ATTILA LŐRINCZY
ATTILA LŐRINCZY
FURY ISLAND
(three lives)
In memory of the wonderful friend and English translator Anna Lengyel
CHARACTERS
Erika, librarian – 54
Stuci, her daughter, a secondary school student, Zsomer’s sweetheart – 16
Zsomer, Stuci’s boyfriend, a university student – 19
The characters are a product of fiction. All resemblance to actual people or actual events is purely coincidental...
SET in Hungary, in 2019.
AFTERLIFE
ZSOMER
Where Stuci and I first met is a little hard to define, you know, since the internet cannot be described by longitude and latitude, so in that sense we might as well say we met in the clouds, which, on top of being a nice romantic image, has the advantage of being true.
STUCI
When I was little I loved both my mum and dad as far as I can remember. Later though, I know I grew to love my dad more. It happened about the time I was eight or nine when their marriage went south and they were fighting all the time. I think my mum was a little sick by then, psychologically I mean: she never felt like going out. All she did was sit at home, even on the weekends, wrapped in a blanket, for she was always freezing. She was reading those French romance novels all the time, puffing away, though she was still doing the chores around the house, like cooking and stuff, but even in the kitchen she’d be reading while she waited for the onions to brown. She was a great cook and when we praised her food it made her real happy, which – in turn – made us happy. But she never joined us when we went out. Dad and I would go on bicycle trips, to the beach, to the movies and to the pastry shop. He used to ask my mum to come with us, but seeing how she never did, he stopped after a while.
ZSOMER
Where Stuci and I first met? On a dating site on the internet. As far as I’m concerned it was a love interest at first sight, as they say, ’coz the moment I saw Stuci’s profile I knew she was the one. So I wrote her right away. She ignored my first three messages to be honest and she kept me at arm’s length for a while afterwards, but then the relationship deepened, though for months it remained virtual. We chatted and talked mostly about ourselves, like everybody I guess, which is how we discovered all the common traits in our characters.
STUCI
I loved my dad and he loved me. My mum used to make fun of us, saying „look at those lovebirds”: she was jealous. She was sort of joking at first, but then she got real serious about it, saying she was no longer needed in the house and what we did was disgusting, ’coz I used to wake up early and I always snuck into my dad’s bed and lay down next to him, ’coz by then they had separate rooms. We cuddled up and slept. My mum was always trying to take a peek and she’d barge in without knocking threatening to report my dad, but once she realised there was nothing going on she just got angrier and started to shout demanding to know how come I never snuck into her bed. I am sixteen now, so I am old enough to know there was none of that molesting stuff they talk about so much going on... For a long time I didn’t want to answer my mum, but she kept pushing until I told her I didn’t want to sneak into her bed because she didn’t smell very good, in fact, she stunk. On account of the booze and the smoking. She’d been a chain-smoker ever since we met and by then she’d started drinking. Shit, man. My dad must have had a real hard time with her. At one point they wanted to get a divorce, but in the end they didn’t. They both said they wanted to spare me the shock of being raised by a single parent. This was the one thing they agreed on. And then suddenly my dad died.
ZSOMER
My mother had not yet turned eighteen when she had me. You can still describe her as young, she is thirty-eight now and beautiful, spectacularly so in fact, a true celebrity type, a real show-stopper. That’s something she likes to emphasise and it is still true, though these days all the stains of the bitterness and the suffering she had to go through are starting to show and that’s really freaking her out... I never knew my father, but according to my mum he was the scum of the earth, who led her on for a long time and then dumped her once it was too late to abort me, which is why she had no choice but to have me. I’d still have liked to find out who he was, but all she’d tell me was she hoped he was long dead and six feet under. I think it follows from her character that she needs constant reassurance – and as the past few years have shown, mostly from men – now that it’s clear she won’t have a career as a film star and will be stuck as a waitress... That’s her tragedy and that’s why I feel sorry for her...
STUCI
On November 12th it’ll be three years since my dad died... He went out with his mates to play soccer. It was a company game. He was good at it, he used to go every week. When he was young he used to play in the second tier on a national level: he was a playmaking midfielder and was really going for it, even later in life. He taught me to love soccer and I still know a lot about the game, boys are always surprised... That night he came home, sank in the chair and said laughingly as always: „That’s it. I’m done for.” And those ended up being his last words... He wasn’t even fifty. A moment ago he was there and now he was gone... Heart attack... At the beginning I’d go to the cemetery every day without telling my mum, so on the few occasions we went together she was always surprised where the fresh flowers had come from and she said surely from his lover, but I told her she had no lover and she asked me „How do you know?” and I said I just did …
ZSOMER
When I was a little boy I was practically in love with my mother. I was one of her groupies so to say, but then I had to realise I was rather a burden to her and that caused us both a lot of pain, ’coz after a while she started saying her life was wrecked because of me, which wasn’t very nice, but however much I said I was sorry but it wasn’t my fault, I wasn’t the one who asked to be born, she said these were still the facts …
STUCI
After my my dad died I had to go see a shrink on a regular basis, but I really hated it. I begged my mum not to make me and after a while she gave in, though truth be told, soon after that I tried to kill myself. I wanted to die so bad that I took a bunch of tranquillisers. They told me at the hospital that if they had found me an hour later that would have been it for me. But just when I had swallowed the pills that night my girlfriend called and I had left my cell phone in the living room, so my mum brought it upstairs and found me. From then on, she always made sure to say she’d saved my life.
ZSOMER
My mother used to hurt me a lot, but mostly because of the men in her life. For the men came and went and my mother was constantly in love. She used to say she was a fool for love, and I think it really went beyond what’s normal, if we even want to contemplate the concept of normality here. It’s easy to meet men in a pub of course, working eight hours from six to midnight five times a week, but I’m not sure that the men a woman – my mother in this case – meets there in the depths of night would necessarily be an ideal partner, which is why these stories always ended in some drama and after a week or two of crying we were back to square one... I saw through this at a pretty young age, but there was nothing I could do about it. At night I’d wake up to some crazy stuff, but I soon learned it was best to bury my head in the pillow. I was playing entire soccer games in my head to stop me from listening to them...
STUCI
My mother was pretty shocked by my suicide. She didn’t even scold me for it, she just kept hugging me and crying and saying how much she loved me and that we now only had each other and that we had to start a new life. And she put down the booze, went on a diet and started exercising, for she was pretty out of shape by then. She did those TV-exercises on the carpet, groaning all the time and stopping after two minutes for being out of breath. She couldn’t put down her smokes, but she said she wanted to be a hot babe one more time. I felt she did it all to start dating again, which really hurt on account of my dad, plus I found it all pretty pathetic, but I never told her that. Only one time I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at her, ’coz she was really ridiculous and she threw the remote at me hitting me here under my left eye, it even bled a little, but then she kissed me all over saying how sorry she was and the next day she bought the coolest smartphone to make up for it.
ERIKA
Look, my darling only daughter, AKA the apple of my eye, I tell her as I put her favourite dish, spaghetti carbonara in front of her: A human being, a woman above all, must not look like an animal or some filthy, stinking bum just pulled out of the sewer, so everyone can tell she’s a slut and treat her accordingly... Is that what you want? I’m looking at your face, this angry, bitter lemon of a mug with the clamped jaws and this sliver of a mouth, this hateful look and I have no idea what’s behind it, since you never talk. But I’m gonna take a wild guess here, okay? In truth, my darling only daughter, you guys think we are just a bunch of shit-faced, mean bastards, a pack of pathetic tosspots, a bundle of inept losers doomed for self-inflicted disaster. And the reason you think that, my darling only child, is that your generation is incapable of compassion or love, let alone respect. For you, we are all just a heap of used-up bodies with double jaws and potbellies, in your eyes we are but part of the environment-machinery that stops you from pursuing the happiness you so long for, but have no clue of...
STUCI
I don’t know much about our financial situation but I never felt we had issues in that department nor did mother ever tell me of such issues. My dad’s business partner, Uncle Berci brought us money every month, which was something they had agreed on before my father died, just in case something happened to him... Like somehow he knew... Uncle Berci is very nice to us: every time he comes to visit he brings me a huge bar of Toblerone, which I love and he always asks if we need any help. I think mother is sweet on him, which he finds rather unpleasant I think.
ZSOMER
I have no living relatives, only my mum’s brother in Australia, but we’ve lost touch. I don’t know why. With Stuci I could talk about anything and she really got me, what with her own conflicts with her own mother. Plus, we were both rockers, so listening to the same music was a strong bond, too. I sent her a lot of songs she didn’t know adding the links in English, ’coz she spoke English well and I think she was impressed, in fact she told me she was. After a few days we were writing to each other in English and laughing our heads off at how our mums would never understand our letters even if they hacked our accounts, though mine never did, she didn’t give a shit, but boy, did we have fun...I never had a girlfriend before and my mother was getting on my nerves with her remarks suggesting I was a faggot and that it wasn’t normal for a twenty-year-old boy to have no girlfriend, or even worse that I was still a virgin, which like the moron I am, I had told her the year before when she asked me.
ERIKA
It’s funny how some mothers are so proud to declare „my daughter takes after me”. For me that was one of the most unbearable things in all this, I had no clue what to do with her, same as with myself. By the time I gave birth I had no illusions left about life. I was 38 at the time. Once you’ve given birth, you suddenly get a few-pound screaming bundle, an alien being, whose fate is now in your hands and then you get a lifetime of watching her annoying bungling of her life, but what really gets you is seeing that she is just as pathetic as you are.
I saw nothing in that child beyond my own failure quadrupled. After she was born I wouldn’t let Feri touch me for a year, so toward the end he took a lover: after some birthday party at the firm, which he confessed that same night in tears, but for me it was a relief, so I tried to comfort him saying that it was fine, but he kept torturing himself while continuing the affair... I never said a word, just kept scrubbing the lipstick stains off his shirt collar...
STUCI
This whole beauty-project lasted about three or four weeks, then she gave it up and that’s when she had a nervous breakdown. The brandy portions grew and now she drank them to wash down the pills... She slept a lot, cried quietly, staggered about like a sleepwalker and hardly spoke. It was horrible to watch, but at least she didn’t hurt me. Soon though she couldn’t even walk as far as the library where she worked, which, of course, was not what she told me. She said it made no sense, that people weren’t reading any more and she was fed up with switching the internet on and off for some dimwits.
She took an extended sick leave and was trying to get on disability pension with her nerves. So she got some new pills, uppers and downers, and soon she had a whole pharmacy at home.
But what can a child do with her mother? Not a whole lot... I tried to help as much as I could. I always ordered hot food, I shopped for groceries and I did whatever was necessary around the house: I washed our clothes and mopped the floor.. I felt like I was her mother and not the other way around.
ERIKA
You had a child out of selfishness and here you are with selflessness forced upon you, for now you can never be first in your own eyes. If in the morning you can’t wait for it to be evening and in the evening you can’t wait for it to be morning, then in effect you aren’t waiting for anything, ’coz your morning coffee, that lovely double espresso doesn’t count... It’s when the day is still like a white sheet of paper, when anything can still happen and you are hopeful it will. You contemplate and you plan, but no matter how hard you try, it all seems futile, senseless, ridiculous or simply too hard to do... Which is when you have your first brandy. That’s all you have now and your smokes... and your brandy... and your smokes...
ZSOMER
We first met offline at the Shinedown concert on 4th May, 2018 at the Barba Negra Bar in Budapest. Stuci managed to sneak away with her girlfriend. She told her mother it was a class trip, so she even got some money, but of course I was the man, so I bought the concert tickets. They spent the night at her friend’s aunt’s. The supposedly cool aunt covered for them, and even though I knew that was the plan, I still booked an Airbnb room in the party hood, for I never could have taken her home. She skipped the Airbnb in the end, but on the night bus we made out. (Stuci: No one ever came to visit but Uncle Berci …) and the next day they left, (Stuci: once a month…) and that’s when I knew, (Stuci: when he brought us the money…) that I didn’t want to live my life without her…
STUCI
…but on those occasions my mum really pulled herself together, she put on some make-up, dressed up nice and she was really sweet, I was surprised she was capable of that. But after a while even Uncle Berci got fed up, and from then on he sent the money by mail. So now she was on the phone with her sister every day for hours, but all they talked about was just the usual women stuff, though once the clouds started gathering she started complaining about me, attacking me and calling me all kinds of names. Once my mother was in such bad shape, I had no other solution but to emancipate myself. So I went out whenever I could or else I locked myself in my room.
ERIKA
When I saw that torn purple bang totally out of the blue along with those ugly-hanging pants and the faux leather jacket with the spikes and the boots with the mismatched laces, I got really pissed. Is that how I raised her? Is that what I sacrificed myself for?
STUCI
My mum only left the house to go to the doctor’s, but she called them all idiots and kept switching doctors. What really pissed her off though was when I started to stand up for the rocker values. I ditched my whole previous wardrobe and from then on, I was only wearing black. I bought myself a leather jacket with spikes, a pair of steel toe cap boots and I had my hair dyed... I believe in honest hard rock, which is not as fake and kitschy as pop music or life in general...
COURTROOM 1. / ÓVÁR
ZSOMER
It was a really tough time for me. I am studying theoretical mathematics at ELTE University you know. I mean I was... The third semester that spring was just really intense... I flunked the exam in differential geometry of manifolds and functional analysis twice, so I was supposed to repeat my sophomore year, but I decided to take a gap year instead. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure about maths any more, I wanted to think about it. My mother had a fit when I told her. She said she wasn’t going to tolerate a cretin of a freeloader in her home and if I wasn’t going to carry on with my studies I was free to go. She started throwing my stuff out the door and she grabbed the washbasin and started to hit me with it, even though I worked all kinds of programming jobs during my studies and I sent money home, I even bought her a washing machine and a laptop the year before. But by then I was so fed up that I didn’t mind. I grabbed my stuff and left without a word. Two of my uni mates let me crash on the couch in their sublet for a week, but by then I knew I was going to move to Óvár and look for a job in Austria, even a shitty job would do for the moment, I just needed it fast. I got one at the petrol station in Burgenland, fifteen miles from Óvár, it paid 1300 euro after taxes. I rented an okay flat for a fortune, I bought a scooter on credit and I had the feeling it was all groovy. I hadn’t told Stuci, I wanted to surprise her...
STUCI
It was a total surprise when Zsomer called and told me he was in Óvár. I was really down by then. I had never met a more decent guy in my life. No matter how large my sunglasses, they couldn’t hide the black eye my mum gave me when she hit me so hard that I fell against the balcony railing and broke two ribs. I thought she wanted to push me off the second floor. It was on account of the Barba Negra concert, which she did find out about in the end. I think it was that idiot boyfriend of my BFF, the one she brought along, who told my mum that it wasn’t a class trip and that we went to Budapest. I didn’t tell her about Zsomer, but she was still screaming at the top of her lungs that I was the filthiest, dirtiest slut the world’s ever seen and how many boys was I sleeping with at once and even more obscene stuff I’d rather not repeat. It really seemed like she lost it completely, she was just spewing all that filth at me, I thought she’d never stop, I thought she’d kill me right then and there. I must have fainted in the end, ’coz I can’t remember how it all ended, I just woke up on the floor and the first thing I noticed was the pool of blood I was lying in: it was gushing from my nose... And then I told Zsomer all about it, ’coz until then I’d tell people I fell off my bike. That’s what I told them at the school and at the hospital where my mum ended up taking me the next day when she told me I should thank her goodwill that I got away with so little damage.