I have written more than sixty short stories in the past 15 years. I wrote most of them as homework during the five semesters I spent on a Fine Writing course. Our teacher, writer András Petőcz, always gave a different option for the assignment. I wrote the next three short stories as homework.

The threshold
Written by HayKováts 2017

I didn't hear the door creak, but there he was. He was in his late fifties. He was big, with a snub nose, thinning hair that had turned from blonde to gray, and a forehead that reached back to the top of his head. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the word “Rocker” emblazoned on it, and his beer belly hung from his belt. Only elastic suspenders kept his jeans from sliding down. The owner of the house stared at me through thick glasses.
”Maybe I'll get lucky and he won't notice what I dug up from under the threshold of the great room” the thought ran through my mind.
„What are you doing here at ten o'clock at night? Did your brigade leave at eight, or is your boss not well informed me?" he asked me.
„Yes, the others finished at eight. But I still had a task. I have to take out the door frame, because the masons are coming tomorrow," I replied confidently, taking half a step forward to cover the family jewels.
„So, what's that dirty towel wrapped around your heel? Just not under the threshold did you find it? It's an old house, full of surprises. I know from the previous owner that Jews lived in this villa before the war".
"My grandparents owned the entire building before they were carted away with my father. Only my grandfather was of Jewish descent."–I recalled the past within myself. –"My father was the only one who survived Mauthausen. I was six when he died of lung cancer. My mother died five years ago. I know from him that my grandparents hid jewelry and money in their house. My mother, in her last hours, did not remember what secret place my father had told her about. The renovation came in handy, so I applied as a helper. By the way, I am a writer and live in an apartment across the street."
Meanwhile, the owner clicked on his flashlight and shone it on the package lying behind me. The blue-and-white checkered kitchen towel covered heavy gold jewelry. But I was out of luck. The man saw better with his the thick glasses than I thought. I also glanced behind me. The end of a gold bracelet slipped out of the small bundle and glinted in the lamplight.
“This is my inheritance. The house belonged to my grandparents before the war,” I replied.
"You're kidding, right? This house is mine! From the basement to the attic. Down to the last roof tile. So stand aside! Let me see what the Jews have left for me!"
I raised my palm to stop him and said angrily:
"Slow down with your body! I can prove that I am the heir."
The owner stopped. He looked at me intently and grinned. He was visibly dominant. He was half a head taller than me and weighed about fifty kilos more.
"Little buddy! Do you know who you're talking to? I've been a lawyer for thirty years. If you had come here with two witnesses, and you claim that the valuables hidden in the house are yours because you can prove it, then you might have had a chance. But you want to steal what you found in the dark of night. You could have put the alleged evidence here afterwards. Do you look me so stupid? Get out of my way, because I'm calling the police! - and he took his mobile phone out of his back pocket.
– You don’t even look Jewish – he said to me and pressed the speed dial.
– Only my grandfather was Jewish – I said softly, then I raised my voice because his bloated style annoyed me – Don’t fuck with me, you fat bladder!
– You’re offended, little dick! Maybe you’re some a prince in incognito? – he said angrily and walked towards me.
I crouched down for the hammer. I stood up, holding it behind my back. He noticed and stopped a meter away from me. Meanwhile, the emergency menu sounded from the phone.
"What the fuck! Are you trying to threaten me with a hammer? The police will be here soon. Do you know how many years you can get for this? You are being arrested for theft and for threatening to kill." the owner yelled. As he finished, the dispatcher's nervous voice came through.
At that moment, a red fog settled over my brain. I was not in control of myself. I did not wait for him to answer the dispatcher's question. As an outsider, I heard my own voice, or I just said to myself:
“This is not a threat, you pig!”  and I lunged forward. The lawyer’s hand holding the mobile phone moved defensively
He started to reach for his face, but he was slow. The phone fell to the floor.
I broke the man's temporal bone with the nail puller of the carpenter's hammer.. By the time he hit the ground, there was no life left in him. With the next blow, I smashed the phone to pieces.
The dispatcher could hear everything down to the crackling sound, they would definitely trace the number and determine the location of the call. Soon a police car with its sirens blaring stops in front of the house.
I didn't want to wait for this.
I never prepared for murder, but I watched a lot of crime movies and read even more crime novels.
The dead lawyer, weighing 130 kilos, remained at the “crime scene”. I didn’t even try to move him. I put on a rubber glove and took the “murder weapon” into the bathroom. I used a strong detergent to remove all traces of it. The garbage can was by the back door. I stuck the hammer in deep enough and sprinkled plaster debris on it. They certainly wouldn’t find it right away. “Whoever gains time, gains life.”
Then I hurried back for the inheritance. Time was running out. Next to the jewelry, I found a sheet metal sugar box. Its tightly closed top was wrapped with leucoplast, which was completely old. The lid came off easily.
Over the past decades, the mop juice must have seeped through the cracks in the threshold, the paint had peeled off from the moisture, and the thin iron sheet had corroded. However, the inside was shiny and completely dry. It contained twenty thousand US dollars in hundred-dollar bills and my grandparents' expired passports. These would have been proof, but the lawyer had formulated the "facts" well. In principle, I could have put it to him afterwards. But even if I had followed the honest path, I wouldn't have had much chance. I didn't know in advance in which corner of the house to look for the treasure. If I behaved as the dead man thought would have been legal, I'd just give the owner an idea and he'd send me to hell. He certainly wouldn't let me search his house.
I looked at my watch, six minutes had passed since the emergency call.
– The police will be on my neck soon!–I thought and threw the stuff into my gym bag.
I peeked out the front door, the street was quiet. The lawyer's BMW 600 was parked in front of the house. I slipped out the door, grabbing the handle with a tissue. The last fingerprint was left by the lawyer's hand. I glanced at the BMW and froze.
A pretty teenage girl sat in the back seat, her face seen from the side, illuminated by the light of her smartphone. She was tapping her thin fingers in concentration.
I'm thirty-six years old. The lawyer is almost twenty years older than me. Or rather, he must have  been older than me. Was he his grandson? Or his little girl? That's when I realized what I had done. I had killed the father, or grandfather, of a teenage girl. I didn't go into the house across the street, where I rented a mini studio. I needed to clear my head and organize my thoughts. I walked aimlessly along Városmajor, then sat down on a bench.
My mother was Catholic, my father was half Jewish, but he was not religious. In fact, he considered himself an atheist. Despite this, he did not prevent my mother from regularly attending the Városmajor church, where she took me to Sunday mass. My father's atheism was closer to me, but something of the Catholic faith still stuck with me. I have not been to any church since my mother's death. I felt a strong compulsion to confess to someone what I had done. I do not have many friends, and I could not burden any of them with asking for their silence when I committed a murder.
I vegetate on the periphery of the writing profession. I have only had two volumes of short stories published privately. That's what depressed me. I published my second string of short stories with a usurious loan. I was driven by blind faith: finally, they'll notice me and I'll be successful. I have 400 copies wrapped at home. I printed a total of five hundred. Half of the hundred copies I opened went as gifts, the rest are gathering dust on consignment on the shelves of some bookstores. So far, writing has only meant spending money, except for a few advertising texts, which I just used to pay my utility bills. There were weeks when I lived on greasy bread.
The loan shark sent a debt collector after me. The muscle-brained man gave me a two-wee reprieve. If I didn't pay by then, he would break one of my legs with an iron pipe. My legs so I could still write. He promised to break my other limbs one by one. When I found the hiding place under the threshold, my heart nearly jumped out of its socket. Now I had crossed a line that I had only crossed in my short stories. Until I saw the little girl in the lawyer's car, I was still quite comfortable with the weight of what I had done.
“I’ll meet the priest in the morning. I’ll confess my sins and ask him for advice,” I decided.
Then I thought about the little girl and decided to turn myself in to the police.

It was half past one in the morning when I got back to my apartment. Two flashing patrol cars and two unmarked cars were surrounding the lawyer’s BMW.
I was about to go to the uniformed man standing in front of the gate to ask him to speak to the head of the investigation, because I wanted to make a statement, when I found myself face to face with the caretaker of my house. I knew him, he had good connections with the police. He had just come out of the “crime scene.” I asked him what all the fuss was about. The caretaker already knew everything.

“The big guy was beaten to death in his house. It was a clean case. A showdown. He had a lot of enemies. And they found an underage prostitute in his car. Not many people will mourn this pedophile scoundrel. He was the neighborhood loan shark.”

 

Why?
Written by HayKováts 2017

The train stopped. This is not the first time in Czechoslovakia. I am traveling from Dresden to Budapest on the international “express” train. We are slower than the local train from Budapest to Vác. We have not yet reached Bratislava, but we are already seven and a half hours late. The train is packed to the brim, like tram number 6 during rush hour. You have to stand sideways in the corridors to get to the bathroom, which you have to wait for half an hour for, there is such a queue. I ran out of drinking water an hour agregret it, it tastes so stale.
It is the eno. When I get to the bathroom, I rinse my mouth with the hand-washing water, and I immediately
d of June, the heat is only intensified by the evaporation of the crowd. I am sweating too.
I left my leather jacket in a compartment where young Hungarians were huddled together. They were in Dresden on a study trip. They are older than me, they study at university, they are linguists. The whole group couldn’t fit in the compartment, so they change every hour so that those who are stuck in the corridor can also sit.
When they found out I am Hungarian, two girls squeezed a seat for me. Feigning sleep, I lean on the shoulder of the girl with the bigger breasts. The train slows down, from the jolting really suppress me the dream. I wake up to a sudden braking.
My head is in the girl’s lap, her large breasts are pleasantly pressed against the back of my neck. In the meantime, an hour has passed, and an exchange follows. In the corridor, I notice that the full-breasted girl doesn’t just have big breasts. She has broad shoulders, hips, and is half a head taller than me. She looks good anyway, but she’s not in my weight class.
The thinner one offers me a cigarette. I can't admit it at almost seventeen, this will be the second cigarette of my life. The first one was offered by a girl too. It was a barefoot Kossuth, I coughed a lot. Now the university girl offers me a cigarette with a GDR filter. She lights it with her lighter, I'm coughing, I can't breathe through. She soon realizes that I'm cheating.
− It's not obligatory if you don't like it, says the girl, whose blond hair is boyishly short, her greenish cat eyes narrow, her narrow mouth pulls into a smile. − I only offered it to you so that my foul breath wouldn't bother you when we start making out.
I swallow, then ask.
− Did I understand correctly, do you want to kiss me?
− If you don't mind… − she says suggestively, and blows smoke into my face from close up.
I don't mind. I'm still a virgin, but maybe not for long. We drop the butt in the ashtray under the window and we start kissing. More precisely, the thin girl puts her hand on the back of my head and pulls me to her. She is shorter than me, I bend down to her mouth. My tongue is dry and raspy. Partly from thirst, partly from excitement. Smoking has unified the taste of our mouths. Our tongues tangle and become increasingly slippery.
I close my eyes, I think I am dreaming. The train starts moving again, the rumble is haunting. It would not be easy to tear the girl's lips off me even with a cold knife, I can barely breathe. Our thighs are pressed together. The rhythmic shaking of the train turns me on. The fabric of my pants stretches against her naked stomach. I am confused. Something similar happened to me at a house party, we were dancing to a slow song. Then my partner pulled away from me.
The college girl makes an interesting hip movement and pulls me even closer to her. Then she lets go of my mouth and kiss my ear. I like this. Now she's pushing my earlobe aside with her tongue and caressing the base of my ear. It's getting more and more exciting.
I'm just starting to think I'm going to leave in my pants when she speaks softly.
"Let's go to the bathroom," she whispers, and completely embarrassing me.
I brought a rubber condom with me, but it was left in my suitcase. I never dreamed that I would please an older girl on the train and she would initiate it. More precisely, I've dreamed of something like that, but it's never happened before.
The girl takes my hand with a firm gesture, I don't resist. I should go ahead so I can make my way through the crowd. I'm a head taller than her and at least ten kilos heavier. But she's pulling me along with such force that I can't see any point in taking back her momentum. If I argue, she will change her mind, which would not make me happy.
We reach the end of the carriage, at least six people are waiting for the toilet. The girl continues towards the passage. − But this is the first class! − I say to myself, and I say to myself, and go continue on, mesmerized.
Only two people are waiting in front of the toilet. We hear Czech words and we don’t want to get into trouble. We continue on.
Three people are stay in the corridor. We look into the compartments, as if looking for someone.

There is no one at the other end of the car in front of the toilet. We rush into the toilet, and the girl locks the door. Her hands open my belt buckle, then the button, then the zipper, and she pulls my jeans down to my knees along with my underwear.
"I don't even know your name," I stammer, as if it matters, "and I don't have a condom..."
She puts her finger to my lips. "My name is Dóri, but does that matter? I hope you don't want to fall in love with me. I just wanted you. You must be an only child. A mommy's boy. You like to daydream. Right?"
True. She's guessed everything. She sees right through me, as if I were made of glass. I pull myself together and kiss her on the mouth. Meanwhile, I start unbuttoning her shirt, and Dóri unties the knot at her waist. Her breasts are small, her nipples don't stand out, yet they are desirable, I taste them. Her skin is tight, hot and slippery. Slightly salty from sweat. Meanwhile, my hands try to unbutton her jeans, but she has already slipped them down to her ankles along with her panties. I want to reach between her thighs, but she stops my hand, holds it under the tap, and rinses it. There is no soap in sight, and the towel does not inspire confidence. She takes my fingers in her mouth and disinfects them with her saliva. I continue the movement I started.
I don't have much experience; I can count on four fingers how many pussies I've caressed so far. But my hands are skilled. I'm training to be a goldsmith, so I understand subtleties. Dóri's clitoris is swollen and sensitive. I try to coax out the best melody, and I can hear its echo softly in the rumbling.
Our train's wheels clatter on the tracks, clatter on the tracks... The rhythmic shaking is distinctly erotic. Dóri enjoys my handiwork, but we can't occupy the toilet until we reach Pest. Not even until we reach Pozsony. So she speeds things up. More precisely, she seizes the opportunity with her hand. She finds it okay and squats down next to it. I am completely unprepared for this. She doesn't swallow it, she spits my juices into the toilet. I think: That's it, she's not going to put it in wet...
I'm wrong, she doesn't stop halfway.
She turns around, leans forward slightly, and adjusts herself between her thighs with her hand. I'm worried that the battery will run out. But the whole thing is so exciting, such a new experience. My fear quickly evaporates, replaced by a rush of excitement. We barely move, taking advantage of the train's momentum. We didn't expect it to brake. I derail like a model train locomotive on a model railway, on the curve before the tunnel. I try to put it back, the switch is in the wrong position, Dóri gasps. "Sorry," I say. She reaches between her legs and slides it back into place. Everything would continue smoothly if the train hadn't come to a complete stop.
There's a knock on the door, shouting in Czech, then angry banging. There's nothing we can do, we pull up our pants, Dóri sends me forward with a sentence in German: "Meine Freundin fühlt sich schlecht." Meaning, my girlfriend is feeling sick, that's what I have to say. She wants to buy some time while she gets herself together. I open the door, and a big bald man and a short fat woman continue shouting in Czech or Slovak. I'm a nervous wreck, I've forgotten exactly what to say.
"Meine Freundin ist sehr krank!" I blurt out. Meaning, she's very sick. They understand what I'm saying, but they're not moved. They continue lecturing me in German, spitting out words in unison.
The door opens, and Dóri stares them down. She doesn't say a word. She pushes forward, and we start walking back. The man's loud voice can still be heard in the hallway, and the woman has slipped into the toilet in front of him.
When we get back to the second-class car, Dóri stops me and kisses me. "Too bad they interrupted us. You were really getting into it," she whispers in my ear.
The train is stopped, but I'm not. I stand up proudly. I'm glad she appreciates it. It was very good for me, I would be satisfied with half of it.
"My name is István," I remember, although the point has already been made.
"You're a nice guy, István. That's it for today, and there won't be a tomorrow. My friend is waiting for me at Keleti. We live in Debrecen, and as soon as we get a train, we'll go home.
I'm not surprised, just a little disappointed. I swallow my bitterness; it would be nice to have a drink. Dóri guesses my thoughts.
When we get back to the compartment, she rummages in her backpack and pulls out a bottle of Vat 69. I have no idea where she got the brand-name Scotch. In any case, it's stylish in the summer of '69.
Dóri opens the bottle, takes a good swig, then hands it to me. I take two big gulps, and my mouth goes numb. It hits me with a delay. Dóri takes the bottle back and offers it around the booth.

She shares the rest with me. It puts me in a pleasant daze. Debella winks at me meaningfully, pushes aside one of her classmates, squeezes him into the corner, and offers me his place.
I thank her and go out into the hallway after Dóri. There I hear the group leader's assessment of the situation: "We have our uninvited visit last year to thank for the slowdown strike by the railway workers." This is probably true.
"Why did we go to Prague with tanks?" I pose myself the poetic question.
I hate politics.
I put my arm around Dóri's shoulder and we look out the window. I ponder the recent past. I think to myself that this is not how I imagined my first encounter with a girl. Yet now I am happy.
Meanwhile, we have left Bratislava. The express train rattles along beside the Danube.

We say goodbye to each other in the carriage at Keleti station. I'm a little dizzy from the wine.
"No sentimentality, István!" warns Dóri, and instead of a big kiss, I get two little kisses on the cheek. I restrain myself too, but I give her three little kisses, as I learned from my relatives in France.

My father is waiting on the platform. I didn't expect him to be there. The international express was more than nine hours late. He looks gloomy, and I wonder what I've screwed up again without knowing it.
He hugs me, pulls me close, differently than when he's about to lecture me. He asks me how my trip was...
Then we get into the Trabant and head for Gerlóczy Street. While driving, my father asks a few routine questions about Aunt Lízi and her family. I try to give good answers. I don't mention that beer was flowing from the tap. We get home quickly.
When I see Grandma, I have a bad feeling. Her eyes are swollen. She looked like this when Grandpa died.
"Where's Mom?" I ask, and it dawns on me that maybe she's in the hospital for some reason. Grandma turns away and wipes her face, sniffling. I see a crumpled handkerchief in her hand. She just stands in the hallway, looking lost. My bad feeling intensifies, and my stomach starts to churn. I go to the kitchen sink, bend over the tap, and drink some water.
My father sits me down on a stool next to the kitchen table. He fills two cups to the brim with homemade brandy. He pushes one of them toward me. I look at it uncertainly, then decide it's better to drink it without asking any questions. My uncle's 60-proof brandy burns my throat. There is no customary toast, as there is nothing to toast.
"It happened three days ago. Your mother had an accident," my father says in a hoarse voice. "She didn't survive."
When I realize what he has said, I feel dizzy. My father has good reflexes and catches me halfway.
I go to bed. I'm given a strong sedative. Together with the brandy, it works quickly.

The next day, I learn that my mother threw herself from the fourth floor of a nearby passageway. She fell onto the cobblestones of the inner courtyard. She died in the ambulance.
I can't understand it. Why did my mother do this at the age of forty-six?
I leaf through the family photo album. I look for my mother in it. She is surrounded by familiar faces. Black-and-white prints of colorful experiences. Most of them evoke good memories.
There are no photos of the bad ones. I look for the answer among the missing pictures.

 

Arms dealer in a tight spot
Written by Haykováts 2017-04-22

The man was lying on his back. The girl was rocking on his erect penis in an accelerating rhythm. Her shapely buttocks hit his thighs with a thud. Her full breasts brushed his unshaven chin, her dark locks caressed his face. The bed moved, the lustful dream was torn apart by a hellish bang.
Pieces of plaster fell into the man's face. Debris covered the bed and his sweating, naked body. He swept the debris out of his eyes. The plank floor of the ceiling faced him, it was an inch away from his nose. The torn planks were held up by the bedside tables and the copper headboard of the bed. A few seconds later, the wall behind the bed fell with a solid crash towards the yard. The man didn't hear it. The detonation temporarily deafened him. The thick dust filled the narrow space like smoke.
The man lying on the bed was 32 years old, 184 cm tall, lean, with athletic muscles. His military background made his reflexes work much faster than average.
“Run!” was the first command that flashed through his mind.
He wanted to throw himself off the bed, crawl out from under the boards, but his legs wouldn’t obey. He carefully raised his head and couldn’t believe his eyes.
His thighs were held captive by the falling master beam. At first he thought his legs had been cut in two, and he didn’t feel any pain from the shock. But the pain began to creep up to his brain, but it wasn’t unbearable.
The six-inch beam fell perpendicularly in the middle his thighs, dragging the boards of the attic ceiling with it. The longitudinal tube that formed the bed frame was slightly bent, and the man's thighs and hips were pressed into the mattress. Its elasticity protected him from bone fractures, but it held him so tightly that he could not move.
He tried to insert his hands from both sides under the beam between his thighs and the latex mattress, but he could not. He could only be glad that his fingertips remained dry, apart from the sweat, there was no blood on the mattress.
He looked around to assess his literally awkward situation.
He had no view to the left, towards the garden. All he could see was that the wall below the window was leaning slightly outwards. The plaster had fallen off in patches, and the reed nailed to the planks was visible in its place. Looking to the right, he was shocked to see that the wall of the room had completely disappeared. The bedroom was on the first floor, and the walls of the old house were built of rammed clay, according to local custom. The exception was the wide balcony and the wooden wall that belonged to it, on which shuttered windows surrounded the double-leaf balcony door. Behind the inner wall was the bathroom, and next to it the staircase. The bathroom got its water from a tank in the attic, which was properly heated by the heat outside. The man was glad that the half-ton water tank was not placed above the bed.
"The bathroom!" he thought to himself and cried out in horror.
"Salima!!!!" he screamed his girlfriend’s name. That night, they fell asleep next to each other after making love.
The woman didn’t answer. "Oh my God, don’t you…?" realization flashed through him. Salima had gone to the bathroom early in the morning. She had kissed his on the mouth before, and even further down. The man could a time hear the sound of the shower, then fell back asleep. He had no idea how much time had passed since then, and what time it was now. He stretched out to the side, but his hand couldn’t reach the drawer of the nightstand where he kept his gun and cell phone.
The man’s name was Felix John Malkovich.
He was born a late child in 1984 in Kuwait City, where his father, at the age of forty-five, was the U.S. commercial attaché.
His first name was after his grandfather, who had died a heroic death at Pearl Harbor, where he served as first officer on the battleship USS California, which was among the first to be sunk by the Japanese attack. His father insisted on this. His middle name was after the actor who had been nominated for an Oscar a few weeks before his birth. His mother insisted on this.
At the age of five, he confessed to his parents that he preferred to be called John. His father agreed, and he never used the name Felix again.
Little John grew up among Arab children. They moved back to the States in the days before the invasion of Iraq in 1990. A few years later, the family found themselves back in the Middle East. John attended high school in Cairo, then his parents sent him back to Washington, where he graduated with a degree in economics. He excelled in boxing at middleweight, earning a scholarship.
At his graduation, a family friend approached him and offered to join the intelligence community. By then, he was fluent in four languages. He learned Croatian from his parents, learned Arabic through play, and chose Russian as a foreign language at university.
After his basic CIA training, he was given increasingly difficult tasks. He had always been interested in technology, including weapons. During his training, he proved to be an excellent marksman, but his superiors – many of whom had a good relationship with his parents – set the bar higher. Based on his skills, he was assigned a multiple-covert operation.
Thus, he ended up in the Middle East again, where he felt at home and could easily make people believe that he was an arms dealer. In addition to selling weapons, his job included scouting for competitors.
His undercover activities began four years ago in Libya. Since then, he has traveled to neighboring countries offering his wares. In total, he sold millions of US dollars worth of “scrap” weapons and ammunition to rebels, emirs with more or less power and purse, and tribal leaders. When making the deal, he asked for their word that the weapons would not be used in densely populated areas and that women and children would be spared. This reassured his conscience, although he was aware that a promise made to an infidel was not binding.

John began to analyze his situation, while lying on the bed.
The fact that half the house had collapsed and he had only heard one explosion suggested that it had been targeted with a shoulder-launched missile. “Amateurs” thought the gun-dealer, “most they save money on the test, then shoots sideways in real time. With these stovepipes – that was what the launcher was called among themselves – you can hit a moving vehicle from up to five hundred meters away.
Then the question arose: – Who wanted to get rid of him?
Of course, in recent years, several of his competitors had been eliminated by the CIA clean-up brigade based on the information he had sent. So, if this somehow came to light, he could count on a good number of enemies. But he had not received any indication of this from his liaison, whom he trusted completely.
Then he remembered Abdullah, who had helped with the last delivery. The boy  saw how much money had changed hands after they had unloaded the eighteen crates, the seventy-two M-14 automatic rifles, and the 7.62 ammunition for them from his truck. After that, he considered his salary low.
John didn't like it when they were dissatisfied with the previously agreed salary afterwards. That was why he did not give more than the promised two thousand US dollars. After all, Abdullah only had to drive his old ZIL truck 58 kilometers across the rocky desert terrain. The Arab had bought the six-ton truck from the departing Russian soldiers through John intermediary at a bargain price.
Abdullah had been so chatty and even made threatening insinuations on the way back that he had left John no choice. He had shot the driver before he reached the busy main road. He had driven the truck into a ditch so that he would not be visible from the road. John threw body of Abdullah among the stones, making it easier for jackals and vultures to find him.
But Abdullahs like that had a lot of brothers, cousins, and friends. Even though he had sworn not to tell anyone about their business, he would have told someone.
So that very evening he packed up and set off for neighboring Jordan. He rented a house near of Mabada, in the middle of a neglected fig plantation on a gentle hillside, a kilometer and a half from the main road. He had found the abandoned building three months ago, had struck a deal with the heir, and had paid the rent for six months. At the time, he didn’t know when he would have to leave “the hustle and bustle of life,” but the place seemed ideal for a while.
He had brought Salima with him, and they had shopping for a week.
“After a successful deal, it’s time for a little relaxation,” he thought, when he decided he needed to disappear for a while. How they had found her remained a mystery. Then he pondered further. “What about Salima?”
He guessed that the walls of the collapsing bathroom had buried her. If she had lived, at least she would have heard her voice. Poor girl, she had no idea what she would say to her mother. Salima’s father was killed in a Beirut coffee shop bombing when she was just twelve years old.
The father wasn’t the target. He was just collateral damage, like his daughter was now.
The rage of helplessness was starting to take over John’s mind. His adrenaline was at its peak. Almost literally.
He pressed his fists against the beam, which was four inches from the base of his thigh. His knees didn’t move either. He tried to help with his heels, but no matter how hard he tried to stretch his lower leg, the elastic grip of the latex trapped him.
“The beam wouldn’t be too heavy on its own,” he thought, but he quickly realized that the floorboard was nailed to it. Plus the coconut fiber insulation above it, although it didn’t weigh much. But these “not very heavy weights” added up. The Mediterranean roof tiles were blown outward by the wind of the explosion. If it fell on him, he would surely fall to the basement and not make it out alive.
Using all his strength, he pushed his body up another four or five inches. He felt his bottom move on the mattress. But as he let go, the elastic latex pulled him back, and he was back where he had been. He strained twice more, then thought it best to conserve his strength.
He couldn't decide what to do. If he started screaming, someone who wanted him dead might hear him.  But if he stayed quiet and will be help nobody for him, he'd dry out in the hot sun by evening and be eaten by rats by morning. Not to mention the fact that the dehydration and the constant pressure on his thighs could cut off his circulation. Nice prospects.
He always considered himself an optimist, but he didn't feel like laughing now. Even so, lying there, pressed into the mattress, he looked fucking ridiculous from the outside.
Then he remembered that you could rip the latex apart. But no matter how much he clawed at the heavy linen sheet, it didn't tear, and underneath it was a thicker fabric covering the mattress. A velvet, the tiny threads of which stood towards the end of the bed, so they also restrained his body.
A painful, hopeless scream burst from him. He flinched at his own voice. He restrained himself, began to listen, but apart from the chorus of cicadas, he could hear nothing from outside. He was glad that his hearing had returned.
Three or four hours had passed, the heat had settled under the boards that formed the ceiling, it must have been fifty degrees Celsius. The thirst was becoming more and more unbearable, his mouth was dry, the plaster dust he had inhaled burned his throat, he could neither spit nor swallow. What he wouldn't give for a bottle of water...
Then he started laughing anyway, because it occurred to him that they  have been targeted with a weapon that he had sold to someone in this fucking place. And he was giving away the murderous tools for no small profit. Now he could heat the house with the dollars he had earned from his business. He laughed out loud at this, because he remembered how many air conditioners he could run with his money, but there was no electricity in the house.
Felix John Malkovich lost consciousness by evening.
Two days later, four local teenagers came to harvest figs at the abandoned plantation. They noticed that the house was half-ruined. The walls had collapsed at the back. The cylindrical water tank had rolled out towards the crumbling pile of wood from the fig dryer. The explosion tore a piece of it the size of a sink. The ruins exuded a disgusting stench. The boys knew this disgusting smell, it was the breath of death. That's why they didn't even try to climb the remains of the stairs to the upper floor to search for valuables.
The sand-colored Toyota SUV parked in front of the house was covered in a thick layer of dust, but it was intact. They opened it, started it, and drove away. Later, when they dismantled the car in their father's garage, they found eight hundred and twenty-two thousand US dollars under the spare tire, which the head of the family divided fairly.

 

 

The next two are true stories.

War emergency
Written by HayKováts 2018

My mother told me this story after my grandfather died. I was thirteen years old at the time. What happened in the winter of 1944 remains vivid in my memory to this day. I will try to recall it.
When the Allies began bombing Budapest in 1944, the residents of the house on Gerlóczy Street also moved to the shelter. It was built very deep, under the wood cellar, so it was much safer than average.
In 1956, I also moved there with my parents and grandmother. That is why this place is part of my personal experiences. I would like to add that during the revolution, my grandfather refused to go down to the shelter.
Grandfather, Matyas Hay was already 63 years old in 1944. His a master tailor, were appointed air raid commanders for the house.
It is unclear why he was chosen, as he was not officially a soldier. Only the family knew that he had been a „red soldier" for a few months during the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Perhaps it was because he spoke German well, or because he was considered a trustworthy person who commanded respect? I can only guess. All this happened during the dreaded Arrow Cross era.
One of the downtown headquarters of the Arrow Cross Party was located on the neighboring Vitkovics Mihály Street. They raided houses in the neighborhood several times a week.
In addition to the residents of the house, there were also a few relatives and friends, mostly refugees from the countryside, in the shelter. In November, a young couple arrived with their six-year-old son. They were  from the countryside. They were relatives of the hausmaister. The little boy suffered from severe asthma, but his parents had brought medicine with them. The little boy suffered from severe asthma, but his parents had brought medicine with them. Unfortunately, after a few days, the child caught a cold and developed a fever.
By evening, his asthma attacks were becoming more frequent. The little boy's medicine ran out sooner than planned. The child's choking cough made it difficult for people to sleep in the single-aire shelter.
There was a pharmacy on the boulevard behind the National Theater that was open at night, about a kilometer away. But that evening, the air raid sirens sounded for the second time, signaling the approach of enemy bombers, so neither of the parents dared to go out for the medicine.
My grandfather put on his winter coat, warm scarf, fur hat, and asked the young woman what medicine they needed. The mother apologetically took the prescription out of her purse.
My grandfather beckoned to Mr. Sipos, the hausmeister. He temporarily handed over command of the air raid shelter to him. He turned up the collar of his winter coat and set off into the unfriendly November night.
He had been gone for about half an hour when the sirens sounded again. A few minutes later, the anti-aircraft guns began firing, and the sky began to tear apart.
At first, the sound of bombs hitting the hauses could be heard from a distance, but then it grew closer and closer.
The Allied aircraft formation did not spare the city center from its deadly cargo, even though the Germans had  defensive positions were in the outer districts and the Buda Castle.
My grandmother pulled my mother close to her and started praying, even though she wasn't a churchgoer, just as my grandfather didn't believe in any religion. The sound of the bombing lasted only a few minutes, but to those in the shelter, it seemed like an eternity.
It almost sounded as if the planes were moving away when a much more powerful detonation than before shook the walls of the shelter. Pieces of mortar fell from the bricks of the vaulted ceiling. Many thought the house had been hit. The occupants of the basement did not dare to move. Hellish terror paralyzed those present. Long minutes passed after the terrifying roar, and people listened in whispers. Even the sick little boy suppressed his cough. In the tense silence of anticipation, the doorbell rang.
The caretaker and three other men went to open the door. My grandfather stood in the doorway, gray dust on his dark blue winter coat and black fur hat, a paper bag from the pharmacy in his hand.
"Call an ambulance immediately, and you run to the fire department," Grandpa instructed one of the residents and the caretaker.
He pointed to the neighboring house, which had been four stories high just a few minutes earlier.
Gerlóczy Street 5 had been hit by a chain bomb. It was the terrifyingly close explosion that had terrified the residents of house number seven in the shelter.
The top three floors of the house collapsed, leaving only the mezzanine and the street front of the first floor intact. As children, we were happy about this because it meant we could watch the August fireworks display launched from Gellért Hill unobstructed from the fourth floor of our house.
When my grandfather took the asthmatic boy's medicine down to the shelter, he was greeted with sincere cheers.
It was fortunate in our misfortune that everyone in the neighboring house was in the shelter, so the paramedics had nothing to do. The caretaker didn't have to run to the fire station on the corner either, because he could already see the headlights of the fire truck heading towards them.
The debris did not cause much damage to our house, but it blocked the street gate of the collapsed house for days. This caused my grandfather serious problems.

I haven't mentioned yet that my grandparents also took in a refugee. I knew Aunt Erzsi Tarlos. She was not a relative from the countryside, as she was introduced to the residents, but the wife of my grandfather's friend. Elemér Tarlos was able to travel to New York with a false passport, but his wife's papers were not ready in time. Instead of the Dohány Street ghetto, she hid at my grandparents' apartment during the siege, which is how she ended up in the shelter.
The shelter had a passage to the neighboring house, which my grandfather had covered with a large cupboard. During the Arrow Cross raids, Aunt Erzsi hid in the narrow foreground behind the cupboard, from which a hermetically sealed iron door opened to the neighboring shelter. This door could only be opened from the inside.
The question was whether the residents would report the grandfather for performing an illusionist trick with Aunt Erzsi during the Arrow Cross checks. But Providence took care of them. Not a single one reported, even though the martial law was well known: „Death to anyone who hides a Jew, and his family will be exterminated!”
Since they couldn't use the gate of the ruined house, they opened the passage between the two shelters. For a few days, the residents of the bombed-out house used this passageway to get to the street.
For a few days, my mother and Aunt Erzsi hugged each other in fear whenever the doorbell rang or someone knocked on the gate.
Fortunately, Providence watched over them until the end of the siege. Angel wings protected our family and Aunt Erzsi Tarlos.

Then came the "liberation." At that time, Soviet soldiers replaced the Arrow Cross. Of course, they were looking for fascists and SS men in hiding. And anything worth stealing. Therefore, it was sensible to leave the apartment doors open, otherwise they would be broken down.
On one such occasion, two Russian soldiers grabbed some silk and woolen fabrics from my grandfather's stash. My grandfather had just come up from the basement when the soldiers were already coming down from the apartment. He immediately recognized his own fabrics and indignantly began to pull them out of one of the Russians' hands. The other soldier responded by loading his submachine gun.
My grandfather was nearly shot dead on the spot in the door of his haus for a few meters of fabric. Luckily, my grandmother arrived just then and pulled my grandfather back to reality. But my grandfather had really been waiting for the Soviet troops. In January 1945, he joined the Hungarian Communist Party. Then he, too, lost some of his illusions.

 

Aunt Erzsi's gold bracelet

Written by Haykováts 2018

I remembered a fantastic story, albeit one without angel wings, about Aunt Erzsi Tarlós, who was one of the few private business owners in the 1950s. She sold women's underwear on Régiposta Street. In theory, she made them herself, but we knew that she had them made by workers. As small as the shop was, it was very profitable. Aunt Erzsi made no secret of this from us. 
In February 1964, I was twelve years old. We had recently buried my grandfather.
There was a huge white lacquered cabinet in his the tailor's workshop. As I recall, it was at least two meters high and two meters wide. It had three narrow doors with nine drawers underneath, and a cut glass mirror in the middle door. The inside of the cabinet was mahogany-colored. The elegant three-door cabinet came from the Hatvany baron. The baron
sometimes they settled their debts with objects. Today, this would be called a "bartel" transaction. My grandfather sewed for the baroness and her daughter on several occasions and was good friends with Endre Nagy, who secretly married Alexandra Hatvany and became a famous hunter in Tanzania. 
After my grandfather's funeral, we moved the wardrobe away from the wall to the middle of the room, and my bed was placed behind it, covered by a curtain between the wall and the wardrobe. My bed was a wooden, eight-legged folding camp bed made for military officers. Instead of springs, the comfortable mattress was supported by straps, and I slept well on it. It wasn't too soft, but I wouldn't say it was hard either.
Finally, I could sleep in my own "room." The workshop was so big that you could even play ping-pong on the dining table in the middle of it.
One evening in late February, Aunt Erzsi Tarlós came to visit my parents with her partner.
She threw her thick fur coat on my bed because the coat rack in the hall was overflowing with the family's winter coats.
I drew on the table while the guests were there. Then Aunt Erzsi came, picked up her coat, kissed us goodbye, and left.

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang, and I went to open the door. Aunt Erzsi was standing at the entrance, holding my shoulders with both hands and looking me straight in the eye.
"Isti, have you seen my bracelet?" she asked sternly.
"Well... I haven't seen it," I stammered. "Of course I remember. Aunt Erzsi had a beautiful gold bracelet on her wrist last time, but I really haven't seen it today."
Meanwhile, my parents appeared and asked: what is the problem.
"Kids, I was wearing my gold bracelet, but now I can't find it." Tamás noticed it in the elevator," Aunt Erzsi explained.
"Couldn't you have pulled when it off with your coat?" my father asked.
"Yes, that must have happened," Aunt Erzsi sighed and looked toward the workshop door.
"Okay, let's look around," my mother said.
"I took it off on the bed behind the wardrobe because there was no room on the coat rack in the hall," said Aunt Erzsi in a slightly indignant tone, and she tiptoed into the workshop in her high-heeled shoes.
On the bed behind the wardrobe, a colorful linen cover covered the mattress with a decorative pillow. During the day, I kept the bedding in the wardrobe. Aunt Erzsi lifted the pillow, but the bracelet was not underneath it. Meanwhile, my father brought a flashlight and shone it under the bed. Erzsike also bent down, but the bracelet was not found. Then she put on the mask of the prosecutor from the well-known TV series and looked at me with piercing eyes, but I looked back innocently, because I was innocent.
"I didn't see her bracelet on her today.
They left convinced that the thick gold bracelet had been lost at our house, and they were right.
As the guests left, my parents began to question me, but I could say nothing else: "I didn't see Aunt Erzsi's bracelet today."
Grandma also came out and asked about what had happened. Her opinion was: "They'll find it at home. It's possible that it fell off her arm on the street."
My father thought that the bracelet couldn't have slipped off through her glove.
"Of course it could!" my mother said. "If the clasp was completely open, it could have fallen off on the street," she explained, as if speaking from her own experience. But my mother never had such a thick bracelet, not even in silver.
It felt good that neither of them suspected theft, even though Aunt Erzsi suggested it, but she didn't dare say it openly because she had no evidence. The only thing that could have irritated her was that I had been in the same room as her fur coat the whole time.

Time passed, and spring arrived. The bracelet incident was forgotten, at least on our part, because Aunt Erzsi might have been upset about it. Before the incident, she used to come to my mother's house once or twice a month to chat over a cup of coffee. After the incident, they only kept in touch by phone, and I heard that my mother had called her to come over for coffee, but Aunt Erzsi was too busy.

At the beginning of April, I caught a cold, got a fever, and went to bed. I installed a reading lamp behind the wardrobe and enjoyed my sick leave. I devoured books. I primarily loved the novels of Jenő Rejtő and Verne, but also the Wild West stories of Cooper and Carl May. During the excitement of reading, I was too lazy to go for a tissue, so I played nicely with the snot I had dug out of my nose, carefully reached between the mattress and the wall, and glued them to the wall. Once I reached deeper and knocked something off the protruding screw holding the foot of the bed, which made a loud thud on the floor.
It was the bracelet. A nice, thick gold bracelet. It weighed at least as much on the scale as a bar of Boci chocolate. Like the larger one, the 100-gram one.
So, calculated in retrospect, its value was no less than my father’s half-year salary. I turned it in my hand, the clasp was open, but a thinner chain connected the ends, and it got caught on the protruding screw, of which there were four on each side of the camp bed.
I admit, it crossed my mind that I wouldn’t tell my parents about it and would try to sell it.
Then I thought about it further and realized that it would be too risky. I would definitely have to initiate an adult, and what would I do with a small fortune in secret. Sooner or later the theft would be discovered, and I wouldn’t survive it. So, my cowardice and my upbringing dictated that I give the bracelet to my parents. They would make the right decision about it.
I must say, it was a big surprise. That it would get caught on one of the four screws of the bed… The probability of that was quite small. Well, for the first time, I felt my parents doubt my honesty. They must have thought I had hidden it somewhere, and it took me a while to come up with the story of how I found it.
I kept quiet about playing bricklayer with my snot.
I told my story as if my pencil has slipped off the bed and then I found the bracelet while searching. My parents accepted my explanation.
Grandma thought: “Let’s keep it! This is what the family deserves, since Matyi saved Erzsi from deportation or being shot into the Danube, and didn’t reward her with anything.”
Mom denied this, because she remembered that Aunt Erzsi did bring a beautiful silver bowl as a gift in the spring of 1945, but Grandpa didn’t accept it. Grandma just grumbled something about it, but we knew her memory was quite selective. Regardless, I could sense a little hesitation in my mother too.
Dad cleared his throat and made his decision.
"Call Erzsi and tell her the good news!" he told my mother firmly. And so it was. Of course, Aunt Erzsi had time to come to us quickly. She must have come running, because she also brought a box of cognac cherries within fifteen minutes.
She usually brought this for her grandfather, whose favorite sweet in his old age was “rum cherries”. Of course, it could also be that she bought this box for my grandfather, even before Christmas, because the dessert was quite dry.
I received the cherry bon-bon as a reward, as an honest finder.
"One percent of the value would be better" I thought to myself.  "I could buy a bicycle with that."I don’t think Aunt Erzsi ever believed the true story of how the bracelet was found. Four years later, after my mother’s death, the relationship ended.
I was already an adult, a family man, when I visited Aunt Erzsi in her apartment on Petőfi Sándor Street.
My son Matyi started playing the piano when he was ten years old, and at home he could only practice on a synthesizer. The piano teacher warned me that it would be much better to learn to play the keys on a real piano or an upright piano. Due to the lack of space, the upright piano was the only option.
I remembered that I had seen a piano at Aunt Erzsi's when I was a child, and my mother had played a Chopin etude on it when we visited.
I called him on the phone to tell him I wanted to visit her and to introduce her my son, Mathias. In fact, I wanted to buy it at a friendly price, or borrow her piano for a while.
She welcomed me kindly, but I could sense her distrust from the first minute. She knew that we were visiting her not just for her two beautiful eyes.
When I told her that Márta, my wife, became paralyzed a year after Matyi was born and uses a wheelchair, fear was already welling up in her wrinkles. “What can this Isti kid want from me?”
Meanwhile, Matyi wanted to get to know the piano, but Aunt Erzsi sternly said to him:
− Don't touch that, my little boy! Besides, it's been down of tune for years.
Looking back, I can only guess. When it comes to my son Mátyás, did Aunt Erzsi not even remember that dear Uncle Matyi, the master tailor, who hid him from the Arrow Cross in forty-four? It is possible that our visit reminded her of little Isti, who, according to her misconception, stole and hid her cherished treasure, her gold bracelet, for months.
Of course, these are just assumptions. I could not know what was went through her mind. One thing is certain, she rejected my offer of the piano. She justified it by saying that she had already promised it to someone. We forced a smile on ourselves and said goodbye to each other.
I regretted that distrust had poisoned her lonely old age so much. She had neither a dog nor a cat. In her will, she left everything to the Jewish community.
Aunt Erzsi could not have known that our son Matyi's maternal great-grandmother was also a Jewish woman.
Fanni Klugmann fled from Warsaw to Budapest in 1918 with her six-year-old daughter Zsuzsi and married the master carpenter Mózes Ilyés, whom she had more three children. The second was Jenő, the father of my wife, Márta Ilyés. Then the great-grandmother sold second-hand clothes on Klauzál Square for many years.