My sweet little Gyurikám!
You asked me for the story of my life. Well, I will write it down for you, as far as I can still remember it:
I was born on March 2, 1895, in Márac, on a Sunday afternoon. There was such an unusually heavy snowfall that for two weeks no one could get me baptized because of the deep snow — no one could move about at all. In those days it was the custom to baptize babies within a week, because infant mortality was so much higher than it is now. I was the ninth child in the family. My father, Boldizsár Horváth, was a schoolmaster. My childhood was carefree; being the youngest, I was loved and spoiled. [several lines here are crossed out in the original and no longer legible]. In those days, entertainment consisted mainly of families gathering together for parties at one another’s homes. There were four girls and four boys of us, and by the time suitors began calling on me, they were already grown, and crowds of admirers and friends passed through our house. Now and then I managed to steal a little kiss, though of course I was always scolded for it afterward. The years passed, my brothers and sisters married one by one, and I too became a young lady. I traveled to visit my siblings — always with a chaperone, of course, since in those days a proper young lady could not travel alone.
My parents’ closest friends were a wealthy landowning family named Pásztory. The whole village belonged to them, and everyone worked only for them. Their daughter Erzsébet was my best friend, and her brother Jóska was hopelessly in love with me. I liked how openly he showed his feelings — he came every single day in his little cart and brought me beautiful bouquets of flowers. But it could only flatter my vanity, because friendship was all I could ever feel for him. Both families were quite certain we would become a couple. Aunt Pásztory loved me so much that she never knew how to spoil me enough whenever I visited. They had a beautiful manor house, and once, in a room I had never entered before, she opened an enormous cabinet full of silver dinnerware and cutlery and said, “You see — all of this belongs to Jóska. When he marries, it will be yours.” They were that certain of the marriage. My God, and how differently it all turned out. Jóska was at university then, and always wrote long love letters, which I found great entertainment in — there was no radio or television in those days, only reading and letter‑writing. My sister Ilus, who had married and was living in Eszterháza, invited me to visit, and there — to my ruin — I met István Szilágyi, who was then a journalist at the Pesti Hírlap. Within a month he had completely turned my head. That was where first love touched me, and in my naivety I failed to see that I was choosing mud over gold. And Jóska’s timid, true love — his promise to carry me on the palm of his hand, to shield even me from the wind, to call me his own forget‑me‑not — he who scarcely dared touch my hand to kiss it. Why did I never see that pure, honest love? My God, where was my sense? I became Pista’s bride, and went home to announce that I was to be married. My parents would not hear of it. They did everything they could to stop it. Even Erzsi Pásztory came to me in tears, begging: “Irma, give back the ring while there is still time — don’t ruin Jóska.” He shut himself away, utterly despondent, and would not speak to anyone. My poor, dear father told me: “When you realize you have chosen badly, do not come home to complain about it.” We were married; my parents did not attend. Only Pista’s parents were present. We set up a household in Pest, and there…
…my life’s Calvary began. It was there that I first came to realize that poverty surrounded me on every side, how difficult it was to make a wage stretch, how little it truly covered — though I still believed, then, that this was only the beginning, and that things would surely improve. I never imagined it would only ever grow worse. [a few words crossed out]. In the meantime, I was expecting a child. Pista’s parents lived in Mezőtelegd and kept inviting us to visit, since Easter was drawing near, and so we decided to go. Pista told me not to bring much, since the trains were always so crowded and too much baggage would only be a burden — we would only be there a few days, after all. We closed up our apartment, never suspecting that we would not return to it. And so we arrived at my in‑laws’, and on the second morning we woke to a great commotion — shouting in the streets, people running and crying out that the Romanians had broken through. We ran outside too, and by then we could already see, in the distance, the Romanian cavalry arriving. Within minutes we had gathered our few belongings and were running for the station, hoping to catch some train out. The train standing there was already packed to bursting — people on the roof, on the steps — there was no way to board it. In the end, that turned out to be our good fortune, because that train was never allowed to leave; its passengers were later taken off and arrested. Terrible times followed; we were left with nothing, dependent entirely on my in‑laws. That was in the spring, and in December my first little daughter was born. I honestly do not know how we survived those years — there was no work, no food, and yet somehow we went on. Then Pista ran into an old schoolmate of his from the trade school for woodworking, who made him an offer: he had a small workshop he wanted to grow into a proper factory, but he needed skilled men. “Since you have no capital, I will pay you a wage for now, and later, if things go well, we will be partners.” That is how we came to Tasnád. The friend’s name was Keresztesi. He suggested that I, for just a little while, provide board for the workers, until Pista’s wages were enough for us to live on. Among the men was one who was married, and his wife also took her meals with us; the rest were bachelors. (That “little while” lasted five years, during which I cooked lunch and supper for ten people besides ourselves — and never once saw a fillér from Pista for it.) So — to go on — Tasnád was where one of the most exhausting chapters of my life began. Pista lived his own life entirely: he courted women, and after supper went straight to the Casino to play cards. Apart from women, that was his greatest passion — he never once spent an evening at home. Utterly without companionship, abandoned in spirit, I lived through my joyless days. Word of Pista’s scandalous flirtations always found its way back to me eventually. The height of my humiliation came when he began an affair with the sculptor’s wife; when the sculptor found out, and sought to right the insult done to him, he wanted Pista to marry his own wife, so that he, in turn, could marry me — he was quite astonished when I told him that this particular form of revenge held no appeal for me. The sculptor’s family then left Tasnád, and I later heard that he had divorced his wife. Written so briefly, of course, this sounds like nothing at all to you, but those days and months of humiliation were agonizing for me. All through those years I kept trying to find some way back to Pest, in case anything at all remained of what we had left behind. It took four years before conditions…
…had settled enough for passports to be granted. I was the very first person to receive a passport allowing me to cross the Romanian–Hungarian border. That happened to coincide with the news that my father had died, and that I should come home for the funeral. But sadly, by the time I managed to get there, my father had already been buried. He had died quite suddenly. He had gone into the hospital alone that morning, expecting to be home again by afternoon — he had a boil on his neck, the size of an egg, which they meant to lance to let the infection out. By afternoon he was dead. They had botched the operation. I inherited four hold of land from him, worth a considerable sum at the time. My mother and my siblings all advised that I deposit the money in Pest, at the Anglo‑Hungarian Bank, where it would be safest — because if I tried to bring the money across the border officially, the Romanians would give almost nothing for it. This seemed the wisest course to me as well. We still believed, then, that the Romanian occupation could not last much longer, and that we would return to Pest and have something to start over with. (We had no idea then that the bank would fail, and every penny of it would be lost.) So — to go on — the day after I arrived, I went alone to the cemetery, to my father’s grave, and told him, silently, that he had been right — that I had chosen badly, but that I would not complain of it to anyone. I was just about to leave when a figure in black mourning approached — it was Erzsi Pásztory; she too had come to her father’s grave. As we talked, she told me that Jóska had still never married, and said he never would, because he had loved only one woman [a few words crossed out] and loved her still, even though she had married another. In that moment I felt that I could now love him, and cherish him, and be happy at his side — but it was too late. Oh, how many times since have I turned that meeting over in my mind — if only I had told Erzsi then of my unhappiness, of my ill‑fated marriage, I might still have set everything right. But my pride would not allow it. Jóska truly never did marry; Erzsi told me so again, some twenty years later, when we met once more, quite by chance. She was in mourning again, and told me that they had just buried Jóska. My thoughts keep leaping ahead of themselves, so let me return to where I left off. I went up to Pest to look through our old apartment, hoping I might still find something of ours there, but strangers were living in it by then, and after so many years there was no one left to ask about our belongings. And so I went back, and carried on with my work, and my unhappiness. The years passed this way [a few words crossed out], and fate did offer me a chance to change my course — if only I had not been such a coward. A charity ball was held in Tasnád, which it was proper to attend. I never went out anywhere, because every evening I was so tired that all I wished for was to lie down. But I knew that I had to go to this one. I had a length of brilliant red, pure Chinese silk that I had brought from Pest, and I had it made into an evening gown. I had my long hair cut into a bob, which was just then coming into fashion — it had reached down to my ankles before, and I used to wear it braided into a crown around my head. The change was remarkable; even I had to admit to myself how pretty and elegant I looked. And so we went to the ball. I could feel that everyone was looking at me. After a while, a woman I knew came up to me and said, “Irma, you’ve bewitched everyone — I hear it’s all anyone can talk about, how beautiful you are.” I have only set this down in such detail so that you can see…
…that I was, in truth, quite a match for the other women my dear husband spent the whole night dancing with, while he left me sitting there alone. And so a man named Bikfalvy came and sat beside me. He was a railway official, the stationmaster at Tasnád, though he also owned a considerable amount of land. He told me he had long been looking for a chance to speak with me, but that I lived so withdrawn from society that it had been impossible until now. “Please forgive me for what I am about to say,” he said, “but it pains me to see how your husband humiliates himself, entertaining everyone else all evening — how can you bear it? Why do you not divorce him? I can see how unhappy you are.” What he said stunned me, because I had hidden my unhappiness from everyone; I had never spoken of it to a living soul. I only looked at him, and could manage only to say: but where would I go? I rose at once — a dance had just ended — found Pista, and told him I wished to go home; he could walk me back and then return, which he did. The next morning a motorcar pulled into our yard, and to my utter astonishment, Bikfalvy stepped out of it. “Allow me to continue what we spoke of yesterday,” he said. “I know what I am about to say will astonish you — I have loved you from a distance for years, and for years I have watched how your husband squanders you. I know you cannot love me, but I will do everything in my power to win you. Come, just as you are, get into the car with your two children, and I will take you to one of my estates, where my widowed sister keeps house — you may live there while the divorce is arranged. I will see to everything. Before the marriage, I will sign my entire fortune over to you. I want you to have a carefree, beautiful life — I will tend to you as one tends a flower in a hothouse. You will never regret it if you become my wife. You will be my fairy queen.” (I can still hear his voice, even now, as I write these lines — how strange it is to set down that someone once said such things to me.) I listened, astonished; everyone else felt so very far away in that moment, and for one instant it flashed through me how good it would be to leave everything behind. But that sweet moment of revenge was quickly replaced by a sense of propriety — how could a woman with two children do such a thing, and what would the world say, how it would tarnish my name, and so on, and so on. With a level head, I told him this could not be decided in a single moment, that I would think it over. I could see his disappointment; he said he would not give up hope of one day making me his wife. Pista had scarcely left when he came running back — he had seen Bikfalvy’s car. “What did he want with you?” And I told him what Bikfalvy had said. He swore a terrible oath: that if I ever dared do such a thing, he would kill Bikfalvy, and then I could live with the guilt of having made a murderer of him. “No one will ever take you from me — no one, ever!” It was a frightening scene; he behaved like a man possessed. He terrified me. I was afraid of him. And that was the second time I ruined my life. Everything continued exactly as before — the cards, the women — with the one difference that I announced I would no longer feed the workers. Let him support the two of us on his own, then. Keresztesi never made good on his promise; Pista was never made a partner, only ever an employee. It was around then that a man named Steinberger, visiting from Havana, came to see Pista’s beautiful inlay work, and said: “Mr. Szilágyi, you ought to come to Havana yourself. There you could truly make something of your talent — you would have a great future there, I am certain of it. If you come, I will help you.”
The price of the passage then was very nearly the cost of a house. He took out a loan and set off for South America, leaving me behind to close up our household and move to Szombathely, to my mother’s. It took a long time to settle everything, and to obtain permission to resettle in Hungary. We brought the furniture with us as well. Then the letters began to arrive — how ill he was from the change in climate, how dreadful the heat was, and so on. At first he sent money regularly, so that I could pay off our debts, and this went on for more than a year. I was glad when the debt was cleared, thinking we might live a little more easily now — but the money orders began arriving less and less often after that. In their place came photographs, showing him bathing in the sea — always, of course, surrounded by women. The money orders never again reached their old amount, and in truth, if my mother and I had not lived together, sharing the rent between us, we could never have made ends meet. My brother Laci also lived in Szombathely — (you stayed with them too, Gyurikám, when we were fleeing — we stopped there for a night — but you were so small then that you surely cannot remember it) — in the apartment next to ours. They were always inviting me over in the evenings, to sit and talk a while. One evening a colleague of theirs was visiting, a man named Szétag. After that, Szétag became a frequent visitor at Laci’s. It was May, and back home the Catholics held the litany every evening in honor of the Blessed Virgin; I noticed this was not the custom there, and so I always went alone. Szétag found this out, and from then on he came too, and always walked me home afterward. He was a lonely, disappointed soul, and told me he had spent years searching for someone to share his life with. What began as friendship turned, on his side, into love, and he begged me to divorce my husband, since he had a respectable living — he worked at the courthouse, though I no longer recall in exactly what position — but when he told me what his salary would allow us to live on, I thought that even half of it would let us live like proper, decent people. I told my brother Laci that Szétag had, in essence, asked for my hand — that I found him agreeable, and felt nothing more than that — and asked his advice. He told me: run to church and thank God that life is offering you one more chance at a decent life. For months afterward I turned it over in my mind, weighing what to do. In the end, I decided to write to Pista, proposing that he simply marry well and marry rich over there, since he had written of so many wealthy widows he knew. By then he had already been living abroad for three years, without a single word about ever sending for us. I waited desperately for a reply to that letter, but none came. I told Szétag that I would marry him, once I managed to obtain a divorce. I even wrote a second letter, asking whether my first had reached him. That too went unanswered. Then one day the doorbell rang, and I remember my mother saying, “Who on earth could that be, at this hour?” — and there, standing before me, was Pista. “I have come home. You will not divorce me!” He had come home without a single fillér, since every last cent had gone toward his passage, and once again we found ourselves with nothing — nothing at all. There was no other solution; we had to go back to Telegd, to my in‑laws. Those years were perhaps the hardest of my life, in spirit. I honestly do not know how I lived through the years that followed. Perhaps Pista pulled himself together a little, at least for a while, and worked more seriously…
…and built the small workshop he had opened into a proper business, eventually employing twenty men. The Romanian King Carol himself had him do the wood paneling for one of his castles — all of it inlay work. Things began to go well, but Pista soon grew bored with the actual work, left everything to his assistants, and went back to cards instead. One day he came home and showed me that he had been paid forty thousand lei in a single lump sum — enough money, at that time, to buy a house like the one we later had on Mayfield. I was overjoyed; after so much destitution, I finally felt some solid ground beneath my feet. That very evening he went out to play cards, and lost the entire forty thousand lei in a single sitting. I thought that was something no one could possibly survive, but it seems one can survive anything. Poverty returned; he could not keep the business running, and finally closed it. He then went to Bucharest and worked there for about two years. In the end, my sister Lujza’s son got him a position as a storekeeper, with a company that built tunnels. That was the one job, at last, where there was an actual monthly wage — where we could count on the first of the month to bring us money. Then the Second World War broke out; by then we were living in Pest again. Toward the end, the Russians fought house to house, and we lived in the cellar for weeks on end. Air raids were frequent. One bomb struck our building directly — it was terrifying — though it only tore away the top two floors, scattering the debris across the courtyard. Down in the cellar, though, it felt as though everything was about to come down on top of us, that we would die right there — the whole building shook. Then one day Russian soldiers suddenly appeared in the cellar, machine guns in hand, trying out the few Hungarian words they knew: “wristwatch… pocket watch… davai” — they stripped the watches from everyone’s wrists, and anyone who had none was struck across the head for it. Then they rounded up the young women, saying they were being taken to peel potatoes — in truth, of course, they were taken to the soldiers and raped. Your mother, thank God, we managed to hide well, and she was spared. Coming up out of the cellar afterward, all one could see was rubble and the dead. There was no water, no food; everything seemed hopeless. The people of Buda suffered even worse than we did in Pest, because Buda held out for another six weeks — the Germans there refused to surrender, and kept fighting, waiting for reinforcements that never came. Then Buda too fell. Your father lived through that siege on that side — that is how I know it was even worse there. Hard years followed, full of hunger and suffering, and the hope that things would eventually get better. It took perhaps ten years before the food supply improved even a little. I will not go into detail, since it would run on far too long. In the meantime, your mother married your father, and you were born. Then, in the autumn of 1956, Pista was given a voucher for a stay at a resort — that was the only way one could take a holiday in those days, since everything belonged to the state. I looked forward to two carefree weeks of rest, but of course it did not turn out that way. We had barely arrived when Pista promptly found himself a woman, and I was left alone again, eating my heart out over why I had ever come. I could hardly wait for the two weeks, and my humiliation, to be over. The two weeks were just about up when we heard on the radio that revolution had broken out in Pest. I wanted to rush straight home to see what had become of all of you, but no trains were running; there was no way to get back. Ten days later, at last, they began running trains again, and we arrived in a Budapest lying in ruins. Your parents greeted us with the news that the border was open now, since the border guards themselves had scattered, and everyone who could was fleeing…
…they urged us to go together. I decided, though, that I would first travel down to Szombathely, to my brother Laci — it is close to the Austrian border there — and find out whether there might be some safe way across, for a price, of course. I sat on that train for half a day, half frozen from the cold, and had made up my mind to wait just one more half hour before giving up and going home. Right at the half hour, the train finally began to move. The whole train was packed with people fleeing, every one of them bound for the border. Laci told me that one of his sons had already gone, though they did not know how it had turned out. I thought my journey had been for nothing, until on the way back I found myself traveling with two young men who told me they had been caught at the border but let go, and sent home. They said they were going back to Pest for a little money, meaning to try again, and it was they who gave us the address of where one had to go to cross the border. People were being smuggled across at night. And so the four of us set out — though the evening before, Adi and a friend of his had taken you by motorcycle to your other grandmother’s, since they lived close to the Southern railway station and could bring you to the train the next morning. The only way to get about was on foot; the trams were not yet running. With a little food in a knapsack, we set off through the ruins. Pista wept and begged me not to leave him behind. At the train, Aki and the others, and your grandmother with you, were already waiting, and we set off toward our new life. Trudi and her family got off at Veszprém, to say one more goodbye to their parents. We then reached Horváthnádalja, the last station in Hungary, and made our way to the address we had been given. The crowd getting off the train walked straight on toward the border. We were just about to go into the house when a woman called out to us — her husband was a railway track worker, she said, and they would take us across during the daytime; come with them, they would even give us a bicycle, so we could push you along on it and your father would not have to carry you the whole eight kilometers on foot. And so we joined this group. There were several of them; one always went ahead to scout the way. Suddenly we saw Russian army trucks, loaded up, bringing back captured people who had been heading straight for the border. There happened to be a church there, and the priest was just then sweeping snow from the steps; he opened the door so we could shelter inside while the trucks passed. That was where you prayed: “Little Jesus, bring me a beautiful Christmas tree.” After a while the scout came back and told us we could go on now, that the Russians had gone. Your father wrapped you in the plaid blanket, set you on the bicycle, and pushed you for kilometers along the railroad ties. We finally reached the point where the guide could go no further; only one man remained with us from there. We ate what little food we had left, and after that your father had to carry you in his arms. The road led on through plowed fields, buried under the winter snow, so that one could not tell where the next step would land — into a furrow, or onto solid ground. After a while I felt I could not go on, and told them to leave me there. Your mother told me only to lean on her, to gather myself, that the border was right there. And it was true — from far off we could already make out the Austrian border guards, and people waving for us to turn right. At first we did not understand, but then we noticed the Russians on the left, armed, though they did not fire — I believe we were already on neutral ground by then. I do not even remember how I managed those last few hundred meters. The guide handed us over to the Austrian border…
…guard, and asked permission to go into the village for a little yeast. That is how we arrived in Mossendorf. A great many refugees were already waiting there, some of them for as long as two weeks, hoping to move on. We were fortunate — within about two hours they sent us on to Graz, and from there to Steyr, where we were housed in barracks. There were plenty of hardships, because feeding such a crowd, and moving them onward, was no small task. Nearly a month passed before we finally reached Munich, from where American military aircraft flew the refugees onward. For three days they drove us out to the airfield and brought us back again, since the weather was so foggy that nothing could take off. On the third day, at last, our plane took off. It was an old propeller aircraft, which had to land in Scotland in the middle of a terrible snowstorm, so that the flight ended up taking twenty‑two hours in all. Even in America we could not land at the airport where the buses were waiting for us, on account of the weather; we had to set down at another field, and wait for hours on the plane before the buses could reach us. Gyurikám — both of us, you and I, came down with fevers, and to this day we still do not know why. We arrived on America’s blessed soil on December 21st. Various churches helped settle the refugees into their new lives. Gyurka managed to reach Uncle Imre, spoke with him on the telephone, and was told that in a couple of days a busload of people were being brought to Cleveland, and that we should come there too. That is how we came to Cleveland. We stayed with them for two weeks, and then moved into a place on Lake Avenue. You already have a few small memories from that time yourself. They found your father a position; an American church brought us furniture and clothing, and our American life began. I will not write any more about this, since from that point on you were a witness to our lives yourself.
It's very hard to grow old. I did not know then that I was destined for such a long life. I am glad, at least, that I lived to see your great successes. I pray to God so often that He may carry you through your whole life. May I also be granted to see your parents live out their beautiful life together — I believe a marriage like theirs, where they possess so little of this world’s goods and yet love one another so much, is a rare thing on this earth. Love one another — and love me too, so that what remains of my life may be a little easier to bear.
With love, I kiss you,
Nagymama.
A Strange Dream
Here I must add a strange dream of mine. [a few words here are crossed out and illegible]. I dreamed that word came to me that my beloved sister Janka had been buried alive at the Romanian border. I run, I rush, I reach the grave, and falling to my knees beside it, I see that it is my own name written on the headstone. Sadly, this came true. Was it a premonition, taking the shape of a dream? Who can say…
— end of the letter as preserved —
