MILAN TRESCH: TWO GIRLS ON ONE BENCH

I am now writing my review/recommendation of this wonderful three-part novel while still under the powerful impression of the story after finishing it. I am undertaking to highlight what the author himself intended to show: the beauty and greatness of human relationships — in sport, in family, in friendship, in diligence, in willpower, in recognition… how one can endure the unbearable, and also how time may pass, may rush forward, may even defeat us — yet what truly matters remains… becoming a treasure, unforgettable.

“The order means nothing — I simply cannot place the names one after another, and I also do not know with whom I should begin,” writes Milán Tresch in his message — and that is not a problem. On the contrary.
In this way, the story connects even more strongly across the three parts, repeating, complementing, and reinforcing itself.

We see the lives of two girls from Miskolc from many perspectives — that of a friend, a husband, a son, a coach, a PE teacher, parents, acquaintances — and we also see both past and present. The story of the two girls from the ironworks district, “who managed to get more out of life than what their environment had intended for them.”

“The high-school years are the most honest. Then everyone is who they truly are. This is worthy of a novel, Mesi.”
This was the conversation that inspired Milán to write Edó’s story.

Papp Edit — like my own family name — the tall, quiet girl from 1975, from eighth grade, who becomes Emese’s desk-mate at Kilián High School for four years, is the main character.
We receive a wonderful character portrayal of her — of both of them — from the author.

What was Edó like?
According to the characters: “Unshakeable. Sharp-sighted. She was the only one who never beat around the bush. A mother tiger. The most just friend. When she looked at something, it became clear, purified.”
According to her husband: “Edó is always right.”

“Edó, in your previous life you must have been a countess,” Csaba used to say.
“So much elegance cannot come from Avas South.”

Yet that is exactly where she came from. Emese as well.
They were bound together by a kinship of souls and by sport — basketball. The endless struggle of the “Giraffe” and the “Long-Legged One,” the constant training, and the will to win. The superstition of the “purple hair tie” dissolves and becomes something mysterious — “something that reminded them of the ability to let go.”
Like letting go of childhood — its taste falling into the past… only a photograph taken at the Mese pastry shop preserves the feelings of that time.
“There are things after which nothing is ever the same — and there are things that remain the same forever.”
Friendship. Love. Respect. Memory.
And through Mesi’s adventurous fate, Edó’s path becomes even more emphasized.

How many parallel lives! Edó and Mesi. Edó and Csabi, her husband. Edó and Milán, their child. Edó, Csabi, and their friends.

And then illness overwrites everything — and the “too early end.” Edó’s.

“I must let her go,” said Csabi.
Mesi advised the same: “Survive — however you can.”

Yet “mothers write themselves into their children’s lives” — we know this since Milán’s birth.
This is the surf of time. The way past and present connect throughout the three parts.

The basketball girl “missed the final shot,” and her “last championship match,” which she had feared, became reality.
She kept throwing the balls in the circle of her “teammates,” but she could not win the real match.
The pass was wrong. The feint was wrong. The passion faded.
Her loved ones had to accept the failure in order to go on living with the memories.

In this trilogy, almost every line seems to weep “for the beloved who has strayed onto a distant road.”

A “home-made, family book.”
The feeling that radiates from it — in Váci’s words — is that “the soul speaks and strives toward the light, carrying us page by page along the hidden stream’s path.”
Often there is hardly enough air while reading, and we understand that this is a life-tale written from the heart. We also feel what Saint-Exupéry expressed so beautifully:
“…there is only one true luxury: that of human relationships.”

“Writing is, in fact, an intimate and solitary family constellation. Its effect can be even more elemental, because a person does not place their burden on the shoulders of a sympathetic community, but on paper. And paper is more obedient than our fellow sufferers — it carries the weight placed upon it further, silently and reliably.”
These thoughts of Miklós Vámos are true for this story. Because when sorrow is written down, the soul becomes lighter.

And yet: “something remains in the air — warmth, light, a fire that Edó once lit, and which is now being kept alive. Some people leave, but they do not disappear. They are the ones we gather around — whether at a table or in the glow of a screen — and they will be with us whenever we speak their name.”

The dear reader receives many such original messages in this authentic, gripping, and moving story, told in a clear yet restless, fragmented-but-flowing narrative style — when the eye, the ear, the heart, and the mind are all under its spell at once.
Everything here is cinematic, worthy of film, as the story of the two girls who once sat on the same bench — and remained friends forever — comes alive before the reader.

I have selected the thoughts that were most beautiful to me, but it is impossible to show everything.
To do that, one must read, live through, and feel these destinies.
This is what I encourage everyone to do.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have come to know the “wholeness” of a family through the words of Milán Tresch.
Edó’s memorial has been completed — unique and worthy of her, stronger than marble or granite — because she lives in the hearts of her companions.

/Mária Plószné Papp/