Tag #138067 - Interview #78465 (Egon Lovith)

For a short time we lived in the Peter-Pal villa and when Edit and Samu moved out from the apartment on Majalis street, Margo and I moved in there. It was a miserable one-bedroom apartment. Right next to us there was a three-bedroom apartment and our place probably used to be part of it and they must have built a kitchen into it so they could rent it out. The landlord was a rich man; he owned a metal works and he also owned some property. Our room was unbearably cold until we leased an iron stove from Margo’s salary [who worked as a seamstress at the Victoria Factory.] We also had a terribly dark and damp cellar where we kept our logs and coal. I used to bring the logs up from there with candlelight all the time. It was very cozy and warm after that, and we really enjoyed ourselves in that narrow apartment. There was a big window that looked onto the street. There was no such thing as a pantry or a fridge. We didn’t have a bathroom only a tap of cold water in the kitchen and that’s where we had to bathe. We had a wooden trough that we bathed in. We poured water on each other with cups. We didn’t have a toilet either. There was a toilet in the yard but the water always froze in it during the winter. Nevertheless, we lived happily and finally we had our own room, which was an extraordinary thing for us. We had to pay the same rent as Edit and Samu had paid before us.