Daniela Kapitánová - Samko Tále's Cemetery Book

The thing is I always have lunch at their table in their house every Sunday. And Valent Anka always says that I am his brother-in-law. But then at other times, like when he meets me in the street when I’m out and about with my handcart and he’s in his car, he pretends that he can’t see me. Or that he can see me but doesn’t know who I am. But he can pretend as much as he likes, I don’t care, because people respect me and they don’t even shout at me because they respect me, so there.

And car drivers respect me, too.

Once there was this man in Komárno whose name was Feri Bezzeg, and he respected me, too He wasn’t just any old driver, he was a lorry driver, and he really respected me and he always said hello to me by hooting his horn and flashing his lorry lights and I always shouted back to him like this:

‘Feri Bezzeg Bros

Formula One pros.’

Except that I didn’t know if Feri Bezzeg had a brother but otherwise the rhyme wouldn’t rhyme.

Then he would roll down his window and throw me all sorts of sweets and chewing gum and whatever, and I would pick it up and eat it because I love sweets and chewing gum and whatever. But that’s what Feri Bezzeg was like and he liked throwing sweets to other people too, because he was very kind-hearted. When we still had the Communist Party he used to drive his lorry to lots of different places and he used to bring people things they couldn’t get.

And everybody loved him due to that.

I loved him due to that, too.

Once he drove his lorry to Romania because that’s where he was going, and he threw sweets and chewing gum to people walking by the side of the road and then these people started fighting for the sweets and that’s when Feri Bezzeg realized that they weren’t normal people by the side of the road but a funeral procession by the side of the road. And he felt so sorry that this procession was so poor regarding sweets that he started throwing them whole handfuls of sweets, and the funeral procession forgot all about the funeral and started picking up the sweets and everyone got on all fours to look for the sweets. Even the most funereal ones got on all fours, including the priest and whatever, only the coffin didn’t get on all fours because a coffin can’t do that by itself, right?

Right.

Then Feri Bezzeg stopped throwing but the people wanted him to throw more only he had no sweets left so he stopped. But they didn’t believe that he hadn’t got any more, and they started banging on the lorry with their fists and Feri Bezzeg got frightened due to this and wanted to get away. But he couldn’t because the people put the coffin in front of the lorry so that he wouldn’t get away. Then they started smashing the windows. And then Feri Bezzeg got so scared regarding his fright that he drove right over the coffin because he didn’t know what else to do. And it goes without saying that the corpse didn’t care because it was dead anyway, right?

Right.

The funeral procession didn’t care either and they kept looking for sweets and chewing gum and whatever.

Anyway.

After that František Bezzeg never threw any sweets out of his lorry, but people understood and they said they could understand why not.

I understood, too.

But I don’t need František Bezzeg to throw me any sweets anyway because I can easily buy two hundred sweets like that if I want to.

My favourite sweets are Karlsbad Wafers even though they’re not really sweets. I have to be on a sweet diet because I’m disabled regarding salty food. That is why I always have lunch at the Hospital because I’m disabled regarding salty dishes. It was Karol Gunár (PhD Social Sciences) who arranged salt-free lunches at the Hospital for me in the old days, because he is very kind.

Yesterday I saw Darinka Gunárová outside the Cultural Centre. It’s not called the Cultural Centre any more because it’s called Slovak National Institute now. I’d like to belong to the Slovak National Institute too because it’s very nice. Margita and Valent Anka both belong to the Slovak National. Ivana and Žebrák don’t belong to the Slovak National because they are different.

Darinka Gunárová was wearing golden shoes.

Honestly, I’m not making it up, she was wearing golden shoes and the shoes were not just golden but had golden shoe-laces that went up all the way, just like the kind of shoes disabled people wear. And they were all golden, all the way up to the knees.

I’ve never seen golden footwear like that before, not in Komárno and not on TV. Not even Ivana wears golden footwear like that, even though she’s a great artist from Bratislava and wears all sorts of garments that other people would never ever wear, and even she doesn’t wear golden footwear. I was so surprised regarding the golden footwear that I didn’t know what was what and why and how, so I pretended that I couldn’t see Darinka Gunárová even though I could.

Sometimes Ivana also wears the sort of things nobody else would wear, like on a record sleeve she wears a white tuxedo. No other woman would ever wear a tuxedo on a record sleeve or anywhere else in the world, only Ivana wears this sort of thing, and what I’d like to know is why she’s always got to do the sort of thing that you’re not supposed to do because people shouldn’t do things they’re not supposed to do, right?

Right.

Uncle Otto also used to do things that you’re not supposed to do, but everyone knew that he was disabled regarding his nerves due to a bolt of lightning that went in at his shoulder and out of his foot, so everybody knew that he wasn’t doing it on purpose but due to being disabled. Which was regarding his nerves. Uncle Otto was struck by lightning in a caravan in the Soviet Union during World War II, because he was a radio operator. A radio operator makes phone calls over the radio. That’s what a radio operator does.

Uncle Otto was a radio operator in a caravan in Balakhashka in the Soviet Union. Balakhashka is the name of a village in the Soviet Union. He was struck while he was on the phone. When Uncle Otto recovered he realized that he had not really recovered because he could see himself lying on the ground next to the blown out caravan door and at the same time he was floating above the body that was lying there, meaning that he was floating above his own body.

Afterwards Uncle Otto told everyone how he lay there on the ground and floated above the ground at the same time but nobody believed him because Uncle Otto was disabled regarding his nerves and it said so in the Documents. And another thing that people didn’t like about him was that he had a Mission and wanted to help everyone.

I didn’t like him having a Mission and wanting to help everybody either.

But people wouldn’t ever argue with him because they didn’t want to upset him.

I never argued with him either.

But the really important thing is that nowadays all sorts of people say all sorts of things on TV about what it was like in the old days and what they had been through and sometimes it makes me think that maybe the things Uncle Otto had said about the Soviet Union really did happen. But back then nobody used to say things like that on TV and people never talked about those things either and that’s why nobody believed it really happened.

I didn’t believe it either.

And another thing Uncle Otto also said was that while his body was lying on the ground in Balakhashka and he was floating above it, he floated all the way to a school and it was a school regarding mushrooms. And then a teacher came in and said to Uncle Otto that from now on he would have a Mission regarding mushrooms. His mission would be to make all people brothers regarding mushrooms and to bring peace to the world.

When Uncle Otto returned to his body and home from the Soviet Union he wanted all the people all over the world to become brothers regarding using mushrooms for peace but people avoided him or laughed at him.