Under the frog (9 page)

It was the village priest who then suggested an auto-da-fé.

Again, when it was known that Faragó had his nose pressed to
his pillow by an enormous volume of alcohol, anonymous hands set fire to his
house in the middle of the night. Faragó must have been in the grip of a true
carus because he didn’t lose a snore as the fire charred his front door and
then burned to the ground the two neighbouring houses. ‘The priest suggested
that?’ observed Gyuri. ‘Who knows?’ Ladányi said. ‘If we had the original text
of the commandments, there might well be a footnote concerning exemption in
regard to Faragó.’

When Hálás learned that Faragó had signed up to become the
local Communist Party Secretary following the changing political wind, it was
decided to stop messing about. Faragó was dragged out of his house in the dead
of night, dead drunk, a dead weight. His hands were tied behind his back, a
rope was thrown over a branch, a noose attached to Faragó’s neck. He was
hoisted up, the branch snapped and Faragó’s yells drew a passing Russian patrol
that came to investigate.

The outcome of this nocturnal suspension was that Faragó
ended up with a blister necklace and a revolver as he sensed there were people
who didn’t entirely approve of him.

‘I shoot,’ Faragó had announced in the csárda, ‘and I’m not
even going to bother asking any questions afterwards.’ This statement came
after the death of the villager credited previously with the six-fold
ventilation of Faragó.

The cause of Ladányi’s return was a small vineyard of two
hectares well away from Hálás that produced a wine so acrid that Faragó was
almost the only person who would drink it. This vineyard had been left to the
Church (probably maliciously) although it barely earned enough income to have
the altar dusted.

Faragó as first secretary and mayor of the Hálás-Mezo
megyer-Murony community had decreed that the vineyard should be removed from
the charge of the pushers of the people’s opiate and handed over to the
hegemony of the proletariat. The village turned to Ladányi because he was
someone who had been to Budapest, who had seen the innards of books, because he had breathed
his first lungfuls in Hálás, because he was a fully paid-up member of the
Society of Jesus and because he had broken the fifty-egg barrier.

Although
he had left the village fifteen years ago and had only been back for one
weekend in the interval, Ladányi was still big news and a source of immense
pride. How many other places could boast that the village Jew had become a
Jesuit? And then there were the reports that meandered back, as Ladányi made
his way through his law studies at university, of the omelette jousts and of
Ladányi’s participation in the goulash wars that had broken out at the end of
the thirties in Budapest’s restaurants. Ladányi was six foot two and this
copious frame in conjunction with a,student’s appetite created an enormous
parking space for edibles. He started to pay for his studies and his mother’s
upkeep by taking part in eat-outs with a side-bet going to the greatest
devourer. His first contests were on the student circuit where the wagers
merely covered the cost of the food consumed (usually dittoed three-course
meals) but his unflinching digestion soon took him to the big time of the New
York Cafe where leading journalists would be hard at work stretching the human
capacity for eating omelettes. When Ladányi polished off a forty-five egg
omelette with a couple of kilos of onions and ham thrown in for flavour,
devastating the drama critic of the
Pester Lloyd,
who had thrown in his napkin at thirty-eight, Hálás
knew all about it. When Ladányi with his custom-built cutlery was invited to
Gundel’s to test the new hyperstrength goulash, which was eventually billed as ‘even
Ladányi only had three bowls’ and had been certified by the Technical
University as containing 30,000 calories, Hálás had all the details (if a month
later). When circus strongman Sándor the Savage thought he could take Ladányi
with drum cakes, everyone had a good chuckle about that and the Stradivarius
violin Ladányi had won.

But
Ladányi had hung up his knife and fork, having broken the fifty-egg barrier for
the second time, after the editor of the
Pesti Hirlap
dropped dead on the opposite
side of the table, his cardiac arrest not unconnected with the forty-six eggs’
worth of omelette he had just consumed. This abrupt prandial demise and Ladányi’s
realisation that he wanted to join the Order brought his gastronomic career to
an end, without diminishing his fame in Hálás. So when Faragó heard that
Ladányi was coming to plead for the vineyard, he simply issued the challenge ‘Let’s
eat it out.’

The population
of Hálás was hardly past four hundred, according to Ladányi, and despite the
cold and pluvial weather, most of them were gathered outside in the rain
waiting for the Jesuit-laden cart to arrive.

It was,
Gyuri comprehended, the highest accolade you could get. ‘Now I know what the
nineteenth century was like,’ he thought. The best thing about visiting a place
like Hálás was that it made you very grateful for living in Budapest. Gyuri
hadn’t been out of Budapest seven hours and already the charms of electricity,
pavement and a greater choice of genetic material were becoming overpowering.
For a day, when he got back to Budapest, he would be very happy. Feeling he had
grown to the dimensions of a tycoon or a film star, Gyuri stepped off the cart
and watched his best shoes (not much to brag about, but the most powerful in
his sartorial arsenal) disappear in mud.

They
were shown into the csárda, a wooden affair, with a stove in the centre
dispensing a little heat into the interior, which was really going to be warmed
by the crowd outside funnelling its way in. Ladányi held a whispered
confabulation with the village priest in a confessional, sombre manner. As
Ladányi’s retinue, Gyuri and Neumann took the brunt of the local hospitality.
This, of course, had been in Gyuri’s mind when he agreed to come to Hálás: the
countryside meant unrestrained food. They might go short of excitement, but not
of eats. Gyuri had firm intentions of swallowing along with Ladányi as long as
he could and if people insisted on pressing presents of foodstuffs on them when
they departed, Gyuri could put up with that.

The
scale and ferocity of peasant cuisine could be overpowering if you were out of
training. Gyuri knew how the breakfasts alone could put feeble urban dwellers
in hospital. At Erdóváros, the summer he was thirteen, when Gyuri had been
entrusted to one of the local families, they poured him a generous pálinka for
breakfast along with a brick of fat garnished with a dash of paprika. Thinking
well of their liberality, he drank the pálinka before walking out the door into
the ground. It had taken his legs hours to remember how to walk but his stomach
only a few minutes to evict the solid elements of his meal. That sort of
morning fuelling was tolerable only if you had grown up on it and if you had a
day in a field ahead of you. Even as an athletic thirteen year-old, harvesting
for an hour had given him so much pain in so many places that all he could do
was lie in the field and pray for an ambulance, while the heavily pregnant woman
who had been working alongside him kindly offered to go and get him a drink.

The
hospitality was unleashed straight away. Gyuri hadn’t seen so much food, so
much good food since the point when the war had got noticeably war-like, and it
was quite possible that he had never seen that much food in an enclosed space
ever before. The depressing thing was that he wouldn’t be able to make up for
five years’ going hungry in one evening, however hard he tried. Even the
expansive Neumann was looking awed by the food, since people had unmistakeable
designs of inflicting several servings on them. If Gyuri tried to slow down his
consumption, the villagers who had appointed themselves his personal troop of
waiters would hover around and if he ate up, the consumed items would be
swiftly replaced. Within half an hour of mastication commencing, Gyuri was
already seriously worried about parting company with consciousness: surrounding
his enormous plate, which had grown a stalagmite of sausage, cured pork, pig
cheese and boxing-glove-sized chunks of bread, were two glasses of wine, one
red, one white, two glasses of pálinka, apricot and pear, and two glasses of
beer in case he got thirsty. Behind him he could hear enraged villagers
fighting to get to his side so they could pour out more of their pressings and
distillations.

Ladányi
was also offered some refreshment and a selection of food but noticeably
halfheartedly. No one wanted to wear out his alimentary muscles. He was
principally occupied in giving his hand to be kissed by the queue of people
that had formed to pay its respects. Ladányi was far from pleased about this,
Gyuri could tell, but the villagers’ veneration was reasonable enough, bearing
in mind that there were university professors who were terrified of Ladányi,
who would duck into doorways to avoid a searching question from Ladányi, a
question that would home in on their ignorance. The story Gyuri had heard was
that when Ladányi collected his law degree the faculty offered to throw in a
doctorate to save everyone’s time.

The
concurred time for the blow-out had been five o’clock, but Faragó and his
sidekicks didn’t show up till half past. Ladányi’s request to Gyuri for him to
come to Hálás to manage any violence hadn’t been made out of concern for his
own safety. ‘The villagers would protect me, and that’s exactly what I don’t
want. If things turn nasty, I’d like someone from outside, who won’t have to
stay there.’ However Gyuri’s apprehension about roughhousing was completely subsumed
in his amazement at Faragó’s appearance.

‘No one’s
going to believe us,’ Neumann whispered to Gyuri who concurred with a nod. No
amount of assertions that what they were saying was strictly in the bounds of
veracity would help, Gyuri knew, when he saw Faragó walk in; no one back in ’Pest
would believe them. Faragó rolled in with two lanky lackeys, a pistol tucked
into his waistband. His hue was so ghastly that Gyuri could imagine corpses
being dissected by medical students looking fresher. Faragó was drunk. He
stank. His suit, a pinstripe, looked as if it had been buried, circa 1932, and
only dug up the day before; in any case it clashed with the string vest he had
on underneath. His tie was the most successful part of his outfit; it made an
eyecatching belt.

The
hatred that rose when Faragó entered was so solid, so sinewed, Gyuri was
surprised that Faragó was able to walk in. He realised he was going to be
treated to something special that evening.

It was
hate at first sight for Gyuri which made him reflect that Faragó must have
taken the villagers on an almost endless argosy to undreamed-of lands of human
anger. This was the absolute zero of human turpitude. He deserved to be
exhibited, but it was probably for the best that he was shackled to Hálás. ‘I
thought we had it tough,’ observed Neumann taking in Faragó, ‘but the rest of
the country should write a thank you letter to Hálás for keeping him here.’
Gyuri had been teasing Ladányi on the train down about how the Church should
surely adapt and adopt a forgiving attitude to Faragó and gladly renounce
worldly possessions. Smiling quietly, too capable to be caught red-handed with
any unjesuit emotions, Ladányi had replied: ‘Whether or not we should have such
properties is a good question, as is what should be done with them, but they
shouldn’t be handed over to bandits. And while our Lord did enjoin us to turn
the other cheek, it should be borne in mind that he never met Faragó.’

‘So the
black beetle has come to be crushed by the people’s power?’ roared Faragó,
missing the chair he had been aiming to sit on and vanishing from sight.
Installed in the chair with the assistance of his seconds, he continued his
welcome address. ‘As first Secretary of the Hungarian Communist… the… er… the
Hungarian Working People’s Party of the Hálás-Mezómegyer-Murony community and
as mayor and as Chairman of the ‘Dizzy with Success’ collective farm, in the
words of Comrade Stalin, reporting on the work of the Central Committee to the
Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU(B).’ Here Faragó petered out ideologically,
paused and having run out of things to say, reached for his pistol to
illustrate a point and shot himself in the leg. To general disappointment, it
was the wooden leg.

‘And,’
Faragó resumed, ‘and in a scientific manner, with a bolshevik tempo, I’m going
to eat you into the ground.’ He snapped his fingers and the proprietor of the
csárda approached the table and erected an enormous balance with scales. ‘They
used that in the Békés county fried-chicken championships,’ someone interjected
in Gyuri’s ear, as the proprietor measured out two vast bowls of steaming bean
soup for the kick-off. Ladányi had said nothing more than ‘good evening’ so
far, while Faragó continued to glasshead, letting everyone see his thoughts. ‘You’re
trying to impress us, aren’t you? You think you can carry on sucking the blood
of the people, you leech in a dog collar?’ Here Faragó halted as his eye
chanced upon the village gypsy standing in the front row with a good view of
the proceedings. Emitting a thoracic-cleaning rasp, Faragó then expectorated a
slab of phlegm so huge and forceful that the unsuspecting gypsy was knocked
sideways. ‘No gypsies,’ Faragó elaborated. Which Gyuri found odd since Faragó
looked more gypsy than the village gypsy, with an extended stomach of such
paunchity you might think he had a huge watermelon stuffed under his vest; his
nose had gone in for extra growth as well, hanging like an overripe raspberry.
Gut and conk were unimpeachable witnesses to Faragó’s feasting in lean times;
he saw himself as an omnivore, as a megalovore, for whom eating was a measure
of virility. Faragó had no doubt he would leave his opponent stalled on the
first course.