“Shoo!” says my mother and makes a sweeping movement with the broom.
When she’s angry, she’s angry at everyone.
“Scat, don’t be underfoot here,” she says.
The cat doesn’t understand. It wants to ingratiate itself. When the door opens, it carefully slips in from the garden.
I play soldiers by myself. Lying low just like the Soviet soldiers during the siege of Berlin, I dash from one hiding place to the next. I must remain in the trenches. The Soviet soldiers are being shot at. I’m lucky. No bullets have hit me. I come out of the kitchen garden. I crouch next to the shed. Here, I’m already in the bunker.
“We reach every kilometer stone, and we shall be victorious,” somebody said in a film.
I usually play at partisans among the plum trees. I hide messages beneath the tree bark. As well as reserves for the retreat. And directions for our men. Soviet soldiers are the best soldiers in the world.
I SMOOTH OUT THE CHOCOLATE PAPER. THAT’S WHAT WE call the thin aluminum foil. We got it in a package from Canada. Two tablets of chocolate and Johnson & Johnson talcum powder in a nice tin box. It’s forbidden to eat the chocolate. The talcum powder is so nice. At the beginning, we pleaded to eat one piece of chocolate.
“Not possible,” said my mother.
“Why not?” we asked.
“Because. And that’s that.”
We didn’t dare steal any of the chocolate, just as we don’t dare steal the sugar cubes wrapped in colored paper from the Christmas tree. It’s not allowed. We would get in big trouble.
We hardly ever see chocolate. And if we do, then I share with my sister. But she cheats. She always divvies it out because she’s bigger. I’m only allowed to take a bite from what she’s holding in her hand. And only as much as she allows.
“Half of it is mine, no?” I ask.
“That’s one half,” she says. And she holds her finger at the point where I can bite a piece off. I know she’s cheating me. Her finger is not at the halfway point. In my rage, I bite her finger. I can taste her blood in my mouth. Luckily, I am able to bite off some chocolate, as well. I run away. She yells out. It hurts. She tries to run after me, but I’m faster. I hide. She’s sure to tell on me later. I suck the chocolate in my mouth. “She deserved it, because she cheated,” I say to my mother in the evening, when she asks me what happened.
Chocolate is a big temptation. But it is forbidden to eat the chocolate from Canada.
“You can have it later, at Christmas,” my mother says. She’s proud of it. If a guest comes to the house, she shows it to them. Because we are different. We are not peasants. The chocolate makes us think of Canada, where we would like to immigrate.
“We are going to leave here”—that’s what the chocolate means.
Before Christmas, my mother was in a good mood one day, and she was playing with us. At the end she said that now we can eat some of the Canadian chocolate, we don’t have to wait till Christmas. She took it out of the vitrine, and she unwrapped it, but the chocolate had gotten ruined in the moldy house.
There is a pattern printed on the chocolate paper. It was outlined in the light. I smoothed it down with the back of my fingernail.
I’M WALKING ALONG THE STREET. I’M COUNTING THE Gardas’ houses. The Gardas live all along the Upper Row. They live along the Lower Row, as well. They also live in Hajnalvég. The Gardas lie in the cemetery. In the old one as well as in the new one.
The Gardas are not our relatives. Most of the village’s inhabitants are Gardas. They’re all the same. We’re not like them. Most of the Gardas are short. They marry each other. Every man stays in the village and takes a classmate, a neighbor, or a cousin as his wife. You can’t tell them apart. One Garda looks exactly like the next Garda. They resemble each other like eggs. People tell them apart by using the letters of the alphabet.
A Garda, B Garda, C Garda, and so on.
When the Gardas are still bachelors, they wear white shirts and black waistcoats. They wear calf-leather boots with their black breeches. They have black hats on their heads.
I walk along the street, and they come from the other direction. You can tell that it’s a Garda from far away. The village has been the Gardas’ village for a very long time.
MY MOTHER PRESSES THE STRING MARKET BAG INTO MY hand. And sixty-three fillérs.
“Go get a loaf of bread. And a cup of sour cream.” We call it scald cream.
I hate going to the store. They always cheat me in the tavern. Auntie Piri, the shopkeeper, less so. The grown-ups push in front of me.
“The kid has the time,” they say. It’s not like they’re rushing anywhere, though. After, they stand on the Ramp and talk. They have time. Nobody’s rushing anywhere. Messiyah is always loafing around there. He stands a little farther off from the Hungarians, grinning. He’s always grinning. The grown-ups shout. They laugh with their entire mouths. They spit and they curse. They spit out sunflower seeds. They spit out tobacco. When they quarrel, they spit at each other.
“This money is your two eyes!” says my mother. That means I have to take care of the money like it was my own two eyes. “Do you understand?”
“I understand.” I have to say that.
“Louder! You also talk into your ass,” she says. That means: you’re just like your father. And that’s not good. My mother is nervous. This is the last money in the house. If I lose it, there’ll be no sour cream. And I usually lose it, because I’m afraid. I’m trembling with fear. I’m afraid of the shop. I’m afraid of the Ramp, too. I’m afraid of people the most. Of standing in line. Of the yelling. So I lose the money when I need to be really careful with it.
“I understand,” I say much louder.
Auntie Piri’s shop is on the Ramp, across from the tavern. I don’t like to go to the Ramp in the afternoon, when the men are already standing in front of the tavern. They lurch backward and forward like ninepins when the ball has hit them but they haven’t fallen down yet. They just sway back and forth. The men totter like that on the Ramp. They yell louder and laugh. The day’s shift is over.
I slip across to the other side. I want to avoid them. I’m afraid of them. I notice Messiyah, who is sitting on the bank of the ditch and isn’t moving.
He isn’t crouching, although he usually crouches. Gypsies can crouch the entire day. Hungarians can’t do that. My legs go numb. Messiyah is like us. He doesn’t belong anywhere.
I’m curious and I don’t want to give him a wide berth. He looks at me. There’s something on his face. I squint so I can see better. I’m nearsighted. Later on, if things are better, I’ll get new glasses. We don’t have money for that now. I lost my eyeglasses because I was ashamed. I’m the only one in the class who has eyeglasses. The other kids mock me and call me “owl.”
“Hullo, Messiyah. Why are you crying?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. He cries.
“What did you spill on yourself?”
He answers haltingly. As if he can’t catch his breath.
“He’wo, you thee, they thpit at me . . .” he says in such a thin voice that I don’t recognize it.
The men guffawing in front of the tavern point at Messiyah occasionally. They yell across to him.
“Gypsy, I see you, come out!” Then they burst out into harsh guffaws again.
“They spit at you?” I ask.
Messiyah always smiles, always gets out of everyone’s way. He is humble with everyone.
“Why did they spit at you?” I ask him.
“Becauth I’m a Gipthy,” he says.
In front of the tavern, they’re telling the joke to each other that they repeat every single day. One evening, the Gypsy goes to the priest’s house to steal. Suddenly the priest comes out onto his veranda and begins yelling, “Gypsy! Come out!” The Gypsy hides in the outhouse. The priest yells out again: “Gypsy, I see you, come out!” The Gypsy climbs into the cesspit. He crouches in it up to his neck. The priest cries out again:
“I see you, Gypsy, c
ome out!”
“You see your mother’s cunt, I’m sitting up to my neck in shit!” the Gypsy yells back at him.
The priest calls his dog Gypsy. In the joke, he’s calling out to his dog. But the thieving Gypsy doesn’t know this. Then they laugh at the shit. They always laugh at that, at the shit-covered Gypsy.
They’re bent over with laughter. They keep repeating to each other:
“You see your mother’s cunt . . .”
“I’m up to my neck in shit . . .”
Messiyah had work today. He emptied out someone’s outhouse. Then, as he was going home, the men in front of the tavern began quarreling with him, saying that he stank. They thought of the joke. A drunkard spit on him. Then another. No one protected him. They guffawed with laughter.
“I see you, Gypsy!” they yell out to each other good-humoredly.
“I’M GOING TO LEAVE HERE,” I SAY TO MÁLI. “AND I’M NEVER coming back.”
“You’ll go to your father’s cock,” Máli retorts without thinking. “No one ever leaves here. I tried, too, and I’m still here. Got married twice, and not even once did anything come of it,” she says. And she cackles.
“’Cause you talk a lot, and you don’t like kids,” my older sister says. “And you don’t even give us lollipops.”
“Watch your mouth,” says Máli.
“’Cause you’re stingy,” my sister mocks her.
“Miser! Miser!” we call out together.
“Go to your mother’s cunt,” Máli yells, and she throws the broom at us.
“ALWAYS CLOSE THE GATE,” SAYS MÁLI.
It’s a gentle autumn evening, there’s a husking bee. The corn has been harvested from the collective land, and now the neighbors are coming over. The men banter with each other, everyone gets a shot of brandy. They ask the women, too, the ones who wouldn’t turn down a drink. Máli always asks for one. When she takes the glass into the larder, she licks it in secret.
“Don’t bring it out, Máli, ’cause you’ll drink the whole thing,” they shout after her.
“Your father’s cock,” Máli yells back.
“Shut the gate, somebody,” my grandfather says. “Don’t let it stand there, open wide like the cunt of a whore! Once we left it open, in forty-four, and that led to problems back then, too,” he says.
“That waren’t now,” someone says.
“It waren’t. Back during the war.”
“Got nothing more recent?” my grandfather is teased. But he doesn’t let himself be bothered.
“One time, back in forty-four, the gate was left open once, and people came in. The Russians were coming from Berek. First there was a soldier on horseback with a machine gun; he brought the rest of them. They had small Tatar horses. They brought half a pig on one horse, and the field kitchen on another horse. They lit a fire, brought water from the well, they chopped up the meat into cubes. They stuck cabbage into it, and only they know what else. They offered us some, as well. They drank and they wept. The officers slept in the first room, the others slept in the pigsty and the shed, wherever they could squeeze themselves in. They stayed here for a week. We were terrified the whole time. Then, just as they had come, they left. As if they’d been stung, zip-zap, they packed up in a hurry, and they left. They kissed everyone again and again, and they were really crying. The truth is that even then, they were drunk.”
My father would bring something to drink to the girls and women who were hiding in holes they had dug out underneath the haystack. A long tunnel led there. It started from behind the woodpile. Only a child could crawl all the way through it. They had to be brought water and news.
“Close the gate,” that’s always how the story ends.
“WHAT’S YOUR NAME,” ONE OF THEM ASKS.
“Bobonka,” I say.
“Bobonka?” he repeats and searches in his memory.
But as he doesn’t find anything, he wrinkles up his nose, then spits a big one off to the side. He opens the top of his pipe, brings out his pipe tool from beneath his work apron, and digs around in his pipe. He sucks in strongly twice, puffs out. He draws on the pipe. When he’s satisfied, he taps the metal cover. The clasp rattles.
“Yes,” I say by way of confirmation.
“You live here?”
“Yes, here.”
“Who is your grandfather?”
“Lame Miska,” I say so he will understand. That’s what my grandfather is called in the village.
“Lame Miska?”
“That’s the one,” I say, like someone who should be ashamed. Cripples are considered to be evil. One of my older male cousins is also lame. And he’s a dwarf, too. He’s hardly any bigger than me. His parents were cousins. Two Bobonkas got married because of the land. And their children, one boy and one girl, were both cripples. They live together in the old family house. Neither one ever got married. They live alone. One of them has shoes that are like hooves. With thick heels. And they live far away, in the direction of Csaholc, on the old Barkóczy Street, which is now called Rákóczi Street. Beyond the granary. We don’t go there very often.
“Aye, Mózsi’s bastard,” he whispers to the other so I won’t hear.
“Jóska Mózes’s?”
“That’un’s.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Not them’un’s.”
“But you said Mózsi’s.”
“Not this’un here. The old ’un.”
“The one they done took away?”
“That’un.”
“So Mari Pop’s.”
“That’un.”
“Mari still alive?”
“Nope. She a dead’un. Four or five years now.”
“May God rest her soul, she was a dog of a woman. She could really scratch.”
“True, that. She scratched up Miska real good,” he says, and they laugh. They both spit once. They’re quiet. Both of them are thinking of something, thinking of the same thing.
“That Old Mózsi was a good-looking man. Dashing, can’t deny that.”
“True, that. That Mari was still young,” he says.
“If not a looker, too.”
“What’s young always looks good to an old geezer.”
“True, that.”
“What’s Mózsi doing?” he asks. “Still going to Csaholc, to the state production unit?”
“Every day. With his bicycle. Got some shop there,” the other says.
“Near Bukó?”
“That way. The innocent. What is he supposed to do, the wretch. He does business,” he says.
“He’s just a Jew. It’s in his blood,” he says.
“True, that. Good head for business. He gives credit even today. Somehow writes it off the books. No problems with inventory.”
“They let him. From pity, you know . . .” he says. He doesn’t say for what. That the gendarmes took away his entire family. “Well, that one.”
On that, they agree. They smoke their pipes. They adjust their hats. They push them back, then forward on their heads. They always wipe the ends of their mustaches after they spit to the side. They shoot it out the sides of their mouths. Neither one of them has any teeth.
When they’re not watching me anymore, I run away.
“GRAB THE WING HARD,” SAYS OTTÓ.
I grab the hen with Ottó’s younger brother. We took it out of the hen coop because Ottó said that he would show us how the grown-ups do it. He rolls down his sweatpants and takes his cock in his hand. He rubs the skin. Then it stands up, just like it happens with the dogs.
“Well, hold it down hard,” he says. The hen is cackling, struggling, scratching with its legs.
“Grab its legs, too, it’ll keep biting us,” says Ottó.
“You grab it,” says his little brother.
“Easy for you to say,” I tell him. In the meantime, we struggle with the hen. It’s very strong.
“Who the hell thought the hen could be so strong, Ottó,” we say to him.
Ottó grows i
mpatient. He yells at us.
“Turn its ass this way,” he says.
“You do it by yourself,” we say, because the hen has scratched us all over.
We run away, leaving Ottó there.
“Let him fuck the hen as well as he can,” mutters his younger brother. “He got us all nice and scratched up. Last time, he dug a hole in the ground down in the garden. He peed all around it, making soft mud. Then he shoved his cock into it. It’s a mania with him nowadays,” he says. “He tried to do it with the cow, too. He stood on the milking stool, but the cow kicked it away,” he says, and he guffaws.
WE’RE GOING SOMEWHERE BY BICYCLE. MY MOTHER IS CARRYING me in the basket, because I can’t learn to ride a bike. I’m very afraid, and I can’t find my balance. My older sister already knows how to ride a bike. All the children my age already know how to ride a bike. I’m ashamed, but I can’t do it.
In the meantime, my father is talking with my mother. They’re riding next to each other on the road. Every once in a while, a car comes from the other direction or from behind. Pannonia motorcycles with sidecars. The drivers have dust goggles that look like scuba-diving masks. Fish thrown onto dry land. Trucks come only very infrequently. Then my father cycles in front and yells back to my mother. They can’t hear each other well. So they yell at each other even louder than they usually do. My older sister likes to ring the bell on her bike.
“Stop ringing the bell,” my father yells at her.
In the distance, the enormous poplars lean toward each other above the road. I count the poplar trees. Of course, they don’t really lean toward each other, it’s just how we see them. Just like how tracks don’t really cross each other in the distance. The poplars give a pleasant shade. Sometimes the wind rises. It’s a mystery from where. The asphalt has trickled down from the middle of the bumpy road toward the edges. I look at the edge. Gray stone debris pokes out from beneath the asphalt. My father has a man’s bicycle. My mother has a woman’s. I’m sitting in the back, and my legs have already grown numb: I have to hold them out so they won’t get caught in the wheel’s spokes. Even though there is a spoke protector.
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