Parallel Stories: A Novel (211 page)

At school he observed the Hungarian children with great concern, watching what sort of things they did among themselves, because he understood neither their enjoyments nor their meanness nor their little business deals.

Not only was he unfamiliar with their feelings but he didn’t understand the words Hungarians used to try to restrain their freely rambling desires and fickle attractions. He and his grandfather slept under the open sky. He didn’t know why his grandfather had been cast out by his own people or why the two of them had to live beyond the boundaries of their own tribe. They spent every winter on the mountain in Rátka, in a remote, well-concealed hut his grandfather had built. They could see from the house the great bend in the frozen-over Mura, with the willows. Border guards would interrogate his grandfather when they were looking for fugitives, and they’d shout and swear; once they took him away because they thought he was lying. But other people could not see the hut, not from any angle, unless they spotted smoke rising from its chimney. They came off the mountain only when it began to thaw, when at night the ice cracked and popped in the river.

They could be content because in every village people waited for them impatiently.

They could find lodging in any house.

Uncle Tuba this and Uncle Tuba that, you know how much we love you, an’ the little boy’ll feel better with our young ’uns; with words like these, the peasants would coax the grandfather.

You don’t have to worry about food, the woman is cooking for nine anyway.

It was most difficult in the autumn because that was when his grandfather had to bargain hard with the peasants.

When life had gone to sleep in the trees, old Tuba’s raw material, a peasant would go with them to pick out the right poplar, willow, chestnut, or linden in his woods or at the edge of his hayfield. Of course the obstinate peasant wanted to trick the Gypsy, which made him act foolishly, as if deliberately setting out to get the worst deal for himself. The peasant would never let old Tuba cut down a tree that he had singled out as a good one—and from which, when spring came, Tuba could carve for the peasant a scalding tub for plucking chickens, a washbasin, baking peels, a tray, and spoons for lard. Or the peasant would cut it down himself and by springtime would have used it all up for firewood, stupid peasant. They started with the larger pieces, the scalding tub and washbasin; from the interior of such bowl-like pieces they lifted, very smartly and economically, wood for the smaller items, so that in the end only shavings remained. The peasant needed everything that could be carved from his tree, just as the carvers could not have survived for more than two weeks without the grandfather’s labor. But a variety of profound irritations and annoyances lurked in this necessary and strict exchange.

You won’t cut down that tree of mine, you filthy Gypsy, damn your mother’s dear God Almighty.

And when after all the unnecessary jabber they finally came to terms, the stupid peasant always wanted to have more things carved from his tree than there was wood for. He’d roll his eyes and watch from a distance to see if the old man and boy were not cheating him. Or he’d ask for something that old Tuba would not carve from a tree for all the money in the world.

That’s a peasant for you, doesn’t even know the value or nature of his own tree.

Of course there was always more in a tree than what the peasant could imagine in that hard noggin of his. But they didn’t let him know that, let him be content thinking he’d managed to trick the Gypsy again. The Gypsy can’t help it if he has more brains than the cunning peasant, who always wants more and who always loses everything.

The extra objects disappeared for a while under ashes or shavings and turned up later in faraway markets and fairs.

They could have made even more money on each tree if they’d had a horse and wagon, so Grandpapa Tuba daydreamed; necessity made him more honest than he could reasonably be expected to be.

They were given food and shelter, this and that, some produce, some secondhand clothes, but to survive the winter they needed a little money as well. The old man did not want much—to carve out no more than a few extra spoons, well, maybe a bowl or washbasin. The peasant who could outwit him had not yet been born, and if he had been, old Tuba and his grandson would give his house a wide berth.

Because they kept their eyes and ears open at all times, they saw that there were peasants whom even other peasants avoided; no Gypsy either would have anything to do with such people.

There were threatening beings in the familiar world, some of them more powerful than Gypsies, and every evening the grandfather would tell his grandson a story about one of their deeds. Souls and ghosts would appear from the dark woods and move toward the fire, but they could be friends of neither fire nor light. When the tale ended, the grandfather threw a few more shavings on the fire, making it smoke a little, letting the wild animals prowling around them smell it, and the ghosts gently withdrew into the night filled with bloody secrets.

They could hear the village dogs yelping one after the other as the ghosts passed by, and they kept barking for a long time after to keep the ghosts from returning.

Every successive day brought back the light again.

In the memories of older people in the area, the boy and his grandfather are preserved as two figures in tattered clothes who reappear every spring looking haggard and pitifully thin as they turn into the muddy yards. At that time of year the plump peasant gleams with the extra weight he has put on during his idle winter. If a dog barked angrily, they would stop outside the fence or hedgerow. They never walked side by side; the boy either lagged behind or walked in front of his grandfather, and when they talked while walking they shouted. And they never wound up side by side, as if there weren’t space for that, or as if neither of them needed help or encouragement from the other. The old man wasn’t tall, but the dignity of his bearing heightened his figure in the peasants’ eyes. The women would have liked to touch and hold the little boy, for his beauty moved them, but he radiated only refusal.

For a long time Tuba seemed untouchable; later he seldom longed for physical contact with anyone.

The old man carried a large sack on his left shoulder; he also carried his axe on the left so he had one hand free. He parted his thick gray hair in the middle; according to an ancient law, no barber’s scissors could touch it. And if the masters or the gendarmes were to do that to a Gypsy, as sometimes they did—and the old man imprinted this possibility deep in the little boy’s mind—no greater shame could befall him in his entire bitter life. The way he’d avoided this shame, his grandfather told him, was that when they had wanted him in the army, he took out another birth certificate in the priest’s office in Korpavár. One had to claim to be a few years older or younger when filling out forms so as not to be taken away.

The priest always found somebody in his book with a convenient birth date.

And ever since then he and his children have been going around with this false name. When he went to see the priest in Korpavár, the real Tuba had been dead a long time.

And his grandfather was four years older than it said in his papers.

According to ancient custom, two tight plaits of hair called
kader
in Romany framed his nicely furrowed, stern face; he allowed no emotion to move a single muscle of his face because that would offend his forebears.

By the way, this sack on his shoulder was the big sack with which peasants frightened misbehaving brats. The Gypsy will cut you in two, put you in his sack, and take you away. He carried the sack as his ancestor had done. The strutting foolish peasant believes he is cussing you, but in his language too,
cigány
, Gypsy, means human being.

And he feels good when he says, hey,
cigány
, this or that. For us it’s like he’s not saying anything.

Grandfather Tuba remembered old events as he had heard about them from the stories of his own grandfather; if he could not remember something he rounded off the story by giving his own version. János Tuba told stories the same way to his fellow workers, saw the old fire his grandfather had built in place of the fire around which the road workers sat, and while he filled in the missing pieces from his own experiences he saw his grandfather squatting in the slow-moving veils of smoke, scraping the dying embers with his stick.

When Bizsók was with them, János Tuba skipped over certain things on purpose, so as not to initiate a Hungarian into important knowledge; or he might stretch some facts in other parts of the story.

But among themselves none of these men liked talking about himself or about real events of his life.

And the evenings were not too long either.

After work they had to wash up, and even though they neither washed nor mended their clothes—they took their clothes home and left these chores to their women—they always found things that had to be put in order. While one cleaned the trailer, another would cook. The Gypsies ate what they had cooked together, but Bizsók ate separately. Occasionally they would all go out for a spritzer or, more rarely, a beer, and Bizsók would go with them if only because he didn’t like their being on their own. Four Gypsies appearing in the inn of a strange village was something fearsome; in some places it was not even advisable to go in. Sometimes one of them would want to be alone and would stay back while the others went out. Winding up in the midst of strangers’ lives increased their sense of belonging together; Bizsók looked somewhat askance at this but, as their supervisor, realized that these experiences gave them material to talk about. And since he also had to forge his team into a socialist work brigade, after such an outing he could enter in his log that the brigade members had practiced socializing in their communal life after work.

Tuba was more likely to go out on his own or more frequently to stay back in the trailer.

Bizsók did not like this much.

Sometimes Tuba’s army buddy would show up; the men would find them together when coming back to the trailers, the mustached Hungarian who’d come with Tuba when he joined the team. He always arrived as if materializing out of the ground, and he disappeared in the same imperceptible way. Bizsók had nothing to say about that. He liked that someone had such a loyal friend. They were similar in build too. He always vanished without a word and returned without saying anything; the men could not ask a person like that where he had been or what he had been doing. At most they could tease him, and he could respond in kind. They all noticed that during the days after his friend’s appear-disappear visit, Tuba himself would vanish. But not always. This was impossible to predict, just as it was impossible to comprehend how the mustached man from Budapest always found them no matter where they happened to be working. Bizsók was puzzled, but he neither said nor asked anything. Still, he was left with a tiny ache that reminded him of something he preferred to forget. And he did not like the way the man with the mustache grinned constantly. But over his long years of work, he realized, having thought a lot about it, that the grinning friend had come with Tuba the first time so that the Gypsy would not be alone when he applied for work. Bizsók liked this in Tuba’s friend, with whom he never spoke and whose last name he had a hard time remembering.

He barely remembered the man’s first name, Gyula, because he wanted to cast it out of his memory, and that is when the name would reappear unexpectedly.

Whatever the men did, whether together or separately, they were all very careful, more so than with anything else, not to touch another man’s life, not with words or looks. This basic rule was not to be broken by anyone. Once, the day after such a violation, Bizsók told the malefactor to return his work permit; the man left immediately. Everyone knew what had happened, but in the closeness of their lives they could preserve their self-respect in the future only if no one talked about another man’s private affairs. Of course, there are unguarded movements or words with potential consequences, inadvertently open or meaningful looks that one remembers later. An error may slip into one’s interpretation that may darken another man’s face or brighten it.

Bizsók did not understand many things, but the three other Gypsies could not understand how it was that Tuba could disappear and miss two workdays with impunity. Bizsók would have fired any of the others for such a violation.

At noon, when they came back from having a couple of beers and discovered the strange items in the trailer, a similarly inexplicable thing happened, but this time among the Gypsies.

Tuba slapped Jakab on the face, hard.

And at the same time the older Téglás brother lowered his eyes; if he had not, all the emotions that goodwill and sufferance were curbing would have flared up in the darkness of those eyes. Bizsók grunted loudly. Imre Téglás began to shout and flail his arms.

He stopped instantly because his brother obviously wanted something else.

In the machine was the molten material for at least another sixteen rounds with the wheelbarrows, the tarry mix that had to be poured out at the right places before Bizsók could start with the steamroller. He kept watching his men from behind his thick glasses, but he was at a loss as to what to do.

As though his leniency with Tuba had now come to avenge itself.

Jakab threw himself, screaming and crying, on the floor of the hot trailer, not because the slap had been hard but in desperation. He denied having stolen these expensive, strange items. He kept banging his shaven head with his fist, and if they hadn’t stopped him he would have banged his head against the trailer wall.

He yelled and argued in Hungarian and in Romany, as the good Lord was his witness it wasn’t him, what did He want from him, it wasn’t he who stole, somebody else had stolen his new work clothes.

Actually nobody had accused him of anything.

But how did that expensive pair of pants wind up on the clothes rack, and that fine high-class shirt, pale-blue oxford, and where had those welted, barely used
old English box
*
shoes come from, now under the racks, one neatly side by side with the other, that is what they all asked themselves.