A silent, grey-bearded old man in a densely woven dark cloak sat up at the front on the driver’s box, holding the reins. He was frowning as he scanned the forest for the slightest movement: the ominous whispering of the leaves; the chill sigh of the hills; the ring of the pebbles as they rolled down the steep rocks.– For Halloween, an excerpt from the storybook Helka.
30 October 2019
An excerpt from Péter Gerőcs's novel Orphan Photos (Árvaképek, Kalligram, 2018), in Anna Bentley's translation.
3 November 2020
The boys’ parents and grandparents spent all the afternoon cleaning, and, as this time it was being done in a spirit of good-humour, the children were happy to get involved too. Andriska helped his mother with the washing-up and Tamáska cleaned the bathroom, huge rubber gloves engulfing his little hands and Grandmother providing him with precise instructions how to use the various cleaning agents. Tamás found the work soothing: the slow transformation of the light-blue tiles, the restoration of their former sheen, which he and only he could claim as his own doing. When his arm got tired, as it did from time to time, he would give it a shake. After he had had to do this several times, he went out into the garden and swung his arms in circles. He was only vaguely conscious that he hadn’t thought about the twins at all, or maybe only once or twice, looking for them out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t seen them, and at that moment, he was reassured by that. He had bumped into Dad on the veranda, who was just taking a break for a cigarette from his seemingly endless dusting, vacuuming and mopping of the first floor.
There was once a girl who didn’t speak. She wasn’t so little anymore; she would soon come up to her mother’s shoulders, but she never breathed a word, not of human language anyway. She was clever enough; anyone who had seen the glint in her eyes knew that. And no one could think her dumb, because she made the most wonderful woodland noises. And she clearly wasn’t deaf, as she could mimic the rush of the wind over the field, and the humming of the grasses. And yet, she didn’t speak. She just sat all day on the ledge that ran round the family’s mud-brick stove, smiling. When she was asked to do something, she would do it quickly and neatly, but when she was asked a question, she said not a word in reply.