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Private Collection

Only a few minutes to go before the lesson was about to start… the buzzing on the corridors subsided, the students went quiet. The top grammar school of this county town was famous for a strong competitive spirit and after a few weeks, even first-year students adapted to the strict discipline.

I will be late, she thought while she was busy trying to get into her blue and yellow school uniform with the side buttons (she hated uniforms with all her heart but school uniforms were compulsory). When she saw this one in the shop she fell in love instantly because it had a yellow stripe across the chest and those big buttons at the shoulders and the sides were also yellow. Well, it was a school uniform just like the others… but different. She truly felt like she owned it when she embroidered her name into the fabric with precise, careful stitches.

Laci was walking slowly, deliberately to the lockers… it must be her behind the locker door, right? Who else would be almost always late for almost everything? This came in handy now, this lateness, because she was alone at last. When they talked at the school camp he never had a chance to be alone with this unruly girl, but she was somehow attractive even though she really didn’t fit into his neat little life. He was the best student at the school, he nearly always had straight A-s in every subject and she was a feisty little cat, a rebel. Later he found out that this little fighter could cry too, and she was quite lovable although she strived to prove otherwise.

He liked talking to her, he soon found out that she had both feet on the ground and despite coming from a simple, provincial family, she was cultured, interested in everything although she had no clue about science subjects. She hated Physics and stared at him in disbelief when he easily solved the problems she spent an hour and a half trying to puzzle out, and even then she ended up with the wrong result. But she loved Horváth Péter, the Physics teacher who had huge blue eyes and looked like the young Saviour. He was the only young, bearded teacher at the school, she said at the canteen, and also the first one to call her by her first name when asking her to recite. Well, this happens if you label your schoolbag with your name… (and even years later she perfectly remembered that the measure of the disorder in the system is entropy or S…)

—

He must be careful or the rustling paper will betray him and the others will notice. He didn’t really care whether they would laugh at him, he decided to finally pluck up his courage and tell her. When they talked a few days earlier he carefully brought up the subject.

“Listen, I met a girl but I’m too shy to talk to her, what do you think I should do?”

“Wow, that’s great”, she said happily. “Is she pretty?” she asked with her eyes open wide.

“She is very pretty but I don’t know…”

“Buy her some flowers, take her to the cinema, or for a walk” she advised matter-of-factly.

“Buy flowers? Me???”

“Don’t be so silly, why not? All girls love flowers.”

“But what kind of flowers?”

She thought for a moment then swallowed hard.

“Doesn’t really matter. Something white. Those are the most beautiful ones.” The white chrysanthemums were gorgeous. The bunch was so big he could barely hide it behind his back.

“Hi Liza”, he tried to sound nonchalant but he could hardly talk, he just whispered hoarsely. He cleared his throat.

“Hi, Laci, what’s up?”

“You remember I told you a few days ago about a girl I liked?”

“So are you going out with her?”

“No, nothing like that. Just wanted to tell you that I decided to talk to her today.”

“Don’t forget to tell me how it went. Did you get her flowers?”

“Of course. I did.”

He took a deep breath and presented the bouquet.

“For your name day. I love you, Liza!” he said, kissed the stunned girl on the cheek and darted off.

—

When Ms. Békefi the Maths teacher stepped out of the teachers‘ room all she saw was her favourite student running along the corridor like mad, and a little first-year student next to the lockers, holding a bunch of flowers. The teacher smiled (which was very unusual for her) and pretended that she hadn’t seen a thing.

—

She couldn’t remember when she got that tape and the paper from Laci. It was a little parcel, the paper was wrapped around the tape, at first she thought it was a letter but it wasn’t, it was the lyrics, all in English. It was hard here and there to decipher a teenager’s handwriting but when she turned the page she found the translation on the other side.

She didn’t understand much English then, she could only read a bit. Jon and Vangelis, Private Collection, it said on the tape. When she heard the first song she felt like she was sitting on a rock on top of a huge mountain, looking down with the wind whistling all around her.

The tape was lost eventually. Someone borrowed it and never gave it back.

Nearly 25 years passed. She mentioned it to a friend everyone nicknamed Gombóc Artúr.

A few days later Gombóc Artúr showed up with a broad grin and pressed a CD into her hand without a word. She travelled to the past that night, to white chrysanthemums, but she couldn’t recall Laci’s face, only his voice and the flowers.

—

Her daughter was getting ready in a hurry, prattling on about having to buy a present because of her friend… and the Christmas celebrations at school… She quietly told her that really special gifts couldn’t be bought at a shop. That there were presents you would never ever forget because they are made of love and care.

She found the CD in the evening. And thirty-two years later she could still feel the wind and the mountains and the love on that paper with those messy letters.

She can’t thank the boy now… but perhaps it doesn’t really matter.

Translated by Veronika Goitein

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