Daniela Kapitánová - Samko Tále's Cemetery Book

After that people really respected Dušan Janíček due to sorting things out and later, when he started founding our Independence they all helped him found it because they really respected him.

Then Pavol Orság got himself frozen to death and he never made anybody’s stomach turn ever again.

And this is how he got himself frozen to death: the doctors told him his cancer had got to his other eye too, so he took off all his clothes except for a blanket and he went out to freeze himself to death, because it was in the winter and it was very cold. And when they found him he was frozen dead.

Then he got himself buried at the Cemetery along with his glass eye. Sometimes when I go to the Cemetery to think up things for my Cemetery Book, I go to see all the people that are at the Cemetery because everybody is there. Grandmummy and Grandaddy are there, my Mum and Dad are there and Alf Névéry is there.

Anyway.

Tonko Szedílek is there too, and so is his Mum Katuša Szedíleková.

Tonko Szedílek was my classmate and he was my friend, but he fell off the Water Tower and broke his head and died, and then his Mum Katuša Szedíleková also died due to this disaster. They’re all buried together.

There are still some wreaths on Alf Névéry’s grave but I’ve no idea who’s going to clear them away. I might even do it myself, but I don’t want to be suspicious regarding clearing away wreaths from a stranger’s grave instead from my own, so really it should be Ivana who should clear them away, because he was her friend regarding Bratislava and art.

Anyway, I didn’t know what it would be like with Alf Névéry when Ivana told me that he was going to move in, and I was worried regarding noise because there’s this man who lives on the ground floor in our block of flats whose name is Cyril Malacký and he’s a writer in his spare time, but otherwise he is an attendant in the Car Park by the Church, and he wrote a book. But he wrote his book on a typing machine and that’s very noisy, especially when the weather is nice and the windows are open. Then the noise it makes reaches all the way to the third floor, because that’s where I live. But apart from that, Cyril Malacký is very tidy and sometimes he sweeps up the dirt round the rubbish bins. But sometimes he’s noisy.

The thing is, at first I didn’t know that he was being noisy regarding being a writer, all I knew was that he was an attendant at the Car Park by the Church, but I didn’t know that he was a writer as well.

But then Alf Névéry told me that Cyril Malacký was a writer and that he had written a book. The book was called Kitting Out the Idiots . Alf Névéry also told me that in this book called Kitting Out the Idiots there was a person that collected waste paper in the Market Place and had a handcart with a rear-view mirror. But the thing is I have a handcart with a rear-view mirror and I collect cardboard in the Market Place, so I got very shaken aback. And I said that I would like to read this book so Alf Névéry brought it for me to read. This is what the book’s title was:

Cyril Malacký

Kitting Out the Idiots

Then I started reading it but the whole first page was just one long sentence, so that relieved me because I could see that this wasn’t a book for ordinary people. It had no pictures on the cover. It was very thick. The first chapter was called First Chapter. I can’t think what else I could write about this book.

But the thing I don’t get is why he had to write about a person with a rear-view mirror on his handcart? Why couldn’t he write about a person with no rear-view mirror on the handcart? But the way he wrote it might give people all sorts of ideas, such as that Cyril Malacký lives in the same block of flats as I do, and whatever.

If it wasn’t for the handcart with a rear-view mirror, people wouldn’t get ideas like that.

I wouldn’t get ideas like that either.

Because nobody else in Komárno has a handcart with a rear-view mirror, I’m the only one, and I have it, because without it I wouldn’t be able to see what’s going on behind me, and that’s why Ján Boš-Mojš has to mend it for me because I am a road user just like everyone else and because that’s the law.

And another important thing is that without a rear-view mirror I wouldn’t be able to see who’s shouting at me. Because even though people respect me for being hard-working some people still shout at me like this:

‘Everybody thinks

Samko Tále stinks’

Anyway.

Except that I can see them regarding my rear-view mirror and I can shout back at them and sometimes I even get the things I shout back ready in advance so that I’m not caught off-guarded. But people almost never shout at me now because they respect me, because I’m hard-working even when the weather is bad.

Some people are not hard-working even when the weather is good.

Alf Névéry wasn’t very hard-working either. Actually, he didn’t work at all, because all he did was sit at home doing nothing, just looking at the picture Uncle Otto drew called The Safe City , and that’s why I thought that it was weird that he was a writer but never wrote anything. Because you can’t really be a writer without writing something, right?

Right.

For example, I am a writer because I write. Cyril Malacký is also a writer because he writes and I know that for a fact because sometimes I can hear his writing noise from the ground floor. What I don’t get is how Alf Névéry was supposed to be a writer without ever writing anything.

Apart from that there aren’t many writers in my family or in Komárno, even though Ivana is an artist regarding the piano and Žebrák is an artist regarding drumming. But Žebrák is not a serious artist, he’s just a popular one.

Ivana and Žebrák attended lots of different schools in Bratislava regarding the piano and the drums, but the one thing I’ll never get is why Ivana had to attend all those schools if she already knew how to play the piano before she went there. Because what’s the point of attending a school regarding the piano if you already know how to play, right?

Right.

And she used to be very noisy regarding the piano and she never had to help with any housework such as taking out rubbish and whatever, because all she did was sit and do nothing except play the piano.

And be noisy.

Žebrák attended lots of different schools regarding drumming too and that’s really weird. I don’t get it why you need a school regarding drumming, because we had a drummer in our Young Pioneers and he was very good at drumming without ever attending a school regarding drumming.

Ivana has been phoning me every day for the past eighteen years to ask if I need anything, but she needn’t phone me every day asking that, because I don’t need anything and I can look after myself. And the other thing is that she keeps bringing me all sorts of games and clothes from her tours but I never wear the things she brings and I store them in the larder, because I have a larder, too The games are for playing in lots of different ways such as on TV, and they have names such as The War, The Red and the Black, Moulline, Little Fish and whatever. Except that I don’t need any of them, because why should I, when I don’t need games like that, right?

Right.

No normal person would ever wear the sorts of clothes Ivana brings back from her tours. I keep telling her not to bring me things like that from her tours, so why doesn’t she stop bringing me things I don’t need from her tours, right?

Right.

I keep all the things she brings me in the larder, and sometimes I give some to Margita and she sells them and gives me the money, but she can keep that money for all I care. Sometimes I tell her she should use the money to buy some alcoholic drinks regarding her husband Valent Anka.