I remember the view from the window of my room, in the round tower that is the Danubius Hotel, in Szilagyi Erzsebet fasor; the darkness; the light rain falling on the streets of the neighbourhood; and, in the distance, the dark clouds hanging heavy over the hills of Buda. At the highest hill there was a huge communications tower, with antennas on all sides, from where, in previous years, the government broadcast its doctrine and propaganda.
Tram 56 stopped in front of the
hotel, but every morning I preferred to walk to Moszkva Tér or Széll
Kálmán Tér (as it is called now), where I could have a good and inexpensive
breakfast in a little restaurant inside the market, which also served excellent
coffee. Since I was there every day, Nemecsek (who ran the restaurant and cooked at the
same time) already knew me. With his broken English and
Magyar accent, he would ask me questions about
In Buda, we visited the
Castle, the Fishermen's Bastion, the imposing building that once was the
In
We walked the pedestrian
street Vaci utca from end to end. To get some rest, at
I told Zsuzsánna that I wanted to buy a
T-shirt with some Hungarian motif to take with me as a souvenir. She took me to
the Central Market in Vámház körút. In none of the stores could I find a
T-shirt that was made in
One day, standing on the eastern bank of the Danube beside the massive
neo-Gothic structure of the Magyarorzágház (the national parliament
building), Zsuzsánna, exalted, pointing with a finger to the colossal Statue
of Liberty that was visible in the distance on the hill of Gellért, told me
about the blood shed by the Hungarians. Those who died during the war of
independence against the Austrian Empire, in 1848; those who were executed by
the Habsburgs, including the thirteen martyrs of Arad; those who lost their
lives in the First World War, the Second World War, and during the 1956
uprising against the Russian Empire. The statue is a gigantic structure that
appears to be a woman with her arms outstretched to the sky, holding her dead
son. In memory of those who sacrificed their lives for the independence,
freedom, and prosperity of
The day we went to
In the nationalist store, I
found what I was looking for. I bought a T-shirt that in its front had an
ancient warrior riding with a bow and arrow in shooting position, and an
inscription in Hungarian that said: The Scythian fire is alive and burning
again in our spirits, and together, we will defeat the old enemy again. In
the back, it had an eagle with outstretched wings and the motto (also in
Hungarian): The warrior nation, like the waves of the sea, will never be anybody's
slave! In a bookstore in the same square, I bought two novels: Légy jó
mindhalálíg (Be Faithful Unto Death) by Zsigmond Móricz and A Pál utcai
Fiuk (The Paul Street Boys), by Ferenc Molnár.
To tell the truth, there was
not much we could do; the rain and the cold wind did not allow it. In fact,
what I remember most is the inclement weather and what we didn’t do. We did not
go to
The day before my departure,
Zsuzsánna brought me to her house. I was touched. It’s not easy for anyone to
open the doors of their home to a stranger. We ate pogácsa and gulyás, and we drank
Borsodi. We talked about Hieronymus Bosch, her favourite painter; about her
childhood and youth under the former communist regime; and about how she became
an orphan at the age of twenty-five. Her mother died of cancer, and six months
later, her father, being completely healthy, decided to die too, just like
that, by sheer willpower, because life without his wife was unbearable. He
followed her beyond the grave.
When we said goodbye at Apor
Vilmos Tér, she hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks; I kissed her on the
forehead. She stood on the platform, staring at me, as Tram 59 drove off. I didn’t
take my eyes off her until she disappeared in the fog of another sunless day. I
guess we both knew we would never see each other again.
So, maybe that's
what certain sunny days in
©William Almonte Jiménez, 2012
