Under the Frog

‘They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but as far as I’m concerned that’s exactly what it’s there for – this bunch couldn’t find themselves in the dark. So I have to insist, even allowing for your not inconsiderable indolence, I have to insist on a twenty-point, no, a thirty-point margin of victory. Otherwise it’s sit-ups in the City Park on the rainiest five o’ clock in the morning that I can find.’

Hepp then erected his blackboard, which he always carried around, and chalked up a few plays, selected from his notebook as thick as a hammer-thrower’s thigh (Gyuri once glimpsed a play with a number as high as 602). This was often the hardest part of any match, paying attention to Hepp’s schemes, since, certainly when dealing with a collection of small-bone pickers, the required tactic was simply to get hold of the ball, pass it to Pataki and watch him obligingly run down the court and propel it into the basket. This was a tactic stu

But there in Makó, it was hard to attend to Hepp’s phenomenally involved machinations. You had to put one or two into action, regardless of whether you needed to or whether there would be any benefit from using it, such as collaring a couple of points. Hepp was the coach, and basketball was better than a real job where you were expected to work for the money they didn’t give you. A certain amount of explaining away was possible – ‘Doc, the marking on Pataki was too fierce, we couldn’t use the Casino egg play…’ – but if there wasn’t some evidence of orders being obeyed, Hepp’s favourite remedy for disregard of his specially-bound leather notebook was half an hour of stadium steps and it didn’t make any difference how fit you were, your legs would become solid outposts of pain.

And of course there were times when Hepp’s scheming won matches, such as the Great Technical University Massacre, when the better team hadn’t been allowed to win because of Hepp’s plays. When the end whistle had blown, the Technical University team had stood on court, unmoving, unable to believe they had been beaten, viciously beaten, by a team five places further down in the division. But it wasn’t so much to do with the wi

Róka, as was the custom, went out alone onto the court with the gramophone player. They all knew that this showmanship was wasted in Makó, but this was the point of being professional amateurs – you went on with the show even if there was no one to watch, or if the spectators were too thick to appreciate it. The gramophone player was István’s. István and the gramophone player were about all that was left of the Hungarian Second Army. István had got the portable gramophone player as a present from Elek when he set off to the front in ’41. Gyuri had no idea how much it had cost, but fortunes were involved; there had been German generals who didn’t have the sort of musical recreation enjoyed by the Hungarian artillery lieutenant. The Hungarian Second Army, like all Hungarian armies, had the unfortunate habit of getting wiped out. István returned, flayed and dented by shrapnel, even though 200,000 other Hungarians didn’t. Even more miraculously, the gramophone player had been returned home months later by one of István’s comrades-in-arms. István had no objections to Gyuri permanently borrowing it.

Róka put on one of the jazz records, to the sound of which Locomotive trooped out and started their warm-up, bouncing around and sinking baskets. The records they performed to were all of American origin, which could have been tricky, but before they had thrown away a load of records presented to them by one of the visiting Soviet railway teams, they had steamed off the labels and refixed them on the jazz records. So the Western decadents were then camouflaged by rubrics such as ‘Lenin is Amongst Us’, ‘Our Steam Engine’, and the biggest hit ‘In the Front-Line Forest’ performed by the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Soviet Army (the original credits for the jazz had been long forgotten). Any snooping eyes would only meet estimable red cyrillic whatever the reports of their ears.

The small-bone cleaners were visibly taken aback by this. Somehow, Gyuri felt, they weren’t going to break into the big time of big-bone cleaning. One of them loped up and a

A towering player, some six foot six, the Meats’ not-so-secret secret weapon, lined up with Pataki for the jump-off, pouring down a look of smug contempt on the five inches shorter Pataki. It was fu

They were very surprised when Pataki disappeared with the ball but instead of whizzing downcourt to deposit it in the boardbank as was his wont, he passed it back to Gyuri. For a bit of fun, Gyuri tried to drop the bomb, taking a shot from under his basket at the opposition basket. Normally, this was only attempted as a desperate measure with only seconds to go before the end of a match. The odds practically blocked the ball going in but as Gyuri knew the match was Locomotive’s anyway, even if they’d only been playing two men, he had a go. The ball flew across the court and shot through the net without touching the ring or the backboard. Any experienced player would have diagnosed it as magnificent, once in a career cheek, but the Meats were flummoxed and rocketed from bucolic swagger to abject panic. Instead of piling on Pataki (not that it would have greatly hindered him) they crowded around Gyuri. After Pataki had eased his way through to ten straight dunkings as if he were practising on an empty court, the twenty points hinted to the Meats that they should keep an eye on Pataki but this was of little help. The Secret Weapon lumbered about trying to pillage passes to Pataki but he was too big an opportunity for gravity to pass up and Pataki always got higher or lower faster to pluck the ball.

Bias, the like of which none of the Locomotive players had seen, flabbergasting bias from the referee which gave the Meats impunity to foul, trip and punch, along with several completely unwarranted penalty throws, resulted in a final score of 68-32 to Locomotive. It seemed obvious that the total export capacity of Hungary ’s salami industry would be needed to thrust the Meats into the first division.

The pleasure of the good result that Hepp was looking forward to had been greatly marred by the referee’s behaviour, going for his whistle whenever someone from Locomotive neared the ball. Hepp went over to the referee to discuss the one hundred and eight infractions of correct refereeing he had noted down during the course of the match. Gyuri could tell by the look on the referee’s face that he didn’t realise that he really was going to have to go through the one hundred and eight points one by one in exacting and atomic detail.

Hepp’s persistence was one of the pillars of Locomotive’s high ranking in the league but despite all his cu