“The garniture,” my mother calls them. I don’t know what this word means. The furnishings were her dowry. Nothing else. She fights with Máli about it.
“You came here with your bare ass. You have nothing. I’m a rich girl, you’re just bare assed!”
My older sister is a big girl already, so she got the bed. We can’t sleep together. The crib is still big enough for my little brother.
When I open my eyes in the dark, I can’t see anything. I just hear heavy breathing. The naked back presses against my own. I hear my father’s groaning, as well.
He’s come back again. I realize the cause of the noise.
At times like this, they always wake me up. I pretend I’m still sleeping. I clench my teeth. My heart is beating wildly. I’m waiting for them to stop. When they finish, my father turns on the light. They pee into the pot one after the other. They throw the used condom into it. In the morning I will have to take it out. I’m disgusted by it. The stretched-out, longish pouch floats on top of the dark-yellow liquid. I don’t look at it. I quickly dump out the basin in the outhouse. The stretched-out pouch lies there on top of the pile of shit.
“My father’s is that long?”
The stallion’s was also huge. The breeding usually takes place next to the blacksmith’s. The breeder from the state stud farm comes on horseback, on the stallion. The people watch the mare that has been placed between the railings. The breeder only releases the agitated stallion when the prick is hanging outside already and it’s pawing at the ground with its front hooves. Then the breeder releases it onto the mare. He quickly steps back behind the railing, where he will be safe. The stallion can’t always find its way into the rutting mare. The breeder then reaches over and helps the stallion with his hands. He guides it into place.
The people gathered there can endure the scene no longer. They shout, they encourage the stallion and the breeder. Everyone is flushed. They tease the breeder and each other while guffawing with laughter. The women watch, mesmerized. The breeder laughs with them. He tells jokes to break the tension. The stallion always finishes too quickly, and the people grumble discontentedly. They scatter and go back to their work.
WE HAVE TO RESTUFF THE STRAW MATTRESSES ON A REGULAR basis, because they become soaked through with sweat. We call them palliasses. We also refill them in winter if we have to. I drag them across the snow with my sister. We get the sacks, made out of sparsely spun burlap, from the feed-mixer’s. When my father brings something home from work, we say that it is an arrival. They’re not Hungarian sacks, because those are long and thin, woven from white canvas and with a colored strip running along the end, like on generals’ trousers. The sacks in the national colors are red, white, and green. That’s why they’re called Hungarian sacks. The palliasses are prepared from bags from Pest woven from burlap or nettle.
“Red, white, and green, this is Hungarian land,” my grandfather always chants.
My mother sewed the palliasse. She cut apart a few of the bags from Pest: she made it from those. In the middle she left a longitudinal opening. From there, we take out the old straw and stuff new straw into it. Then only we, the children, stitch it back together. Just roughly, so it won’t open up again. My older sister gets the needle for sewing the bags. We like this chore, since we only have to do it once in a while. And we can jump in the straw. We grab the corner of the sack and pull it behind us like a sled.
“Giddy up, horsey, giddy up!” we cry out.
We throw the old, damp straw under the pig. The pig rises up on its hind legs; with its front legs it jumps on the sty door. It grunts, hoping to get something. The door hinge creaks. The heavier the pig, the more the door strains. It almost breaks from the pig’s weight.
We stuff the straw into the sacks quickly. It will be good to sleep on them tonight. At such times, the beds have a fresh meadow scent. When we finish with one, we go get the other. We play at sledding on the way back on the frozen snow. We hoist it onto the bed when it’s ready. But before, we carry it back into the house carefully so that straw won’t fall over the floor in the room.
Because then we’ll get in trouble. Recently I dreamed that I had gotten out of bed and peed into the chamber pot that had been placed under the bed. But I was just imagining it. Lately I’ve been dreaming about snakes. I am terrified of them. I’m in a narrow space, surrounded by mud-brick walls. The stucco has been applied roughly and it isn’t limewashed. I stand there, but I don’t know how I got there. There is no door or window anywhere. The floor is the same as in our house. I can feel under my bare feet that it’s stamped down. It’s cool and damp. There are arm-sized holes all around on the walls. Above looms the blue sky. But it’s too far away and much too distant. The wall is too high for me to climb up and across. I don’t understand how I got here. But I don’t have too much time to think about it, because suddenly snakes begin to slide out of the holes. We call them sliders. They draw closer and closer. At the very last moment, I start awake with a cry.
IF MÁLI CAN’T TALK TO ANYONE, THEN SHE SINGS. SHE always sings. If she’s in a good mood or bad. She sings like she’s in church. She draws the words out, chanting in a lachrymose voice. She draws out the words, and her voice quivers. Máli presents herself as much older than she really is. She wears black clothes with a tiny pattern. Or pure black, like someone in mourning.
“My wretched whore life,” she says if someone asks her what she is mourning. She makes herself seem older than she is, and she talks about imaginary illnesses. She often goes to the doctor and gets him to write prescriptions for her. She likes medicines. She likes the ones that she’s heard of from other people. She imagines that they will make her better. She’s not ill, though. If the doctor doesn’t want to write her a prescription, then she gets in arguments with him. She looks for another doctor who will write her a prescription. Then she shows everyone the prescription or the box of medicine. She weeps, speaking of how very ill she is.
“Soon I will die,” she says. She likes to issue her last will and testament. We call it testifying. She tells my mother what clothes to put on her, what she is leaving to whom. The wooden spoons, the earthenware pots, mugs—she will bequeath them all. My mother listens patiently.
“Well, and where are you putting the money? Who gets that?” she asks and laughs.
“A horse cock up your ass,” says Máli when she realizes that my mother is teasing her.
Máli goes to every funeral. She puts everything aside just so she can be there. The village is part of the Reformed Congregation, as is the church. They say that in former times the nobility became Reformed, and then everyone had to convert. But we were Romanians back then—only later did we become Greek Catholics. Because we are newcomers. Máli goes to the Protestant church, as well. Because a funeral is more important than anything else. Even people who were in dispute with one another go to funerals, so they can be reconciled.
“In the presence of death, there is no anger,” says Máli.
Everyone takes account of who was and was not present at the burials of their relatives. And the gesture must be returned. Máli keeps in mind every funeral going back for decades. She knows every hymn of the Reformed Church. She only regrets that the Protestants wind up the funerals so quickly.
“That’s the end, nothing to mend, this one’s left to rot, another in his spot, then he’s gone, too,” she says.
WE’RE SITTING IN THE COURTYARD OF THE PINKA FAMILY’S house. It’s springtime, the sun is shining. We’re dressed up like fattened pigs. We fidget in our Sunday best, because it’s uncomfortable. Chairs and benches have been put out in the courtyard. The men, snickering, tease each other. But more quietly now than when they’re in the tavern. My father’s also here. Now he is not drunk. Lately he’s been fighting with my mother a lot. He’s been staying at the tavern late into the evening. When he comes home at night, he stinks and he’s drunk. He has no work and no money. My mother bakes bread; the collective gives her the wheat. In the envelope, i
n addition to a slip of paper enumerating the work brigade’s monthly accounts, my father found just a bit of small change. He didn’t win anything in the raffle.
“Nothing nowhere, just smoking shit,” my mother says to him when my father comes home late in the evening.
My mother waited a long time. My father went to the tavern. The next day, they fought all day. My father went to a Reformed Church school because there wasn’t anything else in the village. My mother went to a Greek Catholic school in the other village. Both of them are Greek Catholic. But my father only knows the Psalms, and my mother reads the rosary. In the evenings before I lie down, I must kneel in front of the made bed. My older sister kneels in front of the other bed. In the earthen-floored kitchen in the winter, I want the prayer to end quickly. I have no slippers. My bare feet freeze. Now, however, springtime is coming; at this time of year, there is water in the courtyard. The ground in the courtyard is like risen dough. Green mildew blossoms on it. You have to stay on the walkway.
We are preparing for Easter. My mother cleans, washes, irons, bakes, and cooks. The force of habit drives her. On Palm Sunday, she puts catkins above the wall mirror. That’s what we call pussy-willow branches. We cut the branches from the willow tree. We call it the willo’wood tree. The pussy-willow branches cross each other above the mirror. These are consecrated branches. After the holiday, my mother burns them and puts aside the ashes. Then, if we are sick, she puts the ashes in water and heals us with them. They make whooping cough and fever go away. Because the ashes make the water consecrated. My mother values the consecrated catkins very much.
I diligently look over the hen coop, the haystacks, the bottom of the woodpile. Some of the hens lay eggs there. When my mother lets them out in the morning, she feels to see whether there are any eggs, so she won’t lose any. In the evening we start searching for the eggs, if there are fewer of them in the nests. It’s a fun game. We search for the eggs. The fence and the hedgerow have holes in some places. But there’s always a nest that we only find in the summer. By then, all the eggs have gone rotten. And my mother cries. Yesterday, we colored the eggs with onion skins and hemlock leaves.
The lady who lives next door is even poorer than we are. On Monday, one of her hens died. She has been shouting and sobbing for days, walking around the courtyard like that. She is in mourning.
“It’s Easter, my hen is dead. May God shove his cock into it,” she says.
Today the sun is finally shining. My mother is in a good mood. She’s finished all her work. Everything is scrubbed, washed, aired out. She even wiped off the slimy mildew from the backs of the cupboards. She usually does that with boiling alkaline water. She boils the water with wood ashes. The ash dust floats on the surface of the water. The ham, sausage, eggs have all been cooked. She has baked the plaited bread. She wove a cross onto the top of it. The white plaited bread is sweet. Its dough is milky.
By evening, the yellow curds tied up into bundles of gauze will have finished draining. My mother ties them up on the branches of the apple tree in front of the door. I was allowed to stir the curds today. I like the scent of cinnamon. After they were filtered, I drank a lot of the sweet liquid. I got diarrhea. I ate it with sugar on a spoon in secret. She noticed, but today I didn’t get a beating for it. She just laughed.
Today, my father isn’t even drunk. He tried to improve the flavor of the wine in the shed. He prepared it from our own grapes, from the blue Othellos. But it went sour. It’s in a wicker bottle, but he broke the bottle’s neck. He made a wooden stopper with a white rag tied around it.
For the Easter bread there must be wine in the crystal carafe, which also has a glass stopper. The embroidered tea towels have already been starched. They cover the baskets in which we take the food to be blessed. In the morning, my father shaved. He was a little angry because the blade was dull. He tried to sharpen it on the edge of a glass cup. The way that a scythe is whetted, or a razor sharpened on the barber’s strap. But it didn’t get any sharper. We put on our best clothes. The only church in the village is a Reformed church. We can’t go there.
“You Vlachs are newcomers,” they tell us. “Don’t even set foot in there.”
We Greek Catholics go to the Pinkas’ house. Their best room is used as a prayer room. The Uniate priest comes on his bicycle from two villages over. We sit on benches in the low-ceilinged room. Now, because there are many of us and because it’s hot, the grown-ups have taken the benches out into the courtyard. They put scruffy old blankets on them. The courtyard is covered with grass here, because the Pinkas don’t have hens. Already, some flowers have bloomed. The bees fly around the cankerwort. Other people call them dandelions. I look at the scalloped edges of their leaves.
The women sing quietly, their voices harmonize. My mother and father sit quietly next to each other. They are not looking at each other. But it’s already good that they’re sitting next to each other. And they’re not arguing.
We kneel on the grass when the priest comes around to bless everyone. The men are not drunk yet, just a little tipsy, but now they sing a little louder:
“Christ is risen from the dead; by death he trampled Death; and to those in the tombs he granted life . . .”
They sing the hymn drawn out, murmuring. The message of Easter is constantly repeated in the song.
“Christ is risen . . .” They launch into it again and again. The metallic green of the grass is good to look at. We sit beneath the blue sky in the temple of God. We are not many, just six or seven families.
“In the hope of resurrection we receive the sanctity of Easter . . .” says the priest, who has eleven children. They live two villages away.
“It’s a soccer team already,” the men joke.
But we are still alive. So why do we have to be resurrected, I think. In the meantime, the priest goes around and blesses the Easter bread with holy water. There will be peace only for as long as we sit here. By evening, the men will be drunk. Tomorrow there will be the Easter dousing. And once again, they will drink the entire day. The cankerwort is luminous in the golden light of the sun. And you can hardly hear the pleading of the people. “Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us. May your blessing be upon us, my Lord!”
MY MOTHER IS SILENTLY CRYING. SHE SWALLOWS BACK HER tears. My father is fighting with us. My mother, her mouth clenched, is quiet. She wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. She blows her nose. Her hands are dirty. She’s peeling potatoes. Lately she’s not been smiling much. My father’s drinking. Once again, he came back late from the tavern. He was singing a Gypsy tune until he got to the little gate, when suddenly he stops. He can’t find the lock. The lock is a piece of wood with a screw in the middle, you have to turn it. The two ends are already battered. If it’s perpendicular, then the gate is open. When it’s at an angle, it gets stuck and won’t move. The lock is there because of the dog. The lock is pretty big, but my father can’t find it. He fumbles and curses. Then he gets fed up and kicks the gate in. Then he kicks the door in, too.
We sleep next to the open door. It’s not locked. In the village, nobody locks their front door. Even when we go out to the fields. If the front door is closed, it means we’re not at home. Otherwise everyone yells in, even the postman. No one ever sets foot in anyone else’s yard without permission. They yell to each other. They’ve gotten used to yelling. Out in the fields, people yell to each other from far away. Because of the noises of the howling winds and the machines and the din of work, you always have to yell. My father also always yells, but now he wants to be quiet. Like drunks when they think they are being careful. My father trips over the threshold and falls into the kitchen. He breaks out in curses.
“God’s cock of a threshold! Wasn’t here yesterday,” he says.
My mother doesn’t speak. My father is in a good mood. Suddenly he feels more sober.
The next day my mother turns her back on my father. She doesn’t talk to him, she avoids his gaze.
My father feels bad
ly, he is ashamed. After a while he can’t stand it anymore, he addresses my mother.
“So, what’s wrong?”
“Our entire life is one big lump of shit,” says my mother.
“Think about what you’re saying,” says my father. He means it as a joke.
“May God forgive you that you don’t bother with your family, only with your friends,” says my mother.
“At least then I’ll have work,” he says.
“Do they value you? They make you work for pee and shit,” my mother bursts out.
“We’re living, aren’t we? What more do you want?” says my father and turns his head away. His heads hurts. It feels like it’s splitting.
“Let’s get out of here before we die. I can’t breathe. You don’t get work. They hate us like their own shit. Even if you lick their ass, you won’t get work. You won’t even be able to carry manure,” she enumerates. “Can the kids live like this? Are they going to go to the tavern with those people?”
“Is that so shameful?”
“We are mired in shit,” my mother mutters.
“Chew over what you’re saying,” my father says in a monotone. There is no more playfulness in his voice. But he’s not irritated, he doesn’t raise his voice like at other times. He just listens to what our mother says. Because women have no other weapons, only words.
He knows that she’s right. He feels that he is powerless.
In vain did he seek out the head of the collective when it turned out that he would no longer get any work in the machine shop, where he had been working until then.
“I can’t leave my mother’s grave here, my father, or my siblings,” he grumbles softly.
“What did your mother do for you?” my mother asks. “She made you build your brother’s house, because you had time for that all the same. And for that, you got a piece of paper that you can wipe your ass with. Did you get anything else? They’ll cheat you out of it, all right. So, well,” she says. “You were able to carry the bricks from Kisvárda and the tiles from Kölcse. But when it came time for you to build, only a few came from the soccer team, all of whom you repaid with help many times over.” My father can’t say anything to this.
The Dispossessed Page 20