are not Keszthely . . . it is hardly as if droves of German and Austrian tourists in search of cheap dental care will be discouraged from coming here by the death of a dog. Why, we don’t even have a dentist!”
“I am not talking about public relations,” Fischer, a former samizdat writer and democratic resistance leader who was quick to lapse into cosmopolitan-style abstractions, was turning rather red. “I am talking about justice for poor Etus and her dog.”
The Mayor, a member of the rather right-wing Smallholder’s Party that was currently part of the governing coalition, had never been terribly fond of Fischer. He looked up from his more domestic duties, removing the borlopó once again from between his lips.
“Kedves barátom,” he said, addressing the writer with a combination of feigned respect and ill-disguised disdain, “I am afraid that such appeals to higher authorities carry far more weight in Budapest than here in our little village. I am merely trying, as best I can, to keep the peace.”
A slight expression of distaste began to make its way onto Fischer’s face as he paused to take a sip of the Mayor’s rather mediocre Sauvignon Blanc. “It is not,” he replied, “a ‘higher authority’ we are appealing to . . . it is your authority.”
“And that authority, I am afraid, kedves Fischer úr,” the Mayor rejoined, “is severely limited by the realities of our village life.”
Disgusted by what he perceived to be the Mayor’s condescending and parochial, small-town attitude, Fischer, followed obediently by Kepes, turned on his heels and strode out the door of the Mayor’s cottage. “In that case,” he turned to address the Mayor once more as the twosome headed back down the hill, “we will simply have to take justice for poor Etus into our own hands.”
***
Hardly three days later, Kormány Lajos’s prize sheep, a dark-haired animal by the name of Levente, was found hanging from a large oak just behind the stream that separated the village from neighboring Raposka.
The very next day, one of Hegymagas’s most eloquent citizens, the thirty-four-year-old parrot, Attila, was found dead on the floor of his wooden cage beside the kitchen table in Gyula’s mother’s kitchen. Not even the most loving ministrations of Kormány Lajos’s wife could revive the bird—a gift from Gyula’s grandmother shortly after her emigration to Chile in 1956—who had startled, and endeared itself to, even Hegymagas’s most patriotic citizens with its ability to pronounce the nearly unpronounceable Hungarian word for drugstore—gyógyszertár.
But it was only when, finally, Feri’s antique gumi csizma were found, the following week, melted into a foul-smelling rubbery blob in the stone fireplace just below Árpi’s hillside hectares, and Roland’s prosthetic hand was discovered, the following day, to have been stolen from his bedside table, that the Mayor decided the time had come to involve himself personally in the increasingly anarchic system of law and order that was threatening to engulf the village.
Knocking on the door of Fischer’s two-story village house late one afternoon, Horvath, emboldened by a half bottle of plum pálinka, greeted the writer with the habitual Hungarian kiss on each cheek.
“Jó napot kivánok, kedves barátaim,” the Mayor announced, stepping over the threshold into the kitchen and adopting what was, vis à vis Fischer, an unusually amiable tone. “Good day.”
“Good day, kedves Polgármester úr,” Fischer sensed that something had gone a bit awry, and responded politely but guardedly. “Come in and have a seat.”
The Mayor, deciding to take advantage of the momentary air of conviviality that had entered his relationship with Fischer, cut right to the heart of the matter.
“It seems,” he said, exhaling deeply and moving to light a cigarette, “that certain citizens of our village have decided to take justice into their own hands with regard Etus néni’s dog . . . And I am not,” he continued before Fischer could get a word in by way of response, “very happy about it.”
Fischer was just about to undergo a radical change of mood and tear into the Mayor concerning his unhappiness with the Hegymagasian system of justice, when there was a knock on the door and Etus herself entered the Fischer’s kitchen. Beneath her right arm were six ears of freshly cut corn and, in her left hand, a plastic bag containing several dozen assorted plain and cheese pogácsák.
“Kedves Polgármester,” she gave the Mayor a kiss on both cheeks. “Kedves barátaim,” she likewise greeted Fischer, simultaneously mouthing the Hungarian words for good day. “Jó napot kivánok.”
“How lovely to see you, Etus néni,” Fischer, ever the gentleman among women, softly kissed his elderly neighbor’s hand. “Kezit csókolom.”
“I am not good,” Etus, placing her two loads on the Pilinskzys’ kitchen table, replied. “Not good at all.” To Fischer’s surprise, and the Mayor’s embarrassment, a small flotilla of tears suddenly began tumbling down Etus’s cheeks.
“It is not right, what is happening in our small village, on account of my poor little Fekete, and I want for everyone—I repeat, everyone—to please stop behaving in this way, so that we can all live together again in peace.”
No sooner had the word “peace” echoed into the room from poor Etus’s lips, however, but a tremendous splattering of shattered glass could be heard coming from Fischer’s backyard. Running out into the garden, tear-stricken Etus and her reeking apron just behind them, the Mayor and Fischer were confronted with the heartrending sight of Fischer’s once-intact clerestory window scattered all over the lawn in a million glistening small fragments. Inside, nestled tranquilly between Fischer’s hirsute begonias and his upturned prize oleander bush, was a large gray stone with the words csunya disznók!— ugly pigs!—painted on it in a pigment all too closely resembling pig’s blood.
“Kedves Isten!” muttered Etus, tears still running down her cheek. “Dear God, what will we do now?”
“We do,” Fischer, never one to linger without a solution, replied, “the only thing any civilized village would do—we drive the bastards out of town.”
Fischer’s reveries of prairie justice, however, were quickly interrupted by a terrible howling sound, like that of a dog with its leg caught in a trap, coming from somewhere across Széchenyi út, followed by the sound of rubber being left on the dusty street, as a car accelerated out of town.
“Now, what the hell is that?” the Mayor cried out, running out into the street, where he was met by the sight of a large pig—from all appearances, Árpi’s pet pig Kadar—dragging its bloody, partially severed tail down the street and howling for all it was worth. Through the dusty aftermath of what had just taken place, the Mayor was fairly sure he could still make out the contours of a rusted yellow Trabant, exactly like Gyula’s, leaving yet another patch of rubber on the road as it turned right and headed toward Tapolca.
***
An eerie, unnatural quiet permeated the village over the next several days—a quiet more characteristic of the short, wintry days of February than the busy tourist season of mid-July. Even the ABC store, site of the ritual daily lineup for fresh bread and cottage cheese, began to take on the lonely, abandoned feeling of an athletic stadium during the off-season. Etus, Terika néni and Vera néni, the three widows whose pained and stuttering promenades along Széchenyi
