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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468563542 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/13/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
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Lily's Daughter
A MemoirBy Susan Gerstein
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Susan GersteinAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-6355-9
Chapter One
The Dream* * *
I am walking towards the airplane waiting for takeoff at a corner of the Park. It's a beautiful spring day; everything is in vivid Technicolor. The airplane, small, open, is crowded; Peti is standing in its doorway, waving me on to hurry uvdown and the entire Park is visible below me: the Corso, the Statuary, the Pebbly with the Fountain and the Great Reflecting Pool. I am very happy to be with Peti, we hold hands and beam at each other. As the plane attempts to soar, it becomes obvious that it is too crowded: the weight of too many people is slowing its ascent. Peti and I are still at the open doorway; we nod at each other in wordless agreement: we decide to jump. I simply step out into the air and float, gently, pleasurably, toward the ground. I am vaguely aware of being separated from Peti but the floating is so pleasant this doesn't seem to matter; I expect to meet him when we reach the ground. There is a soft impact: I have landed in the Pebbly. Peti is nowhere to be seen. I consider what to do. I am on the City Hall side of the Pebbly, next to the Pool and Fountain. It is dusk now; I hear faint strains of music from far away, from the Corso side of the Pool and I would like to get there. To get there I need to cross the Great Pool. As I contemplate how to accomplish this, a rowboat appears not far from where I am, tied up at the edge of the Great Pool as if waiting for me; I get into it and with great ease row across the vast water. On the far side I step out of the boat and make my way toward the now louder music.
On the Corso there is a wonderful scene: a festival is in progress. By now it is evening, dark: the entire length of the Corso is festooned with brilliant lampions and streamers. The music grows louder, I don't quite know where it is coming from, there must be an orchestra somewhere. It is a happy sound, music to dance to. There is a vast crowd milling around under the lights and at first I think it's just some people celebrating; but to my astonishment I see that mingled among the people there are frogs. Wonderfully green frogs, intensely green with specks of gold all over them, somewhat smaller than people, more child-sized, and each of them has a brilliant red ribbon tied around its wrist. The miraculous frogs surprise me but not too much so: I find their festival wonderful and completely natural. No one takes any notice of me, as if I were invisible: I mingle with the crowd, sort of float over the length of the Corso. I never find the source of the music, but it continues, the festivities continue; I am just an onlooker. I am not frightened to be alone; no harm would come to me here.
I now find myself at the lower end of the Corso where Mihaly Horvath Utca begins. The festival is receding: it is still going on behind me but I am now at the far edge of it, I still hear the music and see the faint flicker of the lampions but I am leaving them behind.
I am now, suddenly, at home in the Green Cupola building, in the apartment, standing by the window of my father's room. This window faces vaguely in the direction of the Park, of the Corso, of the festival. But it is now morning. I am alone in the room, yet I am aware there are others somewhere in the apartment. The festival, though I remember it, is like a distant memory. I am standing by this window with a camera: I had always wanted one, and now I am holding one in my hand. I point it out in the direction of Mihaly Horvath Utca toward the Park in the distance. I press the shutter. I press again. And again. Suddenly, as fast as I am pressing the shutter, pictures begin to tumble out of the camera. But they are not photographs: they are drawings. Delicate drawings of green frogs with ribbons tied to their wrists, of lampion-lit festivities, of the Park, of the Pebbly, of Mihaly Horvath Utca. I am amazed. I am delighted.
* * *
I wake up with a complete, vivid, unshakably clear memory of the dream. It was, all of it, in the most amazing color: I had never dreamed in color before. I must tell of it, immediately, to my mother who is sleeping in the adjacent room, known both as My Mother's Room or My Room because we both usually sleep in it. From time to time I end up sleeping in My Father's Room for various reasons, as is the case now; but I urgently need to tell my mother of my dream before I forget it. I had interesting dreams before, and know all too well how easy it is to have a perfectly clear vision of them at awakening, of all that had happened during the night - and yet have absolutely no memory of it by breakfast.
It is 1946; probably spring; I am six years old. I call out to my mother; she comes into my father's room and sits at the edge of the sofa where I had been sleeping. Her blond hair is disheveled, the traces of last night's makeup still show. My mother is an attractive woman: she is not a beauty but has an aura of flamboyant vivacity that puts beauties in the shadow. She is my Best Friend. She always, always takes me seriously: we have woman-to-woman conversations. She knows all about the love-affair between Peti Mautner and me. Peti is the son of one of my parent's friends: he appeared in Szeged several months earlier, we met on the Corso and we knew almost right away that we loved each other. During the past winter we went to Miss Dalma's English Kindergarten where we shared lunch and toys. Everybody, even Miss Dalma saw that we were in love.
My mother sits by my bedside; I tell her about my dream. She listens, as she always does, but now I sense a lack of attention: she is not taking me seriously; she thinks I am making it up. She smothers me with hugs and kisses. I don't like that: she has cream on her face, she hugs too hard, I prefer her as a friend, a confidante. Now my feelings are hurt: she is not really interested in my dream, she is preoccupied with concerns of her own.
Before she walks away from our conversation, she promises I can spend part of the day at the theater: that pleases me immensely. She talks to me while I follow her around the apartment watching her get dressed, deal with her makeup, her complicated hairdo designed to imitate Barbara Stanwyck (whom, she is often told, she resembles), sip her espresso in lieu of breakfast, give Marian instructions for the day, until finally she is ready to leave for the theater. I adore the theater. I am very grateful that my mother works there, for this makes me an "insider", one of the wonderful, amusing, interesting, colorful theater people. She lets me come there in the afternoons and I am permitted to roam all over backstage. The actors, singers, stagehands make a fuss about me while I watch them rehearse or set the stage for the evening's performance. My mother runs the business part: she is a very hands-on, managerial person, very good at her job.
My father is a journalist; he is the editor of the Social Democratic party's newspaper and gets a free pass to the city's three Cinemas. He lets Marian and me use it as much as we want. Marian is the one who takes care of me; she and I spend a considerable amount of our time in those movie houses. They are near enough to each other so if we carefully peruse the timetables and plan well, we can run from one to the other and sometimes see two, once even three movies in the same afternoon. My parents put no restriction on what I may or may not see; Marian and I accumulate a large body of knowledge about pre-war American movies: Zorro, Oliver and Hardy, early Marx Brothers, lots of Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Greer Garson, Barbara Stanwyck, Gable and Colbert, Astaire and Rogers. I form my idea of the thirties based on those movies: Astaire and Rogers dancing divinely come to my mind when I think of Lily, Tibor and their life before the War. Lily encourages me in this fantasy.
Now I silently replay the film of my dream to myself; I make a vow to etch it into my mind so as never to forget it.
Szeged before 1940
* * *
A lovely riverfront city at the southern border – I was born in it in the winter of '40 to Lily and Tibor as the hoped-for remedy for a faltering marriage. In 1940, the war had already started and though it had not yet reached Hungary, the atmosphere was fraught with the threat of imminent disaster – yet Lily and Tibor, like others, decided to have a baby. My arrival on the scene did not repair the marriage that ultimately failed, just held it together for a while.
The Marriage of Lily and Tibor
Lily and Tibor were married in Szeged in 1936. It was a marriage based on a mutual misunderstanding.
Lily was, and remained forever, a riveting presence: the attractive, vivacious, outgoing life of the party. She was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family that lost all in the crash of '29. Instead of being sent to the University, she needed to acquire an income-producing trade: at 19 she learned all about cosmetics, became an expert, and by age 22 had a successful small business in skin care. Szeged in the 1930s was a cosmopolitan city writ small: with a population of about 200 000 it was Hungary's Second City: it had it's business circles, it's artists' colony, several newspapers representing several political parties, the theater, opera, a university, sports, a lively nightlife. Lily had friends in all these circles. She worked and made a living but she also danced away nights in clubs, played tennis, was bright and dressed smartly; she had a cosmopolitan air. Tibor was smitten.
Tibor was a journalist. At the time of their courtship, he edited a weekly publication devoted to the theater and music life of the city and was part of an inner circle of bohemians, where he and Lily had an overlapping circle of friends. But Tibor was also very serious, a thinker about Life, prone to depression. He saw this life force of a girl and wanted her; she saw the attractive intellectual who was going to give stability to her life. He saw her Jewish background as romantic and exotic; she saw his Christianity as insurance against the gathering Troubles.
Soon Lily and Tibor announced their marriage plans.
Lily's family had mixed feelings. Janos, her brother who was at the University in Szeged at the time and was already and incipient Communist, liked Tibor and was all in favor. Eva, her sister, didn't care one way or another: she had met an engineer with a job prospect in Finland and was planning to marry him; Lily could do as she pleased. Her parents were in a dilemma. They met and liked Tibor, but the possible conversion of their eldest child caused them some pain. They wore their religion lightly, and did not insist that their children follow rituals, but still, they had hoped for Jewish grandchildren. However, by the mid-thirties ominous Jewish laws were being introduced by the Horthy regime with increasing frequency and the Jewish community felt besieged. A daughter marrying a Christian was on the one hand lost to the Jewish tradition but on the other hand it meant greater security for her if things got worse. – After much deliberation they decided Tibor was an attractive prospective son-in-law after all and approved.
Tibor had no family and therefore no one to consult. He was orphaned at age one: both parents died in a local flu epidemic within weeks of each other and he was raised by his mother's sister and her husband, childless themselves, who took dutiful care of him. He had an arms length, respectful relationship with them, but there was no pretense that they were his parents. Aunt Maria and Uncle Denes were dutifully told of the upcoming marriage and dutifully consented to it.
Lily's Family
Bella and Gyula, her parents, were members of a comfortably wealthy and assimilated Jewish middle class. Gyula and his brother Pali were grain merchants and small, local bankers; there was a third brother who was somewhat estranged from them. When Gyula and Bella married during the first decade of the 20th century – 1906? 1908? – there was a huge wedding, both families immensely pleased. Bella was a beauty, her family distantly related to that of Theodore Herzl and very proud of it. Gyula was an eligible, thoroughly appropriate groom. The young couple lived in a town some distance south of Szeged but still part of its constellation, a Hungarian town with a sizable Serbian minority. Gyula was something of a gambler, playing poker and 21 late into many nights but other than that, a good husband and certainly a "good provider". He and his brother Pali were successful in their business. Was Bella happy? Who knows? She was soon pregnant, giving birth first to Lily, then Janos, then Eva. Eva was born just before the Habsburg Archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo – and the rest is, truly, history.
The town they lived in was one of those accursed places in Central Europe whose borders changed throughout the centuries too many times to count. This turned out to be one of those times. War – yet again – broke out and, yet again, was not anticipated.
The First World War caught Bella, Gyula and their young children unawares. Gyula was called up and served in the Hungarian army. He returned with a medal for bravery and the family waited for the end of the war, thankful that they were alive. But when the war was over, so was the Habsburg Empire. They had not moved an inch yet suddenly found themselves in a hostile Serbia, double enemy aliens as Hungarians and Jews. They had to get back into Hungary, their country, one they viewed as more secure, more benign then Serbia, one they were loyal to. The price was high, and it was a desperate process: you had to find, pay the exorbitant price demanded by and then trust the "border rats" whose business it was to smuggle people across the border. They left in two separate groups, first Bella with Janos and Eva, followed a few weeks later by Gyula and Lily. They were fortunate; they all survived the ordeal. They were in Hungary with that portion of their worldly goods that they could carry, ready to start again.
New Life in Hodmezovasarhely.
Gyula, Bella and the children joined Pali, a childless bachelor who had gone before them and had begun to re-establish the grain business. The War was over, prosperity was in the air; the brothers were soon making a comfortable living. Life in Hodmezovasarhely, a satellite town of Szeged, was pleasant. The children were prospering. Lily was a tomboy, athletic: Gyula's favorite. Janos had a rebellious streak, getting into scrapes, running away a couple of times. He and Lily, a year older, were great buddies. Eva, a pretty little thing, was a docile, quiet child, much ignored by the two older ones.
A few years pass. By the end of the 20s Lily grows into the local belle of the ball: often literally so, for there are dances at the ballroom of the local hotel, costume balls at New Years Eve, summer dances celebrating the tennis championship; plays organized. Lily is at the center of it all. The three young people, now in their late teens, are constantly admonished about doing well in school, reminded that being Jewish they must do better than others to get into the University in Szeged, as they are expected to do. They didn't really need reminding; they have absorbed this lesson from their earliest childhood. Lily, however, is In Love for the first time; she is half hearted about the schoolwork and manages to do only what she must.
Janos is extremely bright, does brilliantly on all exams and gets into the University ahead of Lily; he is a Greek classics scholar, lanky, moody, and still rebellious. At the University he is increasingly involved in the underground Communist organization of students. He and his friends are arrested, roughed up, then released a couple of times.
Eva is not interested in school.
1930. The Great Depression reaches them.
Again, unexpectedly: Gyula and Pali lose everything in a matter of a few months. They behave honorably in the Panic: they pay off all the funds the local farmers had entrusted to them and are left nearly destitute. There is no more talk of dances, tennis, traveling for Lily; in fact there is no more talk of her going to the University at all. She is dispatched to Budapest where she can learn a trade: cosmetics. Janos will have to fend for himself to stay at the University and support himself, which he will do by tutoring and doing odd jobs. Gyula and Bella must give up their large, comfortable house in Hodmezovasarhely and move to a small place called Szeghalom. Eva is desperate, she is too young to be on her own and she's afraid that moving to Szeghalom with her parents will ruin her chances at a good marriage, her goal.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Lily's Daughter by Susan Gerstein Copyright © 2012 by Susan Gerstein. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
The Dream....................1The Marriage of Lily and Tibor....................5
Lily's Family....................7
A New Life in Hodmezovasarhely....................8
1930The Great Depression reaches them....................9
1932....................9
1935....................9
The Marriage of Lily and Tibor - continued....................10
Szeghalom interlude....................15
Budapest 1943-45....................19
A Long Train Ride....................21
March 1944....................23
The Fonyod Interlude....................24
September 1944....................26
The Siege....................29
The German Doctor....................33
A Russian Soldier....................37
The War Is Over, But....................38
Dog Bites Girl....................42
Szeged 1945-50....................47
1945....................49
Arrival....................49
Aunt Dalma's Kindergarten....................54
A Clarification....................55
I Fall In Love....................56
Marian....................58
Christmas....................60
1946....................62
My First Opera....................63
The End of Peti....................65
The New Neighbors....................65
The Hotel Hungaria....................70
The Szonyi and the Takacs....................72
The Start of School....................75
The End of Marian....................80
A Visitor from America....................81
The Estrangement of Lily and Tibor....................82
1947....................84
The Journalists' Ball....................84
The Faludys....................87
My Spring of Religious Accomplishments....................91
Elections -The Communist Coup....................95
The Divorce of Lilo and Artur....................97
The Return of the Lorinces....................98
The Arrival of Zsedenyi....................102
The Trip to Budapest....................103
1948....................108
The Divorce of Lily and Tibor....................108
The Easter Lunch....................111
Alone on the Train to Budapest....................115
The New Teacher and the New Order....................121
Ballet with Maestro....................123
1949....................126
On Stage and Off Stage....................126
Janos Gets Married....................133
The Rajk Trial....................136
The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein....................138
Disappearing Acts....................140
1950....................147
The Pioneer Camp....................150
The Search for an Apartment....................157
Laci Gordon....................160
Meeting Elly & Co....................165
The Gluckstahl House and its inhabitants....................169
The School at Kiraly utca....................181
Lily and the Pioneer Theater....................183
Janos and the AVO....................185
1951....................187
Expulsion from the Gluckstahl House....................190
A New Apartment, again....................192
Chicken for Dinner....................195
The End of Laci Gordon....................197
The School at Sziget Utca....................202
1952....................206
Another Birthday....................206
Relocations....................210
Peter....................211
Szeged revisited....................216
Back Home....................228
My Moment with Math....................230
Christmas Party at the Lorinces....................231
New Year's Eve at the Feyers'....................233
1953....................235
Zsorzsi's Story....................237
Stalin's Death....................256
The Defection of Kovacs and Rab(ovsky)....................260
Lily loses job - Soccer team wins game....................261
Autumn....................273
Erika Redux....................275
The Match of the Century....................277
December....................278
1954....................282
Oranges....................285
Auditioning....................286
The Stakhanovite Hero....................287
Miklos, again....................290
The Kossuth Zsuzsanna Gymnasium for Girls....................292
New Year's Eve with Erika....................295
1955....................297
Goli's death....................297
The Poetry Contest....................298
Meeting Zsiga....................300
The Anica Film Festival....................302
The LP Concerts....................306
Panni....................307
Johnny enters the scene....................313
1956....................317
Johnny, continued....................317
The Moliere Enterprise and Other Spring Events....................319
Panni, continued....................325
Summer....................331
Fall....................332
October....................333
November....................340
Exodus....................342
December....................346
Departure....................353
Over the Border....................357
Vienna....................358
In Transit....................363
Salzburg....................365
The General Leroy Eltinge....................370
Panni, Concluded....................374
Paprikas Krumpli....................381
Arrival....................383