Tales From Hungary
by
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Swimmy, swimmy, swimmy Hop, hop, tra-la la Swimmy, swimmy – A silly, nonsensical ditty about a mother fish teaching her young ones to swim. A short red-haired girl is singing, banging the piano. A cold, dark living-room lit by a few candles, filled with cigarette smoke and the vapor of breath. A lot of young people thronging, sipping wine from paper cups and tea-mugs. Pale faces with enormous eyes, like death heads. Swimmy, swimmy --- A deafening detonation. The house shakes and the windows of the room rattle and break with shattering noise. Shouts from the house across the street: "Your house is burning!" "A bomb hit your house!" Sirens of fire-fighters on the street. A few people run out of the room. The attic just above us was hit by a small fire-bomb. Tremendous commotion, fire fighters running up and down the stairs. In twenty minutes it’s over. People are trying to cover the windows with paper and blankets. It is even colder now and faces are even paler. We are shivering with cold and fear. I am sitting on the floor in a corner with a few young people. "Well kids, if we are alive ten days from now, we own the world," a tall boy says, lighting a cigarette. "Tell me something I don’t know," a girl laughs mockingly. "Of course, there is the ‘if.’ And it’s a big one. The Nazis will try to accomplish their holy mission of liquidating the Jews. With the Russians at the outskirts of the city, their task is becoming an urgent one. I expect to be taken at any minute to the Danube and shot to fall into the river. What a neat job, no blood, no trouble to bury the corpses."
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About the Book
This book contains autobiographical stories of a young girl’s life during the war and holocaust, persecuted as a Jew. It tells of her experiences later in the Communist era until her escape after the uprising of 1956.
About the Author
Agnes Vadas was born in 1929 in Budapest. At the age of five, she began to take violin lessons. A year later, she made her first public appearance and was called a child prodigy. Her parents were extremely poor; her violin teacher taught her free of charge, lent her his own instrument, and provided all necessary accessories in addition to paying a tutor for schoolwork. She did not attend school, with the exception of one year, to take exams. The war and the holocaust forced her to stop her studies for a year. After the war, she resumed her music studies at the Liszt Academy. Even before graduating from there, she started to concertize; in 1952, she was named State Soloist, played recitals and joined in with orchestras, toured in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, and won several international prizes. After the revolution of ’56, she left Hungary and lived in Paris and Germany before coming to the United States in 1966. Two major breakdowns, due to health problems, were detrimental to her career; she didn’t achieve what was expected of her; to become an international soloist. In the U.S., she held teaching positions at several Universities. Her last job was with the San Francisco Opera, which she retired from in 1993. Since then, she lives in Washington State, on San Juan Island. Twice married and divorced, she has no children. Before this attempt in writing autobiographical stories, she did some translations of poetry and fiction.