Another Love
By Editor Alexandra Wolfe
Title: ANOTHER LOVE
Author: Erzsebet Galgoczi
Translated by: Ines Reider and Felice Newman
Publisher: Midnight Editions, 2007
ISBN: 9781573442985
Rated: 4 stars
Genre: Literary
Another Love by Erzsebet Galgoczi is at once a swift read, but also a deeply courageous novel replete with political commentary, intellectualism and gender identity in Communist Hungary during the 1950’s. Another Love, published in Hungary in1980, is a reflection of the aftermath of the revolutionary chaos of 1956 when Hungarians protested the ruling Stalinist party. This novel gives us a realistic, yet at times veiled, glimpse of a woman attempting to explore her identity as a lesbian and an intellectual in an Eastern Bloc country during one of it’s most tumultuous and oppressive eras.
The book opens with the murder of Eva Szalánczy who was killed by military patrol when she tried to cross the Austro-Hungarian border illegally. First Lieutenant János Marosi, a childhood friend of Eva’s, learns of her death and immediately requests a leave of absence to investigate. Marosi, prodded by his unrequited love for Eva and her promise as a political journalist, begins a labyrinthine search for the truth armed with only her address book and a fold piece of stationary that reads, “Mohács, September 8, 1959. There is no explanation. One cuts open one’s veins…someone else comes along who will explain it.”
Intriguing, indeed. As if Eva knew her own death, at twenty-eight years old, was imminent.
Marosi travels to Budapest and delves into Eva’s life, exploring every phone number, acquaintance and colleague, with tenacity and nostalgia. Since her death had not been covered in the papers, Marosi is left not only with the uncomfortable task of informing people of her death, but also with their refusal to discuss Eva because of her outspoken criticism of the current regime. Surviving on a steady supply of cognac, Marosi examines her notes from University, searching for clues about Eva, her desires, her motives for leaving the country, and her secrets. Within her notes, he finds several of her poems that appear to be reactions to intellectual ideas:
DEVELOPMENT EQUALS THE STRUGGLES OF CONTRADICTIONS
In short: Connections of contradictions (Lenin).
Within me, layers of pain
frozen to ice,
I look at my strong hands,
Why can’t the idle worker
grind herself
And be dust?
The struggle of the worker is something Marosi knows well and a struggle that he knew Eva knew. Eva and Marosi came from the same small town in Western Hungary. They both excel because of their intellect. Eva must leave her peasant background in order to exercise her intellect and expose the political corruption that exists. Eva also knows that the current regime is what causing her family to suffer in poverty because of the government’s control of the land. In her job as a reporter for People and Culture, Comrade Editor-in-Chief Ferenc Erdös explains to Marosi Eva’s interview with him:
”Who is this woman? I wondered. I only knew that she was a young journalist. I asked her to come and see me. A starveling—excuse the expression—showed up in my office. Her dress was worn out, her face was thin, her eyes greedy. She made me think of the Budapest saying: ‘I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. I’m tired. I’m cold and I need to piss.’ She drank her coffee in small gulps, and she smoked her cigarette all the way to the end of the butt.”
And later in the interview:
“Eva said to me: ‘I came to Budapest at the age of twenty. I was a student and didn’t know a single soul. I used to be an excellent student, my classmates liked me and they looked up to me as a role model. I really believed a new class of intellectuals—coming from the people—was in the making. After the government examination, I was supposed to choose where I wanted to work. I wanted to be a journalist, and it was clear that I would get a job with a newspaper. But when…’” the editor-in-chief puffed on his pipe, “’…my job was abolished due to some administrative order; nobody paid any attention to me. My acquaintances preferred to cross the streets illegally, straight into the arms of a cop, who would fine them ten forints, simply to avoid talking to me. They did not want to be compromised by me. I went to the university office for some help—after all, I had studied there for five years; they knew my accomplishments and they knew I used to be a tutor. But they sent me away, telling me they were only responsible for their current students. My former teachers defended their powerlessness, and also sent me away to protect their reputations…In short, Comrade Erdös,’ Eva Szalánczy said, ‘…I discovered that we were hardly in the process of discovering a new people’s intelligentsia, and that any claim to the contrary was utter bullshit. Yes, we all went to peoples’ universities in those days, but the songs we sang, like “Glowing Winds,” were meaningless. You can’t force people to believe even song lyrics, so they all just sing along, smiling hypocritically. Smelly peasant go back to work in the fields! That’s why I didn’t get a job after 1956.’”
Along with the strength it took to fight the political system, Marosi discovers Eva was a lesbian who often fell in love with straight women. The constant conflict in her personal and professional life was tempered only by Eva’s nightly drinking bouts and one-night stands. Marosi learns of her love affair with a married woman, Livia, who also worked at the paper. One of Eva’s former colleagues, Zoltán, relays to Marosi her despair over her lesbianism:
“‘I can’t change anymore,’ she said, discouraged. ‘Maybe I don’t want to change. My “disease” is as old as humanity. Sin is much more recent. Sin is only a diabolical invention of society. But calling it an illness, and not a sin, which is how most of society considers it—I know that very well—allows me to at least see myself as a tragic heroine and not as a weak-minded, incompetent, pitiable plague-blister. Tell me, Zoltán, why am I neither perfectly normal or perfectly abnormal?’”
Interesting to note the commonalities between Galgoczi and her character, Eva: both joined the Communist Party at an early age, they both were able to escape their peasant upbringing and poverty to get an education, both smoked and drank, and both were lesbians. Golgoczi lived much longer than her character and wrote screenplays, novels and short stories. She survived many of Hungary’s political upheavals and living as a lesbian in an Eastern Bloc country that did not openly support or acknowledge lesbianism. And as Marosi learns, oppression of any kind often suffocates human spirit and individuality. Galgoczi knew this all to well, which is why this multilayered literary mystery engages the reader not only for what it says to the reader, but also for what it doesn’t say. A politically infused story with lively characters, Another Love deserves our attention and admiration.
REVIEWED BY M. E. CARTER
Kissed By Venus is a web site for the discussion and promotion of lesbian literature. We publish lesbian fiction, articles, book reviews, and interviews.
