George Konrad - A Guest in my Own Country

We stood behind our chairs in silence while the others mumbled grace: “Dear Jesus, be our guest today, and bless what Thou hast granted us … He who food and drink hath given, let His name be blessed in heaven.” I could have said the Jewish blessing “Blessed art Thou, Eternal God, King of the Universe, who bringeth forth bread from the earth,” but I was not the praying type in those days.

The serving spoon would make the rounds from room monitor (whom we were bound to obey) down, according to age. The prayer did little to dampen the abuse of rank. The serving order went by class, the oldest class going first, the youngest last. If there was a big steaming bowl of goulash in a big porcelain tureen, it was only natural that the highest class should spoon out the most meat for themselves and all that was left for the “little buggers,” those of us under fourteen, were the potatoes at the bottom. As a member of the fourth class I was in the lower school and therefore subject to commands like, “Bugger, bring me a glass of water!” A raw sense of fun made the vulgarity of it all seem natural. Endless jokes about farts filled the dormitory.

Pali was in the first class, at the bottom of the pecking order, while I, in the fourth, belonged at the top of the lower school and was thus ripe for rebellion. I put up with the hazing as long as I could. I even put up with the prank they called the star-kick, which consisted of sneaking up to a new boy at night and sticking strips of twisted paper between his toes, then lighting them. When the flame reached the skin, the victim would make huge kicks in the air and bolt up in alarm to see the flaming paper wafting through the room. Something to snicker at. (Even the little buggers had their established order, whereby one might end up sniggering at one’s best buddies’ misfortunes — or one’s own.) I put up with the fact that packages coming to me from home were opened with the room monitor’s approval and devoured without consulting me. (I was familiar with his type — a “cackler”—and as I will relate I eventually put my foot down.) Otherwise we got on well enough. I was good at my studies and let them play with my four-grooved Cossack dagger, which they would throw at the doorpost. My classmates, sons of village schoolteachers, priests, choirmasters, artisans, and farmers, wavered between intimations of justice, lording it over newcomers, and submitting to the authority of older boys. After lights out a Psalm was read. It was followed by witticisms about jacking off. I didn’t know what that was.

One classmate shared the homesickness that came over me each evening, and we counted the days together. He told me that to get to his village from the station he had to cross a forest. There were wolves in the forest, he said, so occasionally he needed to sling a huge cudgel over his head. During the previous Christmas break he had set a whole pack running. I would have liked to believe my new friend.

Our house was thirty kilometers from the dormitory, which was doable by bicycle, though occasionally a friendly Russian sergeant, the polyglot who had accompanied us to Nagyvárad, would come and ask if I felt like going home: my mother was willing to certify a made-up illness for a few days. He was an interpreter at the headquarters in Berettyóújfalu and knew his way around the markets and the world of exchange in general. I traded him our kitchen alarm clock for a Cossack hat and that four-grooved dagger. We rode in his jeep, with me in back, my legs hanging over the side. He worried that I would bounce out: his driver drove at a hundred kilometers an hour. I was thrilled by the speed.

But it was also a pleasure to climb onto an ox-drawn cart with my mother, the driver perched listlessly on his plank and the two oxen taking their time, letting me have a good close look at every house and tree along the road. The familiar, thirty-kilometer trip between Debrecen and Újfalu would take a good six hours.

In my simplicity I was happy with any pace: all that mattered was that I was going home. And it was with a heart of stone that I watched the truck that served as the bus to Újfalu pull away from the Golden Bull Hotel in Debrecen with my mother aboard after three days in Debrecen, time mostly wasted in a group shopping tour to buy shoes for my sister Éva and cousin Zsófi. They would try on pair after pair, first in shops that seemed to hold promise, then in ever-more disappointing establishments. My mother was patiently respectful of the process, but I was bored and did not pass up the opportunity to express my scorn when the girls ended up with the shoes they had tried on in the first shop. My remarks were received with cool disparagement and labeled barbarian. My original inclination, to go into the first shop and buy the first thing that more or less appealed to me, remained unshaken.

This philosophy of random choice guided me in other areas as well: “God is good, and what he gives is good.” My life has been shaped by chance meetings and telephone calls: the best dinner is always at the nearest restaurant; my first woman — I was fifteen at the time — was the nearest one in the raft of women lining up before me in the salon of the old-fashioned house of assignation. The approach probably had something to do with hunger: I barely grew at all that year. You had to take what there was.

Like Debrecen, for example. It was the closest of cities (with good schools) to my parents’ house. The dormitory destroyed a few illusions perhaps, but I had excellent teachers.

My favorite place was the library. Whenever school got me down, I would go straight there. No one would ask me whether I had permission to be there or was just skipping class. Good as the classes were, I enjoyed reading more, so I often found myself at its entrance, a flight of wide, sloping wooden stairs worn down by many thousands of feet. I had to stretch to reach the handle on the door and was immediately captivated by the smell of floor wax and old books.

One day, while reading a light novel whose spine I had seen earlier on my mother’s bedside table, I felt a tactful hand land on my shoulder. I turned to see our class advisor, Dr. József Salánky, who taught Latin and History and inspired both respect and fear.

“If my suspicions are correct, you, young man, should be in class right now. Is that not so?”

“Yes, it is.”

We were face to face. I could deny nothing.

“I hope you are reading something worthy at least.”

He had a look at the book by lamplight in the November darkness.

“This one is hardly worth missing class for,” he said disparagingly.

I felt reduced to near nothingness but had to respond somehow.

“And what would be worth missing class for, sir?”

It was a cheeky question, but by saying “this one” he had given me a lead-in. He looked at me and said, “Wait!” He had access to the library’s inner sanctum, forbidden territory to students. While he was on his mission there, I found it hard to return to my novel. He reappeared with a stack of books, set them down on the librarian’s desk, and said to him, “If this boy comes back, give him these to read in the building.” He winked at me and left. The librarian called me over with a glance and set the top book before me. It was Crime and Punishment . Later, in the school corridor, Dr. Salánky remarked to me that it didn’t matter if I understood only a little of what was in those books. Whatever I did understand would be worth more than all of a bad book that was easy for me.

Eventually I had to leave the dormitory. What led to my expulsion was the practice of our being allowed out into the city after lunch (though we had to be back by three, which was the beginning of silentium , when we were expected to do our lessons, not play with jigsaw puzzles or tops or that wooden figure whose little red peanut would pop out when you pulled on a string). On one sunny November day I was on duty, which meant I was responsible for taking the key to the common room when we left for lunch and being there to open it for those who preferred the dormitory to town, perhaps because they felt insecure and needed to stick to their nests or because they wanted to study or simply because they were lazy. After a less than glorious lunch I forayed into town. I may have bought a jam roll from one of the glassed-in stands or a cluster of the grapes sold on corners. At any rate, I completely forgot about the damned key. In thrall to the pleasures of sights and tastes I got to the door of our common room to find ten pairs of eyes glowering at me. I arrived in a lighthearted mood, giving the boys a warm hello and making a casual apology. No one said a word, but I got a good slap in the face from the room monitor. Taking a step back, I charged into his belly with my head, which landed him on his behind. When they pulled us apart, he said I would regret what I had done.