Good for Fat

by Levente CSENDER

There was nobody at the butcher's shop except for the two burly butchers themselves. Behind their backs, there were black illustrations of the heads of pigs and cattle, stuck on white faïence, but in front of them there were only empty counters flooded with neon lights. The people were only watching from outside how the butchers sharpened their knives while walking slowly up and down on the wooden grating and how they shook their ruddy double chins again and again outwards, saying they still had nothing to sell, neither that day, nor on the following, or the day after. Everybody knew this (it was the so-called ''golden age'' in Romania), yet people set off to check whether the butchers' aprons were stained with blood of artificially-fed chicken, or trotters, or giblets, or of this or that, but they were not. The refrigerator van did not come, so it did not bring anything: neither "freely", nor for voucher, neither in the morning, nor at noon, nor towards evening. Then one day a piece of news worth gold began to spread, saying there was fat available and free at Temesvár. I still have not got the faintest idea why there exactly, but it was there so you had to go there and that was all. And people did go, whoever had at least a little bit of resourcefulness, whoever had to provide for many children, whoever wanted to eat, because thirty decagrams of bread a day for one person, and half a liter of cooking-oil per month, and one kilogram of sugar never proved to be enough, even if used in a restricted way. Trains were overcrowded by people who set out on the journey to fetch something that was good for fat, and they hung and dangled even from the doors of the train with all their empty bags and rucksacks that were nested into one another. We were informed of this great possibility from those practical-minded relatives of ours who were already on their way back even before the others had set off. The relatives stayed overnight at our place, as there was no bus to Szenttamás and they didn't want to hit the road on foot because of the militia.

In the morning all they left behind was a big stain of fat as they packed their bags in the hallway, and the fat that had melted earlier on the train soaked through our many layered rag carpets. Even so, we lined up in surprise when three militiamen entered our flat. One of them was in civilian clothes and the other two wore uniforms. They were wild and fairly worked up, but mummy blocked off the hallway bravely and ushered them into the living-room where she pushed forward the armchairs just to make them sit down, without even asking them why they had come. Then she sent daddy quickly to cram the coffee maker with beans we had roasted and ground ourselves, and throw it on the cooker. She asked the men if they wanted to drink something. They shook their heads determinedly and kept their faces stern. Still, mummy made me fetch a bottle of local rum from the shop. By the time coffee was ready, the men had already cleared away all the rum from the table. Mum and dad knew very well how stupid it would have been to let them taste our excellent homemade wine from the previous year because if they took to drinking it, they might want to come back every day looking for something. The men were sitting tense and the mood was also tense, and it grew even more tense when one of them produced a search warrant from his pocket. What is more, they rose from their seats to set to work, when mummy pushed them back by the shoulders one by one, and God only knows from where she conjured up a bottle of home-brew palinka. Mummy had always been daring (she wore the trousers also at home), but I had never seen her being so bold as to push down militiamen by the shoulders. After gulping down half of the strong palinka, the men began to speak and daddy conversed with them in Rumanian. He was the only one in the family who had been a soldier just to learn the language. By the time the palinka was finished, the carpet was already full of butts, the lace on the table was browned by coffee and drops of palinka gleamed on the parquet. After all that, the militiamen made do with less searching. One of them, giving me the sign to follow him, lifted the mattresses in the bedroom, and asked why the door of the other, smaller room was locked. I told him that the door-handle was not working since the draught had slammed the door and locked it for good. It was not until the men had left that mum and dad dared to become pale and sat down on the sofa with trembling legs and started to bless divine goodwill and fortune as well as my ingenuity, for the men had not been able to lift the mattress in that little room, since that was the place where we kept all that thread and yarn that daddy managed to bring home, that is 'to save out' of his workplace, the thread-factory. (In those days everybody tried to save everything removable from the State's.)

Daddy was also very proud of his ingenuity (for which now he was almost imprisoned), and behind closed doors he often related the story of that initial episode that he later made a beaten track for the black market. It happened once that he walked out the gate of the factory after working eight hours, giving the porter's lodge a noticeably wide berth as he stared at the tips of the branches and pushed his way through the crowd of workers as if wanting to pass the gate as soon as possible. The porter spotted it and turned up next to him with two bounds. With the same impetus, he dipped his hand into daddy's bag in full view of all the workers. Though daddy was also carrying home a hedgehog in the bag for his son, he didn't warn the porter. In fact, he could not have, because the porter was shouting so much. From that day on, daddy could easily bring home the thread and yarn and whatnot made of Chinese cotton, because nobody looked into his bag any more.

It happened the day after that incident with the militiamen, which had almost turned out so badly, that I was just making myself comfortable for a pleasant afternoon doze, when the bell rang. Who the hell can be calling at this hour, devil take him, I thought, and

I was more of this opinion when I noticed the flat service cap. They must have had a good time at our place so they returned. Now I did not have to present my famous ingenuity and I was not nervous either, since we had already removed the thread from under the mattress the previous night. But I opened the door to find there instead of them my uncle, my father's brother ­ a most pleasant surprise. He arrived from Brassó where he was the head of the criminal investigation unit. Kisses and hugs made a good spirit in our home at once. My only share of all this joy was to be sent down to the cellar with an empty bottle, and come back upstairs with a full one in turns. I regretted not living in a house with an elevator on that day only (on other days I did not regret it because the residents of the ten-story houses spent more time sitting in jammed elevators than in their baths). Daddy and Uncle István (who had been famous revelers even in their younger days) soon burst into song, making the windowpanes tremble slightly. I accompanied them on my opal-red piano accordion for I loved playing music, and there was no problem until the very moment my mummy arrived from work. The new lace that had been spread over the table early that morning was swimming in a pool of wine and butts were still smoldering on the looped carpet moreover, Uncle István had even forgotten to take off his shoes. All these things made mummy (who might have been allergic to the uniform simply because of the previous day) so furious that she demanded, without sparing her throat, that both of them should clear off. She gave daddy an ultimatum: either HIM, or ME. No surprise that daddy chose Uncle István, after all he could much better revel with him than with mummy. However, before leaving the room my uncle stepped boldly in front of mummy (he should not have), and told her: 'I am the head of the criminal investigation unit of the militia in Brassó,' pointing his finger at his shining stripes on his shoulder, 'I do not take orders from anybody!' Mummy was boiling with rage. She took off Uncle István's service cap and put it into his hands, then gave him an enormous slap on the face with her right hand, and said: 'You may be the head of the criminal investigation unit of the militia in Brassó, but in my house you are only a guest, and from this moment on you are not even that!' And while saying this, she made wide gestures with one hand and opened the door with the other.

Uncle István waved me to go with him, and in the stairway he thrust into my hands a bundle of crumpled paper money, some hundreds of leu, and sent me to get them a carriage, but at once. Until I brought it forth, he and daddy would stay in the cellar. I was rushing around the city, from one end to the other, but I could not find a carriage, not even a cart. I asked some acquaintances who just laughed at me, saying I wanted a carriage when it was the heyday of Dacias and other automobiles. Nevertheless, I did not dare to go home without a carriage. Finally I managed to track down one (but only by chance). It was black and glassed-in, with a marvelous wrought-iron frame, and it turned majestically into the gateway of the Calvinist churchyard drawn by four black stallions.

I elbowed my way through the mourners and climbed up to the coachman. There was yet another transport, I said, what kind of transport, he inquired, and I told him not to muck about but simply hold out his hand. And so he did, and how his eyes were gleaming when he crumpled the load of money into his pocket. He was so happy that he almost drove his funereal carriage into the grave. After the funeral just drive to number two Béke Street, and knock on that window where you hear people singing, I prompted him. I was sure the coachman would come because in those days his business was not at all thriving. It seemed as if the food rationing of this period had somehow made the people in Romania even more durable, and fewer of them died. This made the coachman drift to the edge of bankruptcy.

And there he came, and he tapped on the windowpane with his whip stock and lifted his hat. Daddy and uncle staggered out from the stairway. 'Destination Szenttamás!' Uncle István shouted, and pushed back the cap that had slipped down over his eyes. We sat inside the black carriage and the coachman closed the door behind us. I struck up a tune on my opal-red piano accordion while daddy and my uncle were singing, 'In a week I won't be walking this way / the train will tear me far, far away / that fast train, that rapid train will stop somewhere, if it stops anywhere' (they were singing this part with the veins swelling on their foreheads) 'I offer you my right hand, babe, I bid a long farewell' (but they were only rattling this, they were so drunk).

They wanted to get out of the carriage for a pee, but there were no door-handles inside this glass-cage. We began to bang both sides of the glass to indicate that we wanted someone to open it. Our coachman said that nobody had ever wanted to get out of this carriage to go for a pee before, and that they quite rarely used to go out for a breath of fresh air. Luckily we always managed to stop for a pee each time before running short of fresh air. When we turned off the asphalt road at Szejke, I laid on my back, since the jolting was making me miss the right keys and I was playing out of tune. This carriage was not built for long, bumpy roads, and it gave such big thuds that uncle and daddy rolled from one side to the other. The muffled voice of the coachman could be heard only softly, though, judging from the motion of his head he must have been shouting loudly. He might have just been scorning us, or himself, for making this trip. The villagers had already noticed from a great distance that a funereal carriage was descending the slope. We knew this from the ringing of the bell that we heard behind the glass faintly, apart from the voice of the coachman. The first building we reached was the church, where the priest had already prepared for the arrival of the dead man. He was staring at us pop-eyed, but daddy and uncle were not interested in either the priest or their native village that they had not seen for a long time, since they were only concentrating on not breaking the sequence of songs, while I pricked up my ears to try to follow them on my accordion. People were standing in front of their houses, on verandas, and they stared at us bewildered. My father's grandparents lived under the same roof with those practical-minded relatives that had visited us the previous day. When they first noticed the carriage they did not know immediately if it brought someone along, or wanted to carry someone away, and if so, whom it wanted to carry away or it simply missed the entrance of the churchyard. They measured themselves all over with their own eyes anticipating the worst, and checked their family members too, then acknowledged with evident pleasure that all of them were alive and well, and so they could relax. At this moment the coachman descended and opened the door through which my rakish uncle climbed outside, followed by my similarly rakish daddy, and finally I myself struggled out of the carriage with my small accordion. 'Czardas music!' called out Uncle István as soon as his feet touched the mother earth. I struck up czardas music, and they passed through the gate in dance-steps. Uncle István seized my aunt by her waist, daddy seized her daughter, Tera, and then all of them sprang up and danced, so that the whole veranda crackled under their feet and the bunches of grapes trembled on the vines.

Already at our arrival I had got such a thick whiff of fat that I almost vomited. This smell penetrated the entire street and it floated above the houses as if the whole village was covered with an apron smelling of fat. You could even hear how big amounts of fat were sizzling out the lard. They were busy rendering down all those things that were good for fat and those they had carried along with them from Temesvár. They packed a twenty-liter tub of fat in the spare room to let it cool. They brought in wine and also palinka. Towards evening daddy and Uncle István and my other uncle too became as drunk as skunks. They stretched out on the veranda, or crawled on all fours like pigs, and even grunted. The women carried my other uncle into his bed and pulled daddy on to a little bench, while Uncle István was propped up in the spare room befitting his station, and I was folded together with the other children next to his room.

In the middle of the night I was woken by the sound of trickling. I thought it was raining. But it turned out the next day it had not been raining. In the morning a scream banished my dream. My aunt fainted. Early in the morning when everybody was still sleeping, she crept in the spare room to take a little of the new fat for the scrambled eggs she wanted to prepare for breakfast. She was just about cutting the fat with the edge of the spoon when she spotted that yellow liquid on top of it, and she fell flat on the ground. My Uncle István, who had got used to the pan closet in Brassó, later confessed that in his dream he was at home and went in the bathroom, and lifted the lid and began to pee.

We had to leave without having breakfast, and what is more, our good relationship with the family also broke. Daddy and Uncle István were ambling close to each other along the road, while I was playing sad songs, and sometimes they whistled to accompany me.

Translated by Lívia Suvada