The fortunes of the war turned quite quickly. The lines separating the North Korean army from the South Koreans started moving southward. The North Koreans repelled the South Korean aggressors, then took over the initiative and rapidly squeezed the South Koreans and their American protectors farther and farther south toward the tip of the Korean peninsula.
I was puzzled. A few years earlier I had seen the Red Army defeat the Germans and push them out of Budapest. I had no doubt that the North Koreans were trained by the Red Army and were equally proficient and dedicated. Yet I knew that the siege of Budapest took quite some time and that even after the Germans were defeated in Budapest, it took three more months before the last German troops were chased out of Hungary. Hungary was a much smaller country than Korea. How could the North Koreans, who were caught in a surprise attack by the South Koreans, rally this rapidly and defeat an army that had the advantage of deliberately preparing for an attack for some time beforehand?
For some reason, I was reminded of my religion class at Evangelikus. While I wanted to believe what I was told, I couldn't put aside my doubts. However, I felt uncomfortable about openly discussing my doubts with anyone. I finally brought up the subject to my father. He seemed reluctant to acknowledge that things might not be the way they were supposed to be. He cut me short, snapping, “Don't be silly, Andris,” and turned away.
The only other person I voiced my doubts to was Gabi, on one of our long walks around the city. He said, “Maybe it was the North Koreans who attacked, rather than the other way around.” I looked straight ahead at the pavement and kept walking. Neither of us said anything. A bit later, our walk took us by the headquarters of the security police on Stalin Road. This building had an ominous reputation. People said that this was the place you were taken to if you were arrested by the security police. A couple of uniformed policemen were guarding the gate. Without a word, we stopped our conversation and crossed to the other side. It didn't seem wise to walk our doubtful thoughts right by this building.
As time went on, the front line reversed itself again. American troops landed on the Korean peninsula and the course of the war turned in favor of the South. The posters all over the city acquired a new and ominous element. Big ugly bugs appeared next to the maps of the front, portraying the use of bacterial warfare by the Americans and South Koreans against the North. Cries of “Brutal Murder!” accompanied the pictures of the bugs. Eventually these replaced the maps altogether.
As part of his job, my father inspected breeding facilities for cows and pigs in the countryside around Budapest. During the week, he had a driver take him on these visits. Sometimes, however, he went on a Sunday, and then he drove himself and would take my mother and me along for the ride. These were rare treats.
The visits to the breeding facilities were boring, hot, and very smelly, but the rides themselves were exciting and fun. I would sit up in the front, watching the road and watching my father drive. I felt like an adult.
One time, we stopped in a little village near Kiskoros at the house of an old man who used to be my father's math teacher when my father was a child. He hadn't seen my father for many, many years, but he recognized him instantly and greeted him with great warmth. We stayed for an hour or so. At the end of the visit, the old man asked me whether I was good at math. I told him that I liked math but wasn't particularly good at it. He told me that my father was a math whiz. “I hope you're going to be just as good as he was.” I didn't think I could ever be as good as my father. I shrugged sheepishly.
On another trip, I was again sitting up in front. My mother was sitting in the back, reading the newspaper.
Then: “Oh, my God, listen to this!” my mother exclaimed. She proceeded to read an article that reported on a speech by a Party functionary in which he accused my father, among others, of bending the official rules in favor of “bourgeois elements.”
My father had been put in charge of the government's animal breeding program, but he didn't know anything about the subject, so he hung on to people who were experts in their field, even if they were holdovers from the previous regime and not Party cadres. Now it seemed that my father had recommended someone for a particular post and the government didn't approve.
Criticism in the newspaper was something to be taken very seriously. It usually signified trouble ahead. My father gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead on the road. He kept on driving but was clearly in a state of shock, worried or possibly very angry. I couldn't tell which. This outing turned out to be not much fun at all.
In early 1951, my uncle Sanyi and his son-in-law were arrested in the middle of the night. My aunt showed up at our house the next morning, frightened and utterly helpless. Nobody would say where they were taken or why. There were no charges and no one to inquire to. They were just gone.
None of it made sense. There was nothing we could do, except wait to see what would happen next.
A few days later, my father was fired from his job. He was also told that in any future job he would not be allowed to earn more than one-fourth of his previous salary.
People stopped dropping by our apartment to visit my father. Jani and Romacz still stuck around, but most of the others disappeared.
Life at school didn't change, but after a while it dawned on me that the last several articles I had submitted to the newspaper had not been published. When I asked my editor why, he waved me away impatiently and said, “You just don't write as well as you used to.” I asked him what his complaints were. He mumbled something incomprehensible and told me not to waste his time. I was stunned and embittered.
Walking home from the editorial offices, I was struck by an incredible thought: They don't like my writing because my uncle is in jail. It didn't seem that this connection could be possible. But when I got home, I went to my mother and asked if she thought this might be true. She listened to me quietly, then nodded. Her eyes were moist.
A career in journalism suddenly lost its appeal.
Above: My friend Peter was a serious student. He was the chairman of the literary circle.
Above: Mr. Volenski, who taught physics, was my favorite teacher. He was also a character.
Above: My best friend Gabi. I missed him when we started going to different schools.
Left: One of my new buddies was Bubi. Here he is a willing subject of my trick photography attempt.
Chapter Nine
MADACH GYMNASIUM
NOT EVERYONE from the Dob Street School went on to gymnasium. Gymnasium was secondary schooling for students around age fourteen who intended to go to university. For other students, there were technical secondary schools called technikum. Those students still had the option of going to university after graduating from technikum, but they had professional training to fall back on if they chose not to. Some kids went to technikum to study electronics or the machine industry. Gabi had always been interested in working with wood, so he chose to go to a technikum that trained people for work in the wood industry.
I was in a quandary as to what I wanted to be. My dreams of becoming a writer and journalist were demolished. However, without being entirely sure what I wanted to study, I knew I intended to go on to university, so I chose to go to a gymnasium.
Madach gymnasium, the neighborhood secondary school I was assigned to, had once been a school well-known for its academic excellence. Like Evangelikus, it, too, had once offered an eight-year curriculum. But as a result of the nationalization of the schools, it had been restructured so that it now covered only the final four years of what used to be a traditional gymnasium.
Madach gymnasium was a twenty-minute walk from my home. It was an ornate building with wide staircases and lots of tall windows. The building had obviously once been very impressive, but now it was in decay, with the paint peeling down to the mortar.
Upon registering, we were broken into three classes of about thirty students each, called 1A, 1B, and 1C: 1A and 1B were boys' classes; 1C was the girls' class. As it turne
d out, the two parallel boys' classes, A and B, had distinctly different personalities: 1B was a more serious, academically inclined class, while 1A was rowdy, a class of troublemakers. Purely by chance, I landed in 1A.
Soon after the school year began, 1A was taken on a field trip to the Budapest zoo. The zoo was in City Park, quite a distance from the school. Nevertheless, we walked. We lined up in formation, four across, with the teacher in the lead. We started out in an orderly fashion. Soon, however, the ranks broke down, and we clustered into groups, shuffling along, poking each other, and taking up most of the sidewalk.
When we got to the zoo, our teacher left us alone while he went to the ticket booth to arrange for our admission. We were milling around the entrance, restless and barely controlled. Suddenly, a few boys broke ranks and ran toward the zoo fence. In an instant, they were over the top and inside the zoo, running out of sight.
For a brief moment, the rest of us were paralyzed by indecision; then, like a herd of wild horses, we, too, broke and ran. We scattered along the fence until we were out of sight of the main gate, then clambered over the iron railing. I was apprehensive about getting caught on the metal spikes of the fence, but I managed to avoid them by boosting myself up on one of the stone pillars that held the fence in place. Some frantic scrambling, a big jump, and I was in.
Once inside, I was caught up in the same exhilaration that had infected the rest of the class. With a group of three or four other boys, I ran from exhibit to exhibit, panting and flushed with excitement. People turned to stare at us as we went hurtling past. Here and there we saw other small groups of our classmates, all wildly chasing around the cages, some running to the left, some to the right, until we were dispersed throughout the zoo. None of us paid any attention to the animals.
This being a weekday in early autumn, there weren't too many people at the zoo, and we easily stood out from the rest of the visitors. It didn't take long for uniformed zoo personnel to start rounding us up. In short order, we were corralled, marched out the main entrance gate, and led back to our glowering teacher. After the last delinquent was caught, we reassembled in formation and marched back to school. The teacher paid a lot more attention to us this time. When we got back to school, we were told to line up in the courtyard. We waited in silence, a bit deflated after all the excitement. Soon the principal showed up, a short but burly and intimidating man. Glaring at us with fiery eyes, he berated us and told us that he would not stand for us turning into hooligans. Behavior like this, he warned, would have terrifying consequences.
By noon recess, the news of our escapade had raced through the school like wildfire. Kids from the other classes, including even respected upperclassmen, gathered around us in the schoolyard, demanding all the details of our escapade. Our reputation was established.
Even though I had fun in the zoo escapade, I wasn't very happy about being in this class. I missed Gabi and found it hard to make new friends. Most of the class was not interested in the subjects we were to study; I was. But the more they cut up and got rowdy, the more difficult it was to stay interested in the teachers and what they taught.
The wild kids took over the class. They taunted the few of us who did any work and didn't think anything of copying our homework. They asked for or simply took it from us, even as they mocked us for having done it.
Soon a small group of us, characterized by more interest in studying and less interest in rabble-rousing, started to hang out together.
My new buddies included a short boy nicknamed Bubi (a condescending nickname for someone of short stature). Bubi was good in math and physics, and he loved to tinker with gadgets. He may not have been tall, but he was a bundle of muscle and quite good at sports, which helped deflect some of the taunting.
Another friend, Imre, was a complete contrast to Bubi— tall, skinny, and very awkward. He was interested in literature and cultural goings-on. I could count on being able to discuss anything I read with him. Chances were he had read the same book a couple of times already.
A third member of our gang was the math wizard of the class. He was always way ahead of what we were studying and genuinely fascinated by advanced and abstract mathematics. He looked repulsive—unkempt, oily hair, snot in his nose, dirty fingernails. He had acne, too. Our class had started the year by learning about Greek mythology, and in short order he was nicknamed Minosz, after the ugly minotaur. The nickname stuck.
I also became friendly with a boy from the 1B class called Tamas. He was as good at physics as Minosz was with math. Tamas was also an accomplished violinist and a fair piano player.
I felt distinctly inferior in comparison with my friends. I didn't play the violin—or any instrument, for that matter—and I wasn't a math or physics genius. While I was a good student, I wasn't particularly outstanding in any one area. And I was still bad at all sports except swimming. But they accepted me as their equal. I think that the main asset I brought was that I was more comfortable with the rest of the class than they were. I served as their bridge to the wild bunch.
We had something else in common: All five of us were Jewish. We weren't the only Jews in the class. There were a few more whom we had not become friendly with. But as we gravitated to each other's company, and hung around with each other at recess and after school, a subtle wall formed around us. No explicit acts of anti-Semitism were ever expressed toward us. But the separation was real.
We never discussed the fact that we were Jewish. We just knew that we were, just as the other members of the class knew it, too. Hungarians almost always knew who was or wasn't Jewish, kids or adults. It became a sixth sense for all of us, never a subject of explicit discussion, but one of constant tacit awareness.
The classes at Madach operated pretty much the same way as at Dob Street. Students were settled into a particular classroom and never left it except for recess breaks, physical education, and physics and chemistry labs. Every hour a different teacher would come to our room to teach.
The teachers at Madach were better than the ones at Dob Street. One of the more interesting ones was Mr. Telegdi, the Hungarian literature teacher. He was a tall, balding, stooped older man. While the other teachers all wore ordinary street clothes, Mr. Telegdi always wore an old-fashioned, threadbare black smock over his clothes. He carried himself with an old-fashioned dignity that seemed as out of place as his smock.
Most of the teachers had nicknames. Mr. Telegdi had two. Sometimes we called him Tade, after the luckless character in the opera Pagliacci, which was popular enough in those days in Budapest that a lot of people knew the story, if not the actual music. When he listened to a boy answering a question, he would tilt his head inquiringly to the side, tuck his right hand behind his back to grasp his left elbow, and shift his weight into an awkward stance that matched the bemused and somewhat distant look on his face. That gave rise to his other nickname, the Sparrow.
Tade loved literature. When he got going about Hungarian novels or poetry, his face would start to glow and passion would creep into his voice. Most of the kids in the class, however, thought his enthusiasm was funny. They cut up mercilessly in Tade's class, whispering, making faces, and dropping pencils throughout the hour.
The cutting-up took a different turn one day when one of the boys came to class with a pocketful of little pebbles. Tade had his back turned to the class, writing something on the blackboard. The boy started throwing the pebbles one by one to bounce off the blackboard, taking care not to hit Tade, but being sure to disrupt the lecture. Each time a pebble clacked onto the floor, Tade would turn around, shift into his sparrowlike stance, look around the class with a mournful expression on his face, then wordlessly turn around and resume writing until the next pebble hit again.
It was irresistible for the class cutups. The next day, more boys came armed with pebbles; the day after, more still.
On the fourth day, after more pebble throwing, Mr. Telegdi left the room. The principal returned in his place. He delivered another intimidatin
g lecture, then announced that we were confined to class during recesses until Mr. Telegdi gave our conduct a passing grade. The pebble throwing stopped at once.
At the end of the class, I was commissioned by my classmates to ask him whether we had behaved well enough to have our punishment rescinded. He sternly admonished me, “Not throwing pebbles is not the same as good behavior. I expect much better.”
Class after class, he did not waver from his stand. He did not release us until we had a totally quiet classroom—no pebbles, no shuffling, no talking.
It was always strange to see our teachers outside of school. One time, to my amazement, I spied Mr. Telegdi in the opera house. I was in my usual place in the cheapest seats right under the roof, and I recognized him sitting with a group of people in the opera director's box right over the stage. He was wearing a suit, not his usual smock coat, and seemed to fit right in. I couldn't wait to talk to him the next day.
Yes, he said, he had been at the opera. The director was a friend of his. I asked him how he liked the performance. It was a Hungarian classic that featured my favorite bass-baritone, Gy-orgy Losonczy. Mr. Telegdi gave a very sophisticated assessment of the performance, but he crushed me by not being as impressed by Losonczy as I was. He said, “The man is a good actor, but he sings as if he had a dumpling stuck in his throat.” Thereafter, I thought of his comment whenever I heard Losonczy and had to concede that Mr. Telegdi was right.
Swimming Across: A Memoir Page 12