The reason why I’ve never liked being young is that it’s so immature. The great majority of immature things are unenjoyable: sour, tasteless or, like green tomatoes that haven’t yet been pickled in order to be edible, are outright poisonous.

Youth is basically indigestible. If one doesn’t pay attention and consumes it without moderation, it can upset the stomach.

This is precisely what happened to our fathers’ generation. Due to bad digestion, they spewed out all sorts of half-baked ideas about youth.

For instance, that youth has to represent purity, originality or something new. And that it’s uncompromising! I have to laugh. One of the biggest idiocies with which they have poisoned succeeding generations was ‘don’t trust anyone above thirty!’

As far as I’m concerned, I was already looking forward to being above thirty at the age of twelve.

I deeply despised these aging hippies, the generation of our fathers. They claimed that in their youth they were rebelling in the name of noble principles, however, they were only immature, like everyone else at that age. They were basically just ranting and, being unable to restrain their temper, ended up causing havoc for want of something better, which would have been the lesser evil. If only they could have refrained from building a halo around it. If only they could have held back from boasting about this all their lives, with a view to sit on their laurels in eternal youth.

My point isn’t that I’m not bothered about conformist hypocrisy, the lies of the established order or social injustice. Of course, I am. My point is that in the meantime, this decaying collection started to display a false image of youth as its prized work of art.

Had it been up to me, I wouldn’t have stayed young for longer than a moment.

Just as I only coped with being a child willy-nilly after a while.

I kept sitting on the edge of the sandpit as a year five boy, watching the others, little people of all sorts. I wasn’t looking down on them or despising them for playing and wasting their time fooling around. Not at all. It was crystal clear to me that, due to their circumstances and age, this was exactly what they had to do.

In fact, it was this crystal-clear realisation that positioned me by the concrete edge of the sandpit as an ill-fitting landscape feature. This was the reason for not considering myself a child anymore. I was aware that I was no longer part of what was taking place in the sandpit and beyond, at the swings and ping pong tables. I could only act as a spectator to this playground hustle and bustle.

I had read earlier a youth novel set in my hometown, at a time when it was still called Scarbantia and was one of the most flourishing municipalities in Pannonia. This Roman world was much more alive in me than my own, in which I was living as a year five pupil. In vain did I go to the playground to find my way back to the 1970s, I didn’t manage. In the end, I just sat on the concrete edge and contemplated the colourful shovels, buckets and shapes from the vantage point of nearly two thousand years.

From then on, I felt as if I had more or less matured from within, almost grown up, but unfortunately still had to wait a few more years until my body caught up with this level of development.

In other words, people were welcome to sing false praises to youth as much as they liked, I simply refused to believe in them. If I had a choice, I would have skipped this phase altogether, to become a mature man straightaway.

But since I was unable to skip it, I did everything in my power to shorten it.

The easiest way to do this was in my appearance.

With the help of regular and careful shaving, in a few years I was able to turn the emerging fluff on my face into respectable facial hair, from which I could then fashion all sorts of forgotten moustache and beard-styles that our meticulously shaven era had no idea about. In addition, I started to use hair oil, and wore my thick mane licked back, with a parting, like the dandies in interwar films.

I had a growth spurt as a teenager and by the beginning of secondary school I caught up in height with both my father and maternal grandfather, who was living with us due to his advanced age. I started to rummage in their wardrobes, from the back of which I dug out jackets, waistcoats, hats, shirts and trench coats that even they had stopped wearing due to the vagaries of fashion. Thanks to this, I wasn’t dressed in those distressed skinny jeans, T-shirts, gas mask bags and trendy leather clogs that every so-called counter-cultural young person was obsessed with. I even found a small paperboard suitcase to use in lieu of a school bag, as well as a crook walking stick that I enjoyed twisting around in my right hand.

In this way, beyond the archaic touches that are a matter of taste, I managed to add ten years to my appearance. That said, the fastest way to shorten my youth was in the field of love.

Needless to say, I wasn’t excited in the least about girls my age. Mature women, much more so.

If possible, above thirty or, better still, forty. In other words, the mothers of my classmates. I had the rare fortune of losing my virginity to one of the latter.

On a cold February afternoon in the early 1980s, my actual goal was to return a copy of the first Hungarian edition of The Lord of the Rings to my classmate Béci. Not having mobile phones back then, it wasn’t possible to organise things on the dot. Béci happened to be at fencing training. Béci’s father was working night shift, so it was his mother who opened the door. She was wearing her dressing gown, while I was in a rabbit fur hat, bow tie and a coat with a black velvet collar, carefully coordinated pieces from my father’s and grandfather’s wardrobe. Even our respective clothing led to sparks.

My classmate’s mum stared at me as if I was some kind of an apparition. My retro looks caused a minor explosion in her imagination. She could see her own father come alive in me, from the days when she was still a little girl, and this first man constituted a reference point for all subsequent men in her life. She told me all this later, on that afternoon I could only sense the awkwardness that overcame us until it got charged with high voltage sensuality. After I casually handed over my crook walking stick and removed my grandfather’s deer skin gloves, I proceeded to opening my paperboard suitcase in which I was carrying the borrowed books.

By the time we were leaning towards each other over the suitcase, our erotic complicity was obvious to both.

In my mannish awkwardness I kept mucking about with the rusty zip until it suddenly opened, and the three hefty volumes of The Lord of the Rings nonchalantly fell on the hallway carpet.

While bending down, as if competing in courteousness to pick them up, we both lost our balance. Instinctively, we grabbed hold of each other. In the course of this movement, we realised that we were no longer doing this to regain something but to lose as much as possible.

In the months that followed, I borrowed and returned a few other very exciting books, but it would be an exaggeration to claim that with this I had managed to reckon with my burdensome youth once and for all.

I had to wait another two to three years until the total showdown, and I can reveal that it happened way before my infamous thirtieth birthday.

My mother was unable to express her love on a wider scale, but she excelled in cooking and feeding me.

Preparing food was the activity in which she got to the highest level of achievement in her life, even if, in hindsight, I’m in a position to conclude that experimentation, imagination or attention to the way food is served was entirely absent from her repertoire. Despite this, seeing her bustle about the kitchen day in, day out, with a passion as if she were solving matters of life and death, had given me a boost to last a lifetime. Without her example, it would have never occurred to me to take up the job of a kitchen boy on my first ever summer employment at the local railway station cafe.

Working as a kitchen boy has changed my life. I realised that I wanted to be a chef and nothing else. I don’t mean the kind of chef like my boss, who did a quick vocational course only to concoct something barely edible from semi-prepared products and seasonings for the travellers who happened to pass by, while he was selling the actual ingredients on the black market in our non-existent socialist system.

I didn’t even bother to enrol in the third year of secondary school. I moved to Budapest, where I begged for a place as a dishwasher boy with uncle Joci, the chef about whom I had heard that he was one of the best in Hungary. At the time, uncle Joci was running the kitchen at a top restaurant called ‘Mátyás pince’. I learned an awful lot from him during that year, moving from dishwashing to the kitchen and ending up as his sous-chef. The major conclusion that I came up with, however, was that in socialist Hungary there was no such thing as gastronomy, not even a hint of it, and this was my true interest.

Being still underage, I couldn’t obtain a passport, so I had to revert to defection, which I could execute without a fault knowing the ropes as a resident of Scarbantia, officially known as Sopron. What’s more, I even managed to transport the most valuable pieces of my father’s and grandfather’s wardrobe to the Austrian side of Lake Fertő (also known as Lake Neusiedl), across the reeds, and meanwhile not slip my crook walking stick from my hands.

I didn’t stop till France, where, as an underage asylum seeker, I was immediately offered a place at a cookery school in Montpellier. After a theoretical course that lasted for a year, in parallel with which I was learning French day and night, the next autumn I was sent to practice my skills at a gourmet restaurant in Arles.

For the last three years, the restaurant had been run by Madame Galoubet, ever since her husband, Monsieur Galoubet, who was the original owner, died of a sudden heart attack.

The couple’s son, who was two years older than me, was studying in Paris at the school of the Renault factory. He had no interest in gastronomy beyond eating, in which respect he was like any other French man or woman, but his passion was mechanics and he wanted to be an automotive engineer.

Madame Galoubet had the opportunity to learn about gastronomy at her husband’s side, in addition to which she also a natural at practical skills, so she was able to perfectly manage both running the restaurant and doing the job of a chef. Besides, almost everybody from the staff stayed loyal to her after her husband’s death. That said, she wanted to ensure succession, which is why she decided, for the first time that year, to take on a trainee chef.

In Montpellier I realised that I wasn’t only born Hungarian but also French to the same extent,

however, this French side was slumbering in me so far, seemingly dead until being brought to life. My initial shock in Arles was that the Roman city of my childhood (Scarbantia), which had only survived in the shape of the odd ruin in today’s Sopron, had suddenly been rebuilt, complete with a Roman theatre, the amphitheatre and the baths of Constantine the Great.

In Madame Galoubet’s restaurant I could clearly sense that I arrived at the place where I had started off, having left the railway station café in my hometown. No matter what I’d do in my day-to-day work, there would always be something new to discover. I found the right tone with everyone among the staff, and a particularly good boss-subordinate relationship with Madame Galoubet. I couldn’t ask any professional question, no matter how insignificant, that she didn’t explain with utmost patience and competence. What I was most impressed with was that even when the restaurant was jampacked on a Saturday evening, the staff would be still easy-going and relaxed. The kitchen would be inundated with orders, with the various platters of flamboyant dishes wobbling on the arms of the coming and going waiters like a bunch of giant butterflies, just about to test their wings. A thousand and one things would be happening at once around the fridges, ovens, pots and pans on either side of the counter, but this wouldn’t lead to tension, on the contrary, it would just liberate everyone and fill people with an odd sense of elation.

We would normally close just after midnight, and by 1 am a new sense of order and tidiness would reign in the kitchen, of the kind that tends to turn eerie any place where hustle and bustle gives way to sudden stillness. The counters, as well as the various hanging pans, pots and various kitchen utensils would be glimmering mysteriously in the dim light. Gradually everyone would go home, except for me, the trainee, whose bedroom was set up in a space right next to the vegetable storage. I loved the scent of fresh Mediterranean herbs exuding through the wall.

One day, I was heading back from the courtyard bathroom with my toothbrush in hand in such an after-closure quiet hour. Next to the staff entrance there was a small garden table, where we used to have coffee and smoke during our breaks. I almost stepped into the house, when I noticed that somebody was siting there in the dark. I stopped in my tracks. It was Madame Galoubet.

– Everything all right, Madame?

– Sure.

She has never replied to me so curtly before, not paying any attention to her words. Despite the dark, I was able to sense that she was sinking in herself.

I was about to move on, but then it occurred to me that it may not be very polite to leave her alone if she was upset. I stepped closer.

– May I be of any help?

– This can’t be helped, just leave it.

She suddenly straightened herself and motioned gently with her hand.

– The wind is blowing over the wheat stubble – she said.

I didn’t get it.

– People say this around here – she explained – when someone is over forty. Harvest is over, so is youth.

Goodness gracious, we have finally made it to my hobbyhorse!

As much as my French knowledge allowed, I put forward everything I thought on this topic. I managed to bring a smile to Madame Galoubet’s face.

From then on, we have developed a more confidential tone and started to talk about personal topics, too.

I can reveal that I found Madame Galoubet a thousand times more attractive than Béci’s mother. Taking into account our circumstances, I was in no position to even notice this though. Consequently, I dug my desires deep down and symbolically rolled a large rock above them. After our relationship took a more personal turn, however, this rock couldn’t be large enough not to start moving or hard enough not to be shaking apart.

I won’t go into details, but in the end, I became the lover and then husband of Madame Galoubet or Elvira – as I was calling her by then.

I gave her my youth, that I didn’t need in the least, and she lavished me with that magnificent maturity that I could only obtain from her.

The time for the final showdown only arrived when I became a father. A few days before my twentieth birthday our son was born, for whom, as a mature man, I now had to bear full responsibility.

I definitely didn’t have time anymore for such pointless nonsense as youth.