LITMIR.BIZ

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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 út could be counted on to punctuate the monotony of village life, were nowhere to be seen, and—to the utter incredulity of all the village’s 278 permanent residents—even Feri and his perpetually filled pitcher of Kaiser sör had disappeared from the bench in front of the Italbolt.

      As for Kormány Lajos, whom everyone credited with being the body whose hand had catapulted the stone through Pinlinszky’s window, neither he nor Gyula and Roland were anywhere to be seen. Rumors began to circulate that the foursome had stolen a car from the junkyard in nearby Szigliget and taken off for Transylvania. Nonetheless, fears that one or more of them, stones, blades or shotguns in hand, could resurface at any moment were more than enough to cast a melancholic pall over the village’s usual summer rituals of pig roasts, bonfires, wine tastings and infidelities.

      Several nights after the shattering of Fischer’s window, Kepes, Fischer, the Mayor, and—at Etus’s urging—Árpi were meeting at the now-deserted Italbolt to discuss what action might be taken to restore peace and tranquility to the Hegymagasian summer.

      “We must,” inveighed Kepes, “despite what has happened to our poor neighbor Fischer’s window, and to Árpi’s pig, allow an atmosphere of generosity and forgiveness to prevail.”

      “Yes,” seconded the Mayor. “We are a small and peaceful village. We must love one another or die.”

      Fischer, still contemplating the replacement cost of his destroyed window and his unsalvageable oleander, remained silent for a rare moment, as if contemplating not merely his own destiny, but the world’s future.

      Árpi lifted a glass of plum pálinka skyward in a rather elegant arc, coming to a halt at his lips. “Yes,” he agreed, making a slurping noise with his tongue and casting a lascivious eye toward Kati the bartender, “we should all kiss and make up . . . for my mother’s sake if no one else’s. And who knows?—Kadar’s tail may yet grow back.”

      “Well,” Fischer broke his silence with the reluctance of someone at an auction contemplating whether to bid far more than he had intended, “I’m not so sure. Peace and forgiveness have their place in the world, but so does justice. First it’s poor Fekete, then my clerestory window, and now Kadar’s tail. I, personally, have had more than my fill of those four bums and their troublemaking. Who knows what it will be next?

      “It’s about time,” he continued, no doubt thinking about his own offspring, “that we set a better example for our children, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t begin right here and now.”

      “It’s not exactly as if the two of you have been standing passively by watching the whole thing from the sidelines,” the Mayor reminded Fischer, taking on a rather scolding tone. “I think that Kormány’s sheep, Gyula’s parrot, Feri’s gumicsizma and Roland’s arm are a more than adequate display of village justice, don’t you?”

      “I’m not sure.” Fischer seemed to be trying hard, at this point, to restrain a faint smile from trickling onto his lips. “I’m not at all sure.”

      ***

      Yet another week went by, with still no sign of the fabulous foursome, or, for that matter, of the village’s usual spirit of lightheartedness and conviviality. Sipos Lajos, a carpenter from nearby Káptalantóti, was hard at work repairing Fischer’s window, and Árpi and Kadar—the latter with a splint and massive bandage appended to its disfigured tail—kept a hesitant vigil up in the vineyard.

      A resonant emptiness—punctuated, periodically, by a visit by Kepes and Fischer for a glass of Slivovitz—echoed from the Italbolt, and even the village’s two garrulous Germans, Kronzucker and his wife Ulrike, seemed to have decided to curtail their weekly invitations for Bratwurst und Hefeweise at their backyard barbecue.

      On this particularly torrid night, with a severe summer thunderstorm threatening, Horvath, Kepes, and Fischer were once again seated in the bar, a funereal pall having been cast over the former’s attempts at peacemaking by the latter’s intransigence and the other’s relative apathy.

      “I guess it’s going to be a long, unfriendly summer,” Kepes remarked, lighting one of his socialist-era Kossuth cigarettes. “A very long summer.”

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