But not to worry, any possible disturbance will be nipped in the bud, that is the authoritative assessment.
And then he hung up without saying good-bye. He had no time for this priggish hysterical female, about whom the generally accepted view in the highest circles was that she had already lost her head on the evening of October 23, 1956.
She retreated to the space under her desk and issued her orders from there.
Karakas mobilized larger forces to reestablish order at the critical site so that the official celebration could commence, if not exactly at the announced time at least with no more than a half-hour delay, precisely because of the planned radio broadcast. He reported again to the prime minister, who happened to have comrade Kádár in his office. The two men got along well, even though they came from very different social backgrounds and held diametrically opposed views.
They were both slow and jovial, but while the thinking of one was very simple, bordering on simpleminded, that of the other was very convoluted. They listened to the secretary’s report attentively, and with a seriousness appropriate to the situation, and then comrade Kádár opined that comrade Karakas would need the help of a few comrades well trained in carrying out operational tasks, and all of them together should hasten to the scene of the disaster to aid the comrades there.
Karakas had the swarming groups of onlookers and passersby first dispersed by these helpers, then followed and cleared from the nearby streets. He had the windows of buildings giving on the Museum Garden closed; he ordered superintendents to chase everyone away from behind the closed windows. He acknowledged the list of the dead and injured. He ordered the sound crew to play, at the highest possible volume, lively, energetic patriotic songs. While ambulances, firefighters, sanitation workers, and electricians were doing their best, cursing and getting in one another’s way, the entire area resounded with a medley of music — stately palotás dances, wild verbunkos or recruiting dances, and rowdy drinking songs.
He made one mistake. He judged correctly that the schoolchildren, who had been brought from nearby schools and were now forced to wait behind ropes, might be upset by this feverish activity, the quickly spreading news and rumors, and would find it hard to endure quietly a ceremony scheduled to last an hour and a half. It would not be wise to add mass hysteria to the catastrophe. So he ordered that the children should be taken back to their schools but not sent home until further notice.
They should be replaced with other children brought from other schools.
The square had to be filled with celebrants; workers’ militiamen should also be ordered to the square, but in civilian clothes.
The police officer to whom he gave the order did not dare remind Karakas that there were no other children available, since March 15 is a school holiday everywhere in Hungary.
In the Spanish Civil War, Karakas had been adjutant to the current Hungarian prime minister, then the International Brigades’ dreaded commissar of political security. Before 1950, when the prime minister came home for good, they had carried out several well-coordinated cleansing operations together, though sometimes they were not even in the same country or city, and thanks to their mutual support they had managed to be left out of every cleansing campaign and operation since; this did not generate much confidence in them among their dearest friends and best comrades. They were friends, yes, if there were reason to make such a judgment. Yet the same comrades against whom the two had conducted these tough campaigns for decades were the ones who arrested them.
This was no laughing matter. Karakas was nearly tortured to death during his interrogation.
Although he limped because of an injury received in Spain, he suffered from several organic diseases as the result of the later beatings and torture in Hungary. About these he spoke with no one except physicians at Kútvölgyi Hospital; thus no one knew which of his inner organs had been smashed. A number of people knew that Vladimir Farkas had personally urinated into his mouth, as he had done to comrade Kádár too.* But others reacted to this by saying, no, that’s simply unbelievable.
He was considered a communist who could not and indeed did not have any personal grievances. Today, however, he remained conspicuously quiet, almost fearful; he did not say a single word to André Rott in the stormy pool. Neither did he look at him when, having reached the end of the pool, he turned around. As if he had forgotten him or changed his mind, and then his silence or fear acquired a diplomatic character.
He must have a reason for softening up Rott.
But in fact he was enjoying the water, the storm, and it gave him a special pleasure that he was enjoying it after a double ordeal and shock. Anyway, Karakas was a man who was content with small amounts of enjoyment; a few spirited movements were enough for him, he was satisfied and done.
They swam like this for about six minutes, from one end of the pool to the other and then back again. This was no small torture for Rott. Being an excellent swimmer, he found it very hard to swim slowly. But Karakas swam as if his fear of drowning at each stroke was not completely baseless. And then, unexpectedly, after a turn, he waited for André. While both of them trod water and held on to the railing, he said to the younger man that yesterday the Political Committee put an end to the matter.
The Jews are not allowed to study the Eichmann papers we have.*
Surprising.
We prefer not to have Israeli detectives around who are charged with special missions.
Obviously.
Let them give us the date for when the trial begins, and a few days before that they’ll get the necessary papers.
Or at least copies of the necessary papers.
That would mean, André remarked, to give himself time to think, that the memorandum about the extradition is also canceled.
The Hungarian government will not request Eichmann’s extradition, because rejection of such a memorandum would not be desirable. At the moment Moscow does not want to make a big deal out of the Jewish question.
But we shall offer them appropriate documents that may be important to the Jews, and in exchange they should keep quiet.
Maybe not just any documents, and mainly not all of them.
Then they swam for another four minutes.
Which, this time, was not part of the obligatory theatrics of male power play.
André wondered what this powerful man’s intentions were for sharing this confidential information with him.
At this late morning hour, Karakas gave no sign of special anxiety or perturbation, and Rott could not have heard of the terrible accident.
When Karakas, cold and wet but very content, had returned to the parliament from the garden of the National Museum, he first made his report, which was received with satisfaction. But the moment he stepped out of the prime minister’s office he was given some news that had no official significance, but from which he had to sort and rearrange documents on his shiny desk for long minutes to recover.
Finally he got up, very irritated, and in unusually harsh tones told his secretary that he’d be back in forty minutes; until then he could be found in the Lukács.
The secretary’s concerned look followed him out.
He had ten minutes left for the steam bath.
André Rott accompanied him there too.
In the dim hall, dating from the Turkish era, there were only a few naked figures.
Karakas and Rott took their place in the farthest corner of the hot-water pool, sitting on underwater stone armchairs pitted by sulfides and mineral deposits. Simultaneously, security men appeared between the columns and then withdrew discreetly, which unavoidably made for much slipping and knocking noise in the hall. Karakas, holding on to the carved armrests, absentmindedly floated his paralyzed leg for a while, staring in front of him, but not at his pencil-thin penis peeking out from under his apron or his little testicles floating in long folds of skin, at nothing in particular, perhaps nothing at all, and then suddenly he immersed himself completely in the water. When he surfaced, seeking André’s face, he said, so far as I know, comrade Rott’s friends are not involved in any bad-smelling business.