Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

We reached the city. I always have to cast a glance at the huge building of the Ludovika Military Academy, where my father had spent so much of his life. Then came the Polyclinic on Ullői Road, where, in a second-floor ward, my mother had died two years earlier. And right there, while driving between those two buildings, I felt an urgent need to decide just where we were going. I didn't look at him.

I said I had another idea. But for that I had to know whether he insisted on staying in the city.

No, he didn't insist on anything. But really, I shouldn't worry about it.

I should just drop him off somewhere. Anywhere. On the boulevard. He'll get on a streetcar there.

I said I wouldn't hear of it. That streetcar idea sounded rather fishy to me, anyway. But if he didn't mind staying with me for a little while longer, we could go for a ride.

He couldn't answer.

Later, however, I had the impression that something vaguely resembling a feeling drifted back into that empty shell. It got very warm in the car. Maybe it was this heat that deceived me; still, I felt my solution was wonderful, if only because it couldn't have been simpler.

My paternal grandfather was a very wealthy man. He was a mill owner, a grain merchant, and he also dabbled in real estate. The brief period of unparalleled growth and prosperity around the turn of the century seems to us almost too fabulous to be true. It was a time when great fortunes could be made almost overnight. It's all the more incredible since the economic history of Hungary, starting from the last days of the Middle Ages, has been the history of crises, depressions, and emergencies of one sort or another. Yet, we know that there was such a period because most of the schools where we study, the edifices where decisions affecting our lives are made, the hospitals we go to to be cured, and even the sewers where we empty our waste were all built around that time. Maybe not too many people like the ponderous style of these structures, but everybody appreciates their made-to-last sturdiness. During this period, not too long after the turn of the century, my grandfather had two houses built for himself: a fully winterized summer home on Swabian Hill, where Mother and I had lived until her death, and a spacious and romantic-looking two-story hunting lodge. He liked to hunt small game and chose a spot not too far from the city where he could indulge his passion. In a flat region along the Danube he could shoot ducks and coots in the tideland willows, and pheasants and rabbits in the open fields.

I can't divulge the name of the village itself. It will presently become clear why not. Actually, I should adopt the ingenious method used by authors of the great Russian novels and note places with asterisks. The human settlements they identified this way had unique, unmistakable characteristics and could therefore be found on the map, although they could also be anywhere in that vast land. It is the painful consequences of possible recognition that prevent me from naming the place. If I wanted to be coy about it, I could say that starting at the zero marking of the main highway and traveling at a good clip, one could reach the place where we were heading that late afternoon in about sixty minutes.

I should also add here that in January 1945 my mother's two sisters, Aunt Ella and Aunt Ilma, were bombed out of their apartment in Damjanich Street. The house remained in ruins for a long time. Even in the 1950s I remember seeing piles of the uncleared rubble on the street. As soon as the war was over, my two aunts moved into this country house. None too soon, as it turned out. The house had been broken into and vandalized, though strangely enough, few things were taken. Garden tools from the shed and two huge handwoven tapestries that used to hang in the trophy room. Years later, my aunts came upon some pieces of these wall hangings — many of their neighbors insulated their doghouses with them. Neither the Germans nor the Russians ever occupied this village; they only passed through it. The vandals were most likely local people, and the reason they had no time for a more thorough job was that about the time of my aunts' arrival the village was going through some terrible days.

A few days before they arrived, three Russian soldiers, separated from their unit, had rowed across the icy river. They helped themselves to some wine, brandy, a couple of ducks and chickens. They also discovered that in one of the houses there lived three marriageable daughters with their widowed mother. Neither the girls nor their mother minded throwing a wild party and enjoying the commandeered booty. They baked and cooked, they feasted and danced, had such a good time they even fired shots in the air. The house stood at the edge of the village in a waterlogged hollow at the foot of cemetery hill. To this day villagers talk about the incident with the utmost circumspection. The way they tell it, the party went on for two days and two nights, and the women didn't even bother to close the curtains over their windows. Through it all, the village played possum. No one ventured outside. Nevertheless, on the second night, bullets were fired through the windows. The bullets, fired from a pistol and a hunting rifle, came from the top of cemetery hill. The first rounds wounded one of the girls and hit one of the Russians in the stomach, who then bled to death. The other two returned the fire. Bullet marks can still be seen on some of the old gravestones. But the battle was uneven, because in their earlier merrymaking the soldiers had almost emptied their submachine guns. The few rounds they had left they used to cover each other as they retreated to the riverbank. The mother immediately hanged herself in the attic of her house. She got the message, it seemed. The next day, a large contingent of Russian military police arrived. The wounded girl was taken away. My two aunts walked into the village that afternoon. All the interrogations, lineups, and house searches, even the hauling away of some people, failed to produce any results. There were few clues to follow, and they found no weapon. In a small village like this everybody is somehow related. The Russians had to press a few men into service to bury the mother. To this day the village does not want to know who fired those shots. One thing is certain: if my grandfather's house had stayed vacant, nothing would have saved it from destruction. Not to mention the fact that only because of my aunts' foresight and cunning has the house remained in my family's possession.

Two old warhorses — that is how the more outspoken members of my family refer to my aunts. Not a very flattering description. But they are indeed exceptional creatures. Whenever I read some agonizing essay about our nation's slow demise, I immediately think of them. Because it's hard to decide what sustains them: their infinite adaptability or their uncompromising resourcefulness. They eat little, talk a lot, and their hands and feet never stop moving. In recent years, having aged visibly, they keep saying that constant activity wears you out, and if the body is worn out it's easier to die. The year and a half age difference between them doesn't show. They are so much alike they could be twins. Both of them are tall and large-framed; they cut each other's hair, which they keep very short. They may have been attractive in their youth, the way a plowhorse can be said to be attractive. They must wear size 12 shoes; when they walk, everything shakes and rattles around them. If they were not moved to tears so easily by compassion, or if they didn't show an almost exaggerated understanding of the most varied and peculiar ways of the world, one could say there was nothing feminine about them. But their gentleness is so refined, so discreet, so very caring, they surely meet all the spiritual requirements of the most traditional female ideal.