The Dispossessed

by Szilard Borbely

  “We should take my little brother someplace, as well,” I tell my mother. I don’t understand why he was brought here. My mother tells me to love him because he is my brother. The stork brought him.

  “But why was he brought here?” I ask. “There are enough of us already. He should have been taken farther on, where there are no children. They would be happy to get him.”

  “But the angels sent him to us,” says my mother.

  I don’t understand what angels have to do with it, if it’s the stork that brings the kids. They say that the stork brings them. But none of it is true, Ottó says so already.

  “No stork brings the kittens, the tomcat fucks the queen cat and the whelps come from that.” The big boys don’t believe in the stork tale.

  Still, I promised my mother that I would love my little brother. But only for her sake. She pleads with me not to hurt him.

  If only he wouldn’t cry all the time.

  Once, when my mother was seeing out the postman, I gave the Little One some curds and dumplings. It’s what I was eating just at that moment. And when my mother went out, I stuffed his mouth with forkfuls of it. It had lots of bacon lard. The grease made a squelching sound. He stopped crying. The curds and dough fell down on both sides because it didn’t fit in his mouth. He began convulsing, but he was quiet. He didn’t cry. Then my mother came back: she rushed over to him and snatched him up. She shook the dumplings out of him. She held him by his legs and kept hitting his back. She bawled and she moaned. I saw that she wanted to beat me, but then she didn’t. She didn’t dare beat me. She just wept silently. She said that I wasn’t allowed to feed him anymore. She was really frightened. But at least now she knows.

  THE BEETLE IS STILL. IT DEFINITELY SENSES THAT I’M watching it, because it has frozen. Every one of its parts is black. There are furrows along the length of its back. The light sparkles on it. It doesn’t even move; it’s waiting. Then it crawls farther on. It keeps inching forward, toward where the wall meets the cement. When it finds a cavity, it tries to crawl in. It keeps scraping with its legs, straining. But it doesn’t fit. Again, it waits. It flattens itself out for a long time. Then it crawls farther. It tries again, looking around. From time to time, it freezes. At every crack, it wants to climb in again. Sometimes it tries to crawl out. But it falls back in. It thuds dully. It falls on its back. It freezes again. Its legs writhe in the air. It begins to spin from the exertion. Sometimes it tips, but it can’t turn all the way over. Then suddenly it is motionless. It waits. Then the spinning begins again. I watch as it fumbles along the pavement next to the wall. Sometimes it stops to think. It goes backward. Even though it went that way already. But it forgot. Beetles are stupid. Hens are also stupid. It tries to go along the exact same cracks with the same excitement, as if it had never gone that way. It really wants to conceal itself. The sun is beating down on it. It is just past noon. Old Pintye has rung the church bells already. I got toasted bread with garlic, because there isn’t anything else. I’m hungry, I’m sitting on the sidewalk. My mother chased me out of the house. I like how the beetle is spinning on its back. I turn it with a tiny branch. I watch it writhing. When I get bored, I hold out the little branch to it. It clutches at the branch distrustfully. But it doesn’t let go. I turn it over. Then it continues its search for a hiding place. I place a large, flat stone in its path. I always have a large, flat stone in my pocket. I collect them as skimming rocks. I skim the rocks on the surface of the water in the brick-caster’s ditch. The beetle creeps beneath the rock. At last, the sun isn’t shining on it. There is a shadow. It calms down. I wait a while. Let it be glad. Then I suddenly remove the stone. As the light strikes the beetle, it begins to writhe again. It doesn’t understand what has happened.

  The grown-ups call them mourning beetles. They don’t like it when they are near the house. My mother treads on them instantly. She turns the tip of her foot to the right and to the left. She grinds them into the earth. On cement, they leave damp smudges. They look like wood lice. They live in earth holes and in cellars. They are bigger and have a worse stink. I crush them with a brick or a shovel. White mush bubbles out of them. It’s disgusting to look at. Their smell is abominable. I hate black beetles. So I hate this one, too. I want to wear it out. I’m waiting for it to give up. But it doesn’t give up. I get tired of it. I tread on it with my heel. I feel its carapace resist and then suddenly burst. And I twist my foot around on top of it, to the right and to the left. As I’ve seen the grown-ups do. Then I spit once.

  My mother always spits if she has to do something disgusting. Afterward, she spits once. If she doesn’t have any saliva, then she pretends that she spit once. And she says, “Pffu!” Like when we come upon carrion when we are going somewhere. And most often in the forest. We step across it, and then my mother spits once. Big green flies are already whirring around. Some of them fly up noisily. Other times, she just repeats the sound that goes with the spitting. This is the expression of contempt. Of fear. Of disgust. Of hatred.

  YOU CAN BRING ON AN AFFLICTION BY SPITTING. YOU HAVE to spit on something and then pronounce an incantation. Mostly it’s money that people spit on, or matchboxes. Many people keep their money in matchboxes. It’s something they’re always picking up. Then the affliction descends on them; they writhe. Máli knows incantations like that. She won’t tell them to my mother. When Máli tell stories, they’re always about witches. She tells us about the crooked bone.

  “With a crooked bone, you can cast a spell on someone. Sometime around Saint George’s Day, you must catch a bat on the wing. Then, while it’s still alive, place it in an earthen vessel with holes in the bottom, and bury the bat in an anthill. The ants will chew off its skin and flesh. Dig it out a few weeks later and pick out the crooked bone from all the others. Then, if you know how, you can do many things with that bone.

  “If you pull something toward yourself with that bone, then it will be yours. If you push the tip of something away from yourself, then it will begin to be destroyed.”

  Máli pretends to know how to cast spells and transform people. When she is angry at us, she threatens to turn us into frogs. And we annoy her by telling her to change us already. And we start croaking.

  “You have to do it in secret, not in such a way that people will know,” she says. But we laugh at her.

  When we are walking through the forest, we find a dog’s bloated corpse beneath some burdock leaves. At first, we can only sense the smell of carrion. We begin to look for what it could be. My older sister finds it. She lifts up the leaves with a stick. She doesn’t see the dog, and she stabs the stick into its stomach. White maggots come pouring out of it. They twist and writhe because of the light. Or maybe because they miss the warm, decaying carcass. My sister turns away and throws up.

  Máli bends down and with her left hand reaches into the carcass. She hides something beneath her work apron, putting it in her skirt pocket. I can smell the stink until we get back home. That evening, I tell my mother that Máli took something out of the carcass. Máli believes in superstition, says my mother: she believes that if somebody takes something with her left hand from an animal carcass and then throws it between two people with her left hand, those two people will hate each other for life.

  “Is that true?” I ask my mother.

  “No. People who believe in superstition are stupid,” she says. But my mother is superstitious, too. She is afraid of the evil eye. And I’ve noticed that my father also believes in it, although he says he doesn’t.

  WE WALK AND WE ARE SILENT. WE ARE ALWAYS WALKING somewhere, and while we walk we are silent. I count my steps. We speak only infrequently. We walk for a long time. My shoe presses on my toenails. I grew out of the shoes a long time ago. When they pinch a lot, I cut out a hole where the toe is with a scissor. I free up my big toe so my toenail won’t swell. But still, it swells up sometimes. I always wear used shoes, maybe that’s why. My older sister’s shoes, or somebody else’s. All the shoes are bad because they
’re worn out. I like going barefoot the best. We call it bayfoot. When springtime draws near, I go about in bare feet. The skin on my soles quickly becomes hard. I can already walk across the stubble to Péter-Pál.

  “You have to slide a little bit on the soles of your feet. Don’t take steps but force your foot forward a little bit and glide along,” Máli instructs me.

  The soles of Máli’s feet are so hard that she can even walk on a gravel road. She can stamp out the glowing embers that come from the chimney. She can also put out cigarette butts with her feet. She can walk on warped, burning asphalt where tar has melted and great bubbles have formed. By the time of Saint Illés’s Day, everything has become so hot that it nearly bakes.

  I don’t like shoes. If we buy them, I always get shoes that are two or three sizes too big, and my feet slide around in them. We stuff the toe of the shoe with cotton wool. And I walk in the shoes like a clown. I step carefully like a big-footed clown, and my calf muscles get tired. I have to take big steps, and my feet make unnatural movements. Very soon, my muscles are strained. The tendons grow fatigued quickly. The big tendon in the back, my crooked tendon. We call it my crook string. But usually we get someone else’s shoes. Most often, I have to wear my sister’s shoes. I am made fun of because I wear girls’ clothes. I don’t want to wear the really girly clothes. Sometimes my parents take pity on me. But for the most part, I wear girls’ clothes. The boys say that I’m a girl. My older sister does not take good care of her clothes, so I have to be very careful with them so that my little brother will be able to wear them.

  “Be careful of your clothes,” says my mother, “we can’t buy anything else.” I always hear this.

  Holiday clothes have to be protected the most.

  “We can’t buy anything else! Be careful, because your little brother will wear them after you.”

  I KEEP TELLING MYSELF THAT I ONLY HAVE TO HOLD OUT until the poplar tree. It’s already close. Or until the bridge. I always pick a nearby goal. Because I always have to go somewhere. In the winter I’m freezing, in the summer I’m hot, but we must go. In the summer I’m always thirsty. I would like to drink something, but there isn’t anything to drink. In the fields, the water in the flask boils. The water in the jug with the wicker covering stays a little cooler. They say that the green glass protects it from the sun. Everyone puts water in green bottles. I don’t want to, but I have to drink it. We walk in the rain; in the winter we walk in the snow. The pelting rain beats into my eyes. The fine hail scratches me like sharp needles. But always, we have to go. We are always walking somewhere. Either out to the fields or up into the village, to my grandfather’s. We live in the New Row, not in the Old Village. The postman knows the name of the street, Jókai utca, but no one calls it that. The New Row is below, that’s what we say. Because it really is down below, in the area known as the Bottomlands. It used to be called the Buffalo Bath. In the spring, the earth here stinks. It has a swampy smell. I am happy when we go up to my grandfather’s, because there is no swamp smell there. Máli and my grandfather live together in the old family house. We have to help them. So that Máli will have enough work brigade units to qualify for a pension. Work units are counted by the collective. And there are always arguments, because everyone counts them differently. We are always walking along some kind of balk. We call it baikie. That’s where you have to work. And I always have to work. In the courtyard, in the garden, or in the house. I would like to play, but I can’t.

  “When I’m finished cooking, we’re going to help Máli! So start getting ready,” says my mother. “Give the hens something to drink.”

  “Fine,” I say, but I know that it’s not fine.

  “Then collect the eggs!”

  “Then when I finish, can I play?” I ask my mother.

  “No. If you’re finished with that, then shuck the corn and grind it. Then chop up the nettles for the goose.” We call them jenny-nettles.

  “Mix it with the cornmeal and let it sit until we get home. The geese like it better like that. Because then it doesn’t scratch their throats. Then cover it with chicken wire so the magpies won’t carry it off . . .”

  And so on. My mother always gives me more work. As soon as I finish one task, another awaits. There is never an end to it. In the meantime, my older sister watches over the Little One. My mother hangs up the clothes, pinning them to the clothesline; then she takes them in again. She folds and irons them, and then sorts them and puts them away. I scrub potatoes and garlic because we are going to have flour soup with potatoes, says my mother.

  My grandfather’s favorite dish is flour-dumpling soup, she’s making it for him now. Sometimes, when she’s really angry at him, she spits into it. She thinks I don’t see her.

  IN THE EARTHEN-FLOOR KITCHEN, YOU CAN ALWAYS FEEL water flowing through the ground. But you can feel it most strongly in spring. At that time, the ditches fill up to their banks with water. In spring they flood and bring the fragrances of the nearby woods and the faraway river. The river, just a little brook throughout the entire summer, swells up to enormous size. It floods the river basin and flows more quickly than at other times. But its flow is always rushing. It runs quickly, carrying along trees, odds and ends picked up from here and there. Sometimes it hauls along carcasses. Cows with bloated stomachs, sheep, decomposing dogs. You can only just see the whites of their turned-up eyes. Sometimes their noses are turned up, too. They come from Romania, which we can see. We see the mountains lost in the distance.

  “Over there, those are the mountains of Máramaros,” says my grandfather. On the side of one blue mountain, a white spot shines.

  “What is that spot over there?” we ask.

  “It’s a salt mine,” says my grandfather. “Salt is mined there, that’s why it’s so white,” he says. My grandfather has never been there. But he was told about it, so he knows. The river’s source is there, in those mountains. The village fears the river. The village is once again filled with anxiety when the river swells. Everyone thinks back to the old stories, the horrors that occurred in the times of their grandfathers or their great-great-grandfathers, stories that were told to them during the long, empty evenings. The village at once remembers and forgets. It selects between what is important and what is less important. The good from the bad. Then, once again, it mixes them up together, because in the meantime it has forgotten what’s important and what isn’t. No one who is born here ever wishes to go anywhere else. No one ever thinks it’s possible to live somewhere else. To raise a family somewhere else. To build a house somewhere else. Far away from the river, where you wouldn’t have to be afraid of the floods every spring. That’s how peasants think. But we are not peasants.

  “We’re going to leave here,” my mother keeps saying.

  “BECAUSE THE WATER HAS ALWAYS LIVED ON THESE LOWLANDS,” says my father.

  “Once there was an old rabbi at Old Mózsi’s house, and he spoke of this. He said that the Soul of the Water lives here, the Soul of the Water that was here before the people came to live here, to the lands where the colossal forests once stood. This is the Wooded Ridge. The realm of enormous oak trees, of aspens with their trembling leaves. The people ventured only with caution among the willows along the banks of the water. Into the world of the winding waters, where in springtime the poisonous lily of the valley emits its overpowering fragrance at the base of the oak trees. Its bulb lurks there in the water-sodden earth. For the entire year, its poison green funnel leaves collect the morning dew into themselves. And no matter what time of day you lean over it, the tiny drop of water that is always at the bottom of the funnel of the leaves coiling around the stalk twinkles up toward the heavens and winks at you. The ground here is always watery. The mossy earth cannot absorb the moisture, for it is pure loam. Oily and damp loam. It is yellowish in color. In some places it is black, a deep black that does not allow the waters down into the deep. There below, where the sand-drift layers lurk, the wandering fine-grained sandy silt soil is concealed. T
he superstitious well-diggers speak of this. Because they are terrified of it. When they let the well cylinders down, breaking through the loam, and they reach the sands, they must be fully on their guard. The sands that lie beneath the loam will carry away the man searching for water. They collapse all around him, burying him, and he is never found, for he is swept away in the embrace of the sands. There below, in the depths, the fine yellow sands drift and wander. Below the surface, below the layer of loam two or three meters deep, are the sands. And below the sands are the pebbles, which the former rivers brought here from the blue mountains, far away.

  “This is the uncertain plinth, the moving earth on which we live. Upon this stand the houses, the temples. We have built upon the silt, the drifting sands. Upon a sweeping, undulating, congealed sand-mirror. There in the depths, a different, mysterious river network flows. Certain rivers and rivulets plunge beneath the surface, and they flow there beneath the houses, the granaries, the temples, the stone-paved roads. They surge along toward the cemetery, the carcass pit, toward the Outer Village under the hill.

  “A man does not even suspect that he is walking above congealed rivers with their slow sweeping movements. If these depths opened up, the houses, the wooden-spired belfries, the tiny temples that have stood here for almost a thousand years would all disappear. They were built from brick that was fired from clay, for in this land there was never stone. Here there are only the waters, everywhere. Loam and mud. Upon the earth, in the air, and down below in the depths, as well. But thanks be to the Almighty, blessed be His name, for He does not allow the waters below to break into our world.