István Örkény

One Minute Stories

In memoriam Dr H.G.K.

Hölderlin ist ihnen unbekannt?"'1 Dr H.G.K. asked as he dug the pit for the horse's carcass.
"Who is that?" the German guard growled.
"The author of Hyperion," said Dr H.G.K., who had a positive passion for explanations. "The greatest figure of German Romanticism. How about Heine?"
"Who're them guys?" the guard growled.
"Poets," Dr H.G.K. said. "But Schiller. Surely you have heard of Schiller?"
"I have," the German guard said.
"And Rilke?"
"Him, too," the German guard said and, turning the colour of paprika, shot Dr H.G.K. in the back of the head.

He's been sitting inside the main gate, behind a small sliding window, for the
past fourteen years. People ask him only one of two questions.
"Which way to Montex?"
And he says:
"First floor, to the left."
The second question is:
"Where can I find Elastic Gum Residue Recycling?"
To which he replies:
"Second floor. Second door to the right."
For fourteen years, he has never erred. Everyone was given proper instruction. Only once did it happen that a lady walked up to the sliding window and asked him one of the two usual questions:
"Can you tell me please where I can find the Montex offices?"
But this time, exceptionally, he gazed into the far distance, then said:
"We all come from nothing, and to a great big fucking nothing shall we return."
The lady complained to the management. The complaint was investigated, debated, then dropped.
After all, it was no big deal.

Let's learn foreign languages

I don't speak German. Between Budionniy and Alexayevka we had to push a bunch of cannons up a hill because they were stuck up to the hub in the mud. When it was my turn again for the third time and the heavy camp cannon started slipping when we were midway up the incline, I pretended I had to go urgently and made myself scarce.
I knew the way to our sector. I crossed a large sunflower field and found myself in the stubble. The greasy black soil stuck to my boots like the lead weight used by divers to reach the bottom of the sea. I must have walked about twenty minutes when I ran head on into a Hungarian corporal and a German, but I didn't know what he was, because I wasn't familiar with the German insignia of rank. It was bad enough that I'd run into them of all people, because the field was completely flat.
The corporal was standing, while the German was sitting on a small camp chair with his legs spread wide. The lance sergeant was smoking, the German was eating. He pressed some cheese cream out of a tube that looked like toothpaste on a slice of bread, and gave me a look, ordering me to stop.
"Was sucht er hier?" he asked.
"What are you doing here?" the corporal translated.
I told him I got cut off from my outfit.
"Er hat seine Einheit verloren," the corporal said.
"Warum ohne Waffe?"
"Where is your rifle?" the lance sergeant asked.
I told him I was in forced labour.
"Jude," the corporal said.
This much even I understood. I explained that I wasn't Jewish, but I was called in to a special forced labour company because I was the distributor of the newspaper Népszava in Győr.
"Was?" the German asked.
"Jude," the corporal said.
The German stood up. He brushed the breadcrumbs off his jacket.
"Ich werde ihn erschiessen," he said.
"The Feldwebel will shoot you," the corporal translated.
I could feel myself break out in sweat. My stomach was churning. The German twisted the cap back on the cream cheese tube and took up his gun. Maybe if I spoke German I could have explained that I wasn't wearing a yellow armband so I couldn't have been a Jew, and then events would have taken a different turn.
"Er soll zehn Schritte weiter gehen."
"Take ten steps forward," the corporal said.
I took ten steps forward. Meanwhile, I was up to my ankle in the mud.
"Gut."
"Fine."
I stopped. The Feldwebel aimed his gun at me. All I remember is that my head suddenly grew terribly heavy and my insides almost exploded. The Feldwebel lowered his gun.
"Was ist sein letzter Wunsch?" he asked.
"What is your last wish?" the corporal said.
I said I'd like to go.
"Er will scheissen," the corporal translated.
"Gut."
"Fine."
While I squatted, the Feldwebel kept his gun at the ready. When I stood up, he raised it.
"Fertig?" he asked.
"Ready?"
I told him I was ready.
"Fertig," the corporal said.
The Feldwebel's gun must have kicked upwards because he aimed at my navel. I stood like that for a minute or so. Then, as he continued to aim his gun, the Feldwebel said,
"Er soll hupfen."
"Frog leap," the corporal translated.
The frog leaps were followed by crawls, and after the crawls, push-ups. Finally, the Feldwebel said, about-face.
I did an about-face.
"Stechschritt!"
"Goose-step!" the corporal said.
"Marsch!" the Feldwebel commanded.
"Forward march!" the corporal translated.
I started marching. It was next to impossible to walk, much less march. The mud balls flew above my head. I could advance only maddeningly slow, and all the time I could feel the Feldwebel's gun aimed at the middle of my back. I could still point to the spot where the barrel of the gun was pointing. If the mud hadn't been there, my terror wouldn't have lasted more than five minutes. But as it was, it must have been half an hour or so before I dared lower myself on the ground and look back.
I don't speak Italian either. I have no gift for languages, I fear. Last year, when I went to Rimini on a ten-day package tour with Ibusz Travel, one night, in front of the luxury hotel Regina Palace, I recognized the Feldwebel. I had no luck. If I had reached there half a minute earlier, I'd have beaten him to an inch of his life. But as things stood, he didn't even notice me. He and his group boarded a glass-topped red coach while, for lack of speaking foreign languages, all I could do was scream in Hungarian:
"Stop! Stop! Get that Fascist son of a bitch off that bus!"
The doorman, a dark-skinned Sudanese who was half a head taller than I, threatened me with his finger and waved to me to get lost. I couldn't even explain to him what had happened, even though he might have spoken French and English as well as Italian. Not like me. I, alas, speak nothing but Hungarian.

1. Receipt
I, the undersigned Jutka Hallada hereby declare and attest that in the course of the day I have sucked eight decilitres of milk from the breast of my mother, Dr. Mrs. Ernő Hallada, who resides in Budapest. Since the milk was of good quality and sufficient in quantity, I hereby declare and attest that I have no further claims of any sort on Dr. Mrs. Ernő Hallada of Budapest.

Jutka Hallada m.p.
Infant

2. Declaration
I, the undersigned Dr. Mrs. Ernő Hallada of Budapest hereby declare that the transfer of eight decilitres of milk to Jutka Hallada, also of Budapest, was not a burden to me but, on the contrary, a source of relief. Accordingly, I will demand no compensation of any kind whatsoever from Jutka Hallada, neither in the form of gratitude nor material remuneration, at any time, either now in the future.

Dr. Mrs. Ernő Hallada
Mother

On Calvin Square a bus crashed into a tree. Next, every tram in the city came to a stop. Everything stopped, even the toy train in the toy shop window. Everywhere, silence. A little later something gave off a rasping sound, but it was just a page from a newspaper being swept along by the wind. Then it was thrown against a wall, and the silence grew even more profound.
Eight minutes after the atomic bomb exploded the electricity went out, and immediately afterwards, the last gramophone recording wound down over the radio. An hour later, the water taps began to give off a slurping sound, then the water stopped running. The foliage, too, turned as dry as a tin roof. The semaphore gave the go-ahead, but the last express from Vienna never made it to the station. By morning, the water cooled down in the boiler of its locomotive.
Within a month, the parks were overgrown with weeds and oats grew in the sand boxes of the children's playgrounds. The delicious drinks, too, evaporated on the innkeepers' shelves. All the foodstuffs, all the leather goods and library books were eaten by the mice. Mice are marvellously prolific; they have litters as often as five times a year. In a short time they filled the streets like some sort of velvety, mud-like, billowing stonework.
They took over the flats, the beds in the plats, the rows of seats in the theatres. They even got into the Opera House, where La Traviata was the latest performance. When they had gnawed through the last string of the last violin, the twang was the swan song of Budapest.
But by the following day, right across the street from the Opera, a sign appeared, attached to the stones of a ruined building:
"Dr. Mrs. Varsányi, mouse exterminator. You bring the bacon, I catch the mice."

Translated by Judith Sollosy

 

István Örkény