We go across to the Ramp. Nothing is coming along. Vehicles pass this way only every now and then. A few people are always standing around on the Ramp. They’re talking. My mother just nods to them briefly, and we walk on farther, to the Old Village. The sidewalk was recently laid here. Since then, you don’t have to trudge in the mud anymore, like you did before. My mother is ashamed that we live on Gypsy Row. The men standing in front of the tavern hiss after my mother. My mother is young.
“Don’t bother with them,” she says. “They’re peasants. We’re not peasants. They do that because they’re bored. For their entire life, they’re bored. A smart person, though, is never bored. Your grandfather was a drill officer at the officers’ school in Jutas, and people like that feared him like fire. Your grandfather trained the noncommissioned officers. They respected him because he had backbone. We were never peasants,” she says. Then she walks in silence, thinking.
“I was jeered at, too, when I was little. Once I was beaten up, because I got a bicycle from your grandfather in 1944. I was five years old. He got it in Jutas. It was a children’s bike, and the other children were envious. It was beautiful. I really loved it. One day, afterward, we found a label underneath the seat: ‘Évike Sternberg, Esterházy utca 25, Pápa.’ It might have been hers. The Darabánt children took it and smashed it to bits,” she says.
“Why did they take it?” I ask, just to say something. So she will talk with me. But she doesn’t answer.
I ask one more time, because silence is not good. Silence gives rise to fear. It sniffs all around a person like a dog. It has no voice, emerging mutely. But it is always there in the corner. Making no fuss at all. It rubs up against a person slyly. It lurks nearby. But it decides in advance whether there is a thief. In that case it must wait for its owner to give the alarm to rouse the silence, which until then has been cowering in the lower branches of a nearby tree. Upon hearing the sound, it flies away. And the dog once again crouches behind its owner’s back.
“PEASANTS HATE THE HIGHBORN,” SHE SAYS, “BUT THEY also hate each other.”
“Are the Alecska family not peasants?” I ask.
“They never were. They came from Szlatina. We were never like these peasants. If one peasant barfs up his food, another immediately gobbles it up so it won’t go to waste,” says my mother. And she spits once. My mother really doesn’t know how to spit. You have to spit straight. Sharply. My mother just spits because of the nausea. Because her stomach churns. Her mouth is bitter. Acid corrodes it. But she doesn’t have anything to spit out. Men really know how to spit. Sharply, strongly. Their spit is yellow and viscous. Once it dries, you can’t even scrape it off the ground. Maybe it’s because of the tobacco.
“They are all peasants here, they never drop money on anything. Just like they don’t know how to dream. If they notice that some kid is dreaming, they won’t let him sleep until he stops doing it. The adults try to keep it a secret, but it still gets out. And they torture the kid till he’s broken. The adults try to keep it a secret. But children still talk about these things carelessly. The peasants know immediately what they have to do.
“‘We must break the kid of that habit,’ they say.
“Then one day, when the child is already very tired, can’t even be shaken awake, they bring a black cat. It has to be black, that’s the main thing. A kitten is best. Then they sew the cat very tightly into a little bag so it can’t wriggle around, and next to the ear of the sleeping child, they beat it to death . . .”
“That can’t be true, can it?” I ask my mother.
“Of course it’s true. And they don’t rush, they do it slowly. Because peasants always do everything in their own good time. Lazily. Just like how they beat that black cat to death. Slowly, their faces apathetic. Sluggishly, like when they’re working. Only because they have to. Because they don’t like joy. The joy of a task well done. That is unknown to them. They don’t want the tired child to wake up but merely to hear the cat as it suffers. So that the animal’s fear of death will pass into the child.
“They say that they’re beating the dreams out of the child. They stand all around him, and with the short cherrywood cane that they use to beat the seeds out of the sunflower, they beat the cat to death.”
“Really?” I ask incredulously.
“Of course. At the end of the cane there is a slipknot made from a strap, which they attach to their wrists. The sleeping child flinches, and if they beat the cat sluggishly enough, the child’s face will become completely distorted. That’s how they know that the torment is working. They stand there and watch the little bag. They beat the pillow, from which soft gasping sounds emerge. Thin strips of blood emerge from it. From time to time, the cat’s paw twitches. Then everyone wants to hit it one last time. They jostle, pushing forward, just like they always do. They watch for the final convulsions of the unfortunate beast. Because only death makes them happy.
“When the cat finally succumbs, the face of the sleeping child becomes smooth.
“‘Now the dream is gan’ out of him,’ they whisper to each other.
“‘Thank God.’ The mothers finally quiet down. Now they will have no problems with their children. They will not have to be ashamed of them before the rest of the village,” says my mother. Her eyes are dark. I don’t know whom it is that she hates.
“I SAW IT ONCE,” OTTÓ TELLS ME. AND FOR A LONG TIME I thought I’d seen it, too. Ottó told me that his family did it once with his little brother. He told me about sewing the black cat into the bag, just like my mother said. But then he went on. He talks about what happens when the cat dies. The men have to pee from excitement as the cat is beaten to death. The fathers go to the front of the house to pee.
“Their bladders are full up because of the excitement. The tension makes it stick up,” says Ottó.
“Makes what stick up?” I ask.
“What do you think? Their pricks. It never happens to you?” Ottó says scornfully. “They stand right in front of the door, they don’t even step to the side. They don’t even have time for that. They’re just happy if they can get it out in time. The spasms make them pee in spurts, like a stud horse. They enjoy the relief. They hear the sound of their own peeing. They swing their tools in their hands so that the others on the way home, will see how big they are. So everyone will see that they are no dreamers, like women. Because they only believe in what they can grab.
“‘Look, Gizi, grab this!’
“‘It’s true, you can take it in your hands,’ the men say to the more profligate of the women passing by. And Gizi laughs, a low deep laugh.
“‘Well, brother-in-law, you’re not bragging about that little worm again, are you?’ Gizi says in reply. ‘I found something like that in the granary the other day. Well, if the maggot didn’t fall into the flour. Sure it wasn’t yours?’ she asks, and at the end she laughs again, in a titillating voice, like a mare.
“The men follow after the women and reach under their skirts from behind.
“‘Grab her cunt,’ they encourage each other.
“The women jump, their mocking interrupted. In the meantime, the relatives and neighbors slowly return home. The father shakes his cock and keeps pulling his finger and thumb, formed into a snare shape, along it. He shakes out the very last drop. That is the end of the ritual. He puts it back in his trousers, clears his throat, blows his nose, and spits a huge gob into the pool of urine. And when everyone has left, he goes back into the house.
“And that is how dreams are chased away,” says Ottó.
The bag with the cat sewn into it has to stay under the bed the entire night. The person from whom the dreams are being chased must remain sleeping above it. At dawn, the father reaches under the bed for the chilled, stiffened little bundle. He takes it outside and buries it beneath the eaves. He puts something on top as a weight. A large stone or half a brick, so the dogs won’t scrape it out if they sense the cadaver smell. Because those poor things are always hungry. The peasa
nts don’t give the dogs enough to eat, so as to make them even angrier. When the carcass really stinks, then you can take the heavy thing off it.
The next day, no one asks the person from whom the dreams were being chased whether he heard anything while he was asleep. He is only told that there is something stinking in the gutter. That he should have a look and see what it is. And from that point on, the child will never again speak of his dreams. And he won’t even dream anymore. The gaze of such children becomes dark at times, for no reason at all. Sometimes their hands twitch. When they see a cat, they kick it once.
“Did they do the same thing with us?” I ask Ottó.
“WE ARE NOT PEASANTS,” SAYS MY MOTHER. “YOU ARE ALLOWED to have dreams. You should always tell me what you dreamed. Dreams can be read,” she says.
We are quiet. My older sister is feeding corn to her corn-husk doll. My little brother is eating corn porridge with plum preserves. My mother puts it in his mouth with a small spoon. I am playing in front of the stove with corn-husk soldiers. I take them out of the woodbin and break them up into two or three different lengths. These are the enlisted soldiers. I let the officers be longer, because it’s right for them to be bigger.
I imagine each officer as my grandfather Kengyel. On his head is a soldier’s cap, on his hands are white kid gloves, at his side is a sword. Each officer has a little Hitler mustache, just like my grandfather. After shaving, he always cuts it with a scissor, trimming it to a square shape so that it is aligned. That’s the word soldiers use when something is straight. He keeps a small pair of scissors, which he uses only for this, in the shaving box he made when he was a prisoner. I learned how to play at soldiers from him. The rank-and-file soldiers form a skirmish line, like my grandfather showed me. Four squads make one platoon. When my father comes in, he asks me what I’m playing.
“Soldiers,” I say.
“And what are these?” he asks.
“Reporting to the lieutenant: one platoon,” I say. And I leap up and stand at attention, like my grandfather showed me.
“Chest out, stomach in, chin sticking out, arms resting next to the body along the line formed by the seam of the trouser leg. Have I made myself understood?” my grandfather says.
I’m wearing flannel trousers that only have seams on the inside, but I imagine that the seam is on the outside, too. I raise my head proudly.
“Attention! Rest!” my grandfather commands me. “And now report to me, Hungarian comrade in arms! How have you fallen into line? What is this, an ox pissing? Are you a pimp?” he yells, outraged.
“The second platoon of the third regiment of border guards, I report humbly, staff ensign,” and I strike my heels together as I finish the sentence. By doing that, I signify that I am ready for the next command.
“Miklós Horthy’s soldier am I, his most beautiful soldier am I . . .” sings my grandfather; he embraces me and gives me a kiss. My father says nothing. He grumbles to himself.
“Your grandfather’s idiocy,” he says.
THEY SAY YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DRINK THE WATER FROM the sweep-pole well. My uncle Sányi, the town crier, announced this several times. But the old people don’t believe him. They still drink the water. Although the wells are really close to the muck heaps. In spring, everything in the courtyard is slushy and mildewy. The water stands in the well up to the highest ring. When this happens frogs also crawl into the well. You just have to lean over to take water from it. You don’t even have to use the well handle. Even in summer during heat waves, the water is several meters deep. It is forbidden to look into the water because a large frog lives there, waiting for us.
“If you lean over the well water, the frog will throw out its lasso and pull you in,” says my mother.
The older we get, the more incredulously we listen. We’re afraid to go near the well. We’re afraid of the frog. But we’re also excited by it.
The wells have to be cleaned out every summer because the drifting silt clogs up the groundwater. After dredging, there are huge mounds of sand next to the well. The well-digger goes down on a ladder. It is very dangerous work. We play in the sand for the entire summer. When the house is being whitewashed, my mother sprinkles some of the sand into a bucket and mixes it thoroughly. My mother has us sift through the sand. Years earlier, her wedding ring fell in there by accident. She would like us to find it again.
“Maybe then the curse will end,” she says.
“What curse?” I ask.
“Well, the one that’s on us,” she says.
At those times we bring out the sifter and, if my mother isn’t watching, the sieve, as well. And my older sister and I sift through the sand. I throw the fine sand onto the sifter with a coal shovel, and she mixes it with a wooden spoon while the tiny grains of sand fall down. But we never find the ring. Our mother doesn’t tell us what happened; my older sister pesters her in vain.
“I didn’t even wear it on my ring finger because it was too big,” says my mother.
My older sister doesn’t believe her. Nor does she believe that my mother really wants to jump into the well at night.
“I don’t think it’s true,” she whispers. “She never even had a ring.”
“Our mother is lying?” I ask.
“She usually is,” she hisses.
MY OLDER SISTER DOES NOT BELIEVE MY MOTHER.
“She certainly threw it into the well,” she says. Or she wanted to jump into the well and, while tussling with our father, clutched at the well lift and the ring was swept off her finger.
We quarrel about this. I don’t believe her. My older sister is a loathsome frog. She says that my mother just made the whole thing up. Or that our father threw her into the well in anger. Because all men are like that. My sister says “people,” because that’s what we call men. But my father wouldn’t do something like that. My older sister is just saying this out of hatred.
Then my mother got another ring, although she never said from where. But I know that it was from my grandfather Kengyel. She let that out once. And besides, it’s a man’s ring. My mother puts it on only very rarely, because it’s too big for her. Only if we’re traveling somewhere. So that people can see that she is a lady. Not some kind of slut. Then men won’t molest her. That’s what she says. I don’t know what molest means.
“Just so nobody thinks I’m some kind of slut. That I just have kids, but no man.”
Every year after the dredging, we look for the ring. My father is quiet then. We sift the sand enthusiastically. I’m not too good at it, because I mix up what we have already sifted with the unsifted sand. My older sister just watches. She is quickly bored. I lose my enthusiasm as well, and I poke holes into the fine sand. I imagine that there are castle walls, towers, and tunnels. By now, I’m just trusting in blind chance. That I might come across the ring by accident, and I’ll get the gift I was promised. I would like a squirt gun; my sister wants a polka-dot skirt. But more than anything, both of us long for felt-tip pens.
“It’s all the same,” says my father. “Just a rip-off.”
“They have such beautiful colors,” we implore him. “Everyone has some, except for us.”
“There’s sure to be some at the shooting range,” he says. “I’ll win one for you there.”
You can buy them from the itinerant vendors. You have to give them iron or money. If the ink runs out, then you have to pour in some eau de cologne, and the pen will write again.
“It’s a swindle,” grumbles my father.
“It isn’t,” says my older sister. “I saw in the classroom, some parents have already bought them for their children. But you never get us anything at all.” We feel sorry for ourselves. We whimper and cry. We aren’t even interested in the sand anymore.
“Let’s stop, let’s not sift anymore. They’re not going to buy us anything anyway, ever,” says my older sister.
“Then we’ll never get anything,” I say to her, because I would like to continue the search. I like to play with
the sand. And I’m bored, too. Even my sister stops, I will continue.
“Look how fine the sand is,” I say to my older sister, to improve her mood. “How could there be such fine sand in the well? How did it get there?” I ask.
My older sister doesn’t know. She isn’t even interested.
“A long time ago, the river ran here,” my father says. “That’s why the earth here is brackish, because between the village and Gypsy Row there was a backwater.” My father pronounces it backwa’er. “The village was surrounded by the river, the church was built on the highest point of the island. That is why people settled here, because they were protected from the Turks. Later on, the river was diverted so there would be more land to plow,” he says.
“There was a bog here; not so long ago, it was swampland. That’s why it’s called Buffalo Bath—because the buffaloes were brought here to bathe in the mud. Buffaloes like mud, they wallow in it. And herds of swine came here. The Gypsies got some land from the village bailiff. Then, when the Council decided to allot settlements here, the swamps disappeared, because Communism wanted to be victorious over the swamps, as well.”
“But the swamp defeated them all the same,” says my mother.
“Communism is invincible. It is the one just society,” says my father. “Soon no one will have to work, because the machines will do everything for us.”
“Do you actually believe that?” my mother asks derisively.
“They already do the heavy work,” my father specifies.
“So we already have Communism here. For the people who don’t have to work anymore. Well, for them, it’s surely here. And for those who have to work, it will never be here,” my mother says. And with that point, the argument grinds to a halt.
My father hasn’t been accepted into the Party because he argued with people from the Party once. With Guszti, whom he grew up with.
The Dispossessed Page 10