Three Stories

Andrea Berger

A Note on Ádám Bodor's Fiction

The genesis of Ádám Bodor's fiction lies in Transylvania's position at the crossroads of cultures. In the Middle Ages, when Transylvania was at the perimeter of the Hungarian Kingdom, many peoples settled there to fortify the land against invasions from the east; in the Renaissance, many other peoples found in Transylvania a fertile home rich in resources and safe from the upheavals and persecutions elsewhere in Europe. By the seventeenth century, Transylvania was inhabited by Hungarians, Romanians, Germans, Jews, Gypsies and many smaller ethnic groups; and although it was by turns a part of the Hungarian, Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Austro-Hungarian empires as well as an independent principality, its rulers were never able to give equal political power to all its peoples. Ironically, it was probably not its vampire lore but the notorious instability of Transylvania in the Victorian era that prompted Bram Stoker to send his protagonist there: in the twilight days of the British Empire, the ethnic turmoil embodied in Count Dracula may well have been more horrifying than any of his unusual appetites.

The twentieth century has seen no end to ethnic conflict in Transylvania either. After World War I, Hungary was forced to cede Transylvania, its two million Hungarians and its other nationalities to Romania. Into this "Hungarian Question" Ádám Bodor was born in 1934, while Romanization was being forced upon all the peoples of Transylvania, ostensibly in retribution for the suf-ferings of the Romanians under the earlier regimes. During Bodor's youth, the Stalinist model of industrialization, nationalization of resources and political repression was imposed on his homeland. When Nicolae Ceausescu rose to power in 1965, however, with him came an insidious nationalistic communism, with an ethnically "pure" Romania and a frightened, isolated, and subdued pop-ulace as its goal; to that end, Ceausescu employed a hyper-efficient secret police, which tended to eradicate the opposition through inexplicable accidents. With chiselled restraint, Bodor's stories evoke the surveillance, violence, and intimida-tion of the Ceausescu regime, set against the beautiful, despoiled, and haunting landscape of Transylvania. Finally, Ceausescu's anti-minority policies and the failure of his command economy created intolerable hardships for many Transylvanian intellectuals, and Bodor emigrated to Hungary in 1982 under circumstances he does not reveal.

Bodor is a master of the short-short story; he is admired for the economy of his darkly suggestive style, which has been compared to a cross between Hemingway and Kafka. He has published eight collections of stories since 1969 in both Romania and Hungary. Although he now lives in Budapest, his work remains relevant to Transylvania today, because the promise of democracy that came with Ceausescu's execution in 1989 has yet to deliver anything. Despite his fate and that of his people, Bodor's fiction transcends the concerns of any one nationali-ty; like most open-minded Transylvanians, he believes that the peoples who have lived there side by side for generations have no quarrels with one another. Instead, his stories focus on the persistence of dictatorship in this least-known part of Europe, crystallizing the chilling moment at which its victims, regardless of their background, must acquiesce to it. His work suggests that at a future time when the politics of the nation-state will have come to an end, a shared Transylvania should still be possible.

Ádám Bodor

Pot Luck

There was a sliding window on the door. The man, who went by the name of Max, pulled it shut too and locked it. Now no one could see into or out of the kitchen.

It was a little restaurant, just a diner, really, that held only eight tables. Its customers were mostly regulars who came at their customary times and had their meals at their customary places. Even with only eight tables to serve, though, the kitchen was fairly small. Max surveyed it:

"A nice little kitchen," he muttered. He looked around for a place to put his briefcase. He was going to put it on the meat block, but after taking a closer look at it, he stepped over to the window and hung the briefcase from the latch.

The cook repeated his words sourly. "You bet this is the kitchen. And you're not allowed in here. Go have a seat in the dining room."

Max paid no attention to her. He began to study the room. He even examined the ceiling and paid special attention to the dark spots in the ceiling where the steam had soaked into the plaster.

The two waitresses had been working at the counter when Max walked in. They were staring uncomprehendingly at the sliding window that he had closed. Max waited until they had carried their trays out the door, and then he picked up the menu, flicked the specks of rice from it, and began to study it.

"Please leave," the cook said. "You don't belong in here. I told you before to go sit in the dining room. Now get out of here. Of all the nerve. . . ."

"I'm not leaving," Max said, keeping his back turned. He put down the menu and went over to the stove. He began to peer into everything that was cooking, lifting the lid from every skillet, saucepan, and kettle, and tilting his head to one side to keep the steam out of his eyes.

There was a pan warming on the tile stove. He went over to it and looked under the lid. "What is this?" he asked quietly.

"Apple strudel," the cook answered.

One of the waitresses came back into the kitchen. She was tall and squarely built, like a man. "Inspection," the cook whispered to her.

The waitress had some spoons in the pocket of her apron. Max went over to her, took one of the spoons from her pocket, and held it to his cheek. "This is warm," he said.

"Yes," the waitress said. "I keep them in my pocket so the customers get them warm. They like to eat their soup with warm spoons." She colored, except for two white patches at the corners of her mouth.

"What about the forks?" Max asked quietly.

"They're too sharp," the waitress admitted.

Max nodded sympathetically. "How many customers are out there right now?"

"Seven, I think," the waitress said, "unless new people showed up while I was in here."

Max slipped a carbon between two sheets of paper and laid them on the flimsy metal countertop away from the food stains. On the paper, he printed in block letters: CLOSED. He looked up, thought a moment, and then added another word beneath it: PERMANENTLY.

The other waitress had just come into the kitchen. He handed her the papers. "Hang these on the restaurant door, please," he said. "Put one on the outside and one on the inside of it."

The waitress stopped in her tracks, staring at the two words printed on the paper. "What for?" she demanded.

The other waitress had come up behind her and was peering over her shoulder.

"To keep the people who are outside from coming in, and to keep the people who are in here from coming back," Max said.

"But why?"

"And when the last customer leaves, lock the door." Max turned away.

The cook, who had been standing next to him, showed neither shock nor surprise. Her face registered only that she had read the sign and understood it. She knew everything had just come to an end. But she could not help asking one childish question:

"Is this really for good?"

Max nodded his head.

He went back over to the pan on the tile stove and lifted the lid. "I'll take some of this apple strudel, if that's what you call it. I've never had anything like this my whole life."

The cook took her butcher knife and cut a big piece of the strudel. She scooped it onto a warm plate, dusted it with powdered sugar, and poked the raisins firmly back into it with her fingers. Then she set a place for him on the warped metal of the countertop and laid the plate down in front of him.

Stepping aside, she asked very politely: "What was it? Was it some kind of serious violation?"

Max scraped the powdered sugar from his strudel. It stuck to his fingers, and he blew on them to get it off. He helped himself to a big bite of the strudel. Then he put down his knife and fork, spread his palms, shrugged his shoulders and said with his mouth full:

"None of my business. I just came to let you know."

The Woodsman has a Visitor

The stranger sat next to a fire set in a ring of large round stones. The bluish smoke from the long pine logs burning in the ring rose into the trees above the narrow clearing and drifted off along the stream. There was a footpath littered with wood scraps that followed the stream past the fire ring. A long-haired, motley-colored sheepdog was lying on the path.

The footpath ended at the home of the woodsman to whom the dog belonged. It was a little cabin tacked together of rough timbers like something from a fairy tale. The woodsman was a stocky, short-legged man who was wearing sandals. He came out of the cabin with a cloth and a small jar in his hands. Going over to the stranger, he knelt down and took the wet rag from the man's leg. Then he poured honey from the jar onto the man's leg, waited while the honey coated it thickly, and tied the cloth loosely around it.

"Did you see how that looks?" the stranger asked him.

"Never mind," the woodsman said. "You just need some shots, and then you'll be fine." He got to his feet and took the jar back to the cabin.

After the woodsman went away, the stranger untied the bandage and began looking at his leg. The puffy skin around the teethmarks glistened an angry red under the honey. The dog rested quietly on the footpath beyond the fire ring.

Coming back from the cabin, the woodsman saw him peering under his bandage. "You leave that alone!" he yelled at the stranger. He was bringing a rucksack which he dropped on the ground by the fire. He carried the kettle over to the stream and filled it with water. Then he sat on the ground by the fire and began to peel potatoes from the rucksack, letting the peelings fall onto his bare toes. When the peelings piled up he kicked them into the fire. "Leave it alone," he said. "You just need some shots, that's all."

"That's not all," the stranger said. "Look at my leg."

"I saw it."

Past them above the clearing rose a bare mountainside upon which a forest had once stood. The last beams of sunlight still lingered at the top of the clearcut, but the sun kept sinking until only the low clouds were bright in the sky. The air over the stream took on a deeper shade of blue. The stranger pulled a red sweater from his pack, putting it on and buttoning it up until only the collar of his blue shirt peeked out. The sweater looked thin and storebought. It wasn't anything a hunter would wear, but most woodsmen didn't go around in sandals, either.

"Are you going to want some potato soup?" the woodsman asked after he had put about five potatoes into the kettle.

"I have food," the stranger said. Slowly, he took something wrapped in newspaper out of his pack.

"Enough, then." The woodsman put the kettle over the fire and raked up the embers beneath it. He split an onion and tossed it into the soup. He reached into his rucksack again and this time pulled out a bottle. He shook it to show the stranger that the clear liquid inside wasn't water. "How about some of this?" he asked.

The stranger reached for it, sniffed it, and drank from it, keeping his eyes fixed on the bare mountainside beyond them.

"That's Mount Magora," he said, pointing to the slope.

"No it isn't."

"Well, what is it?"

"Just a mountain."

"Where's Magora?"

"You're completely lost," the woodsman said. "You might as well take another drink. In the morning, you can follow that footpath and it will lead you out of here."

He put the bottle back into his rucksack and stood up.

"Are you going to leave the dog like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"You'd better tie him up."

"Forget it," the woodsman said quietly. He walked back towards the cabin.

There were sawed-up logs scattered all around the cabin. He walked back towards the cabin, picked one up, set it on end and chopped it into pieces. Then he took a sawblade that was hanging from the eaves and began to slice shingles from the chopped wood. As he made the shingles, he propped them against the cabin wall.

Meanwhile, the stranger unwrapped a piece of bread from the newspaper and tossed it over the fire to the dog. The dog scuttled forward on its belly, sniffed at the bread, and ate it. The stranger spoke to the dog, but it wouldn't come to him. The woodsman stopped making shingles and watched. The stranger undid the bandage again and looked at him.

"Look at this," he said. "Look what he did to me."

"I've seen it." He went closer. "Just leave it alone." He stirred the soup and tasted one of the potatoes with the wooden spoon.

"Have you punished the dog yet?"

"When could I have done that?"

"You have to show him where he bit me and give him a beating."

"I don't beat the dog," the woodsman said. He went back to his sawing. The shingles he put against the cabin wall glowed whitish in the gathering twilight. Later, he set the wood aside and came back to the fire. He had a tin dish into which he had put a spoonful of sour cream. Carrying the kettle to the stream, he sat it in the water until the soup was cool enough to eat. Then he ladled some into his dish and sat down by the fire to eat it.

He pointed to the stranger's empty pack. "No luck today?"

The stranger said nothing.

"It's a shame you didn't bag anything. But at least you won't have as much to carry this way. You're going to have to walk to the highway to catch a bus, and it's three hours from here. Besides, you did get some fresh air today."

The stranger was watching the dog. "See here," he said. "Do you think your dog would come with me?"

"You mean can the two of you make up? I suppose so. If you gave him some food, he'd probably go with you for a while."

"I wonder."

"I'll bet you have a lot of shells left," the woodsman said. He called the dog over and dumped what was left of the soup in front of it. Then he carried over more water in the kettle and doused the fire. "All I have is one flashlight, so I'll fix things up inside. You just wait here." He went back toward the cabin, but as he passed the tree where the stranger's gun was hanging, he grabbed it and took it with him.

The stranger jumped to his feet. "What are you doing?" he shouted. The dog growled at him.

"Willie," the woodsman said. He waited until the animal came to him.

"What do you want with that? Look, I have a hunting license."

"You'll get it back in the morning."

The darkness was growing. The dog lay down by the cabin door.

A little later, the woodsman called out from the doorway. "Let's get some sleep." He rested one foot on the dog's neck.

The stranger moved towards him warily. "Where did you put it?"

"I told you before. I'll give it back to you before you leave. I have no idea what you were doing up here with a gun. This way, I don't have to worry."

"I do," the stranger said. "You're up to something."

"Come inside. I'll show you where you can sleep."

The stranger followed him in. The flashlight was trained on a narrow bed.

"I'm going to make sure somebody knows about you," he said. "First you let your dog attack me, then you take away my gun."

"You can remember this any way you damn well please," said the woodsman. "It doesn't matter to me. Now here you have your basic cot. Tell me when you're done for the night so I can turn the light off."

The stranger removed his hunting boots and lay down on the cot. The woodsman closed the cabin door and put some blankets on the floor for himself.

"All set?" he asked a little later.

"Leave it on."

"It's just a flashlight. See?" He circled the beam around the cramped room.

"I don't care. Leave it on."

The woodsman turned the light off. He settled in between the blankets on the rough planks of the floor.

The night sounded ceaselessly with the rushing of the stream and the soughing of the pines. Around dawn it rained a little and then stopped. For a long time afterwards the water dripping from the trees tapped upon the roof shingles. The woodsman got up and went outside to chop wood. Over the big, sooty stones in one corner of the cabin he built a fire. The smoke rose past the blackened timbers and out through slits in the roof.

"It's morning," he said.

The stranger sat up and put his boots on.

"Your leg? How does it feel?"

"I want my gun."

"I can cook you some gruel. It's a three-hour walk to the highway."

"Give me the gun."

The woodsman opened the door and went outside. It was a damp, grey morning, and tufts of mist were still tangled among the treetops. The woodsman returned and hung the gun back on the tree where it had been the night before.

"There it is. The trail goes right by it."

"I have to walk for three hours?" the stranger asked, and he set off.

"Yes." The woodsman watched him leave, holding the dog's head between his legs. "If you stayed for a few more days, you never know. . . we might even become friends."

The Ride

The driver pulled off and brought the truck to a stop. The woman came lurching towards the truck as though she were walking on unsteady ground. Her pale dress shimmered in the headlights.

"Go see what's up with her," the truck driver said to his partner.

"I'll bet she's a drunk," the co-driver said as he opened his door and climbed out.

The woman was standing in front of the truck. The headlights caught her across the middle, lighting up a wide swath of white where the flowery stuff of her dress should have been. The driver got out of the truck after his partner, and the two of them stood at a distance staring at the underclothes that were showing around the woman's waist. Then their gaze drifted towards her feet. She had no shoe on her right foot, either.

"Are we having a rough night?" the driver asked gently. He was still looking at her bare right foot.

The woman didn't answer. An old automobile glinted off in the darkness behind her.

"How about if we go find your other shoe?" the driver asked her.

The woman touched her fingers to her temple and staggered back towards the darkly glimmering car. The driver climbed back inside the truck and rummaged for a flashlight.

"It looks to me like somebody brought her out here, got her drunk and then just left her," the co-driver said.

"You grab something too and follow me," the driver said.

They watched the torn dress and the feet stumbling beneath it until they were beyond the perimeter of the light. The door of the car had been thrown wide open, and the woman leaned inside it. When the truckers got there, though, the woman had vanished into the darkness behind the front seat, motionless and silent. The driver reached in and groped along the dashboard for the light switch.

The woman was lying there with both arms braced stiffly against the seats: she looked like someone pushing a plow. Besides that, it seemed like she had no hair. In the car's feeble lighting, they could just make out that the woman's hair was gone.

"I've never seen anything like this," the co-driver said.

"Come on," said the driver. "Let's get her out of here." He reached gingerly around her middle and pulled her out of the car.

The co-driver tried to prop her up by the arms. "Come on, Susie, get ahold of yourself," he said.

"Try to collect yourself, ma'am," the driver added.

It was becoming apparent, though, that the woman couldn't collect herself.

"Why are you being so polite to her?" the co-driver whispered.

"I don't know her, that's why," the driver whispered back. He looked around. "See anything useful, like a shoe maybe?"

"All I see is a beat-up old Ford with plush seats. With spots all over them."

"All right. Let's go." They turned off the light and carried her between them, grasping each other's forearms, back to the truck. They got her as far as the cab door, where she opened her eyes. But only for a moment.

"Can you climb aboard, ma'am?"

The woman raised her right foot, the bare one, very stiffly. She wasn't quite as heavy with her foot in the air, but it was still well below the running board.

"I see," the co-driver said.

The truck they were driving was the kind with a back compartment. It was designed to carry up to five drivers. When they had managed to get her into the cab, the truckers lifted her onto the back seat. Then they climbed back into their own seats, and the driver started the engine. "Keep an eye out for a mile marker," he said to the co-driver.

"There's one. It says three," the co-driver called out as soon as they were rolling again. "That means this is mile three hundred."

"I'll bet you never would have thought of doing that."

"What on earth would you want to come back here for?"

"I guess you are pretty tired."

The driver shifted gears and rolled down the window to get the air moving. It was a hot summer night, and the wisps of mist that were caught among the hillsides had begun to catch the light from the city beyond.

"This one says eighty-four," the co-driver announced. They were at mile eighty-four plus three hundred. "You know, we really didn't need this. I never pick up woman drunks. You can't trust 'em, among other things."

"She look drunk to you?"

They both turned and looked at the woman in the light that filtered in from the oncoming cars. The patches of her scalp that weren't bloody caught the light. Her head seemed to be glowing like the heads of fallen enemy soldiers in the old engravings of the wars against the Turks.

"She is in pretty bad shape," the driver observed.

"I don't like the looks of this."

"Try talking to her some."

The co-driver slid open the partition between the seats. "How do you feel now, ma'am?" he asked the woman.

"Oh, so now you're not pals anymore?" the driver said.

"Listen. I always try to get friendly with girls as soon as I meet them. It makes everything else go so much easier. But this one I just don't know about." He turned towards the back seat again. "We'll get Susie home soon. Then she can go straight to bed, get a good night's sleep, and that'll be the end of it. Isn't that right?"

"The end of what?" the driver said. He looked at his partner.

The co-driver still had his face to the partition. He went on. "And then Susie can sew up her dress tomorrow. Or better yet, she can just buy herself a new one. That's right. Susie can get herself a new dress and new shoes, and she can hop right back in her car and everything will be OK. Nobody will say anything about this once she has all her new stuff."

"Yeah, like new curls," said the driver. "Is that what you had in mind?"

The co-driver closed the partition. "I have this feeling she's going to cause us trouble. You think somebody did this on purpose, or it was an accident and everybody else just took off?"

"I think one thing just led to another," the driver said.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Take a guess."

"You just wait. She's going to land us in trouble. And all this time I was hoping we'd find someplace to sleep by eleven p.m."

The traffic coming from the city had begun to pick up. The last movie of the night had ended, and people were going home.

"Nope. It's after eleven already."

"We should find out what her name is and where she lives."

"Are you feeling better now, Miss Susie? Can you tell us where you live?" the co-driver asked. But no sound emerged from the back seat.

They had passed the sign that marked the city limits and were lumbering along the electrically-lit streets. "Just leave her alone now," the driver said. "We're here, anyway."

"You make it sound like we had a great conversation."

"Why? Didn't you enjoy it?"

"Did you ever work in an ambulance?"

"Sure I did. Did you?"

Nearing the heart of the city, the truck turned left into a narrow street. It pulled to a stop before a building surrounded by an iron fence. The driver got out, walked through the towering gate, and came back a few minutes later followed by two men in uniform.

"Vehicle type?" one of the officers asked from the steps.

"Meat carrier with refrigerated trailer."

"Destination?"

"The slaughterhouse."

When they came to the truck, the co-driver got out and began to explain. "It was a quarter to eleven or so. There was this old Ford sedan with spotty plush upholstery. It was around mile marker eighty-four plus three. I'd never seen anything like it, I swear, even though-"

The driver opened the cab door a little wider so the two uniformed men could see inside. One of them reached in for the woman's limp hand.

After a little while, he shook his head. "You weren't in any hurry, I hope."

"You know the answer to that, don't you?" the co-driver said to the driver. "Or maybe we should ask Susie back there."

"Susie?" the officer said.

"I mean. . .I didn't know what her name was, so I called her Susie. It's the name I always use with girls."

"Uh-huh."

The other officer turned to him. "She's not going to answer any questions. Susie has got nothing left to say." He pointed to the hand dangling above the floormat. "Feel that."

The two of them stood looking inside the cab without a word. Under the illumination from the streetlight and the cab light, they could see that the woman would never say anything again.

Finally one of the officers spoke. "First, you're going to wait here a little while. Then you're going to take us back there with you."

It was almost eleven-thirty and the night was still warm. A couple of beers would have been just the thing after the long day's haul.

"I told you she would cause us trouble," said the co-driver. "I knew it all along."

"Don't start messing with my head. I don't need that right now," said the driver.

"You should know we aren't equipped for hauling stiffs."

"I know that."

"Well, what'd you pick her up for? Anybody could tell she would just make a mess in the back seat."

"So what?"

"So she did, that's what. Didn't you get a feeling this was going to happen?"

"It wasn't what I was thinking, no."

"Well, what would you have done then? Would you have picked her up at all?"

"I couldn't tell you," the driver answered. "I wouldn't know."

Translated from the Hungarian by Andrea Berger