Lázár

The Lázár family travels by train to their house in Budapest, feeling more stunned than sad. It takes months for the reality of their expropriation to sink in. They discover the true meaning of their loss when they realize that they must find work. Lajos secures a job in a textile factory, and Pista becomes a trainee at an insurance company, but both are unhappy. Lajos’s sister, Ilona, now lives in the US. She cries inconsolably when he calls her with the news of the expropriation, much to Lajos’s annoyance.

Lajos grows increasingly paranoid about being monitored by the ÁVO, the secret police. He suspects that everyone around him is an informer and begins making loud, pro-government statements at home to assure anyone who may be listening of his obedience. He also buys a copy of The Communist Manifesto, which he secretly places by the front door each night in case the house is raided by the police. Each morning, he hides the book from his family so that they don’t know about his behavior.

Three years later, in March 1951, two ÁVO officers arrive at the family’s Budapest home. Normally, they arrive at night, but the family is visited in the morning. They inform Lilly that the family is being banished and will be collected in 24 hours to be taken to a work farm in the east. They’re told that Imre, their great-uncle, will be placed in a psychiatric hospital. Realizing that his attempts to feign loyalty were futile, Lajos takes the Manifesto from its hiding place, opens a window, and hurls it into the Danube. Faced with the problem of hiding their remaining valuables, he again resorts to swallowing his jewelry. The family spends their last night in the house in a state of silent, overwhelming despair, unable to find words for their situation.

A year after their expulsion, the family lives together in a single, cold room on a farm. Eva has overcome her previous fear of sex, a change prompted by the sounds of her parents making love at night and by her attraction to a handsome young farm worker named Milan. She finds a sense of contentment in the physical labor of working in the rice fields and feels a connection to the other peasant workers. She frequently fantasizes about Milan. One evening after work, Milan directly asks Eva to sleep with him. Unoffended by his bluntness, she agrees and follows him behind the barn.

In a brief interlude, an elderly, paranoid, and ailing man, implied to be Joseph Stalin, searches his 20,000-volume library for a copy of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, a book he loved in his youth. Dealing with arthritis, arteriosclerosis, and a failing memory, he is deeply suspicious of those around him, believing that they’re waiting for him to die. Unable to find the book, he gives up and goes to his room to sleep, only to find the novel lying on his bedside table.

Eva reflects on her sexual relationship with Milan. She doesn’t love him, she believes. Instead, she views him as too handsome and perfect to be loved. Sleeping with him, however, has made her more confident and in touch with her own body. She recognizes that he has a kind of freedom she has lost. From her perspective, Milan has never had anything that could be taken from him (since her family’s property was expropriated), and he has no expectations to fulfill. As she watches him ride away on his bicycle, she considers him very fortunate, though she concedes that he likely isn’t aware of his good fortune.

After a night of heavy drinking with his comrades, Stalin retires to his dacha. His bodyguards, terrified of angering him but anxious not to hear from him, wait for hours before finally entering his office. They find him conscious but unable to speak, lying on the floor. He has suffered a stroke. When doctors are finally summoned, they aren’t specialists, as the most skilled doctors, who were Jewish, have been imprisoned and tortured on Stalin’s orders. As Stalin lies there, his mind returns to the puzzling final lines of Gogol’s Dead Souls, which speaks to the character and future of the Russian soul.

In the late summer of 1953, following Stalin’s death, the new Hungarian prime minister, Imre Nagy, allows exiled aristocrats to return to the cities. The Lázárs’ excitement quickly fades when they arrive in a bleak, Soviet-controlled Budapest. Their old house remains state property, so they’re forced to rent a tiny, dilapidated apartment near the former Jewish quarter. Beneath it is a small grocery run by a Turkish man whose forefather had fought against Hayo Lázár, the mysterious family patriarch, in the Siege of Szigetvár. Pista works shifts at a bakery and a chemical lab, while Lajos takes a job as a postman, which fills him with shame. Lajos sinks into a deep depression, haunted by his past moral compromises during the war. Eva, barred from university, educates herself with banned books by feminist writers like Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf. She also attends secret gatherings of young aristocrats at a venue called the Cellar, organized by János, Pista’s best friend.

Pista brings his friend Ákos to the Cellar. They met during their compulsory national service in a coal mine. Pista reveres Ákos as a great writer and calls him a “new Petőfi” in reference to the poet and liberal revolutionary Sándor Petőfi. In spite of Pista’s joking, Ákos is intensely shy and private, refusing to let anyone read his work. Eva is drawn to him and wants to know him better, though she’s uncertain whether her interest is literary or romantic. Having read Franz Kafka, she’s curious to understand the connection between a male writer’s real-life personality and his portrayal of female characters. She hopes that reading Ákos’s unpublished novel will offer her insight.

Eva contemplates the absolute power that a writer wields over their characters. She finds Ákos’s shy and decent demeanor inconsistent with the controlling nature of a writer. Unlike other young men, he shows no romantic or sexual interest in her, yet she continues to seek his company, prompting Pista to ask if she’s in love with him. Eva wonders herself whether her interest is truly romantic; she can’t fully deny it. The other aristocrats in their circle find Ákos boring but tolerate him for Pista’s sake. Many of their parents are obsessed with maintaining the behaviors and manners of their former lives, clinging to the hope that their estates will one day be returned. Pista, Eva, and the others from the Cellar are the first generation of aristocratic Hungarians to grow up away from the trapping of wealth and privilege.

One evening in October 1956, Eva finds Ákos heavily intoxicated at the Cellar. Pista, who’s with his new girlfriend Kati, asks Eva to take the disoriented Ákos home. Eva agrees, hoping for a chance to know him better. On the walk, Ákos is silent but steady. In his spartan room, he sits on the bed to remove his shoes and promptly falls asleep. Eva sees his manuscript on the desk and is tempted to read it but resists. She observes his sleeping face for a moment before quietly letting herself out.

A week later, Ákos gives Eva a bag of almonds as an apology for his drunkenness. In the two weeks that follow, his behavior changes markedly: He begins talking to her, stays near her at gatherings, and once touches her forearm. During this time, he mostly stops drinking. One night, he invites her to his room, saying that he wants to show her a book. Eva is curious, wondering whether he will show her a novel or perhaps his own writing. Once they’re inside, he wordlessly puts his arm around her waist, pushes her onto the bed, and rapes her. As he assaults her, Eva thinks about the women raped by soldiers during the end of World War II.

On October 23, 1956, as the Hungarian Revolution erupts in Budapest, Eva lies in a catatonic state in her darkened room. She has been sleeping almost constantly since the assault. Her family believes that she has the flu. Lajos, unemployed and depressed, stays by her side while Pista, calling his father a coward, joins the uprising against the Soviet-backed government. Pista writes an article for a revolutionary newspaper started by his friend János. After initial successes, the Soviet Union invades Hungary on November 4 to suppress the uprising. Pista rushes home and finds Eva looking deathly pale. She tells him, “I was raped” (283). He asks her about her attacker’s identity, but she says nothing.

Consumed by guilt and self-reproach, Pista roams the war-torn streets of Budapest for days, searching for Ákos. He eats and sleeps little, tormented by violent fantasies of revenge and the feeling that he’s losing his mind, much like his great-uncle Imre. The city is filled with corpses, and Pista becomes desensitized, turning over bodies to see if they’re Ákos. After turning over one body, he recognizes a former classmate. He realizes that his hopeless search is an escape from his failure to protect Eva, who had asked him to stay with her. During the search, he realizes that he knows almost nothing about Ákos’s personal life, making the hunt futile.

With the revolution crushed by Soviet troops, a new government under Prime Minister Kádár is announced. Martial law is imposed, and the systematic persecution of rebels begins. Former Prime Minister Nagy, who had taken refuge in the Yugoslav embassy, is arrested and deported despite guarantees of his safety. Fearing his own arrest for the article he published under his real name, Pista hides at his girlfriend Kati’s apartment. While there, he reflects on Eva’s isolation and develops a new empathy for his father, who lost his entire identity during the expropriation. Pista returns home, filled with regret, as Kati’s family decides to flee to the US to escape the expected persecution. The atmosphere in Budapest grows tense as security officers in long black coats conduct widespread door-to-door arrests. While Pista anxiously awaits his own capture, he learns that his best friend, János, has been taken away by the authorities.

Five years later, Eva and Pista visit their great-uncle Imre at a psychiatric hospital. They find him seemingly vacant and unresponsive. He stares out a window while mechanically tracing circles on a tablecloth. Pista realizes that they, not Imre, are the ones who have changed. Meanwhile, Pista inwardly worries about János, who was arrested two days prior and is being tortured. Pista fears that János will soon break his silence. Just as the siblings prepare to leave, Imre unexpectedly thanks them for their visit. Surprised, they sit back down. Imre then warns them that they must go before “they come and it gets dark” (248). He begins speaking of a hunting lodge in the forest, which triggers a flood of memories for Pista, who concludes that Imre’s apparent “flight into madness” might have been the only sensible choice (248).

After Lajos and Lilly share a brief, significant moment at the station, Eva and Pista begin their escape from Hungary. Departing on a train, their plan is to cross the border into Yugoslavia and then travel to Switzerland. After a train ride, they give their remaining money to a lorry driver who takes them close to the border. He directs them through a dark wood and across a shallow, frozen river into Yugoslavia.

They navigate the woods for hours in darkness and fear. Upon reaching the river, the ice breaks under Pista’s weight, and they’re forced to wade through the freezing water. On the other side, they hear dogs barking, so they run across the field. Their flight is cut short when they’re confronted and stopped by two soldiers with rifles.

A week after escaping, Eva and Pista are living in a henhouse behind a refugee-filled inn in a Yugoslavian village. It is revealed that the soldiers who caught them were Yugoslavian, not Russian. They receive food and warm clothing from the Red Cross, supplied in response to the suppression of the uprising in Hungary. Though Pista feels safer, he remains fearful of the ÁVO, viewing the border as an insecure concept. In Yugoslavia, he recognizes the familiar sight of policemen in dark clothes and fears that he can’t trust them. Their living space becomes warmer when another couple, Lászlo and his pregnant wife, Nicolette, moves in with them. Pista bonds with Lászlo while helping him find pickled cucumbers for Nicolette’s cravings, which distracts him from his fear. Eva quickly befriends the optimistic Nicolette, admiring her courage. Nicolette reveals that she and Lászlo also plan to go to Switzerland.

As they pass through a snow-covered Zagreb, Pista reflects on his parents, whose honeymoon ended in this city after only one night when his grandfather Sándor fell down the stairs and fractured his skull. He thinks about how young they were, even younger than he and Eva are now. Earlier that morning, Eva had tearfully and joyfully accepted Nicolette’s offer to be her child’s godmother. While watching Eva sleep on the journey, Pista has a revelation: He will never be able to protect her, but he can always be there for her. As the train leaves Zagreb, he feels that they’re leaving their entire known world behind, heading toward a new life in Zurich.