Chapter 16
Scorpion Love
When I left the boat I still had some 10 days to the beginning of my next, 5th, semester.
By chance my long-time friend, Z., has been idle, we decided to go by steamboat to the town of B. and, as the weather was still fine in the first days of September, make some recreation on the Danube and its backwater, together with Y. and her friend, another nurse, of course. I took my bicycle with us.
It was a very pleasant week except one small detail. One morning I was awaken in the tent by necessity. I finished it and looked around, if everything was O.K. It was, the bicycle lay on its place leant on the side of the tent. Two hours later we both got up and it was missing. First we thought the girls had made a practical joke, but the bicycle has been lost forever. The police accepted our report of the theft, but in two weeks at home I received their notice about the futile search.
With Y. and her friend we have had a lot of pleasant common programs and I became completely caught by my love to Y. She returned my feeling fully, even let me stroke her tiny breast under her dress after an attempt to stop me, but girls with marriage on their minds are predators. Before leaving I proposed and she agreed. We decided, she would come to our house for a week-end in the next month and we would arrange our engagement during Christmas.
Before her coming, however, we with Z. came once more to them to take part in vintage. In one of her letters – in that period we changed letters twice a week – she invited us both to vintage in her village. By that time she had confessed me her two lies: she has not been from B., there she had only a room as a tenant, her home has been 20 miles to the south in a small village being that time within the "border zone” on the frontier with Yugoslavia, and the difference between our ages has really been two years, only she was my senior. The latter was very hard to me as I had always liked girls much younger than me. (Well, there is a popular joke about age: the old man of 70 wanted to marry a woman of 30 and he answered when asked if he had thought of the age that actually he did and was not very calm as then he was 70 and she 30, but after 40 years he would be only 110, but she 70 already.) At the end, love made me forget all unpleasant things. It was really hard to organize permission to enter the border zone and, as it took time, we arrived there only when the work has been done. Of the vintage we have only enjoyed grapes and juice.
We have spent there two days and for both of us the stay seemed worth. Z. and the other girl had become intimate, they both recognized the opportunity for a play with no further consequences. They accepted that it was a short happiness won on lottery. What concerned us with Y., we went ever deeper and it caught us fully. We have had the pleasure of some hours embracing each other and she only asked me to spare her love for our marriage, but she took it with pleasure being caressed on every corners of her body.
We have spent time also chatting about her family. Her father had left them when she was 6 and her brother a baby. He had been working as a miller and so he had to travel a lot. He always had as many women as he wanted. His wife with the fighting spirit had not been the best choice for him. Her mother had brought up her children alone doing the work of a peasant woman. Y. had started to work early, she did it in the agriculture. But as soon as she had the opportunity to become a nurse she went to B. and got her profession in three years. She did well, her study and accommodation had been free, only for her food she had to pay. Her mother had helped her at it.
Slowly I would understand her point of refusing any lovemaking. At that time morale had been keeping medieval principles. For a girl it was almost impossible to come into marriage not being a virgin. It had been so deeply implanted into their minds that there was no way of getting around it. They only let it happen when they wanted to force a man into an unwanted marriage. It took me some time to be aligned with it, but at last I accepted. Later, after many experiences for the good and the wrong side, I found that basically she was honest and did not regret having left her clean.
We returned all four to B. by train and we said farewell with Z. to the girls as we caught another train for the capital.
Z. and his family were moving from the living estate at the airport for a proper apartment on the other side of the city. Our friendship has not died, we had a lot of fine arrangements still, before my wife will have been able to separate us successfully about four years later.
Y. has come to us in October. I have shown her to many places, she has met her brother making his apprenticeship here, too, and we again have had some fine moments together. It seemed that time we had been created for each other and our characters were fitting well. But, she must have been aware of her real desire as once, sitting in my room in close embrace, she asked me:
"My dear Joe, you will never let me down, will you?”
It hit me on my heart.
"What do you think, sweet?” I said.
“I have an unpleasant feeling that your love would not last forever. It happened with others.”
We remained silent and a premonition came into my soul. But at that time I wanted to believe this state was not to change forever and did not catch the real meaning of her question: it was she who could see her own love as something that had had a beginning and it would have an end at a certain time. Women have more common sense than men.
Following her return to her town we went on writing letters often, but it was a hard time for me at the university. I have organized the permissions for my mother and me for our trip to her village in the border zone. Of the money I had saved of my scholarship I bought the wedding rings. In our country it is a custom to use the final wedding rings on the occasion of engagement, only to place them on the left hands. After marriage they are worn on the right. To save enough money has not been easy as half of my scholarship went every month to my mother to help her to make ends meet.
My sister had not liked Y. and tried to stop me in engaging her. She considered her unintelligent and a man-hunter. She must have seen her faults better than me, but they had been magnified in her mind. She looked at me as generally elder sisters do at their younger brothers and had been jealous on any women around me. She repeated it once more when I married. My wife has always remained a thorn in her side.
The first day of Christmas my mother and me have spent on a coach. It was the idea of my mother, but it was not a good one. The coach has not been heated, it got warmer only from the breath of the passengers. And it was extremely slow. It has taken a whole day to reach the village.
The next day our engagement took place. There was a kindness in the air and I thought I had chosen well. On the other morning there was slate and as my mother was leaving she could hardly reach the coach the road was so slippery. But at last she has got home all right.
I have stayed there for some days, but I had to leave quicker than planned as I could not make any progress in preparing for my next examination.
In a month Y. came to us again and in another month I visited her once more. About this trip of mine there is a lot to recall and they are not all pleasant experiences. I did not succeed to get the necessary permission for the entry into the border zone. It was early in 1962 and, being much wrong in the international atmosphere, the ministry of interior affairs did not accept engagement enough to let me see my fiancée. It should have been a family connection to secure me the permission. I did not want to alter my plans and the long line of unpleasant events has begun.
Y. met me at the railway station in B. and she tried to reassure me that we could make it without permission. It was late afternoon and, being a February day, it was dark when the train came into motion. It had some stops before the frontier guards arrived to check papers. As I could not present my permission the soldier went out and returned with the sergeant.
"Without a proper paper I cannot allow you to get out within the border zone”, he said to me.
"I see”, I answered, "but you know my fiancée, she is living in N. and I did not have time at home to wait for the permission.” It was a lie as I have not got my paper at all.
"It is not my business, you will come with us to the barracks and you are to return tomorrow”, he was implacable.
It was in vain begging at that man. When we arrived to N. she got out and promised to find an acquaintance of hers in the village for help. I continued my trip to the terminal at the border line. The guards took me to an office building where, being late, there were no officers to decide my fate.
I spent that night walking and sitting on the bench in a long corridor together with another young man who was caught at the border without passport. We talked very little, both of us were occupied by our own troubles. I was aware of the negative influence this event could make on my life. And not only mine. My brother-in-law was an officer, a major already, and I could not know how far this avalanche would be able to destroy everything.
At about 6 a.m. the commander of the sentry arrived and he soon ordered me to come in. I was addressed a large speech about liabilities and other earnest things, but he said, he would not do anything, if I promise not to repeat my crime. After that I was released. It took me some time to find the way as there was no train, but a car gave me a lift and before noon I arrived to the house of Y.’s family. It goes without saying, I could have stayed another two days in the border guard office, had I waited for the help promised by Y. and her acquaintance.
The wrong beginning made me nervous and there was another bitterness in the air. It was carnival time before fasting and at the pub in the village every week-end there was a dance. The big ball was to come the next evening, but last Saturday the fight among young men led to the death of one of them by knife. It could have been best not to go to the ball, but it was impossible, as the ball was the same one arranged for the wedding of one of Y.’s friends, a girl. Y. had been asked to be one of the wreath maidens.
It was a true peasant wedding, about a hundred guests, many dishes, cakes and, of course, drinks. For a time Y. stayed with me, but, when the local folk dance of Slav origin began, she left me for it. All night that kind of music was carried on and I could only see her, but she did not notice me. She felt extremely well and I on the opposite. That was the time I foresaw problems in our relationship: different cultural roots. I was waiting patiently, even tried not to tell her anything about my loneliness.
Our relationship has become to go wrong. I think a colleague of mine was right when he said:
"Love and engagement is like canned food and its opening. It can stay well for a fairly long time, but after opening you have to eat it, otherwise it would be spoiled.”
Well, I think it happened to us.
Had we not become engaged to each other our love could have survived much longer. But after we opened our can we would have better eat it, i.e. marry. Her letters became rare and when I tried to call her by phone – it was not a small torture at that time to set a long distance call – she said she had little time. I tried to save our relationship and went to her in B. by boat. It was late spring in 1962 and I stayed in the small hotel of the town. I borrowed a good camera from my friend Z. and was expecting a lot.
Arriving there I wanted at once to contact her, but she said she was on duty that evening and could get free only the other day. So, we would have only half a day instead of one and a half, as my return trip was due that afternoon. I spent the evening in the town and outside it. I even went to the port and stood outside the restaurant to listen to the music.
The other morning we spent together and I shot a lot of pictures. These have been my latest ones about her. There was something wrong and not with me. Much later she told me that it was the third person syndrome. Some weeks earlier, when her letters became more scarce, she had gone to dance on a ball – even took off my ring –, where she had become intimate with a young man. He did not know about her being a fiancée because off the missing ring. Their relationship had grown closer and she would think our engagement could only be saved if we had married soon – eating the canned food. She could not decide what to do as I told her strictly, when she urged me to do it, I could not marry her without a proper financial situation.
When I arrived by boat and called her she had already arranged dining with the other man. They were dining within as I stood outside the restaurant listening to the music. How lucky it was I did not know about it that time, I must have beaten her. It is always a failure for a man to beat the girl he loves, it means he has been a coward and could not face defeat. But until now I am ashamed to remember how that girl exploited my love and my trust in her.
We have not met for some weeks and in July I left her with her dilemma and boarded the tug "Esztergom” on a trip downriver to the Danube delta.
It has been my first trip abroad ever. At the shipping company a special group of the personnel department has dealt with the delegation of crew members to different boats, tugs or barges. Our man for the engine room crew has been Uncle Louis. He has not been old, but his character has made him uncle for even the oldest. His fate has fixed him to the desk: during the final days of 1956 he lost one of his legs below knee from a rifle shot as he had been standing in a queue for bread. He had an artificial limb, but he could not go back to his loved engine room any more.
As a student with company scholarship I had come to him a year before and he had sent me to the boat "Kossuth”. Everyone had to begin with domestic routes. After that have come trips downriver from our country to the delta. To be assigned to a ship that was going upriver to Germany has had its preconditions.