“What’s it called in Hungarian?” She seemed reluctant to tell me at first but I kept asking, and eventually she met my eye and said, slowly and loudly, “MAMMUT.”
The mammut lived in a long yellow mansion formerly inhabited by Hungarian nobles. All the lights were off. Elderly women in historical black skirts and white aprons were folding sheets by a dusty window. When we came in, two women put down their sheet and walked us through the museum, one leading the way with an electric lantern and switching on the lights, the other trailing behind and switching them back off again. Every now and then, one or the other of them would urge us to buy one of the Latin-titled monographs that they carried in their apron pockets. Reni declined, first politely, then in an angry outburst that surprised me, though it didn’t seem to offend the women.
We didn’t linger over the geological, petrological, and minerological history of the Gy?ngy?s region—they evidently annoyed Reni in some way, and she walked through in a hurry. But as soon as we got to the ferns, her face lit up, and by the insect room she was in a trance. “I love nature!” she sighed, looking at an ancient dung beetle. She knew all the insects’ Latin names, and asked me the names in English. The only one I knew was “ladybug.”
We came to the vertebrates. “Oh, it’s lovely!” Reni breathed, when we came to the hedgehog. The hedgehog was indeed nice, though it was no less dead or killed than any of the animals in Margit’s house.
Standing in the shadowy doorway of an unlit room, the woman raised her electric lantern, and we made out the gleam of huge pale arching bones. Then she switched on the light and there was the mammoth, standing before a green velvet curtain on an elevated platform with no railing, so you could walk right under the curved human-sized tusks. Unencumbered by flesh or fur, each rib looked so elegant—high, vaulted, marble-white, like the most graceful bridge. O Mahmut Bey, you must know that I am always still expecting you, even now, after so many years.
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On the way back to the village, we got off the bus too early, finding ourselves at an intersection with a restaurant, a gas station, and a sign that read KáL, 6 KM. I suggested that we walk, but Reni said that six kilometers was very far and that I would be tired.
“I’ve an idea,” she said. “My boyfriend’s telephone.”
“Your boyfriend’s telephone?”
“That is only one kilometer. Come.”
We left the highway, walking down a narrow paved road that turned into a dirt road. After about half an hour, we arrived at an orange and brown house with a BITING DOG sign. Reni knocked at the gate. An ugly fist-faced black dog leaped out of a shed, bolted across the yard, and threw itself slavering at the fence.
“Oh, Milord!” Reni thrust her hands through the gate and seized the dog’s head in such a way that it became incapable—though not, I thought, undesirous—of sinking its teeth in her person. Its hindquarters thrashed in the air. “Milord is a very nice dog,” Reni said. Slobber dripped down her wrist.
A woman came out with a plastic basket full of laundry, noticed Reni, frowned, and went back inside.
“That is my boyfriend’s mother,” Reni said. “She does not love me.”
I nodded.
“But she is helpless,” Reni continued. “Her son loves me. Now she will call him.”
“Wouldn’t your boyfriend’s mother let us use the telephone?” I asked, some minutes later.
“Oh, no!” said Reni. “She thinks I am . . . a very bad girl. I don’t know in English.” She was still holding the dog’s head, which emitted a low growling sound. I offered to knock on the door and ask if I could use the telephone, but Reni said the mother was very suspecting and would think I was also bad.
After we had been standing outside the house for some ten minutes, Reni’s mood underwent a transformation, even though our external circumstances hadn’t changed in any way I could see.
“My boyfriend knows we are here,” she said, squinting at the upstairs windows. She released the dog, sending it into a conniption, and aimed a handful of gravel at the windows. One pebble hit Milord. He reacted in a manner consonant with his personality. Reni reached over the gate and began to open the latch from the inside, then glanced at the foam flying out of Milord’s mouth. “Laci! Laci!” she shouted, turning to me. “You call, too.”
“Laci,” I called.
“We must make a more sound,” she said. “Together. One, two, three.”
“LACI!” we bellowed. “LACI!”
The boy who came out onto the porch looked older than sixteen, with olive skin, full lips, and gelled hair. His low-cut white undershirt revealed a golden cross in a nest of chest hair. Reni explained about the bus and the telephone. Laci leaned on the porch rail, making no move to come to the gate. Laci’s mother came back out. She and Reni yelled at each other. Then Laci said something, and the mother went inside. Reni and Laci exchanged some remarks. Laci didn’t change his relaxed posture or lazy tone of voice.
“He says that we may not use the phone.” Reni’s voice was trembling.
“Is there a pay phone near here?” I asked. “I have a phone card.” I had bought one at the grocery store with Margit but hadn’t used it yet.
“Oh—a phone card!” Reni exclaimed, and called something to Laci. Laci sighed and disappeared into the house, then ambled over and handed Reni a telephone card over the fence.
“We don’t use your card,” Reni told me, “because you are the guest!”
We walked five minutes up the road to a pay phone, and Reni dialed Margit’s number, to ask her to come get us.
“It was Margit’s husband,” she said, after she had hung up. “It’s not comfortable. We have very much arguments, because I hate hunters.” She sighed. “Well, I go now. You wait here.”
I asked where she was going. She said she had to give Laci back his phone card because it actually belonged to his mother. She started walking back up the long straight road to the house. When she was about a hundred yards away, I noticed a figure approaching from the distance. As the figure came closer I saw it was Laci, running. Reni stopped. He jogged the rest of the way to meet her. On the other side of the road, a grassy slope descended to what I could now recognize as a tobacco field. Reni rejoined me at the telephone box, beaming. Laci was lovely again.
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Gyula didn’t seem mad about having to get us, or troubled by Reni’s views on his way of life. In the car he asked her lots of questions, roaring with laughter at her responses.
“We all like Reni very much,” Margit told me when we got home.
“I really like her, too,” I said.
“But none of us likes her boyfriend. He is not clever or serious or kind. Unfortunately, he is very handsome. Did you meet him?”
“I saw him.”
“And you found him handsome?” As I was thinking about how to answer, Margit burst into laughter. “You did not find him handsome!” she cried, clapping her hands.
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