—one that he was dead and the other that he ended up in San Francisco. The family was not poor at that time, however, and their fortunes improved during Bernie's childhood, so that in 1940, when Bernie was ten, they were able to move into a better house.
Louis Rosner, a redhead, had an emotional side that ill tolerated the impertinence of his eldest son. Their frequent quarrels were caused by a “lack of subordination,” as Bernie describes his own behavior, assuming a fatherly tone himself. At one point, Bernie's interest in learning and books got him into trouble. A prayer book belonging to one of the pillars of the community sat on the shelf right next to Bernie's customary seat in the synagogue, day in and day out. Bernie coveted that marvelous, leather-bound book so much that one day he stole it, took it home, tore out its pages, and deposited the cover, now devoid of its spiritual content, back in its customary place. Bernie was the prime suspect. When accused of the theft, he denied everything, prompting the owner of the book to comment sarcastically that perhaps an angel had taken it and removed its pages. The boy's insistence on his innocence gained him the nickname “Angel Tralala.” As the full wrath of his father was about to descend on Bernie's head, a minor religious miracle occurred. The owner of the book, the man who had dubbed him Angel Tralala, pleaded that the boy not be punished, since his transgression proved a genuine interest in reading and in matters spiritual. Thus the anger of the father was diffused, but the nickname stuck to Bernie for the remainder of his life in Tab.
Little Angel Tralala felt closer to his dark-haired mother. Bertha Rosner, née Schwartz in 1893, was the spiritual bridge to Bernie's grandfather in Kiskunhalas. She was a sensitive person who cried easily, and Bernie suspects that his mother was a hypochondriac with an imagined “bad heart.” She was the emotional font for him and his brother. An articulate storyteller, she was also the inspiration for his enduring love of books. He still remembers how beautiful her handwriting appeared in the letters she read aloud to him when he was very young. As he found out, these were the letters she had written to his father during their engagement. With a teaching credential, Bertha Rosner was the most educated member of the family. She was the one who made sure there were books in the home, even though the volumes often had batches of pages missing. Bernie remembers how frustrating it was to arrive at page 15, only to find pages 15 through 34 gone, so that he had to use his imagination to bridge the gap. Bernie's mother was also an expert seamstress and a good cook. She baked delicious sweets — cinnamon swirls, jellied rolls, and the kind of cakes that showed that Tab and its inhabitants were not far from Vienna and its elegant pastries.
Bertha Rosner instilled in her boys a sense of duty to take the straight and narrow path. This Hungarian mother employed old-fashioned educational methods in vogue all over Europe — unadorned scare tactics. When confronted with a disobedient son, she threatened him with the gypsies who roamed the landscape: “If you don't behave, we'll hand you over to the gypsies, who will take you away.”
How many times was that admonition used to reprimand European children, and in how many languages? I remember the gypsies in my village who knocked at our front door to beg. I hid behind my grandmother's skirts, fearing they might take me away whether I had misbehaved or not. The very gypsy wagons that moved in and out of villages struck fear into every child, since these wandering people played a sinister role in the pedagogical arsenal of European parents. In Bernie's mother's case, this disciplinary arsenal also included the Scherenschleifer—as he told me in German—the knife sharpener, who appeared periodically to sharpen the knives and scissors of the villagers. I remember that this same apparition, the quintessential outsider, wearing ragged clothes and a broad-brimmed hat, descended on my village as well.
The scarecrow of village life, par excellence, for both of us was the chimney sweep, with his black suit and small, hooked shovel slung over his shoulder. The broom and metal ball at the end of a thick, rolled-up wire cord became the emblem of this mysterious figure who would move in and out of houses to remove the soot, a service for which he was paid. I was convinced that my grandparents gave money to this dark specter to get him to stop damaging our chimney and go away.
But not all fears were induced by the outside world. Many came from within. When he lay in bed at night, Bernie was terrified of a nearby window that appeared brighter than the walls of the room. He thought that a corpse would enter through this dimly luminous square and seize him. I, in turn, felt the ominous presence of thieves, cutthroats, and night owls in the dense forest right next to the house of my favorite aunt in the Odenwald. During overnight stays, I dared not breathe too loudly for fear of attracting their attention.
The nucleus of Bernie's family—father, mother, and two brothers—was part of a large, extended family. Bernie's mother was one of twelve siblings, and his father had two brothers with sizable families of their own living in Tab. There was a paternal spinster aunt, who, in contrast to his maternal spinster aunt— the strict Aunt Libby of Kiskunhalas—was a gentle woman. Uncle Willy had a limp. He also had a daughter with artistic talent who helped Bernie with an assignment in his drawing class. Unlike his brother, Alexander, Bernie couldn't draw, so this cousin sketched a steam engine for him, and Bernie received a high mark for her efforts.
Uncle Joe, the troubled member of the family, had several children. His house was in constant disarray, and he frequently had to be bailed out financially. Bernie remembers that a family council was once convened to discuss the miserable state of affairs in Uncle Joes household. Nevertheless, one of Bernie's first adventures into the world of marketing involved one of Uncle Joe's sons, Jeno. Bernie was hired by this older cousin to serve as a distributor for his tiny candy business. Angel Tralala was unceremoniously fired from his job, however, when he ate the candy he was supposed to sell, or “consumed the inventory,” as he puts it today.
Despite his tightly scheduled days and the inescapable role assigned to him in the religious rituals of the Orthodox family, Bernie was keenly aware of the Hungarian world around him. Most of the non-Jewish villagers were poor sharecroppers who survived on a subsistence diet of homegrown food. Whatever cash they earned, these men spent on alcohol. On Sunday afternoons, Bernie recalls, their wives' and children's cries could be heard as they were beaten by the drunken, angry patriarchs. The black eyes and welts on women and children revealed the violence typical of these poor village men. In the street and stables, the animals —cows, horses, goats —became victims of physical abuse as well. And like any other village in Europe, Tab had its town drunk—Pista Krocsek. Unlike the fathers and husbands who were drunk only on Sundays, Pista Krocsek walked around in tatters in a continual daze. He became the inspiration for Bernie's first poem (which rhymes in his native Hungarian):
Pista Krocsek walks on the street,
Under his arm, he carries a big ax,
And what does he do with that ax?
He chops up little kids.
Tab also had some wealthy inhabitants. From the vantage point of his front porch, Bernie admired these “beautiful people” in white outfits who carried tennis rackets under their arms as they made their way to the local court. He yearned to be one of them, to join their relaxed ways of leisure and plenty. But there was a figure the eight-year-old Bernie admired even more than these tennis players —the second lieutenant of a Hungarian military detachment housed near Bernie's home. A well-groomed officer, in his tailored uniform he represented “the absolute epitome of grandeur,” as Bernie told me. It was the first time uniforms played a role in his life.
Jews who converted to Christianity were also among the upper stratum of village society, but interactions between the rest of the Jews and the Christian community surrounding them were generally hostile. Such antagonism had a history in Hungary that had affected Bernie's family long before his birth. His mother used to break down in tears when she told about the fate of a brother who was killed after World War I. Following the communist Bela Kuhn regime, counterrevolutionary “whites” took over and blamed the loss of World War I and the ensuing “Red Terror” on the Jews. During their “white reign of terror” they wanted to settle scores,
