Free Under the frog by Tibor Fischer

possible for him to do something about these
questions, even if it was like fighting a forest-fire with a thimbleful of
water. An all-pervasive desperation not to do military service saturated his
being. He had seen a group of conscripts the previous week, ideally cast for
the role of a chainless chain-gang, miserable, bones veiled in skin, carrying a
loaf of bread that had long ago lost its credibility in the civilian world,
that required a pickaxe rather than a knife.
    Gyuri liked to think he was tough but knew he didn’t have
the resilience for hardship so well-planned, so non-stop; although things were
rough, there was always the prospect of something good happening to you if you
were outside the Army, no matter how remote that prospect might be. In the Army
you weren’t going to be bothered by any comfort, cheer, or anything that could
be classified under the heading pleasant; there would be no appointments with
pleasure.
    The others in the exam hall, from a distance anyway, seemed
to be beavering away confidently. Did he look in control to those two rows
back? Gyuri wondered. The first question offered a few footholds, so he
hastened to put something down on paper, before the wisdom he had fished out
slipped away, and in the hope that if some apocalypse should curtail the exam
after ten minutes, he might have enough answer to pass.
    He had unrolled as much of the answer to question one as he
could, when a glance to his left established that his gaze had a direct flight
path to the left breast of the young lady there; either she had forgotten to do
up her blouse or the buttons didn’t feel like working but light was taking off
from untextiled skin and crashlanding into Gyuri’s retinas. His loins underwent
a stepping-on, all the mathematical erudition he had convoked was summarily
banished. To deliberately have arranged such an alignment, to visually sidestep
the clothing barrier in other circumstances could have taken hours, but now, at
such a delicate moment, his composure and her mammary impacted. Simultaneously,
he looked away, but it was too late – the chemical heralds hit the road,
stirring up a global ache.
    Crippled by this unwarranted intrusion into his concentration,
he returned to the maths and found he was locked out. The second question
scarcely acknowledged his greeting.
    Surveying the 180 degree view on his right, Gyuri ruminated
on a group from one of the People’s Colleges. These were the special institutes
where individuals predominantly from the bottom of the bucolic barrel were
crammed with learning to provide the Party with man and womanpower. Peasant
lads, in the main, who had ties fastened around their necks, copies of the History of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) stuck in their hands,
along with a ticket to the centre of the universe, Budapest, where
accommodation in some appropriated bourgeois building would be waiting. They
were loud in their endorsements of Marxism, as anyone in their new shoes would
be.
    Gyuri needed, as a minimum, three attempted answers to pass
and while he had one attempt and a feint, the remaining questions looked
hermetically sealed, inscrutable. A girl on his right, one of the People’s
College contingent, kept staring over at his paper which Gyuri found droll. How
could she think there was anything worth examining on his laughably blank
paper?
    He was coming to the conclusion that glaring at the
questions in the hope they might crack was a waste of time and he might as well
enjoy a display of swagger by walking out and perhaps fooling a few despairing
souls into believing he had done brilliantly, instead of squirming around like
a maggot on a hook.
    The People’s girl was still looking at his paper and what
was worse, looking as if she was looking. Being disqualified for cheating wasn’t
going to make much difference to Gyuri but it might to her.
    ‘I can’t help,’ Gyuri mouthed to her. ‘Don’t look or we’ll
both…’ he drew a