HOMELESS

A novel about a Hungarian who emigrated to the West in 1956, lived most of his life in Germany, and then, as an old man, decides to return home to the land of his ancestors with his deceased wife. (Excerpt from the novel - translated from Hungarian by Google)

The postman lived alone in his small apartment in Kleve, near the Dutch border, and no one had visited him for thirty-two days. For the first fourteen days he had hoped that his children would drop in for at least a few minutes, but then on the sixteenth day he realized that they would not be coming for a very long time. He knew that they were sad for him, because he was lonely and abandoned and could not find his place in this country. His wife had died a long time ago, and that was when he began to count the days he had spent alone. Every blessed day, at seven in the morning, he went down to the nearby public house, on the other side of the main road, to buy milk and bread, and at four in the afternoon he went to the cemetery where his wife was buried. For years he had put on the same gray coat with a torn lining when winter came, and so the whole neighborhood knew him by his coat.

The postman was already quite old, a tall, hunched, thin man, and his face was broken into tiny pieces by deep wrinkles. There were several small and large warts under his right ear and on his chin, which the doctor said were probably inherited from his family and were not worth worrying about until they caused more serious complaints. When he stood or walked, he would hunch his left shoulder a little, which was originally just a bad habit, and reminded him of the time when he still carried his big, black mail bag. However, the habit had become a bad posture in time, and today, even if he had wanted to, he could not walk any other way.

The old man was very tired, and not only his body but also his soul was tired. His once bright, sparkling black eyes had become dim and gray, as if life had left them and they were just like cameras.

- A kilo of bread and a liter of milk - he muttered to himself, while with trembling hands he put the bread in the shopping basket. For a while he often talked to himself, because he needed to say something. Besides, he himself was the best listener. And his dead wife, to whom he told much more about himself now than he had in the past, when he was young and proud. When he stood in front of their grave, where he had a place, he was truly overcome with humility. He stood there willingly. Sometimes for hours, completely forgetting about his aching legs, which were then terribly swollen from the water by evening.

His daughter called him every day, usually after dinner, and asked how he was. And of course he always said that everything was fine; what else could he have thought of.

When he left the public garden, he felt the wind blowing from the east, which he especially loved because it reminded him of many things that had once been very important and beautiful in his life. At such times, for some mysterious reason, the hope came to life in him that perhaps his dreams could still come true, at least in part. The hope that had held him in his soul so many times before, and which now shone in his black eyes just as it had when he was twenty.

It was cold. He pulled his coat tighter around him as he climbed the hill where he lived in an apartment building. He did not like this area and would certainly have moved somewhere in Cologne, where his children also lived, if it had not been for his wife. But she lay here in the nearby cemetery, just a few kilometers from the apartment building where they had spent more than ten years together.

At the intersection of the path leading to the garden and the main road, the sun-loving youngsters who often chose this area instead of school were sitting on the rotten-backed bench again. As always, they started to fool around with the old man, but he wasn't angry with them. They laughed at his coat, at how he had the nerve to put on such a piece of rag in twenty-first-century Germany, and how he looked like a homeless beggar in it. Other passers-by, the older and wiser ones, didn't try to hide their contempt either, although there were quite a few who just looked at him sadly. The more tactful ones, the foreigners in similar shoes, nodded at him from afar, and sometimes even chatted a few words with him about the weather, Dutch prices, and the coming Christmas.

The old man walked up the hill to the second floor of the apartment building with slow steps and closed the door of his small apartment behind him with a stony face. He locked it twice, because even though he knew that no one would break in, since everyone in the neighborhood knew that he had nothing, he didn't think he should give thieves the chance.

He put his shopping basket on the kitchen counter, then took off his shoes, hung his coat on the hanger, and sat down in the big gray armchair in the living room opposite the TV. As he always did when he came home from the store, he sat there for an hour or so, looking at the dusty souvenirs in the display case and the six pictures hanging on the wall. One was a photograph of his wife, in a black frame, which he had changed several times over the years, choosing one from the family album to refresh his increasingly fading memories. The second and third are of his son and daughter. The next two photographs, much larger than the previous ones, showed his two little grandchildren, whom he now loved more than anyone else. Finally, the sixth picture was a painting, depicting a lifeless, desolate wasteland, with a well and a sunset in wonderfully chosen colors in the background. Not far from this painting, directly above the display case, hung a small cross, with a metal statuette of the crucified Jesus. He looked through the pictures with a smile, and then his tired eyes rested on the cross.

Later, when he had collected himself a little, he went out to the kitchen and had breakfast. He ate only a little. He had not really had an appetite for a couple of months, but he didn't really care because he thought that this was just one of the unpleasant consequences of aging, like the fact that he sometimes tossed and turned in bed for half the night, his thoughts wandering somewhere in the distant past.

In contrast, he often dozed off for a few hours during the day, usually after meals. That was the case today. He had fallen asleep in the big gray armchair, his shoulders hunched and his head bent forward. The collar of his unironed shirt half-hid his wrinkled face, and if he hadn't been snoring, he would have looked as dead as that wasteland in the painting. His left hand rested on the party trolley next to his chair, his fingers clinging to the rim of a plastic cup.

At noon he woke up to the sound of the doorbell ringing. He opened his eyes, but it took him a long time to fully recover. In his dreams he was somewhere very far away.

- Lunchtime has come. – the old man said loudly, and got up to bring the plastic food container from the stairwell, pour the food into another container, wash it, and then put it back in the cupboard by the light switch, from where the delivery boy could take it with him the next day.

After he was done, he washed the dishes, heated the food in the microwave, and had lunch. He had to force himself to eat the cabbage, which had a foreign taste to him, and the dumplings covered in brown sauce. He almost never liked the food, but he ate it because he knew he had to eat if he wanted to fulfill his last big dream. And he didn't want to lie to his daughter every night when she called him and asked what he had eaten that day.

After lunch, he took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and returned with it to the gray armchair in the living room. He turned on the TV to watch the midday news and enjoyed his drink. In recent weeks, German TV has also been talking a lot about 1956, the Hungarian revolution, which many believe was the first and perhaps the biggest blow to the communist dictatorship and the seemingly unassailable empire of the Russian occupiers. Fifty years ago, the Hungarian people resisted the cruel invaders with unparalleled courage and tried to win the independence of their country. And the two-faced Western democracies stood idly by and let this small people bleed to death in the face of Russian superiority. Not only did they not help them, but they even betrayed them behind their backs; they assured the Russian oppressors that they could do anything because they would not interfere.

"That's what the world still doesn't talk about today, of course," the old man thought. "That 1956 was the complete bankruptcy of the Western democracies, and a clear manifestation of their lies. It showed us what we could really expect from them. It showed us clearly, and yet we still believe them. Only I never believed their white lies, because I was there and saw what happened."

He turned off the TV, finished his beer, then stood up, went to the window, and drew the curtain. In the dim light, he undressed and lay down on the sofa where he slept in the afternoons. He pulled the blanket over himself, rolled his shirt under his head, and soon he was overcome by sleep.

In his dreams he was again very far away, in Hungary, in the Carpathian Basin, in the Puszta, where he was dazzled by the softly trembling golden sunset; then on the high, whitened peaks of the Carpathians, and on the great, elongated mountains. In recent months he had always been there, there, in that fairyland, every afternoon and every night, hearing the clatter of the hooves of horses galloping on the roan, and seeing the peasant carts passing through the imposing Székely gates. In his dreams he flew on the back of Turul, over the borders of Historical Hungary, sometimes against the western, sometimes against the eastern winds.

He usually woke up when they had flown around the country and arrived again at the Vereckei Pass, from where they always set off. The huge bird of prey landed here, and he climbed off its back and sat on the rock, from which a stunningly beautiful view opened up to him to the west, and which the people of Árpád must have seen at that time, more than 1,100 years ago, when they finally returned home to their Holy Land after their long wanderings. Because that the Carpathian Basin had always been the ancient home of the Hungarians, was also told to him in his dreams by a bent-backed, white-bearded old man.

He hadn't dreamed about his wife for years, nor about the women he had known in his life. He hadn't dreamed about 1956, about the gunfire, the roar of tank cannons, the ruined houses of Budapest, the marching crowds, and the toppling of the huge statue of Stalin.

Suddenly, without any transition, he woke up on his own, after three in the afternoon, as he usually did. He got up, walked unsteadily to the window, and pulled aside the blackout curtain. He squinted for a while at the sky above the roof of the house opposite.

"It won't rain today," he thought contentedly. "Thank God. I really have to go out to see my wife today, because I have something important to tell her. Whether it rains or not, I have to go; but I don't think it will."

He went to the bathroom to urinate, then shook out his wrinkled shirt and put it on. This apartment was always very warm. That was what he and his wife loved most about it. When he was at home, he would gladly throw everything off and be in just a T-shirt and underwear. But now he had to go, so he pulled up his pants. He had to talk to the woman today, and he knew he couldn't put it off any longer.

- It's no use, there are things, old man; that a man has to do, - he said in a low voice. - Things that no one else will take over from you.

He put on his coat and a few minutes later he was walking southwest, towards the small railway bridge, under which if he crossed, he would reach the cemetery much sooner than if he had gone around to the main road. He started a little earlier than usual, but he didn't mind, because he needed more time today. By the time he reached the railway bridge, he was fully awake, although he still carried his dreams with him like a pleasant but disturbing burden. Actually, he should have gone around the cemetery anyway, this time from the other direction, but over the years he had come to know a few secluded places where the simple wire fence was not quite right, and where he could get in from there. Shortly after the bridge, he had to turn off the narrow concrete road that led up to the Holland Restaurant by car, and walk about a hundred meters along the edge of the field to the imposing pine trees that stood in front of the fence. Behind them lay the bushes that covered the half-meter hole in the fence. Probably only very few people knew about this secret passage, and even those who did were very careful about it, because the cemetery caretakers had not noticed it for about two years. He also pretended to be hiking, hiking along the edges of the fields and forests, and before he climbed behind the bushes, he always looked around carefully to see if anyone could see him. When he reached the cemetery, he quickly came to a path strewn with small pebbles, which led straight to his wife's grave.

The old man's wife had a very simple grave. She had wanted it that way before she died. And the old man did what she wanted. He had a small wooden cross placed at the head, with only the name and the year written on it, and he planted a showy climbing plant on the grave, which completely covered it and prevented weeds from growing on it. But apart from the stone frame, there was no stone or marble cover on it, and so it somehow looked more natural than the stark concrete mass of the surrounding graves. What the old man liked best about it was its location; all the way to the back corner of the cemetery, at the foot of the pine trees, on the edge of the small forest strip, barely ten or fifteen meters from the wire fence.

When the old man arrived there a few minutes after four o'clock, the sky was already gray, and the branches of the trees merged before his eyes, as if he had seen a romantic landscape painting. He stood silently in front of the grave for a long time, just looking at the trees, the tangled creeper, and the small wooden cross. Then he cleared his throat before speaking.

- Hello, dear… - he began. - I came a little early today because I have a lot to say, and you know that I have to go again at six at the latest, because it will be completely dark by then. It's not that I'm afraid in the dark, especially when you're here with me... But I don't want to stumble around among the graves unnecessarily, because I'm old now, and if I fall, I'll break my bones. You know, Anna, it's not good to be old, isn't it? A person always has something wrong with them; sometimes it hurts here, sometimes there, and I can't really do anything with myself anymore. I feel that I can handle less and less every year, and it's becoming more and more difficult for me to think. The children are fine, but as always, they're very busy these days, they work a lot, and they probably won't come here until Christmas. I know you would have sent me to live near them, somewhere in Cologne, a long time ago, and you would have said that it would be enough if I visited you once a month or two; but believe me, Anna, that would never be enough for me. I'm sure I often bore you with all the nonsense I'm putting together here, but I know that you at least understand, as you always did. I simply need to tell you everything that's on my mind; that is, what's left of it. I also know that I shouldn't think about the past so much, because you always said I think too much; but be honest with me, Anna, what else is there if I'm not even allowed to remember? Actually, I don't think about much, because for months now, every single day, the same thing has been on my mind, but it's so consuming my energy, so entwined in every tiny detail of my life that I can't even get rid of it in my dreams. I've already told you that I need to find some solution to this whole situation that I got both of us into when I convinced you to come with me. More than fifty years have passed since then, a whole lifetime. Our whole life, Anna.

The old man fell silent, because not even a few meters away from him, an old woman dressed in black walked by, carrying a bouquet of flowers. He didn't want her to hear him speaking a foreign language, because that had been enough trouble for him in the past fifty years. It wasn't that he was ashamed of his native language, but most people here thought he should be. The wind was still blowing from the east, chasing gray wisps of cloud across the sky.

"I know, you've always said it, but I didn't want to believe it," the old man continued when he was alone again. "You've said enough times that what we're doing is wrong. But unfortunately I was a coward, and maybe that wasn't even my greatest sin. But when we could have gone, I wanted to stay for financial reasons. Yes, that was my greatest sin! That's why we both had to stay here forever. Unless… I don't know how to begin. Unless I fulfill the last dream of my life and we return home."

He lowered his head and was silent for a long time. He stood there with his hands clasped, listening to the soft rustle of the wind and the siren of an ambulance in the distance.

- Yes, Anna, we're going home, I've decided - he said then, suddenly encouraged by something. - If it's up to me, we're going home. Either now or never again. The right time has finally come for me too, when I can let go of everything that tied me here. I don't need anything anymore, just to be home again and to feel the Pannonian winds on my skin. I can't take it anymore either, Anna, I really can't take it anymore. Don't be angry that I didn't decide this sooner! And don't worry about the children, they'll visit us there if they want. They haven't really pushed themselves too hard when it comes to visits so far. Ági rings me every day, but she can do that even if we're a thousand kilometers away from them. Of course, now you're surely asking me if I want to take you home? Well, you'll see. I've already planned everything exactly, and we're going tomorrow. I deliberately didn't tell you about it until now, because I thought you'd just be nervous. I have planned everything down to the smallest detail, and don't worry, it will work out. We can't wait any longer, Anna, because if I get too old, it will be too late. I feel that my strength is decreasing year by year, even month by month.

....

(If you want to know the sequel, order the printed or electronic version of the novel from me. It will be available from August 2026.)