“I would see him every morning,” the master continued, “as the crew stroked past my window. He looked hale.”
“The crew is going to miss him.”
“We all shall,” said Finley, shaking his silver mane sadly. “We all shall.”
The great man’s next words were not unexpected.
“Eliot, Eliot,” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Eliot, Michael’s untimely departure leaves us with a space both in our house and in our hearts. And while one cannot find a second Wigglesworth, perhaps Destiny has played a hand in all of this.”
He stood up, as if to spread his rhetorical wings. “Eliot,” he continued, “who can be unaware of the tragic events of recent days? As, after Troy fell, countless innocent inhabitants were
Andrew had had enough prep school Latin to realize the master was quoting the Aeneid. Was he about to say that Wig’s place was going to be filled by a Trojan student?
Finley was frantically pacing the room, frequently gazing out onto the river where hale Mike Wigglesworth would never more be seen, when he suddenly whirled and fixed Andrew with a coruscating gaze.
“Eliot,” he concluded, “George Keller will be arriving tomorrow evening.”
GEORGE KELLER
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.
Budapest, October 1956
George’s childhood had been dominated by two monsters: Joseph Stalin — and his own father. The only difference between the two was that Stalin terrorized millions, and his father merely terrorized George.
True enough, “Istvan the Terrible,” as George often thought of him, had never actually killed or even imprisoned anybody. He was merely a minor official in the Hungarian People’s Working Party who used Marxist- Leninist jargon to castigate his son.
“Why does he flagellate me?” George would complain to his sister, Marika. “I’m a better socialist than he is. I mean, I believe in the theory, anyway. And even though I think the party stinks, I’ve joined for his sake. Why is he so fed up?”
Marika tried to mollify her brother. And comfort him. For, try as he did to deny it, George was genuinely upset by the old man’s disapproval.
“Well,” she said softly, “he’d like your hair a little shorter…”
“What? Does he want me to shave my skull? I mean, lots of my friends wear Elvis Presley ducktails.”
“He doesn’t like your friends either, Gyuri.”
“I don’t know why,” said George, shaking his head in consternation. “They’re all sons of party members. Some are big shots, too. And they’re a lot easier on their children than Father is.”
“He just wants you to stay home and study, Gyuri. Be honest, you’re out almost every evening.”
“You be honest, Marika. I graduated first in my gimnazium class. I’m studying Soviet law —”
At that very moment Istvan Kolozsdi entered the room and, immediately taking command, finished his son’s sentence.
“You are at the university because of my party status,
“Assistant minister,” George corrected him, “in the Farm Collectivization Office.”
“You say it as if it were a disgrace, Gyuri.”
“Well, it’s hardly democratic for a government to force people to farm against their will —”
“We do not force —”
“Please, Father,” Gyuri answered with an exasperated sigh, “you’re not talking to some naive idiot.”
“No, I’m talking to a
“How can you criticize Aniko, Father? The party thinks she’s good enough to study pharmacy.”
“Still, it hurts my standing when you’re seen with her. Aniko’s a bad type. She malingers. She sits in cafes in Vaci Ucca listening to Western music.”
What really annoys you, George thought, is that I sit right next to her. Last Sunday in the
“Father,” said George, hoping for reasonable debate instead of a brawl, “if socialist music is so great, why doesn’t the Stalin
Livid, the government official turned to his daughter. “I won’t talk to this
“I’ll change my name,” George said facetiously.
“Please,” said the old man, “the sooner the better.” He stormed out and slammed the door.
George turned to his sister. “Now what the hell did I do?”
Marika shrugged. She had been the referee in these father-and-son combats for as long as she could remember. There seemed to have been conflict ever since their mother died — when George was five and she only two and a half.
The old man was never the same after that. And in his fits of bitterness he would vent his anger on his eldest child. While she tried to grow up as quickly as she could to be a mediating force — a mother to her brother and a wife to him.
“Try and understand, George, he’s had a very hard life.”
“That’s no excuse for giving me one. But in a way I understand. He feels trapped in his job. Yes, Marika, even socialist officials harbor ambitions. The Farm Program is an unmitigated disaster. His boss naturally blames him, so who can he let out his frustrations on? Sometimes I wish we had a dog so he could kick it instead of me.”
Marika realized that, despite George’s angry protestations, at a certain level he genuinely sympathized with his father’s disappointment. Yet, the old man had done well for someone who had begun life as an apprentice shoemaker in Kaposvar. Istvan Kolozsdi’s greatest misfortune was that he had sired a son whose brilliance would inevitably show how mediocre he really was.
Somewhere in their hearts, the two men knew it. And this made them afraid to love each other.
“I have tremendous news!” called Aniko as she dashed across Muzeum Boulevard to catch George between lectures at the Law Faculty.
“Don’t tell me,” he smiled, “the pregnancy test was negative.”
“That I won’t know till Friday,” she replied, “but listen to this — the Polish students are striking to support
