Home Game

by Endre Farkas

  “Tomorrow, we’re going on a tour of Budapest, so we’ll only have morning practice. And there will be photographers and a television crew. So, we’ll work on skills, no plays. Derek, your strong side is the right side, so during warm-ups I want you to hold back on your leaps and let in a few soft goals there. Wolfie and Speedy, I don’t want you guys taking shots on Derek. Luigi and Schmutz, you guys will warm Derek up. Okay?”

  “Coach Hustle’s a fox,” Speedy said. “I think he really wants to win.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “You bet.”

  “We’re going to need every trick in the book and then some.”

  Coach Hus shut off the TV. “Okay. Bedtime, you prima donnas.”

  Mr. Nemes showed up with the photographers and TV crew before breakfast. They filmed them eating, getting dressed for practice, running out onto the field and kicking the ball around. They filmed Luigi and Schmutz shooting on net and Derek diving. Tommy and Speedy were heading the ball back and forth.

  Speedy smiled. “Coach Hustle ain’t so dumb.”

  “They’re curious about us too,” Tommy said as he and Speedy tried to keep the ball in the air.

  “Maybe they’re worried?”

  “You think?”

  “Tamás, can we have you take some shots on net, please? Mr. Nemes called to him. “Our viewers are interested in the prodigal son. Especially since you are also the team’s top scorer.”

  Tommy was caught off guard. He didn’t know what prodigal meant.

  “How do you know?”

  “Mr. Papp reports for us.” He smiled.

  Mr. Homokos? he almost joked. “Mr. Papp who owns the bookstore in Montreal?”

  “Yes. He writes for the national newspaper about the diaspora.”

  “Oh. Well, you’ll have to ask the coach.”

  Coach Hus nodded.

  “Okay, Lefty,” Speedy yelled after him. “Show them what that left foot of yours can do.”

  Tommy glanced back at Speedy. He smiled and nodded. The other guys gathered to watch. He lobbed a few toward Derek, then to the left and right of him. When he was warmed up, he put power into his shots. Tommy secretly tapped his right or left foot so Derek would know to which side he was going to shoot. He made sure that Derek looked weak on the right side and strong on the left. He also took some right-footed shots that were weaker and less accurate.

  Coach Hus blew his whistle. “Okay, boys, cool down and take a shower.”

  Tommy watched Mr. Nemes, the photographers and cameraman leave, and when they disappeared around the corner, he turned his back to Derek, kicked the ball into the air and, as it came down, he leaped, flattened in mid-air and scissor-kicked the ball into the top left-hand corner. He landed on his back. The boys whooped and circled him. Tommy lay there facing the sky and moved his arms and feet back and forth.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Schmutz asked.

  “Making grass angels,” he said, laughing.

  The boys jostled onto the tour bus. The tour guide was an attractive young student from the university. She had no trouble getting their attention.

  “Velcome. My name is Anna. I vill be your guide.” Her English had a Zsa Zsa Gábor quality. Tommy expected her to call them dahlings. The bus started up. “Before I tell you the history of Hungary, I vill tell you the mythologia of Hungary. It is about the Golden Stag. The legend say two brothers, Hunor and Magor, went hunting and saw a Golden Stag. They pursue the animal but it always stay ahead of them all the way to a place called Levidia. There they meet two princess and marry them. Then they make Hungary there. From the brothers’ name, as you can hear, we get the names Hungarians and Magyars. Interesting. Yes? The fact? No.

  “The Budapest you vill see today is the result of many years of rich history. There have found evidence of people back to second millennium before Christus. First ve have the before Magyar times. The first settlement that is today Budapest vas built by Kelts. The Romans occupied this town in the first century before Christus.”

  This was as new to Tommy as to the others. “I should have boned up on Hungarian history as Mr. Papp suggested.”

  “Better late than never, eh?” Speedy elbowed him in the ribs. “I like my history this way.” He winked at Anna.

  She was flustered for a moment but quickly recovered. “The Hungarian tribes arrive to the Carpathian Basin in 896. Árpád, leader of the Magyars, settled on Csepel island, in the south part of Budapest. In 1000 Hungary’s first king is Stephen. He become a Christian and make everybody Christian.”

  She pointed to the Buda side. “There is Gellért Hill. It is named after Bishop Gellért, killed by barbarians during war against Christianity in 1046. Ve vill pass it over there soon.” Anna paused. She scanned the bus. Tommy wasn’t sure but he thought that she gave him a quick small smile. He hoped that it was for Speedy.

  “The beginning of Buda and Pest begins by French and German settlers who migrates and works along the shores of Buda and Pest in the twelve century. But in 1241 the Mongols come and destroy both cities. Now ve are in Buda and will stop at the Castle Hill which King Béla IV in 1248 lived. You are permitted to take pictures, please.”

  They got off the bus and walked out to the terrace that overlooked the Danube and the parliament building on the Pest side. The boys ran to the terrace and began clicking their Kodak Instamatics.

  “You vant I take picture of team?” Anna asked Tommy.

  “Sure.” They lined up with Pest in the background.

  “Now let’s take a picture with you in it.” Speedy guided her between him and Tommy. “Schmutz, take a picture of us.”

  “I am sorry but I am not permitted,” she replied. She removed herself from the picture.

  The boys wandered around, taking pictures of each other. Anna stood off to the side. When Tommy passed her, she touched his arm. “Hello, captain of team.” She smiled and switched to Hungarian. “Do you have any nylons or farmers?” she asked in a low whisper.

  “Farmers?” he asked, perplexed.

  “Levi Strauss farmers,” she said.

  “Oh, you mean jeans. Sorry. I only have for me.” Tommy had snuck one into his suitcase when his mother wasn’t looking.

  “Vill you sell them?”

  “What are you two talking about?” Speedy asked. He sounded a bit pissed. I’ll tell Marianne.”

  “I’m in room 101,” she said, before switching back to English. “Ve must go back on bus now.”

  When they were all aboard and seated, she began again. “In 1458, the noblemen of Hungary elect Matthias Corvinus as king. He make Buda the most important city in Europe. Then the terrible Turks come to Hungary in 1541. The Turkish occupation last almost 150 years. They built a lot of Turkish baths because Budapest have lots of hot water under the ground. Ve are passing one now. She pointed to a building. It is more than four hundred years old and example of Turkish architecture.” She paused while the boys looked out at a long, one-storey building with very small windows and a couple of domed roofs.

  “The Austrian Habsburg beat the Turks in 1686 but Buda and Pest are destroyed in the battles. Hungary become part of the Austro Hungarian Empire.”

  “But Hungary wasn’t really an equal partner in this empire,” Derek interrupted her.

  She faltered. “Yes, you are correct. In 1848 Hungary has a brave revolution against the Habsburgs.”

  Something stirred in Tommy and he began to recite from memory.

  Talpra magyar, hí a haza!

  Itt az idő, most vagy soha!

  Rabok legyünk vagy szabadok?

  Ez a kérdés, válasszatok! –

  A magyarok istenére

  Esküszünk,

  Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább

  Nem leszünk!

  She stared at Tommy. He was also surprised.

 
; “You are a real Hungarian,” she said in their shared language.

  “English, English!” Schmutz yelled out. The rest of the team joined in.

  Coach Hus stood up. “Boys! Enough!”

  “It is a very famous and important poem for Hungarians, what your captain said.” She smiled at him.

  Tommy remembered memorizing it in grade one. It was also the poem the people who were placing a noose around a statue in ’56 in Békes’s town square were reciting. Tommy was sitting on his father’s shoulders watching and listening to the people pull and recite until the statue tipped and fell. He remembered the loud cheer as it hit the ground, as its neck snapped, and as the head rolled into the bushes.

  Speedy’s elbow brought him abruptly back to the present.

  “In 1945 Budapest was liberated by the brave soldiers of the Soviet Union. They along with the brave patriots of Hungary, defeat the fascist German invaders. Since then Hungary has been a proud progressive socialist republic.”

  When the bus came to a final halt, Tommy ran up to his dorm room, grabbed a pair of nylons and ran back to the bus. He pulled Speedy aside. “Here, give this to her but don’t let anyone see.”

  “Okay, everyone fork over twenty forints for Anna for her wonderful tour.”

  “Thank you, but I am not permitted.”

  “We insist,” Tommy said, and put the money in her hand.

  She gave the driver a couple of the twenties. “Thank you,” she said and added in a low voice in Hungarian. “This way we are all protected.”

  “My friend there would like to give you something extra,” Tommy said, pointing to Speedy standing by the back of the bus.

  40

  Gabi had called it the Crystal Palace of trains. The last time Tommy had been in the Western Train Station he was holding Gabi’s hand, looking up at the stars visible through its glass roof. It had been midnight when they pulled into the station. He’d never been up so late and was excited because he was on an adventure. When they had left Békes, his parents had told him that they were going to Israel. He thought that they had arrived. In the station there were boy and girl soldiers, machine guns slung over their shoulders, strolling, holding hands. They were smiling and speaking Hungarian. Tommy remembered he was happy that they spoke Hungarian in Israel.

  Now he was with his teammates waiting for the train to Debrecen to play their first game. He looked up. He couldn’t see the sky because of the soot covering the glass panes. And the patrolling soldiers weren’t smiling. Today he wasn’t feeling the excitement of an eight-year-old on an adventure, but the anxiety of a nineteen-year-old returning to a foreign familiarity. He would never have imagined that he would be returning to Hungary and certainly not as a captain of a soccer team, leading his teammates, the Knights, back to play on the Golden Green.

  “How was room 101?” Tommy asked Speedy during a private moment once they had settled into their seats and the other players had settled into theirs.

  “Very very hot and pleasant.”

  “I fell asleep waiting for you. I was beginning to think you defected.”

  “I was tempted,” he said.

  “Is she Catholic?”

  “Huh?”

  “How was one of my kind?”

  Speedy smiled. “A fine shikass.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Schmutz asked, sitting down next to Speedy.

  “Accommodations, guides, loyalties and religion,” Speedy said.

  “Bullshit,” Schmutz said.

  Tommy stared out the window as the train departed the station. He saw his reflection staring back. Everything struck him as simultaneously familiar and completely strange. Although he recalled events from his childhood, it felt like it was someone else’s. It all felt like so long ago even though it had only been eleven years since he’d last been here. Of course, that was more than half his life. And his mother tongue wasn’t his mother tongue anymore. He struggled to understand the words he heard and struggled to speak it. This was his motherland, but it didn’t feel or sound like home. Yet here he was.

  The land was flat and green with crops, row on row as far as he could see. They were divided by fields of sunflowers. What a strange thing to grow, he thought to himself. Other than sunflower seeds, he didn’t know what else they could possibly be good for. Huge heads on such thin stalks. Why didn’t they fall over and snap? Incredible.

  Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

  Who countest the steps of the Sun:

  Seeking after that sweet golden clime

  Where the traveller’s journey is done.

  “Where did you learn that?” Speedy asked.

  “We studied it in my Romantic-Victorian Poetry class,” Tommy said.

  “You’re becoming a friggin faggot poet,” Schmutz said.

  “The teacher dissected it to death. He found more symbols and meanings in that poem than a sunflower has seeds. But you just have to see one to understand it. My grandfather had sunflowers in his garden. I usually spent a week or two in the summer with him in Hajduszabad. He told me that the sunflowers followed the sun. I didn’t believe him. So, he made me check them morning, noon and at night. I thought he meant that they actually walked from east to west.”

  “Did they?” Schmutz asked.

  “Schmuck,” Speedy said, punching him on the arm.

  “We’re going to pass my grandfather’s town just before we hit Debrecen. My father was in a labour camp there.”

  “What’s a labour camp?” Schmutz asked.

  Tommy thought everyone knew what it was but then realized ‘everyone’ meant Jews. “It’s where Hungarian Jewish men were sent when the war broke out. It was part of the army except they weren’t allowed to carry guns.”

  “Why not?”

  “Jews were not considered real Hungarians. They weren’t trusted with guns. Instead they were given picks, shovels and brooms. They were given all the shitty work: fixing roads, digging ditches, cleaning latrines. And some, according to my father, were sent to the front and used as mine clearers.”

  “What are mine clearers?” Schmutz asked.

  “The ones forced to go clear land mines that the enemy planted before they retreated. They had to go find and explode them before the regular soldiers advanced. Many of them were blown up.”

  “Shit!”

  “Does your grandfather still live there?” Schmutz asked.

  “No. He moved in with my aunt in Debrecen. He’s pretty old. He was born in the 1890s. Imagine. He was in World War One. He had an armoire with bullet holes in them. I used to stick my fingers in them.”

  “That’s old. My grandfather still lives in the same house he was born in,” Schmutz said.

  Speedy looked at the passengers looking at them. “Would you recognize him if he got on the train now?”

  Tommy looked around. “Probably not. I’ve seen pictures of him, but I don’t think so. He looked old to me then, imagine now. All I remember is that he was very religious. He always wore a yarmulke, prayed a lot and only spoke to me in Yiddish.”

  “You speak it?”

  “No. I understand a few words and expressions but that’s it. Do you guys speak your mother tongues fluently?” Tommy asked Luigi and Schmutz. He knew Speedy did.

  “Of course,” both replied.

  Tommy wondered why he didn’t. Probably because his parents hated the people who spoke it and drove them from Hungary.

  “What about your grandmothers?” Luigi wanted to know. “My father’s mother lives with us.”

  “Both my grandmothers died in concentration camps.” He stared out at the moving landscape.

  “There it is.” Tommy pointed to the train station with the Hajduszabad sign on it. The uniformed stationmaster stood at attention outside the station holding a stick with a red circle on it.

  “They
do the same thing in Italy,” Luigi said

  “Spain, too.”

  “Have you guys been back to your countries?”

  “Yeah,” Luigi said. “My mother’s grandparents live in Vasto, in the south of Italy, on the Adriatic.”

  “We got stories, too,” Kostas said.

  “Debrecen next,” the conductor called. He hoped Gabi would be there.

  They were greeted by a representative of the city holding a bouquet of flowers and two people from the university who also held bouquets of flowers.

  “I am Dr. Nagy, the Dean of Physical Culture at the Kossuth Lajos University,” he addressed Coach Hus. His English was not as good as Mr. Nemes’s but good enough to introduce himself as their host and translator. He then introduced the city’s representative, who just nodded and handed the bouquet to the coach.

  “I bet he never got so many flowers in his life,” Speedy whispered to Tommy. “Maybe they want to date him.”

  Tommy elbowed Schmutz in the ribs.

  “Köszönöm,” Coach Hus replied, pronouncing the word for thank you perfectly, just as Tommy had taught him.

  Everyone applauded. “Please, the Captain?” said Dr. Nagy. Coach Hus signalled to Tommy, who grabbed Speedy and walked with him to the front. “Tommy Wolfstein and Roberto Gonzales,” Coach Hus introduced them.

  Dr. Nagy introduced the young man standing next to him. “Könyves András, the captain of the Kossuth Lajos university team, the champions of Hungary.”

  Even in his suit he looked well built, stocky and sturdy. Physically, he resembled Puskás. He probably had a powerful shot too. Derek’s going to have his hands full, Tommy thought to himself. Könyves stuck out the bouquet that was tiny in his big paw.

  “Careful shaking a Hungarian’s hand,” Speedy whispered to Tommy.

  Tommy smiled. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a rolled-up Sir George pennant and unfurled it. They had been briefed by the protocol officer at the consulate on these greetings and exchanges. When Tommy, Gabi and his friends used to gather after Sunday afternoon soccer broadcasts to replay the game, Gabi and Frog, who were always the captains, made pretend exchanges the way they were doing now for real. He took the bouquet, offered the pennant and reached out to shake hands. He made sure that he grasped Könyves’s hand first so his couldn’t be squeezed hard. Könyves smiled and offered the team’s pennant to Roberto, who did the same.