The Convalescent (9 page)

Ján jumped up. “What?”

“You’re cut off.”

Ján opened his mouth to protest, but Grandfather Ákos held up one finger. “Until,” he said, “you find it.” He stood up and began buttoning his coat, and it was then that the boy, watching from behind the kitchen door, noticed the buttons. They gleamed as he maneuvered them between his fingers. Ten perfect circles of gold. Grandfather Ákos finished buttoning and walked towards him into the kitchen. He rolled up the newspaper, and then took the boy’s head in his hands once more. He bent down and looked so closely, the goatee tickled the boy’s chin. He clucked his tongue, the clean smell of lemons on his breath—

“They say it’s in the eyes,” he said, and then turned and left the farmhouse.

Now, years later, Ján Pfliegman still has not found the violin. He pours himself a glass of whiskey and plunks down at the dinner table. “Screw it,” he says, rubbing the mud from his shoes. “We don’t need the money.”

“That’s right,” says Janka. “We don’t. We have everything we need without him.”

She brings over a large glass jar full of pickled eggs and places it on the table. A piece of masking tape is taped to the front of the jar that says
Tojás
: eggs. Janka keeps big glass jars above the cabinets in the kitchen, and writes everything on the masking tape in Hungarian:
Bors
. (Peppers.)
Káposzta
. (Cabbage.)
Krumpli
. (Potatoes.)
Kompót
. (Stewed fruit.) She brings over a bowl of tomato soup, and Ján starts shoving in spoonfuls. He reaches a hand into the jar of eggs and removes two. He eats them whole, like cookies. He takes another drink of the whiskey and then he looks over the table at the boy sitting across from him. He seems startled, like he’d forgotten the boy was there, and is suddenly struck by a moment of unpredictable hilarity. He takes another egg and pops it in, chuckling that he has a hairy little son who won’t speak to anyone. He giggles like a child.

Janka thinks he’s laughing at her cooking. “You better cut it out,” she says, but the man cannot help himself. The weird little frame. The lumpy head! He bursts out laughing. In a fury, Janka turns and hurls the stirring spoon from the stove.

It slaps him, hard and wet, right on the neck.

He jumps up from the table and reaches for Janka, punching her clean on the head. She kicks him with her wooden clogs and gets him swiftly across the shins. Ján cries out and grabs his legs. Then he stands up and throws a fist into her back. She bends over and grabs one of his hands. She takes his thumb in her mouth and bites it.

This is how they fight. Like children.

Where is the child in these pretty environs? He goes to the same place he always goes when they start fighting. He leaves the farmhouse and runs to the mailbox at the end of the driveway. He takes out the newspaper and reads “Today in History, by Eldridge Cooner.” And today in history, on March 18, many big and important events took place: In 1766, Britain repealed the Stamp Act. In 1850, the American Express company was created, and in 1932, John Updike was created. On March 18, 1965, Russian cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov left his Voskhod 2 capsule and hovered in space for twenty minutes. Four years later, on March 18, 1969, President Nixon’s “Operation Breakfast” began, as the payload from B-52 bombers lightly fell from the sky onto supposed communist base camps in Cambodia. These events have all been forever recorded down in history by Eldridge Cooner. But it’s true, the boy observes; Grandfather Ákos was right. Eldridge Cooner does not keep
record of the small events; he does not record what happens in the rubble of Mexican earthquakes. He makes no record of the discoveries of faraway nebulas, the fear of the agoraphobe. He most certainly does not record the Pfliegmans. He does not write that on March 18, 1983, a ten-year-old boy living in a farmhouse that leans both east and west wished his parents would die. He does not keep record of us, but these, Dr. Monica, these are our records.

This morning I wake up, pull on my sweatshirt, slice off a fat piece of tomato for Mrs. Kipner, go out to the tree, spend a few unpleasant moments trying to contribute something to the green bucket that does not want to be contributed, and then unroll the awning, lean the chalkboard against the side of the bus, plunk down in my lawnchair, and sell my meat.

The chalkboard is for writing down everyone’s orders, so people know how much meat is left, et cetera. For the most part it’s a reliable system, but occasionally someone will come around who hasn’t been to the bus before, who doesn’t know that I don’t talk, and who gets in a huff because I’m not answering their important business-related question, because I’m just sitting there in my pink sweatshirt, staring at them from behind my beard as though I’m merely an extension of the bus itself. But before things get out of hand someone usually clues the new person in, and then they get an altogether different look on their face.

“He doesn’t
speak
?”

Then it’s like I’m deaf and I can’t hear what they’re saying.

“Why doesn’t he speak?”

“He’s a mute.”

“But everybody speaks.”

“He’s a midget
and
a mute.”

Today we have a wrangler.

“Look here, boy, how come you don’t speak?”

A tall, square man with a buzzcut orders four sirloin strips, and when I don’t respond, just make a few quick marks on my chalkboard, the man decides that he’s insulted. He marches over to me, grabs a fistful of sweatshirt, and hoists me five inches above ground with one arm. “Listen here,” he barks. “I’m a retired general. Now speak!”

I don’t say anything. I just hang there, like a coat.

“Speak!” he shouts. He shakes me a little.

Then a fat man comes running up from the back of the line of meat customers. “Hey!” he shouts. “Hey you! Knock it off!”

He’s wearing a baseball cap with an M on it, and I recognize him immediately. He’s the one who said I should wear hats when I sell my meat. He’s the one with the swollen stomach, the head like a vise. He’s got a walkie-talkie clipped to one side of his belt. From the other side, a long black billy club hangs like a second, misplaced penis.

“Just drop him,” he says. “Leave him be.”

The general scowls. “I’m not doing anything. I just don’t believe the boy can’t speak, that’s all.”

The fat man places a threatening hand over the billy club. “
Drop him
,” he says.

“Who are you?” says the general.

“I’m a security guard,” he says, and taps his baseball cap.

The general laughs out loud. He lifts me a little higher. “The Big M supermarket? You’re a security guard for a supermarket?”

The fat man moves his arms away from his considerable stomach. He places a threatening hand over the billy club. “So what?”

I look back and forth between them. They don’t move. So I open my mouth and gargle, “
Bawr
.”

This is good enough for the retired general.

“See?” he says happily. “The boy’s no mute.” He drops me back into my chair.

The security guard watches him leave, and then turns to me. “You okay?” he says.

I nod.

“You ever need anything, just come by the Big M and ask for Herman. I mean that,” he says.

I give the billy club a nervous look.

He holds it up. “This? Don’t worry about this,” he says. “It’s a fake. Made of polymer or something.” He snaps a finger against the club. It makes a stubborn, plastic sound. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone,” he says. “But only the police get the real ones. Not too many people know that. Security Guards don’t get the real ones.” Then his mood abruptly changes. A troubled look consumes him. “Baseball caps and plastic,” he says. “I was in Desert Storm, for Chrissakes.”

A soft breeze passes through us. Next to his leg, the billy club lifts like a feather.

“You got any hamburger?”

I point to the chalkboard.

“A dollar a pound?” he says. “Is that right?” He fidgets with the rim of the baseball cap as if he can’t believe it. “This place is cheap,” he says. “Cheaper than the Big M supermarket, even with my employee discount.” Herman removes a wallet from the nether regions of his gigantic pants. “Gimme two pounds,” he says, and flakes out the dollars.

Dr. Monica would be proud. She wants me meet people. “It’s important to try to interact, Mr. Pfliegman,” she tells me. “Look for opportunities to have social encounters. After all, look how much you’ve improved just meeting with me. You don’t cough as much, and your lungs are clearer. If you can communicate with me, then I’m sure you can communicate with other people.”

“But Darling,” I want to say, “you are not ‘people.’” And I’ve had encounters. Just the other day, a meat customer was so pleased with the weight and texture of his top round that he held out his hand, intimating that he wanted me shake it. He beamed at me in a friendly manner, so I reached out to him, but as soon as he saw my tiny hand, bony, quivering, skin flaking off like grated cheese, he quickly withdrew the offer. The truth is, most Virginians aren’t looking for encounters with hairy little men who do not speak, who wear bristling, cakey beards and Disneyland sweatshirts. Men who cough greedily at the slightest cross-wind.

Most Virginians buy their meat from me and then return to their cars and drive back to wherever they came from. They don’t talk to me or about me. They pretend I don’t exist. Which is fine.

I just read the books that I keep in the bus.

Take
Madame Chafouin’s French Dictionary
.

A few weeks ago, on my way out of town from Dr. Monica’s office, I happened upon a carton of eggs at the bottom of a garbage can in the Village Square. I cracked one of the eggs and it didn’t smell terrible, so I was planning on bringing the carton home for Mrs. Kipner, and that’s when I noticed the dictionary. It was heavy, bound in fake brown leather. It looked like a present no one wanted. So I took the book along with the eggs, but when I brought it back to the bus, I realized that it was not an ordinary dictionary at all, that the word
chafouin
in French means “weasel-faced,” and every word in the dictionary is something unpleasant. So now I’m learning Unpleasant French. I’m up to the D’s. Today’s word was
la diarrhée
.

That means “the diarrhea.”

Come evening, after the meat customers have left and the gray spring sky has gone grayer, I’m rolling up the awning when a large black sport utility vehicle drives past. It moves slowly at first, and then speeds up, disappearing around the bend. Sometimes cars will drive by the meat bus like this. The drivers want to see what a human being is doing out here with a broken-down bus and a fridge full of meat. They always want me to be doing something interesting, but when they see that all the hairy little Hungarian does is sit in his green plastic lawnchair, leisurely enjoying the scents that float across the field, stroking an exceptionally long blade of grass with one finger, just waiting for meat customers, they become impatient. Sometimes they shout, “Do something!” or “Do a trick, midget!”

So now when Virginians drive by the field, I stay seated in my lawn-chair. I remain so still that I’ve started practicing not moving at all. Not even blinking. Sometimes I get so absorbed in not-blinking that I don’t even notice when a customer comes up to the bus. Not even when they stand right in front of me, waving a hand in my face, which is what a female Virginian of a tall, gangly variety happens to be doing right now.

“Hey, are you still open?” she asks.

She pokes me with the tip of her shoe.

I go inside to wrap up the woman’s steaks, but it turns out that I do not move fast enough for her.

“Come on, come on,” she says.

I hand her the meat from a window.

“You’ve got terrible service,” she sneers, and sprints across the field. She jumps in her car and roars off. As she goes, she passes the same black sport utility vehicle returning to the field. But this time it doesn’t just drive by the meat bus; it expertly backs up around the bend and comes to a shuddering stop at the side of the road. The doors swing open and three men hop out. They’re all wearing clean-pressed black suits, and they all possess these strong, remarkable chins. They remind me immediately of FBI agents I’d seen on a television program at Dr. Monica’s office, but these are not FBI agents. One holds a fresh white letter in his hands, while the others remove a wide sign attached to a stake from the backseat:

The Subdivisionists look both ways, walk to the edge of my field, and then, with a rubberized mallet, wordlessly pound the stake into the ground.

It is not always easy for people to move from one region of the world to another and make a fresh go of it. It is not always sufficient to live in an unpopulated field, or even an entire unpopulated freshwater basin, and call it your own. Sometimes a person must possess certain things that declare ownership. Pieces of paper, et cetera.

Possessing pieces of paper, it seems, is extremely important to people.

Five years after Aranka’s river redefined the quixotic geography of the Carpathian Basin, the Western Europeans were not at all pleased that these nomads from the East had acquired so much land so quickly. And so close to an actual
place
. They began spreading rumors, horrific rumors, as though the Hungarians were as bad as the Turks, the Huns, the Saracens, or even the Pechenegs, calling them, incredulously, “Child-Devouring Cannibals,” or the “Bloodthirsty, Man-Eating Monsters from Scythia.” To these people devoted to leisure, to vanity.

To public displays of affection!

Word traveled back to the Ural Mountains that the grass-lolling Magyars had discovered a river next to the nicest and grassiest of all nice and grassy spots to live, and so, without even finishing their breakfast cereal,
the Pechenegs migrated southwestward to once again wipe their filthy paws all over our brand-spanking-new grasses, to kick down the posts of our tents and bust all our clay pots, to thrust the wooden stakes of their flags into our precious fields and claim our land as their own. To once again ravage the weakest among us. And this is the reason why the early Hungarians, who up to that point had been perfectly content to farm and make wine, beekeep and fuck, were interrupted from the progress of their own evolution.