I just finished
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts, by
Julian Rubenstein.
It's the unbelievable story of a Hungarian Romanian no-good kid with a heart of gold from modest upbringing, who fled to Hungary (yes,
to Hungary) just before the fall of communism to become, on will power alone, the goalie for the UTE ice hockey team - be it in what "may have been the worst performance by a goaltender in the history of hockey". What catapulted him into history, however, was his sideline of bank robberies.
Using the opportunity offered by a rudderless society facing a brave, new capitalist world, one in which newly acquired FBI partners uselessly recommended witness interview databases to a robbery department that posessed one "hand-me-down computer made from mismatched parts and connected to an outlet whose current was occasionally shut down because of the delinquency status of the building's electric bill", Attila Ambrus just walked into a post office, politely asked for the money, kissed the teller's hand and brightly went on his way. He didn't get much per heist even when he moved on to banks, but with eight robberies in 1993, four in 1996, six in 1997 and, at the top of his fame, another five in 1999, he quickly became single-handedly responsible for half of the bank robberies in post-communist Budapest. What's more, he became a folk hero.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what made Ambrus or, as he soon was lovingly nicknamed after his favourite drink,
a viszkis, the Whisky Robber, the country's favourite bad boy. Perhaps it was his consistently courteous behaviour, at one point bringing a rose for the bank clerk. Perhaps his pluck, seemingly exhibited in robbing the same locations time and again, the employees of which soon knew the routine (in fact, he kept robbing them because he'd cleverly mapped out which locations were the easiest to do). Perhaps it was his defiance in not wearing any gloves, "perhaps assuming, the police inspector feared, that the robbery department's crack staff wouldn't be able to come up with a single fingerprint suitable for analysis. (Which, of course, it hadn't.)"
More likely, it was the very fact that his loot was always modest, placed against the background of a postcommunist body politic that swiftly went to rot. When, as if to add insult to injury, the police official who was nicknamed "The 12 Percent" for the share he took of everything was eventually promoted to Minister of Interior right after the main figure in an expansive corruption affair in the highest circles walked away free, it was easy to see the
Viszkis as a latter-day Robin Hood. Hardly a leftwing paper, Magyar Hirlap ended up devoting an editorial to him called
The Hero of Our Time, the Bank Robber, noting that "In a time bereft of morality, can anyone regard the deeds of the Whiskey Robber as a crime? [People] understand that they are locked out of the privileged class, which can do anything without punishment. Attila Ambrus had the courage to make an attack against this unjust system. He didn't rob a bank. He just performed a peculiar redistribution of wealth, which differs from that of the elite only in method."
This, of course, was bollocks. Attila was affable but no idealist: he was in it for the money and, ever more, the kick and the fame. That Clash song could have been about him: "Daddy was a bankrobber / but he never hurt nobody / he just liked to live that way / and he loved to take your money". The only Hungarian rapper of his time, Gangsta Zoli,
did make a song about him, an instant hit. Sports supporters started chanting his name. Women swooned over his tales. When the police finally went full out after him, it found that not only could noone give the officers a lead, everyone they interviewed told them that even if they
had seen the man, they wouldn't tell them. Hey, in a year (1996) in which the mafia had thirty car bombs "going off like fireworks around the capital", Ambrus was positively lovable.
Plus, he turned out to be a natural media talent. One who made sure to schmink and dress himself up to look like the hapless police chief during one robbery. Who, during another one, left a boxed empty whiskey bottle with hand-written greetings for the police chief's chief. Suddenly, US-based
Sports Illustrated was reporting about the criminal feats of "one of the best goalies in his country's top league".
A viszkis was achieving myth status, and he relished it. His popularity even drove the police to try deflating his appeal by putting out (false) stories about how he was gay.
Ambrus finally was somebody. Only problem was, he couldn't take any credit for it. "Of all things, his career choice required a commitment to the one he'd spent a lifetime running from: anonymity". The credit only came after he was caught. And got his live TV interview. And a bunch more. When he arrived in jail as a hero: "Attila couldn't remember when he'd felt so welcome." An MP spoke up for him in Parliament. If he'd come ten years later, he'd probably ended up in a reality TV show. Now, he entered history, through a unique window of opportunity offered by the confluence of conditions in immediate postcommunism.
Of course, for that he first had to break jail, the first one to ever escape from the one he'd been imprisoned in. And then, be recaptured again.
In short, this is a hell of a story. One that can easily be read as a peephole into the whole damned, amazing mess of that time.
Two things about this book, apart from that. One: it is diligently researched. Rubinstein, who's never written a book before, spent three years investigating the story. His access is impressive. He conducted many interviews with the humilated police chief, Attila's ex-girlfriend, his teammates, his accomplices. While Ambrus was allowed one hour-long private visit a month, which friends and ex-girlfriends took on rotation, Rubinstein spent twelve full days with him. The photos in the book are nonchalantly labelled as stemming from Ambrus' own archive, that of his ex-girlfriend or the Budapest Police Department.
Two: it is, especially in the beginning, excruciatingly badly written. The opening sentence alone merits a prize for possibly the worst opening sentence ever written:
Quote:The sweet smell of a triple-creme torta hung in the air like a good idea.
Wanting to impress the many interesting cutesie historic details of that quaint country Hungary on the reader, Rubinstein again and again falls into the trap of injecting irrelevant tourist guide factoids in unwieldy sentences, the worst of which is possibly this one on page 18:
Quote:Walking in the opposite direction of the statue-filled Heroes' Square, where Chief Arpad and the seven other founding fathers of Hungary rode stone horses, Attila passed the renowned Muvesz cafe and confectionary, whose patrons debated the merits of democracy while employing aluminium spoons to shovel sugar into their espressos; the nineteenth-century Opera Pharmacy, where pitchers of water sat on the counters for those who couldn't wait to take their medication; and the neoclassical State Opera House, roosted atop a swath of marble steps, behind a statue of Liszt.
For flaming sake, an editor, my kingdom for an editor! And you thought my posts were bad. After the perfect cover and lay-out, such sloppiness in the actual writing was a bit of a come-down.
But to be fair, whether it's because the story is too fascinating to be distracted from or because Rubinstein himself starts writing better as the narrative picks up speed, none such nonsense bothered me much anymore later in the book. Just had to bite through it.
Here's
the Amazon page on the book.
