George Konrad - A Guest in my Own Country

Our bundles of bedding were falling apart; we hung onto the quilts in desperation. I would have liked to earn Aunt Zsófi’s praise. Once she called me her “little mainstay,” but my joy at this mingled with the disappointment of being called “my little hypocrite” again for another of my attempts at pleasing her. That slightly chilly but still flirtatious irony was in Aunt Zsófi’s face now too, curious to see how I would manage a bundle that was threatening to disintegrate.

The building on the corner had been razed to the ground, but 5/a Szép Street was miraculously still standing. It had taken a few cannon shots here and there, but they were patchable holes. The marble fountain in the courtyard, untouched, had icicles hanging from the stone-rumped nymph’s jug.

The brass nameplate had disappeared from the front door of Dr. Gyula Zádor’s apartment, and Aunt Zsófi’s key would not turn the lock. The buzzer would not ring. She had to pound on the door. Out of the darkness of the long foyer a little circle of light emanated, and as the tiny grille-protected window in the door opened we saw a gray-haired woman sizing us up in a manner less than friendly.

Zsófi was wearing a light-colored fur coat, and her black hair was bound in a light-gray silk kerchief. The five of us children were standing behind her. We were curious and determined to reclaim the apartment.

“Good day, madam. I am Zsófia Vágó, the wife of Dr. Gyula Zádor, owner of this apartment and the possessions therein.”

The gray-haired lady answered as follows from behind the grille: “I am Mrs. Kázmér Dravida, rightful tenant of this apartment. Your apartment, madam — inasmuch as it was in fact yours — has been officially granted to us as refugees from Transylvania.”

To which Zsófi said: “Madam, the legality of your procedure is subject to several objections.”

To which Mrs. Dravida replied, “I trust, Madam, that you wish to impugn neither our good faith nor our patriotic obligation to observe the spirit of our thousand-year-old state as it is embodied by the authorities in power at any given time.”

Zsófia: “You might, however, let us in, Madam.”

Mrs. Dravida: “My conscientious observation of recent developments leads me, Madam, to do so. I note that you have of your own initiative removed the distinguishing emblem from your overcoats, trusting that the days of discrimination are over. Well, I do not discriminate against you, Madam, and out of patriotic sympathy do hereby bestow the use of two of the apartment’s five rooms to you and yours.”

Zsófia: “Madam, I have no wish to deceive you into thinking that I would not have been happier to find my apartment uninhabited, but then, of course, you yourselves must find refuge of a winter’s day. How else might I put it? Kindly make yourselves at home in my rooms and with my furniture to the extent that propriety allows.”

We watched motionless as these two elderly people, Dr. Kázmér Dravida and his wife, deftly salvaged their vital reserves — several bags of potatoes, beans, flour, bacon and sausage on spits, sugar in a large paper bag, pork lard in a red-enameled pot, and crackling in a large pickle jar — from pantry to bedroom, lest the invading horde make short work of them.

Not until then could they bring themselves to ask, panting, whether we had brought any food with us. Well, no, we had brought nothing at all. Good will moved the Dravidas to give us enough potatoes, flour, and bacon to hold us for dinner and the next day. For the third day we got nothing, but they did not hide the news — the most useful item of all — that there was a German storehouse in the basement of the Reáltanoda Street school perpendicular to Szép Street, and though the locals had carried off most of the inventory on that day, 18 January, there might still be something left.

We boys set out with empty knapsacks to see what we could find. We heard a machine gun ratatatatting from the direction of the Danube. There would be trouble if the Germans came back: the Dravidas would have us removed from Aunt Zsófi’s apartment and our feet would never again cross the copperplate but long unpolished threshold.

A well-worn path led from the front gate of the school across the snow-covered courtyard to the back staircase and down into the cellar. We saw German corpses sticking out of the snow and shone our flashlight in their faces. I had always thought the dead grimaced, but every one of the faces was peaceful, including the one lying on his back on a wooden crate in the cellar next to a depleted bag of beans, his head hanging in a rather uncomfortable position. The only possible explanation was that there had been another crate under his head. And if they didn’t leave it there, it must have been worth taking.

We filled our knapsacks with beans, peas, wheat, and dried onions, which was all that remained by then, but were still interested in the crate lying under the young German. He was a tall, handsome young man with a powerful brow and a light-colored stubble on his narrow face. His deep-set large eyes were open, and he observed us with interest.

“Forgive us,” we said to him as we tried rolling him off the crate.

“I will not forgive you,” the soldier responded coolly. “I have no idea why I had to die on this crate after taking a bullet on the basement staircase and dragging myself over here. In fact, I have no idea what I am doing here. You will find this crate to contain fairly high-quality sausage, and though it has turned white on the outside with mold, after a bit of scraping you will find it perfectly edible. I have turned stiff, and you will take the crate out from under me and steal away with the goods, but I will remain here in the dark, in this cellar of death, until the corpse-removers take me to an even darker place. No, I will not forgive you.”

But we persevered. “O unknown German soldier, we understand your sense of injury, since, to put it bluntly, we are not allowing your earthly remains to rest (however uncomfortably) in peace, though it might be said in our favor that by removing the crate of sausage from under you we may actually straighten you out. Still, we hasten to observe that you have come a great distance from your permanent place of residence, by command to be sure, but not by invitation. Moreover, it is probable that when the bullet hit you you were engaging in activities of which we do not approve. May we point out that it would not have occurred to us to shoot at you, but the issue of whether or not you shot at us was a function purely of the random circumstances of the commands you received. From your perspective there would have been no obstacle. You shot your innocence dead, whereas we are still innocent — though understandably cynical — young boys.”

The moment we lifted the crate, we were filled with disappointment: it proved mournfully light. And what remained of the ten scrawny sausages once we had scraped off the white and chopped it into the beans on the little utility stove would not hold us for very long. Two weeks later we were resigned to the wheat, grinding it up and boiling it for hours to soften it. While it cooked, we stood around it to keep warm, dipping dried onions in mustard to trick our hunger in the meantime.

Mr. Dravida, a fur cap on his head, sat in a rocking chair wrapped in a blanket up to his waist, squeezing a tennis ball in each hand. “It works the muscles, very soothing, and helps you think.” He wore a winter coat with tassels and hiking boots with gaiters. His mouth, thin but sharply delineated and outlined by an equally thin mustache, had the sour twist of scorn and pride. From Uncle Gyula’s high-backed reading chair he cast an occasional glance at us noisy ghosts. “Just because you’ve won, you’ve no right to come snooping around.” Next to him sat his old dog, slapping its tail back and forth. Now and then Mr. Dravida touched the tennis ball to the dog’s head. “I brought Bella’s food inside because you ate her baked potatoes. There are a lot of you, and you make noise, and you eat my dog’s potatoes. Don’t stand in the door! Either come in or get out! What’s this? Garlic sausage? You’ve got it good. You people always have it good.”