Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1979. január-június (33. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)

1979-02-08 / 6. szám

Thursday, Feb. 8. 1979.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO

9

scum pennies

Zsigmond Móricz:

The gods were right in ordaining that also the poor should be able to laugh.

Not onlv weeping and wailing can be heard in the hovels but many a good heartfelt laughter too. It may even be said that the poor often laugh when they would have every reason to cry.

I know that world well. That generation of the Soos’s to which mv father belonged has experienced the most dire need. In those days my father was a day laborer at a machine workshop. He does not boast of those times, nor does anybody else. They were true, though.

And it is also true that never, in mv future life, shall I laugh as much as I did in those few years of mv childhood.

How should I laugh indeed, when I no longer have a pink-cheeked, merrv mother who could laugh so sweetly that the tears ran from her eyes in the end and she was taken with a cough that nearly choked her.

And not even she ever laughed as hard as she had when we spent a whole afternoon searching for seven pennies, just the two of us. We looked for them and found them. Three in the drawer of the sewing machine, one in the wardrobe...the others were harder to find.

The first three pennies were found by mv mother herself. She hoped to find some more in the drawer of the sewing machine, because she used to sew for money and always put there what she earned. For me the drawer of the sewing machine was an inexhaustible treasure-trove into which one had to put one’s hand only and immediately there was everything you could desire.

I, therefore, was quite amazed when my mother searching in it, rummaging among needles, thimble, scissors, bits of ribbon, strings, buttons and all at once exclaimed with great astonishment:

— They have hidden!

— What?

— The little coins - said my mother with a laugh. She drew out the drawer.-Come my little boy, let us look for the wicked ones, nevertheless. Oh, the naughty, naughty little pennies.

She squatted on the floor and put down the drawer as if she were afraid of their flying away; she suddenly turned it upside down as one catches butterflies with a hat.

One could not help laughing.

— Here they are, they are inside - she giggled and was in no hurry to lift the drawer, -if there is only one of them left, it ought to be here.

I squatted on the floor watching whether no shining little coin would creep forth. Nothing was moving there. In fact, we did not really believe that there was something inside.

We looked at each other laugliing at the childish joke.

I touched the drawer turned upside down.

—Tut - my mother warned me, - be careful, for it may escape. You don’t know how nimble an animal a pennv is, it runs away very quickly, it almost rolls. And how it does roll...

We were rollicking with laughter. We did know from experience how easily a penny rolls away.

When we recovered I put out my hand again to tilt the drawer.-Oh!- exclaimed my mother again. I got such a fright that I drew my finger back as if I had touched a hot oven.

— Be careful, you little spendthrift! How eager he is to make it go! It belongs to us only as long as it is underneath. Let it remain there for a little while longer! You see, I want to do the washing, I need soap and soap costs seven pennies at least, it can’t be had for less. Three I already have. I need four more, those are here in this little house, here they live but they don’t like to be disturbed. If thev get angry, off they go never to come back. Be careful, money is very touchy, one has to deal with it delicately. With respect. It gets easily offended like voung ladies. Don’t you know some alluring rhyme? Perhaps we could entice it to leave its snail house.

Heaven only knows how much we laughed during this chatter. But the enticement was very comical indeed'.

“Uncle money do come forth,

On fire is that house of vours!...”

With this I upset the house. There were a hundred different kinds of rubbish under it, but money there was none.

Mv mother rummaged with a wrv face, but in vain.

— What a pity - she said - that we have no table. Could we have turned it over on top of a table we would have done it greater honor and we should have found something underneath.

I scraped together the rubbish and put it back into the drawer. In the meantime mv mother was pondering. She racked her brains whether she had not put money somewhere else once but she could not think of such an occurence.

However, I felt an idea stirring in me.

— Mother dear, I know of a place where there is a penny.

— Where, my bov? Let us look for it before it melts away like snow.

— In the glass cupboard, in the drawer.

— Oh, you wretched child, how lucky you did not mention it before! It would not be there bv now.

We got up and went to the glass cupboard which had lost its glass panes a long time before, but in its drawer we found the penny where I knew it would

(cont. on p. 10.)

László Cs. Kovács