Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

Beyond the scrapyard, the road, made of imperfect concrete blocks, turned down towards an oily garage entrance. In the building, half sunk into the ground, there were windows like those of the workshops in Vilmos Csillag’s secondary school. In two places the broken panes had been replaced by ones that did not fit. This plot must have long ago gone bankrupt: the doors hung open and the name of the firm, KLINE & FOX, THE WIZARDS OF FORD, had broken off at one end and hung down in the wind, making a slight creaking noise. It was witty. He was pleased he understood the word play on The Wizard of Oz . Abracadabra, just watch my hands, one, two, a Ford for you, air-conditioning, leather seats, power steering… He knew how to say “power steering” only in Hungarian; it never needs to be said in English, because every car has it.

KLINE & FOX

He tried to get closer to the English pronunciation. Kline must have been Klein, the Fox perhaps Fuchs and then… more Jews… oh yeah. He imagined them. Béla Klein, no, Albert Klein, no, better: Miklós Klein, piano maker. They fled here during the Great War from Kispest. Miklós Klein, starting out as a hawker, then vacuum-cleaner salesman, later office worker at Ford, meets Ödön Fuchs… Jenö Fuchs… Richárd Fuchs… Aha, these Baradlays from Jókai’s masterpiece, The Sons of the Man with the Heart of Stone . So it’s Rezsö Fuchs that Miklós Klein meets, and by then they’ve become Ray Fox and Mike Kline, and deciding to open a car showroom with a garage for servicing, they win Ford’s approval, the business prospers, they go from strength to strength, right until the Crash, when…

No, they must have been flourishing here even last year, as the oil marks are quite fresh. He had left the scrapyard behind and was wheezing, so he put down his suitcases and sat down on them. When he continued on his way, he felt pitifully weak.

Is it possible that some grandfather or great-great-grandfather of mine also came to America?

He had to pause more and more often, his jacket and trousers were drenched; fat slugs of sweat lodged at the roots of his hair, stinging his scalp.

He was quite close to the Project, as the bleak housing estate where Shea’s mother lived was known, built at the end of the Fifties as part of the comprehensive urban-renewal plan to help the poorer families of New York. Every inch of concrete surface had been painted some garish color by hippies? addicts? the homeless? God knows who.

He could still hear the roar of Grand Central Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway-it was the latter that made Shea’s mother’s life hell. The noise now reminded Vilmos Csillag of Niagara Falls. Like a million other Americans, that was where they had gone on their honeymoon. He would never forget the moment in the mountainous seas of the bay when the motorboat took them beneath the foaming torrent. Enhancing the visuals was the sound of a thousand billion drops of water cascading onto the agitated surface of the bay. Niagara Falls, Vilmos Csillag said, imitating his wife’s accent not entirely successfully.

“Whassup?”

Two colored men were kneeling on the concrete, by some burning rubbish, the acrid whiff of which just at that moment stung Vilmos Csillag’s nostrils. He couldn’t reply; he had first to clear his throat. “Just a minute,” he said in a whisper.

“Is this jug talkin’ to us?” said one of them, in a worn-out black leather jacket, and trousers of similar stuff, which allowed strips of his knee to be seen.

Vilmos Csillag didn’t understand the word “jug”: “Whassup?”

“You mockin’ me, shithead?” The other guy was somewhat younger, twenty to twenty-two, jeans but stripped to the waist. His chest, shoulders, and arms were a riot of colored tattoos.

Vilmos Csillag didn’t understand this either. He was amazed at the way the designs on the man’s skin merged into each other. He was still coughing.

“Git yo ass out of here fast!” said the leather jacket.

“Yo kin leave the stuff!” said the younger one.

Vilmos Csillag was not familiar with Bronx slang and clung to the handles of the suitcases in some uncertainty. From the tone of voice he understood aggressive intent of some sort, but didn’t think that his insignificant goods or person could prompt anyone to act. As soon as he had caught his breath, he gave a sort of nod and said: “Nice to meet you.” Then he walked on.

He had learned that this was a harmless greeting. He did not for a moment suspect that the original sense of these words might, in this particular circumstance, be regarded as an act of aggression. Before he knew it the two black men had knocked him to the ground and begun to kick him. The one with the naked torso had a pair of Doc Martens, the other basketball shoes or sneakers. Vilmos Csillag tried to roll towards the latter. He waited for them to stop; after all, what was the point of all this? A Hungarian sentence came to his lips: “Enough already… I’ve nothing against negroes!”

“Nigger? Did you say nigger?”

A hail of heels and toecaps hit him in the groin, in the eyes, on his nose, and when the Doc Martens got him in the testicles he lost consciousness. He saw again Niagara Falls -overexposed color Polaroids taken by Shea, and black-and-white images shot by himself.

After a while the two men tired of battering the motionless body.

“Is he still “live?” asked the leather jacket.

“Look, he’s still movin’.”

“Lessee his stuff.”

They took everything he had, splitting his money and throwing his wallet and papers on the fire. The leather jacket wanted to keep his credit card, but the other took it from him and threw that too on the fire: too risky. They tore open the suitcases, but took only a pullover and a pair of shoes. The presents brought from Budapest all ended up on the fire, and the items that burned most fiercely were the matrioshkas that Vilmos Csillag had bought from an unshaven trader in the underpass by the Astoria Hotel. They opened the two small bottles of Tokay, but found it too sweet.

Vilmos Csillag came to at dawn. He felt his body weighed several tons and had been trodden into small pieces. Something dreadful had happened to him, yes; at first he was unable to recall what. He drifted in and out of consciousness. He saw what remained of his belongings: his favorite velvet jacket lay like a wet washrag in the dust.

As the evening cooled he finally managed to sit up. He was horrified to find, on touching his face, that there was an aching knot where his nose had been. A thin sound that must have been weeping seemed a miserable comment on his helplessness. He needed food, drink, a doctor, otherwise… He had lost his past and he was now very near to losing his future. I must stay conscious, he mumbled to himself. The sound bubbled out of his mouth unarticulated; he was missing four or five of his teeth.

He had a feeling that his cries for help would not be answered; at most he would attract the attention of figures like his attackers, if anyone. He crawled forward, in pain, on all fours, towards lights that shone more intensely. He saw jagged stars jumping around before his eyes.

Those lights came nearer only very, very slowly.

He did not notice that he had reached one of the open spaces near La Guardia, in the opposite direction to where he was originally headed. Large notices warning NO TRESPASSING indicated that strangers were not permitted here. Despite this, the local boys played baseball and football here on Sunday mornings, until the security guards chased them off. Vilmos Csillag himself had once played softball here with his fellow employees.

He reached a bushy patch and could only zigzag ahead. He was shivering with cold, though the first rays of the sun had begun to light up the land. I’ll have a little rest, he thought, and sank to the ground. He lay on his side, in the position of the embryo in the womb; this was the way his vertebrae were least painful.