"Huge hands on thick, workhorse wrists, they were, of course, wrinkly." An excerpt from Pista’s Hands by Gail Varga. Photo / 123rf
"Huge hands on thick, workhorse wrists, they were, of course, wrinkly." An excerpt from Pista’s Hands by Gail Varga. Photo / 123rf
The open section of the annual short story competition run by the Northland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors was once again popular.
The judges Diana Menefy and Eddie Williams said there were 47 entries this year and the quality made it difficult to pick out a longlist of the top 10 stories. They said they enjoyed the variety in the open competition and the stories had characters they could identify with.
“The winning story, Pista’s Hands,was powerfully imagined and complete with an ending that lingered in our minds. The characterisation, themes and setting are universal – the relationship between youth and old age, the power of love,” they said.
Gail Varga, of Tūtūkākā, wrote the winning entry in the annual short story competition run by the Northland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors.
Ildi, my mother, always found the torture of leaving things unsaid more bearable than the terror of saying them: I was a skinny, empty kind of little girl, storyless, my Eastern European social and domestic history unspeakable.
Then there was Pista, my grandfather. He was Pista the hard, Pista the mountain builder, Pista the sayer of all things sweet, all things ugly (all things that should not be said), Erős Pista the unforgiving, Pista the determined goer alone, Pista speaker of terrible English, ‘I-never-want-die’ Pista. Pista of the loving, demonstrative hands.
Over years and years I spent weeks and months, and a very long time besides, my own small hands in dialogue with Pista’s massive old hands while his mouth said the words of all the stories that made me. With the conviction of his hands he fleshed out the skinniness of my youth and filled in the emptiness of my little girlness. I miss his hands.
Huge hands on thick, workhorse wrists, they were, of course, wrinkly. Blotched by ages of summer and usually a little purple in hue, they were soft, the skin on the underside smooth.
Fingers of amazing strength and girth hung apart from one another from the mass of knuckle, spanning the air, hugely encompassing, a gold band still about his ring finger from his ‘schoolgirl-size wife’. The fingertips had a soft, frog-like look as though so much usage had squashed them.
The nails were very flat, often dirty and cut down close at each side, left almost pointed in the middle (for Pista’s kind of practicality).
These hands told of the man he was before his shrunken old age: Big, Mighty. I was always and forever in awe of them. And these were the hands that cared for me. I miss them very much.
I miss the hands that drew my face toward his kiss each time we met, gentle about my head, sure. ‘Hello, darling!’ his mouth would say (Pista, lost in his failing fiction of we’re-anglicised-around-here). ‘Szia kedvesem!’ said his hands (as he rightly meant in his heart).
‘Any road…’ He would settle. His hands patiently awaiting the unfolding of his own tale. At rest together there was something gentle and controlled about the way they related. I felt and saw all the heavy work they had done and yet they were not dissatisfied. They were content to be still and quiet. This was Pista at his best. Not trying. In these moments he was noble, proud, poised. His great aura of power was about him, as if hewn from rock.
I would sit by him and we would each give a hand to be together until the story was over.
This day it was the story of his father’s death on ‘crackers day’ (fireworks day) at the end of a hot Budapest June in 1908, just days before Pista’s birth. This was a great and typical Pista-story, me-story.
His father, István, was crossing the road taking a basket of oranges to the coffee house belonging to his mother-in-law. Someone had laid ‘crackers’ under a nearby ox-cart that was delivering kegs of liquor to a drinking house.
Pista carefully described the cart with his voice, continued the story with his hands. His free hand threw the kegs to the ground on to the cushions left by the driver, tried to rein in the oxen, lost control of them. The other hand gripped mine in an excited response. The climax came when ‘the cows getted vild’, István and the oranges were mown down and the road workers came with baskets and ‘shovelled up his minced body’. Pista’s hands had seen me through this trauma many times before and the story affirmed (again) that we are survivors, we two. I need not fear.
There were many doing days we spent together as well, of course. I was Pista’s practicality in his latter years. His eyes were blind, so his mole-like, seeking hands would describe the task, and together we would feel for the solution.
He would throw his hands open to send out the sparkle of his delight at my abilities, our achievement. I miss very badly those hands that let me know that whatever I wanted to try, I could do it.
Sewing and carpentry and gardening and organising and fighting the battles of being us with whosoever said we could not be so. We could do it. I could do it. Pista’s hands told me. Pista’s hands had known and seen and done and come through and they had a truth I respected beyond anything, even beyond fear.
But Pista was angry too. ‘No!’ He would explode in an enormous, rumbling fury, beating his fist on the table, his small plastic tubs of pens, torch bulbs, paper clips, batteries and rubber bands jumping with fright.
The anger at his father’s death, the anger of giving his pay to his mother from his first job, aged 6, the anger of queuing for bread to eat, the anger of his friends and colleagues disappeared in cattle trucks to God knows where, the anger of an ill wife who would not have him, the anger of his country destroyed, diminished, the anger of betrayals by people who should not. All this was in those fists, and more, every time. Those fists were mine to love as well. This was my story too. I accepted it. (Flinchingly).
It was for me that I laid out his body when he had left it. I did not know where he had gone but I wanted to explore whatever remained a last time, so I washed him. As I washed him I also accepted him in a final-last-time kind of way.
I accepted his unseeing eyes, the irises in two colours, his funny beard, his peeling tongue, his toothless mouth, hanging, his dropped shoulder from the dislocation that never really went back, his bruised stomach from whatever had eventually ruptured within, his sternum-to-vertebral-column scar from when he had his lung removed, his long, thinned pubic hair, his impotent ‘fiddle’ and his wizened ‘plums’, his slack anus, not used for a week or two, his lumpy, stiff knees on his skinny, useless legs, his hoof-like toenails on his feet, bad with sores.
This was all well. I washed his hands, each finger, and each finger. His hands, my hands, too cold. He was ringless since the swelling became bad. I lamented that he had died without his wedding ring but was glad I was not left with the choice of robbing it, wrestling it from his body.
I miss his hands. After I have missed them, I miss them again, and more. I left them at his funeral when I packed all about him in his coffin with roses and placed just one in his hand. ‘A rose for a rose,’ he would say, making a gallant flattery out of cutting me a flower from his garden. Roses were his favourite. They embodied him with their thorny aggression and sateen elegance. Now I left him with himself.
Afterwards I looked over all the things that Pista had handled in the last part of his life. They smelled of his skin. Papers... I came across his certificate of naturalisation, an object of great pride to be considered with reverence. I was bewildered. I was shaken anew. His hands had lied. Pista, aged 48, had been a reasonably short man. This could not be so. My Pista was a giant, a mountain builder, a force, a law. His hands told me so. They were the truth. Some frailty in me quivered. My shaken world teetered.
I took all his family papers with his ashes to Kispest. He was not in that little box, I knew that. Was he in the papers? I wondered. I studied them carefully with Aní. Pista always enunciated the word ‘shock’ as if he had just been cut down. He almost lost his teeth with this word often. When I say I was shocked when we looked at István’s death certificate I mean it in a Pista way: I was shocked. My own teeth could have fallen out, sound as they are. His father, István, had died on ‘crackers day’ 1908, from an overdose.
What about the oranges? I had smelled them for years. I caught their bright colour in the grey street and the blue sky. What about his blood in the dust? It was drying, blackening. What about the clatter of the ox-cart? The wet, flaring nostrils of the oxen? The fear? The truth? My fear. Was I left with it?
In the softness of loss I missed the hands that could make me sure again. The hands that would touch me and I would know. I slipped on Pista’s ring. He had fleshed me out and filled my empty places, but I could not flesh out his hands, nor fill his ring. Understanding the truth of Pista’s hands in me was a whole other beginning story.
My sister Gwennie swore on our mother’s grave that the little chap who mowed the lawns saved her life.
And that he loved her.
Fridolin came into our home and our hearts in autumn, when the walnut tree had almost finished dropping its leaves. An old German word, Fridolin means peaceful ruler, and that he was, patrolling the grounds in near silence, slowly sculpting beautiful Zen-garden shapes in the grass.
He was unobtrusive to near invisibility, but if we strained our eyes through the conservatory window we could just make him out moving sedately along the line of the hawthorn hedge or circling the great trunk of the oak like a dancer. Unlike the lumpish gardener who tended the flowerbeds and hedges with an undercurrent of resentfulness and muttered curses he thought we couldn’t hear, Fridolin glided amongst the garden’s muted greens and browns in perfect harmony with the autumnal colours and the peaceful hush.
Sometimes he paused and went still, as if to admire the view, to take satisfaction in the orderly trim, the crisp edges.
Fridolin often worked in the early hours and by breakfast time his tasks were completed and, always discreet, he took himself off to his shed. We would drift out on to the lawn in our elegant dressing gowns, cups of tea in hand, and admire the green velvet cloak he had laid anew in front of the house as if only for our pleasure.
He never questioned the tasks we set him. He never loomed or dominated. None of the stony stares or teeth-sucking that the gardener engaged in. He was perfect.
When winter set in we saw him less; the soil rested quietly in the cold and the grass ceased to grow in the short grey days. But as the equinox passed and the sun reached a little higher every day, we started to watch for him, and it was with squeals of delight that we spotted him one shining morning emerging from his shed.
I was surprised when Gwennie rushed out to meet him, followed by our old dog Woofter who almost capered for a moment on his rheumy legs, but I didn’t say anything when she returned, her face a little damp and attractively pink. To be honest I felt a tinge of jealousy but brushed it off. Gwen was an old romantic, but I was just old, and too jaded for romance.
During that spring Gwen spent many hours accompanying Fridolin around the grounds; they moved like a pair engaged in an eccentric but graceful waltz. She became calmer, more contemplative. Gone was a lot of the nervous gabble, her face became tranquil. Fridolin, too, was different around her – seeming enraptured, pausing frequently, waiting for her in secret green places where the light was flattering and dappled leaf-shapes splashed her skin.
If I were in the garden he would often busy himself elsewhere, but I didn’t mind.
There wasn’t much to keep him – the extensive grounds of the manor house our grandfather built have been slashed to a fraction of their former glory, sold off in ever-larger parcels to bolster our ever-diminishing circumstances. Now the money’s all gone too, sucked away by taxes and by attempts to prop up the crumbling house and our crumbling selves.
Now when we climb the modest slope we look straight into the cheap, boxy Noddy-houses of the new estate that has elbowed its way up to our drystone walls. Sometimes we hear raucous voices, harsh music banging across the lawn, the tragic complaints of dogs, and Gwen and I tut to each other – but I don’t mind really. We’ve had our day. Only the memories are left of a privileged past served by gardeners, maids, cooks and butlers; I can no longer imagine employing a small army of people to minister to our meagre selves – how extraordinary! The world is better this way and those modern sounds of ordinary people … well, what a blessing to be still alive to hear them.
And if we stand in a certain spot in a certain light we can dream that just out of view beyond the crest of the shallow hill, sheep still glow white against green fields, and the oaks still stand sentry in the wild-flower meadow. Despite its shrinking from the incoming concrete tide, what’s left of the garden somehow holds its ancient, unhurried quiet, seems to doze in a place untouched by the new century, watched over by dear Fridolin.
The day of the accident was deliciously warm. I was writing cheques at my desk, where I could lift my eyes and gaze across the lawn which glowed emerald in the sun. Just beyond my sight lay the shallow ornamental pond, edged with handsome red bricks salvaged years ago when the local Catholic school was burnt to the ground by one of the girls, who was, if rumour had it right, maddened with unrequited love for the Mother Superior.
Unaware of Gwen’s drama until I heard a cry that made my hair stand on end, I hurried from the house across the grass and found her lying close beside the pond like an antique doll, skirts flung up, gazing at the sun. Her hair, her upper body, was wet, dear Lord, had she been partly submerged? Her forehead was bloodied and beginning to bloom lilac and plum. Terrified, I dropped to my knees and tried to sit her up, ropey arms straining, but she swooned.
Pressed against her side, mute, was Fridolin, but I could not ask him what happened.
I noticed a smear of blood on the brick, realised she must have fallen and hit her head. “Gwennie, Gwennie dear, can you hear me? Answer me!”
She gathered herself, struggled to sit, coughed violently. Her hand went up to feel the growing egg on her forehead, and she stared at the blood on her hand. Her hair dripped.
“I fell,” she said in astonishment. “Fridolin saved me!”
I turned to him, incredulous.
“How could Fridolin save you? Come, dear, try to stand and we’ll get inside, tend to your poor head.”
Gwen pushed me away in her agitation. “But he did. I tripped and fell forwards over the edge of the pond. My face was under the water.” She was crying now. “I think I was stunned. I breathed in the water. The horrible, slimy water!”
I stood up with difficulty and held out my hand. “Give me your hand and I’ll try to pull you up. I can’t carry you.” I was almost crying too; fright was getting the better of me.
She remained on the ground, coughing. “I felt him pushing my side…” her hand fluttered up to touch her ribs with wonder. “I felt him rolling me away from the pond, an inch, enough to bring my face out of the water. I could have drowned, but he saved me.”
I had not seen this from my window – could such a thing have happened? In a burst of panicked strength, I managed to drag Gwen to her feet. She swayed, and holding each other up we staggered towards the house.
I looked back at Fridolin. With Gwen’s body no longer laid in front of him he was freed from the pond’s brick edge behind, he could move. With a little shudder he lurched forward, and I could just make out a soft whirring as the small blades under his beetle back scythed to and fro, flecks of grass spraying from either side of his plastic flanks.
He made a beeline for his shed. At the door he stopped and turned, as if he were looking at us, two old ladies making unsteady progress across the patio. As if checking Gwen was safe.
Ah, the sun was warm. The grass was perfect. His robotic heart beat steadily.
A mustard haze settled upon the small town of Te Marama where Marlow and Kym crossed the main road towards the services section. Mount Manu loomed over the Moa River, casting shadows of premature dusk.
‘Oh, not today, love. Your mother was a Libra; remember how indecisive she was?’ Marlow scrolled through his phone notifications.
Towering before them was the vending machine.
[Please touch fingerpad to confirm you are not a robot]
‘But she was so creative; that’s a trait we agreed on, honey. I can’t wait another moon. I’m 42; it could be too late already.’ Kym hovered her hand over the vending machine screen, then pressed her fingerprint to confirm her biosecurity status.
[Before purchasing ‘Human Baby 5.0′, please read the terms and conditions below:
You, the purchaser, agree that we, the provider, are engaging in a legal transaction which cannot be refunded at any point for the duration of your life, or the life of your purchase.
You are financially, physically, and emotionally responsible for your purchase]
‘Can’t we wait a bit longer? I mean, the literature tells us we shouldn’t be purchasing at all because of overpopulation. Are we truly being responsible by bringing a kid into this world?’
Marlow’s phone flourished with alerts: a bushfire nearing their property was under control, a work meeting had been transcribed by AI then sent as an email, the boss was asking for any belated edits, and Marlow’s new car was ready for pick-up.
‘Were you acting responsibly by buying the new four-cab ute that still runs on petrol?’ Kym retorted.
‘You agreed it would be better than a non-recyclable car battery until they perfect the poo cars like they did those planes. Plus, you said the safety rating was a deal breaker. I mean, super technology like antiviral window tinting and bushfire-proof bury theory?’ Marlow looked genuinely perplexed.
[Please specify the type of genitals you wish your purchase to be accessorised with.
Options: Penis and testicles, Vagina and ovaries, Pick N Mix—build your own gender, only $10,000 special deal for TODAY only! Random choice, or Indeterminate]
Kym pressed: Penis and testicles.
[This product will be birthed in the astrological sign of {libra} in the Chinese sign of the {Water Rabbit}. Press: Yes or Cancel Purchase. Please note, if you press: Yes, your deposit of $4000 will be retained by Journeys Company LTD]
Kym extended her open palm. Marlow, who was scrolling through his phone with one hand, reached into his pocket with the other, retrieving his wallet. Kym inserted the credit card.
[Thank you for your deposit. Please insert Specimen A]
‘Okay, you’re up.’ Kym said. ‘Do you want me to come in with you?’
‘Just shut the curtain. It’ll be quicker if I do it on my own.’
‘You know, babe, I can always use some of the stock. I picked out a few candidates from the catalogue.’
‘Why the heck would I make a DNA purchase that’s not even mine, babe?’ Marlow fully looked at Kym now, noticing her grey hair and hollow cheeks.
‘Okay, okay. Calm down. I was just checking. I mean, you always bring up your family’s history of bipolar disorder and suicide.’
Marlow’s glare wilted into a melancholic grimace as he stepped towards the vending machine and pulled the curtain across.
Kym sulked outside on the hazy street while Marlow made his deposit. She heard the machine offer him inspiration material and heard the sultry voice of a woman giving encouragement. Kym politely looked away. The haze seemed to settle around her feet.
A couple had lined up behind them, one of the two men tapping his toe against the cement kerb rhythmically, both periodically looking up from their phones.
Marlow threw back the curtain and stepped aside, hiding his red face in his phone screen.
[Thank you for inserting Specimen A. Analysis in progress]
[Analysis complete. Sperm successfully washed. Would you like to continue with your purchase? Please press: Yes or No]
Kym pressed: Yes.
[Please insert Specimen B]
‘Do you think it’s safe that this machine has our biological data? Like, what if it malfunctions and creates an army of our children?’ Marlow scrolled on his phone, swishing away the severe weather warning - tremors after yesterday’s earthquake threatened Ocean Heads.
‘It might have millions of your sperm, but it only gets a couple of my eggs.’ Kym wiped the sweat from her forehead.
‘But what if it learns to clone your eggs? What if some madmen use this machine to create an army?’
‘Stupider men have done this without technology before, you know?’
‘It would seriously overpopulate our world, and it wouldn’t just be the dinosaurs gone extinct – it will be all of humanity. We’ll kill ourselves through war or environmental disaster. I mean, Attenborough tried to warn us.’
‘Why are you being so dramatic? Are you seriously doubting being a father this bad that you need to fantasise about the apocalypse to convince me not to do it? Are you that scared of responsibility? You know I’ll be doing all the work anyway!’
‘Okay. One – stop with the archaic gender stereotypes, and two – I’m trying to be realistic.’
‘I can’t believe we are re-mortgaging the house to pay for this.’
‘It will work.’ Kym stopped and placed her hands on Marlow’s cheeks. ‘We have avoided the viruses now for eight months, we’ve taken our daily vitamin pills, we’ve eaten the recommended diet, we’ve practised, then abstained, as per the recommendations. It will work, it has to.’
‘Is it even worth it?’
‘Of course, Marlow! When you hold that little baby boy in your arms, hear his first cry, see his sparkling eyes and feel his smooth skin, his chubby little cheeks, his plush arms and bowed legs; when you see his little face and how he looks like both you and me, you will know then; it’s always worth it.’
‘Hearing you talk like that feels nice.’ Marlow dropped his phone hand by his side and used his other to touch Kym’s cheek.
‘See, you’re going to make a brilliant father.’ Kym hugged her husband and kissed him on the cheek. Another couple had lined up, awaiting their turn. There were now four people, and in the hazy distance, another couple approached.
[Please sign in agreement to the terms and conditions: Both the sperm and egg donor agree that this transaction has not been made under any coercion and that both parties fully understand the terms and conditions]
Kym pressed her fingerprint to the screen, followed by Marlow.
[Order processing]
[Please choose your milk type: Formula or Breastmilk]
Kym chose: Breastmilk. Advertisements popped up with add-on deals for lactation cookies and hot-drink mixes designed for ‘prime breastmilk production’.
[Would you like to cut the cord manually? Please choose: Yes or No]
Kym chose: Yes.
A pair of scissors in a sterilised plastic bag fell into the vending machine’s lower cavity. Kym reached through the flap and retrieved them, then handed the scissors over to Marlow.
‘Should I hold your hand, tell you to push?’ Marlow was grinning.
‘Very funny, babe.’ Kym’s eyes were focused on the loading screen, watching the blue wheel spin round and round as technology and science computed the algorithm that made dreams come true, one that offered hope for willing parents on their fertility journey. In a moment, their baby boy would come barrelling down the chute, landing in the slot at the bottom of the vending machine. She would pick him up and he would cry, and Kym would feel fulfilled, finally, in her role as a mother. She would be grateful not to sleep at night, only to see his little blinking face. She would dream of the good life he will have ahead of him despite this wicked, old world; and she would ensure he grew up knowing empathy and humility and benevolence and compassion. He was her serum. It was to be the making of her.
The blue wheel stopped spinning. Kym felt the people behind her in the line look up from their phones. The vending machine jerked and shook - a bouncing noise came from within. A bright flash blasted across the screen:
