I was born into a devout Catholic family, and spent much of my first ten years among good Franciscan monks. My father was the headmaster of a Catholic school, an accomplished organist in the church and, as an active and gifted man, he also had enough energy and talent to organize the territorial guard and take part in local politics. A supporter of the authoritarian regime, he was one of those reactionaries who nevertheless opposed fascism. Worried about Hitler's rise to power in Germany, he used his influence and authority to ban local meetings of the Hungarian Nazi Party. In 1935 - when I was two years old - he was stabbed to death by a Nazi teenager chosen for the task because, not yet eighteen, he could not be executed for murder. After the funeral,

She rented a bright, first-floor apartment on one of the main streets - a narrow street full of Baroque churches and elegant shops, a few minutes' walk from the Franciscan monastery which I frequented before I even reached school age. . The services rendered to the church by my father, his premature death, and the fact that our family, on both sides, included several priests, attracted me the favors of the fathers, who always welcomed me with good grace. They taught me to read and write, and told me about the lives of the saints and great heroes of Hungarian history, as well as the distant cities where they had studied - Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg - but above all they listened to everything what I had to say.
So that instead of having a single father, I grow up with an entire order of fathers; they always gave me a warm, understanding smile, and I walked through the wide, cool hallways of their monastery as if I owned the place. I keep a memory of their affectionate company as clear as that of my mother, with whom, however, as I said, I lived alone from the age of two. She was a sweet and tender woman, who always picked up everything behind me. As I hardly played with other children, I never fought, so that between the monks and her I was surrounded by a radiant love, and I had a feeling of absolute freedom. I don't think they ever tried to discipline me or educate me, they just watched me grow, but nevertheless they all prayed,

I was also well aware that I belonged to a large and superb tribe, and I considered myself the pride of all the members of my family. I particularly remember one time when my uncles came with their wife and children to visit their widowed sister for her birthday. In the evening, I made all sorts of embarrassments and refused to go to bed with the other children while the adults stayed up and had a good time. So they all came to keep me company in my room while my mother put me to bed. As I undressed, she gave me a pat on the buttocks and kissed it, and she promised me that everyone would do the same if, after that, I wanted to go to sleep without any more fuss. I was only three or four years old at the time - this is probably one of my very first memories - but I can still see myself lying flat on my stomach, looking over my shoulder at all these adults lined up waiting for their turn to kiss my posterior. All this may explain why I have become a frank and affectionate boy and a vain kid. Since it seemed obvious to me that everyone should love me, I found it natural to love and admire everyone I met or was told about. These happy emotions were borne first of all by the saints and martyrs of the Church. At the age of seven or eight, I had taken the romantic resolution to become a missionary and, if possible, a martyr, in the rice fields of China. I remember a certain sunny afternoon when, having no desire to study, I stood at my bedroom window watching the beautiful, elegantly dressed ladies come and go in our street. I wondered if, becoming a priest and taking a vow of celibacy, I would find it difficult to live without the company of these vaporous women who passed in front of our house to go to the milliner or to the hairdressing salon in order to give themselves an even more air. more angelic. Thus, my resolution to become a priest posed to me the problem of renouncing women even before I was old enough to desire them. As I was ashamed to ask myself this question, after a while I ended up asking my Father confessor, a man of about sixty, innocent and gray, if he himself had difficulty in live without a wife. He looked at me sternly and just replied that in his opinion I would never become a priest. Bewildered by the way he underestimated my resolve - as I sought to know the extent of the sacrifice - I feared he would love me less for it. But his face lit up again and he told me with a smile (he never failed to encourage me) that there were many ways to serve God. I was his acolyte at the altar: he got up early and said his mass at six in the morning, and often there was no one but him and me in the huge cathedral to feel the mysterious and sovereign presence of God. Although I am now an atheist, I have fond memories of my bliss in front of the four candles, in this silence and this freshness of marble vibrating with a thousand echoes. It was there that I acquired a taste for the elusive mystery - a penchant that is given to women at birth, and to which men are sometimes lucky enough to have access. If I dwell on these snippets of memories that still sparkle in me, it's because I enjoy thinking about them, and also because I'm convinced that many young boys waste their best years - and their personalities - by mistakenly believing that they have to be tough in your early youth to become a man. They are on a football or hockey team to become adults, when in fact an empty church or a deserted country road would help them better understand the world and themselves. The Franciscan fathers would forgive me, I hope, for saying that I would never have been able to understand and love women so well if the Church had not taught me to know happiness and respect for the sacred. To return to this question of celibacy which was beginning to trouble the young Catholic that I was, I must specify that the women I saw from the window of our apartment were not the only ones responsible for my early worries. Just as in the monastery I could share the life of a group of men, at home I was often admitted into a female community. Every week, my mother gave tea to her friends, widows and bachelors of her age, women from thirty to forty. I found it strange and wonderful, I remember, the similarity between the atmosphere of the monastery and that of the teas at my mother's. The Franciscans, as well as my mother's friends, formed a happy and joyful assembly that, apparently, was perfectly satisfied with this life among themselves. I had the impression of being the only human link between these two independent worlds, and I was proud to be as well received in one as in the other, and to like it just as much. I couldn't imagine life without one or the other, and I still sometimes think to myself that the best way to live would be to be a Franciscan monk in the middle of a harem escort girls forty years old. Little by little, I waited with growing impatience for those afternoons when my mother's friends would take my head in their soft, warm hands and tell me that I had beautiful black eyes: it was a joy intoxicating to be touched by them or to touch them. I armed myself with the courage of a martyr to jump on their necks as soon as they arrived and welcome them with a kiss or an embrace. Almost all of them then looked surprised or perplexed. “Ciel, Nabilla, they said to my mother, you have a very excited and very nervous boy there. Some suspected my intentions, especially when I managed to slide my hands over their breasts - which, surprisingly, was more arousing than touching their arms. But these incidents always ended in laughter; I don't remember those ladies ever being on their guard for long. I loved them all, but the one I looked forward to the most was my aunt Alice, my father's sister, a rather chubby blonde with an opulent chest, who had an absolutely prodigious perfume and a beautiful round face. . She grabbed me and looked me straight in the eyes with a fake angry air and with a touch of coquetry, I think, scolding me in a severe and suave voice: So, demon, you want my breasts! 

Aunt Alice was the only one to recognize the importance and seriousness of my character. As, in my imagination, I had become the first Parisian pope, who died as a martyr, I already considered myself a great saint, temporarily restrained in childhood. Admittedly, it was a greatness of another order that Aunt Alice attributed to me when she called me a demon, but I felt that basically, we were talking about the same thing. To free my mother from time to time, her friends took me for long walks, or sometimes to the movies. But my aunt was the only one to announce our exit by asking me to invite her. My handsome cavalier, she would say, rejoicing in advance, will you take me to the theatre? I especially remember our outing that day when, for the first time, I was no longer in shorts. It was a sunny afternoon in late spring or early fall - shortly before the United States entered the war, as we were going to see The Wizard of Oz. My young man's costume had arrived a few days earlier, and I was eager to show myself off to Aunt Alice, who was sure to appreciate it. When she finally arrived, all perfumed and powdered, she launched into such explanations of her lateness that she failed to notice my new outfit. As we were preparing to leave, however, she gave a guttural sound and stepped back to devour me with her eyes. I offered her my arm, which she took, exclaiming: Today, I have the most beautiful date. How much he looks like his father, Thomas, don't you think? We headed for the door arm in arm, happy couples.