“What the devil!” one of our escorts shouted. “I hope we have not missed the other train yet. Let’s go boys, move it!”

I think it was the last tram that we caught running out of the station. We arrived just in time to catch the other train.

“We are going to handcuff you boys again,” one of them said. “In fact, this is what we’ll do. You’ll be handcuffed to me and your friend will be handcuffed to my colleague. Just let us know when you need to go to the restroom.”

I guess they realized how irresponsibly they had been handling their assignment. I slept through most of the ride. When I had to use the restroom, my escort came with me, took off my handcuff at the restroom door and put it back on my wrist as soon as I emerged.

It was around five in the morning when our train arrived in Miskolc. It was still very dark. We had to walk from the train station to the police station. The walk took no more than ten minutes but I thought I’d never make it. I was exhausted and so cold that my whole body was shivering. There was a light rain and I was wondering whether the temperature was below freezing.

When we arrived at the big concrete building complex of the Miskolc police headquarters, I was more like a sleepwalker. Our escorts handed us over to someone and then they left. I remember being separated from Somos and taken down to a corridor with many doors on both sides. I remember how awful the smell was down there. I remember the guard opening a heavy metal door and then pointing inside a tiny cell. I looked at the guard, who had a face of a monster. The guard probably did not understand what I was waiting for so he yelled at me: “Get inside, you bastard!”

“No, there must be some misunderstanding,” I probably said. “I don’t want to get in there. I just want to go home.”

“You are home now,” the monster shouted. He shoved me inside and slammed the door in my face.

I guess suddenly I was awake. I looked around to see where I was.

The cell was very small, barely enough for the hardwood cot that had a metal frame with its legs fixed in the concrete floor. The floor was wet. I saw a perforated plate in the wall just above the door. Those perforations were the source of light in the cell. There had to be a light bulb behind that plate. The rays, coming through the uneven holes, painted various sizes and various shapes of light patches on the walls. It was almost scary.

I sat down on the edge of the cot. Soon I had to adjust myself because one of the many bolt-heads, bulging out of the wood, began to press on the bone in my buttock.

I saw a beaten bucket at the end of the cot. It was dirty and rusty with a brand new lid on it. The contrast made me smile for a second. I guess I did not yet realize what was going on. I lifted that brand new lid and immediately I understood why the air smelled so horrible down there. I quickly covered the bucket and moved to the other end of the cot.

I could hardly keep my eyes open. My head hurt, probably from the beer I had during the night.

I heard the door being opened, the huge key making irritating metallic noise in the keyhole. The guard threw in a ragged blanket. A cloud of DDT dust rose from the blanket when it landed next to me on the cot.

“It’s now after six in the morning,” monster-face barked. “From now until ten in the evening, you are not allowed to sleep or even take up horizontal position. You can sit or stand, that’s all. Understood?” He slammed the door and locked it.

A minute later I began to smell kerosene. I also noticed that some lukewarm air was blown in. I had to stand on top of the cot to find the hole. Central heating! Well, now I can joke about it but it sure was not fun back then. The smell of the kerosene got stronger and stronger. That fume eventually began to bother my eyes and it made me cough. At one point I panicked because I thought it would kill me.

As soon as the ‘heating’ stopped, the temperature began to drop.

I could no longer keep my eyes open. I stretched out on the cot carefully trying to avoid contact with the bolt-heads. It was not easy. I pulled the blanket over myself trying not to pay attention to the DDT that kept falling out of it. Half asleep, I was attempting to decide whether I hated DDT more than I hated kerosene.

The guard must have kept an eye on me through the peephole. Shortly after I made myself ‘comfortable’, the door opened.

“What did I tell you?!” roared the monster. “No sleeping or lying down! If I catch you again, I will take you to the dark-cell. That’s a seven feet tall, two feet by two feet hole where you can’t even sit. I’ll keep you there the whole day if I have to. Remember that!”

This is where I broke down. I started crying.

“Stop whining!” he shouted. “You should have whined before committing your crime.”

“I want to go home,” I said feebly.

The guard paid no attention. He just slammed and locked the door.

I did not dare to lie down again. As I was unable to stay awake, my head kept falling on my chest in a sitting position. My ears could already detect the sound that the peephole cover made when the guard lifted it so I would wake up in an instant to keep my head high. Of course, this could be called anything but sleep.

Before I was led to my underground cell, my watch, my belt, my school bag and everything other than my clothes had been taken away from me. I only guessed that it was close to seven o’clock when my door opened again and the guard showed me the way to the washroom.

“Now you can do your things,” the guard said. “There is the restroom, and there is the faucet. You’ll be allowed in here once every morning at this time. The rest of the day you’ll have to use your bucket. This is when you can bring and empty your bucket. Understood?”

No, I did not understand. It did not yet sink in. I was waiting for my father to show up a little later and take me home. I thought if he had to punish me for what I did… no problem. I just did not want to stay a minute longer in that hell.

“Now you follow me!” the guard commanded after I finished with the restroom and washed my face in the ice cold water that ran from the pipes.

We walked up a flight and exited to a closed, dark yard.

Suddenly, the yard got lit up by strong lamps from above and the guard yelled at me: “Run! Run around ten times! You must stay close to the walls! Understood?”

I ran. Ten times around that yard.

When I got back in my cell, breakfast was waiting for me on the floor: a piece of dry bread on a dirty aluminum plate and lots of black coffee in a painted aluminum cup. The cup was covered by old, smelly grease. I don’t think it had ever been washed properly.

I was really hungry so I tried to bite into the bread. It was too dry so I had to soak it into the coffee. Well, that coffee was hardly anything other than lukewarm black water with a tiny bit of sugar in it.

Soon the door opened slightly and a hand reached in.

“Plates and cups!” I heard someone shouting.

My first day in prison felt like an eternity. Anytime the guard lifted the peephole cover or I heard other noise outside, my heart started beating faster. I kept hoping that the door would open up and I would see my father standing there, ready to take me home.

Lunch was awful: some soup in a greasy, smelly tin can and sticky, cold noodles on a dirty aluminum plate. The soup was lukewarm but it had no flavor or nutritional value.

Somehow I survived my first day in jail. Dinner was pretty much the same as breakfast, except the liquid in the dirty tin was ‘tea’ instead of coffee. The bread was inedible but I could force down some of the semi-sweet liquid.

The night was horrible… I had the same nightmare over and over… I fell asleep, and began to dream that I was there in the cell, lying down on the cot and falling asleep. In that second sleep then I would dream the same again: lying down, falling asleep. When this repeated several times, I would wake up from my last sleep and try to sit up on the cot. I could not sit up because I was not really awake. I struggled. ‘Half of me’ was ready to sit up but the ‘other half’ was still deep in sleep. This struggle repeated as I was waking up from all the sleeps I had only been dreaming. It was awful. I often had the feeling that I was in a sitting position which was never the case until I really woke up. Even then, I was totally confused because I was not sure I was awake, I was not sure I was really sitting up. I have to add that I found myself waking up on the wet and cold concrete floor. Was something in the food that caused my brain to function abnormally? I don’t know. It’s quite possible.

I struggled throughout the night until, finally, the light patches appeared on the walls and I heard the irritating sound of a bell outside.

My second day was a carbon copy of the first one. Well, actually it was different in that I felt much more miserable. Still hoping that my father would show up and take me home, I listened to every little noise coming from the corridor. The food was the same, inedible and without any nutrition.

On the third day, I could not take it anymore. I started kicking and beating the door, shouting as loudly as I could:

“Let me out! I want to go home! Let me out! I did nothing wrong! Why are you punishing me?”

Perhaps the guard did not hear me. Perhaps he just ignored me.

I hit that door with my fists for a very long time; my hands swelled up and turned red. I did not care about the pain, I just continued shouting. Finally, something snapped inside me, in my soul. I collapsed onto the wet floor and began to sob uncontrollably as I realized that I was totally helpless and that they could do with me whatever they wanted.

Later, I pulled myself together once more and continued shouting:

“Please, open the door and let me out! Please, let me go home! Please, let me out of here!”

I could no longer hit the door with my fists; my hands were aching badly, so I just tapped on the door with the palm of my hands.

There came no answer from outside.

By the time the door finally opened at lunchtime, I had no more tears to cry and I had lost my voice from all that shouting. My instincts whispered that I must eat whatever it is that I got on that dirty plate.

I was broken in. I ceased to be the care-free kid I had been.

There were about nine glass-bricks in one of the walls that allowed some daylight to seep through when it was not overcast outside. On such days, I would spend my time studying the numerous carvings in the mortar that covered the walls. Seeing a calendar, I created my own during lunch before I had to return the fork when they collected the empty dishes. I often heard Morse-Code signals from the neighboring cells being knocked on the walls but I did not understand them so I did not even try to reply.

Some of the wall carvings suggested that my cell had seen real hard core criminals.

When I think back now, I have a hard time comprehending why I did not just go crazy. How could I resign to being locked up? How could I even make chess pieces out of bread and play against myself on the tiny chess board someone had carved into the cot? How could I stay calm when I was losing weight every day, and without knowing whether the day would ever come when I am finally allowed to leave that hell?

One thing I remember very well: many times during the days I almost panicked when I thought I might never have the chance to love a woman. Was this single instinct responsible for my desire to stay alive? Otherwise, I had already given up.

I had been kept in that cell for an entire month. Every day was the same: there was no one I could have said a word to, no one that would have listened to me, no one to say a kind word to me.

I was released the day of Santa Claus, on December the sixth. As I later learned, the prosecutor wanted to keep me there at least for another month because he needed more time to investigate my case. Absurd…

When I was finally taken to an office, my father was there to take me home. As he looked at me, a teardrop rolled down on his face. I had never seen my father weep before. I had to be an awful sight: reduced almost to a skeleton with skin snow white. I could hardly walk on my own.

My father grabbed my hand as soon as the police officer said I was free to go and quickly walked me out of the building. It was a cold winter day with very bright sunshine. We went to the train station, never saying a word. In the train, my father opened his shoulder bag and gave me some chicken my mother had baked. He also pulled out a bottle of his homemade sour-cherry wine which made me drunk in no time. I vaguely remember my mother waiting for us at the train station and crying all the way until we arrived home.

Out of school

My mother’s care and the nutritious food she prepared for me during the following days nurtured me back to health. In just a couple of weeks, I regained my weight and my physical strength. However, I remained depressed emotionally and mentally.

The school sent me a letter even before I was out of jail, informing me of the decision of the school director that because I had missed so many days without an acceptable cause, I was thrown out of the class and would not be allowed to continue my studies during that school year.

Another letter that came from the police demanded me to appear in court about two months later, in February of the following year, when the judge would decide what kind of punishment I should receive for the crime I had committed.

“He may have to go back to jail”, my father told my mother after he read the letter.

Just thinking about the possibility of getting locked up again, I felt excruciating pain in my soul and in my mind. I was totally alone with my pain, not even my mother could relate to how I felt. My father, of course, blamed me for being irresponsible and stupid. Much worse, when my brother came home on one weekend, he angrily shouted at me for trying to ruin his career: “You are now stamped as a criminal… My brother, a criminal, an enemy of the state… This is going to get on my record, too. No more promotions for me. The police might start watching me, too, or even investigate me… Do you realize what you have done?!”

I felt so horrible; I wished I could just die. I felt totally alone and totally helpless.

The days at home, even after my brother left, were now hardly better than when I was locked up. One word kept hammering inside my brain: “Away! Away! Away!” Now I wished we had not fallen asleep in the train, I wished our attempt at escaping had been successful.

I had been keenly aware of how my father felt about me being kicked out of school, sitting at home doing nothing. When the first snow fell just before Christmas, suddenly I had an idea. I remembered seeing ‘help wanted’ ads in the communist daily ‘Nepszabadsag’, the newspaper that we received every day free. I browsed through the ads again and found something: ‘Laborers needed in Budapest to keep the streets and the tram lines free of snow. Good pay. Free accommodation in worker’s hostels.’

I had kept to myself and very quiet ever since I was released from prison, so I had to gather some courage to make the announcement at the dinner table: “I am going to Budapest to work as a street cleaner.” I put the newspaper on the table and pointed at the ad.

“You are out of your mind!” my father shouted as he swept the paper off the table. “You are not going anywhere! You have done enough damage already… Our son, a street cleaner… That’s all we need now… as if we were not the shame of the village already.”

“Son, you can’t go anyway”, my mother said. “You will have to be here in February to appear in court.”

“I will come home for that day”, I tried in a feeble voice. “They will give me a day off.”

“A day off?!” my father said. “If the judge sends you back to prison, it’s going to be much more than a day off.”

I did not dare say anything more.

“Forget Budapest!” my father went on. “You are not fit for hard labor anyway… I will talk to my supervisor tomorrow. He may be able to help you get a job at the chemical plant… and next year, provided they won’t lock you up again, you should finish college taking evening courses.”

The Christmas holiday was a no event. No tree, no music, and no presents. My father had to work on Christmas Eve, as usual. Even now I hate to admit it to myself… but I always felt some sort of relief whenever my father left for work. It is too late now to feel sorry for him – and to be ashamed of myself. The poor man had to walk for about fifteen minutes just to get to the bus stop: first through the village and then another three quarters of a mile across the field on a narrow poorly paved road that was lined by huge trees on both sides. That road connected the village to the train station and the bus stop. It had not a single street light and when the moon was not out, the darkness was scary. There were rumors about a murder that took place on that road one night. After dark, very few people walked that road, especially alone. My father was one of them. He had worked in three shifts, rotating after every six days and one day off. The night shift began at 10 pm, and he always left the house exactly at 9 pm. He would leave earlier, and not only for the night shift, when the field was flooded by the river. There were three sections on that road where the floodwater often reached as high as three feet and the current was strong as well. My father had to take off his shoes, pull up his pants and wade across - sometimes in total darkness. And if it was not the cold floodwaters in the spring, then the ice cold winter nights and the snow storms that made his life miserable.

The day after Christmas, I woke up with a horrible toothache. Villages had no dentists. The nearest dental walk-in clinic for the public was in Kazincbarcika, the socialist town where the technical college I had attended was. Part of social medicine, dental service was also free.

When I left for the train station that day, my mother was worried. She made me promise that I would go home immediately after I finished at the dentist. I told her my pain was so bad I was in no mood to go anywhere else anyway.

The dentist, an older man, numbed my mouth and quickly extracted two of my teeth without saying anything to me. Only after my second tooth was out which he held up against a dirty light bulb, he said: “Badly infected, they had to come out… And you have some decays, too. Don’t you ever brush?”

I did not tell him that in prison dental hygiene was not a priority and that the food I had to consume for a full month was without nutritional value. The reason I did not: I was not aware of all this at that age. Just as I was not aware of the fact that dental hygiene had not been on the minds of simple village folks. I remember my poor grandma; she had not a single tooth left in her mouth for her old age. She had a set of cheap dentures that she kept in a glass of water and never used because she was afraid the neighbors would laugh at her.

My toothache was gone and the gums healed in a few days. When I went back to see the dentist, he decided to remove one more of my teeth so that a bridge could be put in between my two upper canine teeth. This bridge held up surprisingly well for over ten years. When it finally needed to be replaced as well as extended, I was already in America.

After the first of the year, the postman brought a letter from my school, addressed to me personally. It came from the headmaster of the class, the literature teacher, a good-hearted woman who was as skinny as one can get after several surgeries to treat recurring stomach ulcers. She wrote that she may have a job lined up for me at the Central Research Laboratory of the ‘Borsod Chemical Factory’. One of the few modern achievements of the socialist regime, this plant was built mainly by forced labor, often by the blood of those who would not comply with the harsh policies of the communists that ruled by terror after falsifying election results and taking total control of society in 1948.

A few days later, as I was instructed in the letter, I appeared for an interview in the Lab Director’s office. Being a simple village boy, I had no idea of how to present myself during the interview. As I was still deeply depressed, I did not even have any kind of expectation. I was not nervous or excited; as I remember it really did not matter to me what the outcome of the meeting would be. And that was just fine, as my fate already had been decided. Instead of asking questions, the director promptly outlined the reason I was there:

“We have a young woman, a chemical engineer, who is working on a project in one of our labs. She is working with a member of the Hungarian Scientific Academy, Dr. Gal, who happens to be conducting his research in our institution of which, of course, we are very proud. Well, this young woman just informed us that she is pregnant and is going on maternity leave in the very near future. While she is still here, she is going to train you to continue her work. After she is gone, Dr.Gal will help you if you still have difficulties running the experiment. We realize that you do not have a university degree which would normally be required for this position, and that you have not even completed your studies at the college; however, your headmaster, who is a childhood friend of mine, assured me that you are a sharp kid able to perform this job if properly trained. Well, the proper training will be provided and you are expected to learn quickly. Dr. Gal is a very friendly man. You will enjoy working under his supervision.”

Becoming independent

I started on the job in mid January. It was a day job from 7 am to 3:30 pm with a 30-minute lunch break. I had to get up real early to catch the 6:30 train in the morning. Walking the mile distance to and from the train station every day, except Sundays, was nothing new. Almost like the days when I went to school, except that now I had to take an earlier train, and ride it one stop further. The train station at the factory was very close to the laboratory, only about a five-minute walk.

The pay was miserably low, only 1,100 Forints per month, but it was almost as much as my father’s monthly earning. I suspected that my trainer, the chemical engineer, made three times that much. Since the communist regime set the price of everything, even this entry level salary was enough for all basic essentials. Health care was free, education was free, housing, transportation and food had been subsidized. My lunch ticket cost 1 Forint per day, and the factory had good canteens where a three-course meal was served every day and one could even have a second helping at no extra cost. The monthly passes for the trains and buses were also very inexpensive.

The pregnant woman was very patient with me and she really did a good job training me. By the time she left, about a month after I started, I had no difficulties running the experiment on my own. It was about polymerization. What one half of the Borsod Chemical Factory, the PVC - as everyone called the polyvinylchloride producing unit - did in large autoclaves, Dr.Gal and I did in glass tubes and retorts. Actually I can say I did because after the first couple of weeks, Dr. Gal only showed up every Saturday to analyze the results of the week’s work. He would then give me instructions for the following week’s research. The experiment was basically always the same: I would start by filling vinyl chloride into the system and adding the various ingredients that were used in the autoclaves in real production. Some of these ingredients served as lubricants to prevent the created PVC from sticking to the hot inner walls of the autoclaves which then would lower the temperature in the reaction chamber and slow the polymerization process. Our experiment measured the effects of such retardation. Every week, Dr. Gal would tell me how to change the quantity of the retarding agents, and then I would run the organic reaction, the actual polymerization, in sealed, scaled glass pipettes from Monday through Thursday, slowly raising the temperature while reading the expansion of the reacting materials at regular time intervals.

This job was very boring. Nevertheless, I began to enjoy being employed for several reasons. First, I did not have to be in school and learn things I did not like such as Physical Chemistry. Being away from home most of the day also had a good effect on my mood and I started looking forward to becoming even more independent.

Fortunately, I received a light sentence for my illegal border crossing attempt: six months in prison with three years probation. I think I can thank my employer that I did not get locked up again.

At the beginning of spring, when the river started flooding the road to the station, I mentioned to Dr. Gal that there might be days when I would not be able to cross the floodwater. He immediately called someone in the personnel office and arranged accommodation for me in the workers’ hostel. He told me that if I liked the hostel, he would make the arrangement permanent.

First, my mother was very much against the idea of me not returning home for the nights but my father quickly silenced her:

“It is about time he starts taking care of himself. He is not a child anymore. He’ll be all right, don’t worry.”

My first night in the hostel was quite an event for me. I was excited and happy. ‘Finally, I am really on my own,’ I thought.

The room I was assigned to had four beds in it. I must say I was very fortunate with this assignment as my three roommates were all very intelligent professionals. All three were chemical engineers in their late twenties.

The room was simple but clean. The four beds were in the four corners. There was a table in the middle with four chairs, and there was a green metal wardrobe for clothes at the end of each bed. The common washroom with showers and toilets was in the middle of the corridor. If I remember well, there were about ten rooms on each side of the corridor. The upper two floors were exactly the same.

The rooms were heated by radiators that received the hot water from the power plant. The same pipe system supplied the hot water for the wash rooms around the clock. In our room, the radiator was always hot; the window had to be kept open even during the still freezing nights of March. It was already mid May, the nights balmy, when my roommates finally decided to turn the valve of the radiator shutting off the flow of the hot water.

There was a large canteen right next to the hostel where I could eat good dinners. The ticket for the three-course meal cost the same 1 Forint as for lunch.

When I moved out of home, my personal belongings fit easily in the large, beaten luggage that my father bought for me somewhere real cheap. My mother cried as I was leaving, and my father also had a sad expression on his face. I, on the other hand, felt great walking to the train station that morning. I had told my parents that I would visit them on Sundays.

In the hostel, the couple of shirts, the extra pair of pants and underwear, and the winter coat I had did not take up much of the room inside my wardrobe. When I saw all the clothes my roommates had, I felt somewhat embarrassed, so one late afternoon when the shops were still open, I took the short bus ride to town. I spent most of the money I had and purchased a pair of shoes and a nice jacket as well as a fancy-looking shirt.

I used to give my earnings to my mother; I kept only what I needed to cover the basic expenses. When I moved out, my parents told me they did not expect me to give them any more money.

“Buy some clothes,” my mother said. “Don’t spend foolishly. Open a savings account and put aside as much as you can every payday.”

Well, the savings account was the last thing on my mind. So, instead of keeping my money in a savings account, I carried it in my pockets.

Once I started my new life away from home, I always spent all the money I earned. Often I was out of money a few days before the next payday, especially when I bought some expensive clothes. A nice suit cost as much as half my monthly earning. Usually, anything other than the basic and simple essentials was very expensive. For example, one could not buy a nice pair of good quality shoes for less than 200 Forints.

I visited my parents once or twice a month, always on Sundays. My mother always cooked a very good meal for lunch when I was there. On some occasions I ate only with my mother because father was at work. At other times, my brother was at home, too. We never spoke much. If anyone at home was really interested in how I was coping with life, it was my mother. However, I felt that even she did not understand me so I gave short and superficial answers most of the time. My father, instead of trying to give some sound advice for a change, just kept blaming me for being irresponsible. My brother, when he was around, was doing exactly the same. Any wonder I did not really enjoy spending too much time with my family? For my Sunday visits I never arrived early in the morning, and I usually left with the mid afternoon train. My mother always packed some delicious cakes she had baked, and asked me if I needed any pocket money if it was just before payday. I guess this was her way of showing that she loved me.

During the week, when I finished work I jumped on a bus to spend all my late afternoons and evenings in the town. I usually got off at the end station which was right in front of the technical college I had attended.

The town was small; it had about four major streets lined on both sides by newly built four-story panel houses with about twenty small flats in each house. The entire town had been built at the same time, and probably by the same forced labor as the chemical factory itself. The leadership called it a socialist town.

Some of the ground floors in the buildings were occupied by retail stores, restaurants. The café nearest to the college was a favorite place of students and other youngsters. That’s where I also spent most of my time, playing chess or cards or listening to others telling jokes. I was still shy but making new friends helped me open up a bit. However, instead of talking, I still preferred a good game of chess.

As my ability to play chess well improved rapidly, I was invited to join the local team that competed in the national league. I visited the club every Friday evening and played many games against the strongest players. Soon, I was the club champion which meant playing on the top board for the team. In the summer, the leaders of the team sent me to Budapest to compete in the National Youth Individual Championship. It was a two-week all expense paid event. Mr. Gal was not very happy about my long absence from the lab but high level sports, including chess, had been so aggressively promoted and supported by the socialist regime that nothing seemed to be more important.

The two weeks I spent in Budapest was an extraordinary experience for me. Traveling alone by train to the capital city already made me high. I was so excited I could not sit still in the compartment. I spent most of the three-hour journey in the corridor, sticking my head out the window, smiling into the wind. And when the hills of Buda became visible with the famous statue on top of Gellert Hill, my heart began to race. The train was not even at the outskirts of Pest when I had already carried my luggage to the exit door. Finally off the train, I walked out the station in double quick steps. I saw the yellow trams, the blue buses, and all those people… My heart was full of joy. I walked the entire distance from the station to the site of the tournament, the high school above the round shaped Budapest Hotel in the hills of Buda. I walked at least for an hour and a half, dragging my luggage along, looking at the shop-windows and the buildings in amazement.

Even though there was only one chess game per day, starting in the middle of the afternoon, I did not do well in the tournament; I was too excited to focus on chess. My roommates, who came from different cities, most of them simple folks like me, organized events for our free time and I was happy to join them.

At the end of the tournament, I had a hard time leaving Budapest. Saying good-bye to my roommates, I got so emotional, I almost cried.

Back in the small socialist town of Kazincbarcika, it took me days to readjust. Now my dream was that one day I would find a job in the big city.

In the lab, we continued our measurements.

One day, Mr. Gal asked me if I could offer him a drink. I filled a glass with water and handed it to him. He started laughing.

“Not that, my son, not that,” he said. “I mean a real drink.”

He pointed at the two-liter ethyl-alcohol glass bottles on the shelves:

“Don’t tell me you have never diluted some of that stuff for yourself,” he went on still laughing. “You bring five of those bottles from the warehouse every Monday morning. You surely don’t use all that every week just for the experiment.”

“So far I have,” I said seriously. I was telling the truth.

“Oh, you stupid boy… Give me that requisition sheet you have to show in the warehouse! Let me change it to six bottles… There you go. Now you can use one bottle for your own enjoyment… Here, let me show you the quickest way to fix a real good drink.”

He took a box of sugar from his briefcase, dissolved it in a pint of water and added a pint of that pure alcohol to it.

“Now we add a drop of methyl-orange indicator and a drop of amyl-acetate… and there you have it; apricot liquor… We dip it into this acetone-dry ice mixture for a minute to cool it to the right temperature.”

He poured the drink into two glasses and said: “Cheers.”

That fake apricot liquor was very delicious; I was hooked on it right away. Of course, I promised Mr. Gal that I would drink with moderation and only after work. I must admit I could not keep that promise in its entirety.

When I saw that some of my new friends moved out of the workers’ hostel and rented a room in the town, or just one of the beds in a room, I followed their example. This way, I did not have to worry about catching the last bus at night or walking the more than a mile distance down to the hostel. I found a room with two beds where I had to pay 200 Forints rent a month. My roommate, a young man about my age, was hardly ever there as he spent most of the nights with a widow whose husband had died in an industrial accident. The landlady, in her sixties, who lived in the other, smaller bedroom, was also gone most of the time.

Restaurants and cafes closed at 10 pm but we often stayed for another hour or until the personnel finished with cleaning and getting the place ready for the next day’s opening.

The couple of good friends I had were chess players. They were high school graduates, on their way to universities in the nearest big town, Miskolc. One of them came from a sophisticated family, and he spoke eloquently and with clarity. I really enjoyed listening to him. He was also one of the best chess players in the town.

As I never had a chance to develop my self-confidence at home, or to use the language a lot, my ability to express myself was rather poor. I could never put together a long sentence or make my point clearly. Well, this began to change after I befriended a very funny guy. He was about my age, came from a well-known aristocratic family, and had the same first name as I did. I met him one evening in the bar that was in the building where I rented the room. I think I am not exaggerating if I say the guy was an alcoholic. There were many others who wanted to be his friend and buy him drinks mainly because he kept cranking out jokes and said very funny things in very funny ways when he was drunk. I was very happy when I had the privilege of being his only company at the table as he would not only talk and entertain but also ask many questions enabling me to practice expressing myself. This helped me so much that later when I had girlfriends I was able to tell them funny stories and jokes. Eventually, I became quite an able talker myself.

Unfortunately, this funny guy, whom I considered a best friend for some time, gradually destroyed himself by drinking. The last time I saw him was in 1972, five years after I first listened to his jokes. By then he was a bum living in the streets of Budapest. He was in filthy rags, suffering from delirium, and when I said hello to him he had no idea of who I was and, in fact, he could not utter anything that would have made any sense.

I hardly ever spent time in the room I rented other than the few hours of sleep. In the summer, after work I usually rushed to the new public pool to enjoy the remainder of the afternoons. As I really liked to swim, I developed a nicely shaped upper body as well as some muscles on my legs and my arms. All in all, I began to look like any normal young man - and, to my great joy, some girls actually found me attractive. However, I was still too shy when it came to relating to girls.

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