Further Titles in the Series

Level A2

István Fekete Thorn Castle

(Tüskevár)

Hungarian Folk Tales

(Magyar népmesék)

Hungarian Legends

(Magyar mondák)

Level B1

Frigyes Karinthy Please, Sir

(Tanár úr kérem)

László L. Lőrincz The Shame of the Great Dome

(A Nagy Kupola szégyene)

Ferenc Molnár The Paul Street Boys

(A Pál utcai fiúk)

Level B2

István Csukás Bowler Hat and Red Nose

(Keménykalap és krumpliorr)

Frigyes Karinthy A Journey Round My Skull

(Utazás a koponyám körül)

Géza Ottlik School at the Frontier

(Iskola a határon)

The Bluebird Series

Course Book 1 and 2, Workbook, Teacher's Book

Hungarian-English and English Hungarian Dictionary

GÉZA OTTLIK

School at the Frontier

B2 (2000 headwords)

Translation and adaptation: PÁLVÖLGYI LÍDIA

General Consultant: MARK GRIFFITH

Illustrations: RONTÓ LILI

ISBN 978 963 05 9123 2

Published by Akadémiai Kiadó, member of the Association of Hungarian Publishers and Booksellers founded in 1795.

1117 Budapest, Prielle Kornélia u. 19.

www.akademiaikiado.hu

First edition: 2011

© LENGYEL PÉTER, 2011

© AKADÉMIAI KIADÓ, 2011

Responsible for publication: Director of Akadémiai Kiadó

Responsible for editing: POMÁZI GYÖNGYI

Managing Editor: KÁCSOR LÓRÁNT

Page-Setting: LACZKÓ LÁSZLÓ

Cover Design: SÜTŐ RÓBERT

Technical Editor: KISS ZSUZSA

Copyrights are the sole property of the copyright owners listed above. Any copying, distributing and reproducing in any form (electronically, mechanically, by print or photography) without prior permission of all copyright owners is prohibited.

School at the Frontier

Preface

Dani Szeredy mumbled something under his breath as we were standing on the roof terrace of the Lukács Baths. We were leaning against the railing, looking down at all the sunbathing civilians. It was quite hot on this July day, in 1957. We were staring at the nice bare bellies of the people, or rather of the girls. We felt nothing but benevolence for each other. No wonder I was shocked when Szeredy became quite rude all of a sudden.

“I’m telling you, I have moved in with Magda,” he said.

“Hum!” I replied for the third time. I did not look at him.

But he hesitated only for a moment, and then he started pestering me again.

“Bébé?”

“Well?”

“Bébé, are you not listening to me?” he asked gently.

This quiet question was a grave insult. It is difficult to explain this to others, but it meant a lot to us, it was based on all that we had learnt together. So I grinned, and would have replied something vulgar except that for the last thirty years we have not used the obscene military language that had once seemed so natural to us. Therefore, my reply was limited to this: “Hum… I know. With Magda. I was told.”

We kicked the habit of swearing when we were thirteen years old. However, I fell into the way of swearing again since I had been spending time among painters and the young people all talked this way anyway. I took up swearing out of decency, so that I would fit in with the others. Some of them were quite surprised, as if I had turned out to be fluent in a language other than my mother tongue. Swearing had in fact been my mother tongue and Dani Szeredy was aware of this. He was laughing at me when I would snap at something and utter a short ‘Mb!’ or ‘Hmph!’ and he would know what I had intended to say.

It is true that Szeredy and I never lied to each other. Maybe I should have started with this statement. Or more accurately, we could not have lied to each other; this was simply out of the question. Even if we could have, we would not have wanted to, because we grew to hate lies a long time ago. The reason for this is more difficult to explain, because for someone to understand this story, they would have had to live through the years we spent at the military school from the age of ten.

“Hey,” Szeredy looked at me, lifting his chin with an inquiring move of his head. “We shall go downstairs and have a beer, shall we not?”

This ‘hey’ meant that he was still waiting for my reply to his previous question, because even though he knew that I was trying to avoid answering, he needed my advice regarding this issue.

“Hum!” I said.

And off we went, towards the bar of the baths, with Szeredy slowly walking down the steps in front of me.

I met Magda, whom Szeredy was moving in with, in the summer of 1944, in Nagyvárad. I arrived at Szeredy’s house in the afternoon after Dani had called and asked me to visit. When I arrived, a young maid led me into Dani’s living room without a word.

“Is the captain at home?” I asked aloud.

The maid stopped abruptly in the middle of the room, and lifted her forefinger to her lips in warning. “Shhh!...”

“Oh, is he asleep?” I asked.

“He is playing the violin,” the girl replied in a soft voice. And true enough, I could hear the scarcely audible sound of a violin coming from the next room. The girl was listening to the tune. This young Székely maid was Magda who would be moving in with Szeredy thirteen years later.

Szeredy was not truly interested in my opinion as we were walking downstairs at the Lukács bath, but rather in his own opinion. He was hoping that I could take a step back and observe his life from a distance and that with my help he might be able to untangle the web of his life, and see it from the point of view of a god looking down on us.

Szeredy was a chubby, balding, blue-eyed, meek chap, and he was missing the features of a toreador, a good-looking cavalry officer or of a poet in love. He was interested in music and the fine arts, in certain branches of sport, good food and fine wine. And he was constantly having trouble with women.

At the age of forty-five he had a wife, whom he had loved for six years, a lover, whom he had loved for nine years, and then there was Magda, whom he had loved hopelessly for thirteen years.

I was walking in my friend’s footsteps while wondering what I could say about this matter. Back in school, when something bad or humiliating happened to us, it was Szeredy who came up with a solution: he turned it into a story. When we gathered in the evening, he re-told and re-enacted whatever happened during the day. It seemed the most natural thing to do. He re-told the story and chaos suddenly turned into order, and the incomprehensibility of life became comprehensible.

If I could tell the story of his love to Magda, it might reveal something sensible and it might offer some sort of solution. But it cannot be re-told. If I enumerated the seemingly important events, I would draw a completely fake picture of that evening in Nagyvárad when I had met Magda.

Nor is it true that I was walking down the stairs of the Lukács Bath ruminating on this. This is far from the truth. Almost all of my words become fake and inaccurate as soon as I utter them. It is true that I was ruminating on this matter, but it does no justice to that particular moment. It is very difficult to explain this to civilians. They might descend some stairs while they are pondering one thing or another. Szeredy and I sure cannot do that. For our minds and souls are constantly filled with a sense of ease, a subtle intoxication, the ecstasy of freedom. The civilian lives we are leading today are as carefree as a summer vacation.

During this particular summer I have been on a vacation for twenty-seven years which is a pretty long period and I still have not grown tired of it. Maybe freedom is not the right word to describe it. It is about much more; the freedom from burdens, the freedom of perception, and the freedom to take possession of the world.

“We should ask Gábor about it,” Szeredy says after a while.

“Gábor?”

“Gábor Medve.”

“He sent me a parcel.”

“Huh?” meaning ‘who?’.

“Medve.”

“Huh?” This word means something else entirely this time; something along the lines of ‘Is there a post office in the hereafter?’

“Hum,” I nodded.

It suddenly occurred to me that this parcel might hold the answer to Dani’s question. I had received it a few weeks ago.

I unwrapped it, and found a bound manuscript which had a note pinned to it: To be delivered to B.B. in person, in the event of my death. If he is no longer alive either, it should be burned unread.

At the top of the first page, there was a note written in pencil: Please read and correct it if you see fit…

He crossed out these lines, and also the ones he wrote under them: Dear Bébé, as for those parts that you find to be truthful… This last word he doubly crossed out: …as for those parts that you find to be good…

There were only two sentences that he had not crossed out: Do whatever you want with this manuscript, my dear fellow. God bless you!

Part One

Non Est Volentis

1

Gábor Medve’s manuscript, which I had received shortly after his death, starts with the following quotation: “NON EST VOLENTIS, NEQUE CURRENTIS, SED MISERENTIS DEI.” This inscription could be seen on a house in the provincial town where I went in the autumn of 1923 with six others to join the second year of the military school there.

If I remember correctly it was the 3rd of September. In the morning we took an entrance examination, we said good-bye to our parents, received our uniforms and a barber gave all of us a close crop. The large building was utterly deserted. The glass door burst open with a rattling noise in the infinite silence; someone entered our room and shouted in a stentorian voice: “Hejnatter!”

This impulsive and unsettling phenomenon was a uniformed, blue-capped boy. All eyes turned to him.

“Hejnatter!” he repeated loudly. “Hejnatter!” he shouted one more time. “Is he not here? Or is he deaf?”

One of us was already walking towards him. “It is me,” the small boy told him in a peaceful tone of voice. “But my name is not Hejnatter but Eynatter. What can I do for you?”

“Shut up!” shouted the uniformed boy. “Go to the music room. Your father is waiting for you.”

“Thank you,” Eynatten said and started for the door.

“No thank you,” the older boy was furious. “Do you hear me? There is no thank you and what can I do for you. Stop! About turn!”

Eynatten turned around.

“Stand at attention! I am a fourth-year student.”

Eynatten was smiling confusedly, and clearly did not know what to do.

“Speak only when you are instructed to do so. Is that clear? From now on you only say yes, sir and ay-ay. Double up!”

We were all observing this scene in utter silence when one of the newcomers moved. He took a few tentative steps toward the older boy. He was a lanky, brown-eyed boy, and he sounded nervous.

“Why are you ordering us about?”

The fourth-year student suddenly turned to face him with complete shock on his face.

“Were you joking with him?” the brown-eyed boy pushed on.

The older boy paled. It took him a while to speak.

“Do you have a problem? What is your name?” he shouted.

“Stop shouting, there is no need for that,” the brown-eyed recruit replied evasively.

“What is your name?”

“Gábor Medve,” he answered with a nervous anger.

The older boy smiled scornfully. He was quietly eyeing the recruit from head to toe.

Gábor Medve spoke up in an arrogant voice: “And what is your name?”

The face of the older boy turned from white to bright red. He started howling at us in a tone of voice that made it clear that previously he had only been jesting with us patiently.

“That is enough! If you do not shut up this instant, I shall let you have it, I swear, and all of you, you lazy gang of recruits. Fucking God!”

Nobody said a word after this tirade. The most frightening aspect of his outburst was that he managed to remain eerily calm throughout. This sense of fright was broken by another one us.

He was a shy-looking, somewhat feminine boy. He walked up to the older boy a little stiffly and spoke with all manner of seriousness: “Do not misuse God’s name.”

The fourth-year student turned to him. He finally lost his cool. He started stammering. All we could gather from his words was that he was swearing at us, and then he turned round sharply and hurried out of our sleeping quarters.

Somebody laughed, and then one after the other we all loosened up. Gábor Medve was leaning against the window-sill alone. A boy with a wide mouth and bushy eyebrows walked up to the feminine-looking boy and asked him politely what his name was.

“Tibor Tóth.” He was looking at the other boy with a reserved indifference.

The boy with the bushy eyebrows was smiling firmly. “Well, you sure played hell with him.”

“Who?”

“That idiot who was shouting at us.”

“Why is he an idiot?” Tibor Tóth asked with an astonished expression.

“Well, don’t you think he is one?”

“Love your neighbour as yourself,” said Tibor Tóth.

It was obvious to us all that he was not joking. The boy with the bushy eyebrows was left speechless. He kept shifting from foot to foot confusedly, when our dark-haired classmate, who had given such sensible answers to the questions at the entrance examination, returned from the bathroom. He could sense immediately that something had happened while he was away.

“What is it?” he asked Tibor Tóth.

“Were you not here?” someone else inquired.

“No, I went to have a quick wash.” With that he introduced himself: “Pál Czakó.”

“Attila Formes,” said the boy with the bushy eyebrows. All of the recruits followed their example. We all wore black cloth coats with brass buttons.

We were in the middle of a pleasant, warm Indian summer, but the sky above the mountains was already laden with the colours of the coming autumn.

Gábor Medve was looking at this particular stretch of sky. Or at least the manuscript that he has sent me some thirty-four years later starts off with this description, in the third person singular.

„Lapozz bele!” módban ezek az oldalak nem érhetőek el.

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