What Tricks the Mind
by Rita Taryan
1
Chickens are battering crumbs or the lack of them. A man is digging a hole to resurrect a fence. A tractor is humming. A white tablecloth on the line is surrendering to the wind. The mouths of children on their way to school are filling with pastries: kakaós csiga (chocolate snails); kürtőskalács (chimney cake); túrós táska (sweet cheese parcels). There is a constant and respectable level of exertion in the village of Kistúlzás. In a tree in a yard an industrious Penduline tit is weaving a nest out of willow fluff. It can’t get more respectable than that.
In Kistúlzás the price of goods is set to what is fair, even if what is fair feels like a grand rip-off. Among the villagers the pecking order is established, though it is openly resented. The tractors move dirt here and not there. The wind blows no matter what. The chickens are characteristically chickens. The holes are just so deep. The fences are just so high. The children are quiet and don’t mouth off to their elders but, as children are children, sometimes they do mouth off to their elders. (When the children mouth off to their elders, the villagers spank the children with wooden spoons.)
The comeliest woman in the village is the one with the roundest face and rosiest lips. The most eligible bachelor in the village is the one who writes the most heartfelt poetry about his mother. The great Hungarian poet, Attila József (working-class, schizophrenic, a suicide at the age of thirty-two) wrote, “For a week now, all I think about is Mama; When I stop, I start again.”
The village’s young men are all farmer-poets or poet-farmers. The village’s old men are all former farmer-poets or poet-farmers who have given up all but the watermelon pálinka (brandy) and the occasional creative scatology that comes from total and ultimate dedication to the watermelon pálinka. The village’s old women are all sober cooks and wretched mothers. There is nothing to be done about old women who are wretched mothers, they are justified. Lately so many of their sons have left Kistúlzás for international careers and foreign women in other European and even Asian countries.
Which explains why the women of Kistúlzás are so glad this month to see hanging around the village kocsma (tavern) fourteen well-groomed strapping men in black paramilitary uniforms. (The women are hoping at least one marriage of village young woman to visiting young vigilante will result from this occasion.)
The village dogs bark at everything but not at everybody. The village Roma dogs bark only at non-Roma, which is as it should be because the village non-Roma dogs bark only at Roma. The village non-Roma dogs whine submissively whenever the fourteen visiting men march past the non-Roma yards kempt and concentrated centrally so that they are an easy walking distance to the primary school, which is also the venue for the annual Passion play; the church, which is also the nursery school; the Mayor’s residence, which is also the Town Hall; the kocsma, which is also the restaurant and the distillery; the outdoor antique market, which appears on the first Sunday of every month; and the Museum of Kistúlzás whose permanent collection features centuries of furniture and paintings some of which can be traced back (but are not traced back) to the ownership of former Jewish villagers who used to live in the village.
The former Jewish villagers who are former owners of various furniture and paintings currently displayed in the Museum of Kistúlzás—there are also furniture and paintings not displayed in the Museum of Kistúlzás which are quietly furnishing and smartening the walls of the non-museum homes of non-Jewish villagers—are water under the bridge in that most of them were machine-gunned off the Tisztaboszú bridge into the Tisztaboszú river.
The former Jewish villagers, former Jewish owners of a fair number of currently displayed furniture and paintings and a good number of quietly not displayed furniture and paintings, were machine-gunned into the river, machine-gunned trying to swim to the bank of the river, choked trying to climb out at the bank of the river, choked with bare calloused watermelon-growers’ hands, and thrown back lifeless into the river. Now, along with rocks, sand and silt, the former Jewish villagers play an integral role in the moving force of the river. The current non-Jewish villagers blame the ghosts of the former Jewish villagers for the river’s revenant episodic flooding. The current non-Jewish Roma villagers openly blame the Jewish ghosts, and the current non-Jewish non-Roma villagers tacitly blame the Jewish ghosts. All year long the river pounds against its walls, erodes its sides, rushes its embankments, rattles the bridge’s abutments, dislodges the bridge’s steel supports and, now and then, floods the 60-meter-long bridge. The village Roma men and women load up heavy sacks with wet sand and the Roma children and dogs sit up high on collapsing roofs and falling trees. (The village is uninsurable, say the actuaries.) And the village Roma ask, “Why do the river’s Jewish ghosts pick on us? What did we have to do with the machine gunnings, chokings, throwings, drownings, beatings, starvings, rapings, and watermelon growings—other than likewise being victims of them?” Whenever the river fitfully floods and the Mayor, Mrs. Mayor, mayoral nephews and the rest of the non-Roma non-Jewish villagers stand by and do not lift a finger to help the village Roma load up sacks all night and catch falling children and dogs all day, the village Roma complain, “Why don’t the Jewish ghosts remember? We fled while the fleeing was good, crossed borders and starved internationally, found ourselves home every place because every place cursed us equally, rounded us up, and fragmented us. We were gassed, too! With you! In Auschwitz-Birkenau!” But the river keeps flooding. And the non-Roma non-Jewish red-handed villagers complain, “What’s all this non-this and non-that? We’re Hungarian—period! It’s the Roma and the Jews who are non-that and non-this. Not to mention very un-! The worst un- of all! Un-Hungarian!”
In the antiquities section of the museum of Kistúlzás, there is on display a pair of brass candlesticks with an engraved oriental design. The curator of the museum, Ildikó Őr, also runs the village Bed and Breakfast. She writes the labels which describe the objets d'art in the museum, for example: “Pair of Exotic Candlesticks, Third quarter 18th century, Gilt brass and rock crystal, 1945.100.1.” Mrs. Őr also drafts her own advertisements for the Village Herald: “Cozy chamber for the weary traveler, Affordable, Clean, You can eat off our toilets, Muslims not wanted.”
The village Roma dogs bark viciously when the marching vigilantes approach the edge of the village where the village Roma dogs live in ragtag yards. Every day the men march to the edge of the village where they march up and down day-and-night for a whole month patrolling the Roma ghetto. Also they hang out a lot at the village kocsma where they toast to the winning mission of the march.
At the edge of the village there is the river that floods. There are neglected meadows wild with Sea Lavender and Flowering Rush. There is the Roma ghetto stretching along both sides of the river that floods on both sides. There are the houses needing constant repair because the river floods them. There are bright-colored houses being intensively repainted. The Red Cross has suggested to the Mayor and the village council that the Roma families be moved closer to the center of the village. The Red Cross is willing to assist financially with the resettlement. The Mayor and the village council are outraged by the suggestion: The Red Cross should get its nose out of Kistúlzás’s business and go tend to the unfortunates in Africa, they say.
2
The paramilitary posse arrived in a rented party bus whereas Tomi was driven into Kistulzás in his limo, so there was already a not negligible degree of resentment toward Tomi who had been invited along only to serve as a kind of mascot for the operation. The event post on Facebook read: “Join us—and movie star Tomi Tomás—in Kistulzás where we will fight patriotically to protect the countryside from those unwilling to adhere to acceptable societal rules. Free beer.” Dressed head-to-toe in slimming black in accordance with the prescribed uniform, Tomi emerged from his limo waving jauntily to the small crowd who recognized him from his starring roles in popular action spy films.
For several days Tomi went along enthusiastically patrolling the village. He hollered curses at the Roma dogs and cracked his whip at the Roma horses. The men let him hold a shotgun but he accidentally shot off a village weathervane, so they took the gun away. Then an anonymous video short appeared on YouTube revealing Tomi’s secret Ancestry.com results and Tomi, regretting sending away his spit for testing in Lehi, Utah (a place that obviously couldn’t keep its mouth shut) tried to smooth-talk his way out of the problem.
The video went viral. The men were incensed. Tomi tried to give the men money. The men took his money. Tomi tried to leave the village in his limousine. The men stripped Tomi down to his underwear, set Tomi’s limousine on fire, and sent Tomi running for his life.
Tomi ran for days. Like a house centipede caught under a glass Tomi kept running the perimeter of Kistúlzás.
Now Tomi is tired of running. He has chosen an unlocked henhouse in which to hide. The henhouse is three cubic meters. It is airy lodgings built of redwood and wire mesh and elevated so that droppings can fall through the floor. It is well-appointed for the chickens that like to run by day and cozy up by night. And the henhouse is serenely shaded under the large giant sycamore tree that won European Tree of the Year two years in a row: in 2003 when Hungary held a referendum on joining the European Union and in 2004 when—with an overwhelming 83.8 percent Hungarian voter approval—Hungary joined the European Union.
Those were emboldening days for village and tree, the tree grew twice as fast as ever before. The village fussed over the tree: cut the tree’s dry branches, painted its stump to protect it from disease, and sprinkled it with wine to give it and the village more good luck. The tree, in all its 300 years, had never received such fabulous treatment. And it hasn’t since.
Neglect of the giant sycamore began in the winter of 2009. Somebody noticed that the tree had not won European Tree of the Year in a while. None of Hungary’s trees had. The Spanish, with their enviable black aspens, were having a shameless three-year winning streak. The village council of Kistúlzás met to debate the pros and cons of maintaining a tree that had not won anything in years and, moreover, lived off the generous tending of hard-working villagers who had plenty to do keeping up with their other trees which were, by the way, hard-working fruit-producing trees and not a freeloading what-have-you-won-for-me-lately tree. Then, when the national party of NO! won on an anti-EU platform in the spring of 2010, the neglect of the prize-winning giant sycamore became formalized. “Forthwith,” as per the council’s decision, the village left the tree to its own devices, of which it had none after five heady years of being pampered like a greenhouse cultivar.
“This tree fits perfectly into my plan,” Tomi exclaimed, as he was unaccustomed to holding back from exclaiming things. He sprinted, trippingly, like a young rabbit, across the field of wildflowers to the tree. But when he got closer he saw that the giant sycamore was sick. Tomi is no arborist or tree contest judge but even he could tell: “This tree is not strong enough to hold me,” Tomi moaned, as he was fast becoming used to blurting out every moan that came to him. The tree’s bark was coming off in flakes and strips and the naked surface was crawling with blue and gold girdlers. “Yuck,” yelled Tomi, who should not have been yelling.
Right under the tree though, there was the henhouse which, “Is my best bet,” shouted Tomi, who should not have been shouting.
3
Tomi’s Emporio Armani retro-inspired tighty-whities (trending among young conservative men) are camouflaged among the all-white beaks, shanks, toes and plumage of eight ivory-white hens and one pure-white cockerel who don’t remember inviting anyone to share their home. With orange-red eyes they glare at him. Tomi makes himself at home on straw. The eight hens and one cockerel reluctantly give him room to curl up and while he naps, the hens brood in their nooks. The cockerel sits on the perch and shits softly, diplomatically, on the intruder’s head.
Tomi has a good dream. In the dream his mother is nursing him and cooing at him.
Tomi stirs, the hens are convening in the accidental crook of Tomi’s bent legs. The cockerel is pecking at Tomi’s ear, the ear bleeds. Tomi’s other ear is to the ground.
Tomi has a bad dream. In the dream his mother is cursing his father. She is cursing Tomi, too, who is a fetus slowly forcibly reshaping his mother into something monstrous.
Tomi is roused by the seismic activity of fourteen men. The eight hens squawk and the one cockerel sounds the alarm. The men march past the giant sycamore, the men march past the alarmed henhouse. The men shout, “Mongrel and traitor! Death is coming for you!”
Tomi is wide awake, he will never sleep again. The men march past the tree and the henhouse day and night on the way to and from the edge of the village where the village Roma live. The men shout for Death at dawn. The men warn of Death on the western horizon. The men don’t sleep, the men don’t need sleep. The men have Death’s staying power—plus the men have bottomless flasks of watermelon pálinka. Drink stimulates the men because they are young, there are no old men among them for whom drink would be sedating. The men have Youth’s staying power.
The village police drink with the men. The village police do not interfere with the drinking, shouting and marching of the men. The village police go home to sleep in their beds. The men stay up, they shout and flaunt knives and axes with impunity. The village Roma cannot sleep.
The village Roma are afraid to leave their homes. The vigilantes threaten to burn down the homes of the village Roma with the village Roma in them. The village Roma leave their houses for school, work and shops. Every time the village Roma dare to leave their houses, the fourteen men follow them everywhere. To their school, work and shops. The men threaten to burn down the houses of the village Roma while the village Roma are not in them. The village Roma quickly run home from their school, work and shops to their houses to save their houses. Now the men threaten to burn down the houses of the village Roma while the village Roma are in them. The Red Cross busses arrive. Uniformed Red Cross workers load the busses with the village Roma.
The vigilantes watch the busses leaving the village for somewhere, they don’t care where, maybe Canada. The vigilantes sing the Hungarian national anthem.
The busloads of village Roma look out the tinted windows which are made of safety glass and framed with heavy-duty black aluminum. The village Roma see the vigilantes standing in front of the houses of the village Roma. They try to imagine what Canada is like, they picture penguins.
The village Roma, who have for four-hundred-years (on-and-off arrests, expulsions, and genocides) built houses, rebuilt demolished houses and put down roots in Kistulzás, leaving sing the Hungarian national anthem.
4
The ground stops shaking. Tomi shivers. Blood trickles from Tomi’s ear into Tomi’s mouth. He lifts the roof of the henhouse to steal a look, he pulls back down the roof over his head, he crawls around the coop in circles, he cracks the roof again, he drops to his knees. His knees are weak, he has always been weak-kneed. But for a while he pretended, on the big screen, that he was brave.
Tomi ferrets out an egg from a nook. He cracks the egg and pours its goop down his throat. He cracks a smile. He cracks a roof. The giant sycamore cracks from ground to crotch. A hunter of rabbits cracks off a shot, Tomi drops to his bare-naked knees. There is not enough straw so his knees bleed.
The hens are incensed about the egg and about the earth. Tomi’s blood is camouflaged among the all-crimson combs, ear-lobes and wattles of eight hens that charge Tomi. They take turns jumping, biting and kicking him. While he fends off one, another attacks. He tries to reason with the hens, he’s a flop at reasoning. Tomi flashes his teeth, which used to work on fans, women young and old, and on men of lower status and inferior incisors. But that was another life. There has been a tremendous fall from grace.
In this new life Tomi makes men and hens angry. The hens are apoplectic about the disruptive way Tomi is using camouflage (bleeding everywhere) to break up the outlines and features of the hens’ persons and purview. They jump on his face two at a time, they scratch as close to his eyes as they can get with his arms blocking them. Then, suddenly, they stop. Nature calls.
Nature is not Nature. Nature is ten thousand years of domestication. The hens retire to their nooks, they bow their heads in remembrance of their Chinese jungle fowl ancestors. They proceed with cramping out a dozen eggs. The hens pant, they scream. They leave Tomi in that transitional state between dead and alive. The steam off voluminous laboring-hen shit, perching-cockerel shit, and shivering-Tomi shit, warms up the coop.
5
Tomi hears two farmers talking outside the henhouse. The hens lift their backsides in anticipation of being robbed. The cockerel sounds the alarm. Tomi begins to cry. Remarkably, Tomi has the good judgment to cry very quietly.
First the farmers complain about the ferrets that have been stealing eggs and the trees that have not been winning awards. Then their conversation digresses:
“Heard about the cigány (Gypsy) on the run?”
“No. What did she do?”
“It’s a male.”
“Too bad. I don’t mind the females. They’ll do anything if you promise to release them. If you know what I mean.”
“Not my taste, but each to his own.”
“What did the cigány do?”
“I don’t know but they want him all the way in the Capital.”
“Húha! He must have stolen a crown jewel out of the Prime Minister’s ass!”
“Don’t knock the Prime Minister. He’s doing his best.”
“He’s a highway robber.”
“Yes, but there are worse things.”
“As I was saying, there’s a városi cigány (city Gypsy) loose.”
“What’s he doing here in Kistúlzás?”
“Came disguised as one of the volunteer youth sheriffs, but they sniffed him out.”
“Haha! Stupid murdering cigány!”
“I don’t think he’s killed anybody yet.”
“Better lock our doors just in case. A leopard can’t change its spots.”
“Maybe he left with the rest of them on the busses.”
“Better sleep with one eye open just in case. A tiger can’t take off its stripes.”
“I’m more concerned about the ferrets. Found too many broken eggs lately.”
“Once a thief, always a thief.”
“Found blood. But the laying hens are all accounted for.”
“I’d count them again just in case. Can’t get rainbows from a horse’s dick.”
“Let’s change the subject.”
“I can do that.”
The two farmers light cigarettes, it’s a nasty habit neither man truly enjoys. In the 19th century when the ruling Austrian monarchy imposed tariffs that cut into the Hungarian tobacco trade, smoking became an act of Hungarian and masculine defiance. Today it’s the globalist health regulators trying to make patriotic Hungarians stop smoking.
“I’ve been reading a book,” says the farmer who suggested changing the subject.
“Oh?”
“The writer is some kind of professor from Canada.”
“I won’t hold that against him.”
“He says that compared to the murdering and thieving that goes on these days, there was much more murdering and thieving a thousand years ago.”
“That’s a thing to say.”
“It makes perfect sense when you think about it.”
“It does?”
“You see what tricks the mind is technology. The Internet. Social media. The human mind can’t process it so we’re in a constant state of fight or flight. I’ll give you an example.”
“Please.”
“Just the other morning I am making myself a small plate of kis katonák (mini-sandwiches): a little salami, a little cheese, and an irreproachable but satisfactory layer of Erös Pista (Strong Stevie paprika paste).”
“Nyami. (Yummy.)”
“And the dog starts barking at me. High-pitched like a woman.”
“Intolerable.”
“And I tell it to shut up but it won’t.”
“Stupid dog.”
“So I slap him across the muzzle.”
“Naturally.”
“Not hard, just to make the point.”
“Of course.”
“And it cowers away under the stove.”
“Poor thing. Too stupid.”
“But the surprising thing was...”
“Man’s best friend is as stupid as man, some people say.”
“As I was saying…”
“Yes, apologies. Go on please.”
“The surprising thing was that my heart was pounding the whole time.”
“No way.”
“And for an hour afterward.”
“That is surprising.”
“But the book explains it.”
“Oh?”
“It’s like this. Today, everything feels worse.”
“Much worse.”
“Granted it’s true that there’s still tribal warfare going on in places.”
“Ukraine!”
“Yes.”
“Gaza!”
“Yes.”
“Burkina Faso. Maghreb. Sahel. Niger. Mali. Myanmar. Sudan. Burkina Faso . . .”
“You said Burkina Faso twice.”
“Yemen. Columbia. Pakistan. Azeerbaijan, Papau New Guinea . . .”
“Yes, yes. But it used to be worse.”
“Really?”
“Yes, all things considered—the civilizing of man, the subjugating of the jungle, animal husbandry, horticulture, agriculture, Christian values—the world really is a much-much better place than it ever was before.”
“Uh-huh,” says the second farmer, pausing tensely and peering cross-eyed at an Acheronian sky. “Should we get these locks on? Looks like it’s going to rain.”
“You’re right. The sky is getting sinister,” says the first farmer with eyes screwed on right.
Tomi listens to the last sounds he’ll ever hear: the hasping and padlocking of the door of the henhouse; the chaining and locking of the roof of the henhouse; the panting of hens; the crowing of a cockerel; the banging in of a nail next to the door of the henhouse; the hanging of a key on a nail; the clomping away of two farmers; the banging on the outside wall of the henhouse of a swinging key in a wind that is picking up; the tapping of rain on the roof of the henhouse; the lapping, against the outside walls of the henhouse, of a river which the village Roma used to keep from lapping; the sputtering of the Jewish river forcing its way through wood into the henhouse; the cascading, like high loose boulders pitching down the Tokaj mountains, of Tomi’s own tears which are hardened and amplified; the flapping of a cockerel perched on Tomi’s head; the swirling silence of a soup of chicken.
Rita Taryan is a Hungarian-born Canadian-American writer and teacher.
Note from the editor:
Hey there, it’s Kate Tsurkan, editor-in-chief. Literary magazines like Apofenie are able to remain up and running first and foremost thanks to the support of their readers. Please consider becoming a paid member today and helping our community grow.
