Chapter 14
Not Completely Freshman
The professor who has kept us the common lectures in the subject "elements of machinery design” had earned himself a good and a bad name at the same time. In the ‘20s and ‘30s he had been working abroad as an engineer. Calculation and manufacture of gear-boxes was the most interesting and newest topic of mechanical engineering that time. It has been raised both by the expansion of automotive industry and the switch from steam engine transmissions to independent electric motor drives. Our professor had gone to the Maag works in Switzerland and had taken a job of gear-hobber machinist. By keeping his education as engineer in secret, doing manual work, he had avoided attention and he had had the possibility to learn everything about the theoretical side of gears. His bad name has been earned in Switzerland where he was wanted when it became known that he had actually been an industrial spy.
His good name in his home country made it possible for him to get a department at the university in this highly competitive subject. He has developed gear design by his calculation method that enabled his followers to build gear-boxes using the minimum quantity of steel and so minimizing the weight of the units.
The other new subject in our second semester was metallurgy. Professor Gillemot has had a North-African or French origin and all over the world his name is well remembered among his fellow scientists. His lectures have been extremely interesting. He has had such an overwhelming charisma – at that time this expression has not been so fashionable as it is today – that at his lectures the room has always been full and nobody has even had the idea of neglecting it. To study his subject has involved doing a proper practice in the department’s laboratory.
My most pleasant experience about an examination is connected to him. In one of his lectures he has dealt with material exhaustion and its dependence on design details as sharp corners. He has talked about British airliners where the fact that window frames had sharp corners resulted in serial problems. These problems had been caused by exhaustion. I was to do my exam with him and he had his bad reputation as examiner. He gave me a question about material exhaustion. I only had to begin with the airliner example as he grabbed the word to himself and spoke about 20 minutes, finishing it by giving me a maximum score. I have never had a better, more pleasant and easier exam.
It is always harder to prepare for examinations during the summer season. In winter it is much easier to stick to your text-books and problem solving. In the cold weather we were staying in the university’s library from morning to late afternoon and did not miss the cold outside world. But, when it is fine, you feel a great desire to throw the printed papers into the corner and go walking or swimming. Anyway, I survived the examination period in that first year, too. I have just received my last score and have given my report-book into the dean’s office for the summer holiday, when I got that fatal telegram about the death of Ildiko.
I have got a very bitter holiday season. What made me the mental burden lighter was the job I took in one of the biggest factories of the capital. The factory lay beside the suburban train track much nearer to my home than the university. My working hours were 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. The factory has been manufacturing telecommunication devices, phone exchanges, phones, radio receivers, etc. I have been working as an unskilled locksmith and have done a good work as such. It has been a large factory with many hundreds of manual and office workers.
During the time I have spent in that place I have met somebody from my village years. There was a girl working as mail distributor, whom I noticed at once, but did not recognized. After two days she told me we knew each other. She made me remember that we had been learning at the 6th or 7th grade in the elementary school. Her name was Margaret. With some difficulty I could recall her from my memories. She had even had a younger sister, Helen, but of that I had really had no memory. As we met that time I thought she was older than me, but only she was a fine girl of 19.
She has had not only that sister, but a married brother, too. He has been living with his family in a flat in one of the 4 apartment blocks near the same military airport, like me. The two girls I often saw later when they came to visit their brother.
M. would not have been against making me her partner, but within such a short time after the loss of my sweetheart I did not have any desire for another girl to take her place. Some months later in the autumn, when my new semester had begun, I took her to the ball at the university, but we could not become intimate, as I had always liked younger girls and she probably had her other acquaintances. Her sister, H., has been a tram conductor for a while before I lost her from my view. She has always been very friendly to me and it was fine to chat with her, but she was not my choice either.
My 3rd semester at the university has meant that I had survived the first big sifter – the first year has been called so as about 20 percent has been usually left behind either to leave the institute or to get a new start – and was to face the second one at the end of the second year. There were some supervision examinations from all the four semesters and they generally made it hard for some students to step forward.
I had not found it very hard. I began to like the student life and wanted to do as well as possible. At the end of the second year we had to choose our specialization. Earlier, when I had spoken about it – shipbuilding has always been my goal –, fellow-students had been laughing at my simple-mindedness: they had said, about half of the 400 boys and girls had wanted the same. One day towards the end of my 2nd year, when I was just giving in an application for some financial help in the dean’s office, the lady working there questioned me about my plans. To solve my problem she suggested to go to the national shipping company and to sign a so-called scholarship agreement. It had become fashionable for companies to get some employees with high education by giving them scholarship at the university and binding them for as many years as they received the money.
I have done as she said and so my place as a would-be naval architect has been secured.
During first and second year in our agenda also the subject of gymnastics and sports took place. There was a possibility to choose from different sports, I took swimming. In the morning once a week we had two hours of training.
On April 12, 1961 we were just returning from the pool to sit down in an auditorium to listen to our Mr Physics’ lecture about quarks and the like, when he called our attention and said there was a man orbiting Earth. It was the day Yury Gagarin has been sent up.
I had mentioned in some words the attempts of the government and the ruling party to win the confidence of the young in the country. For a long time it had not born results, but four or five years after the uprising our living conditions became better, and more and more young people could be drawn into the Communist Youth Union (CYU). Actually, it was communist only in its name. There appeared a rumour at the end of the ‘60s that in our country the last of the bigot communists was executed in 1958. It referred to Mr Imre Nagy, the premier during the uprising, who had actually believed that improving the same system had been possible. Only some decades later would it be realized that it hadn’t. I joined the union in the first half of my second year. I have not mentioned yet, that at the same time when I started my studies at the university, more than twenty officers were admitted, too. My brother-in-law, Steve, could have been among them, but for some reasons he had been rejected. They usually had not have any maturity examination, and have been selected mainly by their faith to the party.
Their admittance had some influence on my joining ceremony to the CYU. Among the officers there has been a man, whom we call here comrade Z. He has always been a bigot believer of Marxist ideas, and during the first hour of the uprising he had been insulted for them. His instinct commanded him to hide, until the danger would be over. When the Soviets helped Mr Kadar to grip power and the fights were over, he appeared at a party members’ assembly. There he has been praised as a clever one, who has survived hard times by hiding.
As the CYU members of our year at the university have assembled to vote for my admission, this comrade Z. stood up and said he opposed my admission, as I had been a regular visitor of the church.
There burst out a very fiery debate, where he was beaten by two arguments completely. First, he has been there as an observer of the party without a right to vote. Second, he was lying as I had not even had the possibility to go to the church, because I did not know where to go – the second reason is clear to anybody who has read this book so far.
I had to speak about this event as my life has been influenced by my joining the CYU many times. First, as a new member I could not avoid enlisting for a building camp during summer. For some years this tendency, to organize youth to building camps, had been on its way. The first camp of this kind was created in 1958 for the drainage works of the swamp in the westernmost part of the country around Lake Ferto (Neusiedlersee for the Austrian). There has also been the one for the foundations of the big cement works north of the capital at Vac. In that year, 1961, the task before the youth in camp was to dig the foundations for a big chemical works in the north-east of the country, at Berente.
Life in camp has not been unpleasant. Manual work has not been unknown to me and the company was excellent. It has lasted 4 weeks during July. The camp has only been for boys, girls have done easier work somewhere else. One night shortly after supper my stomach refused and food has been given back. It has been followed by a two-day illness. I have not been alone with it, on the opposite. Later we would learn that the pastry and cheese given as supper have been unfit. Most of the boys have healed quickly, but with me it has become a sensitivity of alcohol and fat. My liver could not overcome it completely. I was 20 then and, as before that I had never been drunk, I do not know how it feels to be one. Since that time drinks have made me sick to vomit before I could have become drunken.