American Hungarian Trilogy

CHAPTER 1-1

CHAPTER 1I was really in for it now. I stood at attention in front of Principal Aczél’s desk staring at my handiwork, a poster that said, “DOWN WITH CUMPOLSORY RUSSIAN.” I spent most of last night writing the same words in big bold letters on thirty sheets of art paper, made sure I got to school before it opened and tacked them on every door, including Principal Aczél’s forbidding oak door. I didn’t think anyone saw me. I guess I was wrong. Someone snitched on me. But who?

I had to say something in my defense. I told Comrade Aczél I was interested in learning other languages. “Why aren’t we allowed to learn other languages besides Russian? Like English and –”

He cut me off sharply: “I don’t remember saying you had permission to speak.” Comrade Aczél was furious, and when he was furious, his sarcasm had an edge. “I can guess who put this in that fourteen-year-old head of yours. Who else, but your reactionary father. Oh, I beg your pardon. He couldn’t have been the one, could he now? He’s in prison, isn’t he? For anti-Communist activities, I believe. Well, well, it seems to me you’re doing everything in your power to make sure you follow in his footsteps.”

I didn’t react, and this made him so angry his breathing became uneven. Still, I had this feeling he was enjoying himself. He stubbed out his cigarette in its amber-colored holder and said, “I must warn you, Izabella Barna, this is not a game. Of course you realize you’ll be kicked off the track squad. And, if I have my way, you’ll be kicked out of school. You know where you belong? A youth brigade, like the old Stalin Work Brigade. Far away from anyone who would rather have you speak the language of our enemies than the language of our friends. You will learn to respect the language of our Soviet liberators, yes? And you will start tomorrow, yes? You are to report to this office at seven-thirty sharp, yes? The disciplinary committee will decide then what to do with you.”

I hated school. But the thought of being away from my mother and my sister and my aunt made my mouth dry. “I’m sorry, Comrade.”

“I don’t think you know what the word sorry means. But you will. You will. Tomorrow, seven-thirty sharp, yes?” And that was it. The oak door closed behind me.

What was I going to tell my mother? She would kill me. Maybe I could talk my aunt into coming with me when I face the disciplinary committee. She was always good at talking to people. She was very charming when she wanted to be, and very persuasive. Maybe she could talk them into letting me stay in school.

Like any fourteen-year-old, I loved and hated school. I loved gymnastics because when it came to the balance beam and the parallel bars I was the best in the whole school. I was also the fastest in the 100 meters, even faster than the boys, except for Guszti Pálréti. My friends kept teasing me about him until my face was beet red and my freckles disappeared. They said I liked him and let him beat me every time we raced. Sometimes I pretended they were right, though I sure would’ve liked to beat him. Just once.

I didn’t tell a soul, but I had this secret dream of becoming an Olympic champion one day and winning a gold medal for Hungary. When it came to sports, I was very proud to be Hungarian. Two years ago, in 1954, our soccer team almost won the World Cup in Switzerland, and we were third in the whole world in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. Not bad for a small country of ten million.

Now that I was going to be kicked off the track team, my dream of ever making the Olympic team was shattered.

Track and field was my favorite event. I just loved to race. My hair was usually in braids except when I raced. Then, my long hair fluttered behind me like a banner in the wind. My classmates said I ran like a cheetah. I didn’t mind being compared to the swiftest animal on the face of the earth, and it wasn’t long before it became my nickname – especially when I beat Guszti in the city finals in Budapest.

It was something, crossing the finish line with hundreds of spectators cheering me on, including my mother and my little sister who shouted, “Go, Cheetah, go!”

I wished my father could’ve been there to see me win my big race. My little sister caught on to my new nickname in a hurry, but my mother didn’t like it. To her, it wasn’t very lady-like. I don’t think my father would’ve minded. His nickname for me wasn’t that far off. Ever since I can remember, he called me Kitty. He said as a toddler I’d leap on the furniture and bounce up and down on the couch like I was possessed. I was always a bouncer. I loved jumping. The higher the better, the farther the better. That was another thing I liked about school. The high jump and the broad jump. So, I guess you could say I liked gym.

I wasn’t a slacker at schoolwork either. My grades were really good, especially in Art and in Hungarian. Now Russian was another story.

What I hated most about school was being forced to study Russian. It’s such a hard language with their different alphabet and everything. I was pretty good at memorizing the grammar rules and some of the vocabulary, but to speak it or write it was near impossible and not just for me. My Russian language teacher was as strict as a boot camp commandant. We had to sit straight, with our hands folded behind our backs and stare ahead. Not that there was anything interesting on the wall, unless you were crazy about larger than life portraits of Stalin, Lenin and Marx.

A few years ago, the school took down all the pictures of Stalin. I guess it looked odd to have a blank space on the wall where the paint was a lot lighter. We joked about it, calling it Stalin’s ghost. Our strict principal put Stalin’s picture back. As far as old Comrade Aczél was concerned, Stalin, the great hero and liberator, was back.

A great dictator is what my father called him. I really missed my father. They dragged him off to prison a little more than a year ago. My mother said it was because of Stalin. Because of what my father said against Stalin. I wasn’t very fond of Stalin. Ever since kindergarten, we were taught about Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. I didn’t mind the parades on May Day or singing the “International,” but being fed all that stuff about Stalin being the great hero and liberator, day in and day out, in just about every class was like stuffing geese. And we were the geese.

When I told my art teacher about what happened to me in the principal’s office, she said Comrade Aczél was just trying to scare me. If only I could believe her. “Let me talk to him,” she said. Art was my last period class and, after gym, my second favorite. My art teacher never talked about politics except to say that propaganda art was a great waste of red paint. We were all afraid that somebody was going to report her, but no one did. I was glad about that because I liked her. She may have been old and poor, but she was full of life. She liked her students, and I think she liked me.

One day she put a pair of tennis shoes on her desk. We all thought she wanted us to draw them. She had this habit of putting objects on her desk for us to draw, but this time the worn pair of tennis shoes were not part of our art lesson. She wanted us to buy them. We knew they were used, and that they were hers, even though she went out of her way to tell us the shoes belonged to a relative. We also knew how desperately poor she must be to have to do that. I felt sorry for her and offered to buy them from her. I tried them on after class, and they fit me fine. The problem was I didn’t have nearly enough money so I told her I’d pay her the rest later. She let me take the shoes home anyway. To this day, I have not had a chance to pay her what I owed her. The funny thing is, she never once brought it up.

She was very serious about art. I remember the last class I had with her. She took her glasses off and placed them on her desk at an angle so they picked up the light from the windows. She wanted us to paint her glasses that way, with all the colors reflected in the lenses. Outside our second-story windows, the trees were turning not yellow so much but a rusty brown. The sky was blue with blotches of gray. I found myself staring out the window thinking about all sorts of things, mostly my father. When I didn’t have school, he’d let me go with him on his job as a mailman. Once his mailbag got lighter, he let me carry it. How I loved the feel of the leather strap on my shoulder.

“Izabella Barna! Izabella Barna! Are we lost in reverie again? I know there’s a lot on your mind, but would you kindly tell the class what is so interesting outside? You haven’t even started on your water-color!”

Our teacher went to a window herself. She opened it to a blast of noise. A chorus of voices chanted, “Russians go home!”

She leaned out to see what was going on. “What on earth?” she said. “What day is it, children?”

Now that was strange. She never called us children before. It was always class this, or class that, or she’d address us by our last names.

We told her it was Tuesday. October 23. Like she didn’t know.

It was one day I would never forget.

“As far as I know, there’s no parade scheduled. Where are all those people going?” She went back to her desk, snatched up her glasses, and marched back to the window.

We jumped from our seats to see for ourselves. Suddenly it was chaos in our little classroom. Our teacher who was strict about discipline said nothing. We were amazed at the sheer number of people pouring down the street. Some were carrying Hungarian flags. One person held up a sign that said, “FREEDOM NOW!”

Our teacher clapped her hands twice. It was her usual signal to get our attention. “Everybody! Get back to your seats. Pack up your things and go home. I don’t like the looks of this. You are all to go straight home, do you hear me?”

I didn’t feel like going straight home. I wanted to see for myself what all this excitement was about. I was going to get it anyhow. Might as well do something to deserve it.

Putting on my pullover and backpack, I skipped down the stairs with my noisy classmates. It wasn’t every day we were let out early. We sounded like swarming birds.

The air was dry and cool outside, as it should be on a late October day. I felt like I stepped out of a dark dungeon straight into a carnival. Before I caught on what was happening, I was swept into the crowd.

Most were students who attended college right here in the city. Two young men wearing sport coats and ties carried a placard that said Eötvős Loránd University. Another group was from the Technical University of Budapest across the Danube. A group of older girls walked arm in arm, taking up the whole street. I decided to walk alongside them. A car behind us honked trying to get through. We didn’t budge. The girls were singing a song, but I couldn’t make out the words.

People streamed in from side streets to join the swelling crowd. I had no idea where all this was headed. There was so much excitement in the air, enough for sparks to start flying. I figured this was some kind of spur-of-the-moment thing, not some official parade.

I asked the girl next to me where we were going. She didn’t hear me. She simply locked her arm into mine and before I knew it, I was marching with them past the law school and the University Church where my family used to go before the Communists locked it up.

Sometimes our art teacher took us on field trips to show us some examples of beautiful architecture, and on one of these outings, she pointed out this church on the corner with its twin spires. She said we were looking at the finest baroque church in the whole city. We couldn’t go inside, but she raved about the wood carvings on the altar and the choir.

The crowd crossed the street by the University Library with its corner copula. We poured into a square and stopped to let a yellow streetcar pass. I looked around to get my bearings.