A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [86]
In October 1956, Gyorgy Konrad was editing a new literary magazine, which by chance had been scheduled for publication on October 27, the day of the outlawed demonstration. He had finished his studies that summer, and he and his classmates had been inducted into the military. Their training included not only instructions on the use of weapons but lectures by officers on abstract notions such as “the nature of the enemy.” Konrad would listen to these lectures with his mouth slightly twisted in his ironic smile, but the “nature of the enemy” lecture proved to be too much for him and he exploded in great heaves of laughter. Soon he was declared an “anarchist” and thrown out of the army. This was the same army from whom his university colleagues obtained weapons a few months later, in October 1956. Konrad, not wishing to take part in a shooting war, stayed home for a few days after the illegal demonstration. But since it did not wind down and was too interesting to miss, he decided to wander over to the campus and around town.
At the university, rebels had stacks of boxes. There were boxes of apricot jelly from the far right-wing Otto von Hapsburg, and boxes of light weapons from the police. Somebody had sent cans of corned beef. When Gyorgy arrived at the campus, it was all being distributed to the young revolutionaries. “Who wants a submachine gun?” someone shouted. Konrad raised his hand and was handed the weapon.
It was amusing to walk around Budapest wearing an armband and holding a submachine gun at your side. “I carried it like an umbrella,” he said. He did not want to shoot anyone, but he did have some things he wanted to do. He visited the various publishing houses, this tall young man with a mop of curly brown hair leaning on a submachine gun, and asked to see the director. He was always ushered into the director's office immediately, and the director always readily agreed that writers should have far greater artistic freedom. A submachine gun, it seemed, was a useful tool for a writer.
But it also had some disadvantages. A small elderly woman pulled on his arm and said, “Young man, please come here.” Without waiting for him to answer, she dragged him down the street, over to where a group of women were standing and pointing up at a building.
“There on the third floor is an AVH man,” one woman said. The AVH was the despised internal police. Then all the women started shouting at once.
“What do you want?” Konrad finally shouted over their voices.
The small elderly woman looked at him as though he were an astonishing simpleton. Then she shouted, “Shoot him!”
“No, no. I'm not going to shoot him.”
“Of course. He's AVH. We have him cornered,” she said, trying for a conspiratorial tone.
“No, no.”
“Why not? You have the gun!”
Konrad tried to explain that although it was true that he was carrying a weapon, he did not shoot people. He tried to calm the women. But one of them shouted, “If you won't shoot him, I will go find someone else to shoot him.”
“All right,” said Konrad. “Take me to him.” The woman led him into the building and up to the third floor, where they found an unarmed man crouching in terror. Konrad pointed the submachine gun at him. “All right,” he said. “Get up and start walking.”
While the women cheered, he marched his prisoner out of the building and down a quiet street to shoot him. The man explained that he was from the AVH, but he kept insisting that he only played in a band. This brought the same mischievous smile to Konrad's face that had caused the army to declare him an anarchist.
“What instrument do you play?