Left: My New York family ( from left ): Lenke, Paul, me, and Lajos. From the first moment, I felt at home with them.
Chapter Fifteen
NEW YORK CITY
LENKE ANLAJOS'S apartment was in the Bronx, on the fourth floor of an apartment house. It consisted of two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The living room had a fold-out sofa, which at night was turned into a bed for Lajos and Lenke. The arrangement reminded me of the Big Room in my parents' apartment, except this room was smaller and the central piece of furniture was a television set. I had read about television, but this was the first one I had ever seen.
The other room belonged to Paul. It, too, was a small room, smaller than my room at home. It had a bed, a small desk and some bookshelves, a birdcage with a canary, and Paul's bike. This was going to be my room, too. Paul had already set up a sleeping bag for himself on the floor. He insisted on giving me his bed. No amount of protestation would change this arrangement.
As soon as I arrived, Lajos took charge of me and guided me to the bathroom, where he filled the tub with steaming hot water. It looked inviting. I hadn't taken a bath since leaving home. After I climbed in, Lajos picked up the corduroy pants and jacket I had worn for the past month and marched off somewhere, holding them at arm's length. That was the last I saw of them. Later on, he told me that he'd tossed them into the incinerator. That was another mysterious contraption I had never seen before, but, unlike the television, I had never even heard of it. When I first put some garbage down its chute, the strange, strong draft that hit me when I opened the door actually scared me.
While I was luxuriating in the bath, the phone rang. I heard Lajos speaking in excited Hungarian, then heard him say, “Your son is here.” I was in shock. Moments later, he opened the door and said, “Come quickly, it's your parents.” I jumped out of the bathtub, wrapped myself in a towel, and ran for the phone. My parents had managed to beg their way to an international connection, which was very difficult to get. We heard each other's voices for the first time since I'd left. My mother was breathing quickly, and I was so excited that I could barely speak. Our incoherence was furthered by the fact that my parents had to huddle around the one telephone receiver we had, so neither one could hear me very well. I had to repeat myself quite a bit.
We finally calmed down enough to talk clearly. After assuring my parents that I really was all right and hearing their reassurances in turn, the conversation turned to day-to-day details. I asked my mother to pack up some of my chemistry textbooks and mail them to me. She agreed, then sheepishly confessed that she had disposed of my treasured stockpile of chemicals. I asked her how. After a moment's pause, she said she had flushed them down the toilet. Horrors flashed in front of my eyes. Depending on the order in which she had dumped them down the toilet, the process could lead to disaster. Sure enough, my mother added, “I probably shouldn't have done that.” The combination of chemicals had overheated the water and the toilet bowl had cracked.
The minutes clicked away and we had to finish the conversation. We promised that we would write to each other in detail. I had been writing a diarylike letter on board the ship, which I fig- ured I would send to Manci. My parents assured me that no harm would come from sending letters directly to them.
My excitement lasted long after the conversation ended. Lenke had returned home from work by now, and she and Lajos made me repeat the conversation several times, discussing every detail while I celebrated my arrival by snacking myself to the point of indigestion. In anticipation of my arrival, they had loaded up the refrigerator with a variety of foods. I particularly liked chocolate wafer sticks washed down with orange juice. The novelty of oranges was still strong.
Although she was Manci's sister, Lenke did not look like Manci at all. She looked like their mother, who had died before the war and whose picture I had seen at Manci's house. Lenke was an exceptionally warm person. She was determined to become a substitute mother to me and assumed this role with so much enthusiasm that it worked. From the moment I met her, I felt at home.
There was yet another treat in store. My parents had been writing to me in care of Lajos and Lenke before my arrival, and there was a pile of letters waiting for me. I eagerly settled down to read them.
The tone of their letters was worry, worry, worry about everything. Had I arrived safely in the United States? Was I eating? Was I sleeping? Was I able to understand people? Did they understand me? Would I get into a university? And on and on and on. I figured that the only way I could make them stop worrying was to let them know everything that was happening to me. I wrote a very detailed addition to my ongoing letter that brought them up-to-date with our phone conversation. Lajos agreed to mail the thick wad of scribble-covered paper for me.
Lajos took the next day off from work and devoted it to me. The first thing he did early in the morning was to march me down to the neighborhood doctor, who gave me a polio shot. Polio was a scary disease. There were polio epidemics every summer in Hungary; the common belief was that the disease was transmitted primarily in swimming pools, so it always cast a shadow over my trips to the pool. I hadn't even known that there was a vaccine. I was very glad to receive it.
Then we took the subway to visit Lenke at her workplace. There was a short underground tram in Budapest, but it was nothing like the Manhattan subway. This was a huge network, deep in the ground. I was impressed by the complexity of the construction, the escalators, the stairs, the tunnels, and the distances the subway covered, but I didn't like the noise, the dirt, and the cramped and confining atmosphere. My expectations of a big-city subway system were shaped by pictures of the Moscow subway, which was spacious, bright, spanking clean, and filled with statues of heroic figures. The loud, decrepit tunnels of the New York subway gave me an uncomfortable feeling, reminding me of my first impressions of the city from the windows of the bus.
Lenke worked as a saleslady in a department store in the middle of Manhattan. When we surfaced from the subway, I stopped cold. I was surrounded by skyscrapers. I stared up at them, speechless.
The skyscrapers looked just like pictures of America. All of a sudden, I was gripped by the stunning realization that I truly was in America. Nothing had symbolized America more to me than skyscrapers; now I was standing on a street, craning my neck to look up at them.
Which also meant that I was an incredible distance from home—or what used to be my home. The cacophony of the traffic filled my ears. Mobs of people brushed past me. The perspective made me feel like an ant in the bottom of a canyon. I suddenly felt very, very insignificant in my new surroundings.
Lenke excused herself from her work area, and she and Lajos took me to get outfitted with new clothes. Most of them were on sale, but all were new. They were good clothes, they fit well, but they looked and felt somehow different. They felt American. I left the department store, my old clothes bundled up in a package under my arm. It occurred to me that the package represented my past, neatly wrapped and tied with string, as easy to discard as my corduroys. I kept a firm grip on it.
When Lajos and I got back to the Bronx, we took my old clothes to a place filled with washing machines. For a few coins, a person could wash his clothes while he waited and could dry them, too. Then we headed home.
Lajos automatically turned on the TV as soon as we got back to the apartment. I was to discover that the TV was on a lot. Much of the time, Lenke, Lajos, and Paul just watched it out of the corner of their eyes. At first I found it distracting, but I soon just treated it as background noise.
Lajos rummaged for a copy of the Sunday New York Times, and the two of us spread the “Classified” section on the kitchen table. Lajos said that the many little items there advertised job openings. We didn't have this in Hungary.
We looked up jobs for chemists. I was delighted to find pages and pages of little boxes describing different positions for chemists. Most of them seemed to be in companies making cosmetics. Even so, Lajos and I were satisfied that my chosen profe
ssion was a good one.
I was still full of nervous and physical energy from the day's events. I was excited about everything that had happened. And scared—of everything and nothing in particular. I figured I would calm down by writing to my parents about my latest experiences.
Once I started, it occurred to me that I would never know if all of my letters arrived at my parents' home—they might be unintentionally lost by the post office or purposefully waylaid by some censor because of their American postmark. For the same reasons, I didn't know if I would get all of their letters. I devised a scheme where I would number my letters and suggested that my parents do the same. Then each of us would start our response by acknowledging the number on the last letters we had received.
Lajos decided to use that weekend to introduce me to the wonders of New York. We took the subway to Manhattan again. Lajos, Lenke, and Paul were all dressed up, as was I, wearing my new American clothes. On Saturday, we watched a Cinerama movie, which played on a huge, wide screen the like of which I'd never seen before. On Sunday, we went to see another movie and the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. In between, we walked around Manhattan, with me continuing to gawk at the skyscrapers and the crowded sidewalks.
I was astonished by the display of wealth. The store windows all looked fancy beyond belief, the mannequins in the windows beautiful and elegant. The people on the street, although not as elegant as the mannequins, still seemed well dressed. But what really impressed me was the number of big cars driven by uniformed chauffeurs. I watched some of these cars pulling up in front of a store, the chauffeur running around to open the door for the occupants in the rear seat. It looked like a Communist caricature of capitalism come to life.
We went to a Horn & Hardart restaurant. The arrangement was highly unusual. Instead of a waiter bringing you a menu and food, there was a wall of little glass-fronted drawers, each drawer containing a different dish. You put coins in a slot, then opened the little glass door to get your plate of stew or pie or whatever. I thought the food was bad and the surroundings unappetizing, but I didn't say anything because Lajos was so obviously proud of it.
The next day, using my newfound knowledge of how to use tokens and navigate on the subway, I took off on an expedition of my own in Manhattan. While looking at the newspaper, I noticed that a new film version of Don Giovanni was playing in a Manhattan movie theater. It featured Cesare Siepi, a legendary singer whom I'd heard of but had never listened to. I had to go. Lajos gave me money for the tokens and the movie, and I was off on my adventure.
I easily found my way to the subway station, but then all of a sudden I wasn't sure if I had the right directions. I walked up to the man in the token booth and, in halting English, asked him if this was the right place to take the D train. When he answered me, I wasn't sure I'd understood him correctly. I could understand the “D,” but what followed sounded more like “shrain.” I asked him to repeat himself. I still couldn't understand him. Behind me, people were getting impatient and beginning to comment loudly. I decided to take a chance that this was the right train, but I thought that people here were not so friendly as in Vienna.
I did find the movie theater, however, and Don Giovanni was spectacularly good. What surprised me, though, was that I was almost alone in the movie house. A movie like this playing in Budapest would have been mobbed. Here, there were barely fifteen people in the audience.
I also took the opportunity to find the Metropolitan Opera House, a place of mythical status in my eyes. Several people directed me to a big, blocky building with a shabby, blackened-brick facade. I couldn't make peace with the fact that the home of the legendary Metropolitan Opera was this decrepit building that reminded me of the farmers market in Budapest. America was confusing.
But I didn't have much time to brood. I had to get on with my life.
I was getting increasingly comfortable navigating by myself in the city, so I went to visit the New York office of the International Rescue Committee, my sponsors. I was received very warmly. A middle-aged woman introduced herself as Mrs. Kadmon and invited me into her office. She had a file on me, which impressed me. She updated my address and phone number and asked me about my plans. She spoke English slowly and distinctly, and I had no trouble understanding her. I said that my uncle worked at Brooklyn College and, with his help, I was hoping to enroll as a chemistry student there. She noted that in the file. Then she asked me if my eyes and ears were good and when the last time was that I had visited a dentist.
I told her that I was slightly nearsighted and didn't hear very well, but that although I hadn't seen a dentist in many, many years, I had no problems with my teeth. She said I should see a dentist anyway, as well as visit a place for eyeglasses and another one for hearing aids. She wrote out papers for each of these. Then she told me that it wouldn't cost me anything; the IRC would pay for the dentist as well as any glasses and hearing aid that I got.
The visit to the dentist was another surprise. The office was gleaming, filled with all kinds of equipment that I'd never seen before. I'd never had a toothache or cavities, and the only problem I'd ever had with my mouth was that my gums bled a little when I brushed my teeth, so I thought I would be in and out in minutes. I wasn't so lucky. The dentist told me that my teeth were covered with “calculus.” I was confused. Calculus was what I studied in math class. He explained that it was also a word that described deposits on my teeth that irritated my gums and eventually could cause real problems. Then he proceeded to scrape my teeth. My gums bled profusely. I thought my teeth would fall out. He took pity on me after an hour of torture, but only because I promised that I would come back the next day to let him finish the job. I dreaded it, but I did return, obedient and much chastened.
I also went to the eye doctor. He prescribed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses for me. I promptly stuck them in my pocket, feeling quite confident that I didn't need them.
Getting the hearing aid was a revelation. I had tried hearing aids in Hungary. They were bulky contraptions made in Russia. In addition to having to wear a conspicuous headset, I had to carry the batteries in my pants pocket and the hearing aid in my coat pocket. Both of them were heavy and dragged on my clothes. But worst of all, they really didn't help. I quickly gave up on them.
The hearing aids at the store here were astonishing. There was an enormous variety and the biggest one was barely the size of a matchbox, even including a place for tiny batteries. I was helped by a kind gentleman with a deep, booming voice that I could understand perfectly. He explained the different types of hearing aids, measured my ear, and picked out a number of models that he thought would work. I tried one after another in the store and got completely confused.
He suggested that I take home the two I liked best, then come back in a day or two to make my selection. I thought I must have misunderstood. Hearing aids were very expensive; the ones I chose were the most powerful and cost about $300. Yet this man would let me, a stranger, out of the store with two of them. But it turned out that I'd understood him correctly. I went home with two hearing aids, which I tested with Lajos, Paul, Lenke, and the TV. I chose the one that happened to be the most expensive hearing aid in the store. But when I reported this to Mrs. Kad-mon with much embarrassment, she said, “Just choose the one that works the best and don't worry about the cost.” America kept surprising me.
Lajos had arranged for an appointment for me with the head of the Chemistry Department at Brooklyn College. When the day came, I got up very early so that I could take the subway with him to Brooklyn. I didn't realize what a long commute he had. We started from the top end of the Bronx, practically the end of the subway line, and because we were near the end of the line, at least we were able to sit down. Then we rode and rode and eventually changed subway lines. By this time the trains were full, so on the new train we stood sandwiched between other people. Lajos had developed a skill of folding his newspaper into eighths, so that he was able to read it even when fully surrounded. I whiled away
the time by looking around the train, reading the advertisements over and over, and gazing at my fellow passengers. None of them returned my glance.
We got to Brooklyn College a few minutes after eight o'clock, after more than an hour of travel. Lajos first showed me around his workplace. He was a technician in the Botany Department, which was a logical job for him because he had been a gardener back in Hungary. Here he tended all kinds of exotic plants that were going to be used in the botany classes. His empire was like a jungle.
His colleagues greeted me with great exuberance. It was obvious that Lajos had told them about me and they were looking forward to meeting me. One of them showed me around the chemistry lab. There were no students around at the time because it was between semesters, but otherwise the room looked just like the chemistry lab at the University of Budapest. That was reassuring.
Somebody else showed me around what he described as a language lab. He explained that this was where students learned foreign languages. The lab consisted of little cubicles, each equipped with a tape recorder and a microphone; students could listen to phrases in foreign languages, repeat them into a microphone, and instantly hear their own pronunciation of the phrase so that they could compare their pronunciation with the correct one. I had never seen anything like this and was very impressed with the lavish setup. I sat in a cubicle and repeated an English phrase into the microphone. When I listened to my own version, I was appalled. I sounded like Donald Duck with an accent.
Then it was time for me to meet the head of the Chemistry Department. He spent a couple of hours with me, trying to establish what I knew about various subjects so that he could figure out which courses to enroll me in. It was an informal test, like a casual version of the oral exams I'd had to take at the university in Hungary. At the end of it, the professor told me that my knowledge of chemistry was “outstanding” and that I would do very well at Brooklyn College.
Swimming Across: A Memoir Page 24