Viv Pencz

To eat your own children is a barbarian act.

The Soviet regime printed this on posters during the Great Famine. Ildiko learned this while studying wartime Europe in the sixth grade. To her, Europe was a faraway land where either beautiful or horrible things happened, like the invention of chocolate fondue or her parents’ flight from Communist oppression.

The anti-cannibalism posters made the hair on Ildiko’s arms stand up. But she couldn’t stop thinking about them. Ildiko still remembered the first time she saw the painting called Saturn Devouring His Son. Her friend Eve showed it to her in a book about Greek mythology when they were seven years old.

The Satanic whites of Saturn’s eyes gave Ildiko nightmares. In her dreams, she ran from Saturn through a painted black void, only the whites of his eyes visible in the half-light. They gaped like his mouth as it stretched to engulf his son’s small body. But Ildiko and Eve would always turn to that page in the book during Reading Time.

Ildiko’s father sprouted Saturn’s bulging eyes whenever he got angry. He’d grown up during the failed Hungarian Revolution, gunfire rattling his tiny world. And that gunfire rattled around in his head now, painting his vision Russian red. He was angry with the Soviets, who had persecuted his people. He was angry with his son Dom, who struggled with his homework. And he was angry with his wife, who didn’t always agree with him.

Ildiko didn’t want her father to be angry at her too, so she formed a habit of gathering corny jokes to tell at the dinner table. The dinner table stuffed Ildiko full of fear. Her parents never asked how her day was or what she got up to at school, and silence made Ildiko anxious. After all, silence was just a delicate membrane.

What did one elevator say to the other elevator?

I think I’m coming down with something.

Why was the math book sad?

It had too many problems.

What type of music are balloons afraid of?

Pop music.

Ildiko threw jokes into the silence like lifelines toward a rescue boat. And when her parents smiled, a light shone on the shadows of their old dark house. But Ildiko still struggled to finish many of her traditional Hungarian dinners. Their shapes, colours, and flavours sometimes felt alien, even though Ildiko and Dom were raised on their mother’s home-cooked meals.

Of course, there was goulash. But there was also húsleves, a rustic nomad stew of diced beef and carrot. Paprikás krumpli, coins of Vienna sausage and golden potatoes floating in a blood-red sea. Jars of pickled cucumber and purple cabbage in the garage. Winter salami in the smokehouse outside, which fumed ominously.

For dessert, there was something like mákos tészta. These are egg noodles tossed in sugar, butter, and ground poppyseeds. In Ildiko’s childish gaze, they writhed like a pile of pale worms in black soil. Ashamedly, she preferred McDonald’s milkshakes.

One night, Ildiko watched while Dom refused to finish his dinner. They were having roast chicken with cucumber salad and sour cream, and Dom hated sour cream. When he saw it on his plate, he cried, and his father’s eyes bulged.

“Your mom slaved away all day at the stove,” he said, “To put food on the table for you. Now, eat like a man. There are people starving in Africa. You know, when I was a boy, I had a pet chicken. I named in Attila. He was my little best friend. Followed me everywhere I went on the farm. One day, my mom made chicken paprikash for dinner. We all sat down as a family to eat. When I was halfway finished, my mom told me that the chicken we were eating was Atilla. I cried and cried. But I knew I had to be tough. My father always kept one hand on his belt. So, while crying, I finished my dinner. And it was delicious.”

He smacked the table, balloon-red and sweat-buffed. Dom wasn’t even crying anymore. He sat frozen and deflated in his chair like a big cloth doll. Avoiding her father’s eyes, Ildiko stared at the impossibly blue cornflowers on her plate.

The plate was a hand-painted gift from her aunt in Budapest. She didn’t remember much about her aunt, who she’d only met once, but she remembered her telling a story about the lion statues on the Chain Bridge. When the sculptor realised that he’d forgotten to give his lion statues tongues, he was so ashamed that he jumped into the Danube River.

In a small voice, Ildiko’s mother tried to intervene. “If he doesn’t want to eat it, then he doesn’t want to eat it,” she said, testing the water. “He can have something else.”

“You’re always defending him.”

“No, I’m not—”

“You’re always going against me. You never leave me alone. One of these days, I’m gonna grab the keys, get in the car, and drive. Or I’m gonna put my head in the oven. Is that what you want? Is that the only way I’ll ever get my peace? No, you stay where you are and eat your dinner.”

Ildiko had slowly risen from her seat, wanting to escape to her room, but sat back down at her father’s objection. It was as if a binding curse, chains and fetters materialising from her father’ lips, held her there. She wished she were one of the gods from Eve’s book on Greek mythology. That way, she could transform herself into an eagle.

Ildiko knew what would happen now. Her father would make another speech, puffing his chest and gesticulating like a dictator at a podium, until dinner went cold. She and Dom would go to bed hungry whether or not they ate the food. And the next day, their mother would tell them, “This is how it is.”

But then something else happened.

All of a sudden, the roast chicken in the centre of the table began to move. Somehow, it moved of its own accord, straining. As if it was giving birth, its little legs rocked back and forth, back and forth—a magic trick without a magician. Eventually, in the midst of stunned silence, the chicken came to a halt. It propped itself into a grotesque sitting position on its plate, facing Ildiko’s father.

“My name is Jupiter, son of Saturn,” said the chicken, gleaming with golden paprikash roux. It didn’t have a mouth to move, but its uncanny voice seemed to echo from nowhere and everywhere. “Would you like to hear a joke?”

The family sat very still, struck dumb as mermaids, their faces like masks. Before anyone could even think of a reply, the bird went on.

“Why did Mozart get rid of his chickens?”

Silence again.

“They kept saying Bach, Bach.”

With that, the bird plopped over, lying still on its bed of rosemary.

Then, Ildiko heard a strange clucking sound coming from her left. Slowly, she turned to face her father. His eyes were bulging again, but this time in fear. The clucking sound was coming from him.

It was as if little Atilla was speaking through his own consumer. It started low and soft: cluck cluck, cluck cluck. Then it grew and grew—buck buck, buck buck—until it reached an awful crescendo.

“BUKAWK!”

From her right, Ildiko thought she heard her mother laugh. And suddenly, the binding curse upon her was broken.

Ildiko shot up from her seat and ran around the table. Grabbing Dom’s hand along the way, she dragged him and herself out of the kitchen as quickly as she could. They hurried outside and across the lawn, the front door swinging shut behind them. The cool night air enveloped them like waves of soft music. They’d made it to the opposite side of the street, when Ildiko felt an urge to look back.

Their house had grown feet. Ildiko once read about a house with chicken feet in an old story, but she never thought she’d see one with her own eyes.

Shining in the darkness of the night, they shot to the ground like yellow tree trunks with twisted roots. And for the first time in her life, Ildiko saw the house clearly. It was an imposter, only masquerading as a home.

By the light of the moon and an orange streetlamp, Ildiko and Dom walked in a daze to the patch of old woods at the end of the road. There, though exposed to all the elements of the earth, they finally felt safe. Once Ildiko felt they’d gone deep enough inside, beyond where they normally liked to play, she made a nest out of the grass and fallen leaves. Exhausted, Dom laid down and fell asleep.

Ildiko curled up beside him. Their father and mother felt a world away. The stars overhead glinted and tingled on Ildiko’s tongue, like white pepper. Csillag. That was her favourite Hungarian word. She whispered it to herself: Csillag, csillag. From the nearby hydrofields, Ildiko could hear coyotes. In the half-dark, she hoped that she and Dom wouldn’t get eaten.

Published in the Protest issue of Popshot Quarterly.