Back

My roommate from orientation, of all people, is back.

We shared room keto-keto-harom, back when Hungary was still so new and absurdly foreign. He’s an unlikely returnee. We met up Sunday morning, an hour after his plane touched down, in a little basement pub next to Keleti. His first urge, back in Hungary, was a Borsodi, even though it was 10:30. He’s always been more comfortable talking to me than just about anyone else, I think, and he chain-smoked his way through his entire story as I listened on in a condescending disbelief.

He was a little older than us, on a year's sabbatical-of-sorts from a major movie studio in Hollywood. He was quiet during orientation, then they sent him off to his little village. It's in the same league as Heves and Gaines' Mezobereny. Those kind of places can mess with your mind. Plus It's a kilometer from the Romanian border. Many of the students come from Romania each week, staying in the dorm-like kollegium, so they can learn in their mother-tongue, Hungarian.

His first problem was contractual. They wanted to change the terms of his contract because the county was nearly bankrupt, or something along those lines. Scared that nothing was the way he envisioned it, he argued back, calling Hajni down to mediate.

After a rough start, he began to bond with the students. He's not a teacher by trade, but he was willing to become invested in their lives and offer English lessons to anyone in the town who was interested. When his washing machine broke and flooded the office below him, he offered a handshake and English lessons in apology.

He came back from a Christmas break back at home to more problems with his principal. That's about the time, too, when the drama began. The teacher who lived above him was disappointed when he didn't want a relationship. The twenty-something college girl from the town, though, was excited when he did. (So, too, was her little sister, one of his 9th grade students.) The teachers were mad that he didn't have a strict Hungarian-teacher attitude with the students. A gay student was too close for comfort. And the cutest girl in the school started coming to his apartment, alone, for private lessons.

He explained the culmination best in an e-mail i received in September or so. "I got mixed up in whole love triangle," he confessed, "and it all exploded one night at the disco in Romania." What did that look like, you might wonder? "I ended up walking the streets drinking and basically crying and later I learned the cops were looking for me the whole time." So it goes.

The sordid details were no less tumultous than some of the other misadventures of his life, that i've strangely and detachedly been privy to. He finally straightened everything out, to the satisfaction of the principal, police and himself. But his departure was tainted. He sees his stay as a success, as a positive, because of the relationships he built with students and because of the positive impact he had on them. But back home, it affected him so much that he was nearly comatose for several months, dazed by Hungary. And that village. Finally, he found a really good job in another movie studio that he really enjoys. But just as he was set to move past Hungary, he decided to come back.

He's looking for a little closure, I think he'll find it. It might be dramatic, as tends to be his panchant strangely enough, but i think it will be good for him, but that's just a guess. I warned him about the strange sensations of going back to a place that you come to romanticize and glorify, if those are the right words. He listened, then lit a cigarette.

He disappeared just as suddenly as he appeared. Like a shadow. I haven’t heard from him since he boarded that train to a little town far from here three hours after we met up. Who knows if I ever will. So it goes.