The May Beetles Page 3

  Anything that happened in our neighbourhood was interesting, sometimes even fascinating. It was not so much to do with gossip, but rather that we were watching the day-to-day lives and stories of people we knew well unfolding before our eyes – the narrative of our town. We noticed if a girl had a new dress, or new shoes, or if someone seemed a little bit ill, or very ill, or more cheerful than usual. Our neighbours were characters in the tale of the town, just as we were to them.

  The winters of Nyírbátor made filling buckets a particular trial. The temperature dropped, snow fell, and the water droplets that ran from the fountain of the well froze as the cold air hit them, creating a long icicle. People would break off the icicle before turning the handle on the wheel. And the handle itself would be freezing cold. I never tested it, but I imagine that the flesh of a bare hand could have been fused to the metal. I suppose you can get used to all kinds of hardships.

  I have spoken of Jewish ritual and custom in the Keimovits family without making it clear that we lived amongst the non-Jewish people of Nyírbátor – which was to say, the majority – and not in a ghetto of the sort that existed in other parts of Europe. The Jews of Nyírbátor had never been compelled to isolate themselves in a designated area. We lived in the best streets of the town, and in the poorest ones, and whether we were well-to-do or penniless, we all thought of ourselves as Hungarians.

  I suppose living with neighbours of one’s faith to the left and right reinforces the bond of shared belief. But our family honoured the rituals of our faith without any great fuss. We didn’t feel insecure – at least, not in the early 1930s – and we didn’t feel the need to live cheek by jowl with other Jews. No Jewish children at all lived close to our house in Pócsi Utca; until I started school, all of my friends were non-Jewish. It’s possible those kids I played with on the street knew I was Jewish since I didn’t join them on Shabbat, but maybe not. We delighted each other – that was all we cared about.

  We had four immediate neighbours in Pócsi Utca. On one side, behind a high wooden fence, lived a middle-aged woman who kept herself so much to herself that she could have been considered a hermit. It was rumoured that she had a husband somewhere, maybe in jail. Nobody knew why, or even if it was true. We were curious, of course, but too well mannered to even think of approaching the lady and asking her. She kept a dog, a real ruffian of a beast, ugly as sin, with a square face that seemed to be designed to repel any attempt at affection. The hermit lady never left her house without this forbidding creature, and it may have been the dog’s task to keep us all at a distance. She never spoke a word to anybody in the neighbourhood.

  A Jewish family lived over another fence: the Roths. The men of the family had become tailors, while the grown-up girls were all seamstresses. The work of the Roth family seamstresses was mostly alterations; they were not geniuses of the needle and thread. We children liked to go over to the Roths’ house because the girls, the seamstresses, allowed us to undo seams. We would pick away at those seams as if we were being granted some wonderful privilege.

  The room in which both the tailors and the seamstresses sat working at their machines was long and had a low ceiling, somewhat like a factory. I loved this big workroom: there was such a feeling of industry, of busyness, that I couldn’t help but feel excited. The girls were young, but not so young that they couldn’t marry, if they wished, yet most were spinsters. Acceptable husbands were in short supply at this time; many young Jewish men had been amongst the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians killed while serving the Emperor during the Great War. Sometimes the Roth girls took us into their small bedrooms. There were two beds per room, with dainty white lace everywhere, and on each bed a fancy doll dressed in pink frills. These bedrooms were so tiny that one might think the dolls were the actual occupants.

  On Friday nights the machines were covered, the half-finished works went into cupboards, the floor was swept and the workroom became a small prayer house for the Jews of the neighbourhood and a little further distant. On Saturday morning everybody wanted to go to the big shul, but on Friday nights many people were too tired to rouse themselves to attend. They would make a short appearance at the prayer house, then go home, eat dinner and rest. After six days’ work, and at a time when a working day for many people lasted twelve hours, that was understandable. My father was often amongst those who availed themselves of this convenient local house of worship.

  Behind us lived Iri and Mari, identical twins of my age who had long, straight blonde hair. We were playmates but not really friends. We didn’t refer to them by their individual names but with the compound name of IriMari, and they were content to be addressed in that way. IriMari’s father was not on the scene. It was quite possible that he never had been, or perhaps no more than once. IriMari’s mother was, as you might expect, very poor. She made her living, such as it was, by mending, laundering and ironing. But the girls were our playmates, and that was all we cared about. We never went into their house and they never came into ours.

  The Szucs children were in a different category. The two Szucs girls, Anna and Marika, and their older brother, Feri, were very close to the respective ages of the three Keimovits girls, and our friendship with them was perfectly harmonised. We adored them; they adored us. Such intensity in the friendships of childhood! And at the same time a simplicity that we are unlikely ever to experience in our adult years.

  The Szucs family was Christian. Come December, for Feri, Anna and Marika, there was a Christmas tree, carols, Christmas dinner, special dishes, presents. And for us there was Hanukkah. I don’t think the differences between the two festivals ever had to be exhaustively explained; it was accepted that the Keimovits children did one thing, and the Szucs did another. No big deal, as they say.

  Mr Szucs ran a chimney-sweeping business, and made a good living from it. And although we never saw the interior of IriMari’s house, we saw the inside of the Szucs children’s house all the time. It was a treat to visit. The Szucs home was modern, with a loft that had small, round windows and a floor covered in golden sand. The purpose of the sand was to act as insulation, I imagine, but it meant more than that to me. The smell of it thrilled me, evoking images of beaches and an ocean that I had never actually seen. The loft was an adventure playground of sorts – no obstacles to climb or crawl through, but the sand excited in me a feeling of otherness, of an attractive strangeness, as if I were travelling to another land, like the exotic destinations in the books I read with such relish. The round windows were like the portholes of a ship, and although I had never seen a ship, it was easy to imagine that the loft was a proud vessel riding the swell of the ocean.

  Holidaying at the thermal baths of Hajdúszoboszló.

  Cousin Kati Lichtman from Budapest is at the left, with Erna and Marta on the right.

  Sitting is Baba, not wearing a bathing costume due to a cold.

  We never came to the end of our enjoyment of that loft. We brought toys with us, including our dolls, as if this special place had to be shared with those toys for which we had such love. The Szucs loft was, in fact, a separate home for us, one we had fashioned ourselves, where our passions and priorities ruled, and where our lives were at their most vivid. When I picture the Szucs house, I think of a drawing by Erna. She once chose to depict the house for a school assignment. The genius of Erna’s draughting was celebrated in our family, and her drawing of the Szucs house was a masterpiece, perfect in every detail. We said, ‘Erna, how are you able to do that?’ It really was something. Even when I gaze at it now, in my mind’s eye, it seems to me better than a photograph.

  Each year our family enjoyed a holiday away from Nyírbátor, often to the spa at Hajdúszoboszló. A special delight was to return with presents for Feri, Anna and Marika, knowing that they would also have presents for us. The Szucs family always went to the home of the children’s grandparents, Szerencs, in the north of Hungary, a town only half the size of Nyírbátor but which boasted the biggest sugar refinery in Europe. Szeren
cs was famous above all for its chocolate. We could always anticipate the treat of chocolates, the perfect gift, when we met up with the Szucs kids after our holidays.

  I’ve seen enough in my life, and read enough of the experience of others to know that friendships between Jews and gentiles, particularly at this point of the twentieth century, often frayed. The Nazis were a robust political force in Germany, and even without their propaganda, Hungary was a nation historically susceptible to outbreaks of anti-Semitism. There was plenty of it about in Nyírbátor and its region at a time when I was old enough to know what it meant.

  A few years later than this, troops of Hungarian soldiers marched through the town, singing loudly:

  Hey, Jew, hey, Jew, hey, you stinking Jew

  What are you doing here amongst us Hungarians?

  Under your side-locks lice are crawling

  Your mother Zali was smuggled into our land

  In a sack on your father’s back

  And:

  Because the Jew is of a kosher kind

  It feels so good to hit him hard.

  The prejudice that informed these grotesque sentiments remained dormant for a time, only to be stirred up by virulent slogans and broadcasts. How happy I am to say that in those days the Szucs family never gave the slightest indication of sympathy with such anti-Semitic rants.

  The loving friendship between the Szucs children and us remained unsullied until one day in 1938 when we saw Feri in the street. As we walked past him, he looked at us and hissed, ‘Stinking Jews!’

  In front of the Keimovits home at 1 Pócsi Utca in about 1936; the Greek Orthodox church is visible in the background. The family was farewelling the Hammermans, who were leaving for Palestine.

  Margit Hammerman (Boeske’s half-sister) is in the top centre. Hedy, her daughter, is on the far right. Between them is Boeske. Erna stands on the far left, and Manci, another of Boeske’s half-sisters, is next to her. In front of them are Marta (left) and Baba.

  CHAPTER 4

  Learning

  Between roughly 1932, when I was five, and 1934, when I was seven, Marta and I attended kindergarten, just across the way from our front door in Pócsi Utca. The kindergarten welcomed kids of all social classes. We counted in our number the children of a policeman, of shopkeepers, even of a local Lutheran preacher. And some who, judging by their dress, came from peasant families.

  It was still a time when you could be a Jew in Nyírbátor in an unselfconscious way, but in kindergarten the dominant faith of the town, Christianity, took precedence. When mid-December came around, the Christmas nativity play attracted devoted attention from the teachers and the kids. We Jewish children never took an active part in the Christmas play. We sat through the rehearsals, not entirely without interest, learnt the songs and the hymns, but we were not participants. The teachers and the Christian kids certainly didn’t scorn us, but it was evident that we were outsiders. I didn’t protest, but Christmas in kindergarten gave me an incipient understanding of what it might mean to dwell in the margins of a community. It wasn’t tragic, just strange. For those few days in December, the Jewish children of the kinder withdrew into a type of limbo.

  But I was still watching and noticing. I remember clearly one Christmas play in which the role of baby Jesus was given to an unkempt little girl with tangled fair hair. She looked inadequately nourished, and spent the whole of each rehearsal in a basket. She had no lines to utter, and she gazed about, baffled, one hand tucked between her thighs. None of the other kids in the rather large cast – the Magi, shepherds, angels – paid any attention to what baby Jesus was up to, and the teacher appeared oblivious. Even baby Jesus herself seemed unaware.

  Our kindergarten teacher was a plump, not so gentle old maid in her late fifties. She lived on the premises with her diminutive mother. This ancient lady sat throughout the day in an armchair in the middle of the room in which we children sang and played. She remained almost motionless for the whole time we were there, bundled up in a colourful crocheted rug. She slept at times – well, her eyes were closed – but for the most part she simply stared straight ahead, at nothing.

  Anger always seemed to be brewing in our teacher, who was assisted by a sturdy peasant maid. One of the maid’s winter tasks was to keep the fire burning in our room throughout the day, adding coals to the glowing embers. One winter’s day we were indoors, as was usual when the playground was covered in snow. The fire was glowing, the ancient lady was sleeping under her crocheted rug, and we children were playing quietly in scattered groups. I happened to be in a group close to our teacher when she suddenly felt the need to chastise a girl in another group. ‘You rude little runt, how dare you use such filthy language?’ she roared. ‘I will burn out your tongue!’

  I was startled. The phrase ‘burn out your tongue’ arrested me, and I glimpsed the maid shuffling toward the fire. She picked up the poker and jabbed the tip into the glowing embers, leaving it there to grow red-hot. I thought: ‘The poker is being prepared to burn out that girl’s tongue, and I will be forced to watch.’ A surge of panic rose into my chest, and I fainted there, where I sat.

  This swoon in the kindergarten was my first, but it would not be my last. For years after, whenever I faced sudden physical, psychological or emotional rigour that came without warning, my brain short-circuited. These lapses into unconsciousness were not unwelcome. Escape from the immediate was one benefit, but there was another, for as soon as I fainted, I began to dream, and the dreams were always enjoyable, even rhapsodic.

  When I regained consciousness, the teacher and the maid were bent over me with concerned expressions. But I was fine. I remembered the rapture I’d just experienced and had no fear of it returning at some future time. I hadn’t hurt myself by collapsing – indeed, in all my future syncopic episodes, I never suffered bruises, abrasions, fractures.

  Marta, Erna and Baba in the yard of their house at 1 Pócsi Utca.

  I recall clearly one Thursday morning in September 1934: I was preparing for my first day of school in Nyírbátor. Marta was still attending kindergarten, but here I was, at age six, about to commence a new stage of my education. Erna was of course already a schoolgirl, and for some time I had envied her. On that first morning, I was so wildly excited that I couldn’t manage to put my own clothes on, and my mother had to help me. I babbled on in a torrent of delight, even going so far as to tell my elder sister: ‘Erna, you will no longer have to read me stories, for after today I will be able to read everything myself.’

  Erna laughed at me. ‘No, not after one day, Baba, it will take longer than that.’

  I was annoyed – how dare she! ‘I will be reading as soon as I come home!’ I said. ‘You’ll see!’

  While I started out with unrealistic ideas about learning, I was indeed reading a few months after commencing school. My enthusiasm for school was not only for the increased opportunities for play or the chance to make new friends, but for learning itself.

  I recall a day almost a year before that first day at school. I was in the kitchen of our house with my mother and Marta. I was sitting at the low children’s table we kept in the kitchen, and Marta was on another chair. Our mother was busy preparing dinner, carrying a big, black pot from the table to the stove. I had a book of poems open before me on the table, a book from which my mother often read aloud. I was leaning over the book and reciting a poem to my sister – but the poem I was reciting was not in the book. I was making it up as I went along, imitating what my mother did when she read aloud to us: keeping my eyes on the lines before me, turning the pages at intervals with a wetted fingertip. The poem was not gibberish; it had fluency, meaning, rhyme and rhythm. As soon as I came to the end of the poem – and I somehow knew when I reached the end – the words, the lines, vanished from my memory. I was overwhelmed by my talent and tears ran down my cheeks. My sister stared at me wide-eyed.

  That first school I attended was a Jewish day school, which offered Nyírbátor’s Jewish community a curricu
lum spread over six compulsory grades. As happens amongst children, the pre-school friendships I thought would last for eternity began to fade away as new friendships developed. The schoolhouse was less than a kilometre from our home in Pócsi Utca, a ten-minute walk away. The headmaster and his wife lived there, and there were three rooms for the kids and a tiny apartment for a janitor. The headmaster was about fifty, with a strong build and a broad face that remained as red as a tomato all day. He was a pompous man, full of self-importance, as if he’d been granted his office and authority by the king himself. His wife was a colourless creature; the only thing I remember about her was her size. The fat wife and the red-faced husband had no children.

  Classes started at eight o’clock in the morning, which in winter meant that Erna and I headed off to school half an hour after sunrise. The pale light reflecting off the snow lent an element of mystery to the journey. In spring, the birds sang a chorus of encouragement. In summer we would sometimes see storks and wild ducks. I had a leather bag slung over my shoulder, a few books inside and also my lunch: buttered bread wrapped in greaseproof paper, and a piece of fruit. I chattered away inside my head as I walked, noticing everything, asking myself questions. Some of the thoughts that engaged me had a philosophical aspect. One morning it occurred to me that animals, even insects, might have souls. In the newspaper death notices, the announcement always noted that a person ‘exhaled his or her noble soul’. What did a flea exhale at its death? The question perplexed me. I raised it at school amongst my friends and was surprised that they had no interest. They thought I was crazy.

  Our school had two sessions each day. In the morning, the three lower grades occupied the schoolhouse. At half-past twelve this first group of students departed for home; the place was spruced up by the janitor, and at one o’clock the higher three grades came to study. The facilities were somewhat spartan. We wrote in pencil until third grade, when we were judged mature enough to use ink. There was only a tiny open space outdoors for play, and not much more room indoors, for that matter. But the tuition was thorough, taking in maths, history and geography, and we kids loved the school and respected the education it provided. It was our school. We were given a cup of warm milk at second playtime, and were grateful for it. For some kids from poorer families, this may have been their most sustaining nourishment of the day. Sometimes, in the winter, the janitor would bring us freshly baked squares of pumpkin.