Erzsébet Scipiades

The Can-Can Forever!

When they appear on stage, they usually enter from two sides, but here they climb up on top of a garage so they can lift their skirts high. The rounded knees, the ruffled bloomers, the wide hips, the heavy breasts, the lips, painted a bright red, and lovely faces covered in a web of wrinkles are all there for the viewing.

"The can-can forever!" they said, these women in their sixties and seventies--this being several years ago, at Szentendre; they took each other's measurements, and began to cut and sew. When they pulled the blue, yellow, green and pink can-can dresses over their heads, rouged their cheeks, put on hats the size of palms with flowers, and ran out on stage after stage, audiences jumped to their feet in delight. They shouted and whistled and refused to believe that what they were seeing were Hungarian country women and not French beauties--ex-former factory hands, cooks and textile workers whose lives had never been easy.

Ilonka's husband, for instance, died a long time ago. Before that, he had a leg amputated. Ibolya's husband was found hanging from a walnut tree. Magdi's first husband drank like a sailor, and Rózsika married to get her own back. In succession, they all became widows; they were getting on in years, and all they were doing was sitting at home alone. Then they said to one another, why don't we all meet at the pump-house. And so they met, and their lives were never the same again. The twenty-seven square meters of the pump-house became heaven itself for the thirty-seven women and seventeen men who joined them there. Despite their wilting, the women felt like real women once again, and the men courted them. They recommended new members, and before long, being elderly and happy didn't seem so strange at all.

"This is how I met my angel, Ilonka," says Gábor Bazsó, as he kisses the plump arm of his wife. "Isn't she just like a mischievous angel?" he asks. "An angel, who makes me join in the fun? She's my second wife. The first died within five minutes, after a heart attack. I was sad, then I laid eyes on Ilonka. In order to be near her, I even went to the embroidery circle, though I'm a stone mason by trade. Ilonka's husband also died of arterial sclerosis. Then I moved here, to her house. We sold mine. We split the price four ways, three quarters of it went to my three children, and one we kept for ourselves. I've been here fourteen years. We're still in love. People said there's no true love, but we knew there was, even though we were seventy."

"Almost all of us are just living together," says Ilonka. "We didn't tie the knot. The Kisses aren't married, and Ibolya isn't married either."

"You see, mine was a good marriage," Ibolya explains, "but then it turned sour. My husband was a tailor, just like Rózsika's husband. We even lived on the same street. But my husband couldn't make enough working three shifts at the Újpest clothing factory. That's why he left to drive tractors. He passed his exams with top marks, but he had a serious accident driving a combined harvester. A head injury. The doctor said it'd get worse as time went by. But my husband, when I turned fifty, went to the walnut tree and hanged himself. It had a terrible effect on me. My menstruation stopped, I was all skin and bones. The psychiatrist said it's better like this than if my husband were alive, dying in his bed. That's why I don't want to get married, though I have a friend from the club. He's an educated man, an engineer with a diploma, but I didn't want to marry him. Now I spend more time at his place than at my own. My engineer friend says all the time, "I'm ready to marry you any time you are, Ibike."

"These days a piece of paper means nothing," Rózsika cuts in. "I'm not saying this because Laci and me, we're not married. We met in this club. We felt as if we'd known each other all our lives... I told my children, and they said if it's not going to last, they don't mind. But I moved in with Laci Kiss anyway. You know, I never did like my husband. I married him on the rebound, because I loved another man. He courted me for two years, he wanted me to sleep with him, but I'd made a promise to myself to stay a virgin until I was married. That's how it happened. Later I was sorry, I could not forgive him for sleeping with somebody else one night. My husband knew, he felt it all the time, that I just couldn't love him. And it made him suffer for twenty-eight years. But our origins kept us together. In 1947 his family and mine were both forced to resettle here from Upper Hungary. At the time, six thousand Hungarians lived in Vasznad, in Slovakia. They sent 5,400 off to fend for themselves. We came in rail wagons to Hungary, not to replace resettled Slovaks, but to take over the houses of the Swabians, to Császártöltés. They were expelled to Germany. We got deserted Swabian houses, and my future husband and his family got one where the dough for the bread was still in the kneading tub. Those Swabians had gone into hiding, and when the expulsion period was over, they turned up. They hated us, so whoever was able to, went and moved someplace else. But we got married there, in Császártöltés. There was a big wedding, and inside me the desire to get my own back because of my other love. But I was scared, because of what happened to my sister. She let her friend do it and got pregnant. They took her to a midwife. The man ended up marrying her anyway, but by then the baby was gone. That's why I stuck to my virginity, and ended up unhappy as a result. But now...."

"But now," the other women chime in, "she's in love!" And they raise their glasses of sweet cherry wine in her honour.

"Yes, yes," Ilonka says, "but there's a problem. My husband is lying in a crypt, and there's a place there reserved for me. And one for Gábor Bazsó, too, next to his wedded wife. I keep on saying to Gábor Bazsó, just imagine if I were your wife, too, who would lie next to whom?"

"Ilonka and her man and Rózsika and her man," Ibolya says with a smile, "are just like my grandparents were, together in good and bad. After they had five girls, and time was passing, my grandmother said, 'You know, what? We're getting on in years. Let's sleep in separate beds, and then you can snore as loud as you like.' And my grandfather said, 'If you dare do that to me, I'm leaving you!' And they slept together for fifty-seven years, until they died. Even the last year, even the last day. My grandmother would be sleeping, and my grandfather would stroke her arm and say, 'God, it was so beautiful, being with you.'"

"And it's beautiful for us, too," Gábor Bazsó cuts in. The women laugh full- heartedly. And they show photographs. "In this we were majorettes in front of Parliament, here we danced the charleston and the lambada... We've been asked to perform for the Social Democrats and the Workers' Party, too... In this picture, we're singing stuff from Cats, here we're bathing, here we're on an outing. For Carnival and the vintage festival, we get the city auditorium for free. There's always a full house. They want to see what it's like being old and happy. And they want to join us, but we say, 'Oh, we're so sorry, dears, but you must wait. Our pump-house is very small, and as you see, we're still around.'"

Erzsébet Scipiades

is a freelance journalist.