George Konrad - A Guest in my Own Country

We were hungry. We ate the dog’s food and stole garlic from Mr. Dravida’s kitchen cabinet. Nibbling away on a clove was almost like eating. Outside, the popping of a machine gun. We exchanged glances, then looked over at Mr. Dravida, who seemed encouraged: “The game isn’t over yet. If things turn around and our troops come back, you’ll need my protection. You might get it, but that depends on you. If you’re nice and quiet and don’t eat up Bella’s food, I’ll put in a word or two on your behalf. Though to tell the truth you are a bother. I keep finding the bathroom door closed. Have you so much to eat that you’re constantly on the toilet, you locusts?”

We boys, the four of us, lay side by side on the double couch, talking about what was to come. Once the lights were out, I imagined myself at home with my parents as if nothing had changed. I would have been ashamed to speak of this to the others, though I was curious to know what they were imagining. It was cold and dark in the large apartment, and we wore socks in bed. The fire in the utility stove died early.

Once some Russians came. They checked Aunt Zsófi’s papers and eyed her and my sister like cats eyeing sour cream. My sister pulled her clothes under the covers and got dressed. Aunt Zsófi went into the bathroom. One of the soldiers followed her in, but a minute later tiptoed out, as if signaling that no youth on earth was as tactful as he. After shining his flashlight on our four deeply attentive young faces, they praised Zsófi. “Good Mama, nice Mama, many children. Good!” They growled at us not to make a racket, though we had been quiet anyway. They took a can of meat and three eggs out of their pockets and put them on the table.

“It’s cold,” said the Soviet soldiers, whose faces were of various shapes. They got the fire going, one of them pulled a bottle of brandy out of his pocket. They bit off pieces of bacon, red onions, and black bread to go with it and even gave us a piece or two while they regaled themselves. On their way out they offered everyone their hands. I took hold of the magazine on one of the soldiers’ machine guns. “And what do you want?” He pressed his fur cap down on my head, then set it back on his own. They took nothing and left a smell of warmth, onions, and boots. They also left us with an uneasy feeling, since Dravida muttered something to them in the front room in Slovak.

The next day I waited in line outside the baker’s, if only for the smell wafting out. The quicker ones had taken their place early in the morning, though bread didn’t go on sale until ten. It was not often I managed to get there early enough to avoid coming away empty-handed. But at least I didn’t have to drop down onto my belly or press against the wall as machine gun fire strafed the street. At this point the real fighting was over, even in Buda. Newsboys shouted out the name of the newspaper: Szabadság! Freedom! In the parks graves surged up in mounds, and in the streets people went around in search of their loved ones.

Aunt Zsófi kept expecting her husband. One day she went down to Nyugati Station in a light fur because she had dreamed he was lying in a field, his still-open eyes staring at her. She had also dreamed of a village, which she now sought. She turned to a Russian officer for help, explaining that she wanted to travel west. At first the officer didn’t follow what she was saying, but when Zsófia continued in French he gave her a seat on his train and told her that no one would bother her there and she should let him know when she wanted to get off, because he would be in the next compartment. And in fact she did find the village she had seen in her dream. She inquired whether there was a mass grave within the town limits. There was. They opened it. She found her husband.

Aunt Zsófi and Uncle Gyula had last spoken on the sixth floor of 49 Pozsonyi Avenue on the balcony facing the courtyard used for carpet-beating. It was there they had kissed for the last time. In 1953 Zsófia jumped from that balcony onto the cobblestones below.

The day after our liberation I went with Aunt Zsófi to the Wesselényi Street ghetto hospital, where we found her mother, still alive, on the third floor. Her head had been shot through, the bullet entering the right side of her face and exiting the left side of her skull under the ear. She was a slight woman, still in late middle age, and even in her state could manage a bit of a smile upon seeing her daughter. A few sugar cubes were all we could take her, though we couldn’t bring ourselves to put one on her lips. The ghetto hospital had once been a school and is now a school again. On that day in January 1945 I looked out onto the school courtyard and saw a hill of bodies rising to the level of the second floor. Zsófi sat next to her mother. They were holding hands. Neither asked the other what had happened since they had last seen each other. When I accompanied Zsófi there again the next day, her mother was on her way to the pile in the yard. Aunt Zsófi sent me home and tried to arrange for her mother’s body to be identified and removed from the mass grave.

I didn’t much feel like wandering around Budapest, as I found the city inhospitable and yearned for the familiarity of home, for our house in Újfalu. It felt miserable to come back from the baker’s empty-handed and stand around stirring the wheat in the pot, the fire almost out. Even dazzling winter days can be miserable when you look out from a dark room with nothing to hope for. Nor was there anything left to steal. Those elegant gentlemen who three weeks earlier had sat in their galoshes on the ribs of a dead horse lying in the snow had now acquired the status of a comical memory: there was nothing left to hack.

By now we were just a nuisance, extra mouths to feed, and there was no immediate danger to save us from. The smartest thing would be to go where we belonged. There would certainly be something to eat there. So my sister Éva and I decided to return to Újfalu and wait for our parents. István and Pali were heading for Kolozsvár: their paternal great aunt had survived the barely survivable year and invited them there. We would go home to the village and manage somehow. Homesickness for Berettyóújfalu and our house was hard at work inside me. If my parents didn’t return, then we, the inheritors, would open the business. I would invite all the old shop assistants back and behave exactly like my father, free of all Budapest arrogance and scorn. But if my parents did return, I would give my father the keys and the cash books and accept his handshake and thanks for what I had done to keep the business going.

The role of guest was not to my liking; I felt much more at home in the role of host. Once I had grown up, I would bring a woman into my father’s house and make lots of babies using the method described to me by the Gypsy Buckó one day on the way to Herpály. I had once gone to visit him to see how Gypsy children of my age lived. A boy came up to me, only slightly smaller than I, wearing absolutely nothing but a cap. You need a woman in the house, with a nice-smelling wardrobe and a nice-smelling muff. And you need children for the swings and ping-pong tables.

If during abnormal times you act according to notions born in normal ones, you owe the Devil a trip. This requires a train ticket. The news in the bakery line, which the Dravidas had also heard, was that tickets were available only at the Rákosrendez? Station, a good couple of hours on foot from the center. It was a long trip, with Russian and Romanian soldiers everywhere. At times I was a bit afraid. My sister couldn’t accompany me, as the city was dangerous for young girls. I had no gloves and tried to protect my hands from the cold with — heaven knows why — a hair net. The thought that I was now truly hungry and truly cold gave me a certain pride, but I also kept my eyes open, there being plenty to see.