“That stinking ’bacci, it’s all you think about,” she shrieks.
“Leave me alone already,” my grandfather grumbles.
Máli chews on sunflower seeds. Somehow she puts one in her mouth and cracks it open. I don’t know how she does it with her two teeth. She spits out the shell. And all the while, she talks. She sucks the spit back in.
Sometimes she’s drunk, often she’s just tipsy. In the village, many people are already tipsy in the morning. You can smell the brandy on them. They’re in a good mood, they’re loud, they’re tight. When Máli is tipsy, she really shows her love for us. She kisses me again and again. I don’t like it because her mouth stinks. The spit drips down her face.
Grown-ups kiss little kids by giving them many little kisses, one after the other. Relatives kiss each other on the mouth. With their mouths closed. They kiss each other three times. The ladies who are getting old like to kiss little children over and over again. Especially little boys.
“Oh, what a pretty little boy! Come here, my soul, let me give you a little kiss,” they say, and they pull you to themselves. I wipe away the glutinous saliva. I wipe off my skin with my coat sleeve. It’s even worse in the summer. They grope my bottom with their hands, they pinch it. My great-aunt does this, as well. I don’t like to go over there. I don’t want to, but my mother pushes me over “because otherwise your auntie Magdus’s feelings will be hurt,” she says.
They don’t have any children, and both of them were only children themselves. Their parents were large landowners. The two of them live in a big house on a large piece of land. My great-aunt sits beneath the grapes all day long, underneath the bower. She doesn’t work. Her husband is also old. They’re already retired. My auntie Magdus is very fat. She sits on a stool. The stool is small, and her bottom hangs down all around it. She doesn’t get up, she just pulls me toward her, keeps kissing me, grabs my bottom, pulls me to herself. With her other hand, she grabs my willy.
“What a nice little willy he’s got already,” she says to my mother and snickers. I see my mother turning red. They both giggle as I try to slip out of her grasp. I’m angry at my mother because she’s laughing, too. Before she lets me go, she gives me a good pinch on my bottom. She only lets me go very slowly, her nails digging into my skin. I can’t wait to go home. I sulk angrily.
“Let’s not come here anymore,” I say when we’re outside in the street.
“She’ll get upset, we have to see her sometimes,” my mother says. “You know how it is.”
“But she’s disgusting,” I reply.
“She’s an old woman,” my mother answers. “You can put up with it.”
In the summer, my auntie Magdus sits outside in front of the house, on the bench. They live across the street from my grandfather and his family. Then we have to call out to them. I hear my mother whispering to me.
“Greet them!” she nudges me.
I can’t get out of greeting them. I have to yell out a greeting and wave to my auntie Magdus from far away.
“They still get on very well,” my mother says. “Well, say hello already,” she hisses between her teeth.
“I don’t want to,” I say stubbornly, my head bowed down, I’m also hissing between my teeth.
“You have to greet them, it’s proper,” she replies strictly. My older sister greets them loudly in a singsong voice and is already running into my grandfather’s house.
“I kiss your hand,” she says. I mutter something so they’ll leave me alone already.
“No one can hear what you said. Don’t talk into your ass!” my mother drills me.
Sometimes love bursts out of my mother, and then she kisses us a lot, too. At those times she also grabs my bottom, just like Magdus.
“What a nice little bottom you’ve got,” she says. And she caresses my member. After a while I pull away. I don’t want her to grab me.
“Well, look at that, the little soldier,” she says when she notices that I’m pulling away. “You’re a big boy already,” she says.
WE’RE SITTING IN THE FIRST ROOM. MAGDUS’S FAMILY HAS a big house. They have many outbuildings. It’s a big kulak house on a large kulak property. They say that they watch television every night. We don’t have a TV. There’s only a TV in the House of Culture. We go there sometimes. You don’t have to pay, and it’s heated. One night, though, we asked them if we could look at their TV, my mother wanted to watch something. After saying hello, auntie Magdus once again slipped her hand between my legs, but this time she didn’t grab for a long time. Her husband was there as well, my uncle Károly. They’re very rich, the glass-fronted cabinets are filled with porcelain figures. In the mirrored cabinets, too. You’re not allowed to touch anything.
The TV sits on a brown inlaid table. Its top is covered with a lace doily. They already have their own set. In the House of Culture, you can’t understand anything because people keep talking. The old people are hard of hearing, and they keep asking about everything.
“Who is this now?” they ask every time a new character appears.
The younger people shout that they can’t hear anything like this. In the end, there’s always a big argument. So we prefer not to go there. That’s why we came here now, to Magdus’s house.
Everyone takes a seat. My auntie Magdus sits in her armchair, we children sit on stools; my mother also sits an uncomfortable chair. My uncle Károly ceremoniously plugs the connector into the socket. A strange sputtering sound is heard. My uncle Károly looks in the back through the cracks, to see what is happening.
“Lights are on,” he says, transmitting what he sees.
“So fine, sit down already, it will warm up without you, too.” Magdus gestures to him. Uncle Károly sits down.
“Has it not turned on, my uncle Károly?” my mother asks.
“We don’t press the button, ’cause that breaks it,” he says. “It’s enough to stick in the plug. That’s what they said in the shop. It’s better like this, because when there’s a storm the electricity won’t fry it. Then you gotta pull it out, because the electricity pulls in the lightning. You don’t never leave the radio plugged in,” he says.
“That’s what I always tell him. It’s enough to just shove it in, then pull it out. As long as there’s something,” my auntie Magdus says to my mother.
My mother turns red. Embarrassed, she straightens her skirt. Magdus neighs with laughter in a deep voice, my mother giggles modestly. She turns red, she steals a glance at us. My uncle also laughs to try to cover the embarrassment.
“An old woman, and still making jokes like that,” he says.
“Don’t have to be in there long, just shove it in,” says my aunt Magdus with an even deeper snicker.
“Don’t talk like that in front of the kids,” says Uncle Károly.
Sparks run across the television screen, and then long, oblique stripes. Something appears, but the picture is moving. Slowly it comes to a stop. First it is blurry, then the TV warms up with loud crackles.
“Picture tube warmin’ up now,” Uncle Károly explains.
The announcer appears on the television, he repeats the evening program.
There is lilac paper attached to the screen with bandages, the kind of lilac wrapping paper that my older sister, who goes to school already, uses to cover her school notebooks.
My uncle Károly sits on the made bed, that’s the only place left for him, he leans against the eiderdowns piled up high. No guest can sit there. My aunt Magdus scolds him, telling him not to lean against them.
“Watch out for the made bed! It’s not easy to fold them so that the tips of the blankets are pointing up,” she says and laughs delicately. “But I could’ve told you how it has to stick up . . .”
FOR SUNDAY DINNER, THERE MUST BE MEAT SOUP. BUT often we don’t have even that. Because there isn’t any meat. Then we make vegetable soup with noodles. My mother is ashamed that there is no meat soup. My father is ashamed that there is no meat in the pot. Only I’m happy
, because I hate chicken. I’m disgusted by the skin.
In spring, the chickens are still little. We’ve already eaten up all the ducks and geese. Only one smoked leg from the pig hangs in the larder, a few strings of sausage, a little bit of bacon. We need the ham to go with the matzoh at Easter, as well as the sausage, so we’re not allowed to eat them. There are hardly any eggs. A few scraggly hens cackle in the courtyard. In the spring, they hide when they lay their eggs. You have to keep looking for them.
There is silence. My parents are quiet, they eat. My sister and I are also quiet. We spoon up the soup in silence. I prefer vegetable soup. I like egg soup, too, and caraway soup. There are still potatoes. We call them tauties. In the autumn we put them in a pit in the courtyard. They last well in the cold. But now they’ve started to go bad. Until they run out, there will be potatoes every day.
It’s not a problem during the week. But on Sunday there has to be meat soup on the table. Even if we’ve been fasting. We call it festing. Wednesday and Friday are fast days. Recently we’ve been fasting every day. My mother sighs. My father is quiet. We eat the watery soup in silence. Everyone’s happy now because on this Sunday, my father is at home. Every day he’s out by the pump, because he has no one to relieve him. Nobody from the village wanted to take on this work, but my father had no other choice. It’s good that he’s here now. We would be happy if the Little One wasn’t sick.
The second course is doughnuts. Doughnuts with jam preserves. Or my mother makes potato pancakes, or sometimes fried dough with sugar.
My father drinks a shot of brandy. In the meantime, the Midday Chronicle plays on the little red radio. My father lights up a cigarette. He rolled himself one from newspaper. My grandfather cultivates the tobacco in his garden.
My father leans his elbows on the table.
My mother is washing in the big basin that is placed on the little goat-legged table. My father sings with the radio: “O mother mine, you fine woman.” He smokes the cigarette and sings softly. My mother’s back is turned to him. They don’t talk.
“I’M NOT GOING TO SCHOOL,” I SHOUT FROM UNDER THE bed. “I already told you I’m not going.” I hide under the bed, all the way in the corner. I don’t want to go to school.
“Come out,” says my mother and laughs. My father’s laughing, too.
“I’m not going! I’m not going to school, do you realize that!” I say.
“Don’t be an idiot,” my older sister, who already goes to school, says, laughing. She always cries when she comes home. Because they beat her. She got rapped on the knuckles by the teacher. She had to stand in the corner. Or my mother beats her because she got a poor grade.
“Then you’ll end up behind the cow’s rump,” they say. “You can go scrape the stubble. You can carry the manure.”
“I already carry it,” I argue back.
“Why don’t you want to go to school?” my mother asks.
“Because I don’t know how to read or write,” I answer.
“But no one else knows, either. That’s why you have to go to school,” says my father.
“But they’re going to laugh at me, because I don’t know anything,” I say.
My mother and father laugh.
THE TEACHER CAN’T STAND US. THE BOYS ARE GRIMY, smelly, and wild. The girls are also unkempt.
We’re learning how to read. Right now we’re at the letter h. In the reader there is a picture of a beautiful horse. We look at the book and we listen to the teacher.
“What is that?” she asks, pointing at the picture in the reading book.
In the fragrant book, the horse has been colored brown. We look at the picture.
If we look out the window, we can see a horse at any time, but it won’t look like the one in the book. The kids who have fathers who take care of animals sit on horseback. You can sit on the backs of the old horses that lug the manure.
If people have to plow or spread manure, they ask for a team of animals from the collective. In the winter, they bring trees from the forest. In the summer, they bring coal to the shed. Or they bring grain for fodder to the grist mill. They bring wheat to the auger mixer for it to be ground.
“What is in the picture?” the teacher asks.
Everyone shouts out the answer at once.
“No,” says the teacher. And she asks us again. By the second time, we are already uncertain. The third time, no one answers.
“What is in the picture?” she repeats the question impatiently.
We are suspicious. Everyone knows what’s in the picture, but the answer still isn’t good.
“What is it?” she asks again.
Her stiffened face winces beneath her enormous black bun. And in the area around her blazingly red mouth. Her powdered face, and always the same little suit. The bun, tall like a tower, is held together in a little net.
The teacher is a gentlewoman. Peasants make her wince. She doesn’t touch us. If someone is bad, they get a rap on their knuckles with the ruler. But she never steps closer, she just leans forward.
“It’s a wig, not her real hair,” my mother says of the bun.
Maybe she’s afraid of some infection. She hates living here. She hates everyone.
“I am Mrs. Király,” she says when she is introduced. Her husband is the teacher Mr. Király, the deputy headmaster.
Mrs. Király is beginning to lose her patience.
“What is it?” she asks again.
“Well, it’s an ’oss,” someone says.
“A what?”
“Well, an ’oss,” the answer is repeated.
“’Oss! ’Oss!” we all cry out at once.
“Horse,” says the teacher. “Be quiet!” and she raps on the table with her ruler.
That makes us quiet. The third graders, sitting in the outer row of benches, are whispering.
“I did not ask you to speak!” she says to the third graders.
“Say horse!” Mrs. Király shrieks at us. “Don’t talk like peasants!
“Repeat nicely after me: horse,” she emphasizes, and, forming a perfect oval with her bright red lipsticked mouth, she says: “Horse.”
Now we understand why the answer wasn’t good. But that’s not how we say it. We try to imitate her. We repeat the word slowly, drawing it out. Mrs. Király writes something on the blackboard.
“And what does a horse do?” she asks.
“It farts,” says Ottó.
“Who said that?” She swerves around so she can see where the voice came from.
“Was that you?” she asks Bálint, who has stealthily made himself small.
“It was ’im,” says Bálint, “not me.”
“Got no shame? Don’t lie,” says Ottó.
“If it was me, Teacher, may I become a hunchback. May my mother and father die if I ain’t sayin’ the truth,” he reassures her.
Mrs. Király grows rigid. Her mouth is trembling. Now even the third graders are laughing. We are sitting near the windows in the shared classroom; the third graders sit next to the wall. There are two rows of desks in the room. The floor’s surface is oily. Every morning, the cleaning lady pours diesel oil onto it. This makes it shiny and black and slippery. You mustn’t fall on it. If somebody holds out their leg, you could end up taking a huge dive. Whoever falls is laughed at. And then at home they get in trouble.
“I will ask you again, what does a horse do?” Mrs. Király hisses.
“It farts,” someone says.
“It poops, poops out goop.”
“Old hooper, pants pooper.”
“It shits.”
“It gets the runs.”
All hell breaks loose.
The third graders join in, as well. They can’t stop. Mrs. Király’s eyes dart around the room. Her mouth turns white. You can see by her bun that her head is shaking. She runs out.
“Peasants!” she yells back at us. “Country rubes!”
She slams the door after herself.
BÁLINT HAS TWO GREEN STRIPE
S BENEATH HIS NOSE. IT’S mucus that has dried there. The edges are yellow brown. In the middle, it’s bright green and moist. Maybe it’s been there for a few days already. Sometimes he rubs at it with his fist. He doesn’t wipe it away, he just sort of swipes across it. Nobody uses handkerchiefs.
If somebody’s nose is stuffy, then they sniff it up. If their nose is dripping, then they spit. Even if they don’t have a stuffy nose, they spit. The men are always spitting. Because of the cigarettes. The old people can spit straight out of the corner of their mouths. Because of the tobacco. Enormous globs of phlegm. Bálint is always sniveling. He is now, too. His brother beat him.
“Why did he hit you?” we ask him.
“’Cos I always sniffle,” he says and snivels.
“So stop,” we say to him.
“But my brother beat me,” he snivels, the corners of his mouth turned down.
“Your mouth is hanging open like a hen’s ass,” they say to him.
“Because he hit me,” he answers.
“Well, that’s exactly why. And stop already, because we’re going to hit you, too,” we say to him.
“Somebody give him a wallop already,” the others urge us on.
“No! It hurth my ear,” he says. And he protects his ears with his hands. He trembles from the expected blow. He presses down hard, he protects his ears. So he can’t hear anything. He also squeezes his legs together. He’s so afraid that it’s funny. They play with him like a cat with a mouse.
THE TEACHER COMES TO OUR HOUSE BEFORE THE BEGINNING of the school year. She comes for a home visit. She fills out a form. My mother is afraid of all official-looking papers. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say.
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