my window, the sound of her knees, of the hoe. He ran the press for the Hódmezővásárhelyi Hírlap. He also printed broadsides. He helped found the first Communist party, you know.
What happened to him?
I don’t speak to him.
Sandor, what happened to him?
This is his shirt, I wear the same size clothes. Later, he used a cane. The Horthy government fixed him good. He tucked a hundred forints in my shirt, put me on a train. After my mother died he was old. Always, he was already old.
Tell it again, don’t leave anything out.
I was born on an evening so dark. [Sandor laughs.]
All the evenings are dark in the country, Sandor.
Streetlights came late to our town. Goats in the lane with their bells driven home in the dusk. My mother was dead and my brother had died.
Your brother had died?
I thought my mother killed him, I thought I was next.
Did your mother kill him?
He was born with a cleft lip. My mother struck him with the hoe. My father set both their obituaries in the Hódmezővásárhelyi Hírlap.
What happened to him after that?
I told you, he died. I hid in the woodpile.
Not your brother, your father, Sandor.
We could go see him back there, but we won’t.
Because you hate him?
He gave me a hundred forints, put me on the train. He said, don’t look back here. He smelled like ink and compost. My brother was older than me but he seemed the younger boy. I refused to walk him to school. I wished my mother dead even if it was an accident.
It was no accident?
She got taken away, she got sick then she died, that’s the proof.
[He finishes her cigarette.]
What happened to you in the war?
I was too young, but my father printed a paper so I could join up.
What happened to you in the war?
We pulled artillery through the mud. We pulled a calf from a cow in a field. We pulled a baby from its mother’s womb in some hay but the baby turned blue. We pulled artillery through mud some more. I manned the big gun. We advanced, for a while.
[The lights go out.]
Is there a God?
We tied a chain around the calf in the cow, there was blood on the snow. I said pull. I was the sergeant by then, the real sergeant had already died. We pulled the calf loose. We pulled the baby from the womb, it breathed once, twice. We were already losing the war. This was in Russia, 1944, almost spring, but there was still plenty of snow.
Is there a God?
I said to myself I couldn’t protect him because he was older than me. My mother said his harelip was a sin. It might have been an accident, what she did. Still, I was afraid I was next. When she died I was pleased.
Then the war?
We marched through four seasons twice. We covered the German retreat. Everyone died except me and the radioman and the cook. We passed through.
Then you met Erzsébet?
We covered the Germans’ fleeing backs. In Stalingrad we covered the backs of their necks with our chests. When we turned to run, it was too late to turn.
Then you met her, Sandor?
If I had other clothes, I would have burned my uniform. The cook stepped on a mine. The radioman headed south, I turned west. I didn’t write home. I passed through outside of a camp. Someone had made a small fire from crates and some mostly dead coals.
That was her?
Everyone dead, and that girl in my arms.
[The lights come back on.]
So we could go visit your father then, still?
He printed the obituary of everything.
If you saw us together you’d think we were friends, Margit thought. The tall woman’s hand on the smaller one’s elbow, they walked past storefronts reflecting spent rain. The day white, you could make out the clouds by only their movement against the white sky.
Margit studied herself in the glass, she wished she’d worn a scarf or a hat. She’d dressed carefully just for this. Last night she’d tried on all her clothes, picked a plain lime-green skirt, Sandor’s fish-patterned shirt. She’d fooled with peroxide and bleach for a semblance of blond. Now she could see in a compact she wiped with her spit by what shade she had missed.
“Where do you sleep with him?” Margit asked.
Erzsébet pulled her coat tight, Sandor’s coat. In the war it had been Margit’s coat. “On wooden planks like the camp. I’ve strung barbed wire on my walls for nostalgia’s sake,” Erzsi said. Margit wasn’t sure if Erzsi was joking or not. The cold was so present it burned, it leached the tang on the breeze from the meatpacking plant. A lorry rounded the corner too fast, marbled ribs swayed on hooks behind torn canvas flaps.
Margit said, “My bed smells like your Emke perfume.”
“I don’t care for beds. You can fuck anywhere if you want to enough,” Erzsi said. A smile played at the edge of her mouth.
Margit felt herself blush. Lately, she’d been eyeing her blanket for what might have happened across it while she had been out. Checking for signs of sexual prowess on the sheets, though she didn’t know what these might be, a mangled garter’s sprung clips, elaborate stains. She’d got down on her knees to look underneath for fancy underpants.
“It’s me he loves,” Margit said.
Erzsébet shook her head. “He’ll always be carrying me on his back from the camp.”
Margit pushed up Sandor’s jacket’s sleeve. “Look, his toothmarks,” she said.
Erzsébet ran her hands through her hair to purposely let Margit see her arm with the numbers on it. Her face appeared remorseless with small nervous ticks. Margit felt pity for her, she couldn’t stand how it filled her up with an undesired tenderness.
“He wants me to marry him,” Margit said.
Erzsébet’s breath was a sudden pale cloud when she laughed. “You don’t need my permission for it.”
