Daniela Kapitánová - Samko Tále's Cemetery Book

Only I didn’t laugh at him because I hadn’t been born yet.

And then he was given a disability pension.

Uncle Otto wanted to help mankind as well as all people but they did not believe him and that is why he only helped those people who were dying regarding normal doctors.

When my Mum’s back hurt so badly that she couldn’t sit or walk any more because all she could do was lie down or stand still due to all the pain, she could only teach children standing up, because we were very poor financially. And when the pain got really very bad she let Uncle Otto treat her, because he had wanted to treat her for a long time but she was too scared to let him treat her before.

Uncle Otto cured my Mum in one day.

But before he did it he told her that she would lose all feeling in her nose. But my Mum didn’t care because she couldn’t sit or walk any more due to her bad back hurting really badly so she said she didn’t care if she had any feeling in her nose or not.

This is how Uncle Otto cured my Mum:

Uncle Otto took two chairs and put a ladder across them. Then he made my Mum lie on her belly on the ladder, and he tied her feet and her hands to the ladder.

It was very weird.

Then he put a stove on the floor under her head, and he put a pot on the stove. He filled the pot with water and put some Red Healers in the water. The Red Healer was a mushroom that was red all over and it was called Red Healer. It was red inside and out. It was red like the colour red.

So he put some Red Healers in the water in the pot on the stove until it started boiling and fumes started coming out and my Mum had to breathe those fumes lying there with her belly tied to the ladder. And he made her lie there tied to the ladder breathing the fumes until the next morning and until she was totally fainted and my Dad got really worked up. He got so worked up that he wanted to beat Uncle Otto up, but that didn’t worry Uncle Otto at all, because he believed he had a Mission.

Then my Mum got better regarding the fainting and after that her back never ever hurt again until the day she died, but she had lost all feeling in her nose.

After that everyone in my family respected Uncle Otto very much even though he didn’t care regarding being respected and kept running away from home regarding looking for mushrooms.

After my Mum lost all feeling in her nose she couldn’t taste food any more and we always had to taste the food for her when she did the cooking because she kept saying that she had lost the proper nasal feeling in her nose as well as all the taste in her mouth and in her tongue. She used to say that all food tasted like old paper to her but the thing I don’t get it is how my Mum knew what old paper tasted like because I never ever saw her eat old paper, and nobody else in my family ever ate old paper, because it’s very bad for you.

After Uncle Otto cured my Mum’s bad back my Dad said that he should try to cure me of this illness that has a proper name, because Uncle Otto had wanted to treat me for a long time but my parents wouldn’t let him because they were scared. Because Uncle Otto said that he could cure me but that I would get all swollen up and black in the face to start with, and a green juice would come out of my ears and I would smell of rotten flesh. But after that I would be like my old self again and I would be like newly reborn.

My parents got very scared regarding this because they were worried that it might not work and that I might stay like that for good, all swollen and black in the face with green juice coming out of my ears and smelling of rotten flesh. So they told Uncle Otto that they’d rather I stayed as I was with this illness that has a proper name, because nobody could tell that I had it anyway because I was completely normal, just like everyone else in Komárno or anywhere in Slovakia. Right?

Right.

But Uncle Otto said it was too late now to cure me regarding this illness because I was belated for a cure, but I don’t care, because I’m just like anyone else, so I don’t mind having this illness that has its own name.

Because people respect me anyway because I’m hard-working. In the old days people used to shout at me like this:

‘Everybody thinks

Samko Tále stinks’

And sometimes when I heard them shout like this I thought it was just as well that Uncle Otto didn’t cure me because that could have made me stink for real, but now people just shout at me like that to make the rhyme rhyme, even though it’s not true. But there’s just one thing I don’t get and that’s how come it rhymes if it’s not true, right?

Right.

I always report them to Karol Gunár (PhD Social Sciences) so that he knows who shouted at me and can make sure they get into trouble, and it serves them right, because they shouldn’t have shouted at me. But these days people don’t shout at me any more, except for that rat-woman Angelika Édesová who steals my cardboard from the Market Place. She still shouts at me sometimes but if she doesn’t stop she’ll see what happens to her, that Gypsy rat-woman Angelika Édesová.

There’s just one thing I don’t get and that’s why there are so many Gypsies in Komárno, and not just in Komárno but all over the world, because what I don’t get is why there have to be Gypsies in the world. I don’t want there to be Gypsies in the world, they should go somewhere else, for example to Gypsyland where they came from, because ever since they came here that rat-woman Angelika Édesová has been stealing my cardboard from the Market Place. But she’ll get reported because it’s my cardboard. That rat-woman Angelika Édesová.

I hate Angelika Édesová.

She should be forbidden. Anyway.

Apart from me, the people in my family who hate Gypsies most are Valent Anka and Margita, because Margita’s job is regarding sending children to children’s homes and she says she could write a novel about the sort of things she’s seen in the places where they live. But Margita has never written a novel, because she has no feeling for art.

But I do have a feeling for art and I am a writer due to that. Even though the most difficult thing about being a writer is that it makes your hand hurt. Because I write with my hand, not like some people who do their writing on a writing machine because I don’t have a machine, because what do I need a machine for, this is only my second time being a writer and I don’t need a machine for that, because I am very modest. And I am also very well-off regarding money and I could easily buy 200 machines regarding writing if I wanted to. But I’m not buying any machines because I am very modest.

Anyway.

Everyone in my family has always been very modest because we were financially poor due to my Mum’s disability pension and due to Ivana attending piano schools and that is why we had to be very modest so Dad used to bring all sorts of leftovers from school, for example vegetables, because he was a teacher regarding woodworking, but he also taught some classes in the school garden and that is why we often had vegetables that he brought home because we were very modest.

When we were having lunch he used to work out how much the lunch had cost us. And because the vegetables from the school garden didn’t cost anything the lunch didn’t cost us anything and that made everyone happy.

It made me happy, too.

Because vegetables are very good for you.

But yoghurt is best because it’s really very good for you.

We always used to make our own yoghurt at home regarding being regular because it’s very good for you. My Dad used to say that yoghurt was invented by the Mongols and that this went to show what a civilized people these Mongols were, because they invented yoghurt. And not just because of yoghurt, but also because they had chased the Hungarians out of Mongolia, because nobody in the world likes the Hungarians, because they are Hungarian. But everybody in the world likes Slovaks because they are Slovak.