I chose two variants of the same dynamic character type: the hedonistic, social-climbing version in my grandfather and the ascetic-heroic variant in my father. They seemed as different as night and day. Their fates had one thing in common: they both died in wars that for their nation ended in defeat and had catastrophic consequences. My grandfather was thirty-seven, my father thirty-four when they lost their lives. They were united by their untimely passing, and this single connection between them made me decide that while death, most naturally, stands above all else, it doesn't have to mean the end of life. My mother grew up with one parent and was a widow when she raised me. Victory is probably a good thing, but one can also live with the misery of defeat. It was in line with this tradition that my own variant developed; and it is probably with this variant in mind that my son and daughter will choose their own.
I am thirty-seven years old. Exactly as old as my grandfather was when he lost his life in one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. To lose one's life without losing life itself — a good trick, only how to do it? — that's what I'm thinking about now. My friend's been dead for three years. It's nighttime. I'm busy measuring different sorts and periods of time. It's drizzling outside, a fine spring rain. The pearly drops on the large windowpanes are illuminated by the friendly glow of my desk lamp, until they get too heavy and fall. I think of my children and wonder when I will have to let them go for good. As if I am somewhat surprised that I have had this much time with them and that I still have some left. Here I am, sitting in this book-lined, slightly disorderly — just the way I like it — quiet, nocturnal room. Moments ago some bad feeling or unpleasant dream must have startled my wife out of sleep, because she got up and came, or rather staggered, out of the bedroom. I followed her with my ear as she groped her way through the dark hallway, went into the kitchen, drank something, I heard the glass clink, and after taking a long look into the children's room, she went back to bed, her footsteps softer and steadier. When she opened the children's door, I followed her not with my ears but with my nose. I could smell the sweet fragrance of the children, and not even with my nose but with my flesh, my bones. No doubt my wife is even more powerfully aware of this sensation than I am. She doesn't look in on me. Although we haven't said a word about it, I know that ever since I started going over this manuscript she's been as restless again as she was when, sitting at the same table, I used to spend my time alone, drinking. She fears for our children.
We couldn't have been more than ten years old when my friend Prém and I decided we were going to be soldiers. My dead friend portrays Prém as subjectively as he does me, and sees some kind of erotic mystery in our relationship. True, he views Prém with petulant aversion rather than affection. I am not nearly as well versed in psychological analysis as he was, so I have no way of judging how accurate his conclusions are. But I certainly don't want to give the impression that I am biased in this regard and would therefore reject his particular interpretation of our relationship out of hand. If two human beings are of the same sex, their relationship will be defined by the fact that they are. And if they are of different sexes, then that will be the decisive factor. That's how I feel about it, and for all I know, I may be insensitive on this issue, too.
Prém and I have remained the best of friends to this day. He didn't become a soldier; he is an auto mechanic. And, like myself, a settled family man. If you're looking for faults, well, maybe his tax returns are not quite above reproach. A few years ago, exactly at the time my friend returned from Heiligendamm and I gave up my lucrative job as a commercial traveler, Prém opened his own shop. While the two of us went spiritually bankrupt, Prém got rich. When something is wrong with my car we fix it together, on Sunday afternoons. Prém is an absolute terror tracking down a malfunction. In the way we huddle in the greasy pit of his workshop, or rub against each other while sprawled under the car, making contact as we handle parts of a lifeless mechanism, in the way we curse and quarrel and fume or, in perfect agreement, we acknowledge the other's move to be perfect, just right — in short, in the way we enjoy each other's physical presence, there is undoubtedly something ritualistic that goes back to our childhood bonding, and it must reawaken in us the need for such bonding.
As children we made a pact and sealed it with our blood, though I no longer remember what prompted us to do it. With a dagger that belonged to my father we pricked our fingers, smeared the blood on each other's palm, and then licked it off. There was nothing solemn about this. Maybe because there was no real gushing of blood. We were embarrassed about our ineptness. Still, sealing our mutual aspirations with blood proved to be our deepest and strongest bond. What others used words for, we entrusted to the language of our bodies. And I am convinced the body has words that have nothing to do with eroticism. For the sake of an end to be achieved, we turned our body into a physical means. But our bodies had the goal in mind, not each other. And what reinforces this conviction is that it never occurred to us to consider each other a friend. To this day we call each other buddy, which to me — because I've been infected by intellectual self-consciousness — sounds a little phony, but which to him, precisely because of the differences in our background and social position, is a word that carries a most important distinction. He has other people for friends. But when it comes to straightening out his petty though by no means unprofitable financial indiscretions, he can always count on my professional guidance.
For us to become soldiers, we knew we had to outsmart the existing social order. Actually, neither of us could have picked a worse profession. I was the son of a captain on the general staff of the prewar Hungarian Army, and his father had been a fanatic fascist. My father fell on the Russian front. His father laid his hands on confiscated Jewish property, served a five-year sentence after the war, and then, six months after his release, was relocated to a camp for undesirables — much to his family's relief. The reigning spirit of the new age, in its shrewd cynicism, conveniently blurred the distinction between two lives that were predicated on ambitions and values that could not have been more different. We were both considered children of war criminals. Unless we wanted to appear stupid or insane, we had to keep our plan secret. And we didn't talk about it even to each other; after all, we didn't want to be soldiers of the Hungarian People's Army, just soldiers in general.
But all this needs some explanation.
Up until the mid-1950s, I could still hear members of my family voice the seemingly pragmatic and well-founded view that the English and the Americans would soon relieve our country of the Soviet Union's military presence. And the fact that in 1955 Soviet troops did withdraw from Austria kept these expectations alive, up until November 4, 1956. I considered my family's situation outrageously unjust, but with a child's unbiased sense of reality I also noticed that people around me did not really believe what they were telling each other. When my aunts and uncles discussed these matters, their fear and self-deception made their voices nervously thin and hushed. I had an aversion to these distraught and fretful tones. I must admit, therefore, that for lack of a real choice I would have wanted to become a soldier in the People's Army. Still, I had to realize my ambition without betraying my family. And in my morally dubious ambition, the example of my grandfather's life came to my aid.