Chapter 4
First Love
My interest was shifting from solitary walks and discoveries to girls.
Adults seldom take seriously the feelings of children when it concerns love. As I have a lasting long memory – at the same time I admit that my short memory could be sometimes better – I can clearly remember my schoolboy loves and can say that the feeling was as strong and overwhelming as any one in my later years. It is interesting that what attracted me always was a pretty face or kindness. Even in my late teens, unlike other boys caught mostly by a good figure, a well sized bosom or a pair of fine legs, I liked girls, even if they resembled ironing boards, who had beautiful eyes, kind faces or were lovely to me. And one more point of view: I avoided far away those who did not like me. Dislike was a negative magnet to push me away.
My first love affair has been so complicated that it needs to be told profoundly.
I have mentioned the man who had frequented the house in the outskirts of the capital in the ‘20s, where my mother and her younger sister had been waiting for would-be husbands. He had been working as an accountant and had wanted to use more funds than he had had in his pocket. Although he and my mother had been engaged, the marriage had not come true, my mother had made a vow never to speak to him any more.
How his life turned, I do not know well, but some years later he must have met the elder daughter of a family in the same village, Fonyod, where my father’s relatives had been living. They had married and, when we have moved to the village and there we have found our permanent living house, they have been our neighbours. At that time all of that family were still living: both grandparents and, of course, their daughters, both married with children. The man, my mother’s former fiancé, had three children: a son from another woman and a daughter and a son from his present wife. The small son was still a baby.
When I first met his daughter, Agatha, she was five. I was her senior by 3 years. At the first moment of our encounter she called me to go out with her to the garden and at once we became intimate friends. After that day we have not seen each other for three years. I was a fifth grader by then and she a second, she did not seemed to notice me at all. But we were together many times as we lived in neighbouring homes and even our family used their hand-turned well to draw drinking water from.
In the school everyone had a favourite, usually from the same class. Somehow, A. had chosen a boy whose brother has been my classmate and they both have been unbearably conceited boys. Being as he was, the boy did take any notice of her. Before my new encounter with A. I liked a classmate girl. She was not very pretty, but seemed extremely clever. She had stolen from me the best place in the class when she arrived and she knew all home-works by heart. Soon I discovered that instead of brightness it was diligence. She memorized all that was needed, whether she understood it I do not know. We had been friends and that carried on, until we both finished elementary school and went to different high schools.
When fate had A. meet me a second time, I began to like her and soon I decided, my favourite was she. It was no wonder she got my imagination. She had light blond hair and blue eyes, her face resembled a heart as it is often pictured in children’s books. There is only one way to characterize her look: it was that of an angel. As we stayed indoors, playing games we spoke about our feelings, who was her beloved and who was mine. I told her straight it was she. For some minutes she was shy, her cheeks blushed. The other day she suddenly grabbed me, drew my head closer and whispered into my ear: "Joe is my beloved.” Then she ran out into the cold weather, it was early spring. I could not find her that day.
The day after in the afternoon she addressed me over the fence calling me and I went to her again. She was matter-of-fact during my stay, we played games and when I left she asked me if I remembered what she had said.
"Yes”, I answered, "but I am not sure you said it earnestly.”
"I did.”
"Then see you tomorrow.”
I do not think it necessary to explain how I felt. It was an uncertain happiness as I thought how easily she changed her mind about who her beloved was. At the same time it was happiness and it meant a great warmth on my heart. The days passed by and the weather became milder. We played a lot in their garden and we both accepted that we were in love with each other. But nothing could be detected by a third person, only we did not make any fights and behaved like a good brother and sister.
Spring is wondrous and can even bring together a girl and a man, when they otherwise would not notice each other. As we were constantly together and neither of us had any dislike for the other it was natural that we both accepted the fact that we were in love. Sometimes we made plans for the future to be married. One evening we played seek-and-hide and during our play it became dark. She would not find me. She called and said she was afraid. I was nearby, only she could not see me. I caught her and drew her to me.
"There is nothing to be afraid of”, I said.
There was no answer, but she was in my arms and did not want to go away. I am very sensitive of smells, I have always been. She was smelling of garlic, her grandmother gave her toasted bread smeared with garlic. I do not like this smell, but then this meant her and I liked it. It is in my nostrils even now as I think of it. Very lightly I kissed her cheek.
"It is not allowed”, she said, but stayed in my arms.
"Then give it back”, I said.
"No.”
She left me at once and for some days we would not meet. When we did, I asked her, if she was angry with me. She said she was not. We would not talk about the kiss. I had to help her with her homework. When next time I had an occasion I kissed her cheek again. She let it happen and so she did when later again I gave her a kiss. I did not know that she was counting how many times it happened.
Once she said the exact number. And she said something more:
"I have to begin to give them back otherwise I shall stay behind.”
Soon she gave me her first kiss and blushed. I did not force her to continue and for a couple of days she did not. When she did once more, I wanted to kiss her, too, but she said:
"Wait until I come even.”
Many days passed, before I could kiss her cheek again. And every time she kissed me back, to remain always at the same count.
Once I tried to kiss her on her lips, but she did not let me do that again. As I recollect these memories now I think she was much more clever than me. She kept her feelings in her hands firmly and did not let herself do anything she thought improper by the norms her grandmother put into her head. For a girl of 8 she was a genie.
We continued this for some weeks, but, as summer came, something went wrong. We did not change anything, only her cousin arrived to stay with his grandmother. He showed his true nature already at that time. He was spying after us and heard something that was not for him. A. could not bear the thought that anything could become public and for some months I have not met her. As usual, our close connection that was a children’s love, came to an end.
I have kept these memories in my heart and, although we lived in the same neighbouring houses as before and I saw her walking with other boys, I have hoped for a very long time that it could go right. It would not.
Her cousin Peter and his sister Margaret have been moved to the same house to live with their grandmother. The boy was a bad natured one, every time when I tried to stay with him in half an hour we had to part as he was unbearable. His sister has been the complete opposite of A., both in look and character. Having been multiplied in number, the children did not need anybody for company and I turned to my books and walks to amuse myself.
About a year after our affair A. was moved to a distant place in the village. It has been more than two miles from our neighbourhood on the lakeshore, where, before the war, a rich man living alone had established an orphanage. After the war it has been nationalized and that time, I am writing about, a house-keeper was needed for the orphanage. A.’s father has got the job, so they moved there. I met her there later when I was living in the capital and together with my friend we stayed some days in my old village.
We has met twice more. First time when she has been engaged to the physical instructor of the village elementary school. Second time on my honey-moon in the village, we were walking with my wife, when she came against with her husband. She has been pregnant that time.
Lately I have heard that her life has not been very fine. Soon she divorced and lived with her parents. According to rumour her mother has died in a way not deserved: her husband did not call the doctor and let her die without help.
Many times I tried to imagine what could have happened to me if:
she had not been angry with me after our short, but very happy friendship,
she had not been forced to move out of my reach,
she had accepted my offer during my first visit to the village to visit me in the capital,
and so on.
I concluded that she has been, as blond northern type girls generally are, for me too strong in spirit. Probably we could not have been on good terms for long and our marriage – as during our affair as children we promised each other many times that we would marry – would have been destroyed in a similar way as it happened with her marriage. Anyhow, my way of thinking and, together with it my life, has been influenced by the intimate friendship that is only a piece of memory now and still, it can make my heart warm.