ferryman

"Sarge! This one's a real troublemaker! Lazier than a pig! Let me take him down and finish him off. No one'll miss him. We'll say he croaked on his own... that we buried him in the dyke. C'mon Sarge! He's holding us up!"

The sergeant was glad to be able to have one less Jew to worry about. So long as they could finish the job.

The guard took the Jew down to the bank and told him to swim. Swim like a frog, dammit! Just swim! His shots splashed into the water as the Jew swam. About 20 rounds should do it.

..................................

Misi was the kind of guy who liked sitting in the shade of a willow on the banks of the Maros with a makeshift fishing rod in one hand and a jug of wine in the other. His little sister Julia had always laughed at the idea of Misi as a soldier. "Too bad our János wasn't a bit older. He'd show the Russians a thing or two" she used to say.

Misi's instinct was to throw himself under a tree and snooze, but he knew it was not an option. You can be shot for sleeping on guard duty, even if all you're doing is watching over a bunch of scraggly little Jews doing the first manual labor of their lives. Whiny bunch, but harmless. Always cleaning their glasses with their greasy shirts. Why do Jews always wear glasses, anyway? Whatever. Better a bunch of skinny Jews with shovels than a battalion of Cossacks with machine guns.

The dike they were repairing along the Raba was coming along nicely. The spring air was pleasant; the sun strong. Misi liked this part of the country. Hills in the distance. Actual hills! To Misi, who had seen nothing but the flat expanse of the Great Plain, they may as well have been the Alps. Maybe they were.

The new group of Jews threw themselves down for a short break. A voice addressed him from one of the twenty-odd sunburned bespectacled, big-nosed faces.

"Misi!? Misi Kardos!? Is that you?" the voice was hushed but enthused. "I am Gluck! The brick factory... you know... on the road to Mezohegyes. You carried bricks for me. Yes! Yes! Misi!"

Out here they all look the same, but hey! I'll be damned! Old Mr Gluck! Always gave me a nice tip when I made the delivery without damaging any bricks.

But Misi had enough sense to hide his enthusiasm. The sergeant was a real bastard. With a glance over his shoulder, Misi turned cautiously to old Mr Gluck.

"Misi! Misi! I give thanks to God for you, Misi!"

..................................

Years later, a letter arrived from Tel Aviv, written in slightly ungrammatical Hungarian. Not that Misi noticed.

Dear Mr. Mihaly Kardos,

Through my agents in Hungary I have arranged an account at the Southern Plains Savings Cooperative, account number 5541-2211-KARMIH-001. All funds found therein are at your disposal. I am sorry that it has taken me so many years to arrange this for you.

I thank you again for my life.

Peace be with You,
Henrik Gluck

an angel came and rolled away the stone

When the local priest finally passed away in 1962, Rozi, a believer, naturally turned out to pay her respects to the man who had shepherded the community through war, collectivization, and more. All in attendance were impressed with the stunning rose-speckled black marble headstone.

"A beautiful stone for a beautiful man" one of the old ladies commented. Only Rozi recognized it. She had remembered her father cleaning pigeon-shit from the same stone back in the days when it was carved not with the name of the priest, but instead with Hebrew letters and the name Ábrahám Lichner. It had disappeared in the weeks after the deportation. And here it was again. A kind of resurrection.

incubate back-end markets

Kovi drifts down the street, asking all he meets "Don't you know me from somewhere?" But no one hears. And he's back in his cell, blending into the wall, wondering if he's really there.

And time goes by like the man passing lonely on the city street -- no one blinks an eye. Movement is inevitable. Irrelevant.

Stopping at a mirror, he has no reflection. He rushes to a meeting. No one expects him. People stare at his hands. They know, but none can speak. Nothing is shocking. He fades into the floor.

Look at me.

Right Action

Though Kakas was the tractor repairman at the co-op, Mari never could have imagined that he had such a big tool.

If the gate's open, go in. That's a basic rule of village life. It was then. It is now. So Mari naturally strolled right in to the Kakas home as she made her rounds checking infants and newborns.

And there it was... Well... there they were: young Kakas, with all his muscles showing (and more), making love to his wife (baby asleep) with a tenderness and intensity that left Mari transfixed.

At the co-op Kakas was known for being slow but thorough, and Mari now saw that his reputation was deserved. Mari watched for what seemed like a very long time, sneaking out only after the climax, exhilarated, guilty, and undetected.

The next day, she returned. After all, she had to check on the little eight-week old, a handsome little boy who was already the subject of gossip. And again there they were. Again Mari watched. Only on the fourth day did she finally manage to check the baby, whose beauty she now understood.

To this day she can not pass the Kakas house without wanting to check the gate. And she thanks her lucky stars for late-night German TV.

shepherd the weak through the valley of darkness (cricetus cricetus)

Kovi now knew that a helluva lot of blood pours out damn fast when you slit a man's throat. So looking back to last winter, he wondered what biological miracle had allowed him to make such a big pile of carcasses without spilling more than a few drops.

His mate Béla knew all about blood. He had gone to England where the Hungarians have a good reputation in the slaughterhouses. But Kovi didn't want to swab blood and guts all night and then sleep all day with a bunch of rotten guys in some London slum (four to a room if you're lucky). It had even been enough for Bela. So he came home and talked his old friend Kovi into the first straight job he'd had maybe ever: trapping hamsters. Müller, a German trader, paid pretty good money. He came around once a week during the month long season after hibernation but before the little rats shed their thick winter coats.

But the damn fleas bite your arms and the whole thing gets old mighty fast. OK, sure... there's no blood. But snapping skulls with a pair of pliars, picking corn kernels from the mouth pouch, yanking off the little pelt and stretching on a homemade coathanger rack to dry.... and of course tossing the leftover fetus-thing of meat-and-bones onto the pile... (so many that the cats stops paying attention pretty quickly)... No thanks. Gets old fast, no matter how much pálinka you have.

So when he got a call from some of his old connections he was more than happy to get back to his old business where money came easy. In the glory days it had been fuel and cigarettes from Romania, but this time he had a chance to move something much more profitable.

"The future is in People," his man had told him.

And like the damned idiot he is, he believed it.

a willful decision

"She was the daughter of the veterinarian. He killed his whole family." (Tired after her visit to the prison, Mari was patient as she listened to her mother repeat the story of the Jewish girl with beautiful hair.)

"He had that sort of thing... since he was a vet. Horse tranquilizer, they say. He heard about the orders. For the ghetto. In Makó. He knew the gendarmes would be coming. They had these big feathered hats." She drew out the word "big" as she traced the feather in her make-believe hat. "Even we were afraid of them. And naturally he was afraid... naturally! I mean, she was so beautiful. Who knows what --" (Mari knew why her mother paused.)

"Such lovely hair. Such a sweet girl. So kind. So beautiful." (Mari wondered what kindness the girl might have done to have made such an impression. Or was beauty alone enough?)

"And he was a good man, too." (Mari's mind wandered further. What would it take for her to kill her own family out of mercy?)

"Why them? They were good people." Her mother turned indignant, now talking to no one. "I mean, why didn't they take the gypsies?" (Mari, meanwhile, developed her answer. Not such a difficult question. Not so difficult at all. Not at all.)