Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 13. (Budapest, 1993)

ZÁDOR Anna: Csernyánszky Mária, a barát szemével

ANNA ZADOR A PORTRAIT SKETCH OF MÁRIA CSERNYÁNSZKY, AS SEEN BY A FRIEND I happened to be a class-mate of Mária Csernyánszky - or "Hapi" as she was called - in the grammar school we both attended. However, our friendship developed much later, due probably not to our respective personalities, but rather - as I think - to the peculiar composition of the class we belonged to. There were more than forty pupils in class "A", which was situated in a building still extant on the corner of Váci Street and Irányi Street, in the city of Budapest. At that time it belonged to the school network of the City of Budapest which meant that most of the class were daughters of officials or senior officials of the City Council. They already knew each other or were at least connected somehow through the inevitable office relationship of their parents. This central part, forming about 70 per cent of the class, was supplemented by a thin, more upper-class layer of the daughters of state civil servants - Hapi was one of them - and a thicker middle-class layer of daughters of parents in various liberal professions. These two layers made friends with each other rather than with the majority - although the class lacked deep friendships. I mean, there were no major problems, none of us was a spy or a denouncer, nobody failed, yet there were no great talents, cither. My brothers and most of my boy friends attended the famous Grammar School in Trefort Street, thus we could realize the difference between the niveau of the two schools moreover, in the other school there were one or two out-standing talents in each class. Perhaps it was the largely mediocre quality of our school why we did not wish to meet after the final exams, we never had any parties or anniversary celebrations though we had nothing against each other. Nevertheless, these were interesting years, since almost each period of Hungarian history is full of interesting and impressive events. The eight years spent at grammar school were marked by the first world war and the first Hungarian Soviet Republic. Both historical turns had their influence on the school. For example, our excellent and elegant teacher of the Latin language had a serious shell-shock - just like the hero of Martin du Gard - and his head was always shaking. Sometimes he had to support it with two fingers because the shaking was terribly painful. We never giggled or laughed at him - which would not have been too surprising in the case of teenagers - for if he was angry, and he often was, he was shouting so loudly (probably due to his shell-shock) that the windows were rattling. And I can also remember when our teacher of "substitute Greek" (i.e. Greek studies minus the language, the subject generally taught at girls' grammar schools, as a consequence of which both of us had to sit for an extra final exam in Greek later), and a young student teacher came, to stand in for him. He was wearing threadbare clothes and when he lectured to