After the siege, we began to put the house back together. The first order of business was heating the interior, and that required replacing the windows that had been blown out by the bomb in January. At that time in Hungary, houses were built with double windows. Before the siege, my father had had the foresight to have all the inside windows removed and stored in the cellar. When those were put back, we could heat the house with coal-fired cast-iron stoves brought up from the firm’s warehouse. With the few servants who remained— Anna néni, our cook; the maid, Jolán (God bless her heart); and my grandmother’s factotum—the housecleaning went fairly quickly.
The families settled into different apartments and made do. I lived in the salon—the room that was previously entered only on holidays. (Slowly, as the situation normalized during the spring and summer, everybody who was staying with us managed to return home.)
The Swedes installed their hospital on the third floor, which was where the Heinrich firm’s office was. A lot of Hungarian officers and soldiers arrived, got rid of their uniforms, and departed as civilians. One gentleman, who eventually became the Hungarian ambassador to Austria, met me years later and said: “I shed my uniform at your house.”
We were fortunate to have Russian guards at our house, but outside it was chaos. The Russian troops were coming in and going out. There were dromedaries and horses hauling freight, Cossacks riding in the streets, open railcars filled with corpses rolling by on streetcar tracks.
The level of destruction was tremendous. All the bridges across the Danube had been blown up by the Germans. Until the streetcar rails were repaired, there was not enough transport, and terrible accidents happened regularly because people were hanging between the cars or from their steps.
We tended little victory gardens, just to keep busy. Food was scarce but increasingly available on the black market and for barter. Peasant women, who traditionally demonstrated their status and wealth by wearing multiple skirts, now wore sausages, bacon, and other edibles in place of underskirts. In payment, they accepted our tools, nails, and scythes, which also disappeared under their skirts.
The school system reopened. The Russians installed pontoon bridges across the Danube in March or so, after the thaw, allowing us eventually to cross the river and go to school. By now, I was in gymnasium, which is high school. My brother and I and the Fellners all went back to school, first on foot and later via streetcar.
I don’t know how businesses managed it, but offices, including ours, started working again. They may have obtained merchandise from warehouses that had not been damaged.
One of these, about two blocks from the house, had a patch of grass and a sandbox outside. We kept a few chickens on our gang,and it was Feri’s responsibility to walk them there, walking leading them by a string attached to their feet. He found this chore absolutely humiliating, but my task was much easier. I only had to take our dog there and to play.
Right after the siege, we received care packages from American acquaintances. We found their contents very curious, especially the denim pants, which were quite popular in the States in those days. Also surprising were what appeared to be dog biscuits. (These turned out to be saltines, but we didn’t know what saltines were.) Of course, we thought the Americans were crazy. We were starving, and they sent us dog biscuits and light blue pants, for God’s sake.
After the school year ended, the family did manage to go to the Balaton via freight car to allow the kids the enjoyment of a little country air. But the summer house in Földvár was not reachable, because the Mária Kert had been requisitioned by a workers’ organization and....
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