László Garaczi

Face and About-Face

Excerpt from the novel

 

[...]

There are twelve of them, and they have to re-foliate forty-one trees, roughly three each. It's not even that big a deal, you can do it. A kind of obstinacy and combat fever start to come over them. Bones decides to use the Technokol Rapid. Standing by the box full of red tubes, he picks one up, quick-drying glue, for use with paper, leather, fabrics, glass and wood, fumes can cause drowsiness and dizziness. Wood. Woods. Lots of people think you can get high off Technokol Rapid, but you can't really, Palmatex and the Bulgarian glue Kale work much better. Technokol smells good, but it's missing the essential ingredient, toluene.
Bones gets the three trees in the corner at the far side. He climbs up the first with glue in his pocket and sacks full of leaves on his back. He is out of the sight of the others, but the guard walking alongside the fence passes by beneath him every two minutes, looking at him with curiosity while he works.
There aren't just horse chestnut trees encircling the training grounds, there are poplars, sycamores, and a little cluster of white-trunked birches by the dining hall. In general Bones knows tree names, he even likes the sweetsounding ones, maple, ash, poplar, cause they have interesting overtones, but as far as which one denotes which tree, he has no idea. He knows the trees as a sight, a spectacle, on the one hand, and as names, as words on the other. Sometimes there is some connection, he recognizes pine trees, birches and horse chestnut trees too. Fruit trees too, if they are bearing fruit.
Echoing flappings, the wind whips the regiment flag, and another noise, sharp, jingling, as the metal wire they use to raise the flag slaps against the pole. He's still in the trance he fell into after shooting, but the fresh air and the cosy feeling he gets from sitting alone in a tree help him regain his senses. He grabs a bunch of leaves from the sack, looks at them in the swaying light of the lamp. Last fall Kamilla had sent the same kinds of leaves in a big envelope, she had written on them with a marker the places where she had gathered them. Course there weren't just horse chestnut leaves in the sack. He was going to glue birch leaves, oak leaves, sycamore leaves, and who knows what other kinds of leaves to the horse chestnut tree. Spread the glue on the stem, maybe an oak leaf, shaped like an outstretched hand. He sticks it to one of the branches and it stays.
Gáspár Tóth's whistle announces the break, they gather at the edge of the square, drink brandy, have a smoke. They agree to leave the upper, slenderer branches to the end, tomorrow they'll re-foliate them using a big ladder. Tóth brings a different kind of glue, a little drum of Palmatex. Bones has never seen Palmatex in a drum, in industrial packaging, just in tubes. Tóth says it's just reserves for safety's sake. They return to their places, each to his trees. Bones wrenches off the circular lid of the drum and takes a whiff.
The work is going better and better. He's not really looking at what he's gluing or where, his hand moves quickly and regularly, he repeats some simple melody, tara-ra-tara, following in time with his hand, takes a leaf, spreads the glue, sticks it to the bough, takes a leaf, spreads the glue, sticks it to the bough. Beneath him the guard strolls by, but he has not looked up for some time now. He has made a nice little den of leaves around himself, he is not cold, as if his little recess held in a bit of warmth. Leaves are stuck to his jacket as well. He executes an interesting manoeuvre when he has to switch from one tree to the next, the brandy helps, he comes down without needing anyone to give a whistle, and if no one is around, he takes a good whiff of the Palmatex.
He builds splendid lookouts and hanging gardens, leafing himself up until he can hardly extricate himself from the leafy chamber he himself has constructed. He papers the trunk with leaves of various colours and shapes. After the third rest break he is in a state of euphoria, a fairy-tale empire unfolds before him. He forgets his defeat on the firing range, the hairy body, the nightmares. Yes, when he had been ordered to this wonderful barrack it had been the happiest day of his life. Creative energies arise within him, he can hardly wait to go to the next tree.
No one wants the Palmatex, they're fine with scotch tape and Technokol, he is laying an exclusive claim to it, it's his. The next time he takes the whole drum up with him. He nestles down between two thick branches and takes a deep whiff of the manna.
I'm Polly, little Polly, he whispers, sitting on a branch, I'm chattering and flying. Space expands, time explodes, he soars with outstretched arms into the sky. Beneath him the ocean sways white. The wind howls, the bright, cigarshaped airplanes stand motionless on the blue horizon. He descends, the skyscrapers poke towards the sky, then snowy peaks, the yellow mirror of a desert striped with highways. The ocean comes into view, he lands next to a waterside campfire. The flames crackle cheerfully, girls with long hair and guys with beards sit in a circle. Someone is playing the guitar. They show no amazement, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a soldier in uniform speckled with leaves to plop down from the clouds. Torn blue-jeans, music, smoke, and, as it is written, they're smoking pot, clinging to one another and singing ecstatically. A girl smiles at him, her snow-white teeth shine, she has a garland of flowers on her head. She takes his hand and leads him to a caravan. Colourful blankets, incense burners, the ocean sparkles through the window, you can hear the song and the crash of the waves. The girl undoes Bones's belt and unwraps him from the M65-model training fatigues. He has been waiting for this for a long time, for millions of years, to lose himself in the hot, throbbing nothingness. Hand in hand they go back to the fire, the hippies clap, laughing.
Good lord, he has found his beloved, his brothers, his relatives! They are playing the guitar, singing, passing him joints. Smells like cow dung, and makes him cough. He thinks of Kamilla, he should be doing all this with her, he looks at the girl, her green eyes look like Kamilla's.
They ask what life is like back where he came from, and he tells them how he has been gluing fallen leaves back onto a tree. They are all delighted by what they hear, with general acclamation they vote to come to his aid. They put small white stamps on their tongues and set out in a V-shaped convoy, like wild geese, for Europe. They go around the clouds, the flocks of birds, the airplanes, the astonished look of a pilot: long-haired hippies plough through the sky, at their head a crew-cut soldier boy wearing glasses.
They alight on the horse chestnut tree, the wind has died down in the meantime, the stars are glittering, it must be about midnight. Bones, the good host that he is, offers them a sniff of glue. The hippies speak well of it, good stuff, then one of them takes a guitar in hand, the others get down to work, they sing Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, their hands busy all the while. Bones recites the poem "Hymn for all Seasons" by László Nagy, emphasizing in particular the lines, "If there is a right, it is my right, / Here all power is mine, / I strap on my helmet, my blade! / My beauty, you come to my aid!" Then they all sing together again, tougher songs, Hendrix, Stones, even Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin. They're warbling out Stairway to Heaven in chorus when the watchman stops beneath them. There's been a change of guard, and he's curious to see how the work is going. He can still feel the warmth of the guardroom in his limbs, he twists his neck with gloating curiosity. His teeth click together, he reels a bit, and when he comes around again two minutes later he casts only furtive glances upwards.
The same thing.

[...]

 

László Garaczi
is a freelance writer producing fiction, plays, scripts, essays and poetry as well as
translations from English. The first two parts of his autobiographical trilogy, telling
the story of a boy growing up in 1960s Hungary, were published in English in a single
volume entitled Lemur, Who Are You? (2002). The above excerpt is taken from the third
part of the Lemur trilogy, Arc és hátraarc (Face and About-Face, 2010), in which the
author-narrator becomes an adult. The novel is reviewed on pp. 146–52 of this issue.