Daniela Kapitánová - Samko Tále's Cemetery Book

When I’m done writing this I will write about how he put a spell on Erik Rak.

I never asked him again, because I knew I would just end up buying him another alcoholic drink and he wouldn’t tell me anyway why I’m supposed to write about the Cemetery, because that’s what he’s like.

Old Gusto Rúhe wasn’t like that to start with. To start with, he used to be totally different, meaning that he was totally normal, but he got to be like that due to being beaten in jail with hammers, and he had to pick the one to be beaten with.

Once he got such a bad beating with a hammer on his toes and on his head that he fainted, and while he was fainted he had a dream that went like this:

He dreamt that he was in a waiting room with lots of people and one of them came up to him and said that his name was Ladislav Hrobárik and that he was Tax Office Director in Bánovce nad Bebravou and that his train was due to arrive soon. Old Gusto Rúhe said that his name was Augustín Rúhe and that he used to be a student but couldn’t finish his studies. Then they shook hands.

Then Ladislav Hrobárik said that he wanted to ask him for help and old Gusto Rúhe agreed to help him. Ladislav Hrobárik told him to go and find his wife Elena Hrobáriková in Bánovce nad Bebravou and tell her that he had buried something in the garden, exactly half-way between the wall of their house and the well. He said they should dig up the garden and old Gusto Rúhe could keep whatever they found there, except for a stone that was yellow and transparent and was called Moonstone. His wife Elena Hrobáriková should keep the stone because it was a stone regarding making all wishes come true.

And he said that she knew what wish to make.

Old Gusto Rúhe promised he would do that.

Then Ladislav Hrobárik left because his train arrived.

When old Gusto Rúhe came out of his fainting fit he was very surprised not to be in a waiting room but in jail in Bratislava, and that’s where he stayed for another four years and nine months. And while he was there, he found out that a man named Ladislav Hrobárik, who used to be Tax Office Director in Bánovce nad Bebravou and later was in charge of the auctions regarding Jews and their property, had been in the same jail in Bratislava.

And later he found out that Ladislav Hrobárik had died due to the hammers he had to pick regarding the beating.

After that old Gusto Rúhe was released from jail in Bratislava because it turned out he that wasn’t a bad German after all, just an ordinary German, and he went to Bánovce nad Bebravou to look for Ladislav Hrobárik’s wife Elena Hrobáriková. She was really surprised to hear the story regarding the digging but she agreed to do it.

But the thing is, Gusto Rúhe told the story the other way round and said that she was meant to keep everything they found there, and he was meant to keep just the stone that was yellow and transparent and was called Moonstone.

So they started digging exactly half way between the wall of the house and the well, and they found a tin box, like the one they used to have in grocery shops for keeping cloves. I don’t mean cloves of garlic, but the kind of cloves that are used as spices. They are just both called cloves. But they’re not cloves of garlic.

But what they found in the tin wasn’t cloves that are used as spices but two small packages. In the first package they found a gun that had been taken apart and oiled, six gold rings, four gold watches and one case for glasses. Only instead of the glasses there were 4,500 dollars in the case. Except that the dollars were nine years out of date.

In the other package they didn’t find anything except the Moonstone.

Elena Hrobáriková was very grateful but she decided to burn all the dollars just to be on the safe side, because in those days we still had the Communist Party and dollars were forbidden. And then she took the gun apart into even smaller pieces and buried it in the countryside because nobody ever went there.

So old Gusto Rúhe ended up with the Moonstone and he was really happy about that. But the thing was, the Moonstone didn’t work and it never made any wishes come true and old Gusto Rúhe got very concerned. And to make things worse, someone later told old Gusto Rúhe that there was a bank in America where the money was valid for ten years after it stopped being valid.

So he got very upset about having been so stupid because he could have had 4,500 dollars and a gun and all those things made of gold but instead he ended up with a Moonstone. So he got even drunker than ever, and he kept drinking for three days in a row without getting sober and telling everyone in the Pub how he was supposed to get a thing that could make every wish come true and what an idiot he’d been regarding this.

People were surprised to hear this and wanted to have a look at the Moonstone. And as old Gusto Rúhe held it in his hands, he suddenly felt that due to the Moonstone he could tell the fortune regarding the person who had last held it in their hand before him.

The only problem was that he had to be drunk because he couldn’t tell fortunes when he was sober.

So that’s why he was drunk all the time and never got a job because of being drunk. And then he came to live in Komárno because his sister lived here and he moved in with her.

She was really unhappy about him not having a job and drinking alcoholic drinks all the time so she decided to go to the Communist Party to ask them to sort him out. So they sent this man whose name was Erik Rak to sort him out, because he was a policeman and was really good at sorting things out, but old Gusto Rúhe put such a bad spell on him that afterwards everyone was scared and nobody dared to sort Rúhe out.

Later on I will write about how old Gusto Rúhe put a spell on Erik Rak.

So Gusto Rúhe spent the rest of his life sitting outside the Pub by the Railway Station telling everyone that he got his just punishment regarding having lied to Elena Hrobáriková. And he kept asking people to buy him alcoholic drinks.

He kept saying that he hated the Moonstone and he kept urinating into the Floral Display and people were scared and disgusted, especially regarding his lower lip that was totally blue and hanging down to his chin.

Anyway.

Once I asked Alf Névéry if he wanted to have his fortune told, and he said that he didn’t but he went to have a look at old Gusto Rúhe just the same. He did have a look but didn’t want to have his fortune told and that’s what I don’t get, because what was the point of going to see old Gusto Rúhe and not getting his fortune told, right?

Right.

But Alf Névéry was really weird in all sorts of ways because he didn’t have a job and never did anything, even though he didn’t have a disability pension and he didn’t even have a TV set.

When I found out about that, I got really scared because I’d never met anyone who didn’t have a TV set in my whole life, or at any other time. And also because the reason he didn’t have a TV set wasn’t due to being poor, but because that’s what he was like.

And the reason I know this is that when I found out about him not having a TV set, I told him that Szállási Jr was selling a TV set for just 500 Slovak crowns and I could deliver it on my handcart for free; that’s when Alf Névéry told me that the reason why he didn’t have a TV set was not because he couldn’t afford one but because he didn’t want one.

And that was really weird. Because everyone has a TV set, even Ivana who is a great artist in Bratislava has one, and Margita and her sons have one, and everyone in the world has one, only Alf Névéry didn’t have one, and it wasn’t because he couldn’t afford it.

That was really weird but also really scary because you never know what’s what and why and how and what might happen if you rent out to a person who has no TV set, because people might get all sorts of ideas about why he has no TV.