talked again. And Pataki certainly never talked about
it with anyone else. But he noticed that people didn’t sit on Fuchs any more.
September 1948
The ant-training had been typical. Gyuri knew he should be
studying much harder. Unlike all previous exams, whose certificates of
importance he had never found convincing, this was frighteningly,
windpipe-constrictingly important, and he really should have been studying much
harder. He had wanted to study much harder. The intention had been beautifully
formed, it had been everything an intention should be, but it remained an
understudy, never getting on stage.
He had rowed out on his own to a quiet stretch of Margit
Island with a whole boatful of textbooks, leaving no clue as to his
whereabouts. It was just him and the mathematics. One on one. Lying in the heat
of the elderly summer, Gyuri opened the books to lay himself bare to calculus,
to bask in the equations, but while his tan deepened, somehow his erudition
didn’t. He felt cheated. Like jumping off a cliff, he had hurled himself at the
distant algebra, but instead of plummeting down to impact with those formulae,
he just hovered above, aloft, some covert anti-gravity repelling him from the
maths.
Relishing the unrationed sunshine, he succumbed to a bout of
ant-shepherding. Prior to this, his only dealings with ants had been stepping
on them, either by accident or squashing them when they invaded his possessions
or edibles. He had partitioned himself at the intersection of a number of
formic caravan routes and spent the better part of three hours devising
olympianly a series of obstacles and tests for the ants with the aid of twigs,
leaves and extracts from his lunch sandwiches. He toyed with the idea of
becoming a great entomologist, a world-leading zoologist. As far as he knew,
biology was an area unpolluted by Marx though some of his disciples, like
Lysenko, had tried to make up for Marx’s silence on the phyla.
The fascination of the ants had run unabated as long as
there was no other distraction from the maths. Mathematics had this to
recommend it, if nothing else: it made everything else, ants, English,
push-ups, ironing, washing-up, beguiling and wonderful. Whole new galaxies of
interests had popped open now that the maths exam was drawing close; anything
unconnected with maths was irresistible.
He rowed back to the boat-house to discover that Pataki had
been sculling up and down the Danube looking for him in a fruitless attempt to
gloat over his revision.
Gyuri lugged the maths books home. He was used to carrying
the heavy weight about as a sort of tandem intellectual and physical toning,
helping his stamina and also, he hoped, the proximity of the knowledge would
help it to spill out on him. There were many dogs in Budapest that weren’t as
well-walked as his maths textbooks. Entering the flat, Gyuri noted that Pataki
wasn’t around, because Elek was on his own. Pataki had taken to frequenting the
Fischer flat, because he found Elek most congenial, as unlike Pataki’s father,
Elek had no objection to Pataki smoking; indeed, he would hoard up cigarettes,
ear-marking sole survivors of a delivery to be reserved for an appearance by
Pataki.
More and more often Gyuri would return from training or a
run to find Elek and Pataki in a nicotine partnership, making the most of
scanty tobacco; Elek usually testifying to the callipygian glories of a set of
buttocks he had encountered as long as four decades ago. Gyuri didn’t smoke.
The odds against him playing first-division basketball were already so great
that he couldn’t afford any handicap however small, so he didn’t begrudge the extrafamilial sharing of the cigarettes.
What was irritating was Elek’s equanimity.
Elek would now be regularly on duty in the large armchair
which was almost the last remnant of their prewar furniture, indeed virtually
the last of their prewar property. Stationing himself in this armchair, abetted
by a cigarette if available,
it with anyone else. But he noticed that people didn’t sit on Fuchs any more.
September 1948
The ant-training had been typical. Gyuri knew he should be
studying much harder. Unlike all previous exams, whose certificates of
importance he had never found convincing, this was frighteningly,
windpipe-constrictingly important, and he really should have been studying much
harder. He had wanted to study much harder. The intention had been beautifully
formed, it had been everything an intention should be, but it remained an
understudy, never getting on stage.
He had rowed out on his own to a quiet stretch of Margit
Island with a whole boatful of textbooks, leaving no clue as to his
whereabouts. It was just him and the mathematics. One on one. Lying in the heat
of the elderly summer, Gyuri opened the books to lay himself bare to calculus,
to bask in the equations, but while his tan deepened, somehow his erudition
didn’t. He felt cheated. Like jumping off a cliff, he had hurled himself at the
distant algebra, but instead of plummeting down to impact with those formulae,
he just hovered above, aloft, some covert anti-gravity repelling him from the
maths.
Relishing the unrationed sunshine, he succumbed to a bout of
ant-shepherding. Prior to this, his only dealings with ants had been stepping
on them, either by accident or squashing them when they invaded his possessions
or edibles. He had partitioned himself at the intersection of a number of
formic caravan routes and spent the better part of three hours devising
olympianly a series of obstacles and tests for the ants with the aid of twigs,
leaves and extracts from his lunch sandwiches. He toyed with the idea of
becoming a great entomologist, a world-leading zoologist. As far as he knew,
biology was an area unpolluted by Marx though some of his disciples, like
Lysenko, had tried to make up for Marx’s silence on the phyla.
The fascination of the ants had run unabated as long as
there was no other distraction from the maths. Mathematics had this to
recommend it, if nothing else: it made everything else, ants, English,
push-ups, ironing, washing-up, beguiling and wonderful. Whole new galaxies of
interests had popped open now that the maths exam was drawing close; anything
unconnected with maths was irresistible.
He rowed back to the boat-house to discover that Pataki had
been sculling up and down the Danube looking for him in a fruitless attempt to
gloat over his revision.
Gyuri lugged the maths books home. He was used to carrying
the heavy weight about as a sort of tandem intellectual and physical toning,
helping his stamina and also, he hoped, the proximity of the knowledge would
help it to spill out on him. There were many dogs in Budapest that weren’t as
well-walked as his maths textbooks. Entering the flat, Gyuri noted that Pataki
wasn’t around, because Elek was on his own. Pataki had taken to frequenting the
Fischer flat, because he found Elek most congenial, as unlike Pataki’s father,
Elek had no objection to Pataki smoking; indeed, he would hoard up cigarettes,
ear-marking sole survivors of a delivery to be reserved for an appearance by
Pataki.
More and more often Gyuri would return from training or a
run to find Elek and Pataki in a nicotine partnership, making the most of
scanty tobacco; Elek usually testifying to the callipygian glories of a set of
buttocks he had encountered as long as four decades ago. Gyuri didn’t smoke.
The odds against him playing first-division basketball were already so great
that he couldn’t afford any handicap however small, so he didn’t begrudge the extrafamilial sharing of the cigarettes.
What was irritating was Elek’s equanimity.
Elek would now be regularly on duty in the large armchair
which was almost the last remnant of their prewar furniture, indeed virtually
the last of their prewar property. Stationing himself in this armchair, abetted
by a cigarette if available,
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