Chapter 5
Dove Nest
After that day, I have been taken from the tug and assigned to another one in the yard. It was a custom with the company to gather all their ships in wintering places, preferably in their own in the capital, but sometimes ice made it impossible to reach home grounds or rather waters. The bay of the yard has been full of boats.
The tug I have been assigned to, was to have the regular overhaul of the main engines. I had never taken part in such work before, this has been the reason, why I was sent there. As we have been in no hurry, the work took us three weeks. It was a hard and very unpleasant job, but useful. Only dirt from my hands and the smell of Diesel oil from my skin could not be eliminated.
The repair yard has been near the northernmost border of the capital, while our home lay in the southern districts. To shuttle every day to and from took me three hours. My exhaustion reached high levels.
There was another factor that caused my exhaustion. As soon as we became married we started to sleep in a common bed. But it depends on the kind of bed, if it is a good way to rest. Our wire-mesh bed has not been of the type you would consider proper. We called it pot-bed. As soon as you let your weight in it, the middle of the mesh went down about a foot. We both have always been in the very middle of it. Anyway, we had to make it for a time. When I asked my wife about our financial conditions, she said there was no money left. I would not argue with her, but I made the first step to decide, money has to be kept in my hands.
To buy a proper couch stretchable for the night, needed three months’ pay of my mariner’s salary – I had got a proper salary on the boat instead of a beginner’s pay, that would have been only half of that – or, as there remained nothing of that, half a year’s shore pay. We had to take it on hire-purchase. We needed a guarantee person for the bank and my wife’s colleague, a middle aged kind lady, agreed to take responsibility on her. We were lucky to overcome the obstacle of furniture shortage and before the end of the year the good old pot-bed has been returned to my wife’s parents, to take its former place in the attic.
The couch came in a set, we got two arm-chairs – stored with her parents until we moved out of the small room – and two chairs with it. The room has become full, even a heat-shield was to be mounted between the stove and the couch. Separately, for cash, we took also a table with extendable top. During day the room was full, but usable. At night, with the couch extended, the only way has been via our bed.
For six years our place has remained almost the same. Two years later we were able to buy a combined cupboard-wardrobe of our own, and the old wardrobe returned to her parents.
Being a corner room our home has been a poorly insulated one. In cold weather in winter we heated it up in the evening, but the temperature went down to 50 degrees F till morning. In the stove we burned high-calorie coal. To retain heat better, I bought insulating tape. To do a good work, I taped around the door, too, but began to have troubles with the stove. This problem has been cleared by chance. As I have been trying to kindle a good fire, my wife opened the door to the corridor. Incidentally the main entrance was open, and the fire in the stove burst into flames. The owner of the house hit his head by his palm, as I mentioned it and said:
"I have taped the whole house and this is the reason.” He said he was having the same trouble with his tile-stoves. He took off the tape under the main entrance and I did it with our door. All have been cured at once.
Following my homecoming also the wedding of my brother-in-law took place. They moved into a rented room in "Rose Valley” in the house of his friend, but it has not been their living place for long. Their employer transferred them to another site and provided them with an opportunity to buy an apartment with cooperative ownership (condominium). That apartment type became fashionable with us just very short time before, and my sister-in-law had moved also into such a flat. So, they left our neighbourhood much earlier than us, but in a few years we followed them to the same district.
My job on the tug went on. Having finished the overhaul and having cleaned the engine room we had more time to spend on ourselves. Having a two-year obligation for manual work on boats, I wanted to be promoted in that field by getting a ship mechanist’s certificate. That would allow my employer to give me a job of engine room officer. Also, I desired to be transferred to sea-going vessels – from the previous year the four state companies of river and high-sea shipping, the repair yard and the duty-free harbour has been made into one trust – to see more of the world. As an officer my chance of being allowed to take my wife along on a trip could be higher. In the last days of the year I went to the headquarters and enlisted to a three-week course for the certificate. In January I have done the exam and got my paper.
With my enlisting to the course another machinist has been assigned to the tug from the country. As he would not spend New Year’s Eve at home, he offered me to take that duty from me. The next morning, when I took my duty back, I heard news about the engine-room fire of another tug, that we were helping to salvage her barge in Austria the previous year.
The man on duty on that tug has gone to take a mug of beer in the pub, without having checked the air pressure in the air cylinders. Air has been necessary to feed the burners of the boiler for heating, and had to be pumped up by compressor twice daily. One mug became many and air went out. Not so fire. You can imagine how much soot an oil fire with low – or no – air supply can create.
As the man has returned he saw what happened. He closed the fuel valve and packed up to go home. The smell arouse a suspicion of being something wrong, someone saw the condition of the engine room and alarmed the fire brigade.
Fire had been burning all night. The quantity of soot has been at least 300 pounds, covering walls, engines, everything, even creeping into the electric generators and the giant propulsion motor. You would even see spider webs an inch thick with soot hanging from them. Later I would hear, the company would have covered the event up, had the man done the cleaning himself. But he would choose jail.
It has been the last drop for this tug. It has been scraped and put into the ship-cemetery.
From the first days of the new year (1965) I have been selected as an assistant for Uncle Louis in the personnel department assignment group. He wanted to spare me from the inconvenient dull routine and, as the level of water would allow it, to assign me to a boat as engine-room officer.
Luck has decided otherwise. In the last days of January the phone rang, and it was me, who picked it up.
"Hello”, said a male voice, "is it the office of Louis Aranyszabo (his name meant gold-tailor)?”
"Yes”, I answered, "I shall give him the receiver.”
"Do not, please”, he said, "are you J.K.?”
"Exactly”, I said, "do you want to speak to me?”
”Yes.”
"What can I do for you?”
"I am S.K., Technical Manager of the company. I have been informed that you are ready to be transferred to the construction bureau. Now you are our gold reserve.”
I have been surprised, but pleasantly. Sure, I was ready to have the job, for which I had studied for five years, but now I have not been prepared to it. Anyway, I decided quickly and said:
"I am ready.”
"Pack up then and go to the chief designer in the repair yard.”
Uncle Louis had the dissimilar state of mind: he lost a good skilled man, but he knew, that it was to be my true place.