But real ducks are always moving around. They’re not like rubber ducks. I can hardly catch the faster ones. When my mother goes out with the pig swill, I take out the first duck. I like ducks. I like all of them. My rubber duck sleeps with me in my bed. I grasp the duck with my two palms, and I raise it up to my face. The duck’s fluff caresses my skin.
It’s a good feeling. It tickles. I smile. It flails with both of its legs. Its little legs kick weakly. It makes a whistling sound that doesn’t sound like quacking. I put it down next to the box on the tar paper.
The stamped-down floor in the middle of the kitchen is covered with black tar paper. It’s the same kind of tar-coated canvas that is used for insulation in building construction. Everyone has it in their kitchen. One side is rough, the other is smooth. The canvas is impregnated with tar. It stops water from getting in and protects the stamped earthen floor. The cardboard box is in the middle of the room, on top of the tar paper. I put the second duck next to it, too.
And I do so with the next one, as well. All in a nice row, one after the other. The third. The fourth. And so on. I raise all of them to my face. I feel their warm breath on my skin. They whistle and struggle. My rubber duck never writhes. But that’s why I love these live ones. Five. Six. Seven. They look so nice next to each other. Eight. Nine. They lie all in a row. Good ducks. Ten. They are obedient. Eleven. Now there’s only one left. The fastest one. It runs away from my hand. I almost catch it, but it runs under the bed. The twelfth one has hidden. Eleven ducks lying nicely in a row. Then my mother comes back in.
“All is well,” I say.
My mother always says this.
“Sit nicely and quietly. Don’t run around. Sit on your ass, do you hear! Be quiet. Good, you are a good boy,” she always says. When she has to work, I sit quietly. She likes it when I’m not making any problems. When I am obedient. Now the ducks, too, are lying nicely next to each other. They’re not making any problems.
“All is well,” I say. My mother steps in with the bucket. By now, it is swinging emptily. Her triangular kerchief is tied back like a young bride’s. My mother is beautiful. Now she is in a good mood. She is always in a good mood after feeding the animals. She watches them as they eat. The pigs push forward, pushing each other away from the trough. My mother smiles, leans down, and scratches their ears.
“Eat, eat,” she says. And the pigs obey her, as if they understand. They are obedient. They squeal and devour the swill greedily. My mother knows that we will slaughter them before Christmas. The piglets will be well fattened by then.
“Don’t be disobedient,” she says to me. “Listen to your parents,” she says to my sister, as well. When I eat, she’s always happy. Afterward, her mood always improves a little.
The twelfth duck is cowering under the bed. I have to crawl underneath. My mother stops in the doorway. Suddenly she freezes. She drops the bucket. She clasps her hands together. Whimpering, she cries.
“What have you done?” she shouts.
“Now they aren’t moving,” I say. “They are obedient.” Eleven bundles of fluff. Eleven can’t be divided by anything. Only by itself. And by one.
MY MOTHER IS TELLING A FAIRY TALE. MY OLDER SISTER IS already half-asleep. My little brother is whimpering. The room is filled with the smell of milk. With the smell of poo. With the smell of poverty. But not with the smell of mother. There is too little of that. There is not enough mother. There is never enough for anyone. It can’t be divided in three ways. Because three can’t be divided by anything, only by itself. And by one. We plead with her to tell a fairy tale. She has already put the Little One down into his crib. Now she sits on the edge of the bed, caressing us.
“Which story should I tell, the one about the ell or the one about music?” she asks. Her hair falls onto her forehead, her face is haggard. She looks into the distance, but there’s nothing there. Somewhere into nothingness. At times like this, she doesn’t hear what we say. And she doesn’t see.
“The one about the ell,” I say.
“But the one about music is nicer,” she says mechanically. She stares off into the middle of the room while her fingers fiddle with her spiky hair.
“So the one about music, then,” I say, because I always give in to her.
“But the one about the ell is longer,” she answers mechanically, like before.
“Then the one about music, just please tell one already,” I plead with her.
“But the one about the ell is longer,” she repeats indifferently.
“Then the ell, just please tell us one already,” I burst out. My older sister is sleeping already. She is bigger and knows there is no point to this. I only realize years later, when I can fall asleep from exhaustion without even a story. But now I’m waiting for my mother to tell me a fairy tale. I beseech her to tell one for once. I don’t care which one, whether it’s the one about the ell, which is longer, or the one about the musical instrument, which is nicer. I would really like to hear both. But I want to hear at least one, so I can finally know how it ends.
But there is no such fairy tale. My mother couldn’t tell me one even if she wanted to. She just wants to make me tired. She wants to annoy me. She’s just dangling it in front of me again. Wanting to delude me with hope, like all the other times. She just wants me to calm down, because she doesn’t have the strength for anything else.
Like when she recites the same riddle, the answer to which I’ve known for a long time.
“In the head, a glade; in the butt, a spade: what am I?”
“A fish,” I answer quickly. And we both laugh.
I DON’T REMEMBER THE ELEVEN DUCKS. MY MOTHER TELLS the story again. But I only remember what she tells me. I only remember the chicks: the time when my mother bought some little chicks. My older sister and I played with them. The chicks ran around freely in the kitchen; it was still heated because of the biting cold. They ran around on the floor of the house. Once they’re inside, my mother lets them out of the box. She scatters their food on the tar paper. We mixed finely ground corn porridge with some water. They peck at it. We pick chickweed and cankerwort leaves. The chicks zigzag back and forth. You have to step around them carefully. My mother goes out, and I run after her.
“M’my, M’my,” I call out and run after her.
I’m wearing my very best patent-leather shoes. It was spring. We were getting ready for some holiday, planning to go to the House of Culture. We were celebrating the liberation. The war had ended twenty-three years ago. At that time, my mother and father were both already alive. They remember it. My grandfather Kengyel fought against the Russians. Then the Russians took him away, and he had a five-year vacation in the Caucasus, as they say. My grandfather is always telling stories about the war and his captivity. My grandfather Bobonka also talks about the war, but only about the First World War. That’s when he was lamed. On the Italian front, at Isonzo. Twenty-three years is a very long time. Twenty-three can be divided only by itself.
“M’my, wait for me.” I run out to the courtyard.
A chick runs underneath my foot. I step on its head. I feel something beneath the sole of my foot. I see that the chick’s eye has popped out. The chick jumps up and staggers off. It runs blindly, colliding with the table leg. Hens also run for a bit after they’ve been slaughtered.
Crying, I run after my mother. There is the scent of spring. The scent of earth and water mixes with the nauseating smell of the moldy courtyard. I am in despair. I see the eyeball rolling on the tar paper. A tiny globe. I’m crying. My mother can’t console me. I’m sitting on the ground of the moldy courtyard. My clothes soak through to my bottom. I keep seeing the chick’s eye. I think of my father fishing the chicken head out of the meat soup. He sucks the eyes out of the skull, slurping noisily. He presses his lips against the chicken skull and I hear him suck up what’s in the cavity. Sometimes my mother leaves the kitchen to vomit. My older sister looks away, disgusted. Then my father splits the skull open in the middle with a
knife and sucks out the brain marrow, too. My father’s mouth slurps greedily.
I cry in the moldy courtyard. As if I had peed in my pants. In the meantime, my mother goes in and gets rid of the chick. She throws it into the outhouse. I don’t dare look.
WE VISIT MAMA JUSZTI ON A REGULAR BASIS. SHE IS THE mother of my maternal grandfather. The Harbulas were shepherds; in the old days, they lived north of Munkács. She always talks about Szlatina. She just turned ninety-seven. Ninety-seven cannot be divided, it can be divided only by itself. She is the oldest one in the village. She lives with her youngest son in a separate part of the house. There is room for a bed, a night table, and a storage chest with armrests, where her clothes are kept. That is where we always sit. We are not allowed to stand up.
“Keep your knees together, pull up your waist,” says my grandfather in his drill sergeant voice. He is drilling us now.
“It is particularly important for girls to keep their knees together,” says my mother. “That is the sign of modesty and a good upbringing. As is only speaking when you are asked a question. And you must keep quiet.”
“Be well-behaved,” my mother says before every visit. “If you’re offered something, you must say: ‘Thank you very much, but I’d rather not have any.’ Do you understand?”
“Yes,” we say.
Under Mama Juszti’s back there are pillows. She is almost sitting up. On her head is a black bonnet. She rarely gets up.
“I am ninety-seven years old,” she repeats. “I have worked enough. Now I can rest.” She is the oldest one in the village. Emperor Franz Joseph was still a young man when she was born. Mama Juszti has us stand next to the bed. She puts her hands on our heads and pats them. She isn’t nice, her patting doesn’t feel good. Her bed stinks because she pees in it. I sense the rancid odor. Old people have an old smell. Sometimes they give us a little peck. Her mouth stinks. Her lips are dry and cracked.
If she’s in a good mood, she leans back and pulls out a small sack of sugary lozenges. She sucks on these because her mouth is dry. Sometimes she brings out sour drops. But usually she sucks on lozenges. There are white, yellow, and pink ones. The pink ones taste the best. My older sister likes the yellow ones.
“Thank you very much, but we’d rather not have any,” we say, just as our mother taught us. While looking at our mother. She is satisfied. She doesn’t give us permission to take any.
“Take some, I haven’t anything else to offer,” says Mama Juszti.
Our mother does not forbid us. Fumbling, we take the lozenges. We have to gobble them down immediately, because if we put them aside, our mother will tell us to throw them away. If we put them in our mouths, she won’t tell us to spit them out. Mama Juszti is really very grimy. She doesn’t go to the outhouse. She doesn’t even sit on the potty. She just lets it out beneath herself.
“It’s better if you throw it out,” our mother always says. “Because you’ll end up catching something.” Our mother is choosy and afraid of dirt. At home, she’s always cleaning. To her, our father’s family is dirty. Dirt doesn’t bother peasants. Our mother says they even like it. Our father always says that where it stinks, it’s warm. He never wants to air the house out. Our mother opens the windows as wide as they will go in the mornings. We get out of bed shivering. The cold floor burns the soles of our feet. At that hour, our mother is nice. In the mornings, she’s still in a good mood.
“Don’t be like your father! March to the basin! Wash up! Quickly, one-two! And properly! Not just a cat bath!” she says and laughs. But Mama Juszti always stinks. The smell of old age and the smell of urine.
ONCE I WAS LEFT WITH MAMA JUSZTI BECAUSE HER daughter-in-law, Annus, had to go to the Council office. Then she told me about the Harbulas. When she was a girl, she lived two villages over. My great-grandfather brought her here.
“The Harbulas were shepherds. They rented the pastures. That is why they lived only one or two years in one place. They were always moving around. At that time you could buy pastureland here, because at the end of the thirties, the estates were being sold off. My grandparents were Ruthenian,” she says. “They lived in Szlatina. They came from there. From somewhere near Munkács.”
“So are we Ruthenians?” I ask.
“We are,” she answers.
That night I ask my mother. But she says something else.
“No, we’re not Ruthenians. Mama Juszti’s grandparents were,” she says. “We are Hungarians, that’s what you should say. Because that’s what we are.”
“Could you tell me about the Ruthenians?” I ask my mother.
“I only know what I’ve heard. In Szlatina, there were Ruthenians and Germans. High up in the mountains. In the winter, there was a little work tree felling. But the Ruthenians hardly ever got work; the Germans did. The girls went to work as maids in Munkács, sometimes the men got work on construction sites. In the summer they went to the forest to gather what they could. That’s why they came down to the lowlands, to work as seasonal harvesters. And when Count Széchenyi began regulating the rivers, they worked as laborers. So after a while, they stayed here. But the Hungarians didn’t like the Ruthenians. Mama Juszti said that her mother would never speak Ruthenian in front of her, so things would be better for her. Her mother was endlessly pestered in school until she said she was Hungarian. She didn’t want to learn the national anthem. Until the day she died, she recited the Lord’s Prayer in Old Slavonic.
“‘My God doesn’t speak Hungarian,’ she believed.
“Your great-great-grandmother was stubborn. Juszti was as stubborn as a mule. But people like that live for a long time, because they’re too stubborn to die. Juszti has rolled along like a ball for her entire life. Lately she’s been tired. She was never ill. That kind you have to shoot, they say. Because Ruthenians are tough, like their horses. Hutsul horses,” says my mother.
TODAY WE WAITED FOR THE MESSIAH THE ENTIRE DAY. MY father was at the tavern. He said he would rather wait there. We shouldn’t worry about anything, he said. If the Messiah came, he would certainly stop by the Ramp. Everyone stops by there.
“Even the Messiah should show some interest in the tavern,” he added.
But he was already drunk when he said that.
“I’m just a little wee bit tipsy,” he said, but he could hardly get hold of the latch of the little gate to let himself out. Somewhere, someone had been celebrating a name day already.
We waited for him to come home yesterday, too. We waited for him just like we were waiting for the Messiah. In the evening, my mother lights the candles. She leans toward the flame and closes her eyes. I look at the holes in the elbows of her cardigan, and how they are darned. She has put on her best kerchief. She holds her hands in front of her face.
The flame of the candle dances. Shadows are cast onto the wall. At the end of the electrical wire dangling from the ceiling, there is a Bakelite socket. This holds the lamp ring, the enamel lamp ring that is white below and black above. Flies buzz around in circles along the edge of the electrical ring. They circle ever more quickly. Sometimes they stop. I always watch them while the grown-ups are talking. I don’t understand what they’re talking about. My father’s voice at such times grows louder and louder. By the end, he’s yelling. In the meantime, he clinks his brandy glass. I don’t understand the flies, why they fly around in circles.
Recently, my father has not been coming home. He’s at the tavern. Sometimes at night he doesn’t even sleep at home. My mother says he went to look for the Messiah. Then he’ll come home.
“Why is he looking for him? Why doesn’t he wait here at home with us?” I ask my mother.
“He thinks he can hurry him up,” she says.
Then she changes the subject.
“Help me. Let’s clean up the Little One,” she says.
“If he finds him, will he come home then?” I ask.
“He’ll come home if God makes the sky collapse on him.”
“I DONNAE LIKE THICKENTH,” SAYS MESS
IYAH. HE DOESN’T like chickens because they injure each other. Messiyah doesn’t like it when people argue. But if he is made fun of, he just smiles and puts up with it. He just smiles and says nothing. If someone else is being bullied, then he is sad. He steals away. Hurries off. He goes back to Gypsy Row.
He says that people are always scratching and biting each other, and he doesn’t understand why they do it. Nobody bothers Messiyah. When sometimes someone yells at him, Messiyah bursts into tears. At those times, people protect him and turn against the one who yelled at him.
“So then you can go lick his ass, too,” says the person being rebuked, offended now.
Because people do not act like animals. When chickens notice that one of them is different, they attack it. They chase it from one corner to the other. They rip out its feathers. Then its skin is unprotected and easily wounded. The other chickens immediately begin to peck at it.
A tiny wound can still be healed with wood ashes, but if the wound is large already, the chicken has to be separated from the others until it heals. The most dangerous wounds are the ones near the chicken’s rump.
If a wound forms on this soft part of the skin, then by the next morning the innards, the heart, and the liver have already been pulled out of the chicken. Everything. I saw it once. There was no trace at all, anywhere, of the innards. Everything was gobbled up by the chickens. Only the empty cavity remained. There weren’t even any drops of blood. Nothing in the whole wide world. For a long time after that, I would not eat chicken.
The Dispossessed Page 12