American Hungarian Trilogy

CHAPTER 1-3

I loved my seven-year-old sister, but I hated it when my mother tried making me guilty about her. Just because Krisztina had a bad heart and I didn’t. “Where is Krisztina?” I asked.

“Yeah, where is Krisztina? You forgot about her, didn’t you?”

“She’s at the neighbors, playing,” my aunt said. “Wait a minute. The radio. Turn it up. They’re saying something.” My mother turned up the volume to hear a special bulletin from Radio Budapest:

“This afternoon a vast youth demonstration took place in our capital. Although at noon today the Ministry of the Interior banned all demonstrations, the Politburo changed the decision. Scholars, students of the technological faculties, students of philosophy, law, economics, together with students from other university branches took part in the march led by their professors and leaders of the university Party organizations…At first there were only thousands but they were joined by young workers, passersby, soldiers, old people, secondary-school students and motorists…”

“See, I told you. Secondary-school students,” I said.

“Hush,” my aunt said.

“Can I go back out, just for a little bit?”

My mother turned off the radio and looked right at me. “No! And you can take that pullover off.”

My aunt shook her head.

I started for the door, saying I was going to get Krisztina.

“You’re staying right here,” my mother said. “I’ll get Krisztina.”

I headed for the door anyway. One thing I knew was how to be defiant. I said I had to do homework. One of my friends in our building had this big Hungarian-Russian dictionary. I needed to use it. Just in case we had school tomorrow.

“Kitty,” my mother said. “I know what you’re up to, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. Now take off that pullover and wash your hands so we can sit down and eat.”

“Oh, let the girl go. I can watch Krisztina,” my aunt said. She went to her purse, took out a ten-forint bill and handed it to me. “You can fetch us two double espressos before you go out on your scouting mission. And get yourself a sweet. But do me a favor, take Michelangelo with you. Otherwise, you’re going to have to stay behind on that skinny rump of yours.”

Michelangelo was a neighbor on the ground floor. He was a bachelor in his early twenties, who worked at a tire factory. In his spare time he locked himself in his apartment doing God knows what. My aunt had him run a few errands for her now and then. I looked at my aunt pleadingly, “Do I have to?” Michelangelo was such an odd man. He was supposed to be in the air force but he was never on a plane in his life.

He was an artist type, my aunt said, as if that explained everything. Thought of himself as a painter who was going to be famous one day. That’s why everybody called him Michelangelo.

Once I asked him to help me do a drawing for class and it turned out to be a disaster, but the worst part was he always whined, and he wouldn’t shut up. I let them know I’d rather go with my friend Mariska.

My aunt took off the measuring tape she constantly wore around her neck. This time her tone was stern. “You’ll do as I say or you don’t go at all. Kapish?”

“Are you listening, Kitty?” my mother said.

“And you,” my aunt said to my mother, “you can turn the radio back on. I wouldn’t mind knowing what the hell’s going on, if you don’t mind.”

And that was that. My aunt liked having the last word. Not this time, though. Unlike my aunt, my mother never swore. But she did go on and on about how someone will have to do some serious shopping, and soon. “We’re out of bread and potatoes. We’re out of the basics. What if there’s a work stoppage or something like that? I guess I’ll have no choice but to go out myself. And I’m tired of Kitty always getting what Kitty wants. And you’re no help.”

“Relax. We have all this work to do on your suit. The waist still isn’t right. You’ll have to try it on again. That is, if you don’t mind.”

This would be my mother’s first suit. She had worn blouses, skirts, summer dresses, but never a suit. My aunt had been working on my mother’s English tweed suit for I don’t know how long. But tomorrow was the deadline. We had an appointment for Krisztina with a new heart specialist, and my mother wanted to make a good impression. She didn’t want the doctor to think she’s some village bumpkin.

“Alright,” my mother relented. “Can I at least worry about my Izabella? She is my daughter! And she’s just a kid, for God’s sake. And she’s a girl who does nothing but court danger. I’m sick of it.”

“She’s a big girl now. Aren’t you a big girl, darling?”

I knew enough that now was the time to keep my mouth shut. My aunt looked at me. Our eyes met. This was my chance to talk to her about school. I signaled to her to follow me into the sewing room.

Once we were alone, I told her I was in big trouble. A lot bigger than coming home late. I recounted my meeting with Comrade Aczél. “He wants to send me packing to the Stalin Brigade as punishment,” I said.

I was surprised by my aunt’s reaction. “Oh, that old die-hard Stalinist! I’ll tell you what, you stay home tomorrow, and your aunt will go to school and put that old fart in his place. The Stalin Brigade, my God!”

“No, Auntie. You’ll get in trouble.”

“You let me worry about that. I have friends in high places, myself. I once sewed a gown for Mária Gyurkovics, the famous opera singer. Wait till your stuffy Comrade Aczél hears of that!”

I gave my aunt a peck on the cheek and slinked to the door. I was already halfway out, when my mother shouted after me, “But you haven’t eaten anything!”

I closed the door behind me. Our second floor, like the other four floors, was ringed by an open gallery with a wrought-iron railing. I looked up at the top tier, two floors above us, to see if Krisztina and her friend were playing there. Sometimes she rode her tricycle on the landing while her friend followed her in her wheelchair.

They weren’t there. I pushed the red elevator button and waited for the birdcage elevator to take me up to the fourth floor so I could say hi to my little sister.

She was very happy to see me. I gave her a kiss on the cheek. Because of her heart, Krisztina’s skin always felt warm, like she had a flush. Her color wasn’t red but more bluish. That meant her heart didn’t have enough oxygen. Maybe the specialist could fix the hole in her heart.

When I asked Krisztina what kind of sweet she wanted from the coffee shop, she said she’d like some Krémes, a vanilla-cream pastry. She looked up at me with those big, shiny, brown eyes that said she’d like to go with me. She knew she couldn’t. I gave her a hug and promised her that when I got back we were going to do all sorts of fun things.

The truth of it was, poor Krisztina couldn’t keep up with me. I was such a speed-demon. But I’d slow down for her. We spent hours one afternoon playing on the rug with my aunt’s big magnet, the one she used to collect all the sewing pins that fell on the floor.

Krisztina liked playing with her little friend. She and her nine-year-old friend in the wheel chair got along real well together. Most of the time they played with this old raggedy doll, dressing her and undressing her, using my aunt’s leftover fabrics. I’d cut out some patterns for them to look like little dresses.

My next stop was Mariska, my friend from school, who wasn’t in school today. I wanted Mariska to tag along, but her mother said I was crazy. This morning she had a fever. And there was a mob out there! It was on the radio, she said. Mariska was not allowed out. Period. I was crushed. Then I had an idea. I asked if Mariska could go down to the coffee shop with me. She knew it was just downstairs. I told her I had to pick up some espresso, and cake for my little sister.

“Please?” Mariska pleaded with her mother.

Her mother relented, but we had to be right back or else. On the way, I let Mariska in on my school troubles. She was horrified, almost in tears. “Oh, my God!”

“It isn’t that bad,” I said. “My aunt will talk to Comrade Aczél tomorrow.”

The empty coffee shop smelled of black coffee overloaded with sugar. I asked Mariska if she would do me a favor. If she’d take the cake up to my sister and a double espresso to my mother and aunt. “Tell them I’m looking for Michelangelo. And here,” I gave her the ten forint-bill, “get yourself something, too.” Mariska’s eyes lit up like a Christmas candle. They were very poor and she hardly ever had sweets like the kind you could get here.

I had no intention of hooking up with that maniac Michelangelo. I wanted to go alone and be swept up with the excitement of it all once I caught up with the demonstration on Bem Square.

I got as far as József Boulevard around the corner when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was him. Michelangelo. He sprouted the beginnings of a mustache and goatee. I wanted to tell him he looked like one of the Three Musketeers.

“And where do you think you’re going, little girl?” he said, stroking the flyaway hairs of his new goatee.

He was wearing a trench coat and one of those stupid berets pulled down over his forehead. He said my aunt talked to him. I was not to go anywhere without him. “You’re lucky I spotted you. Look at all these people!”

They were everywhere. On the sidewalk, on the street, streaming toward Margit Bridge. The ones that weren’t on the street stood on their balconies, waving to the crowd. One young woman waved a Hungarian flag from her window. I noticed that the red star had been cut out from its center.

A sign in the crowd said, FREEDOM, in huge letters.

I started to tell Michelangelo about the demonstration on Petőfi Square. He said he was there, too. I asked him if he got any posters about political prisoners. He didn’t. He said he had been a political prisoner. For a week. Then he narrated a long story about how he was supposed to paint a giant poster of Stalin for a May Day parade some years back. The authorities didn’t like it. He had made Stalin’s mustache so droopy, he looked more like Genghis Khan than our great hero and liberator.

“They put you in jail for that?”

“No. But that was just the beginning. They made me go back and retouch the painting. I had to shorten his moustache to make him look friendlier. Lots of work. The poster was huge. The size of a truck. We had a cable going from one rooftop to another. The poster hung from it like an oversized bed sheet, except it wasn’t flapping in the wind. I had ten to fifteen minutes. And I had to stand on a fireman’s ladder in the middle of traffic on Rákóczy Boulevard. I could’ve been easily knocked off my perch. I’m afraid of heights anyway. That’s why I live on the ground floor.”

“Is that why you never flew a plane?”