Chapter 29
Recent Past
This chapter is intended to recollect all significant events – for me of course – in my life that happened recently. I think it will be enough at present. However, I will not wait another twelve years to complement it again, I will do it at the end of each coming year. I hope there can be some chapters more.
At the middle of his first school year the scores of my grandson showed excellent in almost all subjects, there were two subjects in that he was good (gymnastics and art) and, although improving, his behaviour was still a spot on his skin. I tried to convince him as before that for a boy the mark on behaviour shows usually how clever he is. I he is not behaving well, it shows the limits of his wisdom. As far as gymnastics and art was concerned, they could be improved by practice, but it was also depending on makings, not all could do well in those subjects.
In this year mother nature invented something again for us. It started in Mexico, but nothing could stop it. It was the swine flu, or with its professional name the H1N1 virus. It caused a bigger concern, fortunately, than it was dangerous at last. However for those, who got it and died from it, it was a death trap. Especially it was a great risk for pregnant women. In this country more than half a dozen were lost to it. It also raised a false hope that the country would be able to cash in some money by developing the necessary vaccine against it. At last that business wouldn’t turn into a gold mine.
In the school my grandson was, as before, like me in that age: good scores, but lousy behaviour. At the same time I hope he was able to adapt to that environment, at lest the two provoking children, because of whom he had got darker points, became neutralized. I think sooner or later he would listen to my advice: stay calm when they try to draw him into something, let the teacher punish them, not him. My daughter-in-law returned home recently with two new suitcases, a sign of her intent to take the child with her somewhere again for a holiday.
The 23rd of May was a special day for me in last year: it was the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation – and the 22nd of my mother’s passing. The old fellows were meeting again. In spite of the semblance, 24 mates from the class were still living, although chassis were not in their prime at most of them – me included –, one of them was waiting for hip arthroplasty, another one came with crutches. We met in the old school – its name changed to St. Imre from Jozsef Attila – but the celebration was arranged actually in the Queen Elisabeth (not the English one, she was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph) Hotel in Godollo, northeast from Budapest. The reason why so far from the original place of the school Villanyi Street on the shore of Lake Feneketlen (bottomless it means) in Buda was very simple: Ivan the Great, the usual organizer of the alumni meetings, had moved to his 98 year old father in that town after his divorce. As the proverb says even saints are selfish. However, for me it meant two and a half hours of travelling home, although there we were transported by bus. I think if the 60th anniversary are to be held there too – and I will still be living – I would miss it and switch to a teleconference.
During that meeting I had to establish once more that people only become older, but they don’t change in the course of their life. Almost all my classmates were on the same opinion as in the classroom long ago, and they also behaved in the same way. The best example for this statement was someone who actually wasn’t there. During the four years we were in the same class we hardly knew anything about him, he kept distance like a noble. It is true, he stemmed from a famous family, his father was a professor at the technical university, he was the rector there when I studied. His sister was on stage already in the Madach theatre, I saw her in several films later. That classmate of ours was absent already at two meetings before, even, as he is living in California and he doesn’t want to keep in touch with us, he was rude with the organizer of the meeting ten years before for calling him from our country and told him that that phone number was secret.
Also, we had had a classmate, but he couldn’t pass the graduation with us, because he was transferred into another school half a year before the end of the last one. Anyway, he considers himself one of us and he had always been present. He was not less eccentric at this meeting as in the old times. His good friend was the man who had been the physical education expert at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest beginning in the ‘70s, “somersault master” as he was called then. He taught the actors how to behave in action films. Back in the school he practiced pentathlon, he was very good at it and exclusively his personality prevented him to become another Balczo. He is the same today, he is without any education, but his money earned by horse breeding is sufficient to own a 28-foot sailing boat, he even crossed the Atlantic with it. He married the actress Ildiko Piros after her divorce from Peter Huszti, but he didn’t stop there, he had two other wives after that.
At the beginning of the summer I got a message that raised a false hope in me that perhaps my translation for the website items could go on. Alas, it was false. However, it happened that on the same Saturday I got a call from J. on my mobile phone that she was in the capital and wanted to see me – it had long been also my intention to meet her somewhere –, I met her and we made a long tour in the Buda hills in the extremely fine weather. At last we could talk in person and it was a very pleasant experience.
My grandson finished his first school-year and I spent more time with him once more. It sometimes happened too that I took him with me when I fetched the lunch, but of course it turned into an expedition of insect collection. He caught several grasshoppers, even a lizard couldn’t avoid its good fate, it was freed in our garden. He said it was a special one, a wall lizard, he didn’t have such a one, he said. I wouldn’t argue with him, otherwise, he is very good in biology. I planned the same for the next day, but my wife torpedoed it, she erected the garden pool and he was to make a beach there.
We had to leave our summer programs, because what followed was a mild November, only it was June. The temperature was ten degrees Celsius and also the rain fell continuously. With us there was no hail, but in the northeaster corner of the country it established a record again with egg size, that damaged even corrugated slate. The name of some villages would have remained in obscurity without those records. My grandson bore the cool weather with difficulty, because I promised him to go again to the Museum of Transport.
As soon as it became a little milder we went there. He enjoyed it, but he became tired again. He was most interested in the model ships and the railway engines and carriages in actual size. And of course the naval steam engine in the free area with the assembled side paddle wheels on both sides. His English knowledge was growing every day, I wonder if his father wanted to achieve in him what he couldn’t achieve himself. Also his school record was excellent, the closing ceremony was a week before. Not only got he excellent in almost all subjects, but even his behaviour was scored positive. Also he got a certificate of praise from the teaching staff. We all hoped that it would go on. He became more mature every day, obstinate disobedience is rare.
The summer was marching ahead and I left my habit of going for the lunch for five weeks as the kitchen closed. There came a period of eating more letcho and paprika potatoes (something like goulash, only potato is used for meat). At the same time I had more time to go for a walk with my grandson. I promised him the hill reserve Sashegy (eagle hill) where he wanted to see the endemic Pannon lizard. I warned him that it was possible the lizard didn’t want to see him. We went there on a Sunday. Better to say to a place that remained of the original reserve. In spite of its state as a natural reserve it had been almost wholly built over. All the same, the boy said he saw a lizard run away.
George, the former husband of my late niece, Maria – who died in 1994 because of medical malpractice –, had been urging us, all the members of the extended family, for a time to organize a reunion. He wanted to do it as his children with Maria, M. and G. juniors, didn’t know other members well. As he said it rather morbidly he didn’t want that the family meet only at funerals. At this time he was living with his second wife in a village near the capital in the Buda hills. Their house had been built in a place on the side of the hill Kohegy that was a favourite excursion target a few decades earlier. His efforts bore fruit at last in June. Alas, it was me only who appeared beside his children and grandchildren, although the most wanted person was Eve, my other niece, and her two children. She phoned that she became ill and couldn’t come. But it was only when the conversation went on already. Taking our house one end of the world, it was the other end of it. G’s wife was sympathetic me and I greeted G. and M. juniors as old acquaintances from Moscow, although they changed more than me, of course. G. took there his fiancée and M. was expecting her third baby. At the same time she was working on her PhD. Her husband is an artist, his pictures are popular, even his family name fits it, it is Kondor. Their third child, another boy, would be born in September.
My grandson was very keen to go on long walks. We went to his usual collecting place, the small stream, he wanted aquatic plants as his grandmother had installed his plastic garden fishpond and it was no good without them. Although he wouldn’t put fish in it, because they would either die in the autumn or even worse, he wanted to keep frogs, pond skaters and other small living creatures. He even scooped out a lot of tiny amphipods from small puddles on the dirt road from recent rain. In the stream he caught a frog and took it home, but it escaped soon. I tried to calm him that it needs water and would come back regularly.
In the meantime a cold front was coming through the Alps and was nearing us. Weathermen were forecasting a ten-degree cooling temporarily. I was afraid again for damage caused by wind and hail. My daughter-in-law looked the opposite, because, although she was aware of the coming storm, she drove with the boy and a woman friend in a small car to Heviz near lake Balaton. I remembered the disastrous thunderstorm three years before, when four people died. She had been in the town with the boy then, they had arrived home just twenty minutes before it had broken out. Well, they avoided trouble this time again. They spent ten days there in the recreation hotel. When they returned my grandson said that it was a good experience all-in-all, only he couldn’t sleep well as someone was grunting during the night. Soon it became clear that he meant snoring, the woman acquaintance did it.
The next time we went out it was to Buda Castle, the Museum of Military History. We went up from the northern side through the Becsi Kapu (Vienna gate). The boy was fascinated by the old fortress walls and the ruins of the great church around that place. We went into the museum itself and he enjoyed the exhibits very much. I was sure it would be necessary to make other excursions here in the future. After that we walked to the central place of that area, Matyas Church, Fishermen’s Bastion and so on. I had a bad surprise there: we could only look out to the Danube and the other side, Pest, through a café. The ground floor of it was turned into that café and to go up to the top you would have to pay. I had a little nostalgia for the bad old days.
I also wanted to take the child for a little angling, but, although it was August and there were red peppers everywhere – marking the end of summer – it was bad weather and it couldn’t realize. When the summer returned in temperatures it was already time for the child to go to school and for me to resume fetching for lunch. Our long walks were postponed. My son reached the finish in plastering the garage. He wanted to finish work with doors and windows, but it was only half success and it remained to the next summer.
My grandson was spending his last free days before the restart of the school-year. He had his textbooks and we tried to help the child in his progress, we made him read every day a certain number of pages. At the same time, I want him to get more information, I took out from its place one of the favourite books of my boyhood, a volume of a series written by a geologist at the beginning of the thirties. The series consisted of books from those written about Hungarian explorers in Africa to such ones that describe the geology of our country. That favourite one of me was “Ancient Times”, it relates the probable life of people in short story form who lived here in this area tens of thousands of years ago, and whose traces had been excavated by archaeologists. Of course its approach is far from ours, it mirrors the level of science about eighty years ago. Thus the boy began to empathize the life of those ancient human beings and started to try to make chipped stone tools from large stones that his grandmother collected for decoration. It was rather hard to stop the establishment of a stone axe factory.
I found it very positive that also his instincts were in development. He began to turn from hunter of animals to holder of them, just as ancient man did it. This phenomenon had been very strong with his father at the same age too, he also had aquaria with different kinds of fish, as well as parrots, the latter were even on his agenda as commercially bred animals, only he didn’t have the time and place – not to mention money – for that hobby.
The first week in the second grade ended without trouble for the boy, the summer must have done no good for him. However, I didn’t like too much that he was turning from aggressive into defensive, on Friday of the first week, when I was taking him from school, he told me he wouldn’t want to play soccer, because this and that boy was very rude. I tried to explain to him that it was not the right reply to their rudeness to let them do it, but had to be hard with them to teach them the rules. I hope he wouldn’t lose his interest in soccer, as a lonely child needs team sports. At the first week they didn’t have any schedule, they were only repeating what they had learned a year earlier. The teachers wanted to wait until the weather would turn more like autumn, then it would be easier to catch the interest of the children.
As we had already seen there was a ‘normal’ weather, i.e. there was a powerful cold front when the rain fell horizontally, I hate it generally. It ran out with time and the hot weather would not turn back. Fruits felt most this weather change, my fine pear began to ripen. Every day I had to pick off several fruits, otherwise gravitation would have brought them down and spoil half of them. Also the grapes began to ripen and we had to eat them as fast as a fast train. That year wasps were not so numerous, but rose chafers were, twice I found the metallic green beetles within the finest and biggest grapes sunk down to the end of their abdomen. They like fruits, the previous year they harvested the whole crop of apricots in the neighbouring garden.
Although I promised not to write about political issues, I have to mention it sometimes. It happened lately with the Slovaks. Mr. Punch launched the events on 21 August (‘A Good Day for Dying’, said an Indian once, here it is better to say for provocation, as the marching in to Czechoslovakia through the same bridge happened on that day in 1968), he wanted to unveil a statue of St. Stephen (first king of Hungary, the founder of our state) in Komarno (Komarom originally before the Trianon dictate) on the north side of the Danube. He only forgot to invite to it the state celebrities of that country. And they refused to give him permission to entry. To tell the truth, it was also a very unusual and brutal solution, but what can we expect from Slovaks either. There followed a great brouhaha everywhere in Europe from Hungary to Slovakia to Brussels, both party argued for their right, although it is no great news in my opinion. It would be when the Slovak head of state would want to unveil a statue of Mr. Masarik (the person for Slovaks as Stephen is for us, founder of the state) in Totkomlos (a village in Hungary with a Slovak majority in its population) without inviting Mr. Punch and the other Hungarian high officials.
I think there are too many people among us who regard only his or her own sentiments, but has very little empathy. For me it is impossible not to remember the issue of the dam at Nagymaros and Bos (Gabcikovo in Slovak). Half of the population in our country didn’t want it under certain green slogans. And the other half, of course, still miss navigability of the Danube, the proper (green) energy and water to irrigate gardens. The previous half managed to achieve by perfect rabble-rousing (agitation in its true meaning) that Hungary left the project down – against common sense. They wouldn’t learn all that the Soviets knew, but there were methods that could be accepted for them. As it was to be expected, no European place of jurisdiction took the responsibility on itself to announce a verdict, they all let the partners settle their debate. It didn’t happen in twenty years.
That year I had to start vintage of the Pinot Noir grapes earlier, as the berries in the clusters were turning dry as with Malaga grapes. In normal years I started to eat them at the end of August, they were growing sweeter every day, until in October, when meteorologist Karoly Vissy was announcing that “there can be frost in low areas”, I picked them off quickly and pressed them. Annually there were at most 7 to 8 litre of wine of that. But that year I started it early and left it in bottles as must. Some of them shot the stopper out, they were consumed as fermenting new wine. But the most bottles would last till this year.
My car was causing problems frequently again, for this reason I decided to draw it from traffic. It meant a little payment for the procedure at the local government, but I actually saved some money through lifted tax and insurance. It was intended first for six months, and my son would need it actually for the repair of its body – it was repaired ten years before – and the auxiliary equipment of the engine (carburettor, oil, etc.).
Again a few words about politics. As last year was nearing its end, although the professional government succeeded in drawing back the economy from the edge of precipice and at all international forums it was praised for its good deeds, polls showed that the main opposition party (that of the Godfather) and he himself was further gaining popularity. However, this was only the façade. That man wouldn’t risk the weakening of his power within the party – or rather in that self-appointed close clique that controlled it – and, when the re-election of party officials came, the election of the party chairman happened in the same way as in the bad old days every re-election of comrade Kadar took place: there was only one candidate for the post, i.e. he himself, so as not to risk electing another person accidentally.
The other thing was a frenzied attacker. In November we had our first university shooting too. I didn’t understand at all how could that young man get permission for the owning of firearms with a history of psychiatric treatment. One of his victims died on the spot, three other were hospitalized, one of them with little hope. The mass media predicted that it was only the first such case, where there was one more could follow.
Also the following thing can be categorized as political. I had been taking home lunch in a lunchbox for about ten years, but at the end of last year it must have been finished. The local government, in charge of the issue who was to deliver catering services to those institutions and private persons in the district that needed it, decided at the evaluation of tenders on this services that the company having done it so far was excluded from the tender, because they gave false data. That meant they would lose ninety percent of their customers and the activity was to be overtaken by another one from another district. Rumours spread that it was humbug, actually the responsible person had contacts under the grass with the newly selected winner. Although a lot of stones had been turned, the decision remained valid. I wouldn’t accept it so easily. I found the workshop – commercial kitchen – of the company that lost this tender and went there for information. I could join their customers and did so. It was a little farther than the earlier place (that had got the stuff from them by vans), but in time it was not significant.
This year (2010) started with another nuisance. Loafers became numerous in the capital for a week in January. The municipal public transport company started a strike, and not a ‘normal’ one, when there is a reduced service, i.e. everyone is suffering, but for nobody is made life impossible, but it was actually a total stop, traffic of the vehicles was less than 5 percent. Well, the strike was dead end from the beginning, because the trade union was demanding something that was impossible to fulfil. The sole result could be that the economy, being in ruins because of the seven years of sabotage of the Preacher, would fall even lower. For me personally it brought also positive results. My daily walking of about 10 km was guaranteed fetching the lunch, there and back. As the weather was pleasant as generally at early spring, around two degrees and weak sunshine, it made my health good. By the way, for the transport company the strike was actually beneficial, because its situation was similar to that of the proverbial businessman: being a loss-producer it could profit from closure.
A week later the winter arrived as it should, my days began with snow shovelling. It was good, as my daily nine kilometre walk fell out, the public transport was functioning (the trade union lost its face, an in-fighting started among them, at the end they had to be content with less, than the offer was before the strike). I almost missed the long walk, during the week I improved my own record in three successive days, from twice one hour to twice 55 minutes, then again to twice 50 minutes.
The weather was very proper, I mean every day I had to sweep the snow, even the temperature went down, like in a total Russian winter, minus 15 degrees in the morning. About twenty five cm snow fell during a weekend. But it didn’t stop and another fifteen fell. Because of the snow and the clear weather that followed the cold intensified. We could only hope that it would be enough and the winter lets us alone later. During my childhood I can remember a certain winter, when the snow-heap was about half a metre high in front of our entrance at Easter, because it couldn’t melt thus far.
The spring was late a little in this year. Matyas (Matthew, 24 February) didn’t find ice because of the mild weather, thus he had to make some. The beginning of March was cold, even minus ten degrees were not rare at dawn, but at last it retired. My grandson made us proud of him (it was usual with his school record), because he won second place in a math competition (funny, we called it arithmetic in second grade in my time). Both winners got on to the district round. We hoped that even if wouldn’t get on, it was marking his talent. His form master accepted him, just as I had been telling him for years, she wouldn’t speak about behaviour, she had learned at last that this child was a little more complex, and it was worth cooperating with him, even if his behaviour was sometimes troublesome. At last they both fell out in the next round, but he got an award for his achievement in the form of an optical assembly kit, that was good for making different devices from telescope to microscope. I had also been a fan of optics in my childhood.
This was the first year that my grandson didn’t need my company when he went to the girls for the traditional Easter greeting.
About five years before I got my new upper denture and it was still working well. At the same time my lower jaw lost the pontoon bridge – I called it so as it behaved like a floating bridge, both pillars were free-moving already – and one loose tooth and I decided it was time to put it into order too. What made it a little more complicated was that the dentist – the same woman I wrote some negative things about earlier – wouldn’t leave there any bad teeth, two had to go. One of them she extracted the next time I got my date. She was right, it was so inflamed, that although my jaw was numb as piece of basalt from the shot, I felt the pain as if I had had no shot. And it became worse, because the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding, she had to sew it. Of course, it postponed the end of the whole process further. As this tooth held the clamp thus far, my eating was a unique operation. As soon as it became possible I repaired it, i.e. put in a temporary clamp (made of a paper clip). The other tooth would make no problem.
As I mentioned above my car was stopped during the winter months for need of a thorough repair. As the good weather made it possible my son convinced himself to do it. He had suspected that its engine would have to be overhauled, but he found at last that its problems was caused only by the unscrupulous work done in the service.
Before Easter my grandson had a week’s recess from school. He was playing a lot on the Internet in the morning when his father was still sleeping after the night shift. He was extremely skilled (alas too skilled) in those games, I bore it hard, but let him do it as they were developing his abilities. Besides, when a boy wouldn’t live war games through to give out his aggression, he could do it as an adult later. At the same time I tried to direct his attention to creative activities on the computer. I want to teach him graphic editing by Corel. He can lift it as high as art, if he would be interested in it. I can draw any technical things by it, the architect based his plans for my son’s construction on my drawings, also the sewage utility company approved my plan (for my own purposes as I am no registered architect). Even the body plans and lines for ships, that was a serious operation on drawing tables, I do by that application.
The 11th day of April is a special day for our country: it is Poetry Day, because it is the anniversary of the birth of one of our great poets, Attila Jozsef. However, this year it marked another thing: the voluntary sinking of the country from democracy into dictatorship. It was the aim of all parties to convince voters to go into the polling booths as numerously as possible, but all the same this election brought the landslide victory of the Godfather. This a further proof that my teacher in the elementary school, Mr Pasztor, who taught us math in the senior classes, was right when he sighed so: alas, there so many fools in this country!
After his second election loss in 2006 he changed his manner completely, he was not content with preaching any more, but he utilized his ever growing influence for the sparking off of street disturbances. While he denies it, if you are not blind, you also see, not only look.
This is why the right expression at present is not the Preacher, but the Godfather. His courtyard is so well organized that they can extend their influence further, this is why my former teacher was right. It came to light recently that the database they had completed and were setting in during the election of mayor in Pecs is an excellent weapon. About all inhabitants of the country they know exactly whom they support, who they vote for, and if they go voting at all. It is no accident that his political ideal is the Italian man Berlusconi. There is nothing that could save our country from doom.
A few words also about events in the world. In April the Poles had a day of sorrow, because the airplane of their prime minister crashed in Smolensk that lies now in Byelorussia, but had been a Polish town for many centuries. He died and so did around a hundred people beside him. He wanted to be present at the commemoration of the massacre near Katyn in 1941. Another plane could touch down, but theirs missed the runway in the thick fog. The Russians didn’t invite him, but he insisted to be there, the crew of the plane didn’t follow instructions from the traffic controllers, who wanted to send them to another airport. In case he had accepted being not invited, they were still living. Sometimes it is better to bear a smaller nuisance than having trouble. It happened with me in my life at least twice, but I survived.
The poles had made a queer selection, otherwise, when they elected one of the twin brothers premier and the other head of state in the same cycle.
My son started to do a large repair on my car, when the good weather made it possible. After the engine he put also the driver seat into shape, but then he discovered that the bottom was leaky at several places. Probably it was caused by the fact that the more than twenty years old rubber strips in the doors let rainwater flow in, and water follows the rules of physics and chemistry obediently, it drew to the lowest points, soaked the carpets and ate – with the help of oxygen – the thin bottom plate. Those would have to be changed, but, as there was no tool to tip the car, he began only to patch it. It was funny as I was taking home body parts and steel sheets by bus.
April went by, I had a little nostalgia for May Days in the past. It is a paradox thing that it is not celebrated exactly by those people, in whose behalf American workers began to commemorate it more that a century ago. We went with my grandson to a little expedition of insect collecting in the nearby, nature was fast for the calendar by about one month. Never before have I seen such things that in April you find everywhere maybeetle remains. In my memory these insects appear at the end of May. Well, we went in the fine weather to the stream nearby the next day, where I found that its contamination became large, I wondered how frogs could still live in it. The boy goes there usually for them. It was too early to find small frogs, tadpoles use another place where they are hard to catch. There were some older specimens and they are almost extremely canny. I was walking, but the boy used his bicycle. He was exactly nine that day, although rain was coming, we could celebrate it at the garden table.
At last I could order the insulation work on the second side of the house, the last one I wanted to leave for the next year as my money wasn’t enough for all. The same people were doing it as the façade a year before. It was a good technique, about twenty years practice helped it to become a widespread method. Even new houses are built so, that instead of plaster the polystyrene foam is glued on the wall, it is protected by a kind of plastic netting and the hard cement layer, as well as the colour coati