TE23 Double Feature

The Hangman’s House

Andrea Tompa

leg warmers, from Budapest), or perhaps it was 8.05 by the time she appeared in something unexceptionable, but then she couldn’t go in, and then, like someone that had done all in her power, she would turn round and make for the tea shop in the main square, which opened at half past eight, and sit by the big, brown tiled stove with two cups of sweet elderflower tea—Lulu, 2 the town’s favourite lunatic, also warmed himself there for a little while, didn’t ask for anything but got a cup of tea with five spoonfuls of sugar, said ‘thank you’ in a hoarse voice, drank it quickly and went off about his business—and then she would go home by a circuitous route via the deserted marketplace: sauerkraut, fresh cabbage, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, carrots, tiny, wrinkled apples, eggs at an extortionate price and carnations in bud that never opened were on offer that day, and home she went to dohány utca, where she never needed a key as there was always someone in, Grandmother, for example; but this time she hadn’t even left 2 See below in the chapter The King’s Fool . 344

her red record-book at home but showed it up at once because she always had it on her and at home never took it out of the bag that had been made for it from Grandfather’s torn linen towel, Yes, That’s just the bag I wanted, Granny (because for some peculiar reason a fitting cover didn’t exist, such things were only made for elementary-school pupils, Șoimii patriei 3 and soldiers), and she forged her mother’s signature wonderfully: the winter term had scarcely started and already lined up were Principles of Constitutional Law 4, Latin 10, Hungarian 9 for Jókai—the new Hungarian teacher was grey and boring, the previous one had been dismissed after a year, that is, transferred to the country because she’d applied to move to Hungary 4 —History 2, and a slap for smoking in the lavatory from the same history teacher, Ghit ǎ (Gica, from Gheorghe), her ear had still been ringing that afternoon from Gheorghe Silaghi’s big hand, but she’d managed to conceal the pack 3 ‘Facolns of the Fatherland’, a communist youth organization estab lished in 1976 for children between the ages of four to seven. 4 The standard penalty for such disloaylty to Romania. 345