To Gemenc. This is becoming regular, and I really don't know when exactly did I drag Joška into this, should be anytime in july, perhaps the whole month. Ileš would come and get us, and would bring us home. He loved to drive, he actually used to be a rent-a-driver for some outfit once upon a time, he'd even get to Italy that way.
Szoftex found us lodging, right across the street, at Terika granny's (hungarian order of words, sorry). Her son... sort of worked in Szoftex, though not regularly.
Don't even know his name, his nickname was Šerci, from sör - beer. He could drink a lot. He was a genius for larger electronics, and in the last years made a load of money installing satellite gear around town. There were simply not enough majstors, he could charge at will. He knew how to resurrect a monitor on which the guys in the shop gave up. He lived for the, ahem, moment. Then he got married (while we were there) to a football player (!). She was something - no hip no waist, all muscle, but still cute and likable and progressive somewhat forward and backward, a bit too stiff and disciplined, full complement to his chaotic existence. They even had a child while we were there.
Terika granny's house was in another house's yard. That weird setup was common in Gemenc - whoever needed the money at the time would just carve a quarter of his lot, where his house is, and sell the remaining three quarters. So there was a passage, wide enough for a larger truck, from the gate into the wider backyard, where the house was. It was another pannonian classic, with a row of rooms connected on the south side with a gonk, also closed with glass. Joška and I got some smaller room with doors to gonk, granny's room and the bigger room towards the front side. I took the smaller room, he took the darker - it had only one window, facing gonk, the other windows were shut because they'd be facing the fence. The door to granny's room was blocked by a cupboard... or not (can't remember now, though I got a photo, but it's in the next year). We also used the bathroom, which was entered via another small room at the other end of the gonk, which also led to her kitchen and her living room. The bathroom was retrofitted, as usual, and it was full of rags and her stockings. I had a strong hunch that the granny never threw away a pair of stockings, that they're all here in the bathroom. How it didn't stink of mildew and moisture is unclear, but still I didn't feel like getting in there. Next to the bathroom door there was a small table, where we brought our dinners to eat.
Um... I remember speaking hungarian with the granny, and yet I remember starting to speak it in mid-august, sticking to listen-only mode until then. So it's possible that we took the room in august... this is where the order of events in my memory gets a bit confused.
I once even spent the night at Mihály's, which was strange. Now whether he took me home just to show me to his family, who were probably getting curious about that yugo whom he mentions so often, or he needed me late in the afternoon and Ileš had to go home to Délkút on time, who'd remember now. The family is huge, they have five kids, and they're all so disciplined, silent and not too curious. I spoke a bit with them, nothing important, don't remember any text.
So Joška and I were roommates - he took that dark room in the corner facing the rear fence of the other house, where the only light came from a window into gonk, and I took the much brighter small room. The layout stayed for a couple of weeks, when a new customer appeared on the horizon, the Gemenc, and Mihály said we needed someone to do the analysis of what they need and to get things organized, to which we just decided to include Vanji in the scheme. Next week he was a part of the team, was Joška's roommate in the dark room, and Ileš didn't have to give us rides anymore, it was Vanji's corolla henceforth.
In the room I had a 486sx, and it happened again that the machine gets sold while I'm away, and then I'd get a stronger box. Sometimes we had a small printer, an Epson 400lx, which was an amazing little piece of plastic, worked fine and could do LQ mode, almost like a laser but still a dot matrix, and not loud at all.