Home Game

by Endre Farkas

  “I heard that you can go wherever and whenever you want,” Gabi said.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Have you ever met Indians?” Gabi asked, still studying the pictures.

  “Wait till I come back,” Emma said. She gathered the soup plates and brought out a plateful of salami, peppers and boiled eggs. “Go on.”

  “Once,” Tommy said. “There is an Indian reservation….” He didn’t know the Hungarian word for it. He searched and tried different word. “Like a ghetto.”

  “Canada has ghettos?” she asked, horrified.

  “No, it’s not like the ones the Jews were in,” he reassured her. “It’s a special place for Indians. They want to live there. There is one not far from Montreal. I went once on a school outing. The Indians get all dressed up in their costumes and dance for tourists.”

  “Are they allowed out of the ghetto?”

  “Sure. I think so,” he said, though he had never seen one in Montreal.

  “And Eskimos? Have you seen any?” Gabi asked.

  “No. They live far away in the North.”

  “Is it always cold there?”

  “Yes.” He tried to remember what he had learned about them in school. There were some stories about Indians but nothing much about Eskimos.

  “They live in snow houses. And there’s no sun half the year.”

  “No sun? How can they live like that? Do they sleep for six months?” Emma asked.

  Tommy laughed. “I don’t think so. I don’t know much about them.”

  “I know places where there is no sun at all,” Gabi said.

  “Gabi!” Emma hissed. “I heard that Canada is a big country.” She said it more as a question than a fact.

  “Yeah, it’s very big. I think it’s bigger than Russia, but we haven’t travelled that much. We’ve been to Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. I think it takes about two weeks to go from the east coast to the west coast.”

  “That’s big. Here you can go anywhere in a day, when the trains work,” Gabi joked. After a pause he added, “and if you have the right papers.”

  “Is Montreal big and beautiful?” Emma asked.

  He hadn’t thought much about the city until he tripped with Marianne and Naomi on the mountain. From the lookout he’d seen a beautiful vista of greenery sloping down, meeting high-rises of glass, concrete and steel and ending where the St Lawrence River began. “Montreal is the largest city in Canada. It’s an island and it has a mountain in the middle of it. And the Man and His World Fair is amazing.”

  “Are there a lot of people in Canada?”

  “Yeah, about 20 million. People from all over the world live there and you know what? They get along. My team is made up of all nationalities, but the majority in Quebec, that’s one of the ten provinces, is French.”

  “You speak French?” Gabi asked.

  “My French isn’t so good. The French live on the east side of town, while the English live on the west side. They usually don’t have much to do with each other. The English call the French frogs and the French call the English squareheads.”

  Gabi frowned. “Why?”

  “I really don’t know. I learned in my history class that Quebec was first owned by the French but then got taken over by the English. The French are Catholics and the English are Protestants and most of the immigrant kids go to English school. We usually end up on the English side because most business is done in English. If you want a good job, it’s easier if you speak English. Also, you have to be Catholic to go to French school. The English schools are Protestant, but they accept Jews. Most of the French speak English. Most English don’t speak French.”

  “Boy, what a goulash. Thank God for Communism,” Gabi said. “Here everybody speaks Hungarian. We’re supposed to learn Russian, but nobody does. ‘Da’ and ‘Nyet’ are more than enough.”

  “Are there many Jews in Montreal?” Emma asked.

  “Yeah, there are about a dozen synagogues and a couple of Jewish schools. And I got kicked out of one of them. I didn’t have Emma-mama chasing me with a broom,” Tommy said with a grin. Emma leaned over and pinched his cheek.

  “Isn’t that something?” Emma went back to the pictures. “They left with the clothes on their backs and now they make them in their own factory. They are their own bosses; they have their own house and their own car. They are important people. It’s wonderful what is possible when you have freedom.” She rose and pinched his cheek again. “And their beautiful son is here with us.”

  “And does this beautiful son have a beautiful girlfriend to comb?” Gabi asked.

  Tommy didn’t understand. “To comb?”

  “Gabi!” Emma slapped Gabi playfully upside the head.

  Tommy blushed. “Yes, I have a girlfriend.”

  “You have a picture of her?”

  “No.” Not having a picture of Marianne surprised him. How could he not have asked for one? “We just started to see each other. She’s Spanish, she works in a hospital and she’s a flamenco dancer.”

  “Oh, I wanted to be a dancer,” Emma said. “She must be beautiful. What is she like?”

  “Yeah,” he smiled. “I think she is beautiful. She is very free; nobody can tell her what to do.”

  “Is she Jewish?”

  “No. Anyu and Apu would like me to have a Jewish girlfriend, but…”

  “Here it’s almost impossible, but I don’t really care,” Gabi said.

  “But there it’s possible,” Emma said.

  “Anyu and Apu like her, but they’re afraid. They say that people who aren’t the same religion can’t get along. Especially a Jew and a non-Jew because as Apu says you can’t…” Tommy searched for the Hungarian word. He knew the Yiddish but not the Hungarian. “…you know,” he said, making a scissor gesture, “not cut off your prick.”

  “What?” Gabi stared at him.

  Emma snorted and began to laugh uncontrollably. “He means uncircumsize,” she said between gasps.

  “That’s a big difference,” Gabi said.

  “That’s what Apu and Anyu say also.” Tommy joined in their laughter.

  “But they’re right,” Emma said, serious again. “You should never forget what we went through for just being different.”

  Though it seemed stupid, and he wanted to deny it, Tommy had to admit that the emphasis on differences was everywhere. He had seen and experienced its consequences, even in Canada.

  “What are you studying? What do you want to be?”

  “I’m in the Commerce program but I don’t really know what I want to do. Anyu and Apu want me to take over the business. But I don’t think I’m cut out for that. And there’s no future in soccer. I should have become a hockey player. Maybe after school, I’ll travel for a year or two.”

  “You can just do that? Are you a hippie?” Gabi asked.

  “Peace and Love. What’s wrong with that? Better than War and Hate,” Tommy said.

  “You’re so naïve,” Gabi said.

  Tommy shrugged his shoulders and flashed a V sign. They smiled at each other.

  There was knock at the door. “Who disturbs the peace?” Gabi called out as he went to the door. “Coach Varga,” Gabi announced, returning with a small but well-built man.

  Yes. That’s his name, Tommy remembered. He stood up quickly but as he did, his left ankle buckled. Coach Varga reached out and caught him.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “Sit down, Zoli. I’ll make you a coffee.”

  “Thank you, but no, Emma. I have to go to practice. I just wanted to see Tomi before I did.”

  “We were planning to go and see you,” Gabi said.

  “So, I saved you a trip.”

  “I wanted to see the field we trained on and see the Békes team practise,” Tommy said as he rubbed his ankle.
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br />   “Not as good as in your dad’s days. He knew how to get the best guys. He had a nose for good players.”

  “Well, we’ll walk out with you.”

  Coach Varga hesitated and averted his eyes from Gabi. “Maybe it would be better if you didn’t.”

  Tommy glanced at Gabi, who remained silent.

  “I saw you play. You’re very good. I wish your parents had stayed. You and Gabi would make a dynamic duo on the under-twenty team. And your team was surprisingly good, but I wasn’t so surprised after seeing the team practice. Your coach works you hard but also lets you play and have fun. That’s good coaching.”

  “When did you see us practise?”

  “In Debrecen.”

  “It was you who was watching us?”

  Coach Varga nodded.

  “Why didn’t you come over?”

  “I wasn’t allowed until after the games.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “And now?” Gabi asked. Tommy felt the chill in Gabi’s voice.

  Coach Varga shifted from foot to foot. “Not really.”

  “Why?”

  “Mainly because of what you did.”

  “What do you think of what I did?”

  “It was stupid.” He paused. “But right.”

  Gabi’s lips were pursed in a tight smile.

  “Tommy, I want to give you something for your father.” He handed Tommy a small photo of a soccer team.

  Tommy didn’t know what to make of the picture. “Is that the ’56 Békes team?” he asked.

  “Oh, my God!” Emma cried out.

  “What?” Tommy and Gabi asked.

  Emma was silent as she studied the photo. “That’s Sanyi, your father,” Emma said pointing to the player in the second row. It’s the labour camp soccer team. Where did you get this?” Emma asked.

  “As the town archivist I was collecting material from the years between 1935 and 1945. Way back I asked Sanyi if he knew or had anything from that period. You know Sanyi, he was the best at getting things that no one else could. He got me some very interesting material about the Jewish community in Békes and he gave me this. You left before I could return it and I forgot all about it until I heard that you were coming.”

  “Thank you.” Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off the picture. “He’ll be very happy to have this.”

  “I’m glad that I could return it to him. I should go now. Give him my greetings.”

  “I certainly will.” Tommy shook his hand.

  “We were planning to go to the cemetery. It’s on the way. Is it okay if we walk with you till there?” Gabi asked.

  To Tommy it sounded more like a challenge than a question. The silence was uncomfortable.

  “I’d enjoy the company,” Coach Varga said, like a man who had made a decision about something important. “I hope the streets are not too crowded,” he joked.

  Gabi nodded.

  “Maybe Tommy could tell me something about his coach’s methods. Our team sure could use some new ideas.”

  Hardly anyone was out as they walked toward the station. “Let’s take the side streets so Tommy can see how the town has changed and get a look at some of the old places,” Gabi suggested.

  As they meandered, Coach Varga reminisced and asked questions while Gabi pointed out various old landmarks. Whenever they stopped in front of one, Tommy caught Gabi and Coach Varga glancing back. There was a man strolling casually at a distance behind them.

  “Here we are.” Coach Varga turned to Gabi. “Keep up the good work, and maybe one day, we’ll see you play for Honvéd.” He put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “And give your father my best.” When he was gone Tommy and Gabi turned onto a deeply rutted dirt road. The man behind them had disappeared.

  “What’s going on?” Tommy asked.

  Gabi signalled to keep walking. “The usual, except more obviously.”

  It wasn’t usual for Tommy. Occasionally he felt paranoid walking the streets of Montreal after smoking a joint and sometimes he felt that cops were watching him. Some of Naomi’s friends were convinced their phones were bugged. It was almost a badge of honour. But this felt different, more real and dangerous.

  At the gate of the cemetery, Gabi knelt and retrieved a key from under a flat rock. Although a chain-link fence enclosed the cemetery, it looked ready to fall over with the slightest push. It was overgrown with weeds. Gravestones stuck out of the earth like crooked decayed teeth about to fall out. Most of the eroded inscriptions were impossible to read.

  “This is Apu’s,” Gabi said. Tommy picked up three pebbles and placed them on top of Dezsö-papa’s headstone.

  “Why’d you do that?” Gabi asked.

  Tommy was surprised that Gabi didn’t know. “It’s to show that you were here to pay your respects.”

  “Why three?”

  “One from Apu, one from Anyu and one from me.” He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a little booklet and recited Kaddish.

  “I thought you didn’t speak or read Yiddish,” Gabi said.

  “I don’t. This is Hebrew and Apu made me practise before I came. It also has a phonetic version.”

  “I appreciate the gesture, but he didn’t believe.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, like many Jews, he couldn’t believe in a God that let the Holocaust happen. Or, as he said, ‘sat on his hands with his thumb up his ass.’”

  “That sounds like your father.” Tommy smiled. “And you?” he asked as he wandered about the cemetery trying to read the names and dates on the headstones.

  “I’m a man of facts and figures. I believe what I can test and verify. There has to be a reason for everything. And you?” Gabi asked.

  “I don’t know. I also can’t accept a God that let the Holocaust happen. But Anyu and Apu believe. Though I have heard Anyu question God, wanting to know what sin her fourteen-year-old sister could have committed to deserve to be gassed. I’ve asked them a few times how they can believe after all that. My father always says that we aren’t God so we can’t know. They don’t like to talk about it, so I don’t push it. I don’t think I believe, but for them I do this.”

  “There!” Gabi pointed to a shiny large black marble stone in the far corner. It was the only new one in the cemetery. Tommy’s parents had had it shipped from Canada.

  Tommy’s grandmother wasn’t actually buried there. She died in Auschwitz. Beneath the blessing and a split-fingered V sign of the Cohen, their names, Miklos Wolfstein and Rosie Stulberger. And beneath their names, the family history: children Sándor and Margit, daughter-in-law Hannah, and grandchild Tamás, were engraved and painted in brilliant gold. “So everyone will see and never forget,” his mother had said.

  Tommy stared at his roots. He put three pebbles on their glistening marble headstone, wished them peace, and recited Kaddish again.

  “I don’t know anything about my grandfather. All I know about my father’s father is that he died in 1925 and was a hot-tempered man who died because he bit a cow.”

  Gabi gave Tommy a quizzical look, thinking he had misunderstood. “What?”

  “Apparently, the cow bit him first. Apu said that one of his cows bit him and he got so angry that he bit the cow back. Soon after he got some kind of disease and died.”

  Tommy and Gabi laughed hysterically as they left the cemetery.

  It was getting dark, but the streetlights hadn’t come on yet. Even though there were lights on in the houses they passed, there was a ghostly feel to the village. Tommy felt as if he were somewhere between day and night, between safety and danger.

  “Want an ice cream?” Gabi asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Here’s the Nylon. It’s got great ice cream.”

  Tommy glanced at the sign. The People’s Diner. His mother had worked there.
“Why is it called the Nylon?”

  “Because,” Gabi said, pointing to the lit neon sign, “when it opened, it was the only place in the county that had a nylon sign. It was a big deal then. So, people called it The Nylon.”

  It took Tommy a few moments to understand the neon, nylon word confusion.

  “What kind of ice cream do you want?”

  “Cherry,” he said. He felt like a kid again.

  “The Nylon is like a socialist Dobos,” Gabi said, while they waited.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s my description of its architectural space. Here, this small space with an open window onto the street, is the ice cream parlour. You could think of it as the icing. The next layer, behind it, is the dining room. The body, the layers, the people and tables. And at the back, a closed-off area, that’s the bar. We’ll go there tomorrow night.”

  “What part of the Dobos is the bar?”

  “The bottom. Where the darkness is.”

  Tommy didn’t get it. He took a lick. “Mmm. It’s delicious.” The ice cream brought back memories of the mountain, Marianne and the acid trip. What a different, faraway world this place is, he thought.

  “It’s about time you got back,” Emma said when they walked in the door. “Do you want to eat anything?”

  “No, thanks. I’m really tired,” Tommy said.

  “I’ve made up your bed.”

  It was his parents’ bed. Once upon a time, he had slept there, squeezed between them, feeling warm and protected. Now it was Gabi’s.

  “I fart in my sleep,” Gabi said.

  “I probably do, too,” Tommy snickered.

  “Remember where the outhouse is?” Gabi asked.

  “Oh, God.”

  “You can piss over there.” Gabi pointed to the tree by the well.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m going to read for a bit,” Gabi said and walked to the kitchen.

  As he lay in bed, Tommy looked at the picture Coach Varga had given him. His much-younger father was wiry, and sported a Charlie Chaplin moustache. Judging from his expression, he had no idea he was about to be shipped off to a concentration camp. Ignorant of the looming horror, he found joy and escape in a soccer game.