They went out to the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, which the boys were even more enthusiastic about than he had hoped. His father informed them that their renovation had been completed the previous year, when the municipality had decided to rescue them from their miserable and run-down condition, and spent some five million crowns on their restoration. Papa could hardly recognize the place and lavished praise on it as if he were personally responsible for the transformation: “What a wonderful stock of animals! What fine buildings built with devoted skill! The cliffs and mountains are so true to life that you would think they were real! And the promenades and paths furnished with comfortable places to rest! The facilities for summer and winter sports! The playgrounds and the free mobile library!”

Papa had a bit of a lisp, which meant that his speech was an endless source of amusement for the boys. Sándor Csillag was aged forty-five by this time, but his youthful enthusiasm for all things progressive had not diminished one jot. He planned to encourage a similar zoological and botanical garden back home in Pécs (a plan of which, however, nothing came). He also thought it desirable to follow in Pécs the example of Budapest in establishing public conveniences, in the capital maintained by the Ferenc László Company. These were an object of his admiration even if he felt no need to make use of them.

They spent a memorable morning in the Rudas Spa Baths, where Papa explained that it owed its name to the “flying” bridge across the Danube, that is to say, the ferry with its huge pine mast (in Hungarian rúd) berthed at the entrance to the baths. The municipality had rebuilt the old Turkish baths as steam baths in 1883, creating a roof for the main pool and the four smaller pools around it, and opening two large public baths, one for each of the sexes. Papa showed them the effervescent tubs, the various baths lined with pottery, marble, and stone, and the boys had to take a dip in every single one. They listened to the list of the many different ailments that could be successfully treated here in the medicinal baths, whose temperature-Papa knew even this by heart-was maintained at a steady forty-four degrees centigrade, summer and winter. The visit continued in the newly opened sweating and slimming dry-air rooms, the tepidarium, the sudatorium, and the calidarium.

Nándor Csillag was not as keen on the animals and the baths as were either his father or his younger brothers, but was more thrilled than any of them by the theaters screening motion pictures. They paid two visits to the Metropolitan Mighty Movie House in 70 Rákóczi Street, where the company’s advertising promised a nonstop program of outstanding films for the discriminating moviegoer. The hotel porter ordered them tickets by telephone, itself an event so sensational at the time that he recalled the number to this day: 53-27. The screenings were accompanied by highly professional tunes from the piano of a round man with a Kossuth-style beard, who doffed his bowler whenever the audience showed its appreciation.

There were five or six short films per program. It was in one of these that Nándor Csillag saw an opera singer for the first time. The face of the man, in a dark waistcoat, was quite frightening to behold; he sang his arias with a wide, gaping mouth and would stab at the sky with his right hand, at least when he did not do so with his left, too. He rolled his eyes the while, as if he were in his final death throes. Nándor Csillag had been taking piano and violin lessons for some years from Mr. Ibrányi, who would come to their house in Apácza Street. Their father had intended that all three boys would take lessons, but neither Károly nor Andor had an ear for music. Nándor Csillag showed little ability at the piano, but was able to whistle or hum any melody he had heard just the once, at any time and with little effort.

“You take after old Bálint Sternovszky!” his father would say.

At his parents’ urging the boy would entertain with this trick the social gatherings at their house, hesitantly at first, but quickly getting into his stride. The audience mostly asked for songs and folk tunes, and the ladies would reward him with banknotes tucked into his pockets, while the more intoxicated men would plaster them on his forehead, as if he were leader of a Gypsy band.

From the age of twelve he also sang in the choir of the Catholic church, which some looked at askance, considering that however Hungarian Sándor Csillag declared himself to be, he was after all Israelite, as were the family of his wife, the Goldbaums. The wedding of the two Goldbaum girls, too, was held in the synagogue and not the Catholic church. Sándor Csillag did not give the whisperers behind his back the time of day and was triumphantly installed below whenever his little Nándor sang a solo at the base of the organ. “That’s my Nándi!” he would inform those sitting in front, behind, or to the side, despite repeated hushing noises all around. Nándor Csillag found his father’s singing of his praises deeply embarrassing and asked him many times to control himself. Sándor Csillag solemnly promised to do so, many times, but he could never keep his promise when he heard his son’s gentle, mellow tones-the flush of pride carried him away. “At this rate, he could be a second Caruso!”

He could not forbear to note that he, together with his wife and sister-in-law, had seen and, what is more, heard with their own eyes and ears the divine Caruso in Budapest, where he proved an ignominious flop. He only ever made one appearance in the Hungarian Royal Opera House, a benefit for the Prince József sanatorium. “He was Radames and I was fifty crowns poorer for each ticket; even so I had trouble getting them, and I ordered by telegraph. The crowds were vast, people had gone mad, many bought shares in a single ticket, say a foursome, and passed it round to the next for the following act. The divine Caruso was not entirely well and only after the scene by the bank of the Nile did he manage to pull himself together somewhat. He was about forty, a well-built man… at that time. Twelve thousand crowns he got for that appearance, twelve thousand!”

Nándor Csillag was still in diapers when he first heard his father’s Victor vinyl recordings, which he was never allowed to place on the deck himself. On the cardboard covers of the records he could soon make out: “Enrico Caruso, the greatest tenor singer of all time, is under the exclusive contract of the Victor Company.” La donna e mobile! sang Caruso, to a piano accompaniment and with him little Nándor Csillag, in his piping little voice, to the great joy of his father. Soon he knew it inside out, just as he did the song of Nemorino, and above all the sobbing aria, Ridi, Pagliaccio!-he understood not a word of the Italian text, but still gleaned from the music what it was about.

His first teacher of singing was the Italian-born organist of the cathedral. He had some time ago abandoned a promising career in opera in Italy because of a false little Italian maiden. He had eloped to Trieste with her and thence came to Pécs alone. The man was brash, had a moustache and a goatee, and was universally known as Signor Supercilio, because he was a man of few words but many cigarettes and made friends with hardly a soul. They did not know that the reasons for his introspection were quite prosaic: in ten years of residence he had failed to master the Hungarian tongue, of which fact he was deeply ashamed and thus tried to conceal it. He taught Nándor Csillag with unremitting harshness, but rewarded good work at the end of the class with a piece of chocolate. On one occasion he let slip that he had himself been a student of Guglielmo Vergine, the Neapolitan maestro who had taught, among others, Missiano, the acclaimed baritone, and Caruso, the famed tenor. When Nándor Csillag passed this nugget on at home, the standing of his singing teacher rose vertiginously in the eyes of the parents.