The Dispossessed

by Szilard Borbely

  “Here the rabbi paused in his remarks. The lights of the Sabbath candles were ablaze. They quivered as the rabbi spoke, because in the meantime he sighed very deeply. Whenever he took a breath, he struggled as if he were suffocating. Rain beat down on the drainpipes of the windowsill. It rained in torrents, ever more threateningly. It rained uninterruptedly the entire day, as if preparing once again for the Flood.

  “The rebbe looked into the distance, the very far distance.

  “‘The first world was destroyed by fire. The second world was destroyed by air. The third, by water. Ours will be swallowed by the mud of the earth,’ said the rabbi. Around the table, anxious silence lurked. Goga and his little sister began to stir as they woke up again. They nestled even more closely into the adults’ laps, where they had been napping. They slept deeply while the rabbi, a guest, spoke. ‘Before long, the father of destruction shall come, in order to help his son, who is called Malkuth,’ he said, and there was no fear in his voice but rather a concealed sadness. The musings evoked by the story slowly faded from the children’s eyes. Then someone rattled the door. We all started.

  “Old Mózsi opened the door; he was pale. As he stepped across the threshold, he felt that there was something soft beneath his soles. Something that was usually not there. But we could sense it already, we recognized the scent,” said my father.

  “‘They’ve smeared pig shit here again,’ said Mózsi sadly.” Here my father falls silent. We, too, are silent. He always takes a deep breath when he comes to this part of the story. My father hates pig shit because he was always the one who had to clean it up. He went to get the shovel, he sprinkled dust on the shit, and with a brushwood broom he scraped it onto the shovel. He took it out back, out to the manure pile. He got water from the well, filling the bucket only halfway because he could hardly carry even that.

  “I wasn’t even eleven years old yet. I had to bring water to pour on it, because water washes it off. They had been calling me over to their house for years already so that I could light the fire beneath the cholent. So I could light the lamps. So I could kindle the fire. The oven was piled up with firewood, I just had to light it underneath. They couldn’t do it because it was the Sabbath. They couldn’t even clean up the pig shit. Because it’s impure. Because of this, I was mocked in the village as the Shabbes goy. I didn’t mind, because I always got something as a present. Old Mózsi loved me as if I were his own grandson,” said my father.

  “Otherwise, it was your uncles Feri and his lot, Sányi, and Mihály, who were the instigators. Feri was the loudest one. Afterward, they all became big-time Communists. Your grandfather was on holiday by Murder Lake at that time,” and my father left the story half finished, like someone who doesn’t understand even what he himself is saying. And who now seeks the meaning in the story. But he doesn’t find it.

  “THE EARTH HAS NEVER DRUNK THE WATER HERE BECAUSE at every moment the currents slash the fields to threads—currents small and large, rivers and rivulets, ditches and troughs, arteries and canals. We call the canals hollows. The lowlands here are fairly close to the mountains. You can see them like a bluish veil hung across the horizon. The water running down the mountain wants to hurry, but it encounters obstructions and therefore must seek detours. In the beginning it makes little diversions, then it slows down, casting ever larger snares. Seen from above, it looks as if someone pulled a thread from a ribbon, causing the fabric of the rivers and rivulets to swell. It becomes a wavy, frilly arabesque.

  “And so that is how the Almighty, blessed be His name, guided these waters for millions of years here on the lowlands, just as the shepherds, ambling along behind their flocks, drove them to this place. The waters are everywhere; they cannot be avoided. One must seek out bridges, shallows, timber rafts, ferries, in order to keep going on.

  “Vapor floats always in the air. At dawn, fog conceals the trees, the woods, the marshes. In the evening, dew alights on the bushes, the leaves of the grasses. In the forests, the water lurks beneath the fallen leaves. It stands within hand’s reach in the wells. For most of the year, you don’t even need the chain or the well handle if you want to take some water. That is why the wells are covered with wooden planks, so that children won’t fall in. That is why the grown-ups frighten them from the wells with bloodcurdling tales. They tell the children that in every well there lives an evil frog with a rope. And if someone leans over the circular mirror of the well, the frog will drag him in. Down to the bottom of the well.

  “The story is unbelievable, but still terrifying. The curious ones dare to go near the well, but as for looking into it, only the truly brave and reckless do not fear to do so. That is how parents protect their children; it’s how they were protected when they were children. Because there is never an end to anything. Just as hatred shall never cease. A man repeats every mistake an infinite number of times. That is why they are afraid for the children, because they, too, were children. Anyone who gives advice lures someone into a snare. Never believe it. Because here, no one can be trusted,” my father says.

  THE EARTH HERE IS SALINOUS OR LOAMY. EVERYTHING rots or dries out. There is never a good harvest. If it rains, what was sowed rots away. If there’s no rain, it dries out. This village is cursed, that’s what the old people say.

  “It’s not bad soil,” claims my grandfather. “The Communists ruined it.”

  And he pushes his hat back.

  “They should never have allowed houses to be built in Buffalo Bath. I said that to your father, too. But he never listens to me. The problem isn’t with the land. There are such fields here that can’t be believed. Our land was in Fornyos. But you have to know what can be planted where. Your mother’s grandmother, old Juszti and her family, had a few acres of land in Tumblefields, beyond the road. It’s hard to plow there because the soil is loamy. There, the plow just tumbles in the soil, and the animal nearly dies in it. But it bears produce to the one who knows its ways. If someone loves the earth, then the earth loves him back,” says my grandfather. And he falls silent contentedly. From time to time he sucks at his pipe and spits. Then he blows his nose. He makes hacking sounds. He spits out phlegm. When he speaks of the Communists, he always spits once.

  “They think that life is only cream, and all they have to do is lick it up,” he says.

  I don’t know who he’s thinking of when he says that. The Communists, or my father and his relatives.

  At home, my mother says the same thing to my father.

  “You have to lick their boots. Try to understand already, you have to suck up to them. It’s the bootlickers whom they leave in peace.”

  “I do my job, I work day and night,” says my father.

  “You work, you work. Of course. Like feet with no head. But that’s not what you need to do. You need to lick their butts, try to understand that already,” my mother repeats.

  “Then we’ll starve,” says my father, “because I don’t know how to do that.”

  “It will be your fault. Think about the fact that you have a family. Then it will be easier.”

  But it isn’t easy. My father can’t do it. In the evenings, he comes home drunk. My mother waits the entire night, weeping silently. She rocks the Little One.

  “WHO ARE THEY RINGING THE BELLS FOR?” MY MOTHER asks Máli, who has come from the Ramp, because there you can find out everything.

  “For Auntie Juhánka,” says Máli, just like that, disdainfully.

  At other times, she brings the news of death palely and with tearstained eyes as she steps into the house. By the end she is sobbing; you can hardly understand a word she says. That night, she is one of the first to go to the house of the bereaved for the vigil. She sings the loudest next to the grave. She always pushes forward among the relatives toward the coffin; they draw back from her a little. Her brothers and sisters are ashamed of her, but that’s what Máli is like. She doesn’t notice anything. Her favorite songs are funereal chants. When she is in a good mood, she hums them to herself. In
the pastures, as well, while she’s working. In the courtyard, in the garden, out in the fields. In a quivering, weeping voice. Her mouth laughs, but her eyes weep. She sings between her tears, her voice trembling: “Already my coffin has been lowered to the bottom of my grave . . .”

  She likes funerals the best. And illnesses: who has what illness, she’s always talking about that. She sings as if there were always a burial going on. The gathering of mourners, who the priest addresses as “my brethren,” breaks into song when the coffin is slowly lowered with ropes down into the yellow clay. The grave: the final resting place, from where, with the exception of the two driest summer months, the groundwaters must be sluiced out with a bucket.

  At the end of the ceremony, the priest closes the book. He clasps his hands and presses the book to himself. His responsibilities are now complete. The strained silence is palpable. A wave of restlessness moves across the crowd. Then the cantor, who is always a little drunk at burials, takes a deep breath, his head growing ever redder, the veins bulging in his neck, drops of sweat running down his forehead even in winter. The men’s heads are uncovered. Their bald spots are shining. Now it is time for the culmination of the ceremony. The people sing with all their strength, and, just like in the fields when they work, they compete with each other. Forcefully, tensely, they sing, each wishing to outsing the others. The last song at the burials is more like a desperate howl. Whimpering fear can be heard in the final farewell. They chant, dragging out the slow rhythms as the ropes are lowered, and the coffin, painted dark brown with walnut stain, with the name of the deceased and the number of years he lived written on the side in silver industrial paint, is lowered into the grave.

  And the village observes; it stores these pictures away. It notes whether the women wept enough, whether the men did what they had to do. Because this is a performance, the last great performance that is organized for the sake of the departed. The village retains every memory. Every funeral is spoken about for days, for weeks afterward. Every detail is dwelled upon, every word brought to light. Everyone adds a tiny detail that only he noticed. They speak about it again and again until the final form of the memory of the burial is fixed and polished. They will return to it during tedious evenings, or when they are working together.

  For the funeral, Sunday-best clothes are taken out of their moth-scented chiffon. Suit jackets, grown too small, strain across the men’s stomachs and bottoms. They feel like they’re suffocating in their buttoned-up shirts. With their fingers, yellow from the unfiltered “barefoot” cigarettes, they clutch at the ends of the ropes. Two other men pull out the two beams on which the coffin, hovering between the lower and upper worlds, has thus far rested above the empty grave. The muscles of the four men holding the ropes strain, their faces turn purple, their shins tremble. The soles of their feet search for a solid foothold next to the slippery pile of clay at the grave’s edge. Slowly they lower the coffin as the ropes slide across their callused palms. The relatives throng closer to the pit. Máli is always there, getting in the way, as the priest decorously withdraws to the back.

  When the coffin has been lowered all the way down to the bottom of the grave and the men have pulled the ropes back up, the pagan part of the ceremony begins. Helpers rush forward. At the funerals of the well-to-do, one man jumps nimbly into the grave and stands on the two beams placed there lengthwise, the top of the coffin between his legs. He places short planks in a cross from oak, if possible, which will resist decay for a long time in the watery earth. He creates a wooden platform known as a pádimentum. The others hurriedly pass planks of wood down to him.

  They do their work frantically, haphazardly. Everyone is thinking of the feast already. The men are thinking about the brandy, about the stuffed cabbage, and, with relief, about life. The children draw in closer to each other; the women look forgivingly at the men, who will soon be drunk. Everything is determined in advance. This is when soil begins to rain down on the coffin. The relatives each take a clump, a loamy piece of earth, and, weeping, throw it toward the deceased. It falls resoundingly onto the lid of the coffin, or onto the floor planks. The sounds are intensified by the cavity of the grave, the hollow space within the coffin. These last sounds are necessary. This is the final, distant touch between the living and the dead. Then the final farewell breaks out anew. This is the last chance, the very last moment for love and for hate. Now every studied veneer comes apart and despair breaks out, the cowering fear of ominous death in everyone present. Then those who shall live on forgive the deceased a lifetime of hatred. Now, or never again.

  From the throats of those made abject in life, suffocation bursts out. Eyes roll back in their sockets. Faces remove from themselves the cowed discipline, the discipline of conduct forced upon them from school onward. The women try to jump into the ditch. The pain of wives and mothers, gathered over a lifetime, now suddenly breaks forth like an abscessed wound. They tear out their hair, they cover their faces. Their mouths, twisted, turn down. Their heads thrown back, they shake their fists at the heavens. They do not curse, because of the priest, but their bodies convulse in knots from howling. Sounds hitherto unknown break forth from the parched throats, from the gasping lungs. Sounds that are not like sounds made by humans.

  The men do everything to try to impede disgrace, as they say. They grab the women, squeeze them to themselves, comfort them with clumsy and ungainly movements. They embrace them around the waist, they caress the women’s hair, they wipe away their tears with rough hands. Sometimes among the women, there are those who bite. There are those who scratch. There are those who calm down from being touched. Sooner or later they are all tired and give themselves over to the dignity of a woman’s fate, which is the suckling and the raising of pain itself. The nurturing of suffering for an entire lifetime. Unto the grave. The village watches with suspicion as the congregation sings apathetically. Obediently, they follow the cantor. They sob out the song together in the name of the deceased. They know that sooner or later, this will be the fate of all of them. This is why they are attentive. A stupid man learns at his own expense; a smart man learns at the expense of others.

  Even weeks later, on the Ramp, someone will still bring up the subject of the burial. They criticize the priest’s remarks, they analyze every quiver of his face. The cantor’s singing is discussed: he was drunk again, but all the same he held up well. They observe the signs of grief, and whether the relatives behaved correctly. If there was anything in their conduct that should be noticed. They take the measure for a lifetime of who was present and who was missing.

  Máli is never absent, she never misses even one funeral. Now, however, she conveys the news to my mother indifferently. When my mother asks her who the bells are ringing for, she isn’t interested at all.

  “What Auntie Juhánka?” asks my mother, who can never really get things straight in the village. No newcomer can ever really feel sure of herself.

  “Which one, which one, well, the one with the fat ass,” Máli says, “you know, the sister of Auntie Tóni.” Auntie Johanna and Auntie Antónia. Johanna Lemák and Antónia Lemák. “They lived next to the granary. They always wore black, they were a couple of wizened old maids. Johanna Lemák, she was seventy-three years old,” says Máli. Seventy-three can be divided only by itself. And by one.

  “Poor old Auntie Juhánka,” says my mother. “May God rest her soul.”

  “One left to rot, another in his spot,” answers Máli, because she doesn’t like them. Máli never forgave them for not coming to her mother’s, Mária Pop’s, funeral, because they were angry at her, and they didn’t forgive Mária Pop even in death.

  “Don’t talk that way, it’s not right,” my mother shushes her. Máli is happy that she can annoy her.

  “In his ass a horse’s cock, in his hand a crooked cane,” she says and laughs.

  THERE ARE DEEP DITCHES IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE. THEY are used to drain the Buffalo Bath. In the old days, only chervil and hemlock grew here. In springtime, t
he ditches are completely full of water. And snails swim in the water. Black water snails. I sit on the edge of one of the ditch and I watch the snails. I rub the side of the ditch with my feet. The soil becomes luminous, pearls of moisture collect on it. Sometimes my sister sits here with me. But we rarely get along. Girls don’t like to play with boys. I don’t play with her. I’d rather watch the snails. They are black and sticky. They’re not like the snails in the garden. The water carries them away. When there are floods, the water flows backward in the ditches. The water comes from the Túr River. We put a tin can on the end of a broom handle. We pierce holes in the bottom with a ten-centimeter-long nail so the water will flow out of it. We filter water through it. We catch snails this way. We collect the snails in a big glass jar. We don’t know what they eat. The grown-ups say they eat water plants. We put those in the jar, too. We watch the snails for an entire day. Then we forget about them, because we are preparing to be relocated. There was an announcement from the loudspeaker on the Ramp that we are going to be relocated. We are allowed to take one small piece of hand baggage and one day’s worth of cold food, the loudspeaker rasped.

  “That’s what they said to the Jews,” people whisper in the New Row. The Gypsies are afraid. Because all the same, they will be the first to get onto the buses that will arrive at times outside the normal schedule.

  My uncle Sányi, the town crier, announced that we might have to leave at any moment. And ever since then, every day he announces that we must always be prepared to leave; the time for relocation could be any moment. The men have already been taken away. My mother says they’re working somewhere on the dams. They’re reinforcing them with sandbags.

  Every morning my mother gives us money, and every morning we get a cup of sour cream. We call it scald cream. So there will be something to eat. This is a cold foodstuff. My mother is very afraid. My older sister and I reassure her that everything will be fine. Military helicopters fly above us. We wave to them from the Ramp. The men inside wave back. Sometimes we see strange vehicles. They’re known as tank-tread vehicles, because they can also swim. I would like to try that. My sister and I are excited waiting for the flood to finally come here, because then maybe we can ride in one of those vehicles. Our mother will be cheered up by the fact that we will finally be leaving here. She’s not happy about it now. Until then, we fish the snails out of the ditches.