Coincidences, authors are told (usually by the critics), must be avoided, although in truth the real world is full of incidents that in themselves are unbelievable. Everyone has had an experience that, if they wrote about it, would appear to others to be pure fiction.
The same week that the headlines in the world newspapers read “Russia Invades Afghanistan,” “America to Withdraw from Moscow Olympics” there also appeared a short obituary in The Times for the distinguished Professor of English at the University of Budapest. “A man who was born and died in his nation’s capital and whose reputation remains assured by his brilliant translation of the works of Shakespeare into his native Hungarian. Although some linguists consider his Coriolanus immature they universally acknowledge his Hamlet to be a translation of genius.”
* * *
Nearly a decade after the Hungarian Revolution I had the chance to participate in a student athletics meeting in Budapest. The competition was scheduled to last for a full week, so I felt there would be an opportunity to find out a little about the country. The team flew in to Ferihegy Airport on Sunday night and we were taken immediately to the Hotel Ifushag. (I learned later that the word meant youth in Hungarian.) Having settled in, most of the team went to bed early since their opening round heats were the following day.
Breakfast the next morning consisted of milk, toast and an egg, served in three acts with long intervals between them. Those of us who were running that afternoon skipped lunch for fear that a matinee performance might cause us to miss our events completely.
Two hours before the start of the meeting, we were taken by bus to the Nép stadium and unloaded outside the dressing rooms (I have always felt they should be called undressing rooms). We changed into track suits and sat around on benches anxiously waiting to be called. After what seemed to be an interminable time but was in fact only a few minutes, an official appeared and led us out onto the track. Because it was the opening day of competition, the stadium was packed. When I had finished my usual warm-up of jogging, sprinting and some light calisthenics, the loudspeaker announced the start of the 100-meter race in three languages. I stripped off my track suit and ran over to the start. When called, I pressed my spikes against the blocks and waited nervously for the starter’s pistol. Felkészülni, Kész—bang. Ten seconds later the race was over and the only virtue of coming in last was that it left me six free days to investigate the Hungarian capital.
Walking around Budapest reminded me of my childhood days in Bristol just after the war, but with one noticeable difference. In addition to the bombed-out buildings, there was row upon row of bullet holes in some of the walls. The revolution, although eight years past, was still much in evidence, perhaps because the nationals did not want anyone to forget. The people on the streets had lined faces, stripped of all emotion, and they shuffled rather than walked, leaving the impression of a nation of old men. If you inquired innocently why, they told you there was nothing to hurry for, or to be happy about, although they always seemed to be thoughtful with each other.
On the third day of the games, I returned to the Nép stadium to support a friend of mine who was competing in the semi-finals of the 400-meter hurdles, the first event that afternoon. Having a competitor’s pass, I could sit virtually anywhere in the half-empty arena. I chose to watch the race from just above the final bend, giving me a good view of the home straight. I sat down on the wooden bench without paying much attention to the people on either side of me. The race began and as my friend hit the bend crossing the seventh hurdle with only three hurdles to cover before the finishing line, I stood and cheered him heartily all the way down the home straight. He managed to come in third, ensuring himself a place in the final the following day. I sat down again and wrote out the detailed result in my program. I was about to leave, as there were no British competitors in the hammer or the pole vault, when a voice behind me said:
“You are English?”
“Yes,” I replied, turning in the direction from which the question had been put.
An elderly gentleman looked up at me. He wore a three-piece suit that must have been out of date when his father owned it, and even lacked the possible virtue that some day the style might come back into fashion. The leather patches on the elbows left me in no doubt that my questioner was a bachelor, for they could only have been sewn on by a man—either that or one had to conclude he had elbows in odd places. The length of his trousers revealed that his father had been two inches taller than he. As for the man himself, he had a few strands of white hair, a walrus mustache and ruddy cheeks. His tired blue eyes were perpetually half-closed, like the shutter of a camera that has just been released. His forehead was so lined that he might have been any age between fifty and seventy. The overall impression was of a cross between a tram inspector and an out-of-work violinist.
I sat down for a second time.
“I hope you didn’t mind my asking?” he added.
“Of course not,” I said.
“It’s just that I have so little opportunity to converse with an Englishman. So when I spot one I always grasp the nettle. Is that the right colloquial expression?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to think how many Hungarian words I knew. Yes, No, Good morning, Goodbye, I am lost, Help.
“You are in the student games?”
“Were, not are,” I said. “I departed somewhat rapidly on Monday.”
“Because you were not rapid enough, perhaps?”
I laughed, again admiring his command of my first language.
“Why is your English so excellent?” I inquired.
“I’m afraid it’s a little neglected,” the old man replied. “But they still allow me to teach the subject at the university. I must confess to you that I have absolutely no interest in sport, but these occasions always afford me the opportunity to capture someone like yourself and oil the rusty machine, even if only for a few minutes.” He gave me a tired smile but his eyes were now alight.
“What part of England do you hail from?” For the first time his pronunciation faltered as “hail” came out as “heel.”
“Somerset,” I told him.
“Ah,” he said, “perhaps the most beautiful county in England.” I smiled, as most foreigners never seem to travel much beyond Oxford or Stratford-on-Avon. “To drive across the Mendips,” he continued, “through perpetually green hilly countryside and to stop at Cheddar to see Gough’s caves, at Wells to be amused by the black swans ringing the bell on the Cathedral wall, or at Bath to admire the life-style of classical Rome, and then perhaps to go over the county border and on to Devon … Is Devon even more beautiful than Somerset, in your opinion?”
“Never,” said I.
“Perhaps you are a little prejudiced,” he laughed. “Now let me see if I can recall:
Of the western counties there are seven
But the most glorious is surely Devon.
Perhaps Hardy, like you, was prejudiced and could think only of his beloved Exmoor, the village of Tiverton and Drake’s Plymouth.”
“Which is your favorite county?” I asked.
“The North Riding of Yorkshire has always been underrated, in my opinion,” replied the old man. “When people talk of Yorkshire, I suspect Leeds, Sheffield and Barnsley spring to mind. Coal mining and heavy industry. Visitors should travel and see the dales there; they will find them as different as chalk from cheese. Lincolnshire is too flat and so much of the Midlands must now be spoiled by sprawling towns. The Birminghams of this world hold no appeal for me. But in the end I come down in favor of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, quaint old English villages nestling in the Cotswolds and crowned by Stratford-upon-Avon. How I wish I could have been in England in 1959 while my countrymen were recovering from the scars of revolution. Olivier performing Coriolanus, another man who did not want to show his scars.”
“I saw the performance,” I said. “I went with a school party.”
“Lucky boy. I translated the play into Hungarian at
the age of nineteen. Reading over my work again last year made me aware I must repeat the exercise before I die.”
“You have translated other Shakespeare plays?”
“All but three. I have been leaving Hamlet to last, and then I shall return to Coriolanus and start again. As you are a student, am I permitted to ask which university you attend?”
“Oxford.”
“And your college?”
“Brasenose.”
“Ah. B.N.C. How wonderful to be a few yards away from the Bodleian, the greatest library in the world. If I had been born in England I should have wanted to spend my days at All Souls, that is just opposite B.N.C., is it not?”
“That’s right.”
The professor stopped talking while we watched the next race, the first semi-final of the 1,500 meters. The winner was Anfras Patovich, a Hungarian, and the partisan crowd went wild with delight.
“That’s what I call support,” I said.
“Like Manchester United when they have scored the winning goal in the Cup Final. But my fellow countrymen do not cheer because the Hungarian was first,” said the old man.
“No?” I said, somewhat surprised.
“Oh, no, they cheer because he beat the Russian.”
“I hadn’t even noticed,” I said.
“There is no reason why you should, but their presence is always in the forefront of our minds and we are rarely given the opportunity to see them beaten in public.”
I tried to steer him back to a happier subject. “And before you had been elected to All Souls, which college would you have wanted to attend?”
“As an undergraduate, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Undoubtedly Magdalen is the most beautiful college. It has the distinct advantage of being situated on the River Cherwell; and in any case I confess a weakness for perpendicular architecture and a love of Oscar Wilde.” The conversation was interrupted by the sound of a pistol and we watched the second semi-final of the 1,500 meters, which was won by Orentas of the U.S.S.R., and the crowd showed its disapproval more obviously this time, clapping in such a way that left hands passed by right without coming into contact. I found myself joining in on the side of the Hungarians. The scene made the old man lapse into a sad silence. The last race of the day was won by Tim Johnston of England and I stood and cheered unashamedly. The Hungarian crowd clapped politely.
I turned to say goodbye to the professor, who had not spoken for some time.
“How long are you staying in Budapest?” he asked.
“The rest of the week. I return to England on Sunday.”
“Could you spare the time to join an old man for dinner one night?”
“I should be delighted.”
“How considerate of you,” he said, and he wrote out his full name and address in capital letters on the back of my program and returned it to me. “Why don’t we say tomorrow at seven? And if you have any old newspapers or magazines do bring them with you,” he said, looking a little sheepish. “And I shall quite understand if you have to change your plans.”
* * *
I spent the next morning looking over St. Matthias Church and the ancient fortress, two of the buildings that showed no evidence of the revolution. I then took a short trip down the Danube before spending the afternoon supporting the swimmers at the Olympic pool. At six I left the pool and went back to my hotel. I changed into my team blazer and gray slacks, hoping I looked smart enough for my distinguished host. I locked my door and started toward the lift and then remembered. I returned to my room to pick up the pile of newspapers and magazines I had collected from the rest of the team.
Finding the professor’s home was not as easy as I had expected. After meandering around cobbled streets and waving the professor’s address at several passers-by, I was finally directed to an old apartment block. I ran up the three flights of the wooden staircase in a few leaps and bounds, wondering how long the climb took the professor every day. I stopped at the door that displayed his number and knocked.
The old man answered immediately, as if he had been standing there, waiting by the door. I noticed that he was wearing the same suit he had had on the previous day.
“I am sorry to be late,” I said.
“No matter, my own students also find me hard to find the first time,” he said, grasping my hand. He paused. “Bad to use the same word twice in the same sentence. ‘Locate’ would have been better, wouldn’t it?”
He trotted on ahead of me, not waiting for my reply, a man obviously used to living on his own. He led me down a small dark corridor into his drawing room. I was shocked by its small size. Three sides were covered with indifferent prints and watercolors depicting English scenes, while the fourth wall was dominated by a large bookcase. I could spot Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Trollope, Hardy, even Waugh and Graham Greene. On the table was a faded copy of the New Statesman. I looked around to see if we were alone, but there seemed to be no sign of a wife or child either in person or picture, and indeed the table was only set for two.
The old man turned and stared with childish delight at my pile of newspapers and magazines.
“Punch, Time and the Observer, a veritable feast,” he declared, gathering them into his arms before placing them lovingly on his bed in the corner of the room.
The professor then opened a bottle of Szürkebarát and left me to look at the pictures while he prepared the meal. He slipped away into an alcove which was so small that I had not realized the room contained a kitchenette. He continued to bombard me with questions about England, many of which I was quite unable to answer.
A few minutes later he stepped back into the room, requesting me to take a seat. “Do be seated,” he said, on reflection. “I do not wish you to remove the seat. I wish you to sit on it.” He put a plate in front of me which had on it a leg of something that might have been a chicken, a piece of salami and a tomato. I felt sad, not because the food was inadequate, but because he believed it to be plentiful.
After dinner, which despite my efforts to eat slowly and hold him in conversation, did not take up much time, the old man made some coffee, which tasted bitter, and then filled a pipe before we continued our discussion. We talked of A. L. Rowse and his views on Shakespeare and then he turned to politics.
“Is it true,” the professor asked, “that England will soon have a Labor government?”
“The opinion polls seem to indicate as much,” I said.
“I suppose the British feel that Sir Alec Douglas-Home is not swinging enough for the sixties,” said the professor, now puffing vigorously away at his pipe. He paused and looked up at me through the smoke. “I did not offer you a pipe, because I assumed after your premature exit in the first round of the competition you would not be smoking.” I smiled. “But Sir Alec,” he continued, “is a man with long experience in politics and it’s no bad thing for a country to be governed by an experienced gentleman.”
I would have laughed out loud had the same opinion been expressed by my own tutor.
“And what of the Labor leader?” I said, forbearing to mention his name.
“Molded in the white heat of a technological revolution,” he replied. “I am not so certain. I liked Gaitskell, an intelligent and shrewd man. An untimely death. Attlee, like Sir Alec, was a gentleman. But as for Mr. Wilson, I suspect that history will test his mettle—a pun which I had not intended—in that white heat and only then will we discover the truth.”
I could think of no reply.
“I was considering last night after we parted,” the old man continued, “the effect that Suez must have had on a nation which only ten years before had won a world war. The Americans should have backed you. Now we read in retrospect, always the historian’s privilege, that at the time Prime Minister Eden was tired and ill. The truth was he didn’t receive the support from his closest allies when he most needed it.”
“Perhaps we should have supported you in 1956.”
“No, no, it was
too late then for the West to shoulder Hungary’s problems. Churchill understood that in 1945. He wanted to advance beyond Berlin and to free all the nations that bordered Russia. But the West had had a bellyful of war by then and left Stalin to take advantage of that apathy. When Churchill coined the phrase ‘the Iron Curtain,’ he foresaw exactly what was going to happen in the East. Amazing to think that when that great man said ‘if the British Empire should last a thousand years,’ it was in fact destined to survive for only twenty-five. How I wish he had still been around the corridors of power in 1956.”
“Did the revolution greatly affect your life?”
“I do not complain. It is a privilege to be the Professor of English in a great university. They do not interfere with me in my department and Shakespeare is not yet considered subversive literature.” He paused and took a luxuriant puff at his pipe. “And what will you do, young man, when you leave the university—as you have shown us that you cannot hope to make a living as a runner?”
“I want to be a writer.”
“Then travel, travel, travel,” he said. “You cannot hope to learn everything from books. You must see the world for yourself if you ever hope to paint a picture for others.”
I looked up at the old clock on his mantelpiece only to realize how quickly the time had passed.
“I must leave you, I’m afraid; they expect us all to be back in the hotel by ten.”
“Of course,” he said, smiling, “the English public school mentality. I will accompany you to Kossuth Square and then you will be able to see your hotel on the hill.”
As we left the flat, I noticed that he didn’t bother to lock the door. Life had left him little to lose. He led me quickly through the myriad of narrow roads that I had found so impossible to navigate earlier in the evening, chatting about this building and that, an endless fund of knowledge about his own country as well as mine. When we reached Kossuth Square he took my hand and held it, as lonely people often will, reluctant to let go.
“Thank you for allowing an old man to indulge himself by chattering on about his favorite subject.”