Fruits of the Inner City
The Healer, The Cat Lady, The Businessman, The Daredevil (#2)
translated by Joe Váradi and published here with the permission of the original author Lackfi János
THE HEALER
Ms. Zucchini lives in the garret,
the garret is a tiny attic room just under
the roof, with its own tiny staircase leading up
to the roof, to the sturdy little cages that
Mr. Beet built, Ms. Zucchini calls them
hutches, it’s where the pigeons live,
Mom says they are ordinary, filthy
street pigeons that are probably magnets
for salmonella and other such nastiness,
best not to touch them.
In her old age, Ms. Zucchini lost her mind, too,
no wonder, because she never married,
the alone-ness got to her, even though
she’s an intelligent lady, she was a teacher once.
One thing’s for sure, it’s a whole lot more
interesting than bio class to cradle a pigeon in
my hands, carefully, to feel the warmth of its body,
little feathered furnaces, they take off suddenly
from dizzying heights, and move together with
precision choreography, I’m sure they could
win a talent contest. They don’t all let me
hold them — tiny red, black, amber-colored eyes
darting around suspiciously, they each have
different colored feathers, too, chestnut, tar, ash,
cream, and the like, so if you pay attention you won’t
mix them up, ‘though new ones come now and then.
Ms. Zucchini was a chemistry teacher, that’s why
she has funny names for her pigeons, Mercury, Hydrogen,
Bromine, Cadmium, Zinc, Iodine, Oxygen, and such,
I’ve to say it’s more fun to study a chart of birds
than a chart drawn in a lined paper notebook,
when Ms. Zucchini locks her lovelies in her cages,
she says they’re a regular periodic table of elements.
She is furious at the spikes installed on windowsills
all throughout the city, they injure the feet of
her precious birds, one has no feet at all, a streetcar
ran over it, she takes it everywhere in a baby carrier,
and says, Sodium is a survivor. But Ms. Zucchini
loves to quarrel with Ms. Eggplant,
even though they are sisters.
THE CAT LADY
Ms. Eggplant and Ms. Zucchini are not just
regular sisters, they are twin sisters,
one is exactly like the other,
and the other exactly like the one,
they go to the same hairdresser,
who curls their hair the same way.
Ms. Eggplant makes her nest in a
very small flat that was split off
from the equally small flat where
Ms. Zucchini lives.
They were both teachers, and
neither one ever got married, because
whenever one found an eligible bachelor,
the other wasn’t thrilled about him,
and vice versa, and they did not
wish to get into a quarrel over
such trifles. They used to share
a flat, until at last they put up a wall
to split it into halves, when Ms. Zucchini
declared that Ms. Eggplant had taken up some very
odd habits, and Ms. Eggplant declared the
same thing about Ms. Zucchini.
Ms. Eggplant’s flat always has a thick odor,
on account of her roommates, Austin, Tolstoy,
Hemingway, Kafka, Balzac, Pushkin and the rest,
Ms. Eggplant reads their books constantly.
Of course it isn’t the authors who are stinky,
but the twenty cats named after them,
sneaking in and out of doors, windows,
sewer pipes or through the roof, giving chase to
Ms. Eggplant’s pigeons. Once they got hold of
Cobalt, and cleaned her to the bone, there was
nothing left of her but two wings and two legs
held together with string, as if she could still fly,
or run, only the body was missing …
Ms. Eggplant made multiple complaints to
Mr. Melon, who had the health inspectors
come out, to no avail, all the red and grey and
spotty and sooty and tabby felines disappeared
without a trace each time, and all that was left
was a whiff of lilac fragrance, in their wake.
THE BUSINESSMAN
Mr. Pear, always on the go, steps out
of his flat, very dapper in a forest green suit,
his pressed shirt deep purple,
the stripes on his tie
pink-blue-gold, pink-blue-gold,
pink-blue-gold, pink-blue-gold,
and so on to infinity,
his hair gelled to perfection as if
the locks were neat strands of squid ink macaroni,
one hand holding a hanger with a freshly ironed shirt,
to change in case he sweats or spills coffee on himself,
in his left hand a beautiful shiny leather bag,
cell phone pinched between ear and shoulder,
puts the bag down, checks the time
on his left wrist, he must hurry,
left hand digging for keys in his left pocket,
but the keys are in the right pocket,
hangs shirt on doorknob,
right hand ransacks right pocket,
takes key out, locks door,
then slips keys with right hand
into right pocket, unhinges shirt
from knob, picks up his bag,
just as the second cell phone
rings in another pocket
so he hangs shirt on knob once more
and puts the bag down,
takes out the second phone, speaks into the first,
“just a moment please,”
speaks into the second,
“just a moment please,”
and a pigeon picks that very moment
to drop a doo right on the lapel of his
slick forest green jacket,
Mr. Pear is speechless, his face
turns flush red, takes aim at the bird
holding the cell phones as if they were pistols
and yells “Bam, Bam, you’re dead!”
THE DAREDEVIL
Mulberry is terribly brave, I’d love to
trade places with him, but even watching him
from a distance I get dizzy, because I have a
fear of heights, and even after two years of
living on the third floor I still can’t get
used to it, Mulberry on the other hand,
baseball cap on his head backwards,
sporting knee-pads and elbow-pads,
and not just to show off, Mulberry
skips across the rooftop, light as air,
like a fleeing criminal in the movies,
and that’s not all, he jumps from the
mezzanine railing down to the courtyard,
goes into a running tumble and keeps going,
Mr. Melon can wag his broom all he wants,
Mulberry bounces off the wall into a reverse flip,
crawls down the drainpipe,
scrambles up the lightning rod,
no, he’s no feline, he’s an urban samurai,
I watched the other day as he leapt from our roof
across the abyss to the roof of the building next door
and kept running, but at night he just sits
up there, while his parents
quarrel noisily in their kitchen,
over the sound of plates shattering,
Mulberry doesn’t seem so brave now,
and I see the moonlight quiver in the silver
streams running down his cheeks.
previous chapters:
https://medium.com/no-crime-in-rhymin/fruits-of-the-inner-city-part-1-e908357a7004
