“Why the devil did he call in those people? Couldn’t it be the way it was in Poland?”
“Don’t be a child. First, they already had their hands on you. Second, Kádár was summoned. I must confess that his courage impresses me. He took on himself the responsibility for Hungary’s fate. He feels, after all, the aversion that surrounds him,” he said reflectively, “but he has a goal, a great cause, that enables him to withstand pressure. He knows what he has rescued. The struggle for a nation, for the future, is that much more difficult because it is lonely. Well, he has people. But many attached themselves to him for tactical reasons, all the while suspecting that he seeks power, that he wants to pay himself back for being in prison. However, the motives of their actions are not important; only the effects are. The thing is for him to have time — a year or two. Then they will begin to respect him.”
His eyes wandered around the room as if the silence had just begun to make him uneasy. “Let’s put on a little music. It’s dismal here.”
He turned on the radio. A melody from some American film about white immigration gathered volume: Anastasia. His foot swayed in time to the music; he liked the plaintive song crooned in a soft, husky female voice.
“So you think Khrushchev rushed Nagy’s ouster?” Istvan asked, turning down the radio.
“He wanted to make things easier for Kádár”—Trojanowski curled his lips—“to clear the decks for him. He did not take the effects into account. Now he has strikes in Hungary. But that will pass. To eat, they must work.”
“I don’t like that way of getting things done.”
“Who does?” Trojanowski smiled sarcastically. “Agreements. Guarantees. We are grown people. Agreements stand if the conditions under which they were signed do not change — well, and if the stronger party wants to abide by them. In adult terms, if that party still has something to gain. Everyone operates this way except us, except Poles. We defeated the Turks at Vienna, rescuing the nation that invaded us later. We were with Napoleon until the end, though everyone else left him, and at least half of Poland could have been bargained away from the czar. Faithfulness to the end! To the last shot. The world marvels at us for that, and takes us for fools. Crazy Poles, eh!” He waved an angry hand. “Our communists are romantics as well — but they have their feet on the ground,” he added as if to himself. He sucked meditatively at the plum vodka.
“If it were not for them, our People’s Republic of today would not be,” he added, setting aside his glass.
“And you are like that,” Istvan mocked gently. “A chip off the old block.”
“What can I do? At birth I was burdened with this inheritance,” Trojanowski sighed with affected regret. “At times I am even proud of it.”
“Certainly Mindszenty would be to your liking. A cardinal, a voluntary prisoner in the American embassy. He did not abandon Hungary.”
Trojanowski leaned on his elbow and ran his hand through his dwindling shock of blond hair. His blue eyes glowed belligerently.
“I don’t trust such pathetic gestures. Is that a test of my intelligence? We must get this straight: he left Hungary — he left because he is on American territory though he is still with you. He understood nothing about the situation in which he found himself after he left prison. He thought it would be as it had been. Suddenly he felt himself to be not a spiritual leader, but a political one. He urged people on to the struggle. And then he boasted—” Trojanowski looked around for cigarettes, which Istvan pushed toward him in an Indian copper case. “No Kossuths? I prefer strong ones. But the Church has experience. It is a wise institution. It does not approve of desertion.”
“You can’t demand that anyone push themselves into martyrdom,” Istvan protested. “They would have shot him. He’s an old man.”
“Well, yes. It would have been a worthy ending for his life. The Church acknowledges two solutions for its dignitaries in such cases: endure with the faithful to the end and go to the wall when the end comes. The Church values the sowing of blood. It does not go to waste. As a matter of fact, the communists think the same way: an idea that is not worth dying for is not worth living for.”
“And the other solution?”
“It is more difficult, for it requires not only zeal and heart, but good sense. It is a wise, circumspect pact with the victors, for in the end it must come to that, and the Church values that, perhaps even more. But for that it is necessary to love one’s flock more than oneself.”
“Are you a Catholic?”
“You might say so,” he said as if the question troubled him. “In all sincerity, I was. One can renounce it, but it trails after us: tradition, habit, almost magical gestures. I have kept up the hope that the problem exists.” He blew smoke at the ceiling. “It would be better if it did. One pushes away these thoughts; there is no time for them. We do anything to deaden that insistent voice.”
“And so — only after death?” Istvan whispered, listening intently.
“We are inured to death. We know that life is a fatal illness. But who wants to remember that every day? I tell you, I cannot imagine not lying in the cemetery under a cross…Don’t tire me. Surely you didn’t invite me here for this.”
“I wanted to ask for your help,” Istvan ventured. Trojanowski turned toward him, surprised. “I have a painter here.”
“A Hindu?”
“You know him, so it will be that much easier for you to talk to him. Ram Kanval. He was going to go to Hungary. But you know what those imbeciles call it: decadent art.”
“Uh-oh. Something unpleasant comes back to me when I hear that scientific term,” the journalist drawled. “Well, go on.”
“Bajcsy refused to approve his stipend. You have the greater freedom: take him. He’s going to waste here. He tried to poison himself in a fit of despair; I mention that only for your information. Well, think of something. Will you help?”
Trojanowski sat silent with his eyes closed.
“Listen. I’m going away. I put this to your conscience,” Istvan insisted. “Try for once not to do this like a Pole, for you wax sentimental, you promise, and the next day your zeal passes and you forget altogether.”
“All right. I will speak to our cultural attaché,” he agreed at last. “You may count on me, though I can’t vouch for the result.”
“That’s all I ask. Thank you. I know he will be to your people’s liking. Enough now. Let’s go into dinner. What’s your pleasure? Wine? Plum vodka?”
“Let’s stay with the same.” Trojanowski took the bottle and, still holding his glass, moved toward the dining room. “Ah — the smell! All the time I was missing something: it’s just that I’m hungry.” He clapped Istvan warmly on the shoulder.
Istvan spotted a notice in the press that two well-known journalists who had escaped from Hungary had appeared in Calcutta and Bombay. None of the embassy staff, however, could remember any newspaper or other publication at which people by those names had worked. He would gladly have talked with them and listened to their accounts of the uprising, even if it had inculpated him in the ambassador’s eyes. But the route taken by the self-exiled representatives of Hungary bypassed New Delhi.
In bold type on their front pages, the Hindustan Times and the Hindustan Standard sounded alarms about scuffles between patrols on the border of Kashmir and riots in Tibet. They accused the Chinese of invading territory that had been Indian from time immemorial, though only lightly manned forts on two main caravan routes marked out the zone in question, with its barren highlands and arid valleys in which bands of herdsmen wandered freely, grazing yaks and sheep, or pilgrims on their way to Lhasa or the Buddhist monasteries of Kullu passed to the beat of gongs and the birdlike whistle of fifes. An exchange of fire that was actually insignificant reverberated in the press, conveniently for the government, which welcomed the interrogatories of members of parliament demanding new appropriations for arms.