TE19 Iberian Adventure

Gabi Csutak

eating them very slowly, as if pondering deeply over each one. The veins on his forehead were again standing out in the shape of a catapult. I could see that he wanted to say something, but somehow couldn’t get started. Though I had stopped eating by this point, great quantities of spit were collecting in my mouth, as if a tap had been turned on somewhere which now couldn’t be turned off. I swallowed and took deep breaths, but it was no use. A moment later my mouth was full of spit again and I knew that if I didn’t swallow it in time, sooner or later I would have to throw up all those near-perfect mouthfuls. Áron still hadn’t said anything by the time I ran to the bathroom. Before I fell asleep, I calmed myself with the thought that, for a few days, things would be better: I wouldn’t have to listen to anyone arguing, or take myself off anywhere, we could watch the evening film every night, and then mum and dad would be there, bringing in all the chocolate and bubble gum they had got in exchange for the tablecloths and the glass fish. I had done all my homework by the time Áron got in from work. He threw all his clothes in the washing machine, then filled the bath and stayed in the bathroom washing himself until it was time for the power cut. This had been his routine for the last six months. He hadn’t got into the university, and to prevent him becoming a ’dangerous unproductive element’, he’d been assigned to the city’s pest control unit. There, they mixed a bright red poison with grain, which they scattered in the yards of factories and collective farms, and he worried that he was bringing 240