Under the Frog

Начало книги

It was true that at the age of twenty-five he had never left the country, that he had never got more than three days’ march from his birthplace, no more than a day and a half of horse and carting or one long afternoon’s locomoting. On the other hand, Gyuri mused, how many people could say they had travelled the length and breadth of Hungary naked?

They always travelled naked. He couldn’t remember how or why this started, but it had become the irrefrangible rule for the Locomotive team as they traversed the nation for their matches. They always travelled in their luxury wagon (custom-built by Hungarian railways for the Waffen SS to facilitate them in their Europe-wide art-looting, and well known to the authorities on rolling-stock as a peerless carriage for riding the rails) and they always travelled naked.

Róka, Gyurkovics, Demeter, Bánhegyi and Pataki were playing cards on the mahogany dining-table, an ex-antique (according to Bánhegyi, who had served in his father’s removal business) it had been mutilated out of value by years of liquid rings, inadvertent and advertent lacerations, the burrowing of burning tobacco. Left as an object unsuited for pocketing in time of rout, the table had been proudly kept by the Locomotive team despite its great (if progressively diminishing) value as a symbol of corporate excellence.

Читать дальше →