“Your health! Your health!” they yell out and quickly knock the liquor back.
Later on, half-drunk, they shout out, “God! God!” as they down the drinks quickly. No one is allowed to say this, though. According to Party insiders, God doesn’t exist. Party members aren’t allowed to believe in him. Every week they go to Party headquarters, and they don’t believe in him there.
“But we go to the Pinkas’ house,” says my mother. The priest there does believe in him. But my father isn’t sure. Sometimes there are family debates about this. They always end in an argument.
“By God’s cock, how could He not exist?” my grandfather asks.
“Don’t say blasphemies, you old bumberhead,” says Máli and guffaws. Máli is my aunt. She is my father’s older sister. Her face is full of wrinkles. “If he doesn’t exist, then he doesn’t exist. Not everything is possible. This isn’t some request show.
“It’s not like we’re poor around here, and we could say we ain’t got this or we ain’t got that. We ain’t got nothing,” she tells the joke, and everyone guffaws.
“It’s easy to say,” says my father, “that God doesn’t exist. But even the people who say it don’t believe it. Because they take their kids to another village, as far away as possible, to get them baptized in secret,” he grumbles. “God is just something that the priests made up,” he finally states.
My mother doesn’t believe that God doesn’t exist. Actually, neither does my father. But she is quiet, she doesn’t want an argument. She never wants arguments. She prefers to change the subject.
“Those who preach water drink wine . . .”
MY MOTHER WANTS MY FATHER TO CALM DOWN.
“We have nothing to do with them, this is something for people in the Party. For the insiders. Let them say what they want, and God will strike them down in the end.”
The men are afraid of one another, that’s why every night they go to the tavern. Because if they are together, they can keep an eye on one another. The women stay home. Because the men are more afraid of a woman’s mouth than they are of one another. They are also afraid of being alone. The women can bear solitude. They have their kids. Women aren’t afraid of anything. Only of the men, when they come home drunk late at night and beat the children.
My father’s older brother is the proprietor. First the tavern was at my grandfather’s house. A door was cut out of the street-facade wall into one of the good rooms in the front. My uncle saw from the Jews how it should be done. Before they were taken away, Old Mózsi was the proprietor. You have to dilute the drinks for there to be any point to it.
The men suddenly throw their heads back as they toss down drinks. Any kind of work begins like this, as well. “Well, just one more round,” they’ll say while they’re slaughtering a pig. The women distribute and then collect the shot glasses. The men swallow it down all at once. There are those who get the shivers. Those who clear their throats. Those who spit on the ground. They praise the brandy. The stronger, the better. Their faces are distorted. They curse.
The men only drink what’s on offer. Everyone knows it’s diluted. When they drink, their berets fall onto the dirty cement floor. From fall to spring, sawdust is brought from the sawmill and is sprinkled on the floor. While it’s still fresh, the tavern has a forestlike smell. Then it has a swampy smell. Then the smell of vomit. The smell of urine. The indigo-blue berets, falling off the heads, are trampled by muddy shoes.
“Whore mother of God! Whore bitch of God!” they yell, bareheaded. Their bald spots shine.
“God’s wanked prick, what the hell are you doing, trampling on my cap . . .” they say. And if the cap is immediately trodden upon even more, they laugh. Because they’re afraid of each other. They’re afraid of the brawlers who are looking for a fight. They’re also afraid of the Communists. And of the spies, who inform Party headquarters of what they’re talking about. But they don’t know who the spies are, so they’re suspicious of one another. Everyone is suspicious of everyone else. Only the brandy loosens this within them.
They drink. Their faces are imbecilic, smirking. By the faint light, you can even see into their throats. The bare lightbulb glows pale yellow. It gives the tavern a cryptlike air. As if it were a cave. They guffaw ever more stridently. Everyone is shouting. They don’t even understand their own words. You could go deaf. They ask each other for cigarettes. The old men smoke pipes. My father and the men in his family smoke only cigarettes. Everyone is tense, in a hurry. They collect the cigarette butts and roll new cigarettes out of them. They are ashamed, but they reach down for the stubs. Most of them smoke coarse tobacco. They cut newspapers into small pieces and roll tobacco into them. Everyone gets some from the Tobacco Production Branch of the collective.
“It would be better if they paid money,” says my mother.
There is no money. They chop up the tobacco, using a tobacco knife, on the small chair that is kept underneath the bed. Everyone has a small chair like that under their bed. Each one is different, because everyone cobbles one together for himself. But they all look alike. They have crooked legs that were chopped off from handles of wrecked pitchforks and rakes. The men are very careful with the tobacco. They place wrapping paper beneath the chair, because every grain is precious. The old men sweep up even the tobacco dust. My grandfather’s family uses it as snuff. They use pig bladders to make tobacco pouches. My father and his relatives keep the tobacco in tin boxes, and they don’t sniff it. Sometimes they chew on the cigarette butts. Their teeth become tartarous and yellow.
Gedi and I tried it once, but it wasn’t good. It stung our noses. The old men sit on benches and smoke their pipes. My father and the other men smoke gaspers, squeezing them between their index and middle fingers. Their nails are yellow from nicotine. So are their thumbs, because at the end they have to squeeze it between their thumbs and fingers until the cigarette burns down to their nails.
“Fuck that whore God,” they say and stamp on the cigarette in rage.
While it lasts, they smoke with swollen eyes. The real smokers have a butt dangling out of the corner of their mouths the entire day. They don’t take it out until it’s entirely used up. Even if it’s burning their mouths already. Sometimes it goes out because there’s a tobacco stalk in it. We call that the taxman’s leg. Even then, they don’t take it out. In their nervousness, they gulp it and chew on it. They speak with it smoldering there in the corner of their mouth. Sometimes they put it out so it will last longer. They spit into their palms and put it out. They never throw it out. They chew on the tobacco remainders. Their saliva is yellow and tarlike. They spit out thick gobs. Their teeth are yellow stumps. Everyone has had a few teeth knocked out because of the fights in the tavern. They never wash. The older men have hardly any teeth left.
The men are always going from one place to another in troops. They work by day, they drink by night. Their faces are bitter. They all wear indigo-blue work clothes and jackets. In the winter they put on quilted jackets and fur hats instead of the usual berets. We call them ushankas. They became popular because of the Russians. Every piece of clothing hangs off the men and is always dirty. All day long they’re at the collective; in the evenings they’re in the tavern. They’re feral, neglected. Their hair is greasy and matted. There are rubber boots on their feet for almost the entire year. In the winter, they put them on over thick footcloths. In the summer, they wear them on their bare feet. In the evenings, I help to pull the rubber boots off my father’s feet. He stands in the middle of the room, his head bumping against the perimeter of the electric light. He staggers back and forth. My mother is silent. My father speaks as if his mouth were full of dumplings.
“I’m not drunk,” he says to my mother. He nearly falls down. He wants to show that he is not tottering, but he is tottering.
“Can’t you see I’m not drunk? We were just talking a little, discussing things with the comrades . . .”
“I think it was probably you who paid,” said my mother.
“I treated them once . . . maybe even twice,” he says. “And what of it? It’s my money. I earned it. Sometimes you have to treat the colleagues . . .”
“Don’t play the gentleman with me,” says my mother. “Just lie down and don’t wake up the Little One.”
My father sways back and forth.
“Pull off my boots, my sweet son,” he says to me. I don’t move. I’m afraid he will hit me. Or fall on top of me.
“Pull off his boots, because he’s going to fall over,” says my mother. When my father again tries to lean forward, he loses his balance. He heaves and then begins to throw up. The liquid is gushing out of his mouth. He swallows it back. He lurches toward the door. The door stays open. I see the stars and my father’s back as he leans forward. I see the evening star from the bed as he leans forward to retch. The cold evening wind brings in the smell of vomit. It also blows in from the Ramp, and it brings the bitter tobacco smell from the tavern. When my father staggers back into the room, he collapses onto the bed. I pull off his boots. The vomit is all over my hands. It was on his boots. I go to the washbasin. I wash it off. My father, in the meantime, leans back. His feet are still on the ground. He immediately falls asleep. He snores and gulps in his sleep. He licks the vomit from the corner of his mouth. Sometimes his body convulses. His hands beat at the air. Then his arms fall back, powerless. My sister pretends to be asleep. I lie down. I stop up my ears so I can fall asleep. The three of us listen to my father’s snoring.
I WALK AND I COUNT. WHEN I WALK, I COUNT TO MYSELF. I count my steps.
“Look where you’re going,” says my mother. Sometimes I fall into a ditch because I’m not watching. My clothes get stained. I’m thinking about something else. I’m imagining that an angel has descended and walked into our village. I count the telegraph poles. The trees. The dogs. When we walk along a street, I count the windows. The gigantic petals of the dahlias. The cries of the rooster. The fence posts. I count everything that can possibly be counted. I figure out what I’m going to count next. I count, and in the meantime I trip.
“What a clod you are,” says my mother. With one hand, she grabs me. With the other, she whacks me on the back of my head. Then she dusts off my trousers. In the meantime she gives me a good slap on my behind.
“Don’t stand there gaping. Watch where you’re going!” she hisses into my ear. My knees are always scraped. If I’m wearing my short trousers with suspenders, then she isn’t so angry. I cry because my knees hurt. The wound burns. The slag concrete is the worst. And the cement. Asphalt gets stuck in the wound.
My mother takes out a handkerchief and wipes my nose. She spits into her palm and smooths down my bangs. Tears stream down my face.
“Don’t make a flood! Don’t just stand there like a heap of misery,” she yells at me. “You’re hopeless, just like your father.”
I play with numbers. I take them apart and I put them back together. I figure out what they can be divided by. There are numbers that can’t be divided by anything. Those are the ones I like.
“YOU’LL KILL ME. YOUR FATHER WAS A MURDERER, TOO,” MY father yells. “Leave me alone,” and he runs outside. We’re used to it already. He always throws up when he comes home. My father has a weak stomach, they say.
“Don’t drink if you can’t take it,” my mother says the next day.
“I drink because of you,” says my father.
“The hell you do!” says my mother. “You’re a piece of shit, that’s why you drink.”
“I promise I’ll stop,” my father vows.
“It’s not because of me that you drink, so don’t make any promises. Just stop drinking,” she says.
My mother turns her back to him. She is angry. They avoid each other’s gazes. My father feels deathly ill. He has already drunk the brine from the sauerkraut. It didn’t help. He’s suffering like a dog. He promises that it will never happen again. He always makes that promise when he’s like this. Never again will he go to that place with the old brigade.
“It always ends like this,” he says.
My mother utters not a word. My father is out of work. He goes to the woods to collect tinder. He gathers branches and acorns. Mushrooms. When there are mushrooms. During the days, he chews on wild pears. He doesn’t come home until evening. My mother is ashamed, she doesn’t go outside.
BEFORE WE GO TO SLEEP, MY FATHER TELLS STORIES ABOUT witches. Or he tells stories about spell-casters, ghosts, or destructive spirits. The scariest thing about them is that they can turn into animals.
“A witch can turn into any dog, cat, horse, or bull. Especially at night. They change forms after midnight, their power lasts until the rooster’s crow. Once, our neighbor told us that she thought a witch in the form of a white dog was in our sty. As a child, I only knew about this because my parents said that at dawn a witch would suck all the milk from the cow’s teat. She always disappeared as soon as the rooster crowed. Then the cow wouldn’t give milk for weeks. The neighbor warned us that a little white dog sneaked out through the cat hole every morning at dawn. People said that our other neighbor, that old Mrs. Kotvász, was a witch. We tried to watch for the dog. But it knew how to get in so that we wouldn’t notice. I waited with my father by the cat hole in the dawn darkness, with a shovel and a pitchfork. When the cock crowed, my father raised the pitchfork and I the shovel. But we didn’t wait in vain, because the dog came along. We tried to hit it, but it was smart. My father injured its back right leg with the pitchfork. It ran off, limping. It disappeared among the plum trees, underneath the hedge. A few drops of blood showed where it had gone. But the trail was lost in the weeds. We waited in vain the next day—the dog didn’t come. Nor the day after. Then we heard that Mrs. Kotvász had been bedridden for two days. With a large wound on her right leg. No one knew how she could have gotten it. Like someone had stabbed her or something. After that, we never saw the white dog ever again. And in the mornings we could once again milk the cow,” he says.
I can’t fall asleep for a long time. I’m afraid of witches. I’m afraid of spell-casters, of evil spirits that turn into bulls. I’m afraid of the evil eye, of incantations. Of Gypsies, who steal children and eat them. Of Jews, who snatch up children. I’m afraid of wells. I don’t even dare go up close to them because frogs live inside, and they use their lassos to drag children in. I’m afraid of nighttime, too; I don’t dare leave the house, because the copper-pricked owl is lying in wait in the dark. My heart is pounding. I’m frightened by every sound. Everyone else is sleeping by now. I listen intently. Then I fall asleep, and in my dream, everything goes on as before. Something huge, dark, and whirling is descending upon me. When it has almost completely crushed me, I cry out. It’s dark. I wake up to my father walking to and fro in the room.
“Stop crying already. Everything is fine,” says my father.
“TODAY WE’RE HAVING MATZOH TO EAT, BECAUSE THAT’S all I can make,” says my mother when we get home. I break up branches with my older sister. I chop the thicker ones in the shed with an ax. By the time I get back, my mother has already kneaded the flour together with water, salted it, and rolled it out flat. She puts it to bake on the burning-hot surface of the iron stove. We warm our hands above it. The spring is still bitingly cold. Our father is attending a class. He was kicked out of the collective. He couldn’t get work for a long time. He was with the ditch-diggers. For a while he even worked in the grain combine. But he was fired from there, as well. Pump operators are being trained in Kenderes. The accommodations are in the Horthy mansion.
“I never thought I’d be living at the regent’s,” says my father at home.
My father will be the immersion pump operator, but he has to pay for the class. And for a year now, he has had no wages. My mother tries to make some money. She fattens the ducks, stuffs the geese, sells the chickens and eggs. She sells as much as she possibly can at the district market. Beans, garlic, most of the potatoes. Only the tiny or marred ones don’t get sold. She is a day labore
r now. At night she does handiwork, embroidery for the handicrafts cooperative. She even accepts help from the Gypsies. From Aranka Rézműves and her family; they are our Gypsies. Or rather, my grandfather’s and his family’s Gypsies. Hungarians, though, never talk to Gypsies. Sometime Aranka brings mushrooms or acorns for the pig, things she finds in the woods. They help us because when we were able, my mother helped them.
“You’re not like the other Hungarians,” says Aranka.
My mother likes Aranka, but she doesn’t like Gypsies.
“Your father has been given a serious task,” says my mother. But I can feel that she isn’t happy; instead, she’s afraid. That’s why she’s talking to us, to try to convince herself. She’s afraid that my father will have to undertake all the work himself. There is no one to work shifts with him. He will be on the banks of the Túr River day and night. My mother isn’t happy about this. The pay is very little. And the responsibility is too great.
“But it will be better very soon,” she reassures us. “In the spring, your father will flood the rice fields with water.” The bulldozers have already evened out the ground, and the low dams, channels, and water irrigation ditches have been prepared. Large pipes were laid down, and enormous faucets were welded onto the pipes. The sluices of the irrigation channels were paved over with concrete. The sluices’ iron plates were moved up and down by long screws. My father will regulate all this. He will open the faucets, lift up the sluices, start up the loudly puffing motor that powers the generator and the pump.
I should be proud of my father, but I’m not. I’m afraid of these machines. I can’t stand the noise of motors. I’m repelled by the machine lubricant, the diesel oil, the smell of the rust and iron filings.
The Dispossessed Page 3