Daniela Kapitánová - Samko Tále's Cemetery Book

The thing is, Grandmummy was a tailor regarding men’s clothes and that’s why she thought that she was allowed to make Young Pioneers’ scarves.

We used to call our grandparents Grandmummy and Grandaddy, but only at home because it would have been weird to call them Grandmummy and Grandaddy in front of other people, because I don’t know anybody else in the world or in Komárno who’s called Grandmummy or Grandaddy. Because that’s in German and we’re in Slovakia.

But Grandmummy and Grandaddy were not German because they were in Slovakia, except that Grandmummy’s grandmother was Hungarian and her name was Eszter Csonka, meaning that she had a Hungarian name too. And nobody liked that.

I didn’t like it, either.

Grandmummy used to read German detective stories and she read them in German, except that she had to wrap them up in newspaper because Grandaddy was scared that they would get into trouble, because those detective stories came from a woman who had gone to Germany for emigration. The stories were called Allan Wilton. They were in magazines. They had covers too. The covers had lots of different photographs with lots of different people in them. I used to look at the photographs until Grandaddy said that they had to be wrapped up in newspaper regarding unvisibility. Grandmummy always used to tell me all about Allan Wilton and what he was up to, because he was a detective. I loved him because he always solved everything and he was very modest, too He was especially modest regarding women.

Sometimes the photos were in colour. But I couldn’t understand them in colour either because I don’t speak German because I don’t have time for such silly things. I can speak Slovak because I’m a Slovak and I can speak Hungarian because I’ve learned it because I’ve got I.Q., even though you’re not supposed to do that, because this is Slovakia.

And I also know lots of different sentences in German and Grandmummy taught me a song as well that’s in German and it’s about my dear friend Augustin, except that it doesn’t call him my dear friend, it calls him Duleeber instead. The song goes like this:

‘Oh, Duleeber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin,

Oh, Duleeber Augustin,

Alex is in.’

Meaning there’s somebody with the name Augustin.

Once there was this man in Komárno whose name was Augustýn, only there wasn’t just one but two of them because they were brothers and the two Augustýn brothers worked for the Customs. They had a Mum and she worked at the Post Office and when she was 47 years old, she went round the bend due to believing that all the men in Komárno were in love with her and that they only ever came to the Post Office because of her.

She always made a total disaster at the Post Office and kept saying that all those men were only there due to her, so in the end they had to move her from the Post Office counter to another office at the back of the Post Office but that didn’t help at all, because she went on making a total disaster. And people made fun of her for being like that. Then her sons the young Augustýns took her out of the Post Office and she stayed at home. And then they started to go around with bicycle chains so that they could beat up anyone who made fun of her. And if anyone made fun of their Mum, one of the Augustýns would grab him and the other one would beat him up with the bicycle chain. They carried those bicycle chains in their uniform pockets.

And everyone respected them due to that.

I also respected them due to that.

Then Augustýnová the Mum died of a stroke of bad luck because she swallowed all the rings she used to wear on her fingers and by the time they found her she had gone dead.

Her name was Alenka Augustýnová.

Her sons the young Augustýns were called Tomáš and Tibor.

But they weren’t the same ones as in the German song because they were quite different Augustýns.

There’s just one thing I don’t get and that’s why old Gusto Rúhe had to write this: ‘Will write the Cemetery Book’, because I’ve no idea why I should write about the Cemetery. I’ve already written a book about the Cemetery once, but it was only short, just one page long, so maybe that’s why it wasn’t good enough and I don’t even know what happened to it.

I sent it to this man, he lives in Levice and his name is Koloman Kertész Bagala, and what he does is he asks people to write lots of different books and then he collects them, but not for Recycling but so that he can make a living out of them.

He said that there was this competition and that everyone in the world could send him any book they wrote, so I thought this was a good time for me to write the Cemetery Book, so I wrote it and I sent it to him but I never heard back from him but Koloman Kertész Bagala has to write to me and tell me what’s happened to my Cemetery Book because that’s the law, right?

Right.

Sometimes I think that maybe he’s not real or maybe he’s not a man at all because at school we did this writer, her name was Timrava and she was a woman. Seriously, I’m not making it up, she was a woman and her name was Timrava not Timravaová, even though a proper Slovak name for a woman is supposed to have — ová at the end, like Darinka Gunárová, she’s also called Darinka Gunárová with — ová at the end because that’s the law. And that made me think that maybe this Bagala is not a man either, maybe he’s a woman called Bagala, and he’s just making fun of people but that’s not allowed and he’ll get reported and he’ll be in big trouble.

The thing is, I don’t want to say anything against him, because maybe my biggest mistake was that it was only one page long, because it’s true that books usually have more pages, so maybe he just thought it wasn’t long enough. But now Ján Boš-Mojš is mending my handcart and in addition to that it’s raining outside, so I’ve got time to write a longer book. But there’s just one thing I don’t get, why it’s got to be about a Cemetery? Nobody in the world can write a longer book about a Cemetery than my first Cemetery Book, because what can you write about a Cemetery, right?

Right.

Because I’m no retard, I’ve seen all sorts of books and I’ve read all sorts of books too, especially the one that was the most beautiful book in the world. It was called The Young Pioneer’s Heart and it was about this boy who wanted to be a Young Pioneer, but the baddie wouldn’t let him. That was the most beautiful book in the world and sometimes I think that no other book in the world can be more beautiful than The Young Pioneer’s Heart . I used to cry every time I read it but it was OK to cry then because we still had the Communist Party.

I was given The Young Pioneer’s Heart at school because I came top at collecting waste paper and inside the book it said that it was dedicated to Samuel Tále by the Young Pioneers in honour of his outstanding achievements in collecting waste paper.

Ivana used to make fun of this book, because she’s my sister and she’s a great artist from Bratislava but I hate it when people laugh at things that you’re not supposed to make fun of.

For example, Alf Névéry never laughed at this book, but he was very weird like that because he never laughed at anything that was funny and he always laughed at things that weren’t funny at all. I don’t know why he was like that, maybe because he wasn’t humorous because there are people like him that aren’t humorous.

But I’m very humorous.

And the way you can tell that I’m humorous is due to lots of different humorous sentences that I know. Some of them are in foreign languages too because I’ve got I.Q. Like in English I can say Fuck me tender fuck me do . That’s humorous.