In a few days, the glass jar is putrid. There’s an abominable stench. The snails inside are floating at the top. We spill out the dead snail shells into the ditch. It looks like they are swimming. But it’s just the water sweeping them along.
“We are the snails,” says my older sister.
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
“How could you know, you’re a boy,” she lashes out.
“What you mean, that boys can’t know? What do you know that I can’t know?” I yell at her.
“Boys are stupid,” she says, “and slobs.”
That’s what my mother always says when she whispers with my sister. My mother likes my sister better. And my little brother, because he is the Little One.
“Girls are the stupid ones. They stink like piss. When I’m big, I’ll give you a thrashing,” I say. I spill out the rest of the snails in the courtyard. I trample on the snail shells. A slimy and putrid liquid flows out of them. The hens peck at it.
NO ONE IS BOTHERING WITH US NOW. THE MEN DON’T COME back, even at midnight. They’re working on the dams. The schools have been closed, all the children are at loose ends at home. Gedi is at home, too. If he doesn’t have work to do, he comes over to our place. Or I go to his house. We sit beneath the lower branches of the cherry tree, and we spit. In the courtyard there are three cherry trees. In summertime we sit here and we spit cherry pits into the courtyard. The hens rush at everything helter-skelter. When something falls, they snatch it away from each other. They also peck up the cherry pits that we spit out. They are always hungry; they snatch up everything.
“They have to eat stones so their gizzards can digest,” my mother said. Once we found a nail in one of the gizzards. It was coated in calcium. I spit out cherry pits with Gedi and we laugh at the hens.
But now the cherries are not ripe. Now we just spit. The mucus rolls a little bit on the ground from the momentum and collects dust. As the dust clings to it, it slows down. It rolls, a little gray ball. The hens throw themselves at it. They push forward, making a huge uproar, a commotion. If we find a worm while digging, we throw it, too, to the hens. The worm hangs down from the lucky beak; the other hens run after it. They peck at the worm dangling from the beak. The worm twists in pain. We laugh. It’s really funny. We look for more worms. Also caterpillars, beetles. Hens eat everything. We bring them baby snails from the kitchen garden. We’re bored. And we are hungry.
After Easter, there is nothing in the house. We already ate up all the ham. And the sausage, too. The cupboard is bare, there’s only bread in it. Our mother leaves in the morning for work, saying:
“Eat whatever you can find.”
But we don’t find anything. In the pantry, at the bottom of the lard pot, there’s some lard, and some preserves in the attic. Plum preserves. There’s a lot of that. We store it in large earthenware bowls. The tops are sealed with wrapping paper. Then twine is wound around them. Beneath the twine lurk caterpillars. When I unwind it, a few always fall out. I trample them. They would have become moths. Every once in a while, the twine has to be taken off to clean out the chrysalises beneath. We press them together with our fingers to squash them dead.
There’s nothing else. We always eat lard. In the evening, my mother cooks bacon with corn mush. I grind the corn in the shed. We call it grole. I measure it from the sack with a tin can with holes in it, and I pour it into the mill. Then I turn the screw really well. So it will be ground into fine grains. For the chickens, it just needs to be cut in pieces by the disk. My mother is always impatient. She yells at me, asking why it’s taking so long.
“Why are you always playing? Why can’t you do what I tell you to do, quickly?” she yells. “The water is boiling already. Now I’ll have to boil it again,” she says. She pours more water into the pot. She throws in a pinch of salt and mixes the porridge. She has already prepared the bacon.
“Put some preserves on it,” she says. She practically throws one of the small bowls onto the table. My older sister puts preserves on the porridge. I would like sugar, but I’m not allowed, because it’s expensive.
“Couldn’t I put a little bit of sugar, M’my . . .”
“Be quiet,” whispers my sister. She doesn’t want to get in trouble because of me.
“This is what we have. That we don’t have,” says my mother.
She eats quickly. She greedily spoons up the porridge swimming in lard. She mixes it well. When she is no longer hungry, she calms down. And when she has fed the Little One.
We sit in silence. My older sister looks at me angrily.
We are sick, though, of eating porridge with bacon and lard. We’re sick of bread smeared with lard. Gedi showed me how at his house they sprinkle sugar on bread with lard. They smear lard mixed with porridge on bread. Its surface glistens. Then they sprinkle sugar on top. The sugar crystals get stuck in the lard. If the layer of sugar is thin, it sinks into the lard and doesn’t fall off. If it is sprinkled more thickly, then you have to be careful. I sprinkle it really thickly. Gedi hates it, because they always eat it at his house. But his father has a job. It’s easy for them.
I cut myself a large slice. I cut a thick slice of bread. I sprinkle a lot of sugar onto it with the wooden spoon that is kept in the tin box. My uncle carved the spoon when he was a prisoner. In the Caucasus. It’s made of larch wood. He brought it back because you don’t see trees like that here. Since then, it has always been kept in the box. We have to be careful with it. I would be beaten if I lost it. I’m always afraid of getting in trouble for something. My mother would certainly beat me if she noticed how much sugar I’ve eaten.
“You’re wasting all the sugar,” she says.
“Do you all think we have sugar just to shit it out? I have only what’s here, around my soul. So you’re inviting the neighbors over to gorge on it?” she yells at me that evening. Gedi just asked for a bite, though, because he wanted some. He’s sick of it, and he hates it, but then all of a sudden he wanted some.
MY MOTHER BEAT ME. I GO OUT TO THE GARDEN IN THE back. She told me to turn up the earth, but even so I don’t. I let my sister do it. I sit down on a tree stump. The cat comes over, purring. I let it come closer. It rubs up against me. When it’s close enough, I give it a good kick to its side. I put all my rage into this kick. I’m angry, that’s why the kick wasn’t good. I wanted to kick the cat too much. My foot slipped on the muddy earth from the motion, and I could not swing my leg enough. The direction of the kick was off. It just grazed the cat, sliding off its emaciated stomach. But it was enough to make the cat jump away. Toward the fence at the base of the woodpile. The cat quickly hides amid the branches. Now it is suspicious. It will not come out. I am vexed by my failure. I try to coax it out. I call to it, trying to be nice. But my voice shakes with rage.
“Kitty, kitty! Little kitty, come out,” I say to it.
Ottó slips through a crack in the fence.
The cat can sense that something is not right. It doesn’t even poke its head out. It won’t come out, I call to it in vain. But I don’t stop. I should bring it something to eat. A piece of the soft part of the bread, with a pin stuck in it. Ottó said I should do that. The pin will get stuck in the cat’s gullet, and then it will choke. We call it goule. But I have neither pin nor bread. I usually stuff a bit of bread into my pocket at the table, but this time I didn’t. We are eating very little, my mother measures out the food very carefully, because we have to make it last. So I’m always hungry. Later, I will be even hungrier. But I’m not going to turn up the earth. I watch for the cat, in case it comes out. I hold the spade at the ready. If the cat sticks its head out, I will chop it off with the spade.
“You fucked it up, see,” said Ottó when we tried once to get the cat together. He came across to us from the neighbors’ through the hole in the hedge. He was getting on his parents’ nerves. I was bored, and so was Ottó. The cat wasn’t bothering us, but we decided to play at hunting cats.
“You’ve fucked up. Now it’
s hiding. You son of a whore,” he says.
“You son of a whore,” I reply.
“I’ll twist off your head,” he says.
“Let’s lure it back instead. Bring it something to eat.”
“I’ll bring some bacon,” he says.
My mother would beat me, so I do not dare steal bacon. We call out to the cat.
“Kitty, kitty,” we say. But it doesn’t come out.
We think up plans for destroying it. Poison would be the best. Or at least a needle.
OTTÓ HAS ALREADY STRANGLED A CAT, HE SAYS. YOU NEED welding gloves, because it scratches. But not for too long.
“If you break its neck, then it stops,” he says. “But otherwise you wouldn’t believe how much strength it has.”
Ottó’s mother told him to kill the whelps.
“The bitch has dropped kittens again, we can’t feed so much vermin. Get them out of the house,” she said. They were such cute little kittens, though. Ottó wanted to keep them. At least one. Then he had an argument with his mother, who beat Ottó so that he wouldn’t mouth off to her.
“I crapped you out! Even my own shit doesn’t speak to me like that!” she said.
Then Ottó pulled out the welding gloves and in his anger strangled the kittens. But then he said it would be more fun to tie newspaper to the cat’s cock and light it up. Then it would run like something we’ve never seen before.
“We can try it later if my mother isn’t at home,” he said. Gedi replied that it sounded pretty troublesome. It would be better to douse the cat with gasoline. If there was no gasoline at Ottó’s house, then we just had to say the word and he would bring a jar. At his house it’s kept in the shed. His father steals it from the collective. At our house, we only have petroleum. My mother washes the dirty work clothes with it when my father gets home from work at night and has to leave again the next morning. She rubs the clothes in petroleum and then hangs them out on the veranda. We all agree on our plan. We’ll throw the lit match and the cat’s fur will light up, just like when you blow away dandelion seeds. And only the empty stump remains in your hand. It disappears, just like it had never even existed.
“HULLO, MESSIYAH,” THEY CALL OUT TO HIM. MESSIYAH smiles and raises his grimy hat. He got that from someone, too. Every piece of Messiyah’s clothing has already been worn by someone else in the village. Every item is familiar from somewhere. He never begs, though, he just stands by someone’s gate. For days, even. In the evening he goes home, but the next day at dawn he’s standing there again. Until someone comes out and gives him something. My mother feels sorry for Messiyah. She brings him rancid bacon in greasy paper. At other times she brings him beans, noodles, weevil-infested peas. Dead hens in canvas bags. If we don’t need them ourselves. Several times a day, Messiyah passes our gate as he walks from the Gypsy settlement up to the Ramp and back again. On the Ramp, he just stands around and listens to people. Messiyah never has any work anywhere. Sometimes he turns up someone’s garden for them. But he is so gaunt and so weak that he can’t do a man’s work. He whitewashes people’s sties and pens, if necessary. That he can do. Most often, people get him to empty their outhouses. When the shit is too piled up and the liquid keeps splashing back. Or in the summer when they are swarming with maggots.
If an outhouse needs to be drained, the owners go up to the Ramp. Someone is always standing around there who might have seen Messiyah. The bus goes in the morning and the evening. Twice a day, along the paved road that cuts across the outskirts of the village. Actually, it is an asphalt road. Now it’s just called the stone road, because in the old days it was paved with macadam. Enormous poplars line the road on both sides.
There is always someone in front of the tavern on the Ramp. Sometimes an open cart or dray creaks by. An old Hoffer or claw-wheel tractor, confiscated from one of the kulaks, puffs along. In the winter, a horse-sledge slides by now and then. On the highway that passes through the village a truck slows down, snorting, its brakes squealing. Many people come out to the bus in the morning. They aren’t going anywhere, they just come to see who is going where that day. And to see who is sitting on the bus. Tired, haggard eyes peer out from the tiny windows. Old people traveling to their children. New mothers taking their babies for checkups. Sick people who have been referred to the physician in the district hospital. People only get on a bus if there’s a problem. If they have to take care of some official matter. They put on their black clothes. They button their white shirts tightly, right up to their Adam’s apple. Humbly, they knock on cushioned doors. They hold their hats in their hands. The women tie the knarls in their kerchiefs even tighter. We call knots knarls. Travel is never a good sign.
You can find out everything on the Ramp. The news and the gossip. Kossuth Radio is always on in the tavern. Announcements are also pasted up on the Ramp. The notice about the quarantine of the village during the foot-and-mouth-disease epidemic. The WANTED poster for Ság’s murderer. During the day, the tavern owner stands in front of his business. At noon the Party secretary and the council president drop in to get a sense of the mood in the village. To hear what people are talking about. The president of the collective usually motors to Hajnalvég if he plans to have a nap after lunch. He’s in a rush to go angling on the Túr River, but he stops for a nip or two. In the meantime, he asks the tavern keeper how the class warfare is coming along. Not too long ago, all the farming collectives were consolidated. He wants to know what people are saying about the level of productivity, as well as the work competitions. The strongest collective used to be the Steel Collective: all the former large landholders were members. The poor people with their inferior land joined the Red October and Red Star collectives. The People’s Freedom Collective belonged to the former smallholders of the lands of the old manor estates. After the revolution they were merged, and they became the Wooded Ridge Collective. In the winter, the president of the collective hunts in the Count’s Forest with the other comrades. In the summer, they go angling. As they set off, the tavern keeper accompanies them to the car.
At such times, Messiyah is already crouching at the foot of the tavern wall. My grandfather also calls for Messiyah if he needs a carrion man to come clean out the outhouse. Once or twice a year. Mostly in the spring, when the groundwaters come. People look for Messiyah here on the Ramp, close to the tavern.
“Has Messiyah left yet?” they ask.
It’s usually the tavern keeper who is pestered the most, because it’s his job to observe everyone. Everyone knows that he’s an informer. They consider this to be in keeping with his profession. But no one dares say it to his face.
“You can’t become a tavern keeper just like that,” they say with resignation. “Everything has its price.”
“May he be strung up on God’s cock, how should I know?” the tavern keeper says indignantly. “Why are you looking for that one?” Then he laughs. Because whenever people talk about Messiyah, they laugh.
“Well, you’re here,” they say to him.
“Got to empty out the dunghouse,” they add, so the tavern keeper will know, because then it will be easier for him to make his report.
So let him write in his report, if he doesn’t die of shame, that we’re slowly drowning in shit here, just like the little chicks in the rotten eggs that the women throw into the outhouse. Just like the dead little chicks crushed to death by the brooding hens. But the kittens with runny eyes who otherwise would have become queens are thrown into the dunghouse, as well.
My grandfather grabs each one by the tail and slams its head against the front of the terrace steps, smooth with cement. The little body swings a few times lightly and the kitten gasps, barely audibly, as if it were a rag being shaken out. The kitten’s soft nape thumps dully against the corner of the gray cement. The sharp needles of the tiny rows of teeth are visible within its distended mouth. Beneath the eyelids, the eyeballs no longer turn in place. The dark fissures of the oblong pupils dilate.
Their mother has been meo
wing now for several days by the stairs, rubbing up against the legs of those leaving the house. She searches in every spot where she detects the scent of her young. Mostly she paws uncertainly at the earth near the front steps. And if we’re going that way, we give her a good kick because we feel sorry for her.
“Can’t she stop meowing already, what is that cat complaining about,” we say, because we love the poor thing. My grandfather threw the dead kittens into the outhouse. He put the cover back on the hole cut into the seat; it never fits exactly into the battered plank.
Then, sooner or later, Messiyah has to be called.
“There’s a bit of work just for you, Messiyah.” Then they mock him, saying that maybe he’ll even find some treasure if he digs deep enough. Messiyah just smiles. He stands there for a long time yet. He asks which proprietor he should go to. Where the house where he is expected is. Then he heads off to the Old Village to bargain with the owner.
I’M SITTING ON THE EDGE OF THE DITCH AND I’M MAKING up memories. I can’t speak. I have no voice lately. I don’t have a cold, I just can’t speak. For weeks now, but I’ve been lying in bed and looking at the wall. I don’t talk to my mother. I don’t know what happened. I don’t feel anything. I look at the water and make up memories. I think of my grandmother, but I don’t remember her. I was one year old when she died. I try to invent my grandmother. I saw her face in a photograph. We call it a caird.
The Dispossessed Page 8