Swimming Across: A Memoir

by Andrew S. Grove

  The market was in the main square of Kiskoros. It was the weekly market for the region and was always crowded with people from surrounding towns. Farmers and merchants spread out everything from fruits and vegetables to hardware, clothing, housewares, fertilizer, and even farm animals. The fruits and vegetables were weighed in handheld scales, then people put them directly in their shopping baskets. After the isolation of the farm, the hustle and bustle of lots of people talking and bargaining was exciting, but it was also hot and dusty and noisy. I was usually ready to go home after a few hours, but I had to wait until Kehl bacsi was done with his business. The ride back always seemed twice as long.

  The road from Kiskoros to the farm went past what had been my grandparents' house. I always had a tight feeling in my chest when we went by, because by now I knew my relatives had been taken from that house to be killed.

  In the middle of the summer, there was great excitement in the town. They were going to pave the sidewalk from the train station at the edge of town to the square in the middle. People talked about nothing but this impending project. It took a few weeks and lots of starts and stops, but when it was done, there was in fact a paved sidewalk, separated from the dirt road by a rain ditch. People from Kiskoros felt that they had made a major step forward in progress.

  I myself made two major steps forward that summer. I learned to swim, and I learned to ride a bike.

  There was an irrigation ditch about a mile or so from the farm. It was maybe ten or twelve feet wide and one hundred feet long and filled with brackish water. It had a slippery mucky bottom and shallow sloping sides, but it was deep enough in the middle so that I couldn't stand. The summer was hot, so Gabi and I went there often. The walk made us definitely hotter, but we could look forward to cooling off in the water, and the cool feeling lasted almost until we got home again.

  Gabi knew how to swim and showed off by swimming the length of the irrigation ditch. I really wanted to learn, not only because this was a skill I wanted to acquire, but also because I was embarrassed to be splashing around on the shallow sides of the ditch while Gabi was paddling away across the middle.

  My ears were going to be a problem. I was not allowed to let water in them. That was the main reason I hadn't learned how to swim. I even had to be very careful when I took baths. However, I'd found that if I cut waxy earplugs to just the right size and warmed them up by endless kneading, I could mold them to seal my ear canal. Even then, I didn't dare put my head underwater, but at least I could go in.

  In anticipation, I had brought earplugs from Budapest, as well as a swimming belt made out of blocks of cork strapped together. When I strapped the belt around my waist, it kept me from sinking and gave me confidence. After I realized that I wouldn't end up at the bottom of the ditch, I worked up the courage to stand on one side of the ditch. I counted one, two … three! Then I pushed myself off, holding my head high out of the water to keep the water out of my ears. A push like that got me halfway to the other side. I paddled furiously, imitating Gabi's breaststroke and keeping my head out of the water to keep my ears dry. To my amazement, my body only inched forward. I was gasping for air before I got close enough to the other side that I could reach the bottom with my feet and stand up again.

  Still, I had made it across. I was elated. I looked for recognition and an acknowledgment of my feat, but there was no one to give it. Gabi was off someplace else. I stood in the shallow part of the irrigation ditch, catching my breath; then, when I was breathing normally again, I set out again for the other side.

  I practiced day after day, week after week, and bit by bit I managed to cross the ditch with a lot less effort and a lot less panic. Near the end of our stay, I gathered enough confidence to try it without the cork belt. To my surprise, I found it was even easier. I started swimming the length of the ditch. I was slow, much slower than Gabi, but given enough time, I could cover the same distance. I was very proud of myself. I was not good at physical activities, and it gave me great pleasure to master one. I felt especially distinguished because many of my friends and schoolmates didn't know how to swim.

  The other activity that I mastered that summer was learning to ride a bike. Every once in a while, with great patience, Kehl bacsi or Adam put me in the saddle of their big bikes and pushed me on the rutted road so I could get a feel for how to steer. I couldn't really get a feel for pedaling because my feet didn't reach the pedals. They would let go of the bike for a few seconds at a time, and with heart pounding, I managed to keep the bike upright—most of the time. When I started to teeter, they were there to right the bike before I crashed.

  Next, we went to the top of a small grassy slope. I climbed onto the bike, one of them gave me a push, and I glided down to the bottom, where the other one caught me before I crashed. Then I pushed the bike back up the slope and did it again and again until I got comfortable in the saddle.

  Later, Kehl bacsi borrowed a woman's bike and gave it to me. Not only was this bike smaller than his, but it didn't have the center bar, so I could lower myself to pedal. The gliding exercises on the big bike had taught me how to balance, and soon I was pedaling myself along the rutted roads. Gabi joined me on Adam's bike. He was too short to sit on the seat and reach the pedals, but he was able to ride it standing up. I crashed a few times, but it never dampened my enthusiasm.

  Unfortunately, there was no question of my riding a bike in Budapest. For one thing, I didn't have one. For another, my parents wouldn't hear of me pedaling down the street alongside cars and trucks and streetcars. They were concerned that with my bad ears, I would be run over by an unheard vehicle before I got a block away from home.

  Swimming was a different story. This I could continue in Budapest. There was a public pool in City Park. The pool was much bigger than the irrigation ditch, about twenty-five yards wide and fifty yards long. It was a perfect place for me to practice what I had learned.

  There were a couple of weeks before school started again. I would go to the pool every morning when it first opened and before it filled up with people whose splashing and playing around distracted me. At first, it was a struggle to make it across the width of the pool, but as the days went on, it got easier and easier. Within a couple of weeks, I was able to swim back and forth many, many times.

  The pool was the center of my day for the rest of the summer. Later in the morning, other kids I knew would show up and we would spend the rest of the day there. I couldn't participate in most water play because I feared getting water in my ears, earplugs notwithstanding, but it was still fun. Still, the most important part of the day for me was the first hour when I practiced my swimming.

  I kept hoping that the swimming would help me lose some of my pudginess, but that didn't happen. I would start a new year at a new school, but I would still be Pufi.

  When I came home after swimming, I often hung around the warm, dusty apartment and listened to the Rajk trial. The trial was broadcast on the radio every day, much of the day, and everyone who could was glued to their radio set. I listened to Rajk's examination with morbid fascination. I couldn't understand how a man who fought against the Germans and was a member of the underground could turn against his cause and his country. But there it was: He had confessed it himself.

  He was sentenced to death just as the new school year began.

  My mother looking over my shoulder. I was pretty diligent about doing what I had to do.

  Chapter Eight

  DOB STREET SCHOOL

  ISTARTED THE SCHOOL YEAR not just with a new school, but also with a new address. We did not move. The Communist government had decided to rename all the significant streets in Budapest with names of famous Russians. The part of the Ring Street nearest our house was renamed Lenin Ring Street. The main avenue leading to City Park was called Stalin Avenue. Our street, Kiraly Street, was renamed after the Soviet poet Mayakovsky.

  Dob Street, where my new school was located, was not important enough to get a new name. It was a narrow, nondes
cript street in a nondescript neighborhood about two blocks back from the hustle and bustle of Kiraly Street. There was a small post office, some humdrum shops, and a neighborhood school as shabby and run-down as its surroundings.

  Dob Street School was a comedown after the polish and order of the Evangelikus gymnasium. On the surface, the school was run the same as Evangelikus. The curriculum covered the same subjects, and the classes were the same size. A number of kids like me had been funneled in from other schools, but most of the students had attended Dob Street School all along. Neither they nor the teachers had the same seriousness of purpose that was so fundamental to Evangelikus. There was no question of being proud of a school cap from Dob Street. In any case, we didn't have one.

  There were girls at Dob Street, but they were in separate classrooms in a separate wing of the building. We saw them only in the halls as we came and went to classes and during recess periods.

  To my surprise, I ran into Eva, the girl who'd had a crush on me in first grade. If it weren't for her name, I wouldn't have recognized her. She looked very grown-up and even wore stockings to school, which was very intriguing. But beyond a pert, smiling hello, she paid no attention to me. I wondered if her lack of interest was a punishment for how I had behaved to her in first grade. Eventually, I concluded that it was more likely that my pudginess put her off.

  Initially, the grading system at Dob Street School was the same as it had been at Evangelikus. Then, one day, it changed, another manifestation of the increasing Soviet influence on our lives. Whereas before the top grade was 1 and the failing grade was 5, from one day to the next the grading scheme was turned around. Now, 5 became the top grade and 1 the failing grade. This was how schools operated in the Soviet Union, we were told, so it would be how schools operated in Hungary.

  But the biggest change from Evangelikus was the teachers. A number of the Dob Street teachers were obviously new to the profession. What got them there wasn't their teaching skills, but their ability to represent the Communist government point of view. We figured that they were loyal cadres who had been plucked from positions as minor Party functionaries, given some quick training in a subject, and immediately assigned to one class or another.

  A prime example was our geography teacher. His name was Gonci. The word sounds a bit like the Hungarian slang word for “sperm,” so after the first class, we all called him that behind his back. I don't know what Mr. Gonci did before he showed up at our school, but he seemed to have acquired his knowledge of geography by skimming the chapters he was about to teach just before he taught them to us.

  Our lessons dealt predominantly with the geography of the Soviet Union and its allies, the other Communist-bloc countries. Mr. Gonci developed favorites among the countries we studied. These included, of course, the Soviet Union and, for some reason, Romania. The rest of the world got only cursory attention. I don't remember studying anything about England or the United States.

  Mr. Gonci was very predictable—so predictable that the class made a standing joke of it. Whoever was called upon to recite stood at the blackboard and started listing the facts and figures about the country we were studying even before Mr. Gonci asked him to do so. The rest of the class had a fun time watching to see if Mr. Gonci realized what was going on. He never did. He merely nodded his head as the recitation continued.

  The class expressed its contempt of Mr. Gonci by acting up more and more. My tendency to chat in class no longer got me in trouble. I hadn't changed; the environment was less disciplined, so I didn't stand out as much as before. We acted in ways that would have been unthinkable at Evangelikus just a few months ago. But some of these ways were fun.

  Someone had accidentally kicked a soccer ball into the classroom window and broken the glass. The windows were repaired by setting new panes in the window frame with triangular nails, then wedging a soft putty at the edge of the glass. When the putty solidified in a day or so, it formed an airtight seal between the glass and the frame. As at Evangelikus, our class stayed in the same room all day and the teachers came to us. The break between the change in teachers gave us the opportunity to get to the putty.

  Some students wasted no time in scraping out the putty while it was still soft. They wadded it into balls, and immediately the balls were flying back and forth across the room. Then someone made a great discovery: If you threw a ball of putty against the ceiling, it stuck for a while, then suddenly fell down and splattered all over the floor, much to the surprise of the person sitting below it. Meanwhile, the putty thrower, studiously bent over his books, got away unidentified. It was too good a discovery to go to waste.

  Just before Mr. Gonci's class, some of the boys threw putty balls where they would stick on the ceiling right above Mr. Gonci's desk. When Mr. Gonci came in, we were all sitting sedately in our places, holding our breath expectantly. Mr. Gonci took his position at the desk. He actually seemed a little taken aback by the silence of the class. But the quiet was broken when the first putty ball fell from the ceiling and exploded on the paperwork in front of him. He erupted in anger, shouting, “Who did that? Who did that?” He glared at the class, his eyes terrorizing us. Then another ball splattered on his desk, and another. We couldn't contain ourselves anymore and broke out in laughter. Even Mr. Gonci's furious shouting couldn't stop us.

  We didn't learn much geography.

  History class was strange also, although for a different reason. In the early part of the year, we had studied the history of Hungary and its place in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Toward the end of the year, we started studying modern history, with most of the focus on World War II.

  The story of the end of World War II was told differently from what I remembered. According to our history book and our teacher, the Japanese surrendered to the invading Russian army. There was a one-sentence mention of the atom bomb, which was described as a desperate attempt by the Americans to gain credit for the Japanese defeat. Yet I remembered the newsboys running up and down the street in August 1945, shouting about what I heard as the “auto bomb.” Judging from the reaction of the people around me at the time, everyone thought the American atom bomb ended the war.

  I was dying to raise my hand and point this out to my teacher, but I thought better of it. This wasn't religion class at Evangelikus. Contradicting a position that was even vaguely associated with the Communist Party didn't seem like a wise thing to do. I kept my hand down.

  I had one very good teacher. Mr. Feldman taught physics with great energy and enthusiasm, despite having a bad leg that made him walk with a limp. Unlike many of my other teachers, he knew his subject thoroughly and really enjoyed teaching. I liked physics well enough, but then something happened that made me like it much more.

  One day, Mr. Feldman called on me to explain how a siphon worked. He put a tall pot of water on his desk and an empty pot on a chair seat next to it. Then he looped a rubber tube from the pot on the desk down to the pot on the seat. He sucked on the end of the tube going into the empty pot to get the water flowing, then stepped away. To the class's amazement, the water kept flowing up the tube, over the side of the tall pot, and down into the empty pot on the chair. It seemed impossible to have water climb over a wall against the force of gravity. Mr. Feldman called on me to explain what made the water climb uphill.

  I stared at the experiment, then in a flash the explanation became clear. I enthusiastically explained that the water had to climb up because it had no choice. Once the flow was started, if the water didn't continue to climb up the tube and over the rim of the pot, a bubble of vacuum would be created. The vacuum would then suck the water up, so water had to continue to flow upward. It was the need to fill the would-be vacuum that made the water climb over the edge of the pot.

  This all made perfect sense to me, and I was quite pleased with myself. Then I looked at Mr. Feldman. His face was radiant with approval as he said, “What I like about you, Grof, is that when you figure something out, you really understand it thoroughly.”
I felt as if I had discovered a new law of physics. From then on, physics was my favorite class.

  It certainly beat foreign-language lessons. English as a foreign language was replaced by Russian. The language teachers didn't know much more Russian than we did, and they barely kept one chapter ahead of the class.

  There was a feeling of growing resentment toward things Soviet. It wasn't anything I ever heard said, but I could sense it in my classmates' surly reactions. Nothing was ever said about politics at home, either. Our discussions centered around the chores of daily living, people coming and going, my victories and setbacks at school. But the silence on this subject replaced what had been an optimistic air about a new era in politics.

  In any event, we didn't get much done in Russian class, either.

  At my parents' urging, I continued to study English after school. I had a succession of tutors. Some came to our house to teach me. One of them, Egon bacsi, seemed a little strange. My mother was afraid that he might be a homosexual and made sure that the lessons took place when she was around. Egon bacsi never touched me, but my mother remained vigilant.

  After Egon bacsi moved on, I asked if I could take lessons from my English teacher from Evangelikus, Mr. Endrodi. We had heard that Mr. Endrodi had found another teaching job after Evangelikus was closed and supplemented his income by giving private English lessons. To my delight, my mother arranged weekly lessons with him.

  The lessons took place at Mr. Endrodi's apartment, where he lived with his wife, a pleasant but very quiet woman. It was a big, dark apartment, bigger than ours, in an imposing building on the Ring Street. The rooms were filled with huge pieces of furniture, all dark, polished wood. The chairs and sofas were equally imposing and covered with velvet, brocade, and overstuffed pillows. The whole apartment reminded me of a stage set for a play that had long since closed.