Zoltán Böszörményi

I went to the Kilin Academy in Arad. It was named after Mr Kilin, the director at the time. Older people still call it that. My mother was born of Szekler parents. My father was born in Arad. They married in the early fifties. Although I think it was in vain. Their natures were so alike, even a blind man could see they wouldn’t last long together. They ended up divorced, and my father raised me, my brother László my mother. That is why I still feel that I grew up without a mother and a father. It’s a pity, and I’ve regretted ever since that I didn’t become a tramp or at least a bum. Since my father remarried soon after the divorce, I became a stepchild with a stepmother. But there was nothing exciting or pleasant about that. So it immediately looked like I would have to leave “home”.

My father found a way. He enrolled me in the ballet gymnasium in Cluj-Napoca. I was a student there for seven years. It was then that I picked up the bad habit of writing poetry. I was always running away from classes. We went to the cinema mostly. In the evenings, alternately, I went to two theatres and two operas with my friend Guszti. I read my first writings in the Gábor Gaál literary circle. Tibor Bálint chaired the meeting at that time. I thought I was deaf when he compared me to Dostoevsky. All along the smooth, paved, flowery path of literature, Aladár Lászlóffy, Sándor Kányádi, Tibor Bálint, Sándor Fodor supported my dauntless steps. But not for long, because I had to return to Arad because of my father’s new phobia of homosexuality. In order not to get out of the job quickly – in Cluj I did hard physical training every day, including Saturdays, which was as hard as working in a mine – he had me hired as an unskilled worker at the construction company in Arad.

My unskilled nature gave me a big advantage from the start: instead of an elevator, I had to carry the building materials up to the tenth floor on foot, in bags or on springs. At the age of seventeen and a half, I graduated from the evening section of Arad 3 High School. I got an A in Hungarian. Supposedly, according to my father’s fortune teller, I was supposed to fail, but the prophecy didn’t come true for some reason. Others do it as a minor, I was already eighteen when I ran away from home. My father soon found me. I ran away to Cluj-Napoca without any imagination, so I didn’t give him much trouble.

At the age of twenty-two, I was recovering from infectious hepatitis, when my doctor – examining the tumour that had formed on my neck – predicted a wonderful future. I was given a choice of two diagnoses: either I had cancer of the neck or tuberculosis. He asked me which one I liked better. The question gave me such a zest for life that the doctor could hardly keep me in the ward.

I was a conscript in Bucharest for sixteen months. During my service, I was repeatedly tormented by the desire to shoot myself in the head with my service rifle. But for some reason it never happened. However, I had enough sense to get married in 1977 (the number seven appears twice in this number). My daughter Melinda was born a year later.

My first book of poems, On the Wings of a Vortex, was published in 1979 with my own money, saved from painting rooms, by Litera, Bucharest. The second one was also published there two years later, under the title Title Proposals. It was so well received that the security services of the time were eager to have it translated into Romanian. The result was that the security officer interrogating me in the basement asked me, with a slap on the face, if I had ever seen a fatal car accident.
Perhaps that is why I became a spree driver in no time. I walked towards the then Yugoslavian border. With great luck I ended up in the refugee camp in Treischirchen. I was a resident there for seven and a half months. My fondest memories are of my three months as a toilet cleaner.

Although I had wanted to emigrate to Australia to put Europe as far away as possible on the map, fate brought me to Canada. As soon as I arrived there, I knew and felt that my life could only get better. I could tell by the confidence with which I stood on the curb outside Toronto’s Pearson International airport on the evening of my arrival: no family, no friends, no professional, no English, no clothes, my only luggage, my handbag clutched in my sweaty grip, my huge fortune of 25 Canadian dollars in my pocket.

I was accepted to York University in Toronto: if I failed the first English Language and Literature course the board had assigned, I would be disqualified. I tried very hard not to let that happen, and four years later I graduated with a degree in philosophy.

I started my own company, also in Toronto, seven years after my arrival. My two weeks of business resulted in a cheque for six thousand dollars. I had this photocopied and framed before cashing it at the bank. I probably still have it in the basement of one of my apartments.

It took me twice seven, or fourteen years to build one of the most modern light source factories in Romania. But my company also rebuilt the street lighting in Bucharest and other big cities in Romania.

I have lived in Monaco for eight years. When I have male visitors, I sadly show them my wife’s bathroom, where Claudia Schiffer once bathed. Before I bought the apartment, it was occupied by the supermodel for almost a year.
Today, I pay for my work every month. Since my companies have gone bankrupt, I give out my business advice for free. But what I still can’t get rid of to this day is the idea of hunger. It keeps coming back as a very painful and disturbing feeling. I had the privilege and good fortune to experience it in Cluj-Napoca in the early sixties. Since then, I have somehow always seen the world differently.