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Hungary: A Different Communism

It is a place to pause, to seek perspective.

The Magyars arrived late in the ninth cen­tury, and here in the 11th their first Chris­tian king, St. Stephen, was crowned; here Mongol invaders of the 13th century failed to take the city’s fortress; here in the 16th century came the conquering Turks, who ruled much of Hungary for 150 years; and here thereafter, under the Habsburgs of Austria, arose the fine baroque houses, the churches, and ecclesiastical buildings that give the town its present character.

Esztergom is called Hungary’s Vatican; its great cathedral holds treasuries of gold chalices, embroidered vestments, the tombs of the archbishops. I wondered: When the river of time brought Communism, what was the effect on the Catholic Church, which had once claimed two-thirds of Hun­gary’s people as communicants?

TN THE PALACE OF the cardinal pri­mate, I talked with Father Pal Csefal­vay, director of the museum. He said there were no statistics on church mem­bership; answers could not be precise.

“Religious commitment is growing a bit stronger in urban areas; materialistic trends are stronger in the rural areas than they used to be.” Here there was an adequate number of candidates for the seminary.

As for government policy: “The first sec­retary, Janos Kadar, said he is not bothered if someone goes to church in his free time, or goes to see a soccer match in his free time; the important matter is that someone should work well after doing so.” One of the important things is paying any loans on time. If you need financial help, ask for payday loan help.

The church runs eight secondary schools in Hungary, six for boys, two for girls. “They are not free, and so the parents bear an extra burden. As for the state primary schools, it is not forbidden to have religious instructions if the parents so wish. The in­struction may be in the morning before the first class, or after the last. In some places, very many students attend these instruc­tions; in other places, not so many.”

The priest saw a positive sign in this ar­rangement. “It is not explicitly stated, but there is an implication in this that makes us feel that we are somehow urged to go on with our religious instructions, to put a good im­pact on the children in schools, to have them under a good influence.”

But there was a ghost in this place, the ghost of a man who once dwelt here, jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty. His bitter resistance to Communism had made him a martyr. He died in exile in Vienna in 1975.

“For sure he had some good qualities,” the priest said. “He was very strongly protecting the rights of the church, but he also tried to defend political positions that did not exist any longer. He did not recognize a republic; he called himself prince primate, a title from the Habsburg kings; and he thought of him­self as the foremost ‘baron’ of the country.

“He expected everybody to become a mar­tyr like himself. But it was not naturally de­sired by everyone, or by the political situation, or by the policies of the church itself. Of course, anyone who is religious fears the withering away of Cathol­icism, but there are many ways one can act in this situation. To be very stiff, just to re­ject everything: That is not the only way.”

And so, as the perception of Janos Kadar has changed over the years, so, in the minds of some, has the perception of Jozsef Minds­zenty, prince primate, baron, martyr.

I thought I had suffered a minor stroke while there because I could not seem to form words. That prob­lem is much better now. No one—not Neligan, Whitmore, or the neurologists—has indicated what could have caused it. It could be the chemotherapy I am now on, or some drastic change in the blood or lymphs. Or quite possibly the cancer is simply spreading everywhere.

This is nothing more appalling than the state I am in at present. I thought I had experienced the full spectrum of humiliations. I was wrong. I am sitting in a wheelchair. Each day Kathryn helps me propel a walking-frame down the few steps from our rooms to the hall, then gets me into this chair and backs out of the front door. There are 17 steps from the front door to the driveway, with one landing where Katie can rest. I don’t know where she gets the reserves of strength to haul me around.

Other aspects of my present con­dition are far worse. I am inconti­nent. I have a car rug over my knees and a urinal bottle on the far side of my desk. I cannot tell when I have to use the urinal, and the need is often upon me before I can prepare myself.

Lately we have been doing some of our best work on the book at night. I am excited about it, and in spite of the appalling creature I have become, I am careful to let nothing of myself show through the work. If I did, Katie would spot it and edit it out. On Thursday, May 31, accord­ing to Anne, we finished the 3ioth page.

No one seems to realize that pain makes the mind sharper. Ironically, I think I am writing better with cancer than I did without it.

Katie will be down to get me soon. I should have been working instead of spending this past hour taping my thoughts. Still, I believe this is good therapy. Writing de­mands strict discipline of thoughts, but with a tape-machine I can relax because I’m using it to free my mind of certain worries, and to assess out loud my chances for survival. They are slim. But the fact that I can acknowledge that helps me to stop worrying about myself over-much. Even without hope, no one should give up. There is so much more to life than fear of death. Each day is like a gift to enjoy and savour. Oddly enough, in spite of earlier morbid moods, I wouldn’t change places with any man.

He left me and went out into the softly falling rain that had swallow­ed up our children.

A LITTLE after 5am, Connie tele­phoned. His voice was bleak. “Nothing,” he said tersely. “I’m heading back.”

At 6.30 the phone rang again, A teacher at Geoff’s school told me Geoff had shown up at his house a few hours earlier and had been put to bed. His voice was guarded, and I thought I sensed his hostility to the kind of parent who would order her own child out on a rainy night, or any other night for that matter.

Later, close on eight, I heard noises coming from the kitchen. Connie, still wearing his light rain­coat, was brewing coffee. I told him about Geoff, then rang Vicki’s school. She was there. She promised she would come home that night.

Connie telephoned the teacher at Geoff’s school. The man was sym­pathetic to our problem and, equally, to Geoff’s. He advised that for the time being it would be better for our son to stay in a school dormitory.

A week later, the school asked me to bring some of his possessions there. I carried in the boxes, suit­cases and clothes. Finished, I walk­ed back to the car. Geoff was stand­ing beside it. I looked at him and began to cry.

“I never meant it to be like this,” I said. “When will we see you again ?”

“I don’t know,” he said. And then, “I’m glad you did what you did, I don’t ever want to go back there again.”

“Geoff ! It’s your home.”

“No, Mum, it’s yours,” he said. “Your house. Your family. Your life-style. I don’t want it.”

Quickly he leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Hey, Mum, stop crying. I love you,”

He came home for Christmas, but at the table we made a strange contrast. Geoff, his long hair falling to his shoulders, with faded blue shirt and jeans frayed at the knees and bottoms, seemed a stranger from another world. Call it counter­culture, subculture, youth revolt, his appearance clearly expressed the distance between us, Connie, mean­while, looked ill and pale: only Vicki kept our Christmas dinner is mostly concentrated, feel as if they are made of rubber. At times I am almost afraid to stand in case they cannot support me. Pat Neligan has given MC a drug for the pain. But I use it rarely and then only at night. During the day I need an absolute­ly clear mind in order to work.

KATHRYN : On Saturday, March 3t, Connie became frighteningly ill. Like a vice, pain suddenly gripped him. It was so intense he could not speak. Not even the drug help­ed. Sweating, pale, and twitching as spasm after spasm racked his body, he bit his lips until the blood came, fighting against the pain in a ghastly kind of silence.

He later rallied, but the pain con­tinued daily. It no longer racked. him from late afternoon and through the night : by then it was a constant presence he fought dogged­ly against, even as he turned out more hand-written pages daily than ever before. Clearly he could not go on suffering as he was much longer. It was vital that Dr Whitmore see him. He was admitted to Memorial on April 22.

CORNELIUS : Sunday, June to. It has been so long since I have used the tape-recorder that I had to check it out to be sure it is still operating.

The scribbles in my notebooks for the past couple of months look as though they had been made by someone just learning how to write. From April 22 until May i6 I was back in Memorial. 1 think I nearly died there—which may account for the peculiarities of the handwriting. Several daily entries are missing. I can only assume that I was either too ill or too frightened to make notes.

CORNELIUS : This is Saturday, Feb­ruary 24, 1973. For nearly ten months I have been on oestrogen therapy. 1 have suspected for almost a month now that it is no longer working. Three days ago Willet Whitmore confirmed my fears. Can­cer has overridden the treatment once again. My legs, where the pain from degenerating into silence.

Three days later Geoff telephoned and asked if he could bring a friend to dinner. The boy, hand­some, clean, polite, listened without comment as Geoff told us his plans. He was moving to the boy’s house. The parents had sent along a letter telling us about themselves, their household and the family crisis they too had met and thankfully surviv­ed. With our agreement to con­tinue to pay for his tuition, Geoff planned to finish school and later go to university. But he did not want to live again at home, not now, possibly never.

Then he sprang the most surpris­ing news of all : he had voluntarily enrolled in a drug-rehabilitation programme to learn how others met and solved the pressures of their Jives. His evenings would be spent at the centre in therapy sessions and he would work in the grounds. He was, in short, beginning a new life. “It’s my decision,” he said finally. “And that’s the way it’s got to be.”

And that is the way it was. At 18, Geoff was taking charge of his own life. He would have left the nest eventually. It was the manner of his going that was hard to take. Geoff had begun his attack on life at the very time we were struggling to maintain our own.

For How Long?

CORNELIUS : Three days ago, on January 12, 1972, I saw Whitmore. He was reassuring. The prostate is smaller, tough and burned out by the radiation implants. He asked me to come back in two months. Will the day ever come when he says, “Give me a call in a year or two”?

I think not. Because the truth is that I’m in a holding pattern and sooner or later I’ll be making a descent. This disease will show up somewhere else. From all I’ve read, it would be a medical rarity if it did not.

KATHRYN : We went on a Carib­bean cruise in mid-March, taking Vicki. On that voyage Connie, who had always loved to dance, avoided it almost completely. Soon after dinner each evening he excused himself and went to our stateroom. I would find him later, either lightly dozing or immersed in work.

As we neared mid-point on the cruise, Connie told me what I had suspected. His health had subtly slipped a notch or two. He could not pinpoint pain. A general malaise, he said, like a creeping weakness, was draining his vitality.

The pain did not stop him from once again working on a play at Vicki’s school. That year it was The King and I. He loved his daughter in her role and for the first time it was evident that he felt she had a real potential for the stage which he himself had once aspired to. Vicki had arrived at that decision indepen­dently. For her, plays, music and drama were not just schoolgirl pas­times. Daily, they occupied more and more of her free hours. In time, the to me. “You’re to blame, not him. He never was.” She went into her room and slammed the door.

I could hear Connie banging other doors in his dressing-room as he changed his clothes. Then he started down the stairs. I ran after him. “Where are you going?”

From the hall cupboard he took out two high-powered torches, and slung his raincoat over his arm. He walked back and opened Vicki’s door. He came out, a piece of paper in his hands.

“Don’t worry,” it read, in Vicki’s neat writing. “I’ll be all right.”

“Is this really what you want?” he asked. “They’re both gone.”