Queen Of Secrets: God Save The Beauty Queen

CHAPTER 1

Knock Knock - Who's There?

There is a big commotion all over the house on this freezing winter’s morning. The clock has only just ticked six ‘o clock and everyone is running around, whispering frantically.

"Yes, we must go now, …doesn’t matter if she is in her nightie. You never know. She is already overdue by two weeks. Grab her bags and let’s get out of here!"

The air is a frigid minus five degrees Celsius and the car struggles to start. It is frozen inside and out. They keep trying; the men are pushing it.

The hospital is far, some twenty kilometres away in the nearest town to their small village. They have to hurry. They wrap her in warm blankets and help her lie down on the back seat. She manages to fall asleep.

They get to the clinic just in time. The paediatrician takes one look at her and immediately orders her to be whisked into the labour ward. It is time. …Little does he know.

A few hours pass, lunch hour comes and goes, but nothing but pain.

She can’t eat the hospital food, it makes her queasy. She passes out from the contractions. Dinner arrives. …Then late evening. The hospital staff is half asleep, lazily lifting their heads from their newspaper pillows every now and then, just to see if everything is alright around the ward. …Everything is - but not her. She is in thirst aggravated agony. Nothing else matters to her. The central heating is at full blast, making the maternity ward air feel like dry chalk. It is minus twenty degrees outside. She begs for water.

The nurse is not interested, grumpily yawning, No water for you mommy. It is not advised at this time. Just go back to sleep.

Sleep? Who on Earth can sleep in the middle of labour?

Who the hell made that inspired decision not to give water to mothers in labour? She can’t fathom it.

She falls back against her pillow exhausted, her mind in turmoil. Where is my man? Where is my family? These are strangers. I do not know them. …The hands of the state, and I am in their hands!

She prays her little baby will arrive soon, or else…

She tries to ask for something to drink again. Anything to quench her thirst. No answer. Another two hours pass in a haze. She rings for the matron and begs her even just for a lemon. The matron shakes her head disapprovingly, walks away looking half asleep, but eventually returns with a mingy half-lemon. The mother-to-be wraps the lemon in her hankie, hides it under her duvet, and secretly licks it every minute or two. Relief.

The doctor pops in every now and then, then he goes home for supper. He returns only to disappear again into other wards where babies are arriving on time. Those lucky mothers…

She sighs. Tears start to roll down her cheeks. Another hour ebbs away. She stares at the clock on the wall facing her bed, hearing every tick and tock, hoping that every one of them will bring an end to her suffering. She prays. ‘Please my baby, come soon. For both our sakes!’

She loses consciousness from the pain, from thirst and from exhaustion.

The wall clock strikes midnight. She is wide awake again. She asks for painkillers. No, they are not permitted at this time. She screams in her head, considering attacking the night nurse. Still no baby. She is so desperate.

Two hours later the doctor takes pity on her, or maybe just keen to go home to get some sleep. Either way, he decides enough is enough. He orders the induction of the birth. Forceps out, let’s go.

She couldn’t be happier.

The tiny face of an ugly, old little person wrapped in towels stares back at her. She is full of wrinkles, blue from top to toe. Her skin looks as though it’s peeling off in patches. Like a frail miniature grandma being born. …Almost two weeks overdue.

But she is so happy to see her, wrinkles, bruises and all. It has been a long forty-two weeks.

The doctor smiles – she hadn’t known he could, Hello, little old lady, welcome to this world!

The new mommy passes out. 17 December 1973 will soon dawn on mother and her new baby.

It is the 24th December 1973. She is terrified at the thought of having to spend Christmas Eve in hospital with her newborn baby. Not with these grumpy nurses…

She begs to be released with her newborn child.

The doctor walks in, looks at her uncertainly and walks out. Not a word. But eventually he gives in, first making her sign a pile of papers to prove that her release is against his recommendations, as both mother and baby have fevers - but it is Christmas Eve after all.

The nurses reluctantly pack a huge bag of pills for her for the road, and off she goes with her newborn baby … out into the snowstorm.

The hushed snowfall softens the sounds of the old car eventually pulling up at her mother’s gate. Being newlyweds, she and her good looking young husband share the house with her parents until the day when they can afford to build their own family home. One day…

The Christmas tree has a beautiful crib beneath it. No presents, as the greatest gift of all is just arriving from hospital. The anticipated new arrival had already cost them an arm and a leg.

Under the burning candles and sparklers, there is the little ‘old lady’ sleeping peacefully to the melody of Silent Night. It is a silent night indeed.

A four-year-old cousin stares curiously at the little bundle for a long time and eventually utters, This will never turn out to be a girl! The family asks why he thinks so. He says, She has no bow in her hair.

Mothers don’t usually say things like this about their babies: ‘She is ugly.’ But this baby is ugly. Blue and red bruises all over, her head elongated into an oval shape from being pulled and forced with forceps through the birth canal.

The whole family tries to assure the mother, Don’t worry, she will turn out to be a real beauty.

They don’t put a timeframe on it though. It is the right thing to say. But she isn’t worried at all.

She is healthy and she has all ten fingers and toes. That’s all that matters.

CHAPTER 2

Once Upon a Lake - Far Far Away

The blissful spring sunshine of March 1974 gently caresses my face as I enjoy one of my first tanning sessions on my grandmother’s porch. ‘Vitamin-D bathing’ is what my mother calls it.

I am lucky enough to be born on the shores of one of the most beautiful lakes in Europe, Lake Balaton, with lovely summer weather from April to September. So by the time I am three months old I am an experienced sun-worshipper. This habit stays with me forever: the first rays of summer sun will always find me outside basking in the glow, wherever I am.

My mother decides to keep me at home for the first three years of my life. Communist Hungary has amazingly good maternity benefits. New moms can stay at home for three years with fully paid maternity leave. We love it. We have great conversations in my most formative years. When my mom talks to me I giggle back, pretending I understand everything.

There is only one crèche in our village, so the choice is easy. I go there when I turn three.

I am a good girl according to my mom - except for a few occasions. The one is on one of those lazy Sundays while my mother prepares one of her beautiful Sunday lunches. I am occupying myself in the lounge. I find a gorgeous porcelain plate which is bigger than me. I struggle to carry it, but nevertheless I try, all the way to the kitchen where my mother in her apron stares at me with big eyes.

For a brief moment she is undecided whether to scream or keep calm, but not surprisingly, scared both for the plate and her young child, she yells in panic, Don’t drop it!

Of course I drop it.

The plate was a priceless heirloom. A hand-painted antique beauty that dated from pre-First World War, which had survived many great-grandmothers – before me. Needless to say, despite fast becoming a perfect miracle in my mother’s eyes, on this day I am not popular.

Another ‘naughty deed’ I can remember is while I am practicing my ‘writing skills’ at age four. I’m doing it on my parents’ collection of beautiful encyclopaedias, volumes 1 to 17. Not in the books, but on their spines, until I have them all neatly covered.

My mother is distraught, weeping softly, and my father leaves the house for the afternoon, thinking it better to take his anger elsewhere. It is his prized collection. …So unfortunate that I had to find a ballpoint pen that day - and couldn’t find any paper.

In these early days, some recurring arguments with my mother are over which underwear to wear to nursery school. Every evening she religiously puts out my clothes for the next day, and just as religiously I keep changing them the next morning. I love my frilly panties. You know, the kind that stick out from under your skirt or dress. Pink, white or yellow, it doesn’t matter, paired with white knee-high socks with similar frills.

I am convinced only the girls with frilly underwear are popular with the boys at nursery school. Wardrobe Coordination 101 - for five year olds.

My choice of wardrobe does however seem to have merit. One of my boy classmates develops a crush on me and decides to express his ‘love’ with gifts. One day he arrives at crèche with his grandmother’s jewellery box full of pretty shiny things; earrings, pearls, brooches …all for me! I am in total awe, until the teacher finds me prancing around outside, adorned with multi-string pearls down to my ankles and rings big enough to fit my toes. He gave them to me and I was thrilled with the attention – and not at all happy when I have to return them.

CHAPTER 3

Classics - Hungarian Style

Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Johann Sebastian Strauss; the greatest classical composers of all time. They are everyday friends in our home.

My mother cooks, cleans, irons, vacuums and dusts to their magnificent melodies. Our old record player never stops. I don my home-made tutu, go on my tip-toes pretending to be wearing ballet-slippers and dance around our lounge for hours on end with a feather-duster in one hand, and my mother's silk scarf in the other. I have to help mom clean the house.

The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss is my favourite. I replay it over and over all afternoon, to listen to that melody. I believe I am a prima-ballerina. I am five and a half years old.

Not much later I discover a beautiful antique piano in a quiet room of my grandmother’s house. It is always chilly in that room as my grandparents only heat the rooms they use every day in winter. This ‘cold room’ becomes my secret hideaway where I can test my newfound passion for music.

The piano is just too magnificent. Carved out of chestnut wood, adorned with wooden inlays making pretty patterns on the cover of the keyboard. Rich purple velvet covers on the little hammers that bounce off the strings inside to make the most magnificent sounds, and two fold-out candle holders covered in purple velvet. The candle holders keep me amused day after day, imagining that I am giving my first piano concert by candlelight. I keep sneaking into that room every time I visit my grandmother. She is always in the kitchen, cooking.

I surprise my family with my first Christmas concert when I am almost six years old, letting everyone take a seat in the ‘concert-hall’- the cold room -, announcing that I will be playing their Christmas favourites. I play all the Christmas carols I heard my grandmother sing over the years, with Silent Night being on top of my list.

They all clap and I bow. It is a great concert. My grandmother keeps wiping her tears secretly…

This occasion persuades my mother to enroll me for formal piano lessons with one of the best teachers available. Unfortunately they inform her that only children from grade 1 (at least six years of age) can be accepted.

She pleads with them, mentioning that her daughter can already read and write. Eventually they concede and my classical piano training begins. Three times a week I board the bus to travel three kilometres away, to the music school to play the piano, and back home two hours later - for nine years.

It turns out not to be so much of a blessing, being able to read and write by the time I was five. Although everyone in my family is proud of me, when I enter my first year of school at six and a half, my grade one teacher is not impressed.

The education policy in Communist Hungary is not to develop individuals according to their capabilities, but rather to develop all pupils to the same standard at the same rate.

My teacher does not appreciate my enthusiasm offering answers the minute she asks the questions. She wants to stuff a sock in my mouth. Eventually as a last resort she gives me and others who could also read and write, some books to read while the rest of the class did what was considered more ‘age-appropriate’.

I am not an exemplary student, but as long as I enjoy it I listen and learn. My teachers start to realise that I can do good work, even excellent work, and as a result, expectations grow. With time, if my work happens to be anything but perfect, they give me bad marks. Nice. That really boosts my self-confidence.

So I have to start trying to keep up with myself. The teachers expect me to do all of the extramural activities: the school choir, the folk-dancing, the school band (playing piano) and sports. No mistakes allowed. Never. As a result, I learn to set my own standards. I start wondering if it is such a good idea.

CHAPTER 4

The Piano

I have just turned eight and my mom finds out some Soviets have a piano for sale, for a price that nobody ever mentions. We are very lucky that the Soviet army has barracks nearby, where soldiers are prepared to sell anything in exchange for Hungarian currency - the Forint - and some cartons of decent cigarettes.

It is a cold winter’s night. I am wrapped in a thick blanket on the back seat of our car, half dozing and half awake, watching the passing streetlights getting scarcer by the minute, until there are no lights at all, complete darkness. We are in no man’s land.

A hear a big heavy gate screech slowly open in the freezing night air, and hear it being shut carefully behind us. I am terrified. We are in army land now. The barracks loom like dark ghost houses in the blackness. I am trembling.

At the end of the blocks we stop in front of a building with a single window. A light flickers behind it - seems like candlelight. I am too cold and scared to get out of our old Wartburg. Eventually my curiosity wins, and cautiously hiding close behind my mother’s long silver-fox fur coat, we are inside a tiny room. Where are we?

Five small children are sound asleep under some rugged old blankets. Their skinny mother wrapped in an old nightgown offers us some tea. She speaks Russian. My mother courteously accepts. She serves us freshly boiled water in a rusty old teapot with some dark leaves floating inside. My mother quickly decides to get down to business; we have to hurry to make it home before sunrise.

A few minutes of whispering and hush-hushing goes by and eventually the thick canvas at the back of the room is lifted by helpful young soldiers in full army attire, and we finally see her.

She is absolutely beautiful. An original upright piano crafted in shiny dark wood, made in 1958 (this is printed under the lid) with solid steel casing - which is rare - and real chestnut-wood inlays. The keys are immaculate; no fingers could have ever touched them. The tips of the inside hammers are wrapped in soft, dark, purple velvet almost like my grandmother’s. A real beauty.

My mom says something quietly, and a second later the piano is being carefully shuffled through the room by eight soldiers, and lifted to the back of a huge army truck waiting outside.

Six of the soldiers climb in,