I was told he’s the best to talk to about being a Hungarian in our town. 92 and still going strong, walks downtown, does his shopping, and oh, so talkative.
He lives on our street. Past the fisherman’s store, past the dentist’s, is his gate, a green wooden fence. The gate is not locked, only hold by a rope ring. I enter the green yard, and call his name towards the open windows covered in rusty mosquito nets. He comes along the porch, opens the window glass door, I tell him my mission. He says, oh, in his days he preserved the virginity of our street, that is he rescued it from demolition that was hanging over our heads during the communist craze of urban restructuring. He wrote a four-page complaint/memo and gathered our street people’s signatures and sent it to the newly formed Civic Complaints Bureau in the capital and they responded that indeed our street won’t be demolished because it is a historical site. Mom says he talks rubbish, they stopped the impending demolition because the government was overturned in ‘89, and now they gave a new regulation and had to renovate the façade though they have no money, and can’t make any changes to the building without costly Town Hall approvals.
Anyway, he said he was busy with his ailing wife, and his raspberry patch, had a carrying man come Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but I should come on Monday afternoon. Alright. He said he was so very sorry for my father back then when he sold bananas in the market, though he was a retired agricultural engineer, so very sorry to see him in cold and rain, below his station. And my mom. Give them his regards.
When I came back on Monday I went deeper in the yard, though fearing he might have biting dogs. He would not answer my “Hellooo there! Helloooo, anybody home?!” calls. He was in a dark room among plastic barrels, slowly folding a cloth. I didn’t give up being cheery. He remembered me. He refused my audio recorder. The war he had no wish to remember. He had nothing to say to nowadays youth. He watched TV and saw there were 100,000 people sunning themselves on the beach, the Black Sea could not fit anymore people, 100,000, and meanwhile there’s no money to buy medicines for old folks? All they want is to have the elderly vanish, die fast, get rid of them quick, and whatever he’d have to impart, it would fall on deaf ears. He knows that. In Germany the elder had senior citizen centers with large rooms, well lit, and the elders played domino, chess, what a life! Here?!
The wife’s hoarse and frail voice came from behind a window, “Where the heck are you?” several times. I called his attention, but he nodded and went about the war he fought in the Hungarian army, was stationed in Szekesfehervar, and when he saw his unit’s tanks were sticking out of the wheat field while the Russians’ were much shorter/lower, couldn’t see them, and the Russians shot at their tank towers, he said, “Man, I don’t want to do this anymore.” “What do you mean?! You owe us.” “What?” “We taught you how to drive a tank!” “No, man, I shall not keep doing this. I want to go home.” And they sent him to the camp where the other Transylvanian soldiers were held by the Russians and there were trains and he got his documents, and he was to get into the train when the Russian officer said, “Wait a minute, what is your name?” “Nagy Imre.” “Where are you from?” “Carei.” “Not Crişeni Cherestur?” “No, sir. Here are my documents.” “Okay. Pashli.” And he got into the train and got off at Mateiszalka, 24 kilometers from his hometown Carei, and walked from there.
Later on, when he just got married, they asked him to go to the Securitate, our Secrete Police back then. He didn’t tell his young wife about it. He went there, the guard barked at him nastily, “What do you want?” Quite an intelligentsia fellow, he says ironical, making me laugh, and then he entered a closet of a room, not like what they have nowadays, large leather sofas, cognac, delegations of foreigners, lavish feasts, and the officer asked him again what was his name, and was he born in Crişeni Kerestur. “No, here is my ID, here is my birth certificate.” It came out there was a teacher with his name from Crişeni Kerestur who was against the regime here, or back then, when he was in the Russian camp against the regime in Hungary, Horthy regime, which was a fascist regime. So why would the teacher be in trouble if he was protesting fascists in a communist state? Anyway, he was told to go his way, and only then he told his wife he had been called to Securitate. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “So you wouldn’t be anxious for me,” he said protective. And he was never one for sowing dissension. Hungarians, Romanians, were all the same for him. He was called once more to Securitate to report on what was the atmosphere like at his work place? He laughed in Securitate’s face. “Are you asking the atmosphere like in the truck tires, when the driver pumps up more air pressure or less?” He joked. “Come on, I want to know what’s going on.” “Nothing is going on.” “No trouble? No ethnic tension?” “No trouble at all.” And only when he was about to walk out of the office, he turned around and said, “There is a matter actually, across the street from our warehouse at the furniture workshops, Red Star, and those there,” he reported, “on Hungarian Catholic Easter day wont’ come to work on the grounds of the old parents were sick, this and that,. In vain would the leaders report them missing work, they’d refuse to come to work. That was the only trouble to report.” And he was let go scotch free.
I asked him why were we standing up, but he was adamant about no interviewing, he asked me if my parents were ailing, haven’t seen them in awhile. No, my father works a lot in the garden. My mother made tomato preserves. He then took me in the back to see his tomatoes, and his raspberry patch. Now he’s tomatoes, he said, were something to take a picture of, he told his granddaughter to have a memory of what he left them. But they were still green, small, nothing like my father’s crop, crates upon crates of red, huge tomatoes. The raspberry patch was large, half of it still full of weeds, the other half his former employee, a 72 year old with overalls and basketball cap, had already weeded out.
He said, “See this fence?” A weathered wooden fence tied with wires, “When I went for the day to get new foreign eyes to Cluj,” I assumed he meant eyeglasses, “and I arrived home, my fence was gone!” I laughed, thinking someone stole his fence. Alas, no, the small river behind his garden he pointed at, flooded because “See that turn there, were that turn, its beach carved out, the water would flow and not flood my plot. I complained to the Town Hall because I was aware there was an environment protection law, and one day, broom, broom, broom, an excavator was digging in the river, clearing the turn, and I asked the worker, ‘Please throw the cups of earth here to build the river bank back and raise my fence back,’ and I gave him 100 lei for that. Then they gave me 200 lei from the Town Hall to manage on my own fixing the damage.” I suggested he should complain to the National Water Bureau, they were the ones that dealt with rivers and floods. I thought maybe I could endear myself if I spoke to my ex to fix his river matter, maybe this way he’d give me the interview. But no, the price is too high.
Anyway, he got even more animated, “No one does anything nowadays, only corruption in the parliament! They get 350 lei a day for sitting on their fat arses and warm the chairs while my wife gets a 400-lei-a-month pension?! Parliamentarians go on educational trips abroad on simple people’s money, the TV said so?! Awful. I get so very angry, I barely eat. Doctor said I’m like a mill, the grinding wheels worn out, my stomach can’t grind anymore. I should chew real well.
“Oh, how rich was Romania, oh, how rich, only I know, everything went thru us, thru our large warehouse: snails for France, horses to Italy, healing herbs to Germany! Oh, how rich was this country and now they robbed it and ruined it to rags.
“When I see how fat they grew, such huge jowls, fat pigs, incredible, sit in the parliament armchairs warming their seats, making 350 a day! I fist fight the TV screen, robbers and thieves, so no interviews.”
He took me gently by the shoulders, a small innocent pleasure to touch my suntanned flesh, and again wished all the happiness to me and my parents, and walked me steadily along the path towards the front gate. He soon will go in front of the Supreme Chief. He was a just man, never discriminated between Hungarian and Romanian employees. He was extremely strict. His blue eyes told me it might have been so. I held the green cloth rope higher so his jeans hat won’t fall off. He stopped to tell me, man, was he strict. He’d take the six condica/employee sign-in ledgers and look thru it, “Alright, this and this and this say are sick. Possibly drunken/toasted. The workers from the medical insurance should go to their homes on inspection immediately.” And indeed absentees had hangovers. Brought them in. He asked the first one in his office, “ ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?! A family father and you get dead drunk on the money for your family? I can fire you right now. I give you this fine, but if once more you do this, I’m thru with you.’ I could spit on them! The old lady that was my dactylographer, now she died, may she rest in peace, asked me ‘What have you said to this guy, dear comrade? He came out crying!’ So strict I was. Hungarians, Romanians, there was no difference.
“And now? They show on TV old movies, but they don’t show how they shot Ceauşescu, like a dog. Shame on them. He was a smart man who did a lot of good things for this country and he was given respect. Oh, when he went to UK they presented him with six white horses, held him in such high esteem. Would Băsescu,” the nowadays president, “get such treatment? I doubt it.”
And then he proceeded again to tell me the story of the atmosphere in the truck wheel tire. I bailed out thanking him and cajoling him, “Now I have to go home write down what you told me, so the world should know your sorrow. You are the last one standing, do let me hear your stories.” “Oh, I have stories for hours and hours.” “Do tell them, and let me use the recorder. That would be a fine memory for your granddaughter, sir.” He’s way too busy. St. Mary’s Day is close by and he has to go to the cemetery, steep walk up there, and tend to his mother’s and sister’s tomb. Then has to travel to another town. Way too busy for interviews.
“No, I can’t leave any traces, no, I can’t. I’m 92 and they are strong, they could cut my throat in a blink, no trace, no record of what I say.” “But sir, I write this in English, no Securitate would get wind of your stories in New York.” “No, no, one never knows.” “I shall come again, sir.”
Perhaps bring him some of my father’s tomatoes will make him talk. Why, oh, why don’t people think we need old folks. I pay for their old folks' mistreatment. I find it hard to believe he’s in danger if he reveals his secrets. But what secrets can he have?! Maybe he’s just off the rocker, imagining, or if not imagining, still living the dread of communist persecutions. He might be right. Because they certainly didn’t put anyone in prison from Securitate’s ranks. Too many of them. They’re still around, prosperous, well connected. And yet, what secrets he might have? The oath of silence. He might be 92, but his daughter and granddaughter stay behind him.
I don’t know…
Monday, August 08, 2011
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