an exile from my native soil

Peddling home in the sunset along the western edge of the village where the houses give way to fields, it surprised Mari that it only now occurred to her that with a slight twist it's easy to turn Butcher Street (Mészáros) into Deep-Shitty Street (Mély-szaros).

Deep. Yes, like the mud she had to dance through and around on her way to school as a little girl before they finally came in '76 with the asphalt.

Deep. Yes, like the ditch on the north side of the street that they'll fill once the central sewer is built, but that for now rots each summer with stagnated God-knows-what because the money from the European Union is still a long way off and once it comes who knows what we'll see of it anyway because the mayor and his cronies will figure out a way to siphon it off anyway.

Deep. Yes, like the potholes that appear every Spring, especially in front of Matyi's house where he's always driving in and out with his big American tractor and his new combine onto a road that just wasn't made for that kind of weight. And he even has one with air conditioning and fancy lights and a hi-fi that he blasts so loud that you know he's only doing it to make everyone look at him as he comes down the street destroying public property -- and public peace for that matter.

"Never trust a kulak!" That's what her mother had always said. And that's all he was. A rotten modern kulak. He even had the cheek to drive out to the Makó Road last year in a convoy with the other kulaks with a sign on his tractor saying "I belong to the bank." And meanwhile he's got the nerve to pay her boy next to nothing for working all day in the fields in the heat and sun and even firing him just for taking a few sacks of onions that Matyi would have anyway left out in his courtyard under a thick green sheet of plastic held down with bricks from the new house he's building (been building for three years now) and stinking up the whole street while he waited for the price to go up. You belong to hell, Matyi. Like this whole damn place.

Deep. Yes. And Shitty. So obvious.