Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

Right now, waiting for his mail (with army logic, letters arrived more slowly than parcels), he went back to reading his biography of Cardinal Mindszenty. He had arrived at the prelate’s “Statement of November 18, 1948,” made just weeks before the Russians arrested him, forced him into a clown’s costume, and beat him with truncheons: Such a systematic and purposeful net of propaganda lies—a hundred times disproved and yet a hundred times spread anew—has never been organized against the seventy-eight predecessors in my office. I stand for God, for the Church and for Hungary. This responsibility has been imposed upon me by the fate of my nation, which stands alone, an orphan in the whole world. Compared with the sufferings of my people, my own fate is of no importance. Tim could feel in this pronouncement the peace and strength that certainty give, a serene immunity from persecution or even simple need. He had returned to the book a half-dozen times yesterday, and would get back to it as soon as he opened the two envelopes Nontone was now handing him.