Rocking Toward a Free World

Even at the worst of times, we always had chocolate. Dutch Droste cocoa powder, to be exact. This sweet pleasure was anything but a staple in Hungarian households, but we were lucky. We had relatives in Holland and Belgium who would send us brown paper packages from the West, where all nice things came from. My older brother Gyuri, my younger sister Zsuzsi, and I would sit around the dining table when the packages arrived and watch in awe as our parents held up each item in turn: blue jeans for Gyuri and me; a tartan skirt for Zsuzsi; Chanel No. 5 for my mother. And the small metal box of Dutch Droste cocoa.

There was something beautiful about that box: a nurse standing with a tray of steaming hot chocolate on one side, and gleaming gold medals on the other, proof of the quality cocoa tucked inside. It was so different from the dull packaging found in Budapest stores, colorless packets that told of the poor quality of the goods inside. Maybe that’s why our breakfast ritual of kakao felt so bourgeois. Every morning my mother would get up and prepare it in exactly the same way: pour five teacups of water into a bowl, add a mix of granulated sugar and cocoa powder, bring it to a boil on the gas stove. When the liquid started to bubble, turning that beautiful shade of brownish blue, she’d pour fresh milk in the bowl. And there it was. The most comforting drink in all the world. The ritual that started the day.

As a child I was curious about the place where our cocoa came from—the forbidden West where people suffered under the yoke of capitalism, where the fat, cigar-smoking banker squeezed blood out of the poor, miserable worker. Not at all like Hungary, which of course was a workers’ paradise. That was the Party line, but it wasn’t what most Hungarians thought. Hungarians had an almost mythical view of the West, especially America, which we regarded as a world of abundance where people dressed in beautiful clothes, drove around in nice cars, and had the freedom to travel wherever and whenever they wanted.

Hungarians fantasized about the West, and would pass around contraband glossy magazines some wily person had managed to procure, a Sears or Quelle catalog, just to look at a world that was closed to us. What must life be like in that suit, with that radio or that bike. The West was where we exercised our imaginations and let our dreams roam free. In private we talked about the West with longing. It was a different matter in public, where everyone would suggest that they were content with their life and lot, where, with a straight face, they’d criticize the West and praise communism. My parents and their friends never said anything bad about the West. They expressed only fondness when talking about Antwerp and London, Paris and Rome—and always with a note of desire. They’d go to great lengths to find an Italian silk tie or a Western publication, both of which were considered tremendous social assets. The people who lived in the countryside weren’t as sophisticated as their comrades in the city. They didn’t have access to the goods or the information that we did. Consequently, they were more accepting of what the Party told them, and more antagonistic to the West.

The Party turned a blind eye to small infractions: a little contraband in the form of American cigarettes, nylon stockings, Chiclets chewing gum. Occasionally, however, just to make a point, officials would harass someone for making a public statement that deviated too far from the official line. It could be as innocuous as saying “Oh, to be suffering in Vienna,” or “I wonder if they have to line up to get into the stores in London?” Any comparison in which the East was made to look inferior was met with retaliation. When Stalin was alive, such a transgression could mean death. Later, when the Party softened, a public humiliation or demotion would do. Still later, as the Party felt secure in its grip on power—and perhaps to ward off popular discontent—there was a deal in place: pretend to accept Party rule and the authorities will pretend you’re devoted to the system. They even went so far as to amend the Party slogan from the infamous “Those who are not with us are against us” to “Those who are not against us are with us.” That was fine with my father and his colleagues in foreign trade. They knew how to make this system work for themselves and their families.

Foreign trade was Hungary’s lifeline to the outside world. Our factories produced a large quantity of goods, many of which were intended for consumption at home and by other communist countries. But these products were mostly shabby and of poor quality—a missing part here, a broken knob there. Then there were the products intended for the West. “For export” items were made of the best materials by the best craftsmen—wool suits, a racing bike, a handwoven rug—and were used to secure dollars, pounds, kroner, guldens, and deutsche marks, the hard currency the government depended on.

My father’s profession was a blessing. A textile engineer who grew up in Vienna and spoke German like a native—not to mention a number of other languages—he was given advantages others didn’t have. The regime needed him. It was that simple. The Ministry of Foreign Trade assembled skilled professionals for jobs related to the export market. Men like my father who spoke German, French, or English were in high demand, dispatched to what was referred to cynically as the damned world of the West to deal with the dirty capitalists. Which was how I got my first taste of freedom.

When my father told us he was to head the Hungarian commercial office in Copenhagen, I didn’t know what to make of it. My experience of the outside world was limited to the colorful maps in my geography textbook and the postcards Father would send from his trips. And of course those brown paper packages. My brother, sister, and I had a lot of questions:

“Where is Denmark?”

“What do you call the people who live there?”

“Do they speak English?”

“Do they drive Mercedeses and Jaguars?”

In the months before our departure, we prepared. Diligently. Father showed us Copenhagen on the map.

“Here,” he said. “This is where we are, in Hungary. What countries are next to us?”

I listed them. “The Soviet Union, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Here is Austria, where you grew up, Father. Here is Czechoslovakia, where Mari Blaskovics’s family comes from. The capital is Prague.”

“That’s right, Andris, and look,” my father continued. “Right up here, past Czechoslovakia, is East Germany. Past East Germany, across this blue line that is the sea, that’s Denmark. That’s where we’re going.”

Our mother watched.

“We will fly by airplane. You will have to behave nicely—no quarreling.”

As the day of our departure grew near, Father brought home the View-Master. This 3-D picture viewer—from America, of course—was a little miracle of its own, offering “stereo pictures” of Denmark from its “Nations of the World” collection. Those little white disks were a type of crude and wondrous virtual reality that made you think you really were seeing Hamlet’s castle, a herring smokehouse, the changing of the guard.

Palace guards. Strong young men wearing bearskin headdresses and light-blue jackets with gold buttons, black trousers with white stripes running down the sides. A shiny silver sword hanging from their belts. These guards wore serious expressions as they stood outside the Danish Royal Palace, and yet they still seemed friendly to me. Father explained that they were there to protect King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid.

“Maybe you’ll even meet them,” he told me.

I held to this thought in the days before we left. We were going to live in a country with a king. A king who would be my king.

Our Soviet-made Ilyushin Il-14 left Budapest on a gray September morning. This was 1961, long before flip-flops and T-shirts were acceptable travel wear. Flying on an airplane was a special occasion for us, and we dressed accordingly: Father in a suit and tie, Mother in her best outfit. I wore blue short pants and a crisp white shirt. My carry-on bag was stuffed with important things: an inflatable fox made of rubber; the Essential English textbook; and my pocketknife. We were on our way to the West. But first we had to refuel in East Berlin.

The Wall had been erected just a few days before, on August 15, and when we touched down at Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport our little plane was surrounded by military. Tanks, jeeps, and soldiers with machine guns made sure we didn’t leave. They needn’t have worried: we were anxious to get to Denmark and wanted nothing more than to wait safely in our seats. We tried hard to close our ears to the angry shouts coming from outside the plane.

“Niemand verlässt dieses Flugzeug. Verstanden?”

“Alle Pässe kontrollieren. Aber schnell!”

“Auch die Kindern!”

We couldn’t ignore the East German officers who boarded the aircraft. They filed down the rows in silence, glaring at us with cold eyes. Hard men secure in their authority, so sure of their ability to intimidate, these soldiers could do anything to anyone and get away with it. They knew it and we knew it. Father sat straight-backed in his seat, his eyes alert and watchful. Mother gripped Zsuzsi’s hand, while Gyuri and I exchanged glances. We didn’t understand the escalating tensions of the East-West confrontation, but we knew enough to be terrified.

Just a few days before, the citizens of Berlin could come and go as they pleased. Families may have been scattered between East and West, but those who lived in the Soviet-controlled part of the city could mix freely with those who lived under Allied jurisdiction. Yet while we were packing for Copenhagen, planning our move to this important country with its own king and queen, East German soldiers were unfurling the barbed wire that would become the Berlin Wall.

I’ve always felt that there was something fateful about our family leaving the Iron Curtain at a time when things were getting worse for those trapped behind it, when other families were being rent in two.

But I was a small boy in the midst of something big in my own life, and I only knew that everything was about to change. I had felt secure in my world, protected by loving parents, comforted by a familiar routine. I had friends with whom I had grown up, and a teacher, Auntie Ancie, whom I loved. I knew all our neighbors and I could tell from the click on the lock who was entering or leaving our building. I was a sheltered child, the perils of the world mostly unknown to me. I understood on one level that things were bad, but it was too much to take in. Besides, I was nine years old and on an airplane with my family. Soon I would see the Round Tower, the red rooftops of Copenhagen, and the brand-new airport terminal at Kastrup. Soon I would arrive in the free world.