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an even better place to do this later, in the middle of a bomb-
site, which they could attack from two sides only. There were
more and more children around, as this was the Ratkó era, when
abortion was forbidden. We did not know a thing about this, we
were just happy to be in groups. Zugló, our suburb, was famous
or maybe notorious for this. Maybe even dangerous because of
it. Ficek became the strongest amongst us. He was the oldest
and was superior to us all physically, and as so, he had shown
off with it, especially towards me, since I came from a
“bourgeoisie” family, as he referred to it. And those have to be
dealt with. So, after he had beaten me numerous times, I was
afraid to go out on the streets in many cases. My parents,
though, did not really mind.
I was playing with a slingshot in our garden one day,
when he stood in front of our gate and declared I did not dare to
shoot at him. Unfortunately, I did shoot at him and he lost a
tooth. The fact that I fell to the teasing made me feel ashamed,
and I knew that there would be consequences. His father came
over and told us that this shame upon his son would not be
tolerated and he would not spare me. For three or four months, I
could leave the house only after taking precautions. But there
are always traitors among us, and my “good friends” one day
lured me out to the draw well – Ficek was nowhere to be seen,
or so I was told. We started to go when he turned up, coming
from the direction of our house, from behind a bush. No matter
how tenaciously I fought, I was punched in the face, but to my
biggest surprise, he let me go. We befriended each other later,
and I watched him with admiration as he was marching the
streets with a machinegun in 1956 during the revolution against
the communists. Many years later he visited our house and was
looking for me to invite for a pint of beer. He was visiting
home, a former dissident coming back from Sweden. I feel
sorry to this day that I was not in Budapest at the time, because
I would have loved to have drunk a beer with him.

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