Chapter 32
Erecting a chimney and other difficulties
I have got some wonderful books from my Hungarian-American friend, units of a history series. I am sure they will appear on the shelves of my grandson soon.
She also presented her camera to me, it works with films, she switched to digital completely. It was also in the package together with the books. This camera I have seen advertised in the National Geographic Magazine, but it was twenty years ago, and then I could only salivate for it. It is an excellent compact device, as soon as I finished reading the manual I tried it. At once I was convinced that this camera exceeds even my favourite Practica. I placed new batteries in it and film too. Very soon also photographing followed.
The godfather had made his place as solid as in concrete during his time in power of more than one year, even in Brussels it was evident. However, his impolite statements, such as for example that Brussels was no Moscow, they were not authorized to tell us what here in this country would happen, were not to eliminate the fact that our country had become a member of the EU and we had voluntarily undertaken that all legislative actions would be in accord with principles of the Union. Alas it has not been so for a long time any more.
This man had already snatched forty years from the normal life of the country (or more precisely forty six, if you count also his six active years in opposition when he was sabotaging all reform measures from the part of government, and the country stayed in the backwater), because I am sure he would reign here for twenty years (another seventeen from now), and about twenty more will be needed to eliminate laws or replace them with sensible ones that were and would be passed with high hand by his rubber-stamp parliament during his dictatorship, since it is more than clear that after him nobody would be given such a high majority (I do hope that this principle would be put into a better constitution than his present one). Such laws can only be replaced with proper ones only by consensus or referendum.
This summer I had to reject two detachment orders coming from justices for expertise, because both looked hopeless for me. Instead of them I got another assignment. I was found by a private person, who had not been content with the work a repair shop did on his ship, for this reason he wanted to take it from there and transport it to another workshop, my job was to decide whether this movement was justified, at least he said so then. The ship in question was a wonderful vehicle, a wooden sailing ship built in the forties (i.e. seventy years before). I thought it was not to make me rich either, but at least would keep my brain in motion. However, future would show me that I had had better throwing him out at once.
The first step of the accomplishment in this assignment was viewing the ship in the workshop of the originally selected shipwright. It had been expected that it would last only up to noon, but the transport trailer sent on order was not proper for the job as the support carriage could not have been rolled on it, so the ship-owner had to go and find a crane. Thus we could not leave Dunakeszi that is located north of Budapest before five o’clock. The workshop of the other shipwright was in Kapuvar at the border with Austria. We reached it together with the truck transporting the ship at eight. It was unloaded still at daylight, but when it became safely rolled in to the shop it was dark. It goes without saying that the extremely active Kapuvar mosquitoes did their job fine meanwhile.
Actually the owner of the ship is a clever artist dealing with computer graphics, but, in my opinion, his income is more than he deserves and he is not capable to spend it in a sensible way. It is quite clear from his behaviour. He gave me a lift in his car on the way home, however, the excursion went over into the next day even so. Although it did not cause any concern with my wife, because I called home before stating from Dunakeszi.
That year the events around August 20 meant no problem, nature bore itself well. On the streets it was the same, which was completely normal since those who had been doing the hoo-ha in the previous years were at the helm that time.
All the same, August served us a trick. I can remember only one instance beside that year when summer’s end was so hot, that had been when my son was one year old in 1972. In the year I am writing about, however, something happened that I haven’t experienced too often: a temperature of 35 degrees Celsius could be measured outside the window. This weather persisted through several weeks, red alert was announced, on the streets water bottles were distributed (sure, that is much cheaper than solving real problems). And road accidents cost almost always human life. As if the birth rate in this country were not enough for slimming of the population. Only those would stay alive who use no car, but, at the same time, whose birth rate is much higher.
Certainly, heat was excessive, one day even the national record for that calendar day was broken (39.1 degree at Bugac, southeast of the capital) and it also happened in Budapest with the local one for a 100 years, i.e. 36.9 degrees were measured in Ujpest, the northern part of the capital. Within our garden I read 35, also my window thermometer showed the same value on the northern shaded side of the house. When it showed fifty later, I didn’t believe, becausen then the afternoon sunshine caused it.
I decided that it was time to pick red grapes and make wine from them, because blackbirds liked them very much and I wouldn’t go without them. Grapes became ripe quickly in the great heat. The white sweet grapes we had already consumed all. And my plans for the next year in the garden included some minor reforms. Both little apple trees of the kind Starking were to be felled, they had not bore any fruit for a few years as the new garage threw a constant shade on them (I pardoned them at last). I thought I would be able to buy a few kilo apples. And the almond tree, I thought, was not needed to fell as it would dry out by itself, because my son built a heap of wood around it, even covered it, and I thought it would get not a drop of water. I was mistaken, the tree expanded aloft and above the garage roof it grew a large crown. The old plum tree I wanted to prune back also on the other side, where I didn’t have access because of the wooden heaps earlier. That tree was bearing fine fruits on branches pruned in the previous year, as there were new shoots there. My poor little quince tree overloaded itself by fruits that year, even a whole branch broke off. I had to prune it too to let it grow strong. I hoped it would take a rest in the next year, and then bear fruit again.
Summer would not give up in that year, even in the middle of September it was hot with thirty degrees in the afternoon. However, fall was not to be postponed forever.
I finished formulating my expertise in the case of the private assignment, I made the wrong decision: I was waiting for the ship owner to express his opinion how I was to add something to it or the opposite. I wanted to send him the final variety. Actually that assignment was useful for me professionally. It could be considered rather a kind of professional practice if I were somewhat younger. A lot could be learned about small sailing ships built of wood, partly in the two workshops in this case, partly on the Internet. On the other hand it was free lunch for the client and my self esteem went down to the earth. When I lost my patience and didn’t want to wait for his approval of the text I sent him the finished paper. And attached my bill about the sum we had agreed. As he gave me no reply I tried to find his phone or address. Both are encrypted. To this day I couldn’t find him and couldn’t get my money for the work I did.
I helped my son to finish the work needed for the chimney, its last step was the fitting of the protecting cage. There was nothing to hinder the second survey after it.
There followed a little hunt in the food store closet in our upper apartment. Alas, in my family not all members observe the rule that no closed carton box is allowed to be taken in the house from the outside storerooms, because in the fall season mice can nest in them. I discovered that there was one uninvited guest in the store. As it had happened more than once in the past I thought it was my wife who imported the creature with a box. Furthermore, she has the habit of letting the door to the storeroom open for longer times, thus the small villain could get in. I caught him or her in my usual way, only, as I couldn’t find the old wartime mess-tin of my late father-in-law, I used a small heat resistant glass bowl to be supported by the bait of cheese. Although I tried my best to make a foolproof bait, the first two ones were stolen by the mouse, only with third one did the popular saying come true with the jug and the well. Alas, as the small beast wanted to escape after taking the cheese, the bowl fell and the mouse died. Sorry I was for him or her, but at the same time I hoped it was only a lone warrior. Unfortunately it wasn’t and I had the high challenge of moving a lot of equipment out and back. It also became clear that it wasn’t my wife who let them in.
My Hungarian-American friend wrote me in a mail that she had a correspondence with Benko Sandor (he is known as Alaxander Benko), I was delighted to hear it. I also like his music and always wanted to be at one of his concerts. I think, he wouldn’t remember me, my name was not so well known, neither in school nor in life. In that Jozsef Attila secondary school he was my senior by one year. At that time when I wrote down my memories in life first time I wanted to ask him to write an introduction to my book, but I couldn’t find him for that.
Following several unsuccessful attempts we with my grandson went to an excursion at last. Unfortunately, timing was not ideal, one day before it a cold front arrived that caused an uncomfortable seventeen degrees in our apartment. However, I didn’t start heating yet, we took on more clothes instead.
That excursion was long planned program, which needs a little introduction. More than forty years ago my sister and her husband purchased a weekend site in the hills of Borzsony about a hundred kilometres northeast from the capital. In fact it was hillside, you could not stand without pushing stakes into the ground at your feet. At the beginning they were delighted by the place, even they bought a motorcycle, a Jawa that was considered a fine vehicle at that time. Not long after they had minor accident and, although didn’t got hurt, they wouldn’t use it any more. When the small wooden cottage (also of Czech origin) was built on the site they kept the bike in it, until someone ‘borrowed’ it as Huckleberry Finn used to write and vanished in the mist with it. They didn’t feel it a large loss as they were not using it any more. Well, that ground was inherited by my sister’s daughters. Marika could not take too much advantage of it, however, for the snobbish manner of her husband, it was maintained by my younger niece, Eva and, after the death of her husband, she went there always in three with her children. Nowadays she is caring for it alone, although this expression is not fit as almost the original pristine state restored itself there. The hillside is full of fist sized round stones that act as bearing balls when you step. It is a death-trap to move around.
In short we went there together with Eva. We had a fine journey as we took the train from Lajosmizse to the station Nyugati, there we met Eva and together got on to the train to Szob and got out in Kismaros. Already from train the Danube Bend offered a fine view, the perspective was even better when we left the train. It was possible to see even Tata in the western direction. And the other side of the river there is the two hills at Visegrad, the Nagy Villám (it means large lightning) and the other with the fortress on top of it.
To the ground it was very good uphill walk, more than an hour, it was even longer because of Zoli who studied thoroughly the small brook Morgo (meaning grumbler) that we had to follow in our walk. Although the boy wanted to quit several times, it was impossible. At the end we reached the site, in the meantime the weather turned from sunny at first into rainy. It didn’t rain intensively, and also the foilage of the trees protected us. Eva opened the cottage at once and kindled a fire that Zoli began to care for. He was baking acorns and chestnuts. The ground has namely a lot of sweet chestnut trees. Only a small part of the fruits can be collected, but the rest is not lost either as there are a lot of small animals as squirrels, edible dormice and others. At the end of our stay there we also saw salamanders, even made pictures of them. Of course I shot other pictures too with the fine camera sent me my friend. Also we had the digital Kodak with us as my daughter-in-law ran after us and handed it over. We had our mobile phones with us, even mine had been taken that time.
The boy enjoyed the excursion extraordinarily, it was beneficiary for me too (especially for my self-confidence that I had staying power even in such circumstances). In the train there we had eaten the proportional part of our sandwiches, the remaining food however we took back, because Eva had taken with her some bacon for barbecue. That brought fore in my mind the good old times from my youth, I fried the slices on stems and this food we all liked. Also we baked chestnuts among the embers, Zoli couldn’t stop eating them.
I was thinking about the site and its maintenance level, the children (already young adults) would have to get it in order. As long as it was cared for by my brother-in-law it was in a good condition: he created serpentine pathways. They were already loose heaps of round stones as I mentioned.
Zoli was dead tired when we got home, I have never seen him so exhausted. I was not really fresh either, a passing cramp in my leg bothered me during night.
Another excursion was planned to the Hortobagy in the East of the country still that year. My grandson wanted to take with him also his grandmother, alas, until now it has not realized.
It looked that time that perhaps my difficulties about the chimney could come to an end. After the master finished his work the surveyors came again to check everything and they left with the words ‘it would be in order’. This was to be thanked maybe partly to my struggle to eliminate all their earlier points, but more to the influence money paid them through the building master. Financially I hadn’t finished yet as the letter of approval would also cost something and also the master had been promised a middleman fee, let alone the revenue of permission for taking the building into use. And the geodesist too, as the new situation on the site caused by the building activity itself was to be reported to the cartographic department of Land Register, which needed a geodesic certificate.
Again I was served a trick by technical means. At the end of October we had to start heating, because inside there was only seventeen degrees, but my grandson didn’t want to take on enough cloths. I wanted to prevent his getting ill.
It happened only then that it became clear it was no simple business. My son could not start the heating boiler in the lower apartment, because the tank for dilation was leaking, the last forty years wore it out. He could not fill it up, I had to take it to the plumber, but he couldn’t repair it. It took a week for me to buy a new tank and the mechanic to put it into operation. The younger generation had no heating during that time, however, it was not extremely cold yet, if they were cold they came up to us to get warm. My financial situation was influenced by this thing again.
At the same time there were people in the country, for whom such problems meant a longer concern. Since the time when the old regime gave way to free elections several local governments have let things go as they wanted and so they have become deeply indebted. Until the time I am writing about more than one towns were not able to pay for the natural gas that resulted in closing the gas taps by gas suppliers, there was no heating in schools and in many multi-storeyed living houses and hot water either. People were throwing stones at each-other. It is one of the events that make a lot of people wish the pestilent old system to come back. Then this feeling was already present in all areas of society, our conducator (although for him the name godfather is more apt because of the character of his organization) was making his place ever more stable, he also solved the question of a smaller sized ‘parliament’, I have mentioned earlier. I am really sorry that my forecasts would prove true, he would be on our shoulders at least twenty years (not on mine already).
Hungarian people were in a situation not unlike that of the person living in a prefab house who left his apartment for three seconds to arrange something in the stairway, but the door was banged by draught and he was locked out for a day. A lone wrong decision could take disposal of their own life from their hands: there remained only one thing to do, i.e. queue up and wait for years as in the previous regime.
All that is not the product of my brain, I only drew the conclusion from the events observed. As I wrote to my Hungarian-American friend in my mails a couple of years before – at that time the government still had the opportunity, although they didn’t have much means for it, to stop the saboteur, respectively it was voters who were deciding where to cast their votes to throw him away as trash at either the referendum extorted by him or at the general elections a year before – not the right kinds of measures were taken by those in positions to decide. So long as previous governments were in disposal of ample support they should have formed a national unity government. (By the way, since the election victory of the godfather I had never heard any popularity scales. Was it possible that he didn’t dare to take the risk of it?) As I tried to tell it we have to wait another thirteen or seventeen years (from now on) for the next similar opportunity, until then the godfather would always wangle the election results. Only then will have voters their turn again to decide themselves – may I hope properly at last, although I am not convinced about the right IQ level of my fellow compatriots, it is not impossible they would follow another clay-foot idol that time. At any rate, if they will make the right decision then, they will have the ability to replace the orbanescu constitution and to regulate the style of governing in the new one better than it is at present.
I am perfectly sure for some time that the kind of democracy that switches right to govern between the two most influential parties of a country always to the winner – and that is an uninterrupted practice in the western world for almost three centuries – is going to come to an end somewhere in the world in the near future, and at last the principle would gain acceptance that in case a certain party got ‘x’ per cent of the votes then that party is entitled for ‘x’ per cent also in the cabinet, far from the other notion that winner takes all and makes a dictatorship at his own taste. Let’s take Greece for example. Greeks should know what a dictatorship is since they had been living under it – I mean those of them who was born before that – for seven years, still we can see that the same is going on with them as it happened with us before some years: the right-wing opposition is sabotaging all measures of the government, which can bring about their expulsion from euro zone, maybe even from the EU. The mandate of any new Greek cabinet would expire when elections are being held as usual. And then a kind of Greek godfather would come who would be going to help his own clique to the top. The switch-type democracy cannot work properly even in the country any more where it had been set down first in a written constitution (I am thinking about the USA), because I see so significant disagreement between the manipulators of the two great parties that it projects fore a period of de facto civil war. Only if I were wrong!
Returning to our own small country I remember to have mentioned pundits (nosy parkers) some years ago, who accelerated the downward change in the economy in our country by down-rating it. Nowadays it is a common wisdom that this behaviour is an extremely wrong practice. Anyway, he who thinks in his twenties that hot water had been invented by him, follows a really bad practice. At the same time I admit, what goes here with us must be put into order. That is the reason, why I also find topics, where I consider rather acceptable that the democratic – or better to say liberal-anarchic – system during the former cabinets shifted in the direction of an autocratic one, because the godfather can solve things insolvable so far because of natural laziness of people. Let’s take the case of tricky disability pensioners. He who went to the ‘right’ doctor in his time can live even fifty years as an idler. It has to be stopped. However there is the reverse side of the medal: having already two hundred thousand jobless, because either their profession or living place, visage or minority status is not preferable, it is no better solution to launch several dozen thousand new jobless into the active society than paying the pocket money monthly, that is their disability pension after decades of deprecation. This question is as complicated as which was first, hen or egg. Dinosaurs turned into hens very slowly, in the meantime lots of eggs had been laid until it became an egg from a hen. After the moment in the future when the godfather is going to run away, many years would pass until it will be solved too.
It was already the middle of November, also Elisabeth day passed, soon women named Catherine would put their flowers in vases, then wreaths would appear on entrance doors (may I hope those who hang them there know their meaning too) and, at last, stuffed Santa Clauses would begin to imitate wall climbing. A terrible level of light pollution occurs around that time, because street lamps are completely inconspicuous beside the large quantity of outside Christmas tree illumination.
The leading concern was not hot weather already, although summer heat is unbearable at extreme conditions. My favourite locality is Ethiopia (or better to say its capital), it is ideal with its year-round 16 to 18 degree temperature, as if it were September there all the time.
But here with us the winter season arrived, while morning temperatures around minus 8 degree did not last, there was no difference between mornings and days: a constant temperature around freezing point remained. One day even there was a thick fog, even as far as one hundred meters you could not see through. It goes without saying there were rear-enders on roads.
Something interesting I have to mention about domestic politics. In the previous year the godfather, who had just grabbed power, said that he had ‘fired’ the IMF people, because he wanted to free Hungary from financial oppression. That time however, just one year later, applied to them in spite of all, of course he stated that would not mean any debt for the country, it would only be a ‘guaranty agreement’ between the country and the organisation. At once I remembered a certain popular joke going around during the Rakosi era. According to that a gypsy person (Romany today) was idling around the statue of poet Vorosmarty and read the inscription on the base as Vorosmatyi (meaning red Matt), while that on the other side as ‘Lying all the time without fail’ (instead of ‘To your homeland without fail’). This is completely true also nowadays.
The behaviour of politicians (or rather apoliticians) is better to make people vomit than any medicine. Even the opposition party LMP (abbreviation for Lehet Mas a Politika that means Politics Can Change) is sticking to their earlier fixed ideas, although they are continually against every measure of the present cabinet, the denouncement the party chief made against the then premier during the former governing period, has not been withdrawn, in spite of the fact that he who did it can see it quite clearly that it is exploited only for conceptual cases by the godfather. The extreme right-wing party called Jobbik (meaning better that I only call ‘szelso-jobbik’ for extreme right) is slowly converging to the governing party, of course it is saying a still welcome for this change (partly because the cabinet does a lot for that party’s programs, partly as the 90 per cent victory at the next election would be much more certain with their help). And corruption is growing like toadstools in spite of all lip-service.
As I have seen however in one of the columns in Newsweek, this is a global phenomenon. I am speaking about the insider stock trading of influential US congressmen, who decide what should in the economy happen, thus having an insight in almost everything and, of course, lining their pockets by those gains. Well, what they do it is not unlawful actually, ‘literally’ it is not forbidden.
About domestic details I must relate something else. Until that time I am writing about it was my misbelieve that I really did something six years earlier, when I went to great lengths and spent a lot of money to turn my car into an environment friendly one. I bought the type of catalyser that is best for my car and made the service mount it. Well, at that time, when comrade Parlagos (I call so our mayor of the capital Mr. Tarlos, it means the same as his name, precisely someone with a piece of land left on waste) forbade cars with black or red plate stickers from traffic because of the smog alarm, it went home in my mind that my sticker is black too (altogether there are four kinds from the worst black through red and blue to green). At the Internet I got the information that with us cars aren’t classified by their features (what they are able to perform), but what matters is what fuel they need and when they had been manufactured. I could not be less environment friendly, even if I had no catalyser. On the other hand, when I looked around in the street the next morning, of 40 cars 39 had black stickers, I saw only one green. Thus, were everyone observing the ban, the street would have been deserted. Instead, all took the risk of one hundred thousand forint penalty.
The car I mentioned as there was an attempt for a certain co-operation in the neighbourhood: parents of pupils in the class of my grandson were organizing transport of the children. In the morning it was my daughter-in-law who took the three children in our car to school (otherwise it was a mere 800 metres, only a short walk as I had taken the boy there and back when he had been in kindergarten), in the afternoon the mother of another boy took them back on hers. These children plus a few more were coming together often, also in our house the noise was so intense that I couldn’t hear what was said in the TV set. Anyway, I didn’t protest, it was a small price for the development of my grandson into a social animal. Perhaps he would have come also for excursions much more willing, had been there another child with us.
Fortunately mainly good news arrived from school, I hoped however that he would remain a child at the same time and enjoy life.
At the end of November there was already ugly cold weather, the kind I most dislike, i.e. a few degrees below freezing point and dense clouds causing semidarkness all day. A front was around for some days and suddenly it showed a trick: on an area of one square kilometre about three centimetres of snow fell. I became aware of it as sitting on tram the streets turned snowy and back to empty again. That time the cold was short lived, but winter returned soon.
My grandson did well in school, although there were low points for him, I accepted with satisfaction that also he felt inconveniently in those cases, that meant he too wanted to achieve good results. Once he was allowed to take home the zither he played there (it was exceptionally for those to have performed the piece given as homework quite flawless), and he made a show for us too. He still loves music, his zither lessons are overtime. My daughter-in-law had bought him an MP3 player that is smaller than matchbox. When he was doing something on his computer he was always listening to it as his father loaded a lot of music on to it. At that time he had been playing chess for some years already and he was very good at it, also loved it, but he has left that sport since. According to my opinion he had fit in that company well, fortunately what I had been afraid of that he would not didn’t come true.
His grandmother had spared some money that she used that time to buy a zither for Zoli. It made me happy that in the age of computers the boy had such a good field of interest, I hoped he would be able to catch up with things I had didn’t have had the opportunity achieve. My father had fiddle and could also play it rather well. He wanted to teach me that skill too, but, as he wasn’t very patient teacher, he awoke in me more resistance than enthusiasm. It is my strong hope that Zoli would become a really musical man.
With winter the virus season started too, it could cast me down, although I thought I hadn’t caught a cold (or I wasn’t aware of it). In fact I have already ample weak points, thus it is quite impossible for me to prevent such illnesses coming regularly every year. Always sore throat is the worst as it happened in that case, but a new kind of virus must have come to the market too, because, before my throat could have improved, the whole cycle was starting again in my body from gouty shoulders through varicose inflammation to my tonsils. I hoped, however, that it would find a greater resistance in me that the previous one.
Alas, the weather was quite beneficial for such infections, and also my taking bed came, as usual, after that my whole family got over it. It wasn’t really cold, it went down below freezing only nightly, thus bugs could quickly multiply.
At the health service the attitude of doctors was the greatest concern, they preferred going abroad where they earned more because of the shortage of medical professionals to treating their own compatriot. At the Slovaks even a strike occurred before, a state of emergency had been announced and a request had been sent to doctors in the surrounding countries for help in substitution. A fitting answer came from Hungarian doctors: they had solidarity with their Slovak colleagues (and not with people in need of treatments). About this topic I have to agree with the godfather: he who had taken advantage of benefits in the higher education should stay home or pay back the difference between total costs of the training and his tuition fees. Consider my own case: I also had to work with my fresh diploma for the company that had been paying my fellowship on our contract.
At the same time the godfather was in such a stage then, which was similar to that of Ceausescu when he had been breaking with the whole world and paying all the debts of his country.