Baron Pal Podmaniczky and the Norwegian Bible | Page 5

week after that, I asked her again, but she said she was very busy. Suddenly, it was clear to me that the journey of our short stories and analyses was very simple. After being collected in the classroom their final destination was the first waste-basket.
Yes, I could understand her. She was bored with our assignments. She was busy. But why did she promise? Why did she not tell the truth? Because it was her character? I believed the reflection I saw in the mirror.
And now the last story: something about an unposted "The Norwegian Bible". There was a young man in my life. We were classmates in an English course many years ago. After each lesson we went out of the school together and almost every time we met my then boyfriend--(today he is my husband). He attended a German course in the same school, just after our lesson. We greeted each other every time and everyone continued on his or her own way. My future husband went to his class, and we, my classmate and I walked along the street. We talked about the English lesson, about my studies, about family, about childhood, about religion. He was very religious. He was very curious about my being a daughter of a minister and living without the daily reading of the Bible. He gave me a Bible with a dedication note in it. This inscription was a nine line "poem", a clever introduction to me. The first letters of the lines read vertically formed my name ILONK��NAK (to Ilona). The nine letters were written in different colours, the rest of the text in blue ink. I still have his present, this Bible. I preserved it in the same way Mrs. Morel preserved John Field��s Bible in D.H. Lawrence��s novel "Sons and Lovers". But it is not a relic for me: it is used by my younger daughter in her everyday life at the convent school she attends.
This classmate once invited me to ski and visit his family in a mountain village. I hesitated a little bit, but at last I refused the invitation. I had my boyfriend at that time whom I loved very much and did not want to give him up for another man. It was a little unpleasant for my boyfriend to meet me every Monday and Wednesday while I was chatting with this other man in a very friendly manner. I did not want to hurt my boyfriend nor did I want to lose him, so I refused the invitation, although I loved skiing. My boyfriend felt my hesitation because he knew how much I liked to ski. One evening he came to me with a big bunch of red roses and asked me not to go skiing. So I remained with him and we are still together, in love and in harmony. I thought about sending my former classmate a copy of "The Norwegian Bible", but I do not want to disturb this harmony, so I have not sent him one.
So this is the story of the small short story up to now. And it will be going on I hope. Perhaps the other twenty or thirty friends will answer my Christmas card as well. I can say "thank you" to my absent-minded, unreliable professor, who gave us the assignment idea to write a short story.

BIRTH OF A MULTI-LINGUAL SHORT STORY
The essay is finished, but the story continues.
In May my English pen-friend since 1964 corrected my essay grammatically and sent me a small white English New Testament.
There was a friendly smile that I have to mention. I got it as an appreciation for the essay from my son, a former water-polo player who is now a marathon runner and a folk dancer. He read the essay on the train to Budapest. He did not say anything but laughed at me. I think he enjoyed the stories of mine and his father��s.
Instead of answering my Christmas card my half-Polish, half-Slovakian pen-friend since 1963 sent me a copy of an article. He published my "Norwegian Bible" in "Zivot", a newspaper of the Slovaks living in Poland and he wrote an article about our friendship, my grandfather of Slovakian origin and about the short story.
Now I have my "Norwegian Bible" in three languages: English, Hungarian and Slovakian. The next move will be to translate it into another fifteen or more languages. I think I will ask my friends to do it. I can not master eighteen languages like my grandfather, but I would like to have the "Norwegian Bible" translated into eighteen or more languages.
Until now the "Norwegian Bible" served as a mirror. From now on it works as a magnet. It attracts languages, and through it gathers my foreign friends, unknown to each other into a team working