Károly Szalay Years in Love and Blood An Historical Novel About the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 Translated from the Hungarian by Peter Ortutay

The strikes were still going on in the plants and factories. More than half of the workers' children weren't going to school yet. There were substitutions all the time, because many of my colleagues were absent. I didn't even know why. It was cold in the classrooms, because the Polish coal hadn't arrived. There were lots of police officers with armbands, army officers and former ÁVH officers in the streets patrolling in plain cloths, in half-uniforms. The news from the Melbourne Olympics came from very far away and, as a matter of fact, it didn't interest me at all. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember whether the Olympic games had started or not when I was still at home. All my memories of those days are so blurred. The daily events lost their importance. Sometimes I called on the Szentiványis. I slept in Jóska's ramshackle atelier several times, and one or two of his models, I wouldn't say they were quite whores, they weren't, took the hook. Then Halupka showed up again, self-confident, victorious, with a gun on the belt around his fat hips. He had also become a member of the armed forces

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