Under the Frog

When, at Faragó’s suggestion, they switched to chocolate ice cream, Gyuri knew it was all over.

Ladányi and Faragó had warmed up with a couple of litres of bean soup before moving on to the main course – fried chicken – its consumption meticulously measured on the scales. ‘We in Hálás have always been famous for our fried chicken,’ Faragó rambled on, ‘and now under socialism, the fried chicken is even more fried.’ He reached for a plate of slender green tubes. ‘The paprika is optional,’ he a

Three kilos into the chicken, Faragó began to sweat, though whether this was due to gastronomic exertion or the calorific effects of the paprika it was hard to judge. He was also begi

‘I’m just going to shake the snake,’ Gyuri informed Neuma

‘You don’t want to know, sir. Some things should never be repeated, just forgotten. Satan himself is his coach.’

Gyuri waited outside as long as he could without triggering a search party and re-entered to find Ladányi and Faragó crossing the ten kilo mark, Faragó in discomfort, Ladányi still emitting a lean, keen look. A barrel of pigs’ trotters in aspic was dumped in front of Gyuri and he wondered how on earth he was going to eat any. ‘You didn’t like the smoked goose, did you?’ asked one woman accusingly and woundedly, although Gyuri estimated he had had six respectable helpings. Neuma

To round off his other distasteful qualities, Faragó had a bad cold and as he handed over his handkerchief to the deputy Party secretary to place on the stove to dry, Gyuri felt another surge of sympathy for the villagers. They had a straightforward, soily existence which if you liked that sort of thing could be quite pleasant. No wonder they were filled with hatred for Faragó; bewildered by their misfortune, it was like having a plague of locusts or a dragon deciding to set up home with you. ‘Why us?’ the elderly peasant had implored. ‘A whole world to be a stinking horseprick in and he’s never lost sight of Hálás. Why?’

The eating had now long since left pleasure behind. It was no longer a question of appetite, but a question of will, which was why Gyuri knew Ladányi would win, and knowing Ladányi, would end up recruiting Faragó as an altar boy. Conversion. It was fu

What had befallen Fodor in the end, whether he had grown weary of his sadistic evangelism, Gyuri didn’t know. Gyuri had last seen him at a school trip to the cinema where they had been locked in. You could tell it was a Soviet film when they locked you in. The school had taken over an enormous balcony in the cinema which descended in a series of plateaus. Fodor had vaulted over what he had thought was the edge of one of these sections, in fact the end of the balcony. Just before he disappeared from view, there had been a nanosecond’s worth of expression on his face: why isn’t there any balcony here?

Along with a couple of others, Gyuri had selflessly volunteered to take Fodor and his broken legs to hospital, thereby avoiding the feats of Sergei, who single-handedly repulsed the invading Germans in between repairing his tractor to produce a bumper harvest. Either for fear of ridicule or in pursuit of fresh souls, Fodor never returned.

‘You don’t say much, do you?’ Faragó observed to Ladányi, with the implication that Ladányi was unfairly reserving energy for eating. Even if Faragó had had more fight, the switch to chocolate ice cream was the end. A large chicken’s weight behind Ladányi, Faragó had chosen the sweet to which Ladányi was most partial; Ladányi’s nickname in the troop, ‘Iceman’, came from his mythical disposal of chocolate ice cream, in the days before he had signed up with Jesus. Gyuri wondered whether Ladányi had mentioned to anyone back at Jesuit headquarters that he was popping down to the countryside to out-eat a Party Secretary. However laudable the goal, in an atmosphere of austerity where quips such as ‘Isn’t that the second meal you’ve had this week, Father?’ abounded, this sort of indecorous gourmandise, however much a part of Christian soldiering, must have run the risk of some gruelling rosary work.

‘What would you like me to say?’ inquired Ladányi politely, keeping a spoon full of ice cream from its destination. The whole village was craning forward now, as Faragó was visibly floundering, gazing with resentment at his bowl of ice cream.

‘As the saying goes,’ said Faragó fighting for air, ‘there isn’t room for two bagpipe players in the same i