Hungarian Heritage Review, 1988 (17. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1988-01-01 / 1. szám
®ljc ^literature of ^luugarg fight.. .and within two hours we’ll have them back under ground as though they’d never crawled forth. He who’s afraid, let him hide behind his mother’s skirt. He who’s a man, let him follow me! I have said what I have said!” The good pastor spoke in quiet acquiescence: “Let God’s will be done!” The commander of the constabulary calmly considered: “This is all nice, very nice, and the Judge is right. Naturally, we could finish them off in less than an hour, but that hour has to have a beginning and this is where we run into a snag. No one dares to begin because that dam’ smiling freezes the willingness of the hand.” The village notary permitted his diplomacy to succumb completely to Mars: “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Wars can be started only with moral influences and impacts. First, we must order all the taverns to tap their barrels and entice everybody to drink to his belly’s content. Then we must high-pressure the village to believe that our foes were resurrected by those whose only aim was to deprive everybody of everything. Next we will spirit two or three children away to a neighboring village and spread the rumor they were eaten alive by the resurrected who thrive only on cannibalism. We must have them believe that cannibalism will bring about our extinction. If we begin immediately, I’ll wager we’ll be able to begin the offensive by midnight.” The council enthusiastically adopted the village notary’s brainwork. They immediately telephoned Budapest and ordered a coachload of popular and irredentist poets, who arrived on the midday train under the leadership of E.P. Taks, pen-named Gejza Scrivener, and famed for inflaming patriotic hearts. By midafternoon wild and bloody rhymed songs were ringing through the village. Wine flowed freely. Poets and leaders were casting coals into burning human furnaces. Paid women inflamed aching hearts with bloody screams accusing the resurrected of mercilessly devouring live children. One hundred twenty wine-drenched poet voices lustily echoed E.P. Taks’ call-to-arms and inflamed the villagers’ souls: JANUARY 1988 Brother, hone your teeth to true To bite their throats in two. No Magyar is he who rises... For his act treason comprises. Tear off their ears! Gouge out their eyes! And while the earth drinks in their blood Tramp them back into the earth, but good! If they rise, slay them dead. . . Your mother, brother and your dad! Let no signs of them remain, This is the Magyar god’s refrain. Let every fang be bloody, Without it a Magyar is nobody! By nightfall the villagers, constables and soldiers, yelling, brandishing arms and firing off guns marched up to the church knoll. The flames of the watchfires added to the redness of blood-flushed faces and to the redness of screaming, winestained lips. Across the way, from the broad dimness of the night, glimmered the calm smiles of the resurrected. The Judge, whom the civilians had named their commander-in-chief, yelled into the gray darkness: “I, András Kömény, Makucska’s only official supreme Judge and commander-inchief of this noble home defense army, do now inform you that we give you one-quarter hour to return peacefully to your proper and rightful graves. If you do not acquiesce and comply with this order, we will use our full legal military might to destroy you for being traitors and communists. Long live The Homeland! Long Live Law and Order! Long live the rightful and living possessors of Makucska!” The wild screams of the drunken villagers ascended like a red rocket and cast inflamed hearts toward the silent stars. The resurrected just stood, listened and smiled. Thirteen minutes passed. Soldiers, constables and villagers shouldered and aimed their weapons. The machinegunners took their places by their mechanical agents of death. The grenade hurlers lifted their invitations to eternal farewells. A deathly calm burdened the night. Everyone realized that he was about to kill and henceforth would be an irredeemably different individual from heretofore. In this heart-breaking silence —continued next page 27 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW '
