452
PAUL NEUBURG
They dress badly-a yellow summer shirt with blue trousers, gray socks
and br.own shoes is not 'an uncommon sight. But after work the
city
comes to life. They rush off to swim, to row, to play tennis, at least
the ones who have the time (they all seem to have more time, perhaps
because they start the day so early and stay up late with endless
coffees). Cinemas and theaters are full, and now there's elegance.
Money is spent in restaurants and cares where talk is flowing, and
in dance clubs with small bands playing music only a few months put
of date. And for the women, I have only one descriptive word:
dangerous.
It's euphoric. The phone doesn't stop ringing. Friends, relatives,
friends of friends, everybody. Come here, come there. A party.
A
lecture. Theater. A drink. Lunch. Meet this, meet that. A painter. An
actor. A doctor, a marvelous man, down in the country. A writer by
Lake Balaton. "You haven't the time," Mother whispers. I don't and
yet I do. For weeks I sleep four hours a night and eat what seem
sixteen meals a day.
And they talk, God do they talk, and I listen. And no Schweiking.
Unquestionably the situation has changed. Living standards are
higher, and Hungarians themselves, usually known for their love of
complaining, are convinced that currently they're the best off, though
politically not as free as the Poles, among the peoples of the Eastern
Bloc. (Which, by the way, they don't see as
:a
bloc. One evening, I
heard young Communists discussing with enthusiasm the Rumanian
moves for independence within the Warsaw Alliance, just announced
over Radio Free Europe.) Most things are available, though not all of
them all the time, and there seems to be a lot of money around some–
how. Flats or small houses, priced at eight or ten years' average wages,
are immediately sold at a quarter or third downpayrnent, and the
import list for some cars, costing from twenty-five months' average,
are hooked up till 1970.
Still, salaries are low, almost equally for everybody working for
the State. Top officials earn not much more than twice or two and a
half times the average. The best off are members of free professions–
among doctors, gynecologists-and small shopkeepers and tradesmen.
A tailor or the owner of a minute garage, with two men working for
him,
is
liable to earn more than the Prime Minister, and declare less
of it
in
taxes, which are progressive. But even young people, living
with their parents and keeping only part of their earnings, or y.oung
couples, both of whom usually work, don't find sheer living beyond
