Daniela Kapitánová - Samko Tále's Cemetery Book

Or I can say ‘Eins, zwei, drei, du bist arsehole’. That’s humorous in German. But the most humorous sentence of all is the one this actor from the Hungarian Regional Theatre in Košice taught me. His name was Bátori and he was from Bátorove Kosihy. And the sentence goes like this:

Attention, attention, there’ll be no concert, because that cunt Volodya nicked the balalaika.

This sentence is in Russian, and every time we met in the street, Bátori used to go like this:

‘So is the balalaika concert on, Samko?’

And I used to go like this:

‘There’ll be no concert, because that cunt Volodya nicked the balalaika.’

Meaning we’re humorous and people can have a good laugh.

I always had a good laugh, too.

Then Bátori got diabetes and they had to cut his legs off. And after that he couldn’t be an actor in The Hungarian Regional Theatre any more.

His name was Károly Bátori.

Alf Névéry knew lots of different languages too, but he didn’t know any funny sentences, so once I told him all the funny sentences that I knew but they didn’t make him laugh because he wasn’t humorous. But apart from that he had lots of other good qualities, for example he was modest and didn’t make a lot of noise, even though he was an artist. My sister Ivana is a great artist too, but she’s an artist regarding the piano and that makes a lot of noise. And she also keeps pushing herself onto TV and onto records and it’s very embarrassing that she’s like that, always pushing herself everywhere and making a lot of noise.

That’s why I got really worked up and I wanted to know what was what and why after Ivana told me that someone from Bratislava was going to live in the flat after Grandaddy and Uncle Otto, and that he was an artist and that he’d be renting it. But he was an artist.

Luckily, Alf Névéry was not an artist regarding the piano, he was an artist regarding writing. And luckily he didn’t make writing noises, because he was a writer without being noisy. When I asked Ivana about what books he had written she told me that he had written only one book. Then she showed it to me. The book was very thin. And this is what it was called:

100 reliable of ways of committing suicide

+

99 good reasons for doing so

It was very weird.

Then Ivana told me that Alf Névéry was going to write another book, but he never wrote it because he died and it was a total disaster because they didn’t want to bury him because nobody in the world, not even doctors, could work out what made him die because he had no illnesses even though he was nearly 50 years old. So they investigated him for a long time and then they wrote in the Documents that he died of failure and then he was allowed to be buried.

So he was buried at the Komárno Cemetery, even though he wasn’t from Komárno, he just rented a place here.

I liked Alf Névéry because he was modest and because he called me Mr Tále because other people, even though they respect me, usually call me Samko and only my doctor calls me Mr Tále and the postwoman also calls me Mr Tále. So I was pleased that he called me Mr Tále, and I told him he could call me Samko because most people call me Samko. And after that he called me Samko even though at first he called me Mr Tále.

He said his name was Alfonz Névéry but I could just call him Alf.

So after that I called him Alf Névéry and he used to give me lots of different Karlsbad Wafers because they’re the best.

He used to live in the flat next door to mine, because I have my own flat. Some people have lots of different degrees and they don’t have their own flat but I have my own flat. My flat has two rooms. One room is for living and there is also another room just for having. This is where I used to live with my parents and my sisters. Grandmummy, Grandaddy and Uncle Otto used to live in a house that had to be pulled down, so they moved into a flat in the same block as us so they could be looked after because Grandmummy wasn’t alive any more and Uncle Otto was disabled regarding his nerves. Then Grandaddy died and later Uncle Otto went missing and since then everyone has been waiting to see if he stops being missing, even though it’s been 19 years since he first went missing.

And that’s how Alf Névéry came to rent the place.

The thing is, his life of style wasn’t healthy at all because he drank alcohol and smoked cigarettes and never went out into the fresh air so really he shouldn’t be surprised that he died, when all he did was take baths and showers like some woman of sleazy virtue. But apart from that he was modest and he didn’t make any noise.

But he wasn’t humorous.

The book he wrote when he was still alive had some really weird things in it. On every page there were poems that didn’t mean anything and they didn’t even rhyme.

It was very weird.

That’s why I thought it was OK to write a Cemetery Book that was just one page long, even though I knew that books are normally longer because I’m no retard and that’s why I sent it to this man in Levice, the one who never wrote back, but I don’t care if he never writes, I’m going to write another Cemetery Book, so there.

Once there was this man in Komárno and he was from Levice and his name was Zoltán Csipke and he used to rummage in rubbish bins even though he wasn’t a Gypsy. Because normally it’s only Gypsies that rummage in rubbish bins. But Zoltán Csipke wasn’t a Gypsy and when he went out to rummage in rubbish bins he always put on white shoes and white gloves so that he wouldn’t get his hands dirty. And he made a living due to this because the stuff that he found rummaging in rubbish bins he fed to his pigs and then he got very rich due to this.

And he wasn’t even a Gypsy.

But then those rubbish bins made his lungs sick, so he went away to the Tatra Mountains to get a cure for his lungs, but he didn’t get cured and he died.

And he used to rummage in rubbish bins even though he wasn’t a Gypsy.

And everyone looked down on him because of that.

I looked down on him because of that, too.

Because even though he wasn’t a Gypsy he did the sort of things that Gypsies do, like that rat-woman Angelika Édesová who steals my cardboard from the Market Place, but I’ll show her if I ever catch her again stealing my cardboard from the Market Place. I’ll show that rat-woman Angelika Édesová.

But the thing is, I’m not supposed to get worked up because that’s very bad regarding my health so I’m not going to get worked up right?

Right.

There’s just one thing I don’t get, and that’s why I’ve got to write about the Cemetery and not about lots of other nice things you can write about, like the countryside and whatever, though actually I don’t go to the countryside very much because in Komárno the countryside is far away and when I come home from town I don’t feel like going to the countryside because I’m very tired.

But maybe old Gusto Rúhe just makes it all up. But then again, lots of different things did happen just like he said in his fortune-telling and he also put a spell on Erik Rak. When I’ve finished writing this I’ll write about how he put a spell on Erik Rak, because I forgot.

Old Gusto Rúhe is old and he stinks even though he was a German from Banská Štiavnica to start with. The High Ups thought he was a bad German to start with and that’s why they put him in prison in Bratislava after the war. Afterwards old Gusto Rúhe said that he did time in Communist Jail but nobody believed a word he said because he’s an alcoholic. And besides, he was a German and back then Germans were the baddies, and they had to go to prison because that was the law. And he used to say that he got beaten up there. And that the person that beat him most of all was called Sabopal. He always hit his toes with a hammer. But old Gusto Rúhe is an alcoholic so he must be making it up because it can’t be true and he mustn’t say things like that about the Communist Party. I don’t want him to make up things like that. Back then making up things like that wasn’t allowed, because the High Ups would have found out and it would have been be a total disaster, but now it’s OK to say things like that, and I really hate that. People shouldn’t be allowed to say things like that! It’s not fair that people are allowed to say things now that weren’t allowed before. Because now you can’t tell what’s what and why and how and then it’s easy to get worked up, right?