Those who dwelled on the outskirts of town were either manual laborers or living off disability benefits. Many of them didn’t last till the age of retirement. The majority died from heart attacks, stroke was the runner-up, and cancer took the third spot. Out of every ten people there was only one who didn’t drink on a regular basis and only three who didn’t smoke. Each and every one of them begged and cried at night for a brand-new start somewhere else, as somebody else.

This is where Gábor Szeiber grew up. He remembered Béla Ózdi from his childhood. Gábor lived one street away from the pub, in a socialist-style family house. It was shaped like a cube, the ceiling was too low, the rooms cramped, the garden only an afterthought. His father had built a gate out of scrap metal and painted it yellow. This town is known for its outrageous attitude toward colors.

Gábor would often go to the pub to buy cigarettes for his father. One Sunday when the family TV stopped working Béla Ózdi let him watch the afternoon Disney cartoons there. DuckTales was interrupted by the news of Prime Minister József Antall’s death, an interruption that caused a generational trauma. The boy walked home with tears in his eyes, like so many others that day all over the country. Later the police contacted Gábor because he was one of the last people to see Béla Ózdi alive. He had long considered this to be the defining event in his life, and it wasn’t far from the truth.

At the age of forty-four his father bent over to lift up a trailer and collapsed. The runner-up: stroke. The doctors said the tissue in his brain had gotten thin over time. Those forty-four years were all he was given, and they couldn’t have done anything to save him. It was a life-altering event for Gábor. After they had discreetly buried his father’s body, Gábor vowed to step out of his parents’ shadow, move away from his hometown, and make a splendid career in whatever suited his talents.

He did try, and he gave it his all. It just wasn’t enough. He got into college, a first in his family. From day one he knew he wasn’t cut out for it. He managed to pass the exams, just barely, but he couldn’t find any underlying passion or talent, and by halfway through the fourth semester his momentum had run out.