Chapter 15

That winter was tough. I had very little saved and couldn’t keep up with my cousin’s new high standard of living. He wouldn’t eat in any more, he was taking all his meals in lunchrooms and delicatessen stores, sometimes even in a real restaurant; so we separated. I moved to a filthy bug-infested room just off Tenth Avenue, not quite a flophouse but the nearest thing to it. Even though I pulled my rusty iron bed into the center of the room and sprinkled insect powder all around the legs the bedbugs still outmaneuvered me. They crawled around the ceiling above the bed and then just plopped down.

I did not find another job for months. By then I was actually down to starvation level, subsisting on one meager meal a day. I had developed an almost continuous cramp in my stomach and spent hours in front of restaurants just reading the menus. In fact, that was all the reading I did because in that state I couldn’t concentrate on anything outside the “Help Wanted Male” ads. Always a voracious reader, I would now sit in the library for hours with a book open in front of me, without turning a page. I was so hungry my eyes would blur and my mind wander, developing delusions.

I had only a few pennies left in my pocket, seventeen to be exact, the day I finally landed a job.

That evening I asked the boss for a dollar loan until payday. The next night I did the same and every night thereafter until the end of the week. I had been hired at twenty-five dollars a week as a nailer. Nailers were then paid thirty-five to forty dollars and

I was a fast one, but I had asked for only twenty-five so as to get the job.

On payday the boss handed me thirteen dollars. I looked at the money and then at the boss. I told him there was a mistake, after deducting the five dollars advanced I still had twenty dollars coming.

The boss said: “No.”
“But you hired me for twenty-five a week!”

The boss did not dispute that nor did he claim that my work was unsatisfactory.

“All I am paying is eighteen a week. Take it or leave it.”

Borrowing those dollars each day had told him about my desperate situation. He knew I had to take it.

I was learning. I learned that there are variations and degrees in human exploitation. My first boss, Kourash, had exploited my zeal, my na•ïvetéŽ, my ambition; characteristics for which I was personally responsible. Kourash was a rascal; he outwitted me and I could take that without much rancor. But this boss had exploited my desperate need for food, my starving condition, for which I was not responsible, a situation beyond my control. That was inhumanly cruel. I felt like springing at his throat.

I learned that cruel exploitation germinates hate.

Murderous hate!

Chapter 14

The shop was fun. It was hard work, manual labor, but I enjoyed it. When other new immigrants complained about their “degradation” and cried for their old life in the “old country,” I treated them with contempt. My old life was all in the past, buried and forgotten. It was wonderful not to be idle, a pleasure to be working.

Mr. Kourash, my boss, saw to it that this pleasure was prolonged. He kept me busy every minute of the day for the twelve hours I worked. Ours was a nonunion shop and I had to be all over the place helping everyone, cutters, operators, nailers, “working to their hand.” Mr. Kourash was smart, said to have been in vaudeville in his youth, a fact which increased my respect for him. He was far above the workers in his shop in brains, also in schooling. Most of the men in the shop could hardly write, some did not even know how to keep their tallies accurate. One thing in particular astonished me. There would be constant arguments between the boss and the cutters as to whether a certain skin was or was not large enough for the given pattern. The boss would usually insist it was, the cutters would argue it was not. To me there was no basis for all that heated dispute, a few quick measurements with the ruler would give the total square inches in both skin and pattern. When I would demonstrate that, the one in the wrong would look at me with mistrust, being ignorant of the most elementary trigonometry. Of course I would be proven right every time by actual results, which made them suspicious of me. After all, I was a greenhorn, certainly no furrier, so how could I foretell with certainty how much one can get out of a skin, when that ability supposedly required years of practical experience.

Within a few weeks I had my own chores sufficiently well systematized to find time to assist the nailers in their work. We really needed another nailer but Mr. Kourash would not hire one, preferring to press for higher production. The nailers produced between forty to fifty collars each. Soon I nailed an additional 15 to 20 collars, which greatly eased the pressure on them.

My cousin had been raised by his boss to $15. Next Saturday I was eagerly awaiting my raise but it failed to materialize. My cousin taunted me about how much better his boss was; besides, that three dollars made a tremendous difference between his new standard of living and mine—he could now afford to eat more. Finally, after another week went by, I mustered up enough fortitude to speak to the boss.

“Mr. Kourash,” I approached him with trepidation. “I would like to talk with you.” I did not have the chance to continue because he cut right in.

“I want to talk to you, too,” he said. “I want to tell you how pleased I am with you. You’re intelligent, you’re ambitious, you’re honest, you’re dependable.” It was quite a speech and it filled me with gratitude. I thought he liked me but now I knew.

“Now,” he paused dramatically, “I’ll show you how great my confidence is in you. Here are the keys. I am entrusting you with them. From now on you’ll open and close the shop.” I was both elated and touched. I was advancing rapidly, indeed. Here I was, only five weeks in America and already entrusted with the keys to an entire shop. Mr. Kourash did not say anything about the raise and it would have been indelicate to mention that in that uplifting moment.

What if I didn’t get the raise! I had the keys. It meant getting up still earlier to have the shop open by 6:30, and leaving later in the evening, but it did not matter. I had the keys! One night something went wrong again with the burglar alarm and I had to wait until ten before the Holmes people fixed it. When I mentioned that to Mr. Kourash the next day, he was most sympathetic and told me that next time that happened it was all right for me to nail up a few more collars while waiting.

My cousin was far less impressed with the significance of the keys and I was wondering whether he wasn’t right after all. I was determined to ask for a three-dollar raise the next Saturday. It was just and I had more than earned it. The more experience I gained the more work I had to do, and the harder I worked the hungrier I became. I was already in debt to my cousin for $1.20, all of which I had spent on additional food.

The next Saturday I called the boss aside again. “Mr. Kourash, I would like to talk to you.” I started where I had left off the previous Saturday.

“I want to talk to you, too,” again he interrupted with a majestic gesture. “I want to tell you how pleased I am with the progress you are making. To show how much I think of you, beginning this week I am going to pay you one dollar more.”

He was giving me a raise voluntarily without my even asking for it! He was really a good boss, a fine man to work for. True, I had intended to ask him for a three-dollar raise but I couldn’t do that under these circumstances. A man is not a pig.

Thirteen dollars a week still did not allow me to buy all the food I needed. I was always hungry. My cousin had been raised to $18 that week and the week after that to $20, all without his even asking for it. The season was on, the men in the shop were all working overtime and got paid for it, I didn’t. My cousin asked me to go to work in his shop, he had talked with his foreman and he was eager to take me on. That Saturday I went to the boss and asked him for $18 a week. In truth I had planned to ask him for $20, but faltered at the last minute.

Mr. Kourash was deeply wounded by my action. Here he was treating me like his own son, entrusting me with the keys, giving me all the opportunity to learn the trade. He had been accustomed to people taking advantage of his trusting confident nature, of his generosity. But never, never did he dream that I, of all people, would show such ingratitude. He became real angry, and gave me a terrific dressing down, accusing me of treachery, of cold-bloodedly stabbing him in the back.

I felt wretched and miserable. Had I known he would take it so personally I would rather have cut my tongue out than bring up the subject. I tried to explain to him that all I wanted was a few dollars more and only because I was always hungry, that the hard work and the long hours, which I did not mind at all, gave me a much bigger appetite, which in turn put me deeper in debt to my cousin. But every time I wanted to interrupt him he waved me aside. By the time he finished it was too late for that explanation, I was too choked with emotion to talk. I took the keys, laid them silently on the table and went to put on my jacket to leave.

“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Kourash, his voice again gentle and kind as it had always been with me.

“Home,” I answered miserably, “you don’t want me here any more.”

Mr. Kourash was amazed. Of course he wanted me, hadn’t he told me dozens of times how highly he thought of me, how much above the average, the common run of shopworkers I stood in his esteem? Not only that, he was going to raise me one dollar to fourteen dollars a week.

But my jacket was already on; besides, I was too emotionally disturbed to listen. To prove how unjust he was in his accusation I told him that my cousin had been raised to $20 without ever having asked for it. Mr. Kourash’s face turned crimson.

“So that’s what it is?” he roared. “It was he who put you up to this!” He knew my cousin, he would often come to the shop and wait for me to have lunch together. My cousin had a full lunch hour while I would get away only when I could. Now that Mr. Kourash discovered what was back of it all he was no longer angry with me. He told me that he knew from the minute he laid eyes on my cousin that he was a born trouble-maker and predicted that he would come to no good end. He advised me to stay away from him in the future and to inform him that he was not to set foot again in his shop, ever. He realized I had been misled and offered me $15 a week.

By then I was stubborn. I had not mentioned my cousin’s pay for the purpose of bargaining but merely to refute his accusations. Now that Mr. Kourash had blamed my cousin, it was important to set the facts straight. “My cousin is getting twenty and I know the trade better, produce more work than he.”

Mr. Kourash picked up the keys, handed them to me and said in a soft, gentle, paternal voice, “You will be paid $18 beginning next week.” He was so kind about it I felt like embracing him. The raise was to start the next week and it would have been absolutely in bad taste to remind him of that extra dollar for this week he had first offered. That dollar would have bought me an extra hamburger and a double sweet roll at Max’s Busy Bee every day that week, for which I greatly hungered, but—a man can’t be a pig.

It was a very good season for furs that year and the rush was on. The nailers got hopelessly behind and there was not an unemployed nailer to be found in the entire fur market. Mr. Kourash called me aside one day and asked where my cousin was, he hadn’t seen him around for quite a while. When I reminded him that he had forbidden my cousin to set foot in his shop he waved that aside and asked me if I could influence him to quit his job and work for him. That way, since we were close friends, the two of us could be together all day. I told him that my cousin was by then making twenty-five dollars a week. Mr. Kourash said to offer him thirty. My cousin was willing but wanted thirty-five. Mr. Kourash was outraged over that impudence from a greenhorn yet he not only hired him, but also agreed to pay him for overtime, on which my cousin insisted. The entire shop was working overtime until nine every night and my cousin was getting prosperous. He bought himself a new suit, a pair of shoes, three shirts with silk stripes, and even a sapphire tie-pin for thirty dollars.

I was turning out more work than my cousin, I put in fourteen hours a day, and I was still getting only eighteen dollars a week, no overtime. In addition to that I had acquired other responsibilities. I had a system worked out and knew even better than Mr. Kourash where and how to straighten out bottlenecks, what orders had to be rushed out first, and so on. The men would rather turn to me than to Mr. Kourash if they needed anything, preferring to take their instructions from me. It was a gradual change-over and no one knew how it had come about but it definitely improved production. I took stock of the existing situation and then approached Mr. Kourash, boldly asking for an outright raise to thirty-five dollars plus overtime pay, like my cousin was getting.

This time Mr. Kourash did not roar. He took me to his office, invited me to sit down and we had a long talk, a confidential one. He told me, in the strictest confidence, that all the workers in the shop would be laid off as soon as the season was over, all except me. He did not consider me on their level, a worker, but as his assistant, his right-hand man—I was to have a steady job with him as long as he lived. Furthermore, he was getting old. I was making excellent progress, eventually he would turn the entire shop over to me. He had been working hard long enough, he often wanted to take it easier but he had never been able to find anyone sufficiently trustworthy until I came along. It was a serious talk and it opened up a bright future for me. America was really proving to be the land of unlimited opportunity. He also raised me to twenty-five dollars right there and then. As a steady employee, who gets paid whether the shop works or not, of course I was not entitled to overtime pay—a fair and reasonable conclusion.

My cousin and I had been getting along very well except for his occasional cynical attitude which I resented. He jeered again when, in strict confidence, I related my talk with Mr. Kourash to him. Having been less confined to the shop than I, he had broader contacts with other fur workers on the market. He said that all fur workers expected to be laid off after the season, that was why he wanted to make all the money he could to tide him over until next spring when the shops opened up again. He ridiculed me for overvaluing my position, he did not mind from whom he was taking orders, me, Mr. Kourash, or anybody, as long as he was paid for it. My cousin had also been a student in Hungary and I told him I was distressed to see how rapidly he had assumed the attitude of a common shopworker. He laughed and told me I would soon find out that a shop was not an officers’ club and the word of a boss in America was not the bond of a gentleman. I saw no sense in arguing against such a prejudiced attitude and so I dropped the subject.

Four weeks later the season was over and all the men in the shop were laid off, including my cousin. My approach to my job had paid dividends. When I pointed that out to my cousin, he merely shrugged his shoulders—he hoped for my sake that I would be proved right.

The next week in the shop was like a dream. I nailed up the few remaining collars and then a small order came in. Since Mr. Kourash was no mechanic that left it all to me and I cut, sewed, nailed, and finished up that order brilliantly all by myself. I was really getting to be an all-around master furrier, the kind that was getting scarce in the trade.

After that order had been filled I set about to clean the shop. I swept and mopped every corner, every inch of the floor, sorted all the patterns, took inventory of the stock, bundled up all loose skins and hung them neatly on the racks. When everything was spick-and-span and a joy to behold, I called Mr. Kourash in and proudly displayed the shop to him. Mr. Kourash examined everything minutely and was greatly pleased. He then pulled out sixteen dollars and told me he wouldn’t be needing me any more, I should see him next spring, and to leave the keys on his desk.

He wouldn’t even let me finish out the week!

He even shortchanged me thirty-five cents!

Chapter 13

Working in the fur shop was exciting. It was a sweatshop but I did not know that then. I worked a seventy-two hour, six-day week. My working day started at seven o’clock in the morning. The boss would come in ahead of me and after unhooking the Holmes Burglar Alarm System he would lay out the work. When I came in at seven, I would sweep the place and wet the skins for the cutters. The men started at eight, quit at five. Afterward I finished up after them, did whatever the boss told me to do, and left some time after seven in the evening. The boss would leave with me unless something went wrong with the Holmes system, which happened often. In that event, we would have to stay and wait until the Holmes men came, checked, and mended the break. Often that took until eight or later. On Saturdays the shop would close down at twelve but the boss and I would stay on. He liked to stay late and always found enough for me to do.

My pay was $12 a week. My parents lived in Philadelphia then and I had taken a furnished room in New York with my cousin. He had arrived in America a few months ahead of me and he was also working in a fur shop, making the same money as I did. My uncle was a skin dealer and he had found his job for him also.

We each paid four dollars a week for the room. Sixty cents of our pay went for carfare, $1.05 for cigarettes, $1.oo for laundry. That left us each $5.35 a week for food and all our other expenses. It worked out to 76 cents per day, 79 cents for Sunday, a holiday. It was very little, but we managed.

Breakfast came to ten cents for a cup of coffee and two hard rolls. After a while we discovered a place where the cups were larger and the rolls the size of a fist.

For lunch I would go to Max’s Busy Bee on Sixth Avenue, right around the corner from the shop. They served a big fat hamburger on a big roll for five cents, which included the gravy. I did not ask what kind of meat they used. The burgers were big, the gravy was heavy, and I was always very hungry. I would have two of these hamburgers and a sweet roll with a dab of pink jelly on top. That feast set me back thirteen cents each day, but I considered it well worth the price. It was at Max’s Busy Bee that I first discovered how inadequate was the conversational English I had taught myself from books before coming to America. I would ask the people standing at the counter alongside of me: “May I bother you for the salt cellar?” and they would just stare, uncomprehending. My cousin who was learning his English here finally told me how to say it in American.

“Gimme de salt,” he taught me. He was a good teacher. I had no more such troubles.

For dinner, my cousin and I would usually splurge. We would buy two quarts of milk, two stale loaves of bread, and two full pounds of liverwurst, the cheapest meat by far and most delicious. That dinner would come to 3 cents each, leaving us with a surplus of eighteen cents daily for luxuries such as an occasional banana, for cultural needs such as a newspaper, or to be saved up for emergencies such as buying razor blades or handkerchiefs.

I usually went through my entire pay but my cousin managed to save part of his. By the end of three weeks he had accumulated considerable capital. He wouldn’t tell me how much but I suspected he had at least three dollars saved up. I envied him and made bitter reproaches to myself for being a wastrel, too self-indulgent for my own good. I knew I needed self-discipline and made resolve after resolve not to be such a spendthrift but I simply lacked the necessary firmness of character.

Of course, from time to time certain complicated borderline cases would arise that made it difficult to decide what was the more economical practice to follow in this puzzling land. Take the case of the handkerchiefs.

The air in all fur shops is full of flying hairs, a constant irritant to nostrils unaccustomed to it, as ours were, necessitating the use of an unusually large number of handkerchiefs. Our landlady did not allow us to wash them in our room and the laundry charged four cents apiece. So far, all good and well.

However, peddlers would come around the fur market selling handkerchiefs for five cents each, six for a quarter. This posed a real dilemma. Laundering six soiled handkerchiefs cost twentyfour cents, while here were six brand new handkerchiefs for twenty-five cents, costing only a penny more. What was the economically sounder practice?

My cousin decided to continue to have his laundered. A penny saved was a penny earned, a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush.

To me, the latter analogue rested on a false premise. Birds fly away but handkerchiefs were solid, tangible objects which once bought became personal property, i.e., wealth. I decided on the long-range capital gain, buy new ones, save up the soiled.

Life proved my cousin right. Months later when we decided to move from that place, I found my suitcases filled to overflowing with brand new but soiled handkerchiefs. It was either pack them or my clothes. One or the other had to be left behind, and of course the clothes won out. My capital accumulation was wiped out at one fell swoop—my first painful experience with that economic phenomenon termed “business cycle.” My cousin who was secretly worried about my daily rising stock of handkerchiefs, now showed open relief. He was gracious enough to console me, however, by explaining:

“One day you’re up, the next day you’re down. That’s America.”

A brief near-history Hungary

Last week’s chapter ends the primarily-Hungarian portion of my grandfather’s memoir. Because of that, this week I wanted to take a hiatus of posting from American Commissar, and instead post a brief history of Hungary during the period of my grandfather’s memoir. The following excerpt is from the novel Prague by Arthur Phillips and gives an interesting perspective on this turbulent period of Hungary’s near-history during and between the World Wars—the format is also unique.

Master’s in Business Administration, Final Exam, Case-Study Essay Question, as administered to Károly Horváth between July 28, 1914, and July 16, 1947:

You are the head of a small but highly successful family-owned publishing business. Please outline your corporate decisions after each of the following seventeen events take place in the country of operations. Include explanations of how you access materials and labor, gauge the market, determine product range, carry out marketing, and manage an integrated strategic long-term planning function within your senior executive staff.

i. Your country fights and loses a world war; labor is scarce; inflation is alarmingly high. You lose your second oldest son to disease, which sinks you into an uncommunicative depression for several weeks. You decide to stop publishing your most profitable titles, as their authors are responsible for the flu that claimed your son’s life. Revenue earned during the war from publishing government casualty lists, draft notices, maps, and propaganda is almost entirely depleted by the end of your despondency.

ii. Your country secedes from the stable political system it has belonged to for centuries; politics are dangerous and the government is weak.

iii. A violent Communist dictatorship emerges and nationalizes your press. You lose everything and are arrested. The Communist regime is nearly 70 percent Jewish, a statistic that strikes you as highly significant. Your execution is tentatively included on the Communists’ very busy schedule.
iv. Your country loses another war (more of an epilogue to the last one) and is invaded by Romanians, who find themselves briefly in control of Budapest before giving it back and going home. You remain in prison throughout, and your execution date is first advanced then indefinitely postponed.

v. After only four months of Communism, a right-wing counterrevolution is successfully launched. You are freed from prison, your firm is restored to you (you fire your three staunchly anti-Communist Jewish employees on allegations of crypto-Communist sympathies), and you are personally congratulated for your courage by the new head of state, a regent/vice admiral. (He is a regent, although there is no monarch on whose behalf he administers. He is a vice admiral, although your country no longer has a coastline, having lost it—as well as 70 percent of its land and 60 percent of its population—under the predictably unpopular and embittering Trianon treaty ending the world war.) The regent cites your press as the memory of a people and the conscience of a nation. You receive a medal, which you hang in your office, in a glass case with a small electric light suspended over it. Executions of real and suspected Communists sweep the country. The demand for “national-Christian” newspapers and writers seems a very tempting foundation on which to rebuild your firm’s fortunes.

vi. Civil war is narrowly averted when a pretender to the throne of Hungary briefly appears.

vii. Peace and prosperity return at last to your country. Demand rises for your back catalog of Hungarian authors and scholars, though you privately associate them with imprisonment, tyranny, murder and disease. The prosperity they can bring you, though a necessity, seems to you a sulfurous compromise with evil.

viii. The Depression.

ix. Elections subsequent to the Depression unsurprisingly favor the fascists. The regent’s new government flirts with Mussolini and pushes through laws setting quotas on Jews admitted to universities and the professions, then declaring them an alien race. Please detail your firm’s extensive opportunities for profit and acquisition.

x. Another world war. Your country tries very hard to stay out of it, wedged as it is between two very large opposing combatants who don’t think yours really counts as an independent nation. Detail your new government and military printing contracts.

xi. Forced to pick sides, our country wades delicately into the war as a member of the Axis and shyly helps invade the Soviet Union. The government forbids marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Please estimate how many government-edict posters you can produce and paste in Jewish neighborhoods on short notice.

xii. At the Germans’ repeated insistence, the Hungarian government grudgingly, declares war on the United States and Great Britain. New laws force Jews to wear yellow stars and live in a Pest ghetto. After initial efforts to ship Jews to death camps, the government halts deportation when the Budapest police responsible for the roundups threaten to rebel. Please recalculate poster revenues, including both the deportation orders and their revocation.

xiii. The government implies to its German ally that it would like to pull out of the war now, that it had only gotten involved in order to reclaim a little of the Hungarian land lost in the last war, that it has no serious grievance against the British and Americans anyhow. The regent secretly negotiates with the West, then publicly announces, over radio, Hungary’s separate peace with them. Hungary is instantly overrun by its spurned German ally. The regent’s intricate diplomatic ploy was useless: Germany and its Hungarian Arrow Cross quasi-SS allies establish headquarters in the palace on Buda’s Castle Hill and bundle the regent off to Berlin. Back in Budapest, some of your countrymen eagerly offer to help load Jews onto trains en route to Auschwitz. Jewish possessions and apartments are free for the taking. The Arrow Cross, some of whose members work or have worked for your press, rival the SS in their spirited brutality. Meanwhile, other members of the government continue to enact the terms of their separate peace with the Allies and declare war on the (occupying) Germans. Your country is at war with everyone. Please be specific as to your business and commercial opportunities.

xiv. The Americans and British bomb your in the mornings. Your eldest son (and trained heir) is killed. The Soviets bomb you in the evenings. Your third son is killed. The Soviets invade. The Germans—having already been driven out of nearly every country they once occupied—decide, for no discernible strategic region, to make a last stand atop Castle Hill. Jews are murdered in the streets and along the lovely Danube riverfront quays, where they are tied together and pushed from the elegant Corsó in front of the bombed Bristol, Carlton, and Hungaria Hotels into the icy river. Tank and artillery battles flatten the city. Your wife is killed. Please explain how to continue profitable press operations despite your crippling grief, thoughts of suicide, and the country’s near-total economic collapse.

xv. As the last of the Germans retreat, murdering as they flee (Hungary is their enemy), the nation’s victorious Russian saviors begin to steal or rape anything worth stealing or raping (Hungary is their enemy). Your office is smashed to pieces, and Soviet soldiers defecate on your library, including rare editions dating back to the 1800s, among which are exquisitely produced volumes of your grandfather’s poetry. The Soviet Army, needing to meet the deliriously high POW numbers it reported to Stalin during the war, kidnaps Hungarian males to crate back to the USSR whether or not they ever fought and, if they did fight, whether or not they fought for the Axis. Your last remaining child, a strapping boy of twenty-three, hides in the basement for 157 days, then emerges, squinting, ninety-four pounds under his prewar weight. You are not much interested anymore.

xvi. Your country has lost another world war. Hungarian currency is worthless. Ink and paper are scarce. The city boasts no gas, electricity, telephone service or unbroken glass. Your office building is standing, but your presses are badly damaged. Some surviving Jews begin to return and reclaim their looted apartments, furniture and other possessions. Please operate your family business in the current chaos, and with scarcely enough energy or desire to get out of your reeking bed.

xvii. Relative peace, semi-democracy, and rebuilding ensue, though the Communists are organizing in the background, arresting, torturing, murdering their opponents while they take over the police and security apparatus of the country. You have few employees, few capital assets, no appetite to go on. You spend days at a time just sitting in an overstuffed brown chair with a grease stained antimacassar. The owners of this chair have not yet returned from their wartime residence. The question of whether they will return and then find and claim this chair, which is rightly yours, occupies a disproportionate amount of our thinking. You hardly speak at all. Your remaining son, an accidental child of your middle age, whom you know only slightly, brings you food and cigaretts. You eat little and smoke much. Occasionally, you go to the press and watch silently as some of your employees attempt to rebuild. You are accused of pro-Nazi sympathies for some of your actions and statements during the war, but your son defends you vigorously; rather than being hanged in public, you are largely left alone. You are indifferent. You die of chronic untreated heart trouble and your son buries you at Kerepesi Cemetery in the bright sunshine of July 16, 1947. You are laid to rest in the same vault that contains your numerous ancestors, your wife, your twin sister, and your four eldest children. The owners of the armchair find their way home the next week, and your son does not know what to say or do other than politely hold the door and allow the neighbor he has known and liked since childhood push her furniture back across the hall, where it belongs.

Chapter 12

As soon as I got well I went to Budapest and in January, 1919 enrolled in the Medical School of the Royal University of Budapest. I also obtained a job with the Gabor Institute, a private school for the problem children of the wealthy. Some of the pupils were backward, some came from broken homes or were unwanted, others were the unmanageable, the kind no other school in the country would take. I was hired to teach mathematics and physical culture after my classes at the University, in exchange for room and board plus a nominal pay. Since jobs were almost impossible to find, it was a most fortunate arrangement.

I did not relish my job. The children were spoiled and in general looked down on their tutors who, as they well knew, came from poorer families.

One of my colleagues, a brilliant chemistry major just about to receive his degree, advised me to be deferential in my relationship with the boys or I wouldn’t last long, because Dr. Gabor, the head of the institute, would invariably side with his wealthy pupils in any dispute.

That attitude, as I very soon found out, presented a grave problem in discipline. The boys acted as they pleased, studied or not, behaved in a loud and disrespectful manner. There was a great deal of masturbation in the dormitories, also some evidence of homosexual practices, and the tutors had to be on the lookout for that.

It was quite an ordeal. Attending classes at the University mornings and part of the afternoons, teaching until seven, supervising the dormitories until ten in the evening, then doing my own studying far into the night, was beginning to tax me. I became irritable and took a firm hand with the boys. This was immediately reported to Dr. Gabor who called me on the carpet. He was a pompous man of very short stature with a grotesquely outsize head on his scrawny neck, the largest head I had seen on a man. He censured me severely, stating that unless I learned how to use more tact and diplomacy I would not last long with his institute.

Since I needed the job badly I gave that problem serious study. Most of the trouble originated with the older boys. They were the leaders and the younger ones simply followed their example or even tried to outdo it. The next day I changed the physical culture routine by instituting wrestling. Wrestling was not an accepted form of exercise; it was considered an undignified activity fit only for street urchins. I even added an extra twist—ending the sessions with a controlled free-for-all. Each day I would choose five or six of the most obnoxious boys whom I wanted to see roughed up and set them on each other.

It worked for a while. The boys took to it and I took good care to prevail upon their manly pride to keep them from complaining. They did a far better job of beating each other up than I would have dared to do, yet my standing with the boys improved. All went well until one of my colleagues reported that I was teaching the children ungentlemanly deportment, and Dr. Gabor called me into his office again. He told me curtly to discontinue wrestling at once, impatiently rejecting my argument that the pupils, by then, actually enjoyed it and that it improved their dormitory and classroom behavior. He told me acidly he was not entering into a pedagogic discussion with me, he was telling me what to do. He added ominously that he was too busy that evening but would see me the next day. This disturbed me. I liked my classes at the University; losing my job would present a serious problem.

At ten that evening, after the dormitories were finally in silence, I decided to take a walk. It was against the rules of the Gabor Institute for tutors to go out nights without permission, but since I was in trouble anyway, I did not care.

When I reached Erzsébet Boulevard, that broad thoroughfare usually teeming with life seemed quite deserted and this puzzled me. Although I seldom read the newspapers I knew there was a streetcar strike on—I had had to walk to the University that day. I also knew a printers’ strike was on, that no newspapers had been published, and that there was some kind of trouble between the Social-Democrats and Communists.

I knew only in a vague way who the Socialists were, they were the workers in the trade unions. Of the Communists I knew even less. I remembered having read some time back that there were thirty-seven of them, all former prisoners of war who had returned from Russia with a man named Béla Kun who was their leader. Ever since then they had been making trouble for the Social-Democrats. Béla Kun and some of his friends had been arrested and beaten by the police. They were still in jail as far as I knew—not that I cared one way or another. Politics did not interest me, I had my own problems.

I was standing in front of a large café trying to puzzle out why there were so few people around when I saw a straggling line advancing in the center of the deserted boulevard carrying crudely lettered placards which read:

“Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!”

“Long Live Béla Kun.”

The marchers were evidently factory hands, poorly dressed, rather scrawny and underfed. I counted them, there were nineteen, five of them women. I was curious. I went over to the nearest man in the line and fell in step with him. He was an undersized fellow wearing a checkered cap. I asked him what they were doing. He looked me over carefully and then said: “Demonstrating for the proletarian dictatorship.” I wanted to know where they were going.

“To the Eastern Railway Depot, to get arms!”

That interested me.

“Why would they give you arms? Have you an authorization?”

“They will have to give them to us, we are in power now. The proletariat in power is armed!” he declaimed.

I became even more interested. I knew what dictatorship was, Sulla in Rome had been a dictator. But I was not quite sure what proletariat meant, although lately I had come across the word frequently in the newspapers, also on some posters. He explained to me. He was a proletarian. He was a factory worker. Proletariat meant all the workers together who had nothing to lose but their chains and the whole world to gain. He said I was not a proletarian, I was a student. When I objected that I was also working, I was tutoring, he said that I was of the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia were not much good, but students were allies. The intelligentsia could be allies, too. I could be a double ally but still no proletarian.

Hearing our conversation a couple of other people moved to my other side so that I was no longer walking on the outside but near the middle of the column. Every time they saw a group of people on the sidewalk they shouted their slogan and so did I—it was fun. They called to the people to join us, but few of them did. Most of them hurried on ahead, some even turned back abruptly.

It was a long march to the Eastern Depot and I got a bit of education. Béla Kun had been released from jail and the Communists and Social Democrats were now the government. Count Mihály Károlyi, President of the Republic, had abdicated and turned the government over to them.

“Who is going to be the president now? Béla Kun?” I asked. That was a childish question. There was to be no president any more, only the proletarian dictatorship which was much better, and Béla Kun was to be the dictator. Everything would be taken away from the rich, who were capitalist exploiters, their factories, land, castles and everything, and divided among the poor. That sounded fine to me but I did not believe it. I asked many other questions but most of the answers were vague. I concluded they were only guessing, they didn’t know themselves. After all, they were only ignorant workers. How could they possibly know?

(It took me more than a decade to realize how incredibly wrong I was to feel so superior to them—in attributing their inability to answer my questions clearly to their lack of formal education. They could not possibly have given me the right answers because nobody knew the right answers then. Even in this nuclear age, when the physical survival of all mankind depends on our finding the right answers, those answers are still shrouded in the mist of the future.)

After we reached the Eastern Depot we milled around for quite a while until a couple of the proletarians finally located the railway official who had the key to the arsenal. They surrounded him, argued with him, but he refused to yield until one of the women snatched the huge key ring out of his hand.

It took time to find the right key to fit the lock and to open it. There were no more than a few dozen rifles inside. I looked around for a carbine but there was none, so I took one of the rifles. There was no ammunition in the room. They looked funny, those proletarian men and women carrying their rifles clumsily, like picks and shovels. I was still wearing my old army uniform but with the insignia removed, for I had no civilian clothes. The rifle looked good on me and it also felt good.

After we got ourselves armed nobody knew what to do next, or had any suggestions, so we decided to disperse and go home.

When I got to the gate of the Gabor Institute it was nearly three A.M. I did not care, I was full of animation and not at all sleepy. I rang the bell, not apologetically and gently as usual but hard and loud, enjoying the clangor. After a while I heard Dr. Gabor inside angrily demanding to stop that noise, and wanting to know what was going on. He flung the door open shouting that he’d “teach . . .”

Dr. Gabor glared at me in his long white nightshirt, shouting angrily, how did I dare come in at that hour of the night, waking up the entire school, who gave me permission to go out, on and on.

I just stood there grinning and then brought my rifle smartly off my shoulder. Dr. Gabor’s eyes bulged out in his grotesque head. He started to stutter.

“What . . . What . . . What’s the meaning of this?”

“Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” I grinned. “It just broke out, a couple of hours ago.”

He swayed and I had to grab him or he would have fallen. He was one of the leaders of the moderate Liberal Party and, unlike me, he grasped the real meaning of that change in government instantly. The printers’ strike had kept him from knowing the latest developments. He was all shaken up and I supported him to his room.

“Good night,” he thanked me in a broken voice.

In all the three months I had been working for him that was the first time he addressed me as “Mister”!

Weeks passed. The Proletarian Dictatorship was developing turbulently yet I was untouched by it. I attended classes, worked in the Institute, studied, rising at six and getting to bed way past midnight, a routine that taxed me to the full leaving me no time or energy to take much interest in the events around me. Occasionally I yearned to share the exciting life some of my colleagues in the University seemed to be leading but no one approached me to draw me in and my time was far too occupied to enable me to seek contacts on my own. I read the newspapers daily but in a superficial way; they were too full of meaningless political jargon and threats against unnamed counterrevolutionary elements to carry much interest for me. I failed to develop sympathy either for or against the Proletarian Dictatorship. Its promises failed to enthuse me; its threats carried no fear for me. The standing slogan displayed on posters everywhere affected me in a reverse way. They showed a steel-helmeted figure with a rifle on his shoulder and a hate-distorted face, pointing a menacing finger at the onlooker and threatening:

“YOU counterrevolutionary slinking in the dark, TREMBLE!”

I would salute the figure, give a mock shudder, wink at him, and depart whistling.

When the Hungarian Soviet Government decreed a general draft of my age group I decided not to obey it and went home to Gyor. This made me a draft evader but I did not care. I was through with the army. My father was worried, however, and asked me to see his friend, Dr. Parányi, a professional army doctor with the rank of major, then automatically serving in the Red Army, to see if he could work out something for me. Dr. Parányi asked me how much medical schooling I had had.

“Four months,” I told him sheepishly.

“Splendid!” exclaimed Dr. Dr. Parányi. “I’ll make you my assistant.” The way he said it, service in the Red Army didn’t rate high in his esteem, either.

The next morning he gave me a white coat and introduced me to the comrade medical attendants as the “new doctor,” his assistant. I escorted him to sick parade and he instructed me to observe him carefully. There were forty or fifty Red Army soldiers in the line, undressed to the waist. They would enter the office one by one, drop their pants, and recite their ailments. Dr. Parányi would have them open their mouths, stick their tongues out; he would look at the tongue, sometimes look into their throats, then hand them a pill.

Every once in a while he would order a man to turn around, bend down and stretch his cheeks. He would then bend closer, take a look and exclaim triumphantly, “Syphilis.” He would then call me over, tell me to take a look at the angry red growth in the anus, and remark proudly he could always detect secondary stage syphilis by a man’s general appearance.

After attending sick parade with him for three days Dr. Parányi felt I had sufficient practice to be on my own. He turned medical inspection over to me with instructions to refer the seriously ill to him for treatment in the hospital.

We had only four medications at our disposal. A white pill, calomel, which was a purgative; aspirin, a general cure-all; a gray pill, ipecac, an expectorant and emetic; and a yellow powder, quinine, for fever.

I held sick parades daily, distributing the four medicines according to my judgment and sometimes depending on what supplies we had on hand. When we ran out of one pill I substituted another; it worked out the same. I also tried to diagnose secondary syphilis according to Dr. Parányi’s method, by picking a man at random and then taking a look. My score was low. I would mistake scabies, hemorrhoids, or even simple scratches for lues, Dr. Parányi would inform me, sending the men back.

From then on I quit that type of detailed examination. It wasn’t aesthetic anyway. I would simply ask every man whether he had or had had syphilis and if the answer was affirmative I would send him to the venereal ward. This improved my score greatly. Dr. Parányi was pleased with my progress and told me I had the makings of a good diagnostician. I accepted that praise with modesty.

One morning when I appeared for my customary sick parade I found no one in line waiting for me. I finally located an attendant who told me that Béla Kun had resigned, the Soviet Dictatorship was over, that all the men, including the ward patients, had miraculously recovered and left for home.

I went home, too.

It did not affect me one way or another.

After the fall of the Proletarian Dictatorship a number of workers were arrested. Since I did not know any of them that made little impression on me at first because neither I nor my family or friends were involved in any way. But when Admiral Horthy’s White Army entered my town and the White Terror began in earnest my outlook changed completely.

Gangs wearing white armbands roamed the streets dragging people off trains, out of their homes, or off their jobs on the merest suspicion of having been involved in Communistic, Social Democratic, or trade union activities, then brutally torturing, even murdering them. One young boy whom I knew personally had been taken to a concentration camp merely because he had joined the Cabinet Makers Union, although in that shop it was compulsory for all apprentices to join. When he was released four months later he was a cripple and it was said he had been castrated. I went to see him and he sobbed that it was true. He was then sixteen years old.

The Horthy régime needed a scapegoat and, as usual in history, we Jews became it. We were being called unscrupulous finance capitalist exploiters and also Communists, both at the same time. We were accused of being responsible for the loss of the war; also for all the miseries suffered by the people because of the centuries-old feudal oppression. Anti-Semitism became the official policy of the government and Parliament was debating proposals ranging from the complete extermination of the Jews to the comparatively mild one of barring them from all jobs and professions and expropriating their property.

In Gyor the Catholic Herald appeared under the standing banner headline:

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? LET’S SETTLE WITH THE JEWS!

My father, who had received several offers before the war to go to the United States and another one right after the war, finally decided to pull up roots. The family emigrated to the United States in the fall of 1920. I stayed behind to finish medical school but that proved impossible.

Bands of young hoodlums armed with clubs, brass knuckles, and bikacsek (the Hungarian version of a blackjack, made of the carefully desiccated genitals of a bull), would burst into the classrooms of the University, demanding that each student stand up and “identify” himself.

This “identification” was not a request for the showing of documents. It called for each male student to drop his trousers and expose his genitals for inspection, disregarding the presence of girl students. All those circumcised were then identified as Jews even though many had medical proof to the contrary, and they were mercilessly beaten by the thugs, mainly on their heads and genitals, crippling many of them for life.

In my classes a large group of us, including many non-Jewish colleagues, got together and armed ourselves with short lengths of lead pipe and with brass weights appropriated from grocers’ scales. When these roving bands would hit our own classroom, we would give battle royal. Desks would be overturned, chairs smashed, precious instruments destroyed, floors and walls splattered with blood. Our example spread to other classrooms, and finally the University had to be closed down and all classes abandoned.

I went back to Gyor and spent my days in corroding idleness, staying in bed all morning and playing cards in the afternoon, until I felt my muscles grow flabby and my mind empty. To hell with becoming a doctor, I concluded, sold the family furniture, and booked passage to America.

I arrived in New York on July 1, 1921, and by the next day I had a job in a fur shop as a combination sweep-up man and errand boy. In Hungary I would sooner have starved than take such a humiliating job, akin to that of a stable boy, but here I was happy and proud. This was a republic and a democracy where each man was free and equal. This is where I belonged!

Two days later a startling sound of explosions woke me out of my sleep. I listened intently, the firing seemed to have spread all over the city. I distinguished not only single shots but also a short burst of a machine gun in action. So it had reached even the United States! The revolution had come to New York.

I threw my clothes on hurriedly and rushed out, wondering where could I get hold of a carbine. The streets were deserted, the stores, usually open by that time, were all closed. It was the revolution all right. There was nobody around except children. Naturally, there was no use asking them, they couldn’t know. The firing sounded quite close and it was coming closer still.

I was making my way toward the subway station when I saw a man emerging from there. I rushed over to him and asked him what was happening. He looked at me in obvious puzzlement, uneasy over my anxiety. I repeated my question very slowly to make sure he understood my heavily accented English and asked him where the main fighting was, what the revolution was about? He still did not comprehend. Just then there was a loud explosion right behind me and it made me jump.

“Didn’t you hear that?” I yelled, exasperated.

He looked at me, then threw his head back and roared, just roared with laughter.

It was the Fourth of July celebration.

Sorry for the late updates

Please accept my apologies for the past 2 weeks where updates have been missed. It’s Spring, which means travel season is on for me. I’ll be queuing up more chapters to better keep to schedule.

To make it up, I posted some photos my mom scanned in. You can find those photos here.

Chapter 11

The next morning I went over to the Town Hall early. No one was standing guard and the cell was empty. The sergeant and his three cronies were gone and two more men with them. I discovered that a few cabinets had been broken open and I found chisel marks even on the town safe, but it hadn’t been entered.

I walked over to the depot. The freight-car door gaped wide open, the broken lock hanging from it. The car had been stripped bare. That must have been done after I left, later in the night.

I went back to the Town Hall. It was still early but a number of Councilmen were already there busily discussing the events of the night before. I stopped near the door, unnoticed. One of the Councilmen who had called me from my hotel was holding down the center, describing the scene with wide gestures and great detail, embroidering it with touches that were new to me. I came out very well in his story, or so I thought, yet some of the others were saying that I was to blame, I was responsible for the men, I should have had better control over them, the sergeant and his friends were obviously bandits, look how they tried to break even the safe open! How could an officer of judgment have picked such men who were obviously habitual criminals, to guard people’s life and property? Well, after all, he is only a young boy! True, yet it was like entrusting wolves to guard a flock of sheep, and so on. I walked away.

I went to my remaining six men, discussed with them what had happened. They were evasive and I did not press them. I had them clean and oil all rifles including those the sergeant and the others had left behind. I took a rag and, for the first time, helped them with the task; it gave me something to do.

After lunch I went up to my room to sleep. I felt very low, a new mood for me. I slept a few hours and then went to see Yolly. Her father greeted me, but not in his usual hearty “Come in, come in, glad to see you, make yourself at home” manner. He was rather curt, said he had to go back to his office, and left right away.

Yolly was not in the parlor. Her mother told me she was studying in her room. They had news that the schools would be reopening soon, as soon as they could get in a supply of coal. I told her I would wait and sat around playing with the dog. Yolly did not come out of her room so finally I got up and said it was time for me to go. Her mother did not ask me to stay for supper, nor had she offered me some of her cake, as she always used to.

I went out and passing by the window I saw Yolly studying under the kerosene lamp on her table. I rapped on the window and she came over and opened it. We talked but neither of us had anything much to say. She told me she had forgotten all she had learned in school and she had to catch up. She also said that her parents thought we were spending too much time together and it would have to stop, it might lead to talk. That was peculiar, for her parents had been practically pushing us on each other, but I did not mention that to her. She said her room was getting cold with the window open. I said “Au revoir!” and helped her close the window.

It was by then nearly six o’clock and dark. I went back to Town Hail. I found a captain there talking with the Town Clerk, the Council President, and a few other people.

When they saw me come in the group broke up, the Councilmen saying loudly to each other, too loudly I thought, that it was time they got home for supper, the wife was raising holy hell about their always being late; then they left, shaking hands with me on their way out.

The captain, who had been standing aside during this time, now came over to me. I saluted him and he returned the salute. He introduced himself, he was the son of one of the Councilmen. He had just returned from the hospital that morning, he had been wounded in the arm by shrapnel on the Isonzo front. He was very friendly and told me from what he had heard I did a splendid job of restoring order, he was personally proud of it. He then casually added that my grave responsibilities were over, that he was taking over Public Safety beginning next morning. He told me to supervise the patrols as usual for that night, next morning he wanted a full report from me, and then we would discuss what would follow.

I left him, checked the patrol which was about to go out, and went back to the hotel for supper. After supper I took the second patrol out myself. The townspeople making up the patrol were overpolite. They made attempts to joke with me but it sounded forced. After we completed the first round, I left them and went back to the hotel.

The cashier was manicuring her nails and she gave me her usual wide smile with her gold teeth flashing. I asked the headwaiter for a bottle of cognac and then went over to her, invited her to come to my room as soon as she was free, we would get drunk and have a real party.

She laughed. She was pleased but she couldn’t, not that night. She had a date with the captain.

I went to my room, took a couple of drinks out of the bottle, then a couple more, and went to bed. I felt very much alone.

The next morning I walked over to the depot and found a freight train standing there headed north, the direction of my home town. It was trying to get up steam and the engineer told me they would leave when and if they could load up with enough wood.

I went over to Town Hall to see the Town Clerk. He was busy and for the first time he made me wait. I watched him enter items in a ledger for a while, then touched him on the shoulder and told him I wanted to speak to him officially, I was going home. He was polite, but did not act surprised. He told me the town and the citizens would miss me. He wished me good luck, he did not ask me to stay on.

I asked him for my pay. He said that if the Mayor were in town I would have no difficulty, he could then pay me on the spot, but unfortunately, the Mayor was still absent. He couldn’t pay me on his own authority; as commander of the guard I was a sort of town official in charge of public safety; my pay would have to be taken up by the Town Council which would meet formally three weeks later. However, he did not anticipate my having too much difficulty with them.

I told him there was a freight train waiting at the depot, I needed my money at once for I was leaving on that train. He was very sorry, very sorry indeed, he brushed his mustache with a small brush, it was indeed most regrettable, but he personally couldn’t do anything about my pay without authorization. He asked me to leave my home address, they would mail my money to me there. I believed him and gave him my father’s address. He then offered me a personal loan of twenty kronen as a friend, out of his own pocket. I had 990 kronen coming to me. I declined the loan. We shook hands and I left.

I went to say good-bye to the men. They were sorry to see me go and they showed it. We shook hands all around. I took two blankets off one bed because the weather was very cold and I had no overcoat. I noticed a piece of hard sausage on the table and asked the men if it was all right for me to take that along. It was more than all right with them. They even dug up another piece and two hunks of bread. I took a pack, folded one of the blankets and put it into the pack with the food, and threw the other blanket around my shoulders. That did not look military but I did not care. I made a present of my saber to the corporal and left the pistol and holster on the table with instructions to give them to the captain. That was my demobilization. I was through with the army!

I walked over to the station with the pack hanging from my left arm, on the side where my saber used to be. It felt strange walking without the heavy saber, my right foot would still automatically make that small circular kick that kept the saber from tripping one up. My right hand was clutching the blanket around my neck, for my throat felt sore. My body was hot and I was sneezing, my nose was beginning to get runny. I felt a bad cold coming on. I had an extra pair of trousers and some underwear in the hotel but did not bother to go back for them.

White steam was rising from the funnel of the locomotive. We ought to be able to start soon, said the engineer. The fireman said I could travel with them on the engine, it would be warmer. There was no caboose. I got in the cab with them but there was no room to sit down, I had to stand. The warm fire felt good but my knees began to tremble, I felt weak and wanted to lie down. I got off the cab, went to the first box-car but, strangely, I couldn’t make the jump. I had to clamber up slowly, like an old woman, and crawl inside. I was really weak. I struggled with the door for quite a while to close it behind me. I finally managed it by pushing with both my hands and shoulder. I pulled the blanket out of the pack, laid my pack in the corner for a pillow, rolled myself in one blanket and spread the other over me. The boards were hard but it felt very good to be lying down. Never before had I needed to lie down so badly. I was feverish. I did not hear the train start.

When I awoke, it was very dark inside the car and it was also dark through the crack outside. I was very hot and thirsty but I had forgotten to bring along water. I had the sausage and bread but did not feel like eating and went back to sleep. I kept waking and dozing off; my feet were icy cold yet my body was very hot and I kept throwing my blanket off and then pulling it back, over and over again. Sometimes it was light through the crack, sometimes it was dark; when I was awake I kept staring at the crack near the door but I was not thinking of anything, just staring.

A long, long time later I woke again. I was freezing all over, my head was swollen, fiery pains were stabbing through my feet. The train was not moving. I groped for my blankets and my pack, they were gone. Somebody must have stolen them from under me, leaving the door half open. I crawled to the door on all fours and saw we were in a freight yard. I had a difficult time letting myself down from the car. When my feet touched ground, they wouldn’t support me and I fell. I raised myself up, but it took time-my legs were numb and very stiff, they did not feel like my own legs at all. The sky was pinkish gray in the early dawn.

Another freight train was getting up steam. I hobbled over and asked the engineer where he was heading. He told me to Gyor, which was my hometown. Resting every few steps, I made my way to one of the cars and after a few starts managed to pull myself up. I was hot and shivering. I did not have the strength to push the door shut so I crawled to the farthest corner and rested. After a while I sat up and leaned against the wall, took my shoes off, and began rubbing my feet. My feet didn’t feel the skin of my hands, only the pressure. We traveled for a long, long time and I kept massaging my feet endlessly, over and under, over and under, back and forth. I also had to keep my body rocking forward and back to keep it from freezing, it was that cold. When we reached Gyor, it was evening. I was feverish again, just dimly conscious. I rolled out of the car and dragged myself to a fiacre for the ride home. The family all crowded around and I asked what day it was. It was Wednesday, early in December.

I had been on the road three days.

My folks put me right to bed and it took more than a week before I got some of my strength back. It was the Spanish flu, the Doctor said, marveling that I had survived that trip. My feet were frostbitten, so were my nose and ears, but they were getting better.

When I was able to get up and move around I found I was penniless. I hadn’t received my pay in Kobanya, I had forgotten to collect my pay from the Food Ministry, I hadn’t received my pay from the Doctor in the sanatorium, I hadn’t received my pay from the Town Council in Siofok. I should have had well over 1,2oo kronen, big money those days. I sure was an idiot. I had to ask my father for spending money although the family was very hard up because of the inflation. He gave me two kronen, then seeing the disappointed look on my face, he raised it another krone. He couldn’t really afford it.

I wrote to the Town Council of Siofok for my money twice. I never received an answer. I did not bother to write to the Doctor, I knew the score there. But a town . . . ? A town council was a sort of government, it shouldn’t have acted that way, a government shouldn’t cheat a person. . .

A few nights later I was late coming in, it must have been close to eleven o’clock. I took my shoes off in the vestibule and sneaked in on stocking feet to avoid being detected. My father woke up, he was a light sleeper, and gave me a terrific dressing down. He wanted no son of his to become a vagabond, squandering his father’s hard-earned money, staying out that late at night at his age. . . .

I slunk off to bed, feeling very wronged. My father was unjust, totally lacking in understanding. I felt very sorry for myself, my eyes were moist, my throat was choking up. My father was too strict with me, he was too old-fashioned, he wanted me to stay home all evening, my eyes had tears in them by then. I hugged my youngest brother for love and comfort, he was sharing the bed with me. I thought how unfair my father was and I began to cry.

I was back home, again a child.

Chapter 10

When we got near Siofok, I told the drivers to take us to the rear of the Town Hall and stop a block away. It was close to seven by then and it was dark. We weren’t hungry. The men had scrounged enough bread, hard sausage, smoked Hungarian bacon from the help in the Doctor’s kitchen to have our fill on the way over. When we got to within fifty yards of the rear of the Town Hall, we got off, brushed the straw off our uniforms and I had the sergeant line the men up. The street was dark. There seemed to be some light in the square in front of Town Hall and a murmur was rising from that direction.

My plan was to show maximum strength, I explained to the men. We were to march into the square in a double file, but stretched out in length to give us a column twenty yards long. We were to enter in parade step, rifles at ready, bayonets fixed, then deploy into a long skirmish line in front of Town Hall. By the time we had that all straightened out a small crowd had collected, gaping at us in silence, and more people were hurrying toward us. It was time. I drew my saber and commanded in loud parade drill voice:

“Attention! Fix bayonets! Rifles at ready!”

The movements were executed with precision. The daily drills did prove effective.

“Forward, march!”

The cobblestones resounded under the parade steps. We rounded the Town Hall and marched on to the square, the people scampering out of our way to clear space for us. We deployed in front of the Town Hall. The line looked imposing. It reached almost from one corner of the building to the other.

I faced the crowd, mainly women and old men with a sprinkling of soldiers in faded worn uniforms. Our uniforms were new.

I raised my saber, stood at attention, and called out:

“In the name of the law I order you to clear this square at once and disperse to your homes.” It was from the manual, except I left “the King” out before “law.”

Nobody moved. There was silence.

Suddenly someone shouted:

“Tin Soldiers. Go home! Nobody wants you here.” That raised a few other shouts but not so loud and distinguishable.

“Who said that?” I challenged.

A huge man in a torn army blouse stepped forward. There was a loud murmur of approval from the crowd.

“Tell them, Steve,” a voice encouraged him.

He walked forward and faced me.

“What if I said it?” he challenged in a loud truculent voice.

“You are under arrest,” I snapped.

“On whose orders?” he jeered.

I motioned to the sergeant. He stepped forward, raised his rifle and brought the steel butt down full force on the soldier’s head. The man collapsed. Women screamed. The crowd edged back.

“Anyone else care to say anything?” My voice sounded very shrill.

Nobody did. A couple of women started crying.

“I give you one minute to disperse or we’ll fire,” I warned, my voice pitched very high in excitement. The crowd broke and hurried off, the last ones breaking into a run.

Only then did I take a look at the man on the ground. He was gasping for breath with a snoring sound and blood was running down his face. I was suddenly struck with remorse. That man might die! Everything on the square had come off as I had anticipated, but it had not occurred to me that someone might be killed. The Town Clerk and other civilians now came running out of the Town Hall, all excited, all of them talking to me at once. I did not hear what they were saying, I couldn’t tear my eyes off that bleeding man. Finally I told them:

“Get a doctor! That man is hurt! Take him inside and bandage him!”

He was carried inside and I followed him in. They put him in a cell and somebody started to bandage his head. Everybody was crowding around and you couldn’t move in that small cell. I sent a civilian to tell the sergeant to send me a guard, told everybody to clear out, instructing the guard to stay with the man in the cell. I left with the civilians who took me to the Council Room.

The Council Room was in a hubbub. I was escorted to a seat next to the Council President and we all sat down. There must have been nearly twenty civilians around the table, all older men, older than my father. They looked rich, they wore thick golden watch chains, heavy rings, dark heavy clothes of expensive material. A big coal stove was burning in the center.

It did not look at all like what I had imagined a council meeting would be. The Councilmen appeared overexcited, talking in overloud tones, practically shouting. They acted scared. Finally the Town Clerk quieted them and made a short speech. He said that for the time being things were safe and described how we had dispersed the mob. When he mentioned me they all clapped their hands and shouted “bravo,” which embarrassed me. The Town Clerk then said that they were there to decide what to do next, how to keep the mob in its place, and asked for proposals.

A number of them spoke at once. A big red-faced man kept yelling, “We have to teach them a lesson, a lesson they’ll never forget, by God!” They all agreed with that and then one of them asked, “What kind of a lesson? And how?”

The red-faced man, he owned a large livestock farm just outside of Siofok I was told, had the answer.

“We got a prisoner, the leader of the mob. Let’s take and hang him. That will teach them the lesson they need, teach them to stay away from people’s property and steal their pigs and livestock.”

A few people shouted their assent. The others suddenly turned very quiet. That was an altogether new idea. I felt scary.

The Town Clerk then turned to me and asked me directly what my idea was on the subject. The question caught me unawares, I never had thought I had anything to do with that.

They were all staring at me waiting for my answer. I pictured the man lying on the ground with blood all over his face, his breathing so strained, and I became still more scared. I had not meant for the sergeant to club him over the head with a rifle butt. All I had intended was to put him under arrest so that the rest of the crowd would then disperse, and now they wanted to hang him.

The silence was stretching.

“What do you propose to do, Commander?” the Town Clerk prompted me again.

“Military guards can’t hang people,” I finally managed to bring out. “They can only fire at mobs when they don’t obey commands, or offer resistance.” I went on to explain the military rules relating to mobs and domestic disorders. As I spoke, my confidence returned. I was citing the manual which I knew by heart and the words came out fluently, allowing me to think ahead while I spoke. They listened intently.

I explained that in order to make those people respect authority we had to demonstrate to them they had to obey and couldn’t get away with breaking the law. I proposed that next morning we make a house-to-house search and confiscate all military property looted from the depot. They cheered that. I also proposed that we patrol the streets once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and twice in the evening from dark until ten o’clock. By then most people would be in bed.

They liked all but the last part. They wanted to have the patrol out all night.

That was not practical. I told them I couldn’t divide my men. A two-man patrol wouldn’t look too formidable. The guard had to stay together because as a unit, even if they were not out on the street, they constituted a strong armed force which was more than the mob could expect to cope with, and the mob would be aware of that. Besides, the men had to have their sleep and rest.

They heard me out but they still insisted on an all-night patrol. That gave me an idea.

“Let’s organize a civilian patrol out of you men and I will assign two of my men to lead you. Then the guard will still be kept together as a strong reserve.”

They finally agreed. I asked the Town Clerk to call together next afternoon all those who would want to serve on the patrol, bringing whatever weapons were available in town—shotguns, pistols, etc.—and we would organize them.

They assigned a large room right in Town Hall as quarters for my men and agreed to supply them mattresses and three free meals daily, while I was to be the guest of the town and provided with a luxury room and everything else I desired, gratis, in the best hotel in town. By the time the meeting adjourned everybody was cheerful. They came up to me, shook my hands, clapped me on the back just as if I were one of them. I did not feel that way. I was not fully at ease with them.

I went outside and told the men about the arrangements. They liked it. We went to the designated hotel and the men all had a fine meal, each ordering whatever he wanted. They were even served a spriccer each, wine with soda. Afterwards they got their mattresses, toted them over to the Town Hall, and settled down.

I told the sergeant to take the patrol through the town later that night and to make plenty of noise so the people would know the town was being patrolled. Since it was late in November and very cold, I decided not to station a guard outside the Town Hall, but to post one inside the door, relieved every two hours. That was most satisfactory with the men and it was a sound arrangement, for there was no danger of attack.

Next I went to see the prisoner. His head had been bandaged and the blood washed off his face but he was still unconscious and breathing very hard. It made me feel uneasy; I was scared that he would die.

My assigned hotel was close by. A couple of the Councilmen were in the restaurant and they invited me over. I did not feel like eating and they treated me to drinks. I soon felt woozy. I excused myself, went to my room, undressed, and went to bed.

I couldn’t have been asleep long when a persistent knock at my door woke me. I grabbed my pistol and opened the door. It was the hotel porter with a weeping peasant woman dressed in black, a woolen shawl over her head and shoulders.

“She insisted on seeing you, sir, and she wouldn’t stay away,” the porter explained apologetically. “I kept chasing her but she would keep coming back and crying so loud I was afraid she would wake the whole street. I thought it would be better for you to talk to her, sir.”

The woman, who stood there sniffling during the porter’s speech, now burst into a loud wail.

“What’s going to happen to my husband? They told me he was dying. What’s going to become of our poor orphans?” She was the wife of the prisoner. I felt very guilty. I got dressed in a hurry, told the woman to come with me, and led her to Town Hall. It took a lot of knocking before the guard opened the door. He was groggy with sleep.

“I must have closed my eyes for a second,” he apologized sheepishly. I took the woman to the cell with me.

The man was still lying unconscious, his eyes half open but not seeing, his breath whistling through his parted lips.

The woman let out a scream and threw herself on her husband, wailing “Stevie, oh Stevie, what did they do to you?” She wasn’t directly referring to me, but the accusation struck home. I told the woman she could stay there with him as long as she wished. She paid no attention to me. She squatted down on the floor and gently lifted his injured head into her lap. I left them, walked back to the hotel, and went back to bed.

The next morning I divided my men into four details and we made a house-to-house search in the section where the poor lived. We confiscated four cartloads of boots, blankets, underwear, uniforms, packs, and other army material.

The people whose homes we searched were sullen. Many of them offered me bribes to let them keep the stuff, others muttered that we didn’t care if they froze to death. I never anticipated that the job would turn out so distasteful. I did not relish confiscating those blankets and clothes, but of course it was looted stuff, it did not belong to them, it was government property.

During the next three mornings we recovered enough army clothing and other property to nearly fill the box car in which I deposited them for eventual shipment to the Szekesfehervar Army Base. The three-man team I personally supervised recovered more looted material than the other three combined. I was proud of that achievement. I attributed it to the keenness of my eyes in spotting army equipment. It did not occur to me that the eyes of the others might have been just as keen or even keener, but more sympathetic to the poor, or that perhaps the other men were not as unresponsive to the offered bribes as I had been. I saw no need to have the freight car guarded, for the situation was well in hand. I had a stout padlock put on it and took the key with me.

The organization of the civilian patrol did not prove difficult. About fifty men volunteered and they had eighteen shotguns and a few pistols among them. I divided them into three groups, the first one to patrol from six to eight in the evening, the second from eight to ten, the third from ten to twelve. They were older men, the most substantial citizens in town.

I assigned my men to lead them. Since there were not enough firearms to go around, some carried heavy canes.

The patrol worked out fine. I checked every patrol before it went out, and we joked quite a bit. They were rather proud of themselves and talked and laughed loud when making their tours, which I liked. There were no disturbances.

One of the Councilmen who was a processor and exporter of Hungarian paprika, took a particular liking to me. He took me home for dinner and introduced me to his daughter. Her name was Yolan but everybody called her Yolly. She was seventeen, a year younger than I, a very pretty girl with dimples in her cheeks, especially when she laughed. She told me she had a deep admiration for me. We fell in love at sight and I came to spend all my free moments in her house, particularly since her mother and father insisted that I make their house my home. Her mother would cook special dishes for me and bake my favorite cakes. Yolly and I got together every time I was free, and we kissed at every opportunity. That was about all we did; Yolly was not talkative, and I, too, preferred that to conversation.

I also had a personal problem. The hotel where I was living had a blond cashier and she would slip into my room at night when she heard me coming home. I had a few bottles of liqueur in my room, a present from the hotel, and I would find her there half drunk. She smelled heavily of perfume and underarm perspiration. She had a big bust and she was full of smutty remarks. She would smooth my hair and make other advances. I did not like her and always had a difficult time sending her back into her own room. Once she even sneaked into my bed after I was asleep, but I did not enjoy it. From that night on she would make eyes at me during meals and ask me when would I be nice to her again. It was most annoying; since she was much older, I had to treat her with courtesy.

Within a few days the situation in the town was fully under control. Most of the trains in the country had stopped running because of the coal shortage and the few that occasionally managed to come through had to use wood for fuel, which made them very slow. Because of that, only a few soldiers had succeeded in making their way back to the town from Italy. I spoke with some and they told me hair-raising tales of how the treacherous Slovenes and Croatians, who were part of Austro-Hungary until the time of their revolt, had mistreated them, their former comrades in arms; how they had robbed them of their clothing, even stealing the boots off their feet when they caught them asleep.

The arrested man survived, and I gave his wife permission to take him home. Instead of showing hate, they both thanked me profusely for my kindness. The wife called innumerable blessings on my head, kissed my hand, and her children kissed the hem of my tunic. It was painfully embarrassing and I felt much relieved when they left.

By the eleventh day life had become routine. Then a bit of trouble developed. Payday in the Hungarian Army was every ten days and the men expected to get paid. The Town Clerk informed them that the Council had decided that the President had lacked authority when he had offered them triple pay instead of the official ten kronen a day. The men demanded full pay as promised. The Town Clerk claimed the treasury was short of money. The men became threatening and for the first time disregarded me when I tried to calm them. I never liked to haggle about money, but I had to take the men’s part. Finally they got paid in full, 300 kronen each man, which was a great deal of money at that time, more than most of them had ever seen in one lump sum, and they were very satisfied. Since the treasury was short I told the Clerk I was willing to wait for my 900 kronen. He was greatly pleased and thanked me for my co-operation. I was in no need of money, the hotel even supplied my cigarettes free.

That night I had been long asleep when I was suddenly jarred awake by loud knocking and excited voices outside. I jumped out of bed and opened the door. I found three men there, all Councilmen, and they were trembling with fear. There was a riot at the depot. It was then past eleven o’clock.

“Where is the patrol?” was my first question.

They were the patrol, they quaked.

“Where are your arms?” I asked angrily.

Their arms had not been turned over to them that night. When they assembled to relieve the second patrol, the sergeant had sent them home saying his men would take over the third patrol. They all went home except these three, who decided to have a few drinks first. On their way home they had witnessed the riot at the depot and ran right over to see me.

That meant serious trouble. I threw my clothes on in such a hurry that I even left my saber belt off, just snatched up the holster with the pistol, and rushed toward the depot.

It was quite a distance and I was out of breath by the time I reached the depot. The moon was bright and the platform in front of the freight car was dark with people, most of them women.

The door of the freight car was wide open and two of the sergeant’s cronies were busy passing blankets, boots, clothing to the people clamoring below. They had improvised an aisle by placing the massive railroad benches from the waiting room parallel to each other and the people had to pass through this to reach the open door of the freight car.

I saw the sergeant standing on the first bench facing his third crony on the opposite bench. Their hands were full of bills, they were collecting money from the upthrust hands of the clamorous women before permitting them to pass through the aisle. The women were shrieking, pushing and pulling each other—it was a riot all right.

I discovered the rest of my men on the fringe of the crowd. They were not party to that organized looting nor did they do anything to interfere; they were just watching. They caught sight of me at the same time I noticed them.

“Follow me.” I motioned to them. As I saw them close up behind me, I drew my pistol and went out to the platform. I was boiling mad.

“Stop it,” I commanded. “Halt!”

Every face turned toward me. The two soldiers on the freight car froze. The crowd gave way. It was very still.

I walked over to the sergeant.

“You are under arrest!”

The sergeant grabbed for his rifle and cursed. “Get out of here or I’ll kill you.”

My finger tightened on the trigger. I was ready to shoot him.

“Attention!” I commanded in a fury. The other three men with him snapped to. The sergeant did not.

There was a fraction of hesitation.

“To foot!” I ordered with my pistol extended straight, aimed at his stomach.

The sergeant executed the command. His rifle butt made a loud bang on the wooden bench as he brought it down to position.

“You four men are under arrest.” I was still furious. “Take his rifle,” I said to the corporal with me. The drilling paid off. The sergeant turned over his rifle and we marched the four of them back to Town Hall. By then the platform was empty, the crowd had scurried off.

We marched them down to a cell and locked them in. I told the corporal that from then on he was in charge and that I wanted a guard over that cell all through the night. Then I returned to the hotel.

On the way back I felt strangely empty. My mind couldn’t concentrate. I went to bed, closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing that platform, the women milling around, the sergeant with his rifle pointing at me from less than three yards’ distance, ready to kill me. That image swirled round and round and suddenly I started to tremble. I wanted to stop shaking but I couldn’t. I felt my whole body go rigid and I bounced up and down uncontrollably, setting the bed vibrating. Then I began to shiver again until I climbed out of bed, which stopped it. Shock has strange effects.

Chapter 9

Siofok was the largest town in that Lake Balaton area, a famous summer resort surrounded by a belt of smaller villages inshore, with a permanent population of a few thousand. (Less than a year later, it was this town where Admiral Horthy set up his headquarters to organize his march on Budapest.)

Trouble had been building up in Siofok ever since the revolution broke out in Budapest and was about to reach its culmination that evening. The revolution had raised the pent-up discontent and misery of the war in that town to a point of explosion.

Even before the revolution the people blamed their privations on the Town Clerk and members of the Town Council. They attributed the meagerness of war assistance to the families of the soldiers, the inadequacy of war pensions for war widows and orphans to bribery, graft, and corruption on part of the public officials. The officials, and the Town Clerk in particular, were accused of taking bribes to keep the rich exempt from draft; of favoritism; of forcing wives and daughters of absent soldiers to submit to their lust. When the Town Clerk talked about that, he became even more nervous, patting his hair, clearing his throat, pleading with his eyes the absurdity of those charges. The town officials had also been accused of extortion and other misuse of their official powers. Since all governmental decrees, all measures for the sacrifices demanded by the war, such as tightening of rationing, came down to the Town Council, the Mayor, and the Town Clerk for execution, they became the natural focus of all accumulated hatred, and now, they were the targets for revenge.

The early signs of impending trouble appeared trivial. The grumbling grew louder and became more ominous. Next the peasants and laborers stopped taking their hats off to their betters, they would look away or, worse still, brazenly and defiantly stare straight at them.

The next stage started when a woman waiting in line for her war-assistance payment became disorderly, insulting, and even abusive. When the Town Clerk told her to quiet down or he would hold up her payment, someone in the crowd yelled out: “Wait until my husband gets back from the front, he’ll take care of you and the rest of you almighty potentates.” That started a demonstration of wild curses and foul abuse. The women tried to crowd into his office and the two town constables had a most difficult time before they could restore order.

Shortly afterward, several large homes and summer residences in the surrounding area were looted. The number of those lootings had increased in the past days, since the first few ex-soldiers had made their way home from the front.

Just two days previously the Clerk of a nearby village had been seized in his office by a bunch of wild women assisted by some returned soldiers and other trouble-makers. They had stripped the Clerk naked, hung the village drum around his neck, and then forced him to parade down the village street, to beat the drum and cry out, in mockery of official announcements:

“I, the Village Clerk, officially announce by order of the higher authorities that I am a crook, a cheat and a no-good whore-master.”

He was jeered, spit upon, and made to repeat that announcement several times before they would let him go. He fled the village that night and was given shelter by the Siofok Town Clerk until he departed for Budapest.

That very night the military storeroom at the railway depot in Siofok was broken into and stripped bare of all blankets, boots, army uniforms, rations, and other equipment. Luckily no weapons had been stored there. A large mob participated in that looting. Simultaneously, an imposing home of a wealthy Budapest family had been set on fire to divert attention from the looting.

The previous day the Siofok Town Council had sent a delegation to Szekesfehervar, the largest town and military base in the area to ask for emergency aid. But the authorities had been unable to assist them, they themselves lacked sufficient forces to assure their own public safety.

When the delegates had returned empty-handed this morning they were met by a jeering, hooting crowd shouting threats and insults.

“Where are the bayonets, your excellencies?”

“The Red Rooster will fly tonight!”

“Your feet will be dancing in the air after dark.”

Someone threw a rock through the Mayor’s window, frightening him so badly that he had fled the town. Having heard that a strong military force was stationed in this sanatorium the Town Clerk and the President of the Town Council decided, in desperation, to try their luck here. They needed help at once, they implored.

The Town Clerk was talking in jerky sentences, unable to stand or sit still for a moment, twirling his mustache with twitchy fingers, mopping his brow, pulling at his fawn-colored vest. The doctor had caught his panic and became twitchy too, his face turned ashen, his breath was forced out loud from his open mouth. The President of the Council just sat, fat thighs wide apart, his head bobbing up and down in assent.

I was eager to help. I told the Clerk that although I had a force of only twelve men, they were well armed and disciplined, that I was confident we could handle the situation.

The Town Clerk became despondent; twelve men were nowhere near enough to deal with that mob. I insisted we could do it. I was a soldier and it was my duty to restore order in accordance with the Articles of War concerning Domestic Uprisings. Besides, it sounded thrilling.

The doctor cut in unexpectedly. He vehemently asserted he would not let us go; we had been assigned to him to guard his sanatorium l That amazed me. After all his complaints I expected him to be glad to see us depart. Personally, I was eager to leave and told the doctor that the safety of the town of Siofok was of far greater importance than his sanatorium. The doctor was adamant. He insisted since he was paying us out of his own pocket we were under his orders and would have to stay with him.

The Council President now spoke up for the first time and wanted to know how much the doctor was paying us. I told him the doctor was paying the new army rate, 10 kronen a day per man, 30 kronen for me as an officer.

“The Town of Siofok will triple that,” he said, looking at the Town Clerk who eagerly assented.

I thought that exceedingly generous of them. I had no understanding then what had prompted that generosity. They knew what I did not, that the country was then in an actual state of anarchy, and in their eyes we were a group of mercenaries whose allegiance could be bought by the highest bidder. Had I guessed that, I would have walked out right then. I was motivated solely by a blind sense of duty to establish law and order. The sanatorium did not need us. Siofok, a town faced by immediate revolt, did. I told the doctor to pay us off, assured him he could count on our aid any time he needed it, and went out to get the men ready.

The men listened to me in silence. Surprisingly, my indignation failed to communicate itself to them. When I informed them about that challenge to law and order, and when I spoke of our great opportunity to uphold the honor of our arms, they stood impassive, manifesting a singular lack of interest in this new mission. I sensed I would have to find a new approach. While I was thinking about that I casually mentioned the triple pay. This brought an immediate change of attitude.

“Thirty kronen a day!” one of them exulted. “We’ll clean that town up with a toothbrush for that!”

It was settled. We got our gear and I paraded the men. Their sufficiency in arms, their erect military bearing, cheered the Town Clerk and the President of the Council visibly. The daily drill had transformed them into a proud force as they stood at stiff attention for inspection. It was agreed that the Town Clerk and the Council President would drive on ahead and we would be following them in three carts borrowed from the doctor.

The doctor paid the men off dourly. When it came to paying me he said he had run out of cash, he would send on my pay to me in Siofok.

I believed him!

Chapter 8

The days passed quietly and so did the nights. Although rumors reached us that this castle or that estate in outlying villages had been looted or set aflame, we were not molested. The men enjoyed themselves, they had a real vacation for the first time in their lives. They had food, women, and very little work to do. For companionship they had each other and the maids. I had neither and I was getting bored, not being accustomed to idleness. In that entire sanatorium there was not a single book to read. Field-grade officers in the Austro-Hungarian Army had no need for a library. They knew everything, for rank was knowledge. I asked the doctor for some of his medical books to read but he would not lend them to me for fear they would get soiled. I would walk out to the frozen lake shore and hunt for wild ducks with a rifle. I knew I wouldn’t hit any, yet every time I missed I felt disappointed.

The doctor annoyed me with his daily complaints.

“The men cut up a brand-new sheet for foot covering,” he accused me. Soldiers of the Hungarian Army were not supplied with socks. They would use rags to wrap around their feet before putting on their boots.

‘It won’t happen again,” I solemnly assured him, more on hope than knowledge.

“The men are interfering with the work of the maids,” he would complain.

“I’ll put a stop to that,” I would reply, knowing full well I had no intention of interfering. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with it anyway.

“The men are forcing their attentions on my maids against their will,” he came storming to me one time. “I will hold you responsible for their behavior.”

I promised to investigate that complaint at once and went into the kitchen. I saw four women working there and I called one of them out. She was a buxom, very pretty young woman with rosy cheeks, about twenty-two, I guessed. She was a bit embarrassed and was twirling her apron.

“Are my men molesting you?” I asked her. She blushed and said nothing. “The doctor is telling me our men are forcing themselves on you.” She still didn’t answer.

“Come on, don’t be afraid. Tell me the truth. If they are bothering you women, I’ll put a stop to it quick.”

“They are sure no worse than those old officers we used to have around here,” she said spiritedly. “Those old goats were really terrible. They were practically ordering us to go to bed with them. And when they pinched it really hurt.” She giggled.

“What about my men?”

“Oh, they are sociable. They don’t pinch so hard.”

I wanted to get to the bottom of it. “What do they do?” I asked her.

She giggled some more. I pressed her for an answer.

“Aw, go on with you!” she said, raising her eyes coquettishly to mine.”You know what men do. Why don’t you try it sometime? Or maybe you are too young.”

I wasn’t too young and I would have liked to try. I thought of it often enough. But I had to set an example, and you have to pay a price for that. Nevertheless, I felt myself blushing. I blushed too damn easily, just like a young boy.

“Are the men forcing you to do things against your own free will?” My voice was playing tricks on me again. I had been having trouble with it lately. I had a good voice for dealing with men but with women it sometimes came out wrong just when I most wanted it to sound firm. I hoped she did not notice, although she was giggling again.

“Aw, go on with you,” she said. “They are men and we are having fun. It is nice to have your own kind around after all those high and mighty officers. You are a nice young one, why don’t you come down to the kitchen one evening and find out for yourself?” She was laughing at me openly, all her former diffidence gone.

“That will do,” I said gruffly and dismissed her. It did not come out gruff, it sounded more like a squeak. She laughed and went inside. I decided against questioning the other three women and walked back. I had to take it slowly and hold my saber at the grip to keep it from getting between my legs from behind, although the normal way to avoid that is by making a kicklike circular motion with your right leg before you put your foot down.

The next day I told the doctor I had found no evidence that the men were forcing themselves on the maids. The doctor scoffed. He claimed to have it on good evidence, several of the nurses had reported t. I decided to visit the nurses after supper. I had known them all by sight but had had no personal contact with them up until then.

I shaved carefully that evening, the second time that day, although there was no necessity for it. I could easily have skipped my daily morning shave as well without anyone noticing it much. I was blondish, and besides being very light in color the hair on my face grew at a distressingly slow rate, considering my age. I had been shaving daily because that was supposed to make the beard grow thicker and faster, although I had not found that true in my case.

The nurses were six in number and occupied three rooms in a separate wing, one of the rooms being used as a sitting room. I knocked on their door, entered, bowed formally, wished them good evening, and addressed them in my most official manner.

“Ladies, I am here on official duty. I came here to investigate.” Suddenly I did not know how to continue, their stares disconcerted me. It was hard to put it into the right words. I started all over again.

“I came to investigate the . . .” I still couldn’t get any further. That was most unfortunate for they started to smile and this disconcerted me even more. A little red-haired nurse, the youngest of them, was giggling out loud. She did not look much older than I. The others were all much older. The head nurse, a thin woman with a wrinkled face, turned to them disapprovingly.

“Leave the boy alone. He is only a child. What is it you want, young man?”

I was blushing, which made me mad. I was grateful to her and yet angry at her. I was not a boy and certainly was no child. I would show them that I could use strong language if that is the way they wanted it.

“About my men fornicating with the maids,” I said in manly fashion.

They burst out laughing.

“Raping them!” I added for emphasis. Now they were really laughing. One of them exclaimed:

“That would be a new experience to those sluts.” That set them laughing even louder, the little redhead the loudest of them all. It is easy to say “investigate” but in practice it can be quite difficult.

“I am going to prepare an official report on it and submit it to the higher authorities.” This was according to regulations and it went much smoother. “If you have any evidence, you can inform me here, or if that would embarrass you, I am ready to see each of you alone in my room, in private.” I should not have added that last because it set them laughing again.

“What evidence would we have?” asked one of the nurses finally.

“Eyewitness evidence. The doctor said several of you reported it to him.”

“Oh, the doctor. Don’t pay any attention to him. He is mean. Sit down and visit with us. Here, have some candy.” They were all speaking at once and they were very friendly. I sat down and we had a most enjoyable time. They were teasing me about my youth, about my presumed innocence and lack of experience. “I would like to show you, especially this redhead,” I told them, and now she blushed. I was thinking how to isolate her and take her for a walk but there was no chance. Those nurses presented a solid female phalanx. When I left we were good friends and they invited me to visit them again.

The next morning I told the doctor the nurses had no evidence. He gave me another one of his sour looks. He had a bigger complaint now. My men had killed one of his pigs, the largest and fattest one.

I went to investigate that. I found it was pure accident. One of the men had accidentally discharged his rifle and it hit that pig. That pig screamed so loud that it had to be killed to put it out of its misery. There were plenty of witnesses, including the entire kitchen help.

I gave the doctor a full report on the case but it did not satisfy him. He said somebody would have to pay him for that pig but I disregarded that remark. That night we had fresh pork for supper and it was a welcome change in our diet.

The next day two fat geese were killed. Again it was an accident, brought about by a most complicated chain of circumstances. We ate the geese.

Next there were towels missing from the laundry. The doctor wanted me to search the men’s packs. I told him I had no reason to suspect my men. The doctor kept insisting on the search. I informed him I was planning to have an inspection soon and then we should see.

“How soon?” the doctor wanted to know.

“Thursday,” I told him.

“Today is Thursday,” said the doctor. I had lost track of the calendar.

“Next Thursday,” I said coolly. The more contact I had with the man, the less I liked him. He disliked us even more. I was wondering how all this would end when suddenly I heard my name called. Two men came running after me. I was wanted in the office, urgent! Emergency!

I ran to the office. I found two civilians with the doctor and they rose when I entered. One was a portly, older man, with a handle-bar mustache, dressed in black with a heavy golden chain across his vest, the President of the Town Council of Siofok. The other was the Town Clerk of Siofok, in Hungary the highest executive official after the Mayor. He was around forty with a blond English mustache, his hair parted in the middle. His clothes looked very elegant and expensive for the Town Clerk of a small town. He was very pale and very excited. He did most of the talking while the other one just sat, pulling and twirling his thick mustache and nodding in assent.

They needed help at once, desperately. Siofok, only twelve miles away, was in revolt!