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    Memoirs from the Vineyard: A Story of Hungarian Spirit
    Memoirs from the Vineyard: A Story of Hungarian Spirit
    Memoirs from the Vineyard: A Story of Hungarian Spirit
    Ebook128 pages1 hour

    Memoirs from the Vineyard: A Story of Hungarian Spirit

    By Patrick G. Cendes

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    About this ebook

    With the Hungarian vineyard as the backdrop to this historic fiction, this novel follows my family members who lived through times of nobility, war, famine, totalitarianism, and love. Starting from the Tarcal vineyards of Hungary at the turn of the twentieth century, multiple generations of the Kerekes, Csendes, and Kovesi clan undergo harrowing challenges only to see their world turned upside down. Yet love, family, and great wine provide endurance for them through their struggles. The events recounted here are true, in the sense that they collectively portray an accurate account of significant events in my family's history.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 13, 2019
    ISBN9781543994179
    Memoirs from the Vineyard: A Story of Hungarian Spirit

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      Book preview

      Memoirs from the Vineyard - Patrick G. Cendes

      © Patrick G. Cendes

      ISBN: 978-1-54399-416-2

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-54399-417-9

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      My collection of relatives’ memories is dedicated to all who shared common family experiences, reminiscences, and gossip. I would like to express appreciation for my grandmother Charlotte, whose life saw times of nobility, war, famine, totalitarianism, and love. While I was in Budapest, Hungary to pursue my MBA, I was able to reconnect with her to hear her tales and wisdom. She passed prior to this book being published and I hope this book provides a resemblance of a written record for her life and times.

      Thank you to my parents, Marie and Zol Cendes, my sisters Linda and Yvette, and my friend Blake Brittain for being my ‘in-house’ editors, advisors, and stalwart supporters.

      Finally, this book is dedicated in no small part to my lovely wife, Orsolya. I’m grateful of your understanding when I would write during weekends. For a husband who can’t stop talking, I think, no further words are necessary: Szeretlek….

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      The events recounted here are true, in the sense that they collectively portray an accurate account of significant events in my family’s history. Specific passages are based on journals, letters, and other documents my family possesses for posterity. Some scenes have been dramatized to convey the invincible spirit of my family, and to elucidate the exterior forces determining their fates.

      Table of Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One: Szilard Kerekes

      Chapter Two: Maria Kerekes

      Chapter Three: Matilda Kerekes

      Chapter Four: Dr. Tibor Kerekes

      Chapter Five: Dr. Victor Csendes

      Chapter Six: Elizabeth Csendes

      Chapter Seven: Dr. George Fazekas

      Chapter Eight: Dr. Joseph Csendes

      Chapter Nine: Madeline Csendes

      Chapter Ten: Giselle Kerekes

      Chapter Eleven: Charlotte Kovesi

      Chapter Twelve: Emory Kovesi

      Chapter Thirteen: Margaret Csendes

      EPILOGUE

      Prologue

      At exactly six o’clock in the morning, Dr. George Fazekas ponders life and death. It’s not so unusual for him. His profession requires he be clinical about mortality. Watching the sunrise over Lake Erie, George distractedly pulls a silver fountain pen from his jacket’s breast pocket. The unblemished silver reflects the dawn glow, and George suddenly wishes he had found another pen, one that doesn’t remind him of his recent retirement. When you lose everything three times in one life span, you don’t get in the habit of collecting knickknacks, George reflects. Today, an elegant piece of silver reminds you that you were important once.

      Often there’s no sound at all, occasionally the crisp call of a seagull. Erie’s water is tranquil, just a few wrinkles on its face from a breath of wind. In his younger days, he would walk from his house to the hospital. Even in his retirement, the doctor still wanders the streets near his abode and is proud to say that he has never wasted money on a car. As the nascent sunrise spreads along the lake’s horizon, the pen becomes luminous.

      George takes out a fresh piece of paper and begins writing. He writes to his nephew, also named George, who came to visit him in Erie last year. But this year may be the best yet for the grapes in the yard. In fact, it’s the best year of all. And the quality of the vintage is all due to the kid. His nephew had never been to America and had been working on a farm when he visited. The boy ultimately decided to move back to Hungary to marry his sweetheart, Judith. But when he came to visit, he had noticed the grapevines that were planted in Dr. Fazekas’ backyard. Right away he got to work, examining the vines closely before making a cut. George was reminded of a master surgeon, good hands gliding along the arms of the vines. A precise snip there, an adjustment here. Afterwards, his nephew said it was his first real pruning (metszes) of a vineyard.

      Dr. Fazekas pauses in his letter writing and looks at his tanned, wrinkled hands. When he was young, he’d always been reading or studying in school when work needed to get done in the family vineyard in Tarcal. Tarcal is a village in northern Hungary, but Dr. Fazekas was born in Erdély, an area amputated from the homeland after World War I.¹

      Trees sway in the breeze. The morning is cool, but it’s already warming. He feels the calluses on his fingers then picks up his pen….

      So you see, every year there’s a process. Enjoying the work matters as much as the end product. Wine branches demand pruning in the spring (metszeles), the grapes require sunshine and sweat in the summer, and the wine barrels need to be filled every fall during harvest (szuret). Our unique wine from an extraordinary country that has seen uncommon times. But now you know what goes in each bottle.

      Satisfied, George breathes in the cool air. Then there’s that familiar dig, that persistent dark notion. Why in these moments of contentment does that black dog emerge? Walking through the house in silence, he calls out her name. There is no answer. The wind blows in from the garden door. Closing his eyes, he pushes away the image of his wife’s feet dangling from the tree branches. Not now…time to soldier on. The third time was the hardest. Couldn’t change it, he remembers, couldn’t change her, after all….

      He returns to his desk on the back patio and shuffles to another letter, reading the Csendes family name and a Michigan address. After a moment, George smiles. The elder of the two Csendes sons, Nick, had seen it. When he had graduated from college in America, Nick’s gift from his parents was a summer-long trip to Europe. Nick even received a new MG sports car for the expedition. He picked it up in England and drove back to Tarcal, where it all had started. With the Iron Curtain still tightly drawn around the country, an American traveling in a red MG was the equivalent of a time traveler coming to town. Nick saw the Csendes house on the corner of Arpad and Munkacsy Street, and the fence where his parents surreptitiously met at night to speak for hours. It wouldn’t be only the fence, or only their parents, that kept them apart, their forbidden love barricaded.

      Old vineyard workers said they remembered his wealthy grandfather, but maybe they were just being nice to the Amerikai in the red sports car. George thinks about how much Tarcal has remained the same throughout the years. How they no doubt would have misunderstood the family because of the convertible! Just a few years before, the Csendes children had been starving on a farm in Canada. Nick’s father, Joseph, George’s cousin, would go on to work on a farm and in an auto-parts factory before becoming a university professor. George broods over how long Communism has lasted in Hungary – this is 1976, so over twenty years and counting - and hardens his resolve never to go back while the murderous regime exists.

      A haphazard wind blows. George puts his hand on the papers, but it’s too late. The letters fly out of his lap and into the air. They lie dispersed all over the ground. Grumbling, he goes to recover the littered pages. He feels it picking up each page from the grass: bending over is becoming more painful.

      Each letter is a family member’s story, scattered all over without warning. Sorting through all these stories becomes difficult, what with the gust of wind sending one paper here, another farther away. He gathers them one by one and returns to his seat on the patio. He begins to sort the letters, categorizing them by date: yellow papers with fading ink first, all the way through the unfolded freshly lined sheets. One sheaf about wine, another on survival, a fortune lost, love won. All scribed on the ephemeral weave of flimsy paper.

      Now sitting on the notes, George takes his eye off the serene lake and shifts his gaze onto the book he brought. No larger than a pocketbook, fantastic find. He reads the grey book jacket: Tragedy of Man. Perhaps the most philosophically dense book in Hungarian literature, if not anywhere. A masterpiece. This version happens to be in English, which George loves. It reminds him of being a medic for the Brits’ army. He pulls out the white bookmark where he left off and begins to read.

      ¹ Erdély is in modern-day Romania but remains fiercely patriotic to Hungary. Imagine if Texas were separated from the United States and you’ll get the idea.

      Chapter One:

      Szilard Kerekes

      O speak, tell me what fate awaits me,

      Is this brief span of life all that I have,

      In which my soul does fight, and therein strained,

      Like wine, that, when at length is purified,

      Only to be poured on the earth to quench the dust?

      Or have You for the wine a nobler use?

      —Adam, the first human

      (Emory Madách, The Tragedy of Man)

      The smoke and silence waft around the oak table. The Count of Szirma squashes his cigarette in the ashtray and surveys his seated advisors. Finally, he peers through the smoke at this nobody.

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