Author: Kiss Tibor Noé
Translator: Austin Wagner
March 2023

A day, a sun, just like before. Receding, dipping, disappearing. A scarlet streak across the horizon, a gust of wind, they promised a cold night. Scattered trees hung their heads, silhouetted against the blood red streak. Far off beyond the road, power lines. The buzz of high-tension power lines. Abandoned farmsteads. Rust-chewed feed troughs. Beyond the farms, the non-existent farms, nothing.

The match sputtered in Pista Tatár’s hand. He’d cracked a pack of cigarettes, the second that day. Might have been seven at night. Or eight, who was counting. Nobody round there even wore a watch, they didn’t measure time. From cigarette to cigarette, feeding to feeding, sunrise to sunset, that’s how the minutes passed. He flicked away the ash, the sofa groaned beneath him. He looked atop the cabinet, two packs from the last carton were left. He was sick of smuggled cigarettes. He’d have Laci Pék bring him a few packs of Marlboro Red Label from the town, all you could get at the local shop was loose tobacco.

He caught himself in the mirror. He’d only just passed thirty-five, but gray patches were already showing at his temple. Along with the rest, rotting teeth, searing back pain, constant coughing. Sometimes he could barely get himself out of the chair bed. Pista Tatár was already counting down the time. He leaned closer to the mirror. He discovered tiny yellow stains on his face. He wiped down the glass, wrung out the sponge, the greasy, oily runoff dripped into the sink. He jammed his fingers into the box of detergent, washed his hands, his face. The yellow stains disappeared, the gray remained. Gray the mirror, gray the window. He looked out. The bushes stood motionless on the plain, only the sedge swayed in the twilight. He looked at the birch, its trunk split asunder. It was where he’d first met Szandra. The night glimmered with starlight, the wind rose at dawn.

*

Darkness gradually descended, and yet not a soul knew when the day ended and when the night began. Only the locals recognized the moment. Instinctively they knew it. Deep in their bones they felt the call, it was time to leave.

He wiped down the plastic bedsheet. He gathered the feces into a bag, wrung the urine-soaked sponge out into the toilet bowl. His mother sat in the tub in the meantime, staring vacantly at the water boiler. The twigs crackled in the stove, hot water burbled from the tap. It could have been ice cold for all his mother would have noticed. Pista Tatár lifted her arm, soaped under her arm, reached between her legs. He washed her thighs, her back. He bundled her up in a bathrobe and carried her into the room, the bed sheet had dried by then. He put her into her nightgown and cotton socks. The moon shone outside.

He sorted out his mother’s medicine. He unscrewed the cap from the plastic box, colorful tablets lined the compartments. Two of the red each evening, one of the yellow, the white had to be taken with a glass of water. He knew very well that the day would soon come when he would stuff his mother full of the red pills. Then the yellow and the white, every single one. Wait while she swallows down the medicine. It would be best for everyone this way. He lays her on her back. Flips on the TV. Listens as his mother wheezes. Slower and slower.

*

Everybody in the village thought Pista Tatár had no emotions whatsoever. He was constantly alone, they only sometimes saw Antal Pongrácz or Feri Gulyás visit him. He paid practically no mind to anyone else, months would pass without him speaking to anyone. And if he did say something, they noted it immediately. There was never any woman by his side, for a long while they thought that was what he occasionally went into the village for. Pista Tatár would instead sit beside his mother, or lie about keeping his vigil. As if he didn’t live among them. And yet there he was, everywhere, his footprints crisscrossing the village.

But he did have emotions. He thought of his mother. There was so much he should have asked her while he still had the chance. Then perhaps he would have memories. Those were what he missed the most: memories. A few withered photographs in the album, unfamiliar stories about his father, his mother. That’s all that was left. His father had been a ray of sunshine in the village, at least that’s what Feri Gulyás told him. He remembered his mother better. Her long, gray crown of hair woven with leaves. And then it was over. He will never know why they moved here from the city, what stories his father had told him. Not even what his favorite food was. 

Pista Tatár was smoking on the veranda. He hadn’t enclosed the space like so many others in the village did, the gathering wind whisked the smoke onto the patio. The smoke wreathed around the tree all but lost in the darkness opposite. He looked to the overcast sky, knew a storm was approaching. A few hours and it’s here, he picked up the scent of rain. He hawked up a wad of phlegm, spat it onto the patio. A few hours yet.

His mother lay in the bed. She was moaning softly, but you would only hear it if you bent right down to her face. From afar she didn’t even seem to be breathing, her chest was motionless. Still she breathed, spittle dripped onto the pillowcase. It was dark in the room, Pista Tatár had turned off the TV.

*

He lugged the handcart through the back gate toward the village. Overcast, starless sky, ink black night. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Everyone in the village had holed up in their burrows, even Szandra had gone home. Pista Tatár waited until the last, he wanted to take no risk. Nor did he lose his way, even in the darkness. Turn right at the end of the plot, from there fifty paces until the dirt road that led to the village. Onward down the rough and tumble footpath, all the way to the rising slope. Across the asphalt road to the other side of the hill. He’d brought the guard dogs with him, they were the only things in the village Laci Pék’s mongrels were afraid of. But they couldn’t haul the handcart for him. He hadn’t thought a lifeless body would be so heavy. 

He had picked out the ideal spot weeks ago. It was separated from the village by the hill and a stretch of forest, nothing but uninhabited farms nearby. He leveled out the sandy earth, ripped up the tufts of grass. He loaded arm-thick branches and dry twigs onto a metal sheet. He placed the body swaddled in sheets atop the kindling. His mother would have been happy if the pastor had come along as well. It was quiet, he could hear his own thoughts. He would have liked to say something by way of parting, but his thoughts didn’t want to birth the words. Instead he lit the bier. The spark was loathe to catch, the sheet just glowed in the dark. He fetched the gasoline canister from the cart.

He’d been sitting on the ground for hours. The flames had leapt several meters into the air, then slowly the fire began to die down. At first there was the smell of scorched flesh, he might have been at a pig roast. Then came the meat with its sickening stench. He began to retch, had to hold his nose. He couldn’t decide whether it was bones or branches crackling in the fire. He hoped it was branches. Eventually the blaze was nothing but embers. He pulled on his gloves and swept the ashes into a plastic pail. Some larger bones remained, a prosthetic knee. There will be bits for grinding, for picking out, the nightgown’s metal buttons, the deformed amalgam fillings. But that would wait till home, without gloves. His mother’s things. His mother, in his own two hands.