Free Exodus: A memoir by Deborah Feldman

blocks, their cracked concrete facades now done up in cheerful Mediterranean colors as if in rebellion.
    Zoltán told me that the college campus had been awarded a prize for excellence from a global architectural foundation in 2009. And yet, its buildings, although new, had been erected in a similar Spartan style. It was as if the aesthetic here had been permanently altered by the communist regime; the buildings were squat, functional squares around a voluminous courtyard.
    “So, do many people come through here?” I asked as we pulled up alongside the campus.
    “Not as many as we would like. And even the ones who do, they don’t all graduate. Perhaps it’s a problem with laziness”—and then he corrected his vocabulary—“no, I mean, motivation.”
    “But why would they not be motivated?” I asked. “Especially if this is the only way to something better.”
    “A lot of the students who do very well here don’t know what to do with their education once they’ve finished. Some of them are lucky and get jobs, but there aren’t enough jobs for everyone, and they are competing with students from bigger cities. It’s even harder to get work outside of Hungary, unless they’re brought into the factories in Austria and Slovakia to provide cheap labor, as they work for forints. Those employers take advantage of the poor exchange rate and pay Hungarians according to the income scale here, whereas the other employees make three or four times as much.”
    We stopped in front of the college guesthouse, and then I checked in with the receptionist in the lobby.
    “If you get hungry or thirsty, there are vending machinesthrough that corridor,” Zoltán said, pointing. “Otherwise, Angelika, the interpreter, will come get you from your room first thing in the morning.”
    I wrote my name and passport number on the sheet the receptionist handed to me, and she gave me a key card. I entered my room and appraised the two twin beds and their standard hospital sheeting with relief. I hadn’t been sure what to expect. The air conditioner failed to circulate anything other than hot air, but a shower room complete with multiple jets and spouts that had to be manipulated with a remote control surprised me. I might have preferred a working air conditioner, and managed even with a French bathtub arrangement—the one where you shower by using a trickling hose extension from the tub’s faucet. I threw open the large windows that looked out into the main courtyard of the campus. Tall, sturdy-looking trees with thick boughs obscured my view of the ground, but I could hear the idle chatter of students floating up toward me. The air seemed to enter the room almost reluctantly, bringing with it the faint odor of cigarette smoke and damp concrete.

    I slept the sleep of the dead, regardless of the heat. I was awakened by a mourning dove burbling outside my window. For a moment before I opened my eyes, I thought I was back in Brooklyn. I recalled waking up early on July mornings in my grandparents’ house to that same sound of mourning doves cooing in the tree limbs level to my window, the last refreshing breeze of the night wafting into my room. Then I squinted into the bright early light, remembering where I was. I sat up immediately, walking over to the openwindows to glimpse the foreign world in which I’d arrived and confirm it was still real.
    The quad was empty except for a gardener who was trimming grass that had grown into the walkways. I could hear the faint buzzing sound of his electric cutter. I decided to explore the grounds while it was still quiet, before Angelika came to get me, so I took a shower and put on shorts and a T-shirt. In the antiseptic lobby I found a vending machine that served up every kind of Italian coffee drink for ninety forints, the approximate equivalent of forty cents. I could control the amount of sugar, the ratio of milk, and the potency of the espresso shot. My cappuccino dispensed itself in an