George Konrad - A Guest in my Own Country

We were Cohanites, Cohens, that is, descendants of Aaron and the priests who guarded the Ark of the Covenant. My maternal grandfather was also a Cohen, though the designation passed from father to son. Only Cohanites are entitled to remove the Torah scrolls from the tabernacle and carry them around the temple, blessing the congregation. Special regulations of cleanliness forbid them to marry a divorced woman or enter a cemetery: whoever touches Holy Scripture may have no contact with the dead. For my part, I have married two divorcées and enjoy strolling through cemeteries.

My father was comfortable with the positions of responsibility he held, and had no desire to take a leading role in either the town or the congregation. He was who he was. My parents were no more assimilated than other Jews; they simply went a little further into the world at large, where all religions and nationalities learn new ways of life, with mixed feelings perhaps, but slowly and surely, where Jews and Christians alike are assimilants, adapting to the age and to life beyond national borders. But my cousin István and I were the only ones at the Jewish school who did not attend afternoon Talmud lessons in the whitewashed one-story building where one day half a brick tumbled through the dusty courtyard’s fence and landed on my head. The others would arrive home from school at one, but had to go to the cheder , the religious school, at three, where they would immerse themselves in the study of Jewish law and its interpretation. Since they stayed in the classroom until six, they tended to be sickly. I was stronger. Ugly fights were the fashion. All the kids would stand around the enemies and spur them on. We fought on a floor regularly sprinkled with oil. The winner was the one who pinned the other’s shoulders to the ground and held him there. Success was sweeter if a little blood flowed from the loser’s nose and mouth.

Even in childhood the pen was my favorite tool, though I also assembled model airplanes and even soldered one from steel wire. Fixing the hubs on my bike or patching an inner tube was no trickier for me than scratching the tip of my nose. The screwdriver and the saw took gladly to my hand. There was nothing I enjoyed more than observing master craftsmen: I loved watching the locksmith, the blacksmith, the radio repairman at work — my father’s customers all. Nagy, the hospital’s chief engineer, I considered a superior being, and the fact that he never could wash the oil entirely from his hands met with my reverential approval.

Actually I was preparing an enterprise similar to his, an airplane factory, which was to be located just behind the lake where we skated (and bathed the geese in the summertime). All it would take was a little land from the pasture. Obviously I would first have to study at the English gimnázium in Sárospatak, then at Oxford or Cambridge. Having returned with my diploma, I would inherit — or simply run — my father’s hardware business and thence take the step into production. Though why not manufacture planes from the outset? Start small but quickly move on to passenger planes, so one day all of Berettyóújfalu would ride out to the airport in their oxcarts and take a pleasure flight free of charge, experience Derecske, Mikepércs, Zsáka, Furta, Csökm? and maybe even Bakonszeg from the air. Such was the plan.

My cousin István Zádor was a month younger then I: He was a Taurus, I an Aries. We entered the world in the same birthing room. He was a nice pink color and quiet, while I (a breech birth, with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck) came out red, bald, and in agony. My mother, ashamed of my pointed head, kept it a secret by covering it with a crocheted cap before my father came to visit. To this day I have to laugh when I think of my father’s face as I plagued him with questions about our first meeting. “You were quite an ugly little runt,” he would say, and then add reassuringly, “but you managed to outgrow it.”

Both István and I were born at the university clinic in Debrecen, though we lived in Berettyóújfalu. Ours were the two most affluent Jewish families in the Alföld region. József Konrád, my father, was generally considered wealthier, since he had a multistory house on the main street, but actually his cousin Béla Zádor had more money and a college degree to boot.

My father had only a commercial high school education, which he received in Késmárk, an ancient town in the Tatra Mountains, home to a significant Saxon — that is, German — community. Although our family’s native tongue was Hungarian, it made sense at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to board the boys with a family where German was spoken at table. My father ended up in the house of a mathematics teacher. He would take the young lady of the family walking on the castle walls or skating in the Dobsina ice cave, where the snow lingered into summer. This cave occupied my imagination intensely. Several times I asked my father about it as he reclined on a chaise longue on the balcony after dinner and his words flowed freely. All I learned was that the young lady had a red skating outfit and that my father also turned a few figures with the girl on his arm.

István and I took our first steps with a walker while our mothers chatted. They were sisters-in-law and friends. István’s mother was my father’s younger sister, his father my father’s cousin. Mariska, the young beauty, was noticed early by Béla Zádor, her cousin.

During my first days at school my governess Lívia sat with me at my desk. Whenever she stood, I sobbed at the thought of her leaving me there alone. On the fourth day she managed to tear herself from my side. I cried, and the others made fun of me, so I got angry and beat up every single one of them. At home I announced that I did not want to go to school, and repeated this regularly over the course of a month. My parents finally accepted the situation, and I became a home student. So did István. As our instructor did not come until the afternoon, we were free all morning out in their large garden among the sour-cherry trees on the banks of Kálló Creek. We would finish the lesson quickly and go back to playing soccer or cutting cattails or catching frogs.

When Aunt Mariska allowed it, little István would watch his mother stretch out in the tub. He would feel her clothes and smell her colognes. The governess, who answered to the name of Nene, would shout for him to come out immediately and stop bothering his mother, but István would just stand there, watching through fogged-up glasses as his mother turned her beautiful legs.

We sat together in school and were reluctant to part company. István would walk me home and come up the stairs. “You understand, Gyuri, don’t you?” he would ask at intervals, standing in the front doorway. “I understand, I understand,” I would answer after a considered pause. No one was as good to talk to as István, and I never talked to anyone else as much. With our arms on each other’s shoulders we would walk round and round the courtyard at school. Having failed to shut us up, they tried to separate us, but ended up leaving us in the same row. István was not beyond a few pranks, but was bored by childish rowdiness. I know a number of people who admit that István was smarter than they; I am one.

István Zádor’s brother Pál was three years younger than he and followed in his footsteps. A mathematician, he has been living in Washington for about forty years now. Pali could beat both of us in ping-pong: he was bent on making up for those three years. He had no tolerance for an affront. If a salesman happened to say anything out of line, Pali would answer with a single compound noun: “Curcowstupidpig!” In the time it would have taken for his father to come out of the house and set him straight, we were all down on the bank of the creek amid the sour-cherry trees and raspberry bushes.