Frequenting the bar where my funny friend spent most of his evenings, I became quite a drinker myself. Often I went to bed drunk around midnight and felt the hangover the next day in the lab. On top of this, I began to make my own drinks in the lab and would occasionally drink during working hours. Fortunately, I was careful about how much I would drink in the lab so my ability to perform my duties was never impaired. The liquors I made were mainly for all the new friends who discovered that visiting me meant a free drink or two.

A very attractive girl about my age was among those visitors. About twice a week, she came to see her aunt who worked in the lab next to mine. After her aunt introduced her to me, she always came in to say hello to me as well. She voluntarily told me that she was engaged to an older man, another Hungarian who lived in Belgium, and she was waiting for her papers that would enable her to leave Hungary and join her fiancé. In spite of being engaged, as I later learned from some of my friends, she dated other men.

When she suggested that we meet for a drink in the town, I was beside myself. After the drink, my voice shaking, I asked her if she would like to come up to the room I rented. She happily agreed. As usual, my roommate and the landlady were gone. However, as soon as we entered my room and I locked the door from inside, I froze completely. Even when the girl came closer to me and tried to kiss me, I backed away with my knees trembling. I felt very awkward, my brain heated up, and I could not say a word. She soon gave up and left. This was my first close encounter with a girl and I felt awful for many days after the experience.

There was a rather sophisticated fellow, a couple of years older than me, who also worked in one of those labs. He came in for a drink from time to time and told me a joke in exchange. One day he asked me if I had ever been to Budapest. I proudly told him about the time I spent there playing the chess tournament. He asked me if I liked Budapest. I said, of course. He asked me if I would be glad to take another trip to Budapest and again my answer was, of course. How about a trip that would cost me nothing, he said. That would be fantastic, I answered naively. Well, he said, he knows a man who works for the railways and can take anyone to Budapest free for a weekend. So, how soon do you want to go, he asked. The sooner the better, I replied with excitement. He came back the next day and told me to meet him, and the man, at the local train station the coming Saturday. I was there exactly as we agreed. He introduced me to the man and then he left.

The man was in his railroad uniform. At that time I did not even pay attention to his age, I was just plain excited about riding the train free going to Budapest. As I remember, he could have been in his mid forties. I never knew his name, and I don’t remember him calling me by my name, either. We hardly spoke during the couple hours of express train ride. I was just looking out the window, looking at the fields, enjoying the ride. We arrived in Budapest late in the afternoon. The man said we would have dinner and then go to the hotel.

The hotel! For the first time in my life I would see what a hotel looked like inside.

Now when I think back I keep wondering how I could be so extremely naïve, not even suspecting anything foul about this man. Only after we were in the hotel room and the man asked me to sit next to him at the table and look at dozens of photographs of naked girls, an alarm began to go off in my brain. I still did not know exactly why I was beginning to feel uncomfortable as I had never ever heard of homosexuality before. However, when the man started breathing heavily, moving his chair closer to mine and putting his hand on my thigh, I began to realize that something abnormal was happening. Suddenly I jumped to my feet. By then my whole inside was shaking from fear. I pulled my chair away and sat at the other side of the table. He waited a little while and then he grabbed his own chair and sat next to me again. He put the photos in my hand and then he touched my thigh a second time. I stood up and looked at the door but did not have the courage to leave.

Fortunately, he did not make another advance. He said something like ‘you have no reason to panic’, and ‘you are absolutely safe’, and ‘feel free to go to bed and sleep without worrying’. He quickly got undressed and went to take a shower. It was a cheap hotel; the shower and the toilet were in one corner of the room, so I could not avoid seeing him masturbate while taking his shower. I felt sick to my stomach and could not sleep all night. The next morning he took me to the train station and I was home safely by early afternoon.

The experience stirred me up so badly, I had been emotionally sick for months.

In the meantime, after my father retired, my parents sold their house in the village and bought a smaller two-bedroom cottage in the town of Ozd. As it now took about an hour by train, instead of the quick ten-minute ride to the village, I visited them even less frequently.

At the age of 18, I was already a loner. I counted all my relatives on three of my fingers: father, mother and brother. As I never felt comfortable in their company, I hardly ever thought of them. I was totally on my own, independent, without any supervision or any advice. The friendships I had were rather superficial. No commitments, no attachments, and I kind of liked it that way. I think it was my instincts that guided me: learn as much as possible from everyone and move on.

After the director of the Research Lab reminded me of my promise that I would complete the last year of my studies, I enrolled in the ‘correspondence course’ of my college to start in September.

After about one year working in the lab, Mr. Gal informed me that he had already completed his research, achieved the academic title he was after, and I might soon be working for a new aspirant from the Scientific Academy. I jokingly told him I hoped I would not have to work with cyclo-hexanol anymore because I could not stand its smell. Not only that, Mr. Gal replied, it can also destroy your bone marrow and your red blood cells.

I was getting tired of working with solvents and other harmful chemicals so in January of 1968 I found myself another job at the Road and Railway Building Company of North-Eastern Hungary as a Quality Controller. I could not even have dreamed of a better job. Even though my salary more than doubled, there was hardly anything to do on the job. I was working for the asphalt road division. My ‘office’ was in a trailer that I shared with the foreman who supervised the paving. Basically, it was the foreman’s office; I only had one corner of it for my small desk and the beaten metal dresser that stored the instruments I was supposed to use to perform my duties. Well, the foreman made it clear the very first day that I was not really hired to control quality.

“We’ll bring you a cube of the asphalt sample every day. The only instrument you’ll ever need to use is the one that measures penetration. I’m sure you’ll find every sample acceptable. You’ll sign your test sheet at the end of the day and you’re done.”

That’s the way it was. I understood that I was not to interfere with production as a lot of roads needed to be paved and the company was way behind schedule. Quality did not really matter. The possibility of being held liable for poor road surfaces never even occurred to me, although, there were plenty of newly paved bad roads. Of course, I would not have known this as the foreman warned me not to show up at the work site.

“It would just make the laborers nervous,” he said. “We had to fire the guy that worked here before you because he was slowing us down… Just take it easy. If you get bored in the office, go and have fun in the town. You can always check the cube (the asphalt sample) the following morning.”

So, I usually placed the cube in the ‘penetrometer’ in the morning and after the foreman left with the work crew, I either slept a couple of hours leaning over my desk or caught a bus into town. When I was not sleepy or when it was raining outside, I studied my school books. One day the foreman saw my Organic Chemistry book on my desk.

“Now, you see, I’m glad you figured out how to best spend your time here,” he said cheerfully.

Once a month, at the beginning of each month, I had to get on the train and travel to the headquarters of the company for three days of training. This meant traveling to Budapest which was the highlight of this job for me. Not only all expenses paid for by the company but receiving additional bonuses for these days as well. The training itself was totally meaningless as the trainer always found an excuse to be somewhere else. Most of the time, he told me not to return after lunch.

“Just go and enjoy the sights of our capital city,” he said.

I usually went to the ‘Inner City Café’ where one could rent a chess board, a chess clock, and play speed games for money. When I got tired of playing, or when I lost all my money, I walked over the Elisabeth Bridge and climbed up to the top of Gellert Hill from where the panorama of the city was breathtakingly beautiful.

All in all, 1968 was an interesting year for me.

One evening during the summer, I ran into a guy who had been a classmate of mine through most of our elementary school years. On and off, he had also been my best friend from fourth to eighth grade. He had finished his trade school in Miskolc, and he was now living in Kazincbarcika.

He started showing up in the cafes and bars at night. Almost every time I saw him, he was with a different girl. He did not treat me as a real friend; he was kind of talking down to me whenever we met. Since that was his way of relating to everyone, I never got offended.

At the end of August, on a weekend, he joined us at the public swimming pool. After the pool closed, he asked me if I wanted to have a drink with him.

“Of course”, I answered.

We went to the bar in my building and ordered a bottle of red wine. We did not talk much; we just listened to the music. When the band took a break and it was finally quiet enough, he leaned closer to me and said:

“I have a date with an older woman. She should be here shortly… She is great… I was wondering whether I could bring her up into your room… Of course, only if your landlady and your roommate are gone for the weekend.”

I told him that I had nothing against his plan.

Soon, the girl arrived. She did not look older to me.

My friend paid the bill and then he said: “Let’s go.”

I went ahead to make sure I was, indeed, the only one home. After I let them in, I went to my room and they went into my landlady’s room. I stood at the window for a while looking at people chatting in small groups on the sidewalk, then I watched the bugs circling the streetlight. As it was getting late, I thought I should just go to bed. ‘They can let themselves out if I fall asleep,’ I thought.

I left the window open so I could hear the music from the band playing downstairs in the bar. After I got into bed, the wine I had made me fall asleep quickly.

I do not know how long I had slept when my friend woke me up.

“I don’t think she likes me,” he said. “I’ll just leave her here for you.”

Before I was fully awake and had a chance to react, he left. After he shut the door behind him, the girl entered my room. Without hesitation and without saying a word, she came into my bed and wrapped her arms around me.

This was the night when I lost my innocence. She left in the morning and I do not recall ever seeing her again. Of course, there were many other girls in town and now it was easy for me to find new relationships. I accepted the "rules" which meant never more than three or four nights with the same girl.

When I look back, I feel sorry for my generation. Religion was almost dead, young people drifted without guidance. The political system encouraged abortion which lead to free love, love without emotions and strong commitments. Husbands and wives often cheated on each other which inevitably produced a lot of divorces. This was the profile of the new socialist society. It was still different in the villages where the older folks stayed together in marriages, faithful to one another until the end. However, most of the young people who left the village, quickly converted to the new way of life.

Moving to Budapest

After about a year and a half on my second job, I was getting more and more restless. I hated that job. It made me feel worthless as I produced nothing valuable. Even in chess I seemed to reach a level from where I could not show any improvement. The title of Master Candidate I had obtained was far from the level of the top players.

At least I was able to complete my last year at the school and graduate.

I began to think about Budapest. I had no strong friendships or other relationships that would have made me attached to Kazincbarcika. I often read the ‘help wanted’ ads in the national daily paper but only physical labor had been advertised. These were the real jobs that almost nobody wanted: hard work with little pay. There was usually one attractive incentive though: the companies offered free accommodation as only people from the countryside were expected to apply.

Toward the end of summer in 1969, I made up my mind after reading the ad of the Cordatic Rubber Factory: ‘Vulcanizing help wanted for three shifts. Good pay. Free accommodation in IBUSZ-rooms.’

As I later learned, IBUSZ was the national travel service of Hungary. The IBUSZ rented furnished rooms from flat owners mainly for foreign tourists. The IBUSZ charged the tourists based on the going rate in Western countries, or pretty close to it, and what the renter received was also a substantial sum. The state-owned IBUSZ often had contracts with other state-owned companies, such as Cordatic, and placed laborers hired by those other companies in IBUSZ-rooms. This way, those renters who had good connections received a steady high income for the room they rented out. As I understand, the Cordatic, and other companies, paid IBUSZ several times the amount a laborer earned in a same given period. The renter received a large percentage of that amount. This was one method used by the regime to maintain the double standard, to allocate much more money to their own than to the average citizen.

When I read the job advertisement by the Cordatic, I had to wait until the end of August to receive my pay. As soon as I had the money in my pocket, I handed in my resignation – effective immediately - and I said good bye to my landlady with whom I had no written contract as room rentals were month-to-month payable one month in advance. I packed my belongings into my old luggage, got on the train and off I was to Budapest. I left with an early train to arrive at Cordatic before noon. In the personnel office, I showed the ad I had cut out from the newspaper and that was it, I was hired. The woman that hired me asked only a few questions, mainly my personal data. She created my file in a few minutes and then she handed me a piece of paper with an address handwritten on it.

“This is where you will sleep starting tonight,” she said pointing at the address. “Report to work tomorrow morning at six. Make sure you catch an early bus to be here on time. You have to take over from the night shift and they don’t wait a minute after six. Now, go down to the warehouse to get your overalls and then go find the vulcanizing plant so you’ll know exactly where you have to go in the morning. Your foreman will give you the schedule so you’ll know when to come afternoons and when to come nights.”

The address for my IBUSZ-room was in one of the best areas of Budapest, in the first district just under the castle. By bus, it was only about a fifteen-minute ride to and from the Cordatic. (Today, it might take two or even three times as much due to the drastic increase in the number of personal automobiles and other traffic.)

When I rang the doorbell of the flat, on the fourth floor of an old but very clean and well kept building, a very old and very unfriendly woman opened the door. I told her that the Cordatic sent me. She looked at me from head to toe at least three times before she allowed me in. As I remember, it was a modern flat.

“This is the kitchen,” she said in an authoritarian voice while pointing at one of the five doors that opened from the narrow hallway. “You are never allowed in there. You will do your eating at the company cafeteria or wherever you want.”

She opened the second door on the left.

“This is your room,” she continued. “The bed is narrow but comfortable. You also have a small table here and a chair, in case you need to write a letter… You are not allowed to bring anyone in here, absolutely no one, not even friends, boys or girls. Understood?”

After I nodded, she pointed at the other two doors on the right.

“This is the toilet, and the other one is the bathroom. Make sure you get up early enough if you have to use the toilet in the morning. I have a son and his wife and their four-year old daughter who also have to get ready every morning. You will do your washing at the company washroom. Make sure you take a shower every day after work. Once a week you may take a bath here if you tell us the day before.”

Finally, she pointed at the open door at the end of the hallway.

“Here are our living room and the two bedrooms. You are never to enter through this door. Understood?”

“Understood,” I said obediently while looking at the menorah on top of the piano in their living room.

The next morning, I started on my new job. The work was very challenging, to put it mildly. I had to operate five ovens that burned the raw rubber-textile barrels into truck tires. Each oven produced two tires at a time. The bottom half of the oven was fixed to the concrete floor. The timer automatically opened up the upper half. The raw barrels kept coming on huge hooks hanging from a conveyor. Each weighed over a hundred pounds. When an oven was opening, it gave out a very loud sound of deep ringing, and its lights started flashing. I had to grab the long iron rod and dig the tire out of the upper or lower half of the form, depending on where it got stuck. It took a lot of muscle straining to free the tire from the hot oven. If I happened to slip, which occurred quite frequently during the first few days, my arms got badly burned touching the hot iron of the oven. I had been warned to be very careful not to fall inside the oven. I could see why: such accident would have been deadly.

By the time I managed to pry out both tires, other ovens started opening. I lifted the heavy barrels from the hooks, threw them into the lower part of the oven, centered them, and then started closing the upper half down. The heavy duty rubber bag in the middle would begin to fill with pressurized hot water to stretch and press the barrel into the form by the time the oven was completely closed down. It took a lot of maneuvering to close the ovens the right way and to avoid producing unusable tires.

There was no stopping until the fifteen-minute break half way through the shift. If I did not hear the siren, I knew it was break time when the conveyor stopped. I quickly ate the sandwich I bought before the shift started, and then I drank a lot of club soda water that the factory provided free in huge ten-gallon containers. The containers were lined up against the walls. The soda runner who brought the refilled containers on an electric cart had to frequently replace the empty ones because we could not stop drinking during the entire shift. It was extremely hot in the plant. We all sweat terribly all the time. The air was very unhealthy, full of sulfur and other chemicals that burned out of the raw rubber. The lamps that provided the light in the plant were always dimmed by a silvery smoke.

During the first couple of weeks, I was always exhausted after the shift. If it was after the day shift, I usually went to the Inner City Café to play chess or I went to a movie theater. The night shift was cruel. By three or four in the morning, the plant felt like pure hell. The afternoon shift was the best because I could sleep long in the morning.

I never counted how many ovens there were but I remember at least a handful of us operated them. One of the operators was an older man who always coughed when he walked by me to get to the soda containers. He was skin and bones and I did not understand how he was able to perform this job. Well, one day during the night shift, while lifting a barrel from the hook, he collapsed and died.

My life was very simple: work, eat and sleep… work, eat and sleep.

One day I met a young girl in a food store where she worked in the fish department. I asked her out and she agreed. She just turned sixteen she told me on our first date. A couple of times we went to the movies. One cold day in the middle of November, we walked for hours in a park. She told me about her mother but she was not sure who her father was.

At the beginning of December I made an awful mistake: one morning after my night shift, I took her up into my room. I knew that only the old woman was at home and she would still be sleeping. I locked my door and we went to bed. I do not know how much noise we made but it was enough to wake up the old woman. She started shouting in her high pitched voice outside my door:

“You were told you can not bring anyone here. Get out immediately! Get out!”

She just kept shouting until we got dressed and sneaked out.

I can only speculate whether this incident had anything to do with the arrival of a letter from the military only a couple weeks later. I received the draft.

In a way, I felt relieved. I realized that a change might do me good. After all, I did not want to be making tires for the rest of my life. Besides, I had a college degree, so what was I doing working as a laborer?

The labor camp

I had to report for military duty in the middle of January. By law, my permanent address had to be registered with the police at my parents’ home, as I had no home of my own, and I had to report for duty where my permanent address was.

The same day when I reported, a few of us were put on a train and taken to a base in Budaors, just south of Budapest.

The barracks were in three one-story buildings on the south side of the city of Budaors, right next to the main highway that connected Budapest with Vienna in Austria.

In spite of the very cold winter, I enjoyed the first couple of weeks of being in the service. I thought the rigorous training was a lot of fun. However, my mind changed quickly when one day we had to march up and down in a frozen swamp for hours. Our boots broke through the thin layer of ice on top of the swamp and sunk deep enough to get filled with the icy mud. By the time we got back inside the barracks, my toes were frozen. The next day I developed a very high temperature and landed in the sick room where the care was provided by a young medic. The pills I received brought down my fever and I was thrown out of the sick room after a couple of days.

While I was down with the fever, my roommates in the sick room told me that some of those that started their service the same time we did were already getting out, discharged based on their medical problems.

“I really hate being in the military,” a blond guy on the bed next to mine said indignantly. “I had just engaged my fiancée, and what did I get in the mail the next day? I got the draft. This is total bullshit! They take my freedom away for two years… for two darn long years.”

He leaned out of bed and extended his hand to me.

“Hey, my name is Bela… Nice to meet you,” he said after we shook hands. “I am from the thirteenth district. Are you also from Budapest?”

“No, I am from Borsod county,” I said.

“It does not matter, you look like a great guy,” he continued. “I guess you hate being here just like I do. I don’t mean here in the sick room, I mean being drafted to do forced labor for two long years.”

“Forced labor?” I replied in surprise.

“You mean you did not know? Wow! Everyone knows this is no military service. You are here because you have done something against this darn regime, or you are here because your father has done something, or your brother, or your friend, or… you name it. You are here because you are to be punished, to be broken in, and to be converted into a stupid communist. Mainly, you are here to do free labor, to build this shitty system they call socialism. We’ll do about six weeks of this circus with our fake guns, marching up and down in frozen mud, and then as soon as the weather improves in March, we’ll be out in the streets of Budapest digging deep trenches for postal cables six days of the week. And don’t even think about trying to get discharged because you end up court marshaled. I know someone who came out after three years in the military prison. The guy is a potato. They drove him crazy. He’ll never recover.” He took a deep breath before going on. “Then there are some slick assholes, sons of the elite, who serve two weeks and then go home. They have official papers from doctors showing that they suffer from stomach ulcers, heart problems or who knows what… and they get discharged. Of course, they are healthier than you or me… Gosh, I am really pissed.”

Bela and I became good friends. The more I listened to him, the more my attitude changed. When March arrived and we had to start our hard labor working with pick axes, jack hammers and shovels, I felt exactly the way he did. It was not really the labor that I hated as I thought the physical exercise would just make me stronger. The petty officers, all from the ranks of those serving their second year, treated us like dirt. That’s the way they had been treated during their first year, before they were selected to be trained during the winter, and now they were taking their revenge on us. Most of them did not even complete the eight years of elementary school. They came from remote villages where all they had learned was how to cultivate the land. They genuinely hated everyone who was any more intelligent than them, and, of course, they derived real pleasure from showing that here they were in charge. This was the real punishment for Bela and me and a few others.

Of course, we resented when these officers called us idiots for no reason. Of course, they resented our resentment and punished us as much as they could.

It was not even the end of March yet and I already lost my temper. I made the huge mistake of talking back to an officer, returning the ‘compliment’ when he called me a feeble minded retard. The two months that followed was pure hell for me. It started with relatively mild punishments but then it got worse every day.

As soon as the alarm rang at five every morning, I had to grab a rag and a bucket full of water and start washing the concrete floor of the long corridor. It did not matter which officer was on duty as they had all been instructed to handle me with ‘care’. By the time the hundred (or so) first year soldiers were out of the building, ready to start the morning exercise, I had to join them and do the exercise like everyone else. When that was over, lasted about half an hour, I had to rush to the cafeteria to set the tables with the plates and the utensils. Bela and a couple of other ‘marked’ guys were also punished from time to time and sent to help me. In the meantime, the rest of the soldiers were doing their normal routine. When they arrived to have their breakfast, I was always one of those who had to carry the food on large trays from the kitchen and distribute it. This never gave me enough time to eat my own breakfast. And when breakfast was over, of course, I had to take part in cleaning the tables, carrying the leftovers, the plates and the utensils to the washroom… and then wash everything in a big hurry. Then run to the dormitory, get dressed, run to the yard where everyone was already seated on the flatbeds of large green military trucks.

The ride to the work site often took half an hour. On cold mornings, it was definitely not a joy ride.

Other than the officers, all of us had a quota, a certain length of the trench to be dug. We worked until noon when a truck would arrive with our lunch. Food was plenty, full of fat and meat. After about an hour lunch break, we worked until late afternoon when the trucks came to pick us up.

The work was not without danger. It happened several times that after we opened up the asphalt and dug down a couple of feet, our pickaxes would hit unexploded grenades left over from the war. Fortunately, none of us ever got seriously injured when these grenades blew up.

A couple of times we dug into remnants of underground bomb shelters and unearthed hundreds of skeletons. Often the bones were still moist from the tissue remains. We piled up the bones, and then shoveled them onto a truck.

When we arrived back in the barracks from the work sites, the officer on duty was already waiting to give me the usual assignment: wash the floors of the corridor, the toilets and the washrooms, and then set the tables in the cafeteria for dinner. After dinner, clean the tables, the floors, wash the dishes.

All those that ‘required no disciplining’ could relax, go to the clubhouse to watch television or enjoy a glass of beer in the canteen.

When my punishment got switched into higher gear, not only I did not have a single moment for myself but I now had to spend half of my nights in the kitchen helping with the preparation of food for the following day. Every night there were a lot of potatoes to be peeled and diced. If not potatoes, then it was green beans, onions, garlic, and other vegetables. The alarm sounded at 9:00 pm; that was the time everyone had to go to bed so that they could sleep eight hours and get up rested for next day’s labor. It was not the same for me. At about midnight, when the food preparation in the kitchen was complete, when even the two or three others who had to be punished that day were allowed to go to sleep, I was forced to finish up in the wash room, cleaning all the large containers that were used to transport the meals during the day. I always tried to do a very thorough job because if the officer found a speck of grease on any of the containers, he would order me to do it all over again. Of course, these inspections often found something where there was nothing.

As I remember, for more than a month, there was not a single night when I was allowed to go to bed before two in the morning. Often I was not even able to fall asleep. I just lay there in my bed, feeling some tingling in my brain, aware of every passing moment, knowing that the siren at five would knock me out of bed and the same hell would continue repeating. By the end of April, I felt like a zombie. The labor out in the streets was my relaxation and some regeneration for my brain.

Even some of the second year soldiers began to feel sorry for me.

Bela tried to help me when once I almost collapsed during the daily labor. One day, as we were eating our lunch together sitting under a tree, he said:

“Hey, you must have done something real serious against the regime. The way you are being punished is much more severe than what these second year petty officers would normally use. It seems like they have been instructed from above to destroy you. I wish I could help you but I have no idea of what you should do. Obviously, escaping is not an option. You would be arrested within a couple of hours. Even if you could manage to reach the border it would not do you any good; surely not on the Austrian border where you would be blown into pieces by the first mine. Crossing anywhere else you would still be in the communist block. Once they catch you, it’s minimum five years in the military prison.”

I began to realize, with whatever brain capacity I still had, that continued obedience, the routine of punishment, would really destroy me. I realized I had to do something. One morning, as I was washing the corridor, I saw one of our high ranking officers arriving. He was an older man, a two-star general, a man of soft voice. I threw down the wet rag and followed the man to a section of the building I had never entered before because it was off limit to soldiers, even to petty officers without permission. The general entered his office without noticing me. I stopped for a second in front of his door to see the sign on it. ‘Human Resource Officer’, the sign read. Without hesitation, I opened the door. The man was already sitting behind his desk. He was totally surprised to see me there. He wanted to say something but I got ahead of him. As loudly as I could, I started shouting:

“Look at me! I am at the end of my rope. Your petty officers are killing me. They have not let me sleep more than a couple of hours every night for more than a month. My brain is fried. I can not do this any longer. I came to let you know that from here on I am not responsible for my actions. Whatever I might do is on their account…”

The old man raised his hand so I stopped shouting.

“You know you could be court marshaled for what you have just done,” he started quietly. “I know… you are out of your mind. That, of course, would not be an excuse. However, I think I understand the situation. I’ll see what I can do. Just go back and continue what you were doing, at least for the time being. Give me your name!”

He wrote down my name and I returned to the wet rag.

Already that evening things changed. At 9:00 pm, one of the petty officers shouted at me to be in bed within five minutes. During the days that followed, I still had to do a lot of extra work but it was nothing like before. Most importantly, I could now sleep almost eight hours every night and that helped my mind to get back to normal. Of course, as I began to be able to think more clearly, my mind started rebelling against the lack of freedom and the unfair treatment.

On Sundays, I now had at least half the day for myself. This in itself was not enough to cheer me up. In fact, now that I could spend some time in the clubhouse, playing a game of chess or reading newspapers, I saw that many of the other soldiers had visitors. No one ever visited me and that sometimes made me very sad.

Another thing that gave me pain: beginning in April, almost everyone received permission to leave the barracks on Sundays. I never did. I asked a few times and then I gave up. All in all, I really felt like a prisoner.

After hearing all those stories about the ones that kept leaving the service due to medical problems, I started playing with the idea of inventing an illness for myself. ‘One way or another I must get out,’ I thought. I could not imagine spending a full two years of my life being continually humiliated, being forced to accept inhumane treatment, being forced to do slave labor, and being robbed of my free will. Most of the time when I was alone, I was thinking about how I could free myself, I was dreaming about the free world. Anywhere else, I thought, but not in Hungary. Away from here as far as possible!

I think now I make it sound like I really had the courage and the ability to think that freely. In reality, I was deeply depressed and I felt totally hopeless. The couple of months of sleep deprivation left a permanent negative effect on my mood. I did not feel like talking to anyone, not even to Bela who also had his share of suffering. I felt that what had been done to me was a gross violation, and I just could not understand why others would want to hurt me when I had done nothing to hurt them.

One evening after arriving back in the barrack, I gathered the courage to walk by the sick room. The sign on the door of the medic’s office clearly stated that reporting any illness to him could only be done during the evening hours. I heard talking behind the closed door. After some hesitation, I knocked on the door.

“Enter!” I heard the medic yelling.

There was a second year petty officer in the office chatting with the medic. He was one of those that worked in the barracks, doing administrative work.

“Sit down!” the medic gave me the order. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

After the petty officer left, the medic turned to me: “What can I do for you?”

“Lately, I have problems with my stomach,” I began. “I have a lot of pain… and I feel bloated.”

Weeks earlier, one day when I had to do some cleaning in the room that also served as the library, I came across a medical encyclopedia on the shelves and I quickly looked up the symptoms of stomach ulcer.

“Do you have pain now?” the medic asked.

“I do… and it’s almost unbearable.”

“Have you seen blood in your stool?”

“I have never looked.”

“How long have you had this pain?”

“I’ve had it for a few weeks.”

“Has it been getting worse lately?”

“It’s been very bad the last couple of days.”

The medic sighed and looked at the concrete for a while. When he looked at me again, he had a sly smile on his face.

“Aren’t you the one that used to be disciplined all the time for not showing any respect to any of your superiors?” he asked kind of laughing.

His question caught me by surprise; I did not know how to respond to it.

“Look!” he went on. “You might be faking your problem. Everyone knows how much you hate doing your service to your country… If you think you can get discharged by faking your illness, you are sorely mistaken.”

With his eyes narrowed, he looked at me, waiting for me to say something. Now the expression on his face was very serious. He just kept looking right into my eyes. After about a minute of silence, as I began to feel I can not take his penetrating look any longer, I almost broke down and confessed that I lied. For a moment, I regretted I knocked on his door. Fortunately, the memories of the nights when I was not allowed to sleep were also strong in my mind. After my moment of weakness, I began to gain strength and his look did not bother me anymore.

Finally, the medic leaned back in his chair and said:

“Okay, let’s say you are really ill.” He paused. “Well, what do you want me to do?”

...  

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