The Light of a Destiny Dark: A real-life novel of Hungary under war followed by Soviet Communism

By Helen Fogarassy

About the author:

Helen Fogarassy is an internationalist writer by birth and experience. She was born in Hungary, raised in the American Midwest, and has been a New Yorker all her ad

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Branding LLC
• Release date: Nov 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781639452965

Helen Fogarassy

Helen Fogarassy is an internationalist writer with over 20 years of United Nations experience. She was born in Hungary, raised in the American mid-west, and has lived in New York as an adult. Her UN work includes an assignment to Somalia, where she was Editor-in-Chief of a Weekly newsletter aimed at the local audience as well as at UN Headquarters and Embassies around the world. Among her work adventures in New York, she has held positions with Scholastic Magazines, the Margaret S. Mahler Foundation, and the Trump Organization.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

This book would not exist without my mother, who had the emotional wherewithal, the talent and the will to record her experience of an unimaginably perverse and irrational period of history on a scale so grand it dwarfs the Second World War itself. A mere ten years passed before the Hungarians revolted against Communist oppression at the urging of a world that ultimately let them down. Another 33 years passed before the system imploded of its own weaknesses in the process of human rationality that forms the basis for faith in an always better future. The purges, executions and rehabilitation of freedom-fighters are just now in the process of being reconstructed into a unified portrait as a memorial to the 50 years that have passed since the heartbreak of the revolution that at least was a harbinger of the spirit destined to survive. May that portrait be a beacon in t he present

This book, its inspiration and its author also owe a debt of gratitude to my father, Fogarassy Janos, whose noble soul struggled valiantly against a system designed to kill the best in a man like him. His honesty, integrity and bold embrace of even an unjust life have blessed me with the gift of searching and finding the truth in actions of love beyond the bugle calls for hate, obstinacy or fear.

That search has led me on a merry romp through life as my family provided the safety and security for the many misadventures inevitably encountered in a commitment to gaining courage. Without that growing family, I would have fatally fallen at numerous points along the way. They are now a solid part of me and as much an author of this work as I am. Eternal gratitude is my destiny as I continue on the path of using their faith in me as a basis for joining with others in the cybernetic spiral where small and big actions of support are appreciated, celebrated and sent into the world to ignite and explode like fireworks. Or revolutions.

This work would also not have been possible without the thousands who have dedicated their lives to researching, analyzing and making public the reality of the period and its dynamics. That includes not only those who have written about Hungary directly but authors of numerous nationalities who have examined the Communist phenomenon from their own country’s perspectives as well as from the international angle.

My research in that regard, as well as the perspective gained from it, has been greatly enhanced by my experiences with the United Nations. There, the commonality of all the world’s people in all its nearly 200 countries bring out in relief the big picture of human reality. Every country has a personality. Every nation has its own flag. But every national of that country is equally capable of being cooperative or any form of its opposites, be it obstructive, coercive defensive or offensive. Further, it’s clear that every country has suffered from the actions of the latter, whether within its borders, at the hands of neighbors or even those across the distance. No country has a corner on suffering, it’s quite clear that a mechanism was created to ensure world peace. And the message of some necessarily droning speeches is also clear. The sooner national grudges can be released, the sooner the nationals of all countries can stop suffering.

Therefore, my destiny of eternal gratitude also goes out to all my United Nations colleagues and all those who have supported my many years of attempts to get this story out. The happy aspect of that grateful attitude is its multiplication. As I think of all those whose support I’ve received, they become too numerous to mention. And they continue to increase by the day, directly and indirectly, as my Hungarian heart grows in its capacity to embrace ever more people of all nations in the true Hungarian spirit.

That spirit has been kept alive by renewed contacts with my native homeland, where the bruised soul has never stopped singing. It has also been kept alive by the American Hungarian community, particularly in St. Louis and East Chicago. And now, in the final step of getting out a story of what Hungarians went through, I owe enormous thanks to Adam Salviani and the staff at Raider International for a delightful publishing experience, with regrets that his international ambitions fell victim to the global Covid pandemic. Happily, others have continued to further the work of communicating across cultures, including CalCoastwebdesign and Writers’ Branding publishers.

Preface

This novel is based on a memoir written by Helen Skerl Fogarassy entitled Behind God’s Back. That’s how Eastern Europeans felt when the international community let the Soviet Union take free rein over their governments just as they still reeled from the nightmares of the Second World War.

The 1958 memoir about the miseries of daily life during that time found no publisher. Eastern Europe would be under Soviet domination for another 40 years. Americans were busy recovering from their role in the war. Television was a sparkly new toy in America. The miseries of distant others were a drain on the drive to rebound from wartime rigors. Thus, the story of Eastern Europe since the Second World War may have been forgotten had it not been for an alarming development. The dynamics of 21st century America became much the same as those in Europe more than 70 years earlier+.

In 1901, Friedrich Nietzsche described the will to power as an avenue for two very different aims. One was to express personal strength by creating art. The other was to direct great personal energy into dominating others. In other words, those who can’t create seek to destroy.

In the fast-moving cyber age of the 21st century technology is encroaching on every human function, including the most basic human faculty of artistic creativity. In addition, the Google shorthand for information has discarded many lessons of a critically nuanced past. Wikipedia is great but it tells us little about what motivated Cleopatra to choose Marc Antony over Julius Caesar. Such subtlety is the province of art. Its paucity has left a gaping hole where new ways of dominating others seep into daily life.

The 20th century was the end of military force as a way to dominate others. Of course, the practice continues but it is a dead end. Two devastating world wars in Europe engulfed little-known regions of the world, brought in the mighty US and laid down the red line in conflict with the dropping of the atom bomb. The next such face off would end civilization itself and to avert that disaster, the United Nations was created.

Unfortunately, since its founding in 1945, the United Nations has been plagued by the bounty of its opportunities for dominating others at all levels. The vast network has opened the way for its members to manipulate personal relations in both institutional and broader contexts, from national and regional to corporate and nonprofit. The easy path to power has sapped the Organization’s ability to maximize its potential for fostering creativity to address emerging global crises.

Managing the earth’s environment has proven to be paramount among situations requiring concerted international efforts. Climate change causes much of the migration leading to national and regional conflicts. Combined with the interactive nature of the modern world, the changing climate may also contribute to the spread of ever-more virulent diseases and catastrophic weather events that leave thousands homeless. threaten shore lines and endanger the very existence of small island nations favored as vacation spots by the world’s wealthy nations. But getting aid to those adversely affected depends not only on finding funds but on delivering the aid, which is either helped or hindered by political and geopolitical realities.

By definition, democracies rooted in people aim to help those in need while autocracies geared to consolidating power in one entity work for limited interests. In the complex modern world, bureaucratic snags are unavoidable. Unblocking those logjams for greater efficiency in meeting evolving needs depends on the political will of those in power. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to delivering aid to those in need was the domination of Eastern Europeans by the failed Soviet experiment.

The United Soviet Socialist Republic was established in the ashes of the First World War after Russians overthrew monarchy in favor of a social engineering scheme. The plan was to establish a utopian structure by turning social classes upside down. The poor and the outcast would be made rich, the gentry would be stripped of entitlements. By the Second World War when Adolf Hitler made his move to dominate the world, the USSR was ready to harness a great chunk of that world into its own plans for world dominance. Its opportunity came when it helped topple Hitler and victorious allies allowed it to implement the Soviet experiment in satellite countries where its will to power exposed its naked self enrichment.

Russia, temporarily known as the Soviet Union, was clever and ruthless in its hostile takeover of Eastern Europe and Asian neighbors. They recruited sympathetic national leaders, worked propaganda to gain support for national Communist party leaders, installed those chosen leaders and once in office, backed them up militarily to quell opposition. With that system in place, Russia fleeced its satellites of natural resources by brutally enforcing isolation and terror.

Atrocities still occur throughout the world in the 21st century, but the scope of Soviet Communism remains unparalleled. Half of Europe was held prisoner behind an Iron Curtain of barbed wire. Mail between East and West was prohibited and intercepted by the state. Midnight raids on private homes by national security forces were designed to inspire terror and suspicion about neighbors suspected of informing about alleged infractions of ever-changing rules in successive five-year plans for development of the Soviet system. To anyone who lived through that period even as a young child, the US ICE raids against illegal aliens during the Trump years revived long-buried traumas.

The Berlin Wall between East and West Germany was broken down in 1989 without military intervention. The Soviet Union fell in 1991 after a failed coup to sustain the Soviet system. Since then, Eastern Europe has become Middle Europe and Asian former satellites have become independent. Russia, however, seems not to have given up on its will to power. Oligarchs maraud the world and corrupt established institutions in service to the Kremlin occupied by a dictator well-trained for his new position by experience in crafty Soviet ways that leave no room for the creative art of human empathy. In the complex, confusing cyber age of the early 21st century, Russia just may have tipped its hand when it took on Europe and the US simultaneously.

The year 2016 saw the election of US president Donald Trump as well as the UK Referendum that started the Brexit withdrawal of the UK from the expanding European Union. Since then, the entire world has become embroiled in a fierce battle between the two expressions of the will to power. The little people of nations connected by the internet are increasingly aware of freedom and they like the possibilities offered. Dictators clamp down and the methods of the two systems become muddled in early 21st century cyberspace.

According to the findings of Quantum theory, particles can travel forwards and back at the same time. Chaos theory holds that seemingly random events are actually connected if studied thoroughly enough. Perhaps those two models of reality can be applied to the social sphere of a global world stuck in the quicksand of the Covid pandemic.

In the real world as known, progress and regress do not happen simultaneously. Either tolerance and the furtherance of equality go forward or they are stymied by those in power who seek to retain it by any means necessary. That choice reflects the options available to the human brain itself.

Human evolution has been based on continued development of the upper brain functions, those of reason, logic and common sense in a globalizing world, those functions are stretched to new limits. Many have chosen to take the easy way out, retreating to the lower brain functions of anger and hostility in pursuit of their will to power at whatever level they possess it.

The choice for expressing power is personal as well as communal. Options for that expression have never been more numerous. They are offered by democracy, a messy, contentious process that produces a satisfying forward outcome as opposed to the stifling result of a safely docile dictatorial society. The people of Eastern Europe never had a choice. Their story can enlighten a conflicted world, particularly the world leading US.

The land of opportunity does not like to look back as it charges forward heedlessly. Yet it hungers for a connection to its roots, as seen by the surge of interest in sites like Ancestry.com. America needs the world as much as the world needs America. The Light of a Destiny Dark is a bridge between America and its European peers in democracy. It is a searchlight into how democracy triumphs over the most brutal of dictatorships imposing its damaging will to power through domination of others.

Chapter One

Even tempered though he was. Arnie Smith knew when to move. Returning with Julia to the cozy Kertesz house after a romantic dinner on the first anniversary of meeting, he took one look at the handsome dated soldier spying him all year, thought it was 1988 for God’s sake, strode to the foyer table and turned over the photo.

Julia froze, slammed her coat into a brightly painted wooden chair and swept into the living room. The TV went on and Arnie sighed hope. Julia was picking up his habits. Her European disdain for the lightweight American TV fare was giving way to the reality that the silly fluff was handy as a sedative. Of course, she was upset, but he had plans and they didn’t include a husband dead for 13 years.

Entering the living room, Arnie ignored Julia’s stiff form on the couch as he crossed to the sideboard and took down two cognac snifters, pushing down annoyance with an intensity that went with the joy and wit he loved. Julia’s clinging to the past was the worst to him as an American who couldn’t let go of the old fast enough. The Great War made the difference, he thought as he took his time pouring to build patience for the contrast. He’d been a pilot and service had been a rite of passage like his first bankruptcy in real estate. She’d lived the war from the receiving end in Hungary, complete with Communism and escape, not to mention raising three children in a new culture with husband who’d struggled to adjust until he died in a traffic accident. She was faithful to a lost country and a dead man while Arnie had never missed the wife he’d divorced after twenty-five miserable years without ever knowing why he’d married and had the two children he hadn’t seen since the messy split.

At the couch, Arnie held out the cognac, Julia’s jaw worked and then she took the glass with abstracted gray eyes on the TV. Grinning with the one certainty that she’d never turn down a drink and she’d be the first to laughingly admit that truth when not in the grip of an emotional storm, he sank to the couch and raised his glass in a toast. She returned it as expected, and he sank back knowing the night would turn out with the clouds of strong emotion already passing like summer downpour to leave a clear horizon.

Sure enough, Julia was snuggling and Arnie was surging with the power of his calming influence when a news bulletin flashed. A scurry of newsroom and site shots followed.

The Berlin wall may be coming down!

Good God! Arnie mitered as Julia tensed. They both stared as the questions bounced about Soviet troops moving in while the frenzied on both sides of the wall tore at the historic masonry in the background. Arnie refilled the monumental event. Then when the newsflash ended with the question unresolved, he squeezed Julia’s shoulder. Honey, I know this is traumatic to you, but it’s great news.

Great news?! Julia turned on him with bright gray eyes wild. Arnie, I’ve seen this. The cameras go out and the Soviet tanks roll in, she said.

Arnie vividly remembered the failed Hungarian revolution from 1956 but that was history, except for Julia. Unable to argue, he pulled her close. Honey, times have changed.

Changed!? Julia drew back, bewildered eyes searching. She shook her head. No, Arnie. Politics. I’ve seen it, she said and jumped. This is too much, Arnie. I’ll be right back, she added and fled while scrubbing chin-length hair.

Watching the little figure swoop away and recalling the earlier scene of Julia’s reaction to the upturned photo, Arnie saw the upside to the tumultuous kind of evening he was beginning to enjoy as a routine with Julia. She was a handful with her baggage of history and family ties, but she lit the bland life he’d lived and he knew he could trust her with his life, now history had intervened, driving all thought of the overturned photo from her mind. He wouldn’t have planned the opportunity better, he thought adventurously and sprang, limped across the house healthily and returned from the November-cold back porch in time to plop a vase of roses on the coffee table and dive in the couch before footsteps sounded, sprawling nonchalantly as he gasped for breath with eyes on the door.

From a Frozen moment, Julia laughed and swept forward, Arnie, you’re too much, she crooned and swept to touch the buds.

Embarrassed by the spectacle he’d created for Julia’s romantic streak when dead flowers were a waste of good money to him, Arnie glanced away. Look close, he grumbled in case Julia missed the pragmatism behind the drama. He looked back as Julia stared at the sparkling diamond he’d dumbly tied to a blossom, her expression unreadable. The overturned photo, he thought and straightened, I’m sorry. I should have asked.

Julia’s eyes teared as she looked over. Arnie, I never had such a ring," she wailed.

Honey, honey, Arnie murmured and swooped to Julia up, his large hand in her hair.

I-I’M So happy with you. It frightens me, she snuffled.

Arnie grinned. We’ll get used to it, he said and rubbed his jaw against Julia’s temple. You deserve everything after what you went through. I couldn’t be happier than giving it to you, he said and breathed deep with relief. His fling with romance had worked. He’d never bought an engagement ring. His wife had picked hers and he’d only paid for it. Reminded of the marriage trap, he eased away. Try it on, he said gruffly and returned with freshened drinks as Julia frowned at the huge round diamond in a platinum setting. We can take it back if it doesn’t fit or you don’t like it. Or don’t want it.

No, Arnie, it’s perfect. Just like you, for some blessed reason past me.

Beyond me, Arnie corrected with automatic ease.

Beyond me, Julia grinned then frowned again.

It’s just that nothing makes sense, she added in a puzzlement that went straight to Arnie’s heart as she gripped his hand. Arnie, what if the Wall does fall without a crack-down? How do I understand? Communism over in a minute after it destroyed my life? And Feri’s? she added, using the Hungarian version of the husband Frank in the photo.

Can’t just let it go, like a car accident? he suggested and winced, remembering Feri had died that way.

Julia, however, only tilted her head. A forty-five-year accident with half of Europe? Now why didn’t I think of that? she said with a smack to the head.

Oh, how I love you, honey, Arnie laughed and tugged Julia close, the ease of her dry delivery recalling the mystery of their utter comfort together. He’d never been so free with another, the reason he wanted to marry after never having the desire again, the reason he put up with the baggage and intensity and why he even liked going the extra mile to help.

All that went through Arnie’s mind as Julia went on about the Wall that had gone up overnight and who could have the authority to put it up or take it down. Who had so much power that they could turn whole societies upside down, like the Soviets were allowed to do after the war? So much power they could let them keep doing it after the Hungarians themselves said no more, after laws were passed to take away people’s property, rights and dignity. Feri was a noble, generous man when I met him, Arnie. The war and its aftermath destroyed him. He was born with everything and they took it all. He died with nothing, she ended.

Arnie sighed deeply with helplessness. Honey, the answers are complicated, as you know only too well. But he didn’t die with nothing, Julia. He left two terrific kids. And even Kati’s not a total loss, he added to lighten the heaviness, Julia’s chiding glance bore out the easy honesty between them. Going further in a campaign for cheer, Arnie gripped Julia’s hand. I have to tell you, Julia, how happy I am with Andras, he said of her only son, the one who worked for him and the one who’d brought them together at the wedding of the youngest Suzie the year before, He’s a natural for real estate. Two years in the business and he has loyal clients. Took me years! He uses that accent, cuts right through unease by stating he’s Hungarian and wants that sh in his name. He turns a handicap into an ice-breaker! Arnie laughed.

The attempt to control her smile intensified the pride in Julia’s gray eyes. She looked down. Yes, they are American now but I am happy they have the old ways. Hard times, they teach them. Always be there in need, even if not talked for weeks or months.

Arnie shifted, Julia’s wry expression no doubt a rebuke about his own children. Then the phone rang in the next room and Julia jumped. Don’t get that, Julia.

I have to. It’s Kati.

That’s why I’m saying don’t get it. We just got engaged for God’s sakes.

Arnie I can’t. This is a big event. She’s all alone.

We must talk!"

Chapter Two

The new engagement and a joint future itself nearly died that night as Julia stayed on the phone until Arnie stayed only out of stubbornness, unwilling to let Kati win. Even so, he had one shoe on with the engagement, a clear mistake before Julia returned and convinced him they deserved the night to reconsider the happiness they’d found despite deep differences.

Recovery began with another drink. It continued upstairs where the silent joining of bodies led to the forgiving ardor never experienced in youth that then stretched into a long night of catnaps, talk and a snack before Julia snuffed the bedside candle as the sun’s glow took over.

At least we talk and not yell, Julia murmured into Arnie’s neck. Feri and I couldn’t talk of weather without talking sides on the chance of rain and arguing our view to death. Habit, maybe. And anger from a time when life made no sense.

Nudged awake, Arnie bear-hugged Julia and nodded with chin on her head. Me and Marcy never fought, he mumbled about the wife he hadn’t seen in ten years. We tried the weather once and found nothing to say, he added sleepily.

Julia listened to deed breathing, bursts of snores and nonsense bits of sleep-talk that told her Arnie’s dreams belied his easiness. Still, he was an American and she was tied to a man the evening had brought back. One she’d met at fifteen and had carried as a growing weight, floundering in a trap without logic. But her attachment to that man reached into the entire thousand-year history of the country they’d fled, where hardship and suffering were enshrined in the lore and in the anthem itself to carry the stamp of a small country’s identity in the midst of Slavs and on the divide between east and West. Isolated behind the Iron Curtain with their own country suppressing the identity of the Soviets, she and Feri had clung like millions of others to the identity as a life force that had become an ideal, on loss of homeland, to dictate every decision and thought beyond a logic others could understand.

Julia looked at the gleaming diamond in the dim light and her heart pounded. She hadn’t told Arnie the whole truth about her talk with Kati, unable to push more when he was already upset for good reason, unwilling to let him go and yet caught in a dynamic she couldn’t change any more than she could her handwriting.

Her eyes stung and Julia strained up to touch Arnie’s feisty, bony face with a depth of longing he couldn’t know. He moved in sleep and tucked her into his shoulder. She nestled back down with the heavy certainty they’d never marry. However, she wanted to please him, she was saddled with a lifetime of experience she couldn’t erase starting with the random images that popped up as sleep scrambled the present in a blend of small towns where her life had started in the bleak, sad days between the two World Wars.

The flavors of those images were of national mourning as retold over the ages in family tales. Again, the Magyars had been compromised by larger powers forcing them to yield the national integrity that was their greatest pride by giving resource-rich territories to neighbors. That was the reason behind the unpaved roads and drab clothes Julia had seen in photos of her parents when they’d met just months after the first World War. They’d married two years later, after the Trianon Treaty tossed great chunks of Hungary to neighbors and changed the nationality of half the bride’s family to Romanian. The tumult of those between-war years was not the best dowry for two kids barely twenty, but they didn’t complain. Life could be worse and it had been.

The young husband named Viktor Kalman was tall and skinny with glasses and a bushy mustache, as he always would be. He was also serious and shy, curious, industrious and loyal. He’d become an electrician while supporting parents and four siblings since his father couldn’t keep jobs, saddled as he was with the conviction, he’d been born for better than life offered.

The properly bred, demure young wife named Agnes had resigned herself to spinsterhood when Viktor spotted her over a rose hedge. Men were scarce in the post-war years of a cropped-back Hungary and Agnes had a poor chance of landing one. Her father dying when she was ten, five children were raised by a weary mother, maiden aunts and a grandmother. Skilled in all the domestic arts, she knew little about men with brothers at boarding school from earliest memory.

Among Agnes’ virtues in a fervently Catholic country was a deep religious piety exalting sacrifice, suffering and doing without. The quality manifested after marriage in a two-month delay in consummating the union followed by enormous shame at being instantly pregnant. Nine months later, the ugliness of the red and wrinkled baby so horrified the unready mother she refused to touch the child even after the midwife cleaned it.

Don’t be silly. They all look like this at first, the stocky and whiskered farm-hand snapped when the weeping Agnes refused to open arms or eyes when the child was placed against her. The midwife then gave up and swaddled the child, grumbling about the common reaction she’d seen in small towns since she’d been conscripted in the post-war shortage of medics. Give me animals any day, she ended, grabbing up the child and with a last look at the sobbing mother, stomped to the sitting room door of the small house where the father paced.

Is Agnes alright? Viktor croaked, eyes bulging behind thick glasses.

Of course, she’s alright. What do you think? Babies get born every day. But your wife’s young and she’s not talking this well. Can you call anybody?

Of course, her family. I’ll telegraph right away, Viktor said and bolted.

Don’t you want to see it? the woman demanded from across the room, crossed and unfolded the swaddling. Viktor leaned as if inspecting a live wire, his mustache bobbing and eyes tearing on seeing the little red face. Unfortunately, it’s a girl, but I doubt your wife knows yet. You might want to see her before you go to the telegraph.

I can see Agnes? Viktor rasped.

God love you, she’s your wife, the woman snapped and eyed Viktor as he hesitated, strode and stopped at the door. Glancing at the midwife after glimpsing his wife, Viktor saw a disgusted shake of the head that told him the shameful secret was out. He’d never seen his wife disheveled or naked. He had been caught as one of those who put on airs. An electrician with a house full of books and a wife who embroidered; all telling signs of upward social striving pursued by a pretentious formality that betrayed discontent with a given lot. The source of all human ills, Viktor read in condemning eyes while he couldn’t go to the wife, rejecting her own flesh and threatening the very life of the child he’d just seen. A hard jab broke the paralysis. For God’s sake, go. She won’t bite after labor, the midwife grumbled.

Full of shame, Viktor advanced and stared in horror at the misery in his wife’s face. A-Agnes, he stammered. Tears squeezed past clenched lids. He reached for her hand but stopped afraid she’d start crying at the smallest contact as she had since coming home with the news. The child squealed but Viktor gaped at his wife’s grotesquely pale face and the rumpled covers, shocked at no trace of the angelic composure he’d come to expect and appalled at how nothing in marriage was he’d thought.

The child must eat. Go wire, the midwife then ordered sensibly.

Whirling with relief to be useful and free, Viktor turned to look back at his stricken wife, an efficient helper and his firstborn child bound as a unit in a crisis to which he was an outsider. The bewildering sense of being an ignorant alien in the deepest human drama sent him tearing down the garden path onto the dirt road until the bustle of routine town life brought home the impact of the event. The constellation of women barring him from their concerns existed only because of him, which meant they could cast him out but he still belonged.

He was a family man, an adult, he realized as he reached the post office and wired Agnes’s family on the near side of the new border that had put Transylvania into Romania. A whole new side to disappointments with Agnes and the marriage came through as Viktor returned home along the broad main street with gnarled acacias standing sentry on either side. looking with new eyes at the low, red-roofed houses behind brick or wooden fences. He was part of the town now with the purpose of providing for a family in a duty shared with every other man. Working hard and reaching every goal, sooner or later he’d own a house as a natural outcome of seeing after his family. Toward that end, he’d accept loneliness with Agnes, her emotional distance, her aloofness and her insistence on proper manners even in private. He’d adapt and not complain because he’d never had a real family but had made one with Agnes. The social blessing far outweighed personal disappointment.

From then on, Viktor bore the indignities of his unstable electrician’s job with a detached resolution. Basics such as happiness were both beyond his grasp and as a family man. The condition depends on the one person who’d given him position, the life-partner who was the enigmatic woman, Agnes.

That brand new concept of being a family man and what it entailed was sealed as a mystery never to be understood in the month of the new child’s life after Agnes’s maiden aunt Rozi arrived and made it clear men only got in the way of a house crisis.

You can’t help. The child won’t eat. Poor Agnes isn’t used to her yet," she’d say on Viktor’s rare home visits during a lucky rush of rural electrification. The faraway work paid well and the twelve-hour workdays were no hardship to Viktor, who didn’t even need to unwind in one of the many forms of drinking establishment after work with other men. His father had done it enough to last even his own lifetime. Instead, when the workday was done, Viktor went to think on the narrow bed given him in whatever backwoods town he served.

Thoughts of the family sustained Viktor that month by a cyclical process chiseling the lesson into his brain that at home he must stay out of the way while his time away was a chance to absorb the latest disappointments of home, focusing on the virtues of family establishing him ever more in society. Both at home and away, he survived by picturing a time beyond Agnes’ illness and inability to get out of bed, telling himself the day would come when she laughed again and the little one crawled, when the fretting old lady in black was gone. But the period stretched into infinity when Viktor returned to find the matriarch herself arriving the next day to put a whole new twist on his vision of family.

Of course, the child won’t eat. How can she eat from a sick mother? Agnes’ own mother and the maternal expert greeted Viktor when he met her at the station, fussing and interrogating all the way home until she jumped from the hired wagon and strode through the house dropping black shawls until she marched past her bed-ridden daughter smiling with weak joy and went straight to the squirming child, lifted it from the cradle and turned a severe gaze on her cowering sister. Rozi, you botched this job. It takes no expert to see the child is starving.

We’ve given her supplements.

Supplements! Mari jeered, her beaked nose and sharp eyes full of scorn for her beloved sister’s inadequacy, Rozi crossed arms and shrank as Mari unbundled the frail body. No, it’ll take more than supplements to fix this mess, she said, peered down and sighed. It’s unfortunate she’s so homely and a girl. But we still can’t let her starve. Tomorrow we go home.

From behind her, Viktor shot an alarmed glance at Agnes and she weakly drew up on elbows. Anyu, I can’t take Viktor’s family from him, she whimpered.

A noble sentiment, but Viktor won’t have a family if the child dies, Mari stated. The child screamed to confirm the gravity of the crisis and Mari’s rocking and crooning calmed the outburst to prove the remedy. Then she fed cream of wheat to both child and mother to demonstrate the proven cure for all ailments.

Even so, Viktor held his lone position about wanting to keep his family and was now destroying the already pared down expectations he’d accepted with the woman lying in bed, the one he’d married on love at first sight over a flowering rose hedge during a walk home from work.

Morning brought another low to Viktor in the mysterious process of adulthood through family when he called off from work to get trunks and bags to the station and stood on a platform as the rain pulled away. He thought of the mere dozen sentences he’d exchange with Agnes since the baby’s birth, the few kisses he’d placed on her cheek. But the bewildering part of the whirlwind departure was that he had no idea how long the separation would last, no clue about how long it would take to cure the baby that made him and his wife a family.

The question stretched without answer for two impossible years while Viktor lived the peculiar state of a family man with no company. Forever after, he’d wonder how those months had slipped by, dissecting the time into health crises, from a host of natural childhood diseases to Agnes finally recovering from complications of the birth only to succumb to mishaps from mushroom poisoning to pneumonia.

News of those setbacks came on monthly visits with Agnes in her darkened childhood room. Over time, they created an image of never-ending catastrophes that left him alone for life. The doom of that future weighed heavier each time he walked up the familiar path where he’d first seen Agnes. Until the roses bloomed and the ache of remembering how they’d framed her that first time sent a signal of being wronged. Still the illnesses stretched, the sense of injury growing as the child began to walk, run, even talk with eager little arms around his neck until Viktor knew the misfortunes keeping him from his family were ordinary events in a normal life.

When the roses bloomed a second time, Viktor stopped at the gate, breathed deep of the scent and closed his eyes to let anger build. The roses came and went with the seasons, some wilted while others bloomed but it was a natural rhythm to life and it was missing from his. Now a building rage swept him at seeing how out of step he’d been, sitting by the sidelines while adversity played mischief with his wife and family.

Crashing through the gate, Viktor marched up the walk amid the summer lush garden, his shoulders up and mustache bristling above his grimly set mouth. He barged into the small foyer and past the dark parlor where he’d asked for Agnes hand and where the two women in black now sat among the heavy old German furniture. Resentment burning at how fully he’d been shortchanged, Viktor strode past the gleefully running child and pushed into the darkened room.

You’re coming home with me! he declared to Agnes and remained unmoved in a long night as the women argued, Agnes cried in the next room and his daughter slept in his lap. He’d been patient. Now he was mulish about reclaiming the family he’d created with Agnes.

Chapter Three

The wall did come down the Thursday of the engagement. Both Arnie and Julia took Friday off work, Arnie leaving the real estate office in Andras’ capable hands and Julia having no problem skipping a day since she was now an administrative nurse at the geriatric unit of Northwest Indiana hospital and had weeks of overtime coming.

The long sunny weekend alone was full of the abstraction Julia fell into under the weight of heavy thought. The silences had unnerved Arnie at first until he realized they were the opposite of the cold quiet in which he’d lived with Marcy. In part because Julia’s gray-eyed stares seemed full of activity, as if she were processing a lifetime of experience. By now, Arnie felt the look reach into his soul to build intimacy and trust as he contributed to the resolution of complex needs with the solidity of his presence. Now, when he asked what she was thinking and Julia said she didn’t know, he couldn’t doubt the truth of the answer and her childlike amazement drew him into the struggle to express ideas too big for words, like the inconsistency between her ascetic early life and the passionate chaos she lived through with Feri.

On Saturday night at their favorite restaurant overlooking Lake Michigan, the other side of that communication stream opened when Julia trailed off, squinted across the candlelight and asked about his childhood. The deep intensity in the eyes then drew from Arnie a description of his life in during the Depression, some personal element in questions leading him in to really remember, as if she lived his experience and needed him to fill in the picture. Thus, he told of his father always away and of himself on his uncle’s pig farm in southern Indiana, of kids sharing clothes and shoes, taking turns at second helpings and brothers fighting for odd jobs paying a dime a day. I didn’t start life out with a full belly, Arnie said through revived early feelings.

Funny. I knew about the Depression, but never thought people suffered in this land of plenty. I figured we in Europe had the corner on misery, Julia said, the exchange continuing at home as they compared notes with Julia trolling the question of loneliness.

How could I feel lonely? There were twelve kids in the house. All I wanted was five minutes alone in the bathroom, Arnie laughed. They ended with the curious observation that autonomy was the biggest difference between them, a sense of individuality central to Arnie’s self-concept while almost missing in Julia, who saw herself in terms of others.

Sunday brought a late brunch followed by football for Arnie and a day of arranging photo albums for Julia. They were across the dining table over candlelight and gulyas before Arnie returned to the cavernous home he’d hung onto since his marriage. Julia took a bite, sipped wine and leaned elbows on the table. Honey, I didn’t want to spoil our weekend again. But Kati’s coming in for dinner Thursday, she said.

Arnie froze then drank. To congratulate us on our engagement, he said dryly.

Julia pulled a face. I didn’t tell her yet, she confessed softly.

"Why? How can you not tell her when it just happened?

I couldn’t spoil the moment for her. I was so happy about you and she was so happy about the Wall, it--wouldn’t have been right, she said.

A ponderous frown spoke of confusion and not deceit and Arnie sighed. So why is she coming? To celebrate the Wall? Germany’s better. I’ll buy the ticket, he groused.

Julia hid a grin by eating then looked up with laughing eyes. It is work, connected to the Wall. Her firm wants her to start a new Hungarian branch. She wants to use my brain.

Pick your brain, Arnie corrected and scowled. I don’t trust this, Julia. She’s up to something and you’ll give in, he grumbled and swallowed other words.

Julia reached across the table and covered Arnie’s hand. Honey, I have your ring. You are first. But it’ll take time and if you don’t want to come now, I understand, she urged.

Arnie reared back. And leave you alone with her? I may not find you Friday, he grumbled and suggested dinner out knowing the option was out of the question. The intimacy of home was the venue for whatever this daughter wanted with her mother.

The evening ended pleasantly with TV. But back in the tomb of the sleek house his wife Cindy had designed, Arnie stewed over the quick trip and Julia not mentioning their engagement. Usually happy to sidestep the unpleasant, as he had with Cindy, Arnie wanted to skip the dinner but wouldn’t. He had to see what he was up against with Kati.

He woke Monday determined to talk with Andras, but the idea of a woman rattling him from across the country seemed ludicrous in a day of conference calls and a site visit. Certain he was overreacting, he arrived home to find Julia had been on the phone with Kati on Sunday after he’d left and again already that evening. Why all these calls, Julia?" he demanded irritably.

She’s excited, honey, Julia assured.

But on Tuesday Arnie was sure Kati was calling to annoy him. Again, he put off a talk with Andras to safeguard the business. On hearing that night, however, that Kati had called again, he lost his temper. There’s something you’re not telling me, Julia. Nobody just chats long distance every night, especially with big news not in the open, he growled.

I told her about us, Arnie. It’s one reason we’re talking, Julia said mildly.

A tinge of pique in Julia’s voice was with Arnie on Wednesday, when he’d meet Julia to prepare for the Thursday invasion. Determined not to go into the showdown unprepared, he arrived at the run-down office in a converted single-family home he’d occupied for the ten years since Marcy and pushed into the reception area thinking he’d start the talk with Andras by taking up the refurbishment they’d discussed since their hook-up at a regional convention. Seeing Andras on the phone with feet on the desk in his own office, Arnie scooted past with relief at not having to face the awkwardness just then. Yet he’d barely reached his own back office and flopped into the torn leather of the executive chair he’d had since starting in business thirty years before when impatience gripped. Reaching for the rotary phone he wouldn’t give up though he’d let Andras buy a computer he wouldn’t touch; Arnie punched the intercom.

I need you, he snarled when Andras picked up, still sorting embarrassment when the wiry blond young man appeared in the door with two mugs of coffee, placed them on the desk and pulled up a chair that lost a caster half-way.

Andras looked from the chair to Arnie with Julia’s wry gray eyes. "Arnie, when we gonna fix this place up? ‘’ he asked.

Soon. But now I have a bigger problem, Arnie said, grabbed a mug and watched the young man settle loosely with the leisured air of all the time in the world for any need. Feeling ridiculous confiding in a man young enough to be his son, Arnie sipped coffee and thought of how the fair-featured man differed so much from the dark Kati Julia had said took after her Transylvanian father. Still awkward but pressured by chagrin at stringing out his difficulty so immaturely, he leaned. Andras. How are things at home? he asked.

Andras stared, drank coffee and shrugged. This is the big problem? Mom getting on you about my being miserable with cold Maggie? he asked. Breathing a sigh of relief at the naked honesty that was family wide and couldn’t be doubted, Arnie leaned back. Actually.

No problem, Arnie. Tell Mom I’m wretched and doing my duty. Maggy gripes I don’t spend enough time at home. I get home early and nobody’s there because of after school stuff and Maggy at the church flea market. Last night she squawked about my going out with the guys. I told her to keep it up and I’ll move back home with Mom, Andras said lightly.

Arnie knew Andras had moved back home a number of times and he envied the freedom of this young father of two who had the flexibility to return home on rough sailing when his only option had been to ignore a similar wife. But the past was gone and Julia was his life now, complete with a son who taught him lessons about bluntness with the personal. He didn’t need to be embarrassed or worried, just bold. He frowned into his mug. Here’s the problem, he began. I don’t understand. Some big events happened this weekend. The Berlin Wall came down. Your mother and I got engaged. Your mother and your sister Kati are on the phone every night. She’s coming. The rest of you haven’t talked. Why?

Andras stared with the