Gyorgyike Hasko with her brother

Gyorgyike Hasko with her brother

My brother and I in the garden of the house of my father's sister in Zugliget.

My father had a sister, Margit, who was two years older. My grandfather didn't let her study, but they married her off to a jeweler, a goldsmith master, whose workshop was in Marokko Court. That house isn't there any longer. This uncle was a ring maker I think, because the goldsmiths divided up the job among each other, not all of them made necklaces, not all of them made caskets, etc. He was a ring maker and worked with a few apprentices. I liked to go there very much as a child, because in the first room, there were about three or four rooms in this workshop, there was a long counter, and behind the counter there was a drawer system, a big cupboard, and in all of the drawers there was a different kind of stone. These weren't precious stones, but semi-precious stones, with which one could play excellently. Aunt Margit had a son who disappeared in the Don bend during the war.

On the 20th August my parents took my brother and I home so that we would get accustomed to town life again and forget that rural tone, because we did learn this and that, what wasn't appropriate. So we got to Zugliget, to my father's sister and grandmother for two weeks. We didn't like this grandmother of ours, this tiny little hideous woman, and we didn't like being there at all, but we had to stay there, we had no choice. When we got used to the town again, we went to school.

This villa was owned by my father's sister and her husband. A beautiful, neat garden belonged to it. All along the path there were beautiful roses. There were a lot of fruit trees in the garden, and it was interesting, that my aunt, who was a very good housewife, preserved the compote so that she put it in jars, put sugar on it, put a lid on it and put it on the steps on the kitchen side, in the sun. Nothing she made ever went bad.

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