Chapter 27
Also Adults Are Growing Old (if They Live Long Enough)
Technology is a double edged sword that can facilitate development, but also can cock a snook at people. For example information technology, it made space exploration and the mapping of genes possible, but can also block you from the use of your mailing system and contacting your partners. I experienced it at that time with my operation system, when my Windows went nuts and I had to reinstall several applications, among others Outlook Express. For days I couldn’t communicate with it and also J. flew back without seeing me.
During that spring I got a call by phone, I was surprised very much as it was John E., my former colleague at my first employer and later my neighbour on the living estate. He told me that he had sad news, Steve S., our common colleague at the same place, had passed and his burial would be the next week. Steve had stayed in the same village where he married and the event was to be held there. A good thing in sadness – the opposite of the saying ‘fly in the ointment’ – was that almost all of us from that team were present. It was really a mixed reunion, but if you consider passing a natural detail of life, it was more of a happy one. Steve had been working as an assistant professor at university where I received my first diploma. Since the time of the funeral I have been able to renew my connections with those I was in a good relationship with.
An early heat wave also made my life harder in the middle of June, but to tell the truth, I began to bear heat easier as I grew older. My neighbour in Addis Ababa was right: you only need self possession to bear heat. My grandson was still in the kindergarten, his mother planned to go on paid leave a month later when the institution would close for the summer recess. They would go again to the lake Balaton for a week and I intended to visit them again as a year before. The fine weather made it possible for my son to go on his construction of the garage. He generally did it alone, only he needed help from his brother-in-law to make the scaffold for him. Sometimes he asked me to help him too, as there were certain operations that needed two persons. Also, there was a funny blackout: we had to turn the concrete mixer manually so as not to let the mixture solidify in it.
He became a true bricklayer in the literary sense of the word and the walls were soon finished. After that he switched his trade to reinforcing man as the concrete girdle under the roof had to be prepared, then to carpenter for making the formwork for the girdle. At last, with the help of his brother-in-law he mixed and poured the concrete into the formwork. After that they – or rather he alone – erected the chimney as high as he could, the higher part he would do standing on the roof when it would be finished. I think the mentality of chimney sweeps had been derailed, costs for building the smokestack exceeded those of wall materials. They demanded the use of acid proof lining and a concrete cover on the opening for soot removal was not allowed, only a stainless steel one. Of course the concrete one would have cost a tenth of that made of stainless steel.
There was another aspect besides. The architect did a fine work, but the general arrangement plans of 1 to 100 scale were not detailed enough to manufacture the roof structure of the building. I prepared a drawing in 1 to 25 (details even more particular) about it and took it to the architect. He did the calculations and told me the sizes of the steel beams to be used. Then I prepared the workshop drawing to enable my son to do it. I took home the raw material partly personally by my car (it had a good luggage rack aloft at that time) or had it delivered home by the dealer.
It was almost the same with my friend living in America. She was the same central support for her family like I was for mine. She was continuously complaining about her situation and I couldn’t do more for her than to write sympathetic replies on her e-mails. Also, she wrote about bad weather. It was the same with us, and it was even worse than earlier, when there had come a heavy thunderstorm, we had had to be afraid from hail only, but until that time I am writing about you had to be afraid also for your house. Not long before ridge tiles at the roof edge had been broken loose by a puff of wind over 100 kilometre per hour, their shape was like an anti-aircraft gun, you could look out to the sky from the attic. The insurance company considered it so minor that they sent a certain sum without inspecting it.
There was another thing to be afraid of and it was the bad old times coming back in health care. My grandson stayed home again, but now it wasn’t flu or cold. I wouldn’t believe my ears when the doctor (an elderly lady on friendly terms with the boy) diagnosed blisters on the chin of my grandson: impetigo. I haven’t heard about this illness since I was a child, that time it was the plague of very poor children at the end of the village. Well, I had to think about bad old days coming back, perhaps even smallpox will come back sooner or later – although it was announced dead some decades ago.
My grandson was looking forward to their holiday at the lake, but it must have been postponed because of an accident. He broke his right upper arm in the kindergarten, almost the same way as his father did it 25 years before. The teachers arranged the ambulance that took him to the emergency hospital, my wife rode there at once by the public transport, I stayed at home to be able to bring him anything needed. As I arrived there also my daughter-in-law was present, I informed her at once on her mobile phone. I could talk with the boy two, he was behaving very courageously. Alas, his accident was worse than it had been with my son. He couldn’t come back after the treatment like his father could, but his arm must have been operated in order to clean the wound of splinters and apply the wire (that would need another operation three months later to take it out).
The boy was just coming to himself from the narcoses when I was calling my daughter-in-law in the evening. The next afternoon I visited them, the mother was making a camp (sleeping on chairs) there, namely, the hospital wouldn’t provide her with a night rest to deter relatives from sleeping there on the spot. The child couldn’t get over the trauma yet, he even had fever, about which the doctors found out that it was because of lack of fluid the boy drank. Also his disposition was cursed by the situation that the secretion leaking from the wound was led into a bottle, and he had to take it with him even to the toilet. Lucky that they were situated only two in a ward for five. The other boy was a teenager who broke his arm in a bicycle accident.
A day later I visited him again, it was fine that his fever and the pain in his arm left. What was worse than before that there were more accidents in the meantime and the ward was full, even there was a four-year-old with possible concussion. My wife stayed with the boy as long as his mother came home to put herself into order. After five days in the hospital he was released to come home. However, he was to go back as an outpatient almost daily and their holiday was postponed for a time. At the same time he was staying home and it was a terrible hot summer with 36
C every day. My position wasn’t fine either, beside staying with the boy as much as possible I had to go on my translation job as well. About two weeks after his operation he got his definite plaster cast and he could do almost everything in it. As the heat gave way at last he had a good spirit, even became rude sometimes with his grandmother who took the load off me.
Another two weeks and he lost his plaster. It was a hard time, the muscles having had no movement for over a month had to learn again how to work. It was terrible to see the thin six-year-old small arm with the ten centimetre long scar on it. It was almost as big as my wound from the dog bite at nine.
The proverb is right: even a dog leaves his dirt where there is some already. We didn’t have enough trouble with my grandson’s arm, my wife had been complaining about pain in her bowel for a while, and now she was diagnosed with a cyst. She was hospitalized and operated. A night she spent in intensive care and then she was let in an ordinary ward for two. Fortunately she was released in a few days.
My grandson could go to the lake Balaton with his mother at last. This time they lodged in a trades union hotel instead of a private home as one year earlier. Those hotels had been built as recreation homes for the trades union twenty or thirty years before and with the change of the system they were turned into hotels where ordinary working people like my daughter-in-law could also pay with special recreational checks. Those checks were useful, three quarters of the lodging could be spared by them.
I visited them at Balatonlelle with great expectations, but the weather had its own vote. Cold rain was falling all the time, the temperature was at most 18C, there were no excursion to Badacsony or swimming. We boarded the ship to Badacsony, but only to the next port on the same southern shore, and there we disembarked. The boy didn’t let him disturb by the rain, he was discovering the shore directly at the water’s edge, even he saw a water snake. Fortunately he didn’t want to catch it like in the previous year. We took the first train in the direction of the capital, they got off at the first stop and I went on to the capital. Something hadn’t changed for forty years: Sunday afternoon there was always a large crowd in the carriages rolling to the capital. However, in the past there were much more trains in the timetable. My intention was that later I would take the child with me to the other lake nearer to us, he hadn’t been there yet, and frogs are generally numerous in the reeds.
That year marked the tenth one from the time I signed a complementary pension contract with an insurance company. As it was planned for ten years I wanted to refund my money. Actually it was more complicated than it sounds as in about three years after signing the contract the insurer became bankrupt, I had to move to another one, but it counted my years only since my shift to them. The original firm was liquidated and some money was paid to members. It coincided with the termination of my contract, I got back the same sum I had been paying in for that three years. Also the second insurer paid and so I could be relaxed again for my finance.
In the meantime I was working as a hamster on my translation, I could hardly finish one package when the next one came already. While it was very useful financially, I didn’t have very much time for other things, also my hobby writings stopped. Lately it was exacerbated by the holiday of the youth and the hospitalization of my wife, also I had to prepare food as there was a month of recess in the school catering. I tried to prepare such food my son liked as letcho or pastry with filed and stewed cabbage.
The night before 20 August I was awakened by the coming and going of my wife in the apartment. As soon as I awoke I heard the sound of rain and hail. Without intermission it was pouring from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. Almost 90% of the time also hail was falling. The activity of my wife signalled that rainwater was flowing in near the chimney as usual. About a year earlier something had gone wrong (e.g. a sheet metal loosened) and from that time water was always seeping in when the intensity of the rain was excessive. As far as the amount of precipitation was concerned, the next day there was a quantity of water in every buckets in the garden about ten centimetre high, that means that a portion for one and a half months had been falling in two hours. Something interesting: rainwater pouring off from the roof of the neighbour (her house had been built exactly on the border line) pushed gravel waiting for use at the construction of the garage away by about a metre, the next morning I shovelled it back. I told my son we had spared some money on the water bill, the gravel was full of water, it could go at once into the concrete. All grapes were damaged, I had to pick it at once and make wine of it (instead of the usual five to six litre about double that I had to store). I have never been a great drinker, my ration is about three litre in a year.
This enormous torrential rain and the flood in its tracks must had frightened my cats too. Since our moving into this house we had always had one or more cats. The first one – the ‘intelligent’ one – was our first cat, and when it disappeared we had always had feline pets starting from the second one and a small female that had been ‘adopted’ by our dog. The last female of that long line left two males when at last she discontinued coming home for food. I was delighted not to have any females and to be able to stop unwanted cat breeding. The smaller one looked first as if he were a she, but when his testicles became seen clearly I had to rename him – both were patched in black and white and the smaller one had a pattern on his head as if he had had a Russian fur cap with ear flaps (ushanka), so I first called her Natasha, and later Sergey. They were very pretty cats. Unfortunately, someone in the neighbourhood around that time was fighting rodents and he or she must have placed out such a toxin that took multiple victims. Almost simultaneously they stopped coming home.
My grandson underwent the second operation and was freed from the wire. After that there were certain nerves that didn’t function, I began to go with him to the rehab where he got treatment in electrotherapy. Soon he became the favourite of the medical assistant women. Slowly his arm began to work as it was expected. However, it would take almost two years that he would forget about his accident and use his arm as if nothing had happened to it.
Beside compulsory activities as I mentioned recently I tried to design a small rowing boat for my grandson that I myself was to build. The plans were finished and with the auxiliary programs I prepared for the calculation of curves of form I calculated its characteristics. However, its building had to be postponed to another time. It was one of the line of boats that I intended to design for the lake Balaton based on the lines of Joshua Slocum’s sailing boat Spray.
From the autumn of that year (2007) my load in the translation work eased somewhat. The employer sensed that it was too much for me to do both English and German. They got another translator, alas, he didn’t know German, thus he was chosen for the English. There was something like foul play also from his part, he dumped on my work by saying that my style is different from what the message of the articles would need. Well, I couldn’t say anything against it, but when I saw his translated texts I didn’t like them, style or no style. That change was really necessary, as from the beginning of the next year the printed magazine would turn into a complete English-Hungarian publication instead of the English summaries only, and I wouldn’t be able to do all the articles completely.
My grandson was healing gradually and, as he couldn’t sleep after lunch as it was the habit in the kindergarten, he was taken home after he took his lunch. My wife was spending a lot of time with him, teaching him, reading for him. Also his father was doing the same, he also put together a PC for him and installed such programs that taught him playfully several things. He quickly learned all the letters and began to read. Also he had programs in natural science, it had always been his favourite topic. Of course, he had also games, but they were harmless that far, not the shooting types. I seated him sometimes in my lap and let him surf the net for things he was interested in.
He was very hard to please with any gifts as his favourites were living things in nature. When there was a fine weather and we went home walking from the kindergarten he found all dogs along the way and cuddled them. They also liked him and were waiting already all the time he was to arrive. There was one beagle named Beigli (walnut cake in Hungarian) that was very fond of him. Also there was a small dog like a puli (a Hungarian shepherd), but it was grey. She was called Rozi, but we just gave her the name Gombocka (little dumpling) as she looked like a cotton ball. She liked fresh walnut, so did I, and I always gave her some. There were walnut trees beside the street as I was walking for my grandson and I munched on the fallen fruit while walking.
Slowly there arrived another year (2008) and we had to calculate differently because of the rise in prices once more. I myself was not concerned by that in transport costs, above 65 I rode free on public means. But my daughter-in-law paid more than eight thousand forint for her monthly ticket. The prospects for the next three years were gloomy because of the de facto civil war situation, as I wrote above. Nobody could be safe, the politicians of the governing side were getting their mail with the white powder, a former member of the socialists, Mr Csintalan (his name means someone frolicking in our language), who was an emcee at the far right TV channel at that time, was severely beaten (‘over eight days’ in the jargon) in his own garage, because he hadn’t agreed with a phone caller during his show, who had been for immediate regime change. I couldn’t recall similar things in this country as long as I had been living here. As far as I know, about 100 years ago, under prime minister Istvan Tisza, there happened something like that. The Godfather succeeded in passing three of his seven initiatives for referendum through the constitutional court, that meant, we would have to go on voting during spring. There was no doubt that the mislead voters would agree with him, the reform package would be outlawed (just as that of Mr Bokros in 1995) and there would be here no euro until at least 2020.
It happened around this time that an old law was reinforced. It concerned health insurance. My son had no such thing as his time with the employment office expired and he wasn’t accepting any jobs offered. I arranged it at the tax authority and began to pay from my account the necessary sum every month.
There were other public affairs worth mentioning, e.g. the strike of the railway wheel sounders (they have to knock every wheel of the train before start to check its solidness). Their action was organized by a trade union functionary, whom I usually called jug-head (because of the shape of his skull) or CEO-killer (the general manager of the Hungarian Railways died in December 1999, he had had a heart attack as he slept in his office after a marathon negotiation round with the trade union led by the same functionary, he had been found dead in the morning). This time he problem actually was that their demands were unreal, the railway company was not authorized to pay out the money they were requiring. A funny thing was that was sad at the same time that his target was the wheel sounders’ trade. It was the weakest point of the structure (just the same as the steel structure had been in the two towers exploited by Osama): without wheel sounding no train was allowed to leave the station. Jug-head organized them to strike in one hundred percent. Of the six thousand trade union members they make only two hundred and forty, and it could cripple railway traffic in the whole country. Well, such people can damage the economic situation in every case, and my opinion is that it is a crime.
I mentioned that my grandson hadn’t been promoted to the school at the proper time – at six – and he stayed in the kindergarten. It was detrimental to his development in itself, but there was something else that made it even worse. The groups in the kindergarten were realigned: the traditional age groups of children was replaced by mixed ones, where all groups had children between the age of three and six or seven. My grandson stopped evolving in the kindergarten, we had to teach him at home, but his behaviour was really bad. Anyway, we tried to be patient with him, explained him the great dangers of being rude and disobedient. It was a hard time for all of us, but it took fruit, I think.
He got a gift from me for Easter, a LEGO set, about that his father, when he was child, could have only dreamt, let alone my Easter presents of Cheap Library books (at that time one volume cost three forint). It was a cargo plane sold only in three shops in the country because of its price. I couldn’t believe my eyes, he assembled it the same day (I gave it to him at once, I didn’t wait till Easter). From his birth this small child has always been the most important issue for me. Perhaps his life will be better than that of his father who wouldn’t go on studying. I hope, my grandson will. He would make a good engineer, and his interest in natural science is enormous too.
About twenty five years earlier, during my first trip to Munich, I bought a toy race car track for my 12-year-old son. He played with it only a few times, it remained in a good condition. It was time for his grandmother, who had safeguarded it that far, to give it to our grandson. I helped him to assemble it and then tally ho! It is unbelievable what this seven-year-old did with it. What a good luck that also his father and grandmother likes to preserve everything.
As the good weather arrived in April we decided with my grandson that it was time for us to go for a long walk. I took advantage of it and organized a nostalgia tour (for me). It was a Saturday and my daughter-in-law was working that day. Her working schedule had always been a riddle for me at that working place of hers. We went to my working place during the yesteryears, that is to the Shipyard Island in Obuda. Alas, we didn’t have enough time, as it is enormous, but the boy’s interest is different anyway. First of all we had to go down to the water’s edge on the Danube; namely in the tram, in which we rode that far, I stepped on something left there by the dog of a bipedal animal, and it was necessary I wash it off from the sole of my shoe. Of course the boy enjoyed the vicinity of water.
After that we entered the territory of the former yard. I remembered the two cases when I took my son there thirty years before. At the first case he was below two years and he was still communicating in new-Hungarian (in shortened form), as we entered the construction bureau and he glimpsed the fifty people in the large hall he said: “Kime, kime!” (approximately out, out). The second case happened two years later and he said after looking around: “It’s a very good factory.” Well, my grandson learned from me what had been in which building. Of course, at that time they housed already nothing of the original, there were furniture stores, auto spare part shops and restaurants in them.
I didn’t dare to go up into the old offices where I had been working as a naval architect, I didn’t know what I would find there. However, at the free space in front of the office building the large launching berth winch of many tons were still there, it was manufactured in the 19th century, and also there were two anchors to be seen. They interested him very much, just the same as the screw propeller, which we saw in front of the former library building as we were going out. The place of the statue of comrade Lenin made by my brother-in-law’s younger brother was taken by one of the anchors.
We made a round trip of the whole yard, then I took the child to the loft of the carpenter workshop, where in my time at the end of ‘60s the young men of the yard – with the support of management – had built a youth club during their leisure time (then it was called KISZ-club after the Young Communist League). That was closed now, but the further area of the loft that had been the mould loft (something characteristic exclusively of shipyards, lines and body plans of hulls are drawn there in a 1 to 1 scale, as well as moulds for the building of the ships) back then, at that time we saw there a Spanish furniture store. It was fascinating for the boy, as a wonderful scenery had been made of castle backdrops and model ships, I could hardly take him away.
At last we crossed the pontoon bridge over the inlet in the middle of the isle, it was that body of water where the shipbuilding activity were actually done in the old days, and the same bridge had been left on place. A large assembly hall with catering facilities in it used to be on the other side, now it was closed and used for storing construction means. The circular side part of the building stood empty, earlier it housed the refreshment room. The hall recalled memories in my mind, there were competitions held there during my active time, of course, it had always been my team that won. There I won my voucher for the trip to Yalta too.
From there we made a detour around a closed area, I heard later that a very old settlement had been discovered there from the last years of the first Hungarian dynasty (the House of Arpad) and it was under excavation. There we found the other shore of the island, the boy liked the sight of a self-propelled river barge passing in about ten metre from us. At the riverbank there had been done a kind of barbarous activity as we found the traces of fire with burnt cable lining and large blocks of black glass also melted. As the water level was low we could see all very thoroughly. Homewards my arm was tested for strength – and a plastic bag too –, because my grandson made me carry home about five kilo of the glass chunks.
The population went on their harebrained manner, after the railway strike was recalled the municipal transport announced a half-day strike, because they had a completely impractical demand. The city transport was on a zero level, it was a special Hungarian feature of those strikes, as everywhere in the world no strike was lawful without a previous agreement on minimum services. Without it a strike was a wildcat strike that was prohibited. Just to make it more confused Mr. Jug-head ordered his people at the railway on strike too – as he said to be solidly united with strikers at the municipal transport. My daughter-in-law was forced to take the car and suffer in the traffic jam. Fortunately for me, it was recalled soon, I didn’t have to drive to the lake Balaton for an on-the-spot survey, I could use the trains. Although another strike of the city transport followed some days later and the situation looked quite helpless (I mean for the passengers).
As the summer came near my grandson was preparing for his last weeks in the kindergarten. However, he succeeded to leave them even before that by ten days as he caught a cold and the doctor (the sympathetic elderly lady) didn’t let him go there. Even the farewell party was lost for him, but it didn’t matter. As I have mentioned earlier the last year was doubly bad for him, first, he lost one year in the school, second, he had to suffer in a mixed group. Thus our usual program started: his mother stayed with him in the morning and, as she was in a period of afternoon shift for one month, she came home very late, it was our job to stay with the child.
At the beginning of that summer I was summoned to the city court of Kaposvar to bear witness in a case I made an expertise for. I devoted a whole day to test the coaches of our national intercity bus company Volan. It was unavoidable as the county seat Kaposvar is hard to access by train. It is fine that the county of Somogy is wonderful, it is similar to the English countryside, thus I wasn’t bored at all. I had not been in that town for about 55 years, I did so twice with my father, when as a child. My eyes needed spectacles and the village of Fonyod, where we had been living at that time, had neither secondary school – that was the reason I began my secondary study in Siofok – nor outpatient clinic and optician. My glasses I always got in Kaposvar. Otherwise the town is beautiful, especially its main street, it reminded me that part of the inner city of Brussels where I lodged some years before.
Around that time (June 2008) I heard an interview in the radio that someone went to the cemetery to put a new bunch of flowers on the tombs of his or her parents, but they vanished. Namely, when the rental of the grave included in the astronomical cost of the burial expires after 20 years, you have to extend it for another 10 years. Otherwise the remains will be placed in a common grave closed forever. It convinced me that it was time to go to the graveyard where I knew my parents’ ashes were guarded to see if all was in order. It had been long ago that I did the same. Actually I didn’t have to bother about such things, my sister had arranged both funerals, I gave her my part of the costs only. I didn’t know what the matter with them was. However, my sister left us in 1993 and since that time even the addresses registered with the undertaker company became obsolete, no one took the trouble to take care.
Thus I went there where the ashes of my father were stowed in the columbarium in 1971 and those of my mother in 1977. Alas, the incident heard from the radio was halfway true in my case too. After the rental for my father expired in 1991 they waited another 11 years, but then, as nobody came to extend it and the place was needed, he was placed into the common grave. My poor father will have there eternal rest really, no one will take him out of there ever. Fortunately the compartment of my mother still existed and, although her rental was also too late by 11 years, her ashes could stay there until 2017, as I paid the previous 11 and the following 9 years. If I live long enough I will probably take the urn home instead of extending the rental. I can design something like a shrine here at home and also our remains can be placed there, provided that our descendents will not be worse than me. To tell the truth I have another such thing to arrange, my brother of eleven lost in the sledge accident in 1948. As he was buried in a village, I hope I will not be late.
This summer was no different from other catastrophic ones. One day I was listening to the news in the radio where it was announced with great pride that the harvest in that year was going to be a record one. The other day there came a big thunderstorm and the grain all went to the ground. The next piece of news informed us that it would be fine if we had a medium harvest after those events. By the way, harvest. My fig tree – better to say bush – was already seven or eight years old, but in the previous years it produced almost no fruit. The first yield around June or July had always fallen off – I think there were no fig wasps around and the pollination couldn’t occur. The second crop was good for canned fruit (green figs). However this year enchanted my bush and during a two-month period we could pick about a hundred figs, every week half a dozen, large ones like Alexander pears. They were delicious.
As there came a few days of calm weather, although it was rather hot, I took my grandson again with me on excursions. Our first trip lead us again to the Shipyard Island – I wonder how it will be called when it will perform its new function (recreation island) that had b