“Juli, the strobe,” Bernadett said, sitting up.
There really was a strobe light in the corner, on a tripod. Juli turned it on. Bernadett lay back on the pool table and resumed her wallowing. Blanka trotted in circles under the strobe light, flickering in the empty dark disco, like a living silent movie. This was an amazing sight. And yet, I didn’t know where to put it. It just seemed to sit there, like a fur hat whose apparatchik had been airbrushed away.
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I felt in a panic to pay attention to everything, to figure out what the deal was, to retroactively earn the right to even be in Hungary—because after all I hadn’t applied to the program, Ivan had just talked to Peter, and probably I had climbed over the heads of countless more deserving English teachers. I knew there had to be something important left to do or learn, if only I could figure out how not to squander my time and opportunities.
I sat up late at Bernadett’s desk, under a poster for a German band called Mr. President, making a list of the potential uses of my time and opportunities.
Learning Hungarian. (How? Studying in this room, talking to Juli, trying to befriend the Gypsies?)
Having universal and meaningful human experiences (in English).
Understanding regional history (“Ottomans,” “communism,” “Habsburgs”).
Changing children’s lives? Some of them (ádám, maybe Csilla) do seem like they want their lives changed.
I stared at the list for a long time. The longer I stared, the less sense it made.
On the way to the bathroom, I glanced involuntarily through the open door of the spare room—why was it so hard not to glance through an open door, even when you didn’t want to see inside?—and saw Juli’s father sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Olympic weightlifting. The lifters’ bodies looked almost green. They trembled, bulged, and strained, like they were going to explode.
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In my last week at the school, I helped the children put on a play. I wasn’t allowed to choose the play. It was like Epictetus said about life: “Remember that you are an actor in a play, the nature of which is up to the director to decide.” The play Tünde chose was called Chicken Licken. The action was identical to that of the story I knew as “Chicken Little.” In the past, I had only ever seen the phrase “chicken licken” used to designate the chicken fingers plate at Friendly’s. As a name for a dramatic protagonist, it seemed sinister, grotesque. I proposed that we change it to “Chicken Little.” Tünde said no. “If it’s Turkey Lurkey, it’s also Chicken Licken,” she said grimly.
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Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky, and Goosey Loosey were played by the three biggest boys in the class. Wearing cardboard masks with beaks, hunching their shoulders to resemble wings, they hulked around in single file, like a row of totem poles.
“Ah, here he comes now,” said the Narrator. “The stupidest chicken in all the world.”
The dialogue in the play wasn’t very challenging, so I told the advanced students to write soliloquies where they said what they were thinking.
Turkey Lurkey talked about what it was going to be like when the sky fell. “There won’t be any more space,” he said. “The sky will lie on the earth, like a book on a table. I don’t know who or what is a king, but we must find one.”
Bernadett was Foxy Loxy. “I’m hungry all the time,” she said. “I’ve never been full—not once. Eating is more important than having friends.” She said she hated cowardice and stupidity. She could never feel sorry for anyone who wasn’t clever, brave, and strong.
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On the last Saturday of the program, all the English classes gathered at the auditorium in Feldebr?, and each one performed a play. Daniel’s students staged a Wild West adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, with gunfights and cowboy hats. The script, props, and costumes were more sophisticated than ours, and I worried that my students would feel bad. But when I saw the boys troop onto the stage in their bird costumes, with their hooliganlike energy and weird asides, I understood that everything was okay, and I was filled with affection and pride.
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On my last night in the village, there was a party at the school. The English students came, and their parents, and the other teachers. Rózsa had said she wouldn’t come, but she did, wearing little bows in her hair. She gave me two doilies she had embroidered herself, with scalloped edges, purple roses, and purple script; one read TO DEAR SELIN, the other FROM UNFORGETTABLE ROSE. Juli gave me a potted cactus plant with googly eyes, and the school principal presented me with a leather hair clip and a decorative miniature shoe.
Vilmos, the cook, was there in his white hat. He had made a marvelous soup, tiny meatballs, apple pastries, and punch. Later he followed me to the bathroom and lurched toward me and put his hand on my waist, and I saw he was really drunk. I didn’t feel scared. “You’re a very good cook,” I said, patting his shoulder, and detached myself. He didn’t follow me—he wandered back down the hall.
The sun was setting and turned the school’s pink fa?ade a blazing molten liquid color. At the same time, rainclouds were gathering over part of the sky. The sunflowers glowed in the golden light, standing out with superfine clarity against the blackening clouds. Someone had built a bonfire. Margit gave me a match. Everyone held hands around the fire and sang a song about beautiful blue eyes. At the one line about black eyes, Margit, who had black eyes like me, took my hand and sang with extra energy.
When it got dark, ádám brought out a boom box and there was dancing. Vilmos turned up again, no longer wearing his white hat. When the music changed to a slow song and all the boyfriends and girlfriends paired off, Goosey Loosey asked me to dance. He put his hands on my waist and I put my hands on his shoulders. I had never really looked at him before, because he was so quiet and not that good at English, but I saw now that he was taller than me, with hazel eyes. He said a few things in English. They were all things I had taught him how to say.
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