PUSKAS

They believed he was a flasher, Miklos. Perhaps it was the loose-swinging gabardine raincoat and the shifty, downcast eyes. Or because he was cleaner of the boys’ toilets at the high school, dropping deodorant lollies into the gutter of the urinals, running a mop over wet lino, rolling up the tangled streams of toilet paper, occasionally putting on gloves to scrub graffiti off the walls and shit off the mirrors. Something sour from that stench lingered on his pores, his beard, his gabardine raincoat.

Not so pungent, more mouldy, but a sour smell all the same . . . lying face-down in a field of turnips not yet harvested on that bitterly cold November night. Which he remembered every day since, his aching belly, his fatigue, his faintness, the village dogs barking across ploughed fields at the Hungarian fugitives or invisible Russians, taking shelter in a hay shed, then disturbed by two men with a gun, a map, matches and a small bundle from which they pushed at him a scrap of reddish-grey meat; dog-meat under-baked. It was against his religion, eating animals, furry animals that is, but you didn’t refuse gifts from strangers in the dark or informers. Even frightened peasants might turn you in.

                                                       the frog lives in the silent lake

And you didn’t refuse to honour that dog, too often in nightmares, even though dogs were simply shot if they roamed more than a hundred yards beyond the village limits. Like thousands of refugees that November, twenty-five thousand.

Inside the Animal Shelter he slid the bolt to the first pound and shuffled down the walkway between cages. Cowed in corners, heads buried in the matting of bellies or crooks of legs, what passed as dogs were waiting, on dark patches of stone, waiting for the death knock.

Between the bars of an empty cage, Miklos shocked himself with a glimpse of memory . . . a scarfed head, his mother, bowed over the stove, frying smoked ham and scrambled eggs. Then he saw a man running towards the forest, carrying a shovel, his mother screaming after him, ’It’s madness, Jozsef! The tanks are coming! Jozsef, the Russian tanks!’ The last he saw of his father were footprints in the mud slowly filling with snowflakes slanting in under the pine trees that bent and howled with the fall of that November evening.

Dogs were yapping in the next pound, restless, pleading with eyes and inquisitive muzzles. Miklos found himself choosing, or rather being chosen by, an animal with long, shaggy, chestnut hair and white mane snuffling forward to the bars for a piece of hand or gabardine, an animal of no discrimination, whose history might have been as checkered as his own.

                                           never chase the cart that would not pick you up

Ferenc, he was tempted to call the dog, after his son lost to a drunken driver on the Leongatha road, but settled on Puskas, to hell that it sounded like a cat.

Miklos’ weatherboard on a small corner block, a victim of the Dual Occupancy Act that cut through the last of the trees from the old orchards and shadowed his fence-line, he had let run down, the split window ledges, damp up the walls, mould on the ceiling. He banged up a pen in the cramped backyard, a fence of chicken wire one metre high supported by metal trellis stakes, and fed the animal scraps from his own table. In his vegie patch he grew capsicums, for his mother used to sprinkle paprika over everything, Turkish tomatoes or eggplants, cucumbers . . . and cabbage to stuff in his rolls with a bit of cheap meat and rice.

Preferred his own company, Miklos. Whereas Puskas, once out on the leash, would lunge and swagger, whimper and wag at any flicker of movement, be it human, bold magpie, scudding leaf or skateboard rumbling by. On regular walks to the milk bar, where he’d tie his animal to the bike rail, protesting with high-tossing head and wild white in his eyes, Miklos began to notice things, small things, like Puskas’ droppings were solid dark or squidgy biscuit, that flowers colonized beyond their borders, that telegraph poles had seven sides, that rambling roses twisted upwards for light.

Reluctantly and to his embarrassment, Miklos was gradually drawn into the briefest of chats with local dog-walkers, armed with frisbees for fetch-and-carry, ball throwers or bone ropes, and even wary despisers of dogs, who protected their nature strips by leaning over gates with frowns: ‘Don’t you foul my footpath!’

‘But my dog he picks up in his mouth your drink cans, you know, empty bags, banana skins. He picks up, you know, your germs!’

‘Get away, you old bugger! Or I’ll ring up Council and have you fined.’ slow streams can wash shores

In fact, Puskas had become quite a show-off, seizing branches of several twigs with leaves, sprouting antlers and what might have been an alligator grin, then a second stick or paper bag in his jaws, turning his head this way and that for approval, as well as for a helping hand to pull off his three-stick trick.

Far cry from the dogs Miklos remembered from his homeland, working dogs, keeping out foxes from chickens. His elder brother, Janos, had owned a sheepdog. It was the dog that found him dead in the middle of a corn field. Janos had set light to several patches of stubble prior to ploughing in the ash, then been trapped by the flames or overcome by the fumes; others said a heart attack.

                                            even a hundred words have one ending

Miklos, who had seldom kicked a ball, not even in anger, since fleeing from the Soviet invaders, took to stubbing a scurfy tennis ball for Puskas to chase, dribble with front paws, trip over on to his back and rebound after the ball.

‘Get that bloody dog off the oval!’

‘Have you some problems?’

‘Dogs are not allowed on this oval,’ said the groundsman, flexing his shoulders. ‘It’s for footy.’

‘Well, I buy him a toy footy ball.’

‘Smart arse, eh? Look, mate, footy players won’t stand for diving in dog shit.’

‘So what about the shit of you footballers, you know, blood and tape, snot and slag, snake oil . . . One time I saw a player pissing in the bushes.‘

‘Nick off, you old bugger, before I collar youse!’

                                                      the jug goes to the well till it breaks

Puskas would be fast asleep, stiff as a corpse, four legs splayed sideways or rigged in the air, the odd nightmare whimper or self-satisfied yawn, when Miklos would at first drag then restrain him all the way to the oval under cover of hedges, walls, trees, darkness. Where freed from his lead, Puskas pranced and cantered, sniffed and stared, ears pointy. As Miklos hugged the boundary line, Puskas would dissolve into the blue-blackness in search of some object of mystery, then seconds later come thundering towards him, a luminous blur, a ripcurl of surf, suddenly a huge, dark shape heaving up at him, panting, teeth bared in exhilaration. Even Miklos was strangely moved. Enough to open his fly and water a bottle-brush, Puskas lifting his leg on the other side.

                                                 the goose goes to the ice to enjoy itself

From the shadows of a seat under the eaves of the clubhouse, with no outline but the minute glow of what must have been a cigarette, came a drawling voice: ‘Hey, you old Hun bastard, did youse know them council dog-catchers are on the prowl?’

‘How do I know? I mind my business only. And my dog’s.’

‘Why ain’t your dog on a lead, mate? And where’s your pooper-scooper?’

‘We do no harm. Nobody here. It’s middle of the night.’

‘A little girl was mauled on the oval Friday arvo. The brute bit her cheek half out. Wasn’t your mongrel was it?’

‘I know nothing.’

‘Must’ve been the flasher, they said.’

Droning, droning nearer, searchlight glaring toward the oval, a helicopter now banking, looping round, nosing closer, racketing louder overhead, the wind getting up. Throw yourself to the ground, the first instinct, but the flares, or floods from the clubhouse roof, picked out even the scuff of dirty paw marks on his gabardine.

Hopeless, nowhere to hide. They could see he’d slipped the lead off the dog. But then he hadn’t been spotted by the frontier guards on that still, cold November night when the cover of snow lit up the sky, so that he could make out the silhouettes of the border guards in those watchtowers rearing up grim and sinister a quarter-mile apart. From time to time shots would ring out, so keep calm, don’t breathe, don’t crunch the snow. Only later in the refugee camp did he learn that the Magyar guards were sympathetic to defectors and were firing in the air to deceive their Soviet overseers.

Those days, nights, early November, wandering zig-zag across ploughed fields, through forest of birch and elm along the railway line towards the border, evading Soviet soldiers guarding bridges and crossroads. Survive at all costs, pushing away thoughts of the mother and father left behind, trying never to think of their fate even now, the horror of it in the shadows of his own guilt, but a terrible pang seized him across the chest. In spite of himself, there were his mother and father dancing before him, smiling, dancing to folk music, Romani, whirling about him with gathering excitement till he felt dizzy, dances he would never dance, zither and hurdy-gurdy he could never get used to. Then people swarming this way and that, most carrying suitcases or children round their neck, suspicious of everyone, including their own freedom fighters, alert for Soviet service men or armed guards by railway stations asking for identity papers, jeeps firing at them near Kormend, at random to clear the road, they realized, when they scrambled to their feet. Even Magyar soldiers, armed or unarmed, were stealing across the border.

                                           the eye of the field and the ear of the forest

One peasant, he fondly remembered, an old woman in black scarf and bunda, a threadbare fur coat, driving a horse and cart, gave him an apple and a small glass of cherry brandy, trembling fearfully and waving away his apology of empty pockets.

                                                only stretch the cover till it reaches

How he had envied the stream of long-legged cranes, migrants from their bolt-holes in the marshes a couple of months earlier, bugling their alarm across the northern skies. Did he never come close to giving himself up for a bowl of gulyas? No, he couldn’t remember.

Miklos fumed trying to bring Puskas to heel, even with baits, small cubes of cooked liver. Sometimes the animal would roll on his back, kick out with muddy paws, and growl in frenzy, too surly-strong for him to slip the leash over his snapping head. Another night, in pursuit of some unsuspecting jogger away from the oval, he disappeared. Miklos himself growled through those desolate streets, straining to hear some distant whelping or skidding of brakes, fearing a dog-catcher under every street light. With much spitting and a hurried shuffle, he reached his gateway, from which bounced Puskas, bold and smug, a syringe aslant his jaws.

Miklos fell upon the animal’s neck, snatched the blunt end of the weapon and cuffed his flanks till the dog coughed and held back in shame.

It was many years since he had left school, the same year as the Uprising, though he clearly remembered the torture of all those oral tests, standing up in front of the class and inspectors with severe faces, giving a talk with false indignation about those corrupt imperialist Hapsburgs and wicked Maria Theresa . . . Now it was time for dog training.

One Sunday afternoon in November, Miklos shuffled up the slope to the clubhouse. Already Puskas was growing agitated, pulling hard at the leash, dropping gouts of saliva, his whimpers growing more urgent, more plaintive, when over the brow Miklos was struck by people, lots of them, in the centre of the oval, in blobs of colour, moving in circles, several circles, walking with some briskness in their red and mauve and yellow tops, parachute tracksuits of blue and green, a woman desperately hanging on to a full-grown German Shepherd, two black poodles leading little, laughing twins, a fluffy white Samoyed; in fact, dogs as well as owners of all breeds and colours and temperaments.

Nervous himself, Miklos was fast approaching dread, having already lost control even before the lesson had begun, Puskas weeing and trotting at the same time, tugging them both into a stuttering run, dragging him closer towards the bellowing German Shepherd that had just slipped his lead. Still pining, Puskas rolled on his back and kicked his hind legs in half-circles, exposing his belly, his genitalia beneath the big, black muzzle of the German Shepherd.

Quite winded, yanking uselessly at the fervid Puskas, all too trusting, Miklos was about to boot away at the fearsome threat.

‘Beast, come here!’ gasped the woman, her complexion ruddy from exertion. ‘Very sorry. He’s really too much for me to manage.’

Her warm smile, her plumpness, that awkwardness with her knock knees put him in mind of some other woman, years before. He had entered an inn that night. It was November too. The barman with harsh German accent shook his hand, strong and jerky, so that he sensed the electricity all over his own body weak with hunger. Or perhaps it was just the memory of that momentous evening that thrilled him still. And the barmaid served him warm bread from the kiln, some schnitzel and a mug of beer.

                                                     praise the day by the sunset

And when he caught a glimpse of the crucifix on the wall, he fought to gulp back the tears, for he knew he’d reached Austria.


Michael Small

June 15-July 1, 1993

published: Gathering Force, spring, no.1, 1994