DURING THE HEAT WAVE, MY MOTHER’S SMELL IS A LOT more unpleasant. I can sense how much she smells. At times like this she always stinks, and she is a lot more jittery, too. She sends me to the shop. She is nervous and jumpy. There is no cotton wool at home.
“Go to the shop and get some cotton wool,” she says. “But hurry! Don’t stand there gaping!”
She doesn’t say why, but I know. I knew even before my older sister started menstruating.
I always saw the bloodied cotton wool in the outhouse. For a long time, I didn’t attribute any significance to it.
My mother’s mood changes like the moon.
Friday evening, while waiting for the stars to come out, we look at the moon.
“Saint Peter is playing the violin up there,” people say.
I don’t see it. I think of my mother. From the light, I think of blood.
I ALREADY KNOW HOW TO READ, BUT I DON’T GO TO SCHOOL yet. I got an illustrated Bible from the priest. It’s my first book. The letters are blue, and the pictures inside the book are also blue. When I look at the pictures, I’m in Jerusalem. There is also a map of Galilee in the book. I imagine the summer heat. The sun burns there from the same height as here. The flocks listen indifferently to the barking of the dogs. I imagine that my father is a carpenter. I imagine the Lake of Gennesaret. With the help of the pictures, I imagine the stories of the Holy Land. What I’m reading about comes to life in my imagination.
We are crossing the wheat fields. The grass on the paths is beaten down. We cross the river by the shoals of the Kövicses’ land. There is a heat wave. The grasshoppers lazily jump out of the way. The river winds, describing sharp arabesques between the trees. Blue mist looms above the distant mountains. In the distance, one white spot is discernible where the cliffs beat back the sun’s light.
One day, when I’m big, I thought, I will see what is there.
But I don’t really think this seriously, because even in my father’s family, no one has ever been there. It never occurs to anyone that they could live somewhere else.
“Life wouldn’t be any different there than it is here. So what’s the point of fallutin’ around?” people always say.
The village gives a sense of security. Every day, I walk along the one street. I can recite the surnames of the people who live in all the houses: Udicska, Ricu, Kotvász, Tarca, Tógyer, Udud.
I go along the street and say the names to myself. I recognize the gates, ramshackle and woven from dilapidated, dry stalks, blackened, beggarly. The rusted wire mesh with swaying spiderwebs in the middle that in the fall become distinct white outlines because of the frost in the morning dew.
I walk along the one single street that is itself the village. From each window, somebody watches. I know they are there. They are watching. A staring eye in every window. From each one, somebody peers out. In my throat is a suppressed scream. At the same time, I hear the dogs. I know the sound of each one. I have to walk on the same side of the street as the tavern. This side of the street turns off toward Hajnalvég. I promised my mother that I would not walk on the other side of the street. There, the dogs bite. I’m not as afraid when there are only a few people on the street. I’m more afraid of the unknown. Of people.
MY FATHER DOESN’T LIKE MY GRANDFATHER BECAUSE HE was a fascist in Horthy’s time. My father says he is a war criminal.
“Who knows how many people your father killed?” he says to my mother.
That’s how he gets on her nerves.
“The bloodsucking bandit from Jutas!” But he only says that when they fight. When he comes home drunk from the tavern. Then they curse each other’s families. Because my mother doesn’t like my father’s family, either.
“I’ve had enough already! I’m fed up with your entire idiotic family! I’m not going to be anyone’s footcloth! I’m going home. And I’m taking the kids,” says my mother. Sometimes she packs up and moves home with us. Before the Little One came along, this happened quite a lot. Sometimes she left by herself. Then my older sister would look after me.
When my father is sober, he just ridicules my grandfather.
“Your father? He’s hardly normal. Always acting the gentleman. Picks up his fork with kid gloves. Uses formal address with his dog. When he pours out the bones for the dog, he says, ‘Here you are served, please do enjoy your meal.’ Then, when the dog is finished, he inquires: ‘How was your meal, my good sir? Was it to your liking? To your health!’ He carries out the dog’s water in a glass pitcher and pours it into the gleamingly scrubbed bowl. From a glass pitcher, just like in a restaurant,” says my father.
“The dog can’t be poured water from an ordinary metal canister. And so the dog is honored. Your father always wears ironed trousers in front of the dog. He would never put on a plain quilted jacket. ‘I wore that enough in the Caucasus,’ he says.”
He goes to the barber’s twice a week. He shaves every day. My father recalls when my grandfather and his father drove the flocks, before my grandfather enlisted as a regular soldier. During the time of the Great Depression, there was no work to be had anywhere. When my father was a child, he saw him herding sheep. But even then, he wasn’t all there: he wore sunglasses, says my father. My father couldn’t have seen him, though, because my father was only born in the last year of the Great Depression, when my grandfather had already gotten himself recruited as a soldier.
“They were all Ruthenians. That old Kengyel, his father, didn’t like to work, either. That Jani. If it hadn’t been for Juszti, his wife, they would have starved,” my father repeats.
I IMAGINE THAT MY FATHER IS DEAD. THIS MAKES ME FEEL calmer. Recently, my father has been coming home drunk. My mother just cries. They’re fighting again. I close my eyes, I turn toward the wall. I hear the shouting. My older sister is crying. She has the hiccups. Girls are crybabies. I have to squeeze my eyelids shut tight so they won’t open. At moments like this, I look at the wall hanging, like I do when my mother and sister change or wash. The electric light is on. I have to turn around so I won’t see them. My older sister and my mother. I don’t look over there. Just sometimes I peep a little. My older sister is watching, of course, and she always tells on me. I hate fighting with her. Instead, I don’t look. I press my face against the wall hanging. It’s moldy, but at least it’s cold.
I can feel the bumpy wall. At night, mice burrow in the wall. I’m afraid of them. Or rather, I’m disgusted by them. We usually hit them on the head with shovels. I hit them, but in the meantime I’m afraid of them. But I’m too repelled to touch them. I grab the mouse by the tail and throw it to the cat. Or to the hens. I’ve learned how to kill them. My nose immediately senses if there’s a mouse close by. I can tell the smell of mouse without fail.
My father hiccups, shouts. He’s drunk again.
When I’m bigger, I’ll kill him, I think. I’ll kill him if he touches my mother. Or if he beats my sister.
In the dark now I don’t see the wall hanging, but I know what’s on it. Every detail is engraved in my memory. A snowy landscape. A craggy mountain slope, pine trees clambering up the side. Eternal snow on the peaks. Eternal ice. I see my father there, lying in the snow. He isn’t moving. Drunks freeze in the winter because they fall asleep in the snow. But winter is still far off.
My father’s death would solve everything. Then we could move away from here, and there would be no more fighting. My mother wouldn’t even want to jump into the well. And she wouldn’t cry every evening. She wouldn’t keep asking for God to take her. And asking who will take care of the Little One. At those times, she makes my older sister give her word of honor. My sister will be cursed if she doesn’t keep her word.
“Swear to me that when I’m not here, you will take care of this poor unfortunate,” she says.
My sister is peevish. Looking after the Little One is always left to her.
None of this would be happening, I think, if my father didn’t exist. I picture how my mother and my older sister would be pro
ud of me.
Then I plan to kill him. But of course it would be better if he just died, or was put in jail. Then I would know that he couldn’t hurt us.
And that I didn’t kill him. But still, it would be reassuring if he didn’t exist.
“WE ARE NOT PEASANTS,” SAYS MY MOTHER THAT EVENING after the boy hit me again and then ran off with the others, disappearing somewhere on the half-built allotment. “You remember that.”
My mother yelled after them. She argues with them, too, when we come across them later on the Ramp. The boy turns his back. He is impudent. He doesn’t speak, just makes a face.
“What business is it of yours?” he says contemptuously. “What do you want?”
My mother is too ashamed to think of a retort. The word that cannot be uttered.
“How dare you harass my son?”
“He deserved it,” the boy says and runs off.
My mother doesn’t know what to say. The boy disappears. We stand there, powerless. My mother pulls me to her, I plunge my head into her skirt. There is a smell of blood.
“You mustn’t cry,” she says. “They are peasants, we are not. Don’t let them have any power over you. Don’t let them rise above you. We are free. You will go away from here. You will never be friends with them. You have nothing in common with them. Don’t play with them. Don’t make friends with them. Don’t ask them for anything, and don’t give them anything. Learn from your father’s fate. Peasants die in the same place that they are born. They know nothing about truth and love. They are like plants. They don’t know what to do with themselves. If they survive the winter, they shoot up again in the spring. In the fall, they spin cocoons. They sleep through the winter. They like things that stink because it’s warm there. They’d rather suffocate from smoke than open the door for anyone. They don’t throw out bacon, even when it’s rancid. Not even after a fly lays eggs all over it. Not even after it’s full of maggots. They take out their pocketknives and carve pieces out of it. This, too, is meat, they say. It would be crazy to throw it out . . .”
“But why did they say ‘dirty Jew’?”
“Because to them, anyone who doesn’t die where they were born is Jewish. They can sense people who are different, who are going to leave. They immediately sense the foreignness on anyone who isn’t like them. They can only tolerate people who are their own kind. Anyone who leaves is a traitor. Anyone who is different is a traitor. And anyone who wants to be different is also a traitor. They consider anyone who uses his mind to be a Jew. Anyone smarter than them: a Jew. If they notice that a child is clever, they give him bread soaked in brandy. They get him to drink wine with sugar in it to make him stupid. So that he won’t leave his parents when they’re old. So that he’ll stay in the village. So that in his whole life, the only place he will dare go will be the tavern. Because they hate anyone who isn’t like them. Anyone who thinks. Who conjectures. Who wants something else. Who wants anything at all. Who has a star on his forehead,” says my mother.
“I have a star on my forehead?” I ask my mother.
“Yes, my treasure. My little blond prince. You don’t see it, but I do,” she says and then whispers in my ear: “Peasants don’t see, they only feel.”
That star makes me think. I stealthily touch my forehead. I run my hand all across it. I don’t feel anything, no star at all.
“But if we’re not peasants, then what are we?” I ask.
“Your grandfather carried a sword and wore white kid gloves. He pomaded his hair with fine oils. He waxed his mustache. He bantered with everyone. And everyone raised his hat to him. But he just raised his index and middle fingers to his military hat. Because that’s how a soldier greets someone if he is not saluted. His boots were always as shiny as mirrors. He was stern but humane. He was respected because he was somebody. But he became somebody because of his own humanity,” says my mother.
“Did he also kill people?” I ask my mother. My father, when he is angry at my mother, says that she is a murderer like her father.
“In war, it’s kill or be killed,” says my mother.
“Will I be a soldier, too?” I ask.
“You can only be a soldier if you’re healthy,” she says. “Your grandfather believed in the regent, and in the final victory. And in the miracle weapon. He was honorable, just stupid,” says my mother. And she bursts out laughing. She draws up her eyebrows, affecting a serious expression.
“‘Humbly reporting, at your service! Do you give me your officer’s word of honor? No, listen, it’s only natural . . . On my officer’s word of honor . . .’” My mother imitates my grandfather’s voice and demeanor.
“‘You see, your word of honor is my guarantee . . . You may count on me.’
“‘Humbly reporting, thank you.’
“The essence of being a soldier is his deportment, your grandfather always said. The essence of honor is deportment, not words. And he’s certainly right about that,” she says.
“So are we soldiers now?” I ask my mother.
“Not in the least. We are prisoners. We are captives, just as your grandfather was, too.” After a brief pause, she continues.
“At Győr, the Russians told your grandfather’s detachment not to tire themselves out by walking. Instead, they were asked if they would be so kind as to please get into the wagons. Your grandfather asked if they were being taken to Siberia. The Russians answered with perfectly straight faces: of course not! How could they think that? And they swore on everything. On the lives of their mothers, their wives, their children. All those vows started to seem a little exaggerated to your grandfather, and he became suspicious.
“‘Shall we give you a document?’ asked the Russians, wishing to chase away the slightest trace of doubt. But my grandfather had heard that the Communists had no respect for papers. Indeed, they despised them, just as they despised the laws that they made them think of.
“‘If you give me your word of honor as an officer, that is enough for me,’ said your grandfather.
“‘On my word of honor as an officer!’ said one of the Russians, and he even clicked his heels together, drawing himself up to attention as he had seen the Hungarians do.
“‘Then everything is fine, humbly at your service.’ And my grandfather got into the wagon with his mortar squad.
“‘Please, after you.’
“‘No, after you.’
“‘You are the senior officer.’ And so they exchanged courtesies at the door to the cattle car.
“Then they heard the lock rattling from the outside, and for weeks on end the train jolted back to Asia.”
According to my grandfather, however, we didn’t come here with the others on the planned route, but by our own. And not with the Hungarians but with the Ruthenians.
They let him go five years later. At home, another kind of captivity awaited him: his past. Since then, he only commands hens and ducks. He likes geese because they move in formation. “In a skirmish line,” as he always says. My mother laughs. She laughs at her father, whom she loves. Whom she is angry at. That, though, isn’t allowed.
RECENTLY, MY FATHER HAS BEEN GOING TO THE FOREST again. Six months ago, the Hoffer tractor broke down. The motor stalled. My father suspected the V-belt, thinking that it had gotten stretched out again and slipped. The tractor was parked on the side of the road, with the two right-hand wheels resting on the shoulder. Because of the rains, the large iron wheel sank into the softened earth. My father was afraid the tractor might tip over and that he wouldn’t get work again. He wanted to keep his job. He pushed his shoulder up against it, as men do when exerting themselves to the fullest. In the end, he got stuck underneath the machinery as the tractor began to tilt to one side. It leaned into the ditch. He was lucky that he only broke his arm. Now it’s in a cast. He can’t use his right hand. Now he can’t work, and he doesn’t get any pay.
When he gets better, it will be very hard to get back the job driving the claw-wheel tractor. And even if he does, it will o
nly be because none of the tractor drivers wants to use the claw-wheel tractor. Because it always has to be repaired. Most of them know nothing about tractors. They don’t understand machines, and they don’t love them.
“Every machine, however, has a soul,” says my father. “They destroy them, then they bring them into the workshop,” he used to mutter at home when he still worked in the agricultural equipment machine shop.
“Cows are what’s good for them: cart-oxen and bulls. You can’t even trust them with a horse,” he says.
The others don’t like the claw-wheel tractors because they’re always stopping, and you can’t get much work done with them. Then the work-brigade productivity is low. Bonuses are allotted by how much the work brigade gets done. The people in the Party get the good tractors. Many of them don’t even really know how to read. They’re good as horse drivers, but they’re afraid of tractors.
TODAY MY MOTHER WANTED TO JUMP INTO THE WELL. WE were just falling asleep when she ran out into the courtyard. My older sister noticed and ran, screeching, after her. Then I woke up, and I went out after them. My mother’s hair was undone. She was weeping, but we didn’t understand what she was saying. She was cursing her life. And herself, as was her wont. She always curses herself. But she never curses us. She loves us. I love my mother. But I’m afraid that she will kill herself. Last time, she said she would hang herself in the attic. We stay with her always. Until we fall asleep, we have our eyes on her. My older sister watches her even then: she sleeps with her eyes open.
My mother collapses next to the well, her hair disheveled. My older sister and I clutch at her legs. We are both crying.
“If our mother kills herself, then we will certainly be taken to the foundling home,” my sister says.
“I don’t want to be a foundling,” I say.
“They don’t take siblings to the same place.” My sister found this out from somewhere. They take them to two different places; that is the custom. She will end up in one place, and I in another. Our mother sobs for us to let her die already. She can’t take it anymore. She’s had enough of the village, of the shifty people. She’s also had enough of our father.
The Dispossessed Page 13