“I don’t know,” I replied. “You are the doctor.”

I thought he might like me calling him a doctor. In reality, everyone knew he had completed only a couple semesters of medical school.

“I could give you some pills to ease your pain.” He looked at the floor again and briefly scratched his head. “However, you may actually have a bleeding ulcer.”

“Is that serious?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” He looked at me raising his eyebrows. “You could have a hole in your stomach by tomorrow morning…. So, here is what we’ll do.”

He reached for his telephone and dialed a number.

“I need an ambulance!” he said a minute later. “Yes, right here at the barracks in Budaors… I have someone that has to be taken to the Military Hospital…. Yes, it’s urgent.”

“I’ll send you in for a check up,” he said when he turned back to me. “Get whatever you need from your cupboard and be back here in five minutes!”

About an hour later, the ambulance handed me over to military authorities at the hospital in Budapest where I was assigned to a room at the section of Internal Medicine. The room had six beds, the other five occupied by soldiers of all ages and ranks.

The following morning a nurse came for me to draw my blood and then to perform all kinds of tests on me. During the two weeks I stayed in the hospital, I felt a sense of great relief. Unfortunately, the two weeks of examinations quickly came to an end. Since all my tests were negative, I had to return to my unit in Budaors – using public transportation. While on the bus from Budapest to Budaors, I played with the idea of getting off and attempting an escape. However, my unit had been notified of my release from the hospital and I had to report at the gate of the barracks in one hour. Getting caught way before I could even approach the Yugoslav border was a sure possibility. An attempt at trying to leave the country as a deserter would have landed me in military prison for a long time.

“Wow! The simulator has arrived,” the officer on duty at the gate greeted me. He grinned as he added: “You know your days are numbered, soldier.”

What followed during the next few days was very painful for me. Just about anyone who had any kind of authority wanted to punish me. Of course, the news about my attempt to get discharged from the service by faking illness reached everyone within hours. In order to discourage other soldiers from attempting the same, the petty officers had to deal with me severely. Fortunately, there was no return to sleep deprivation.

Interestingly enough, after about a week, the harsh treatment stopped. In fact, many of the second year soldiers were getting very friendly with me, and there were times when they talked petty officers out of disciplining me.

The summer was not too bad. Working outside during the whole day began to feel like a good physical exercise. For weeks in the middle of summer, we had worked at the outskirts of Budapest, digging trenches by a major road, right at the edge of a huge orchard. Every day, I ate a large amount of fresh cherries, apples and apricots that we picked from the trees of that orchard.

Of course, my desire for freedom did not die. If anything, it was getting stronger.

Half way through my first year of service, I still had not received permission to leave the barracks on weekends. One Sunday, when I was doing my chores in the kitchen, the cook, a friendly second year soldier, surprised me by suggesting that I take the afternoon off.

“Hey, don’t worry,” he said seeing how startled I was. “I’ll cover for you. I know how badly you have been treated. I think it’s totally unfair… Come with me!”

He opened the back door and pointed at the wire fence.

“It’s not even two-meter high, you can easily climb over it. That’s what many of us do when we have no paper to leave through the gate… You go in that side street, turn right over there, and you are at the bus stop. Go and spend some time in Budapest.” He looked at his watch. “It’s two o’clock. Make sure you are back here by six to help setting the tables for dinner. That way no one will notice you were gone.”

I hesitated.

“What’s your problem?” he almost shouted. “You think I am setting you up?! My friend, you can trust me. I hate this establishment as much as you do… Now, go!”

I quickly jumped over the fence and in a few minutes I was riding the bus to the city. When I got off the bus at the Pest side of the Elisabeth Bridge, I had no idea of where to go from there or what to do. I felt totally lost in the afternoon crowd of well dressed people. Finally, I remembered that the Inner City Café, where I used to play chess, was just around the corner.

The café was almost empty, only a couple of older people were playing a game in one of the corners. I watched the game for a while. When the waitress came, I checked my pocket to see if I had enough money left over from the monthly stipend we received for our hard labor. I ordered an apple juice.

When the game was over, the players asked me if I wanted to play the winner.

“Of course,” I replied.

“You are pretty good, son,” my opponent said after I quickly defeated him in the 5-minute speed game. “Where do you play?”

He was referring to the team championship.

“I don’t play anywhere,” I answered. “I am in the military.”

“You are in the military. So what? Why don’t you go and visit the Military Chess Club? It’s just around the corner. You’ll find some strong players there. We are no challenge for you.”

“Is the club open now?”

“It sure is. Go!”

I took his advice and found the club in no time. After playing a few speed games there with a master who happened to be in charge of a second league team, I was offered membership.

“I don’t think it would work for me,” I said. “They would not let me leave for a full day to play for your team on Sundays.”

“Hey! Don’t worry about that part! Just leave that up to me! I’ll make sure you get as much leave as needed.”

I filled out and signed the application he gave me.

“You are now a member of our team. You will receive instructions as to when and where we play. Your commanders will be notified and they will give you the details. Most of our games are here in the city as the teams in the second league are local. However, the championship will start only in the fall, so do not expect anything until then. In the meantime, you are welcome in the club anytime you are on leave from your unit.”

After leaving the club, I headed for the bus stop. It was still early to return but I was feeling kind of uneasy about being outside.

The cook looked at his watch when I entered the kitchen through the back door.

“I guess you are not used to being free.” He was laughing. “You could have spent another hour out there.”

“Perhaps next time,” I said.

With the help of the same cook, I was out of the barracks on five consecutive Sundays. Unfortunately, on the fifth occasion I ran into my immediate superior, the second year petty officer who had always given me as much crap as he possibly could.

My punishment for the unauthorized leave was ten days in military jail. I was transported to another military establishment in another district of Budapest because our barracks had no jail.

I was locked up with about fifty others in a huge cell.

Every day, the whole day, we had to do hard labor, dismantling an old building using hammers and pickaxes. The food was horrible and we had to sleep on hard wood cots. Still, being away from the barracks was a certain relief for me.

Back from the jail, I suffered another few days of harsh treatment. The most ridiculous punishment I received: I had to wash the entire dirt backyard with a thin rag that looked more like a handkerchief. A petty officer on duty made sure that I continued rubbing the dirt all day Saturday while he and some of his colleagues could not stop laughing. Sunday was another crazy day for me. A strong, gusty wind blew all day, emptying a huge container that the night before was full of all kinds of garbage, mainly small boxes and packaging material from the kitchen. The wind carried and deposited everything on a tall wire fence about fifty yards from the container. I had to remove all garbage from the fence and carry everything back into the container. I was told not to stop as long as there was a single piece of paper on the fence. The problem was that whatever I picked off that fence and carried back into the container was immediately blown out of the container because it had no top cover. In the strong wind, everything was back at the fence before I was. Finally, the wind died down late in the afternoon, and I could complete my assignment.

Amazing chain of events

By the beginning of October, when the rainy season started and we had to dig the trenches in deep mud, I was totally fed up with ‘military service’.

When I confronted one of the higher ranked officers, asking him why I was still not allowed to take my four days of leave - two of which I won during the first six weeks of training by finishing first in the shooting competition, and the other two I qualified for because I donated blood -, the officer just shrugged.

“I’m afraid you have to re-earn those days, soldier,” he answered.

There were rumors that I was among those selected to be trained during the winter to become petty officers. Even if it was true, I thought, I was absolutely not interested. What I wanted more than anything else was freedom.

One evening in mid October, I decided to visit the medic again.

“What’s up soldier?” He asked while making a grimace.

“I have some real problems this time,” I said in a very sad tone.

“What’s new? We all have real problems… So, what can I do for you?”

“I feel very bad pain in my chest… It’s kind of a crushing pain right here on the left side.”

“No kidding… When did it start?”

“It started this afternoon.”

“Wow! And nothing yesterday or the day before?”

“I have felt a strong pressure in my chest during the last few days, but nothing like today.”

“What else do you feel?”

“It radiates into my left arm.”

He checked my blood pressure and my pulse.

“I see nothing wrong with you.”

“I wish I could see it the same way,” I said.

“Well, here are some pills. Come back if they don’t relieve your tension.”

After I left the medic’s office, I flushed the pills down the toilet. I waited about an hour, and then I returned.

“It’s getting much worse,” I told the medic.

“Look! If you are faking this one, too, you’ll be in deep trouble. Just remember, I warned you. I heard the military prison is a terrible place. You might not make it out alive.”

“Unfortunately, your warning does not make my pain go away,” I replied.

He sighed and picked up the telephone.

When the ambulance arrived and I was carried out on a stretcher, some of the petty officers we passed in the corridor made comments like ‘see you in ten years’ and ‘sorry to see you heading to hell’.

In the Military Hospital, I was put in a room again with six beds. Three of the beds were occupied by soldiers about my age, the other two by a middle aged man and an old officer. The old one, as I later learned, was a well known retired general who, in his younger years, fought in the Spanish civil war and later became the military attaché to Brussels. He had written a book about his experience and his rise to the rank of attaché.

My bed was by the window, the general was my only neighbor.

A few minutes after I arrived, a nurse took me to an examination room where my EKG was checked.

“You seem to be doing much better now,” she said after looking at all the charts. “Of course, we’ll keep checking your heart. Tomorrow we’ll start a series of other exams as well.”

I did not expect any positive test results but somehow I had the feeling that something could happen that might just save me.

The general was very friendly. He introduced himself to me and asked me if I could go down to the canteen and bring him a few things.

“I got in here just before you arrived,” he said. “I did not bring anything with me that I will need here. I came for my monthly check up. The doctor said he found something that concerned him and put me in here for some more examinations. I might be here for a few days.”

“I am happy to help you anytime,” I told him. “Don’t hesitate to ask.”

The other officer seemed to be seriously ill. He had blockages in his lung that he could not cough up. It was very depressing to hear his heavy breathing.

One of the three young soldiers stopped me in the corridor and asked me if I was there with a real disease.

“…because I am not,” he said. “I am sick and tired of the military, I want out. My blood pressure is somewhat higher than normal but that alone is probably not enough. I am hoping for a miracle… What the heck, I am here for the first time. After two weeks they will send us back. At least I had these two weeks off from my unit.”

I avoided answering his question and rushed to the canteen.

The general was given some medication to help him fall asleep. Next day, when he woke up, he did not feel too good. Again, he asked me to bring him a few things, like candy bars, toothpaste, and he told me to buy something for myself as well from the money he gave me.

As the condition of the old general continued to deteriorate, I was getting busier helping him. When the nurse was not around, I even escorted him to the bathroom when he wanted to take a shower or to the toilet when he needed to go there. The head nurse kept thanking me for being so much help. The old guy, too, was very grateful.

One evening while he was leaning on my shoulder as I assisted him walking in the corridor, he said something that gave me the impression he was against the regime. With his statement, he immediately gained my trust, so I told him honestly how I felt about the forced labor.

“Son,” he said, “you have been so good to me. If I get out of here alive, I’ll make sure you get discharged.”

My tests continued yielding negative results.

Unfortunately, the old general died after being there for a week.

The young soldier with the high blood pressure left the following day. Before he said good-bye, he asked me to go with him to the corridor.

“They found nothing wrong with me, just as I thought, so I am going back to the unit. I understand you are here for the second time. Be careful my friend. I have seen people court marshaled for what you are doing.”

After he left, I went down to the little park that surrounded the canteen and sat on a bench for some time. My mind started working feverishly after I concluded that, indeed, I could be in real trouble once I am discharged again with negative test results. I remember well, I looked up into the sky because some rays of the sun just broke through the clouds. The rays were so strong they almost hurt my eyes. A few seconds later, the opening in the clouds disappeared. Suddenly, I felt like I knew what I have to do. I stood up and walked into the canteen where I bought a pack of cigarettes and three double espresso coffees in a large cup. After leaving the canteen, I sat down on the same bench and lit up a cigarette. I inhaled the smoke deeply and always held it back for a while before blowing it out. By the time I finished with the second cigarette, the coffee had cooled off enough so that I could drink it. I drank the entire content of the cup. I must add here that I had been neither a coffee drinker nor a smoker. As I lit up the third cigarette, I started feeling very strange. I thought it was time to go back to my room. Walking towards the entrance of the building, my legs were already shaking. I threw the empty cup and the rest of the cigarettes into a garbage can, entered the building and walked up the stairs.

By the time I reached my floor, I had no strength left. Somehow I managed to get inside the room and sat down on one of the chairs around a small table.

“Wow! Your face is snow white,” one of the soldiers sitting there said after looking at me. “Are you feeling bad?”

I wanted to nod. All I remember is that about half way through my nod, I passed out. I was told later what followed: I fell off the chair and became stiff. My roommate ran to the office of the doctor on duty. The office was just a few steps away from our room and, fortunately for me, the doctor, a middle aged, kind woman, happened to be in her office. She ran back with my roommate and together they lifted me onto my bed. The doctor checked my pulse and loudly declared that my heart was not pumping. She ran back to her office to fetch a big rubber hammer. After she returned to our room, she immediately started hitting my chest with the hammer. He continued hammering while she made the statement several times:

“He’s stubborn, very stubborn.”

After a while she put down the hammer and said:

“He seems to be gone.”

She picked up the hammer again and hit my chest one last time. That worked.

When I was coming to, my first thought was:

“Why did you wake me up?”

“Wow! What a miracle!” the doctor said which I could already hear and comprehend well. “You almost did not make it.”

She lifted the ‘patient chart’ off the end of my bed and made some notes on it for the doctors that followed her in the morning. Later, she came back to our room to ask me a few questions. After my answers, she wrote an entire page of notes on her yellow pad.

“Well, I don’t see why they doubt you at your military unit,” she said after putting her notes in a folder. “Now, I hope this collapse will not repeat itself tonight. In case it does, your roommates should come and get me again… Perhaps you will recover on your own once you are in a horizontal position.”

The next day, the head doctor, an older, three-star general, with two of his aids stood at the end of my bed for quite some time. They read the notes on the chart over and over again while whispering among themselves. They asked me whether I ever collapsed when raising my head, looking up into the sky.

“Once I did,” I answered.

They must have thought that was another occasion. They noted it on my chart.

For three more days, I had been tested in many different ways but all the results came back negative.

“The doctors are puzzled,” the head nurse said. “However, everything seems normal so you will have to go back to your unit tomorrow. Get ready in the morning.”

I remember I thought what she said was nothing but empty threat. I should have been scared of her words but somehow I was not. I slept well during the night as if I had nothing to worry about. In the morning, after breakfast was served, I started packing my things. I was folding my pajamas and my towels that I had to return to the warehouse before checking out when the head nurse came.

“Stop right there!” she said. “Just pick up everything you have, including your sheet and your pillow, and follow me.”

She took me to another room a few doors down the corridor.

“Right here,” she said opening the door.

The room was pretty dark. First I saw nothing when we entered.

“There are two beds in here,” the nurse said. “As you can see, one is occupied. The other one is yours. Put everything on your bed and come with me.”

She took me to a supply room at the end of the corridor where she introduced me to the manager on duty. She told him that I would be coming here every day to get a full tank of oxygen.

“Don’t forget to bring the empty one with you!” the man said as we were leaving.

“So, here is the situation,” the nurse enlightened me on the way back to the room. “The man in that room is a famous artist, a well known painter. He is a very good childhood friend of the head doctor. He was brought in here by ambulance this morning because he had suffered a heart attack. Currently, he is in a semi-coma. As he will need continuous attention at least for the next couple of weeks, making sure that the tube that supplies the oxygen does not fall out of his nostril, we thought we would bring you in here. Also, when he starts choking, you would have to put a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue. Do you think we can count on you to watch him?”

“Of course,” I rushed to answer.

“You may not be able to sleep much during the nights. Try to nap often during the day… but never fall deep asleep. Don’t let him die! Again, he is a very good friend of the head doctor.”

“I understand. I’ll do my best.”

“There are two oxygen tanks in the room. Make sure one is always full, ready to replace the other one when that runs out. I’ll show you how to change the tanks and how to tape the tube into the patient’s nostril. If there is anything unusual, call me or whoever is on duty.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Here is a white coat,” she said when we got back into the room. “You should wear this, especially, when you go to the supply room.”

So, suddenly, I became a nurse.

The painter was in very bad shape. The only thing he could move was his nose. Moving it from side to side was enough to loosen the plaster that held the plastic tube in place. About every half an hour, he began to choke because the oxygen was no longer flowing into his nostril. When I heard the panicky breathing, I quickly placed the tube back in his nostril, securing it with a plaster just under his nose.

Just as the head nurse warned me, I could not sleep much. When I slept, I was only half asleep, waking up immediately when I heard that the tube was off again.

The only thing I did not do was help him urinate or defecate. I had to call the nurse for that as it required a special technique. Feeding was also done by the nurse.

The man was half dead for about two weeks. Finally, he opened his eyes and was able to move his hands and his legs.

After about three weeks, he surprised me one morning: he started talking.

“What is your name?” he said in a feeble but clearly understandable voice.

After I told him my name, he did not say anything else for another week.

On some occasions in the morning when the doctors came in to do their usual consultation, I was changing the oxygen tanks. When I finished, I was standing there in my white coat at the end of the painter’s bed, next to the head nurse and the doctors, as if I was part of the medical team. I was wondering how long before I am once again demoted to patient status, and what happens to me then.

After about six weeks, the painter gained enough strength to get out of bed. He leaned on me and asked me to take him out into the corridor for a short walk. However, when I obeyed him and helped him go to the toilet to defecate, the nurse was very angry at me.

“You know, he could have died there straining in a sitting position. Don’t do it again. Call me when he needs the toilet.”

I promised I would.

Just before Christmas, the old man had some visitors. Later that day, the nurse told me that the painter was going home for the holidays. The next day, on Christmas Eve, an ambulance transported him out of the hospital.

The morning after Christmas, before the doctors came to my room, the nurse asked me to be in bed for the visit. After the doctors entered my room, they looked at my chart that had been blank from the day the nurse hung it on the end of my bed. They quietly talked among themselves for a minute before the head doctor turned to me:

“Well, it seems like your low blood pressure has not been getting any better, and since you have been in here for over sixty days, the regulations dictate that you be discharged from military service.”

He wrote three large letters on my chart and then the group left my room.

Later, the nurse came back and asked me if I wanted to stay in the hospital for a few more days until the final approval arrives from the Ministry of Defense or if I wanted to go home to pick up my civilian clothes, and then return to my unit where I would be discharged. I opted for the latter. Surely, I did not expect the humiliation I still had to suffer during those last few days. As I was still a soldier, one of the meanest petty officers who did not go home for the holiday made sure I had plenty of duties to perform before I got discharged. He was not happy about my hair that grew rather long during my stay in the hospital. On my very last day, he ordered me to cut my hair, to look like a soldier when I leave the barracks. I went to the washroom and used a razor blade to shorten my hair. When I reported that I obeyed the order, he laughed.

“You call that a hair cut? You can do better than that. Report when you are really done.”

He sent me back to the wash room three times. The third time, losing my cool, I cut off almost all my hair. At the same time, unintentionally, I cut into one of my ears with the sharp blade. Blood was all over my face. When I reported that I obeyed the order, the officer laughed.

“Bartok, Bartok, you will never be able to produce a decent hair cut.” Suddenly, he turned serious and yelled at me: “Get out of my face. You are discharged.”

At the end of 1970, and only after eleven and a half months of ‘military service’, I walked out of the barracks in civilian clothes. Walking through the gates and then on to the bus stop, I did not even look back… because I did not want anyone to see the triumphant smile on my face. In spite of my bleeding ear, and the ice cold wind freezing my almost hairless scalp, I felt great. I felt I scored a victory over the regime and its monstrous inhumane system.