“What news, Béla?” she asked seriously, simply, as if talking to a grown-up.
“None,” I said, thinking of the sweets.
And my mother really would reach into her battered handbag and take out a packet of potato sweets.
Meanwhile, the kitchen door sprang open in a distinctly melodramatic way and old Rozi came out, swishing imperiously in her black silks, with her big cross, like a village queen.
“How are you, how are you, dear?” she’d murmur as soon as she saw my mother. “Long time no see. How are you, precious?”
“Thank you, Rozi,” my mother replied humbly. “I’m all right.”
The old woman patted my mother’s shoulder with condescension and a saccharine smile, looking her up and down with a hard, malicious eye the while.
“What lovely fine dress you have, precious,” she noted with extraordinarily mean-spirited emphasis, a reminder of the money my mother owed her; her sickly-sweet smile never faded from her lips.
“This thing? It’s five years old, Rozi,” my mother replied awkwardly, and quickly changed the subject. All her clothes were exactly five years old, poor thing.
Like in a well-rehearsed play, that was how these conversations used to go, more or less word for word, visit after visit, year after year. And then came the second act: scolding me.
“That son of yours, precious!” jabbered the old woman, “Why, he biggest good-for-nothing ever born!”
“That son of yours, precious, he end up on gallows one day, on my soul!”
“That son of yours . . .”
It went on like that for half an hour or so. She listed all my sins of the last quarter, down to the littlest detail. She had an incredible memory, and never left anything out. Everything she said was true, but what she forgot to say was why I did all those things. At the end of the day, the root cause of almost all my misbehaviour was that she wasn’t giving me enough to eat.
But I had learnt early that silence was golden. I neither accused her nor defended myself. I just stood there, my legs spread wide, hands in my pockets, and stared at the old woman’s gap-toothed mouth as she spilt her verbal slop.
My mother, too, was silent. She shook her head in increasing irritation, and from time to time shot an angry look at me. When the old woman finally finished, she’d start up herself.
“That the earth don’t swallow you for shame, you ungrateful boy! After all the kindness Rozi’s shown you!”
That was what she always said, word for word. Well, I thought, you can keep running your pie-hole as much as you like. Just you try old Rozi’s kindness! Then whoops! the squirrel did a little hop, sticking out his tongue. But I just stood there, silent.
“I’ll see he gets what’s comin’ to him, the little good-for-nothing,” she said menacingly. “Come on, you shameful creature.”
I went. With heavy, deliberate steps. At the end of the garden, there was a peach tree with a decaying, backless little bench beneath. We sat down there. My mother’s demeanour changed as if she’d become a different person the second we were out of range of the old woman. Instead of berating me again, she looked quickly around to make sure no one could overhear, and then softly asked:
“She givin’ you enough to eat?”
“No she damn well ain’t!” I replied. “Only when you come.”
This, too, was a scene we’d play every time. My mother would knit her brow and stare silently in front of her for a while. Then she’d say:
“I’ll have a word with her.”
Even at the age of five, I knew that was a barefaced lie. Squirrel snickered away quietly. As if she really would have a word with the old woman, I thought to myself, like hell she would! I know now that the poor thing was always behind on her payments, and was in constant fear of Rozi putting me out on the street, or sending me up to live with her in Budapest. But I knew none of that back then. All I knew of the whole thing was that my mother was lying to me. Instead of taking the old woman to task, she was all sweetness and light with her; it was enough to make you sick.
But I never said a word about that, either. I just sat on the rickety bench under the old peach tree and held my tongue. The sun beat down on the tree, and little yellow latticed spots of light trembled in the shade. I stared at those. My mother, too, just stared with those small, black, deep-set eyes of hers into the distance, or drew meaningless shapes in the dirt with the point of her shoe.
Around us, the yard was full of life. All the young mothers were chattering away, all over their little boys, playing with them, running about and teasing them so you could hear their boisterous mothering all the way down the street.
My mother, I could see, didn’t really know what to do with me. She was no good at endearments, either in word or deed, and she was generally in no mood to play. So she just sat there beside me as beside another grown-up with whom she had nothing particular to talk about.
I, too, was to blame for our not getting closer. My mother did, occasionally, experience a sort of strange and timid affection, but I—without meaning to—always trampled on these delicate buds of feeling. I remember she asked me once why I “looked so mean” all the time.
“Go on, have a laugh for once!” she said cheerfully, tickling me.
I was naturally ticklish, so I jumped up and she ran after me. When she caught up with me, she grabbed me, pulled me close, and kissed me again and again. I don’t know why, but at that moment I was overcome with an indescribably awkward feeling, a vague but intense shame. I pulled away from her with something akin to revulsion. As if she’d felt it, she let go of me at once. She didn’t say anything, just quietly adjusted her kerchief and went in to old Rozi to “settle up”.
Settling up was always hard. The old woman must have kept on about her arrears, because you could hear the sound of loud and bitter arguing from the front room, and when my mother came back to the yard, you could always tell that she’d been crying.
“Come on, then,” she said curtly, in a dry voice full of suppressed tension. “G’night.”
That’s what she’d always say in parting, “G’night”, though the sun was still shining brightly. Her train left a few minutes after seven, but we were always at the station by six. That hour until the train departed seemed intolerably long. The station was always full of people, because down our way, going out to the railway station on a Sunday afternoon was one of the great, worldly pleasures of village life. Hardly anyone actually went anywhere; people just paraded up and down the platforms in their Sunday best, forming little groups, greeting one another, having a little walk. The gilded youth were all there, and there were plenty of colourful bright dresses on display. The lads were overcome with a mischievous cheer, the girls all giggled as if someone were tickling them. The two of us looked on, like an ageing couple, at all this happy youth, and sat in silence like before, beneath the peach tree. But this was a different kind of silence. Though I didn’t know why my mother had been crying, and come to think of it, I wasn’t too curious either, I was nonetheless all at once overcome with an endless, heart-wrenching pity for her.
Who can find their way in the impenetrable jungle that is a child’s heart? I’ll admit, even if you think me inhuman for it, that I never felt what you might call a son’s love for my mother. But I was almost always sorry for her. I felt so sorry for her I sometimes felt a physical pain around my heart. As small and ragged a child as I was, I felt stronger, smarter, and more capable than my mother. I remember, even at the age of six, I could have sworn I could handle my affairs better than her. But what could my mother have known of all that? I sat beside her politely and tried to make my face as dumb as a lowing calf ’s.
The train arrived at last. The wheezing locomotive belched smoke and the sleepy little station filled with the exciting smell of farewells, distance and adventure. I was relieved when my mother had boarded, but my heart nonetheless still felt heavy somehow.
“God bless,” she said.
“God bless,” I repl
ied.
Then the conductor blew his little horn and the train lurched forward. My mother never waved, but disappeared immediately behind the window.
4
ONCE, WHEN I WAS WATCHING her train depart, I was overcome by a strange and frightening excitement, a chilling, magical feeling that constricted my throat and that would for years and years come over me each time I smelt the smell of train smoke, so full of adventure.
I want to try and describe it as precisely as a medical diagnosis. I must have been six. It was a stifling early midsummer eve. I was standing barefoot by the rails, not thinking of anything, just watching the red lamp hanging on the back of the train vanish in the distance. All at once, for no reason whatsoever, I felt a heavy, dull, incomprehensible pressure in my chest, and my throat closed so convulsively that I could barely breathe. It only lasted a few minutes altogether, but those few minutes were so frightening and so desolate that I lost my head completely. My heart pounded at my ribs and I felt my tears flowing into my mouth. I felt a terrifying, sharp, shooting pain, an almost physical desire to . . . leave. Leave my mother, leave old Rozi, leave the village. Where to? I didn’t know. Why? I didn’t know. I had no rational goal in mind, no clear desire, only an idea. To go, go, go.
But I was a peasant boy, with a peasant’s common sense, and half an hour later, I was saying to myself: “foolishness!”
But whenever I smelt the sharp, exciting odour of train smoke, I was overcome again by that strange and frightening desire, so that I began to scare myself.
My teenage father must have felt the same when he ran away from home. It may even have been just such a stifling midsummer eve when he was overcome by wanderlust, and perhaps he didn’t know either where to or why, but just upped and went, like a sleepwalker, following his irresistible desire.
On these occasions, I would avoid the high street, which was always crowded on Sunday evenings in summer. Peasants, if they’re not given to drink, don’t really know what to do with their time on a Sunday evening. Those were long days, and by the afternoon, people had recovered from the week, done their share of this and that, and were bored of doing nothing. They stood around their garden gates, as if they’d been waiting for Monday to come by the evening train. That was how people spent their Sundays.
I made my way home with a big detour through the fields. Until I was out of the village, I paid meticulous attention, as always, to my “rep”. I ambled along with heavy, deliberate steps, hands in pockets, chin pressed down onto my neck, like an old peasant. Now and then I would spit juicily out of the corner of my mouth, for I was absolutely convinced that that sort of thing enhanced one’s reputation. But as soon as the last houses faded behind me, I broke into a sudden run as if I’d been possessed. I ran through fields, meadows and pastures for as long as my legs would carry me. Then I would throw myself face down in the grass, panting, and lay perfectly still. The total opposite of before. The whole day’s confusion would evaporate from my head, and the dumb tension in my nerves would ease off. I felt, lying in the young grass, beneath the unexpectedly broad sky, like someone who, after travelling strange and dangerous shores, had finally come home.
Dusk was gathering, but only the early dusk, when it seems you’re seeing the world through a pane of glass gently overspread with a pale fog of breath. The field was pouring out the sunlight it had absorbed and there was the smell of warm earth as the sun bled on the horizon. The sky was dappled like a wonderful, endless peasant shawl, and somewhere in the distance the cowbells of a herd returning home sounded dully. I was home.
I wended my way back to the village quietly, humming. By nature, I could never walk past even the dirtiest cow, the shabbiest horse or the mangiest dog without giving them a long, tender pat. I felt an odd, unbounded love for animals. There weren’t many people for whom I felt as much affection as I felt for, say, dogs. I didn’t love anyone, not even my own mother, but it seems that man must love something, and in my case, that was animals. I was on friendly terms with all of them. Even the most vicious dogs in the village liked me, and even the Count’s haughty greyhounds made a fuss of me, though I had no food to give them.
Few dogs had it as bad as I did. I almost always left the table hungry. The old woman was not one for equality, and every child was looked after according to their mother’s means. And yet there weren’t really significant differences, except for me, because the mothers used to visit their children regularly, and they would complain about any injustices. Péter would protest that Pál was getting better food, while Pál would whine that Istvány was getting more to eat. The poor little servant girls felt sorry for them, and they always managed somehow to produce the requisite little sums, so that a week later Péter would be eating the same as Pál and Pál would be getting just as much as Istvány. But who was there to care for me?
My mother, when she visited, was always having to make excuses for being behind on her payments. The poor thing really was in no position so much as to bring up the matter of how the old woman was feeding me. Day after day, I had to watch children my own age get more, and better, food than me. Is it any wonder, then, that I turned out the way I did?
There were moments in my childhood when I would have been capable of doing anything for a good meal.
I stole, I confess. I was like a magpie. In vain did the old woman keep everything under lock and key from me; necessity and practice honed my thieving into a fine art. There was hell to pay, of course, when she found out, but I never once felt remorse—I remember that clearly. There are situations in life in which not stealing is downright perverse. I hold that to be true to this day.
Was I meant to waste away, emaciated and consumptive, just to protect that tired old whore’s filthy, ill-gotten goods? Not me!
Gradually, I became as determined and cunning as a prowling fox. I realized, for example, that you could turn the human thirst for revenge to your advantage. For, it should be noted, children still live by the rule of the fist. The stronger is always right, and every boy wanted to be right. Not me. I was hungry, and didn’t give a damn about Platonic truth. There is only one truth for the hungry: bread. I didn’t fight out of amateur enthusiasm, like the other children. For me, fighting was a serious, breadwinning, affair. Whenever two boys would start to quarrel, I would go up to the weaker one and say:
“How much’ll you give me to lay him out for you?”
I asked ten fillérs, but I was willing to take on anyone for two, though the business did have its risks. The children almost all belonged to gangs, and sometimes I found myself up against an entire band. I left the battlefield with a bloodied head more than once, but I didn’t care. The coins tinkling in my pockets made the happiest sound in the world, and I could go to the shop and get myself some bread.
The great highwayman Sándor Rózsa was my hero. Other boys wanted to be priests or generals, but I longed to be an outlaw who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. I didn’t actually distribute what I got, but then again, I would have been hard pressed to find anyone poorer in the village than myself.
5
IN THE AUTUMN OF 1919—I was six at the time—my mother lost her position. Instead of postal orders, the poor thing now kept sending begging letters to the old woman, one after the other, imploring her for goodness’ sake to wait, at least till the first of next month, she was bound to find a new position by then. But she didn’t.
One day, as I was innocently sitting down to eat with the other boys, the old woman burst out of the kitchen and shrieked that there was to be no lunch for me, because my mother hadn’t paid a penny for my keep in four months.
“And you not sort of dear child I keep for love!”
At first, I didn’t understand. I just stood there with my legs spread wide, my hands in my pockets, my chin down on my neck, and watched the old woman rant, waving in her hand my mother’s letter, which must have just arrived.
“If your filthy mother don’t owe so much,” she screamed, “I throw you out in st
reet long ago, stinking gallows rat!”
I was still silent. The other children had begun to eat. My mouth began to water as I watched them. I remember it was potato paprikás with kolbász sausage, and I can still sense its pleasant, tickling aroma. I was damnably hungry. My throat was constricted with sobs, but I wouldn’t have cried for all the world. I could see the children’s sly expressions as they leant low over their plates and shoved each other under the table, waiting to see what came next. So I paid special attention to my rep.
“Muther’ll send those few pengős soon enough,” I said, trying to reason with her, “please give me somethin’ to eat, I’m so hungry.”
“Sorry,” the old woman said, shaking her head. “Why you not tell whore mother not to make herself child if she not pay for it!”
I saw that the boys could barely contain their laughter. An incredible anger took hold of me, I was trembling all over.
“You’re the whore!” I screamed, beside myself, and ran off.
The old woman was not usually the generous type, but when I said that, she threw the whole dish of potatoes at me so hard that it shattered into pieces. Fortunately, it only hit my backside and didn’t do any serious damage. I kept running, but even out in the street, I could feel the good, hot paprikás dripping off my rear.
I was filled with impotent rage. My first thought was to go round the back of the house and take the old woman’s eye out with a slingshot. I believe I could have strangled her without blinking, but I had learnt that you can’t eat rage, and so I turned my attention to more pract ical propositions. I looked around the village to see where I could steal something. I couldn’t steal anything. I was beset by ill fortune; I couldn’t pilfer so much as a piece of fruit. As soon as my old friends, the dogs, saw me, they broke into such a chorus of yaps in their excitement that the farmers’ wives appeared straight away in their kitchen doors. I spent hours hunting around like that, in vain.
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