections, creating political parties and trade unions to defend the rights of workers, and doing away with the secret police. Everywhere, these newspapers were arguing heatedly. Books that had been circulating in secret were now published officially. Khrushchev had even allowed Solzhenitsyn, a former prisoner, to publish a remarkable novel that was set in a gulag.

‘It's the way History is moving,' Pavel had asserted.

But on the morning of 13 August 1961, the sky collapsed over their heads and they woke with a hangover that would set them back several years. During the night, the authorities in the German Democratic Republic had closed sixty-nine of the eighty-eight checkpoints between the Soviet and the Western zones, building an initial wall of barbed wire and bricks that extended for 155 kilometres around Berlin, followed by 112 others between the two Germanies; they bricked up the windows and doors of houses situated on the line of a wall that was 3.60 metres high and was sunk 2.10 metres into the ground, crammed with 96 watchtowers, 302 control towers, 20 bunkers, and 259 units with guard dogs. What puzzled the Club members most was not the brutality and the ignominy
of the methods used, nor their ideological justifications, the dictatorial behaviour, the disdain for human beings, the shattered lives; no, all of this they were familiar with. What upset them was their mistaken analysis, their collective blindness, their failure to understand, the desire to uphold their conviction that the system could get better. There is nothing worse for a Marxist than not understanding historical materialism. There was no possible hope of return now. This wall was like a new prison into which they were shut. They were rather like the inmate who is expecting to be released at any moment and who is then told that his sentence is to be extended to life.

‘For our families, it's all over,' said Vladimir, devastated by grief.

‘This time, we're cut off for ever. We'll never see our homeland again,' muttered Igor.

‘We're idiots. We'll never change,' Imré chimed in.

As usual, whether it was good news or bad, they greeted the event with bottles of Clairette-de-Die.

‘As long as we can drink, let's make the most of it while we're alive,' added Leonid.

‘I raise my glass,' said Werner, who did not usually wax lyrical, ‘to all those bastards who make us seem so friendly.'

Imré was relieved to note that it was not just the Hungarians who had been screwed.

During the weeks that followed, a number of confused Germans turned up at the Club. Those who spoke French settled in Paris. Those who spoke English suffered further hardship by emigrating to London. Nikita Khrushchev was appointed a life member of the Club for his enduring contribution to its development.

10

T
ibor had not been seen for two days. Imré had given the alert and Igor had informed Daniel Mahaut, who had launched some enquiries at the Préfecture, but with no results. Imré was beside himself. According to Jacky, Tibor was depressed; he was eating nothing and was drinking more than usual. Imré confirmed that he had not been sleeping and had been having morbid thoughts. The idea that he had done away with himself gathered momentum, though his body had not been found. The worrying thing was that Tibor had taken nothing with him. None of the clothes he was so fond of. Neither his crocodile skin shoes, nor his suede jacket, nor his suit from Christian Dior in Prince of Wales check that had cost him an arm and a leg. His personal money, the fruits of his tips, was still in the biscuit tin, which meant he had not left of his own free will.

From these observations, Daniel Mahaut had concluded that his disappearance gave cause for concern. He made enquiries in the hospitals and nursing homes in the Paris region, but to no avail. Tibor had left his job at L'Acapulco at about four o'clock in the morning. Nobody had noticed anything abnormal or unusual about his behaviour. He had not returned home. There may have been an encounter with the wrong kind of people in Pigalle, where crooks proliferated, especially at night. God knows what sordid racket he may have got involved in. Lognon got down to work. Along with Special Branch, they had their sources. He had promised us he would search for him, but eventually he was forced to admit that Tibor really had disappeared. When people vanished without leaving any trace, it was not a good omen. Mahaut and two of his colleagues embarked on the titanic job of checking registration forms at hotels and furnished apartments. Imré informed us that Hungarians used to commit suicide by throwing themselves in the turbulent torrents of the Danube, which was not blue, but muddy. He feared Tibor might have drowned himself in the Seine. By now his body may be drifting in the North Sea.

Days and weeks passed and we began to speak of him in the past tense. None of us was aware of the fact, except Imré, who left the Club, slamming the door behind him. We didn't see him again for three days. Igor went to call on him to apologize and bring him back to the Balto, to be with his friends.

Old father Marcusot had a real cause for concern: Tibor had bequeathed him the largest bill any Auvergnat bistro owner had ever consented to.

‘That may well be why he's disappeared,' he reflected one evening.

‘Albert, it's shameful to think of anything so horrible,' replied Madeleine. ‘Poor Tibor. He, who was so gullible and so kind. He must have had an accident.'

‘He's met the man of his life and hasn't dared tell Imré!' suggested Jacky. ‘I know Tibor, what he lacks is not acting parts, but cash. He's found someone that's filthy rich and he's now billing and cooing beside a swimming pool on the Côte d'Azur. I've seen the way guys look at him and even though he has put on twenty kilos, he's still a handsome fellow. He's a star, someone who attracts people. It's true though, when all's said and done, they're just like us.'

If Madeleine protested out of principle, no one found Jacky's idea ridiculous. We had all thought of it. Apart from Imré. He sat there alone on a chair, with his newspaper on the table, lost in thought, and no one dared disturb him. I went and sat down beside him and asked him to talk to me about Tibor. I hadn't known him very well. I didn't know who he was. But when I'd greeted Imré, he'd looked at me as though I were an Iroquois. He did nothing during the day except eat croissants that were intended for customers, read the newspaper, smoke his pipe, daydream as he drank milky tea, and begin translations that no one had asked him for. He always dressed with care and elegance. He no longer played chess. Madeleine overlooked his tantrums and fed him generously, good meals being the best cure for melancholia. He recited poems to her in Hungarian. She didn't understand a single word. He had translated Rilke from German into Hungarian and he retranslated it for her into French. She found it very beautiful, and swore to him that he didn't have the slightest accent. This strengthened him in his conviction that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

The news broke unexpectedly and should have made them happy. When you're convinced that someone is dead and you discover he's alive, you ought to jump for joy and display your relief, but when the members of the Club heard that Tibor was alive, they were filled with consternation. Even Imré would have preferred him to be living it up in Saint-Tropez without him. The reason for their concern was splashed over the front page of
France-Soir
, which reported his triumphant arrival in Budapest. Tibor Balazs had returned home! It was the first time that a man who had fled from a communist regime had made the journey in the reverse direction. And, far from harassing him or instituting legal proceedings against him, Hungary welcomed him like the prodigal son who testified to the superiority of popular democracy over imperialism. It was a spontaneous and voluntary act that surprised everyone, including the Hungarian authorities, who did their utmost to prevent their own people from escaping and were not accustomed to a move in the other direction. Tibor had arrived at the Austrian border and a few minutes later, the response came from Budapest: ‘Allow him in!' He was interviewed by the State radio and declared: ‘I've come back to Hungary. Life in the West is unbearable and loathsome. I couldn't stand being far away from my country and my mother any longer. I ask the Hungarian people for forgiveness.'

His return was resounding proof that the West was squalid, nothing but a mirage created through propaganda, and that the emigrants were going to return to their homeland. Not only was Tibor not put in prison or bothered by the authorities, he was feted and celebrated as a national hero. He returned to Debrecen and found Martha again. She had never given up hope. She knew that he would come back and would not abandon her. He was appointed professor of drama at the Budapest conservatory and, later, appeared in several Hungarian films.

Tibor left a considerable bill unpaid. Some said it was one thousand five hundred francs, others said far more. The fact remains that, shortly after Tibor's reappearance, Albert put up a framed notice: ‘Credit is dead, the bad debtors have killed it.' Imré decided he would pay this debt down to the last centime, but Albert refused. Imré wasn't the one who had ordered
the food and drink and Albert knew his financial position was difficult. Imré was adamant. If Albert refused, he would not set foot in the Balto again. Albert relented. Imré made used of the eight hundred and seventy-one francs that Tibor had left in the biscuit tin and he took over a year to pay off the rest.

Try as he might, Imré could not bring himself to forget Tibor and he arranged for him to come back, much later, in the most unexpected guise. The Club made it a point of honour not to talk about him any more, even though everyone envied him for having the courage to do what they dreamed of doing: to return home.