The May Beetles Read online

  In a maternity ward of the present day, the fever that threatened my mother’s life would have been overcome quickly with antibiotics. But it was less certain in 1927. In my mother’s mind during her brief moments of lucidity at the Debrecen hospital would have been the experience of her own mother, who died of this same fever. My father, so I was told much later, found it almost impossible to look at me in my cradle. Instead of gazing down lovingly at his newborn daughter, as he had when I was first delivered, he saw a fiend who had almost cost him his beautiful young wife. But he recovered and became the adoring father of my memories.

  Boeske might have waited three or four years before becoming pregnant again, considering what she’d endured. But no. She was pregnant once more within six months. Marta, my youngest sister, was born on the twenty-ninth of March, 1929. And she was an angry child who cried incessantly. Doesn’t Marta confirm my theory of happy babies produced by blissful pregnancies? Because my mother’s third pregnancy was not blissful. Her memories of the pain and sickness that came so close to ending her life after my birth were still vivid.

  My little sister was born on a Friday night. On the morning of the following day, Shabbat, my father went to his father-in-law’s house to deliver the good news. ‘The child was born last night, and it is a healthy child, and Boeske is well.’ My mother’s family didn’t enquire as to the gender of the baby. They knew it was a girl – or should I say, another girl. Had the new baby been a boy, Gyula would have hurried to the house in the middle of the night wearing a huge smile and shouting proudly: ‘I have a son! A son has been born to us!’

  We of the Keimovits family had been reasonably well off, but these were the days of the Great Depression and things were tough. Everything was simple, plain and ordinary. Loving parents, games to play, stories read to us. Oh, the stories. Of all the enjoyments my childhood provided, I am especially grateful that books and reading were amongst them.

  I can’t say when my love for books began; at three years, four, five? The magic of the tales and rhymes would have been enhanced by the cadence of my mother’s voice. At maybe four or five, I began to read the stories myself. Throughout my life, in times of distress, I have taken consolation in reading. It has been an ever-present passion, truly. With years it has grown, and it has never abated. My house today is full of books, shelves reaching from the floor to the ceiling. I will sometimes catch the title on the spine of a book and find myself overcome by the rapture of recalling exactly when I first read it, in what circumstances, and I will take down the book and forget all my duties.

  As Erna was five years older than me, naturally she was a little remote. I might have asked her to read me a story when my mother was busy, but we didn’t play together much. It was my younger sister, Marta, who was my playmate – I hovered over her like a second mother.

  My concern for her wellbeing approached paranoia on occasions. Like most houses in rural Hungary, ours had a lavatory at the far end of our backyard; there was no sewerage system, and people naturally wanted to keep the smell as far from the house as possible. The big timber seat comfortably accommodated adults, but it was too large for little bodies, unless they were alert to the danger. I remember vividly my fear that Marta would fall through the hole to certain death, and I followed her down to the lavatory every time she required a visit. I was like a ministering angel – in this case, the ministering angel of the lavatory.

  The fretting Marta caused me went further. I had very little understanding of death beyond the obvious: that when a person was dead, he or she ceased to move or talk, and very soon disappeared entirely. I once overheard someone say, ‘After he died, I closed his eyes,’ and I was clever enough to draw the conclusion that a person could be dead with eyes wide open. Marta, like many other small children, was capable of sleeping or drowsing with her eyes half open. I would stare down at her as she slept, her eyelids fluttering, and when the thought that my little sister was close to death became too much to bear, I would gently wake her to make sure she was still alive. In years to come, I would learn much more about death, but I never feared anyone’s death with quite the intensity that dwelt in me when I sat beside Marta’s cot.

  Marta at kindergarten in Nyírbátor; she is the second child from the right.

  Whether in winter’s snow or the clear air of summer, the day in Nyírbátor began for Erna and Marta and me when the sound of the hooter from the Bohny bread factory blared rudely at seven in the morning. Bohny was Nyírbátor’s sole manufacturing plant, and the hooter signalled the start of the working day. All I ever knew about Bohny was that it produced this bread, which we purchased fresh for our table every morning. I think the plant also included a distillery. The manager of the plant was Mr Zeger, an assimilated Jew, high on the social ladder of Nyírbátor. His beautiful blonde daughter, Annushka, was a friend of Marta’s.

  The best time to be carefree is during childhood, when the world is fresh and vivid – when a game played in the street with your friends, or a sunset, or the flight of birds across the sky, or an ice-cream at the cake shop in the town square thrills and delights you. I recall long spring evenings playing catch on the street, running between the acacia trees with other children of the neighbourhood, all of them my friends. If you touched a tree before the others caught you, you won. And other games too: hide-and-seek, or the many variations of skipping – a long rope swung by a playmate standing at each end, me in the middle leaping while rhymes were chanted. The acacias were in full bloom, and their heavy, sweet fragrance mingled with the dust of the unpaved street. We were uninhibited in our happiness.

  The only thing that interrupted our play was the ambling return of the cattle from the common grazing fields at sundown. We gave way to the herds and watched in fascination as the ponderous beasts lumbered past. It always seemed a minor miracle to me that each cow and each calf knew where it lived, where it belonged. As first one gate, then another swung open, and each beast chose its own yard without any urging from the peasant herdsmen who followed them. Then came the pigs, the sows and their young – big creatures, the sows. There I stood, a hand to my nose, curious about the pigs despite their smell, noticing the way the younger pigs kept close to their mothers. I was curious about everything as a child, as if the world were an inexhaustible source of the strange, the wonderful and the downright puzzling. The swineherds wore black, round-domed hats, and capes that could be slung to hang down the back or pulled around to cover more of the upper body on cold days. The costume of the swineherds was not the same as that of the cattle herders; there were a few differences in the shape of the hats and capes. I took an interest in such things.

  The stench of the pigs never bothered us; we were country children and we never shied away from what was natural in life. We were immersed in nature, in its sounds and smells. Certainly I was a civilised being – I knew my manners, I read books, I learned my lessons at school. But part of me was wild, as if I retained some vital spark of the life people lived before the time of books and schools and learning. That’s what it is to be free, I think: to feel thrilled by what one’s senses provide, and then to go home to warmth and shelter and open a book. I’m not sure that one can ever again be quite as free as in childhood.

  The cows went by, the pigs went by and we resumed our games. We wanted to go on playing, running and laughing forever. Every evening, when I heard my mother’s voice calling us home for supper, I felt a moment’s sadness. The day was over. The fun must wait for another day.

  By nine o’clock I was fed and bathed and in my bed. And nine o’clock was also the hour that the soldiers stationed in Nyírbátor were called to their barracks by a mournful bugle. The sound roused the dogs of the neighbourhood to a frenzy, as if they considered it their duty to make a din louder than the bugler’s. The notes of the instrument combined with the racket of the barking dogs always touched off a fear in me, as if the world outside my bedroom had taken on a darker mood. Then an immense sadness settled on my heart. Where did it com
e from? Was it a warning of some sort, that the world had more to show me than games and sunsets and the interesting spectacle of cows and pigs returning home in the dusk?

  I whispered my Hebrew prayers, repeating the last verse until I had lulled myself to sleep. The following morning, before the hooter at the factory sounded, I would be briefly awakened by the notes of different bugles: the herdsmen and swineherds calling their beasts back out to pasture. Each played a different three or four notes. I would listen in my drowsy state, then ask myself: ‘Baba, did you finish your prayers last night?’

  I’d fall asleep again until the Bohny hooter sounded. By then all thoughts of sadness had vanished. I thought only of fresh bread, of the morning greeting from my mother, and of the fun that the new day would bring.

  In front of the Keimovits family house at 1 Pócsi Utca in about 1934.

  Gyula and Boeske stand at the right, and Boeske’s half-sister Manci at the left.

  Hedy Hammerman sits at the far left, then Marta, Erna and Baba.

  CHAPTER 3

  Shabbat

  It has been said that women lose their sense of play once they become mothers; that the responsibilities of parenting place them at greater and greater distance from the spirit of the games they once enjoyed. That wasn’t true of my mother. She retained her feeling for play even when she was caring for three children and a husband. It was a part of her essence.

  She played shops and housewives and kindergarten with Marta and me, also with Erna when she was younger. She had to be in a good mood, of course, but she was often in a good mood. She entered into the games not with the patient forbearance of an adult, but with the glee of a child. It may even have been a release for her, to caper in the way she did. When my father returned home from his work, my mother stepped straight back into her adult role as wife, and whatever game we were engaged in was over. I resented my father’s intrusion, and wished he’d been delayed.

  It was not only the games my mother played with me and Marta and the books she read to us that thrilled me – she also sang to us. She loved to sing. Her voice was warm and lyrical, and she sang from the heart. Marta and I, and often Erna too, sat around her while she entertained us, our gazes on her face, drawn in by the enchantment of her voice. And she knew so many songs: Hungarian folk songs, others that she recalled from the musicals of her younger years, some from light opera. Just as the games she played with us gave her pleasure, so the singing enriched her days. Can one sing like that, with such tenderness and expression, without enjoying oneself?

  How I loved the sentimental songs fashionable during the First World War! It’s so strange to think that the early twentieth century, such a catastrophic period, should have produced an abundance of songs that spoke of love and home and hearth, of sunshine and blossom, of the devotion of a mother or a father, or of the loyalty of a sweetheart. Or perhaps it’s not strange that such songs became popular when men were fighting each other in the mud.

  There were comic songs, too, even one or two with a satirical edge. I picked up all these tunes from my mother, and I know them still, all these decades later. I begin to hum a tune, and almost instantly the words return and out they tumble, all in Hungarian, my native tongue. I may not have thought of the song for years, but I’ve retained every syllable of the lyrics, every note of the tune.

  Our Jewishness braced our lives in the way that a trellis supports the vine that is woven through it. But neither I nor my sisters, nor even our parents, gave much thought to our Jewishness. We were not self-conscious about our faith. It was a natural part of our lives. I don’t believe I ever once compared, in an objective way, what happened in our household with what went on in Christian households. We followed our own customs, and nothing else needed to be said.

  An observant Jew has a great many rules to honour. Dietary observances account for hundreds; they influence everything you eat. Only observant Jews know the pitfalls of eating away from a kosher table. Yet we did not labour under a heavy burden of observance. It came to us without any anguished reflection: my mother prepared kosher, we ate kosher, and that was all there was to it. Of course we rigorously kept Shabbat and all the Jewish festivals.

  On those days no work is allowed; even making a fire or turning on a light is considered physical labour. When Shabbat commenced on a Friday evening, our house seemed to be cleaner, more sparkling, and the atmosphere was warm and welcoming. The table was laid with a crisp white tablecloth, and at the centre of the table stood a candlestick holder with seven candles flickering. These represented my parents and their three children; my mother added one for a sister of hers who died as a young woman, and for their mother, who died at the age of twenty-two. The candlelight spread a tender radiance on our household.

  Before the sun sets, marking the beginning of Shabbat, it is the duty of the mistress of the house to light the candles of the Shabbat ceremony, and to say a blessing as the flame rises from each wick. Every time I light the candles now, I recall how my father found a way to play his part in the ceremony. He lit each candle for a few seconds, then snuffed it out, so that when the time came for my mother to light the candles, the shorter wick would yield an instantaneous flame.

  After the prayer which welcomed the arrival of Queen Shabbat, my father filled a goblet with red wine, in preparation for the recital of the kiddush. Shabbat is always known as the ‘queen’ or the ‘bride’, a tradition going back so long that no story of its origin properly explains it. It’s not something that we dwelt on; we all rose from our seats at the table as my father lifted the goblet, welcomed Queen Shabbat and blessed the wine. The goblet went around the table and each of us took a sip.

  Father would then lift the cloth cover from the challah and offer a prayer. He cut generous slices and handed one to Mother, then to Erna, to me, to Marta, to all who were seated at our table that evening. How delicious that challah tasted, not only for itself but also because of the comforting ritual of its serving. Everything we ate on Shabbat evening had the superadded quality of taste imparted by these honoured rituals. It was as if we had been invited to enjoy the first food ever consumed on earth, and so our appreciation was at its keenest.

  The whole of the meal was punctuated by songs of praise for Shabbat. And when the meal was over, we sang, at the top of our voices, a final prayer of gratitude, the Birkat Hamazon. For the remainder of Shabbat evening, we relaxed. It was possible to relax on any other day of the week, of course, but this was different – this was relaxation that reached deep down and nourished one’s soul.

  And Shabbat evening, of course, was only the beginning of twenty-five hours of strict observance – strict, yes, but warmly embraced. When we rose from bed the next morning, we were still enjoying this atmosphere, right up until the evening. It was not a matter of finding things to do that fell within the boundaries of Shabbat; it was an easeful day of conversation and communion. We enjoyed a number of meals (all prepared in advance), and each meal was introduced by prayers and chanting.

  If I sit quietly, I can transport myself back to the Keimovits’ household just as the sun is setting. Dusk creeps into the room where we women – well, women and girls – sit around the fireplace, while Father sits alone at the table singing King David’s twenty-third Psalm. It has a beautiful, mournful melody, and Father sings the psalm three times. We do not join him on these occasions. We just sit quietly, each of us with her own thoughts. All is peaceful and we are content.

  Each week there was Shabbat, but only once a year was Pesach, or Passover. Our preparations for Pesach were painstaking. The house was cleaned from top to bottom, and our everyday crockery and cutlery were changed for those that were designated for this special season. I remember feeling a thrill when I saw these bowls and cups and utensils which I hadn’t seen for a year. And when Father arrived with the freshly baked matzah – big, round, handmade unleavened bread, crisp and thin – I produced another smile. I loved the Seder nights we spent reading the Haggadah, which seemed to grow sho
rter year by year as I grew older. And my mother was inspired to sing, as if the season of Pesach and its importance called for the contribution of her beautiful voice. She sang not only for her own pleasure and for ours, but to impress on us the words and melodies of the venerable traditions of the Jewish community. I still sing my mother’s songs to my own children at the Seder table.

  Our neighbourhood in Nyírbátor meant almost as much to me as our dining room, or my own bedroom. The road was wide in front of our house, because at that point it became two streets, Pócsi Utca and Debreceni Utca. Opposite our window was an artesian well, the water raised by a big revolving iron wheel. The handle attached to the wheel had been burnished to a bright silver by the many hands that had grasped it over the years. The most common type of well in Nyírbátor was the backyard draw well: a pail on a rope that was dropped into the reservoir of water below, then drawn up, full, to the surface. But the water of these draw wells was usually too rich in minerals to be used for drinking or cooking. The water of the artesian well, coming from deeper down, was what we relied on for drinking and for bathing. Our bathtub was wooden, made from a hollowed-out tree trunk. My mother would pour heated water from the artesian well into the wooden tub, and we would stand in it and wash, first our upper bodies, then our lower.

  It was no great burden for us to take water from the well to our home. Others endured a longer trek. Marta and I, and sometimes Erna too, watched from the window as the people of the neighbourhood visited the well with buckets, some from a long distance away. For them it was a chore each day; even a single bucket of water is heavy, and most families required more than just one.