Return To Hungary -- Memory Draws Traveler `Home'

CUTLINE: BEKOLCE, A VILLAGE OF 1,000 PEOPLE IN THE BUKK MOUNTAINS OF NORTH-CENTRAL HUNGARY. IF BUDAPEST IS THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY, THEN RURAL VILLAGES LIKE THIS ARE ITS SOUL.

CUTLINE: JIM MOLNAR / SEATTLE TIMES

THE BEKOLCE COTTAGE IN WHICH JANOS MOLNAR WAS BORN 78 YEARS AGO: SOMETIMES JUST THE TONE OF LIGHT IN A ROOM, AN OLD WASH BASIN OR FACES IN A PHOTOGRAPH CAN STIR MEMORY IN THE BLOOD.

CUTLINE: LISA REMILLARD / SEATTLE TIMES: MAP OF HUGARY SHOWING WHERE BEKOLCE IS LOCATED. (MAP NOT IN ELECTRONIC VERSION)

BEKOLCE, Hungary - Everything seems so familiar here. Each step I take along the narrow road that defines this village in the hills of north-central Hungary resounds with memories.

Though not memories exactly. The remembrance that floods through me is borne in blood, not mind.

In Bekolce 78 years ago, Janos Imre Molnar was born.

My father's house, a long, low cottage of mud bricks now plastered by whitewashed stucco, rises from a farm garden behind a raw wood fence. Red geraniums and yellow daffodils dress the railings of the canopied porch where Annus stands waving shyly to me. She's the widow of my grandfather's eldest half-brother.

This spring has been dry. The dusty buzz of insects accents the chill dryness of coming dusk. A cow lows as it breaks for its home yard from the nightly procession from pasture led by the village herdsman. The clop of a horse's hooves and the grate of its wagon's wheels on the shallow asphalt paving mark time for the setting of the sun.

Imre, my cousin, and I walk slowly arm in arm, in the way of European men, toward the csarda (inn or tavern) of Bekolce. We talk - or communicate as we can, with pantomime and drawings on my note pad. My pockets bulge with two phrasebooks and a dictionary. Not one of the 1,000 people in the village speaks English.

In three days, Imre, who's 47, has mastered ``left'' and ``right,'' ``up'' and ``down,'' ``big'' and ``little,'' ``drink'' and ``cheers,'' and ``family.'' My comprehension of Hungarian seems intuitive rather than intellectual; I taste the language, feel it rather than understand it. I speak it like a baby - in simple, single words - yet it comes naturally to my tongue.

We talk about our lives, Imre and I: He wants to know about America, about how much money I make, about schools and hospitals, about the cost of a house and car and food.

He tells me about how the spring drought has threatened the crops; about the steel mill five miles over the hills in Mikofalva where he, like most men in the village, works a few hours each morning.

And he tells me about Irenke, a widow in the village. He loves her very much, he says, but they can never marry. She'd lose her widow's pension; and he, partially disabled from an injury at the mill and a leg going lame from diabetes, must stay with his parents, to help with their two acres of field and garden plot. His parents disapprove of the relationship, he says, but for many years he has visited Irenke every day, and her two young sons are like his own.

`MY FAMILY IS THERE'

It's an hour-and-a-half drive from Budapest to Bekolce (say BECK-ool-tseh) in the Bukk Mountains.

In spring, splashes of pink and white from blossoming wild cherry and apple trees decorate the greening hills through which the road curls.

At the entrance to the village I hailed a man on a bicycle that was draped with sacks of spring squash and radishes. Where was Temeto Ut - Cemetery Road? I asked.

``My family is there,'' I explained.

``All our families are there,'' he said. He grinned and pointed off toward a hillside planted with granite monuments and wooden crosses.

Down a dirt lane, behind a wrought-iron fence gaily painted red and green, a sturdy woman stood wiping her hands on a towel. Mari was dressed like a garden, her dress and apron and babushka brightly printed with contrasting sprays of flowers. She called her husband, Sandor, and son Imre out to greet me.

``Mari-nenem,'' I said, using the suffix of high honor for a family matriach. ``Imre vagyok (I am Jim). Kezet csokolom (I kiss your hand).''

The daughter of my grandmother's brother laughed, gold tooth glinting. ``Yai, yai . . . Kedves Imi (Dear Jimmy),'' she said, ``your family welcomes you.''

Seventy-five years and cancer have stripped the bulk from the body of Sandor-bacsi (the honorific suffix pronounced BOTCH-ee means, roughly, ``uncle''). His coveralls hung loosely and were dusty with the flour he'd been milling in the compound of stables and sheds that form a perimeter around the back of the cottage. But his steps toward me were lively, almost like a dance. His gnarled hand was calloused and hard, his grip gentle.

``You enter our house and our hearts,'' he said. ``Come inside to eat and drink. We will have a toast.''

From the cottages next door emerged other cousins and their families: Sandor and his wife, Ilonka, and their daughter Kati; Mariska, her sons Sandor and Laszlo, her daughters Szilvi and Linda.

Other neighbors crowded around in curiosity and greeting, along with their dogs, and a cow.

Mari-nenem carried a tray of sausages from the cellar. Imre drew a pitcher of water from the well. Inside, at the table, Sandor-bacsi poured tumblerfuls of vodka all around.

Framed in the center of the wall above the table was my parents' wedding photograph.

A TOAST TO BROTHERS

The csarda (say CHAR-duh) is two plain, dark rooms linked by a brightly lit alcove, where a motherly, stern woman presides over the bar with a round man whose arms are knotted across a damp apron. They're shuffling bottles of beer, uncorking liters of the region's dark dry wine - Egri Bikaver, Bull's Blood of Eger - and pouring brandy-like palinka, distilled from pears or plums.

Imre and I make our way to a table in the back room. Two chess games are going on: One is sober and serious, the other drunk and serious, and the pieces that fall to the floor with each move are replaced resolutely.

Echoing from one corner is a debate about the new politics and the wreckage of the economy. From another comes curses about the drought.

Across the room, a man is singing a song about a girl with blue eyes, and his tablemate is shouting for him to shut up.

Several men are sitting alone, silent, sullen. One stands suddenly. His eyes open wide then go blank; he hurtles backward, as if he'd been thrown, then slides slowly down the wall. Two of his friends lift him gently and carry him outside.

``That man's son died,'' Imre says.

Peter, a neighbor on Cemetery Road, joins us. ``This is my cousin from America,'' Imre says. ``A car there costs $13,000 and a house costs $100,000.''

Peter nods solemnly. ``But the car runs and the house probably has a toilet inside,'' he says. ``Here we have good water in the ground and palinka that costs a few cents a glass, and maybe in 10 years we'll have a government that works.''

Imre is my translator. When Peter and others speak to me in Hungarian, my cousin slowly repeats the statement for me - in Hungarian. He and I understand each other.

As the evening wears on we talk, and we sing. Long ago my grandmother had taught me the song about the girl with blue eyes. Imre teaches me a new one: ``Sogor, ugye yo bor (This is good wine, isn't it, brother-in law?) . . .''

``And,'' he says, ``I must teach you to toast properly. When you are with one person, you say, `Egeszsegere (EGG-ace-SHAY-gay-reh).' But when you toast us all, you must be brave and try, `Kedves megegeszsegesedesunkre.' ''

``Cheers,'' I say. ``Cheers, Batyam.''

``No, not `brother,' '' Imre says. ``Unokatestver. We are cousins.''

``Batyam,'' I say.

He smiles. ``You are right. My brother.''

NAMES FROM CHILDHOOD

The day after I arrived, Mari-nenem and Sandor-bacsi led the tour through Bekolce, to the houses of all the relatives - the Molnar side (my grandfather's) and the Dorko side (my grandmother's). At each there were toasts, and pastries and tears.

Yesterday morning Mari-nenem and Imre and Linda took me across the road to the cemetery.

The names all were familiar: Hollo, Csuhay, Kovacs, Jozsa. I recognized most from my childhood. Families who had emigrated from Bekolce, like mine, had settled mainly in Cleveland, Ohio.

Most gravestones bore the name Dorko; either husband or wife - sometimes both - was likely to have belonged to one of the several Dorko clans whose blood flows through most of the village.

Only a few Molnars were buried there, however. They came late to Bekolce - with my great-grandfather, who became the village herdsman.

My grandfather, Jozsef's, mother died during the birth of his younger brother, Janos, who lived to the age of 7. On St. John's Day that year, like all the boys of the village, he participated in the custom of leaping over a bonfire. His white linen trousers ignited and he burned to death.

My grandmother, Rozal Dorko, was the daughter of the village headman (a role combining the duties of mayor, magistrate and judge). The match with my grandfather was made when she was still a child. They were married when she was still a child, 15, in 1908. The groom was 25.

When Jozsef Molnar finished service in the Hungarian army in 1910, he returned to Bekolce and a job in the steel mill. Later, rumors of war and the prospect of his re-conscription prompted him and Rozal to make plans to leave for America with their daughter, Mariska, and the baby my grandmother was carrying.

Jozsef left the village in 1912, just after the baby, my father, was born. He found a job in Cleveland and sent money for passage to his family. In the spring of 1913, Rozal, then 20; 3-year-old Mariska; and the baby Janos crossed the Atlantic in the bowels of the steam liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosser.

In America, Janos Imre Molnar emerged from Ellis Island as John Emery Molnar.

When he was 8 and playing on Cleveland's near west side, a policemen whacked him on the behind with a nightstick and called him a ``little Hunky bastard.'' My father once told me he vowed then that he wouldn't be Hungarian when he grew up.

He married an Irish woman. And though we all lived in the same house as we would have in Hungary - three generations of us, my father's parents and sister, my parents and my brother and I - no one ever spoke Hungarian to me. My father was American, and my brother and I would be Americans, too.

But Hungarian flowed around us. And Hungary flowed through us.

In Bekolce, the sounds in the kitchen were the sounds I'd grown up with. Mari-nenem's sighs were my grandmother's sighs. My grandfather's half-sister Veron had his walk and his gentle, cloudy blue eyes.

And Imre is the image of my father.

Last night, alone at the table with Sandor-bacsi, I was laboring my way through a conversation. My dictionary and phrase books were spread across the table; each sentence took 10 minutes to construct.

Suddenly the old man rose from his seat, walked over to me and swept the books to the floor.

``No more books, not here, not with me,'' he said. ``We will speak only from the heart.''

He took me by the hand and led me outside, where we danced.

THE SPIRITS OF FAMILY

The csarda has been the center of social life for generations of men in Bekolce: where deals are made and promises are broken; problems are solved and created; friendships cemented, and enmities born.

The women talk at their gates and in the little yellow church on the hill.

On her only visit back to the village with my aunt, about 25 years ago, when the Communists were in power, my grandmother smuggled some rosaries and about $800 dollars through Hungarian customs - sewed them into her corset - to give to the church. ``The pews, the paint, the lights: They are from Rozal and Mariska,'' Mari-nenem said.

But now, late at night, sitting with Imre in the dark of the csarda, I strain to touch something less tangible than wood and glass.

Conjured in the odor of tobacco and wine is my grandfather. Seemingly just out of reach, in the shadows of conversations carried on in low, conspiratorial tones, he sits playing cards with his friends.

There is reason, after all, to sense the spirits of my family in this inn.

As a toddler, my Aunt Mary would accompany her favorite uncle to the csarda. He would lift her onto a table - perhaps this very table - and she would dance by candlelight for the men who sang and clapped their hands.

And deep in the worn floorboards of this little inn are drops of my family's blood. My grandmother told the story of how her two grandfathers had argued one night here. It ended when one killed the other, cleaving his head with an ax.

Maybe it was from this corner that my grandfather watched one of his cousins stab a man over an insult. In the confusion that followed, Jozsef helped his kinsman escape and took the rap himself.

The story of how my grandfather spent two months in jail for his cousin is still told in the csarda, where, tonight, it's quiet.

An old man in a rumpled brown suit is asleep on the next table, his fedora crushed under his arm. Two young men have set up a fresh game of chess in the faint yellow light filtering from the bar.

Now my cousin Imre is softly humming a song. If I don't mind, he says, he'll turn off on the way home and visit Irenke for a few moments.

``There's wetness in the air,'' Imre says as we step outside. ``Not enough for a good rain, but maybe something.''

We say goodnight as we reach the turn-off to the widow's cottage.

A little farther on, I pause by the field that stretches to the road from Mari-nenem and Sandor-bacsi's house. This afternoon, the old man pointed out here and said, ``You must come back to Bekolce. When you do, this is where I will help you build your house.''

My grandfather never returned. My father, in his later years, became Hungarian again and dreamed of coming back to where he was born. He died before he could.

But I'm here, and so in a sense they are, too.

A mist has begun to fall. In it, the road glistens blue-black as it runs straight and true through the village of Bekolce, toward home.