In each of the past few years, you spent several months in Hungary, at the same place where you grew up and from where you once left. After not being able to visit home for more than three decades, do you feel you have now arrived home?
Here on Sas Hill, half of the hillside used to belong to my great grandfather and I now spend my summers in his former peach orchards. True, this is not the same hillside as it was when I was a child, but I still know everyone in these streets, my younger brother lives here, my younger sister, their children, grandchildren and the whole family is together. I feel at home here.
The three children you had with your French wife have lived in many places throughout Europe. Your second wife, from a family of Cuban refugees, and the son you had together, grew up in Puerto Rico, but they have lived in Florida since 2001. The dissimilarity is rather interesting. One of your families is all over the place and the other one keeps together.
One could say this is really great, because I have had it all. But the real gift is that I live so close to my sister and brother and their children when I am here during the summer. I had some compatriots whose families did not stay together. But to come and stay in a hotel just because they were born here would be rather miserable. So after a time they stopped coming home altogether.
You do have a place to return home to but I wonder if you feel you also returned home in literary life...considering that your books have been published in Hungary only since 1988.
My books received good reviews and readers also accepted them. Sure, I cannot say that the readers have welcomed me back, considering that my first book only came out in Hungary in 1988. But I meet many readers, sometimes in cities outside Budapest -- as many as 60-80 of them. They seem very interested and we have good conversations.
Sándor Márai once wrote in his notes that "Gypsies are never at home but they behave like being at home everywhere." You also behave like being at home in many places, yet your strongly biographical prose radiates with the experience of being an outsider. What do you think of this Márai quote?
I have been spending the better half of the year here, at home, since 2000, so my initial feeling of being an alien has changed a lot. However, there are some shortcomings in getting my complete works together....As it turns out, nobody is ready to put my complete works together. I have tried several times but it seems an impossible task to have all my works published here. Yet, if I die, there will be nobody here at home who could trace all the things I wrote in different places and in different languages. That's why I would like to see my works written in the West published in one collected set.
Would it take up several volumes?
All of my works written in the West would fit in three volumes and those written here at home would fill another three. Anybody can do this latter one at some point; I'm not concerned about that. But I would like to see my writings from the West collected because I worry that those writings, made in different languages about different topics, may be lost. So this clearly shows me that I am not part of public thinking in literature. You see, it is not possible to have a comprehensive collection of Ferdinandy published here. In the same way, prizes have avoided me. I never considered collecting them very important, it does not hurt me, I only mention it because it demonstrates my reception here.
Several emigrant writers have become embittered as a result of this lack of response, the vacuum, because many of them could only write in Hungarian, their mother tongue. But they were unable to get to Hungarian readers. Did you manage to avoid this problem? You became a successful French writer at a young age.
For a short time, I became a successful French writer, I received prizes, then a contract from a publisher for six books. This was a big thing then, but it should not be exaggerated.
Did you still remain an alien in France and perhaps that was why you moved on, further away? If you had to be an outsider, at least you wanted to be in a place where you could survive?
I thought about that a lot recently. I have written about the story of me being a French writer, viewing my hard-fought experiment with the necessary self-irony. That's all very much in me now. What's interesting is that my best friend in Paris was János Parancs, who decided in 1964 that he had had enough. And he returned home. I also left France, because I, too, was unable to establish the necessary conditions to support my family. I had two children already in '64. János left for the East and I went further west. On the same week. He went home and I went to Puerto Rico. When we met later, we would always discuss which one of use went in the right direction.
And which one was it? That's my question, too.
János in Paris was in such a desperate situation that he accepted anything just to be able to return home. I did not feel that I had to go home no matter what. I felt like returning home, but I was concerned about what would come next. It was still only 1964, after all.
Why did you feel like returning home?
If I had had at least one book published at home, in Hungarian, I would have returned. I thought if they had accepted my children they would have also accepted me. And I thought of my books as children. I only feel at home even today where my books can be published.
So what is the situation with Florida where you have been living for seven years? Did you not have any books published there? True, you spent the rest of your time here in Budapest, but you still keep returning there.
We moved from Puerto Rico to Florida because I got cancer in 2000 and that's where I could get treatment after the operations. We would go for follow-up treatments and my wife found a job for herself as a teacher within a week. This way, my treatments could take place, otherwise it would have cost a fortune. We were very fortunate. My wife still teaches there, that's why we have not moved here. I must not tear her away from that environment, and now our son also lives in Florida.
Besides your books published in the past 20 years and your brother and sister, what else attaches you to Hungary, what do you like so much here?
I tremendously enjoy talking to people, not only with friends and family members but also with strangers. If somebody wants to have a chat on a tram, they will automatically look at me and start talking to me. They see I look like someone who is interested in what people have to say.
Perhaps because a writer is someone who goes about with eyes open. So are all writers outsiders?
Especially if they are emigrant writers. But I can gain a lot from being an outsider. One can really have a conversation with anyone here. That never happened to me in France, nor in Florida. Puerto Rico is quite different but even there people remain within their circles. Many people complain that Hungarians are melancholic. Yet, everyone I talk to seems to be cheerful. When I used to work as a conductor on bus number 8, sometimes when there were only a few passengers left on the bus, I would ask them where they lived and we would take everyone to their doorstep. If one has enough empathy and cheerfulness, it can really add a lot to life.
Fifteen years ago, you told me "I have lived in too many places. If someone is uprooted several times, after a while they will not grow again." Do you not regret that your life developed this way? Wasn't your "study trip" after '56 a bit too long?
I cannot say that today I feel as if I had always lived here. But I still managed to grow some roots because I used to live here for quite some time, then I uprooted myself, but at least I know this soil well. The "study trip" was indeed longer than necessary, but I do not regret that my life developed this way. I managed to maintain openness. It has been fine the way it was and I am happy even today that we can talk like we do now. If the change of system had occurred a bit sooner, that would have been better because I could have returned to Hungarian literature, too. But the reason am I living this long is because I am making up now for lost time.
Author: Erzsébet Eszéki / Photo: Máté Nándorfi
