How Did I Get Here?
From A Blanket for Janos
By Kevin O'Morrison
SANDOR: (reads teletype page: to secretary) Malenkov has been ousted, a Soviet general visits us unannounced, and we have a twenty degree drop in the mercury before nightfall. (dry) That will not improve the temper of the people, will it, Miss Kadar? The coldest winter on record and Father Danube has to flood our coal mines!
(beat)
Make a note for Bela: None of his men is to disturb the Black Market in Karloti Street. Those without coal will need anything they can find to help them last out the night. It's already below freezing. Even if the forecaster were wrong by fifty per cent, which he is not, the result would be the same. So impersonal, the weather Today a weight of cold air invades us. Like a foreign army seeking out targets at random. And tomorrow -- someone's wife, father, child, is no longer with us. (beat) Shall I make you a joke, Miss Kadar? In a world where the only Constant is Scarcity, life becomes a matter of -- degree. (beat) Ask the Minister of Supply whether he has enough coffins on hand. Let me know immediately if he hasn't - with a Soviet General paying us a surprise visit we don't want rioting in our streets, do we?
(sighs)
Do you know why I am here, Miss Kadar. When I was at the university, I made a discovery in history class one day. The professor was praising our brilliance in battle - I forget which one of the hundreds of battles in which we Hungarians have been brilliant - and suddenly I saw that I had been born into a country where the strengths of larger, more powerful countries than ours always overlap. That by accident of geography it didn't matter how brave Hungarians might be. Or how many battles we might win. What had been true for a thousand years would continue to be true: we would always be, at best, an enclave surrounded by a superior power; at worst, occupied. At that moment, I decided to become a policeman. Because whatever the Ruling Power might be, one thing was certain - it would have to be Policed.
