“Come out! You come out, too!” says my mother. I suck my thumb even harder. I cower against the wall. I press myself up against the wall. I would like it if I could disappear into the wall right now. If suddenly there was a door, like in fairy tales. And on the door there would be a doorknob. The door would open and I would step into another world. Or I myself would transform into a table leg. Or, even better, a cat. And scram, I’d run out between my mother’s legs. Out through the cat hole.
“Come out right now,” shouts my mother and yanks me out from under the trestle table. At the same time, something is knocked over, because the table is swaying. If something has broken, she’ll beat me even more. So I let her pull me out. I protect my head and face with my arm. While crying and begging.
“Please don’t hurt me, M’my! I didn’t mean to knock over the water jug,” I say, blubbering.
My mother has taken down the slaughtering net, which hangs on the peg next to the table all year round. So it’s always at hand. If we do something wrong, we’re beaten with it. The net hangs there all year, like a kind of warning. We’re afraid of it. At other times, I don’t really see it. Only if something is weighing on my conscience. Like now. When my mother is angry, all I can see is the net on the wall. To see when she’ll reach for it. When she will make it whistle in the air.
Otherwise, it is only used during pig killings. The liver sausage is placed inside it so it will boil thoroughly in the water in which the innards have already been cooked down to jelly, together with the stomach fat.
Then it hangs there for another year. It dries out and hardens. It’s only used to beat us. As well as the wooden spoon and the floor rag. My mother, in her rage, beats us with whatever is at hand. She also hits us with her bare hands. But only as mothers can hit. Feebly and pointlessly. Without any system at all.
Our father beats us methodically, like a man. His arms are strong from lifting heavy sacks, hardened from using the spade. He rarely hits us with his hands. He beats us with his belt or with a whip. We are afraid of our father. Our mother’s beatings are just hysteria. They don’t really hurt. While it’s going on, you have to cry and yell a lot. Our mother hits us when we’re quarreling. She hits without strength, because she’s crying.
The other boys say that women don’t know how to beat. You just have to wait it out. Stall for time until the anger dissipates. It always dissipates, and they always forgive you.
Beatings by fathers are different. They have a fixed quantity to them. They don’t stop too early: they wait until it really hurts. That’s when they really start getting into it. They beat us until we are crying not only from fear but also from pain. They know when that moment comes. They wait until then.
“A mother’s hand caresses even as she beats the child. A father’s hand punishes even when he caresses,” my mother always says. Because afterward she’s sorry, and she always cries. Then we cheer her up. And we say it didn’t hurt. But that isn’t true.
WHEN MY MOTHER FINALLY CALMS DOWN, SHE PUTS THE rest of the water on the stove. She pours the water that didn’t spill into the iron pot. This iron pot is my mother’s favorite pot. It’s very heavy. And we have to be very careful not to break it, because it’s made of cast iron. Everything cooks more quickly in this pot. I pull off the ring on the top of the stove and throw bits of paper onto the embers, and thin branches on top of that. When the fire catches flame, I put a few acacia logs on it so the water will boil as quickly as possible. We help our mother scrub potatoes. She is making potato stew, this is the quickest to prepare. She always cooks this when she has to make lunch quickly. As well as mashed potatoes with bacon and onion. Or potato pancakes, if we are not so ravenous and the Little One is not crying. My sister prepares the roux. She burns it a bit. This makes my mother angry again.
“When will you learn? Such a big filly, and you don’t even know how to make a roux yet,” she says.
My sister gets a slap, but this is almost like pampering now. Then my mother sends us out.
“Go out for water to the draw well, since you spilled it,” she says. Now she’s just pretending to be angry. We know her. She wants to be alone. As we were peeling the potatoes, she vomited again.
“She wants to have a good cry. Come,” whispers my sister.
“I can only eat salty potatoes today. My spleen is acting up,” she says.
We stand there sadly. We are worried about her. We stand mutely in front of our mother, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Why are you standing there like you just shit yourselves?” she says.
She throws a few heavier logs onto the fire. She doesn’t notice us, her back is turned. She doesn’t realize we’re still there. We see her back, her wide, strong back. It looks like her waist is a little thicker. Suddenly her shoulders convulse, and we hear her crying.
She chokes on her sobs and then begins to retch. She puts the wooden spoon on the pot lid and runs to the basin. She vomits into it. Once again, there is the smell of bile. I am also nauseous. The green spit smears onto the white enamel. My sister puts her hand in front of her mouth. She, too, starts to gag. She tries to swallow back her nausea. My mother notices the sound. She realizes that we are still standing there.
“You two are still standing there! Get lost!” she says.
We turn on our heels and set off for the Ramp. I am carrying the water jug. I swing it.
“Don’t swing it,” says my sister.
“Why shouldn’t I swing it?” I retort. “Look, I can make it spin without the lid falling off,” I brag. I want to show her, because I’ve practiced this in the courtyard when no one was looking. I want to show my older sister that I’m a big boy.
I’ve seen the others do it while going to the well. They can even do it with a full jug of water. I wouldn’t dare, but I can manage it with an empty one.
In the meantime, my sister keeps pushing me. I almost fall into the ditch. There are deep ditches next to the sidewalk. We stop by the Ramp to see if a car is coming. Not too many cars come this way. There is very little traffic apart from the regularly scheduled buses.
We go on, it’s not far from here. The artesian well is next to the belfry. We call it the drill-well. We fill up the canister and spill it out again several times. We pretend it happened by accident. I trip and fall. I trip on purpose and fall down on purpose. If someone notices, they always say something to us.
“Don’t waste the water! What are your names?” And finally the person will speak to our mother to tell her she didn’t bring up her kids properly.
If there isn’t a line at the well, then we stall for time. We spill out the water next to the well; it flows out through the iron grille that we place the jug on. But you can see the water in the ditch, because the pipe flows out there. A large puddle forms. That’s why I have to trip, to make it seem like it happened by accident. At home, we say that there were a lot of people at the well and we had to stand in line. Because we always have to lie.
We don’t want to be at home when our mother is angry. If we stay out too long, she comes after us to see where we’re wandering around. Or to see if the others are bullying us. The gangs of boys play near the well. They jeer at us. Or they spit on us.
“So, what’s up, Goga? Cat got your tongue? What are you staring at?” they say to me.
“Why gawk, why gawk, just one fart and you’ll drop,” they chant.
They try to fart. They turn their bottoms toward me. The braver among them let down their drawers. They lean forward and pull apart their backsides. I see the brown color of their assholes. They look back at me through their legs and stick out their tongues.
They mock my sister, calling her “Monkey.” I would like to beat them up. But I’m little, and there are big boys in the gang. They ridicule us. I feel impotent rage. With my head bowed, I quicken my steps. I would like to get home as soon as possible.
By the time we get home, our mother has cooked the potatoes. She’s made an “empty soup” from the
broth. She’s not angry anymore. She just eats the potatoes, without salt. We call it saltless.
She runs her fingers through my hair. She caresses my older sister. The Little One isn’t crying. We eat mutely. We don’t speak.
I IMAGINE THAT MY MOTHER IS DEAD. BEFORE FALLING asleep, I turn toward the wall. All day, I’ve been wishing that she would die. Now it’s calming me down. I see my mother, dead. I don’t know how she died. Maybe she jumped into the well or got some sickness. I see her in front of me, all laid out. Her face is smooth. Her head is framed by a black kerchief. I’m angry at her. I wanted her to die. I know she died, but she just looks as if she’s sleeping. Her face is the same as when she sleeps. I usually observe her when she naps after feeding my little brother. At those times, she turns toward my little brother’s bed. She doesn’t move and she doesn’t answer. I’m always afraid she might’ve died. I lean in closer to her. I watch to see if she’s breathing. I see no difference.
Then when I hear her breathing, I’m reassured. Or her snoring. Sometimes she snores. Not as loud as my father, but she snores. That is what her face is like now. But I know she’s not sleeping. I feel satisfied. I’m relieved to know that she won’t bother me anymore. I’ve always wanted her face to be like this. Peaceful, smooth, tranquil. I will always see her like this now, I think. I know that the moment will come when she will die. I try to prepare for that. The tears pour down my face, there’s a bitter taste in my mouth. I feel sorry for myself. I feel emptiness. Emptiness, deep and dull. I can never find that moment when this state turns into sleep. I am searching for that borderline. I would like to sense when exactly sleep comes. But it never works.
THE CATS PURR, RUBBING AGAINST MY MOTHER’S LEG. SHE doesn’t like them, but she feeds them. And the cats know this. Sometimes my mother kicks them away. Not roughly. Not in such a way that it would hurt the cats. She just gently swings them over with her foot. She pours milk from the tin canister into the shallow enamel bowl. Every house has a cat bowl like that. White enamel.
They say that cats are clean animals. Cleaner than dogs. Cats have deportment. There’s a kind of gentlemanly tempo in them, a kind of nobility that demands respect. The cat is hungry and digs into the bowl. My mother tries in vain to keep it at a distance. The milk drips down its head.
“You see,” she says in a forgiving voice. My mother feels sorry for every animal. She doesn’t like it when they go hungry. The first thing she does when she comes back from the fields is feed them.
“They shouldn’t go hungry because of us,” she says. “The house needs a cat. Otherwise the mice would eat us up. And what kind of house is that, where there is no cat?” she asks.
“A Gypsy house. The Gypsies don’t keep cats because they scratch into their own shit. It’s not clean. Only Hungarians think that. Hungarians think that cats are constantly cleaning themselves. When they lick their fur and their paws, then they’re cleaning themselves. They scratch off the dirt. Hungarians also shit in their own houses. Aranka saw up at the manor that there’s a crapper in the house,” says my mother and smiles.
Before, the cats came in and out through the cat hole. The doors were only closed in winter. Or if people left the house, to indicate that no one was at home. In the autumn, it’s hard to get used to closing the door again.
“Close the door,” people start yelling at that time. “Don’t let it be wide open, like the cunt of a whore,” they say.
“It’s smoky in here,” says my mother.
“If it stinks, then it’s warm,” says my father. They fight over this.
When it’s really cold, then they say to us:
“Close the door! Is your hand glued to your ass?”
FOR A WHILE, I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO FALL ASLEEP. BEFORE, my older sister couldn’t fall asleep. Now I wake up, crying out. The doctor said I’m anemic. My mother is also anemic. I look pale, and there are big white spots on my fingernails. The doctor turned out my eyelids; those, too, are pale.
“I pronounce the diagnosis: anemia,” the doctor dictates to the assistant, who writes everything down.
I’m examined in one of the rooms at the House of Culture, where the doctor sees his patients. From here I can see the soccer field, the school courtyard. I watch the courtyard through the window while my mother talks to the doctor. We say doktur. The school shares the courtyard with the House of Culture. The school and the House of Culture use the same outhouses at the end of the allotment. I see somebody running toward the green wooden doors lined up next to each other. On each one of them there is the letter Z. He steps in, pulling down his trousers. His bare bottom shines.
My hair is falling out. They say it’s because of the anemia. Or a vitamin deficiency. My sister is already sleeping, but I’m still tossing and turning. In the evening I have to turn toward the wall after I’ve washed my face and my feet. My mother insists on us washing these body parts, always. And before going to sleep, we have to brush our teeth, too. I spit toothpaste into the basin.
I fold up my clothes correctly, in military order, on the stool, as my grandfather taught me. I straighten the front of my trousers. I fold up my shirt and my pullover. I roll my socks into balls and put them next to the legs of the stool, stuffed into my shoes. In the autumn I wash the mud off my shoes and dry them a little in front of the oven door. We call it bake door. The oven door is always open, the cat likes to lie down next to it. The door has to be kept open all the time so the metal surface won’t burn off. Damp clothes dry the fastest. With shoes, you have to be careful that they don’t dry out too much, because then the leather will break and split apart.
“Clothes must be taken care of,” says my grandfather, “because that’s the basis on which people will judge you. Your shoes should always be polished. A clean exterior covers an orderly interior!” This is his motto.
My mother says, “Take care of your clothes, because we don’t have money for any others.”
“How will we be able to hand them down to your little brother if you ruin them?” she always adds.
“At least he won’t have to walk around in girls’ clothes, and they won’t make fun of him.”
My mother doesn’t say anything to this.
The boys mock me because I wear my older sister’s clothes. They say that I’m a pansy.
“Pansy! Pansy! Put on a skirt!” and they throw mud at me.
The villagers call the director of the House of Culture a pansy. He wears eyeglasses with thick plastic frames, and he always wears trousers. He wears a jersey turtleneck with his black jacket. Not a white shirt, like the other men. He doesn’t even wear a hat. His hair is long and straight, and he’s always adjusting it with a long-handled comb that he keeps in his pocket. He combs it to the right, but it always ends up sliding back into his eyes. And he doesn’t go to the tavern like the other men.
In the evenings, he doesn’t dare go anywhere near the tavern. He’s been beaten up a few times already. He organizes study groups and trains the schoolchildren for the performance on the holiday of the Great October Socialist Revolution. He is hated in the village, but he is feared, as well. He is one of the insiders, because he is a Party member. When my grandfather, who deep down inside always remained a soldier, sees him, he spits after him.
“Who is that pervert?” he asks.
“The director of the House of Culture,” I say. “What does that mean, pervert?”
“A shirker,” he answers. “He must be a Communist. They all are.”
My grandfather takes rules very seriously. Shoes are the most important item. And hairstyles. I always have to get my hair trimmed with the clipper. I’m just allowed short bangs in the front. From the front, it looks as if I still have hair. But from the sides and the back, I look completely bald. Every two weeks I have to go to Guszti the barber, who otherwise is not a barber but who will cut anyone’s hair in the evenings. He has an appliance that he keeps in a cardboard box on the crossbeam. He takes it out of there, then he twists a dirty sheet around
my neck, and the clippers begin to rattle. In the meantime he lights up a cigarette, like every man. The machine pulls on my hair. I breathe out sharply because it hurts. But my grandfather rebukes me.
“Stop whining! This is a matter for soldiers!” he snarls at me. “Only pimps and Gypsies have unkempt hair.”
ONCE WHEN MY MOTHER COMES HOME EARLIER THAN usual, we get in trouble because of the cosmonaut game.
“What are you doing? The poor thing can’t get any air,” she screeches. The bag has gotten stuck on my little brother’s face. His mouth has turned a purplish blue. We didn’t notice that he wasn’t able to breathe.
The cosmonaut game has to be played with plastic bags. We pull them onto our heads. Then everyone has a space suit head, because the plastic sticks to your face.
“Don’t you see that he’s suffocating!” my mother shouts. “Don’t you ever try this again, do you understand? I’ll break your hands off if you ever put bags on your heads again, do you understand?” my mother yells.
My mother is terror stricken. She seeks out our gazes but doesn’t find them, because our heads are lowered. She is shouting, but she is frightened. I can hear it in her voice. She is compelled to sit down, and she puts her head between her hands. That’s how she usually cries, with her head between her hands.
My older sister cried like that when I wrung the neck of her favorite pigeon. Up till that point she had a big mouth, she mocked me. Not since then. She got quiet fast.
I AWAKE TO THE FEELING THAT SOMETHING ROUND KEEPS pressing against my back. I’m sleeping very deeply, I can hardly come back to myself. I always sleep the most deeply at midnight. At the same time, I can feel that I’m being pressed up against the wall. I sleep in the same bed as my mother. My mother gets up early, she kneads the bread, cleans, and all the while she has to feed my little brother. I can only sleep peacefully after she has gotten up. It’s very hard for me to get up, because I sleep poorly and very little. We don’t both fit in the bed.
We have two beds. There is one in the good room, as well, but we don’t heat that room. There is also the bed with the eiderdown, which my mother doesn’t use. These are in the good room.
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