Fraternity-Testvériség, 1956 (34. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1956-04-01 / 4-5. szám
38 FRATERNITY SEVEN PENNIES By Zsigmond Móricz Translated by Mrs. Paul Harkai Schiller Copyright, 1955, by Mrs. Paul Harkai Schiller Wisely have the gods ordained that the poor man, too, shall laugh. Weeping and wailing are not the only sounds to come from his cottage; there’s plenty of heartfelt laughter, too. Why, it is even true that the poor man often laughs when he really has more reason to cry. Well do I know this world. The generation of Sods’ to which my father belonged has experienced the worst of misery. In those days my father was a day laborer in a machine shop. He does not boast of this time, nor does anyone else. Yet so it was. And it is true also that never again, in all my born days, shall I laugh so much or so heartily as I did in those few years of my childhood. How, indeed, could I laugh, now that my mother is gone — my merry, apple-cheeked mother; she, who could bubble with laughter till, in the end, the tears rolled from her eyes and she coughed and choked, and gasped for breath. And even she had never laughed as she did the afternoon we spent, the two of us, hunting seven pennies. Hunting them and finding them, too! Three in the sewing machine drawer, one in the cupboard . . . The rest were harder to come by. The first three pennies my mother found by herself. She thought she would find even more in the sewing machine drawer, for she used to sew for money, and whatever she was paid, she always put in there. To me, this drawer was an inexhaustible gold mine. All I had to do was to reach in — it worked like the magic charm in the old fairy tale, where, in answer to the spell, “Little table, spread yourself”, a table appears, laden with food. I was utterly astonished, therefore, when my mother ransacked it, rummaged through needles, thimbles, scissors, odds and ends of ribbon, braid, buttons, everything, and suddenly said in wide-eyed wonder: “They’ve hidden themselves.” “What have?” “The little pennies”, said my mother, tinkling with mirth. She puled out the drawer. “Come, little son, let’s find the scoundrels — mischievous, naughty little pennies.” She sat down on her heels, lowering the drawer to the floor gingerly, as is she were afraid the pennies might fly out; then she turned it over, in one motion, like one catching butterflies with a hat. One couldn’t help laughing at that. “They’re here; they’re inside it”, she giggled, in no hurry to lift it up. “If there is even one, it must be here.”
