Excerpt

CHAPTER 9
Perilous Period
…One day we went out to try our luck. We walked out the front door, turned to the left and went past several houses to the end of the street where a road connected to the beginning of another small street. We went across this street, turned left, and after a short block approached a crossing. Just about three steps before we reached the corner, we suddenly heard a big explosion, followed by a large ball of fire that flew across the middle of this crossing from right to left. I walked to the corner and looked to the left. The ball of fire had disappeared.

For a few moments Magda and I couldn't speak, both our faces had turned white. We had never experienced a thing such as this, and we both agreed that if we had come out of our house only ten seconds earlier we would have reached the middle of the crossing right when the ball of fire shot through and that would have been the end of us. I guess that's what people would call being lucky. We missed it by just ten steps.

When I saw a man come in our direction, I asked him if he saw the fire ball fly through the crossing, and he told me he had and thought it could have been a cannon ball. After this incident we were more careful not to go out unless it was important, although a couple weeks later it was necessary for us to do so. That morning we went in the same direction as the last time, and as soon as we turned left from the end of our street, we saw a horse lying in the center of the crossing and several people squatting around it. When we got close we saw that the animal was dead and people were slicing it up for meat. One of these men I recognized as Béla, the owner of the wine store at the corner of our street, “Béla, what happened to this animal?”

He turned and looked up at me. “I don't know, but it looks like he got shot. You can see the head is full of blood.”

“What will you do with the meat? Are you going to eat it?” I asked him.
“Sure, I’m going to eat it.”

“You don't think the meat is harmful?”

“Harmful? You mean poisonous? No, I don't think so. You can see there is nothing wrong with the body except the head. He must have gotten shot early this morning because his body is still warm.”

I told Magda to wait there for me and I went home and got a knife and a big bowl for the meat.

When I got back, Béla had just gotten up and was leaving but he pointed at the horse's loin parts where he had been cutting and told me to cut there. I sliced six pieces and went home with them. On the way Magda asked me, “Have you ever eaten horse meat before?”

“Yes. It tastes like beef, only a little sweeter. Did you know that in France there are butcher shops that sell only horsemeat?”

“Yes, I know, but I’ve never tried it.”

At lunch, although Magda and Ma had never tasted it before, we all enjoyed the meat, which we cooked in the style of pan-fried steak, with sliced onion and fried potatoes. The rest of the meat we made into a stew, and it was very good, too, especially since at that time any kind of meat was hard to get.

One day at noontime while we were having lunch, to our surprise the siren blasted like mad. Before we could get down to the basement, the bombardment began. The explosions got louder and louder, and then we heard a tremendous blow and we felt the house tremble. Within two seconds there was another blow, and the house trembled again and the window burst. I saw glass fly and land on the floor. We all said to ourselves, “Oh God, our house got hit,” and expected the floor to collapse. We waited a bit longer, but it didn't, and then we knew the place hadn’t been hit. Soon the siren sounded again and it was all over.

I rushed to the bedroom to find that the window there was also blown out. I went closer to look out to the street facing the back of our building, and just as I expected, the house across the street had been hit. In fact, half of it was down. Now I believed the house in front of us must also have been hit, and to satisfy my curiosity I went down to the street and went around the block. When I reached the front of that house, sure enough I could see it had been hit and most of it was also down. There were several people just like me who came to look. One of the men who lived in our house turned to me and said, “Do you realize that we were very lucky it was the Russians who dropped the bombs, not the Americans?”

“How can you tell who dropped the bomb?” I didn't understand him.
“You see, the Russians use small bombs, the Americans use bigger ones. If it was the Americans, our house could have been down like this.”

All the men went up closer to inspect the ruins. I suspect that there must have been dead bodies inside, but I had no stomach to face them, so I went home and told Magda and Ma what I saw and what the man had told me.

“This is the second time we escaped death. If there’s another bombardment, we might not be so lucky.” Magda remarked.