The Convalescent (17 page)

Of love with fat ladies, of tidy, gruesome deaths, of bread so warm it could not be sliced, only pulled, the bread was the worst of Árpád’s desires. It was the one thing he could not have. Every morning, the Grand Prince awoke to the sound of ját smacking the stones, so you might also say that
aside from fleeing Pechenegs, it was for the want of thick, brown loaves of steaming bread that the kingdoms of Europe suffered Hungarian incursions for the next fifty years.

Árpád was merely a man desperate for his carbohydrates.

But now, here, on the eve of the Great Leg Wrestling Match, Lili arrived at his tent, and he beckoned her inside. He offered her a plate piled with ját.

Lili stared at the plate distastefully. She had been expecting a fair amount of pomp: exotic rugs carpeting the dirt floor, canopies of fur decorated with prized collectibles. She had seen the Grand Prince riding his great white horse around camp, and knew that he wore brilliant armor, heart-shaped across his chest. Around his helmet, the wings of the turul bird gleamed. She also knew that the leader of the Hungarian tribes ate better than anyone, so needless to say, the tent was a significant disappointment. Árpád’s armor was flung messily into a corner. Two Persian rugs his men had stolen off a German merchant were rolled tight, lying like logs across the center walking area. Dogs had pissed on the rugs, filling the tent with an acrid, sour odor that seemed to linger on everything. Cracked jugs of grain alcohol lay emptied on their sides, fruit flies danced above a bowl of sweetened figs, and various flags stolen from various armies, moist from the wet country, were folded and stacked, gathering the slow, dark mold that would eventually consume them.

She picked up a clammy ball of ját and scowled. “This sucks,” she said.

Árpád just grinned and lay a burlap bag down next to the rugs. He began unbuckling his outfit that once, to Lili, had looked fine and regal, and now appeared depressingly quotidian. He tossed his helmet onto a small table littered with stale shards of ját. “I don’t like the crusts,” he said.

Then he stripped to nothing. With his armor removed, his already small girth halved. His skin was surprisingly thin and hairless, like a sheared rabbit. His tiny body shook from the cold, and he reached for her to warm it.

Lili demurred. Although she always won the leg-wrestling contests, when it came to men she was really quite flawed. She tried many of them, like a naturalist who examines many specimens of a species to better understand the general whole. It never worked out. She sighed and removed everything but her laced boots, which frankly weren’t worth the effort, and lay her fleshy body across the burlap.

Árpád jumped eagerly upon her, as though a child upon a featherbed.

In seconds, it was over. Lili barely felt a thing. It was a lesson, she decided, an important lesson about greatness and fame.

The Grand Prince rolled over onto his side and grabbed the bowl of rancid figs: “
Füge
?” he offered.

“No thanks,” she said.

Árpád shrugged and popped three into his mouth. He chewed with his mouth open. A bit of moist fig flew from his tongue and stuck to his mustache. “Come again tomorrow,” he said, his mouth full.

Lili shuddered. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.” She sat up and began dressing.

Árpád’s forehead crumpled. “But I’m the
leader
,” he said. “You
wanted
me.”

Lili kept buttoning her cloak.

Árpád sat up quickly. “I’ll give you anything you want,” he said, and tried massaging her thick shoulders. He pecked her neck with figgy kisses. He reached over and began unbuttoning what she was buttoning. “What do you want?” he asked. “You name it. It’s yours.” He turned one of the buttons in his fingers.

Lili looked at him. “Anything?”

And so, over the following year, really out of nothing better than good old-fashioned pre-medieval ennui, Lili became Árpád’s mistress. Árpád adored her. His own Tribal Mate for Life was a thin and delicate woman who became annoyed with him if he stroked her with a finger. He felt a kind of freedom with Lili that he had never experienced, and he greatly anticipated her visits. He would sit impatiently in his tent, lifting the flap every few seconds to see if she had arrived, and when her figure came lumbering around the corner, he quivered with want: “Love Button!” he cried.

“I’m starving,” said Lili.

Árpád began ordering special food for her, and fussed over the particulars of the meals. When she came to his tent, they would engage in their lovemaking and then gorge themselves on fresh figs and deerfat. Then they would move on to a veritable buffet of spiced meats and stews, and finish with sour apples drizzled with creamy honey. Lili grew plump and cheerful. The Grand Prince wrapped his arms around her—he loved how they could not quite fit
all
the way around—and was most pleased.

“You make me very,
very
happy,” he said, glowing.

“Sure, whatever. Me too,” she said.

Of course, Lili was far less satisfied with Árpád. One night, again be-mused by what passed for sexual prowess, she yawned and stepped outside for a pee. A large man was lying on the ground next to the tent, curled into a huge ball, weeping.

It was the Giant. After losing the wrestling match, it proved too difficult to return to work and put himself to use; he felt abandoned by Lili, by the men who had recruited him to wrestle, and was now soaked with loneliness. To want to be a part of a community that does not want you back was a savage, unsettling feeling.

Lili looked at him, and was stirred with pity. She squatted down and stroked one of his large ears. “I won the match,” she whispered. “Now
you
shall win.”

“If I can be of
use
,” he said, miserably, and rolled onto his enormous back.

Lili climbed upon him and, bungling, was surprised at how well they fit together. His large parts fit evenly around her smaller parts. Her smaller parts fit neatly inside his large parts. Moving slowly, in a thick, strong tumble, Lili saw something flicker in his eyes, something similar to the flash of recognition that Szeretlek had seen when they first wrestled. It lasted only for as long as one might snap a finger or clear their nasal passages, but there it was. Lili was surprised to find herself in love with the Giant.

“
Szeretlek
,” she said softly.

“That’s my name,” he said.

Weeks passed, and Lili’s visits to Árpád became more and more infrequent. If she came, she would appear bored and uninterested. She nibbled listlessly on whatever foods he had prepared, and then laid herself down on the burlap and went to sleep. Once he ordered up an entire ham for her, and seven days and nights went by without a word. The ham sat, cold and rubbery, on his table until Árpád finally threw it to the dogs. They devoured it in a greedy, snarling mass. Árpád leapt from the table in his messy tent and began hurling plates and kicking the dogs with his bare feet.

“Love is a sharp-edged triangle!” he shouted. “A sharp-edged triangle is the head of a spear!”

He grabbed his sword and went looking for the slut.

In minutes, he had gathered together a search party. Árpád still rode M, though the horse was older now, and every few miles the party had to stop so M could rest. While they were stopped, Árpád wandered around camp, throwing back the flaps to every tent he could find, asking if anyone knew where to find the Woman with Enormous Thighs. Most of the Hungarians had never actually met the Grand Prince, and had only heard wildly embellished stories about the success of his incursions, east and west. The Árpád they imagined was a large and domineering man with clear, agnostic eyes, a thunderous voice, and many large and discernable pectoral muscles. When they met him face-to-face, no one believed that he was actually the Grand Prince at all. They stared at the tiny man in front of them with his dragging cloaks, his bird-helmet hanging low over his eyes, his sword looking as though it anchored his legs to the ground. They covered their mouths with their hands and begged, “You’re
who
?”

At which point Árpád stiffened, shifting the sword around his belt. “I’m
Árpád. Great and noble
.”

And then they burst out laughing.

A long month went by, and eventually Árpád’s own men became amused that he couldn’t find the woman he was looking for. Especially such a
large
woman. “Maybe she’s hiding in this,” they said, laughing behind his back, holding up the horses’ tails. One afternoon Árpád heard their laughing, dismounted M, and walked quickly over to the men. He grabbed the one who had been laughing the loudest by the foot, and in one clean motion, pulled him from his horse and swiftly dangled a sword above his trembling body.

“Do you desire to be cut in half?” Árpád cried.

The Hungarian shook his head vigorously.

“Do you desire to be exposed to hopeless situations?”

The man started to cry.

Árpád pointed his sword at the other men. “And what about
you
?” he shouted.

They put up their hands. They bit their lips.

Árpád replaced his sword on his belt. “Wait here,” he said, and then, to give old M a rest, the Grand Prince left on foot. He walked through an orchard, collecting hard little apples and eating them as he went. Along the way, he thought a good deal about his current life-position. Despite the fact
that under his leadership the Hungarians had managed to instill fear into the heart of every good and civilized member of Christian society, not all that much had changed for Árpád personally in the thirty years since he had led his people into Carpathia. His voice had not changed; the Pechenegs were still hunting Magyar for sport; the Gyepü still needing looking after. He was still gnawing ját every morning for breakfast, and now this—his fat, delicious Lili had abandoned him. He was in an exceedingly bad mood. “Muther-loving—” he grumbled, kicking pebbles as he walked. “Stupid, pooping idiots.”

Suddenly the ground changed beneath his boots. The long soft green grasses became mud. Árpád took a few more steps. It began to rain. Baffled, he looked up. He was still in the region of the Hungarian camps—only seconds ago the sky had been clear. Back over the valley, through the apple trees, the sun was still shining. He twisted his mustache thoughtfully, staring at the sprawl of the sky, marveling how the dark cloud had spread over the hills. How it only seemed to cover this one particular region. Then it really started coming down.

Árpád spotted a large, poorly assembled tent, and quickly ran over.

The grass that surrounded the tent had long ago browned. For all this rain, he wondered why there were no visible gardens. There were no designated fields around the camp for animal husbandry. The only animal around for miles was a lone cow standing next to the tent, so thin you could see its scalloped ribs; so morose it didn’t even look up when he approached. The Grand Prince hung back, nervously. He wondered if he had accidentally stumbled upon a crew of Pechenegs who would no doubt be pleased as punch to slaughter the leader of the Hungarians in a manner most unsavory, when a flap of the tent turned, and a dozen children scurried outside. The children saw him and halted in the rain, staring wide-eyed at his regal garments. When they understood that he would make no move against them, they splashed in the mud around his feet, and then spontaneously sprinted across the open plain.

These children were not like Normal Hungarian Children, with fat limbs, the ones who helped their parents carry water and feed the animals. Who played games in the grasses on warm days. These children were
filthy
, with black, bowl-shaped eyes. Dusty skin. Clothes hung in shreds from their arms, and many of them appeared to have some kind of notable
disability or disfigurement. They limped and coughed as they ran, and their heads were atypically large, tipping side-to-side on their shoulders. They were all chasing one of the smallest children, a boy. The boy had a bad leg, and although he was clearly doing his best to escape from the others, they gained quickly and easily upon him.

As the boy hurtled himself towards the forest, it looked to Árpád as though a piece of skin had come loose from his body. It flapped over his arm, like a flag in the wind, and when the children finally caught him, he let out a helpless squeal.

“Sacrifice!” they chanted. “
Enni Hús! Enni Hús!
”

The broken boy was lifted into the air by the others and became disoriented. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and his tongue lolled out, and they carried him thus, vanishing into the forest. Árpád was familiar with gypsies. Gypsies cast spells on people and wooed them with handkerchiefs, gold chains, and other sorts of suspicious hardware. But these were not gypsies. These were—he didn’t know
what
they were.

He took a deep breath, held firmly on to his sword, and entered the tent.

The following morning, I awake to find a small woman standing at the foot of my bed. She’s of an indistinguishable age, wearing a brown tweed suit with both front jacket buttons neatly cinched. Her hair is tied back as far as it will go, pulling smooth the wrinkles in her skin. Her lips purse together in a dry smooch. Eyeglasses fill her face.

“Bonjour Rovar,” she says archly.

She’s standing in high heels pressed together at the ankle, holding the dictionary in one hand, a long stick that serves as a pointer in the other. It’s Madame Chafouin.

“Get up,” she says, and slaps her pointer.

I scramble out of bed.

“
Distraire
,” she recites. “
To be disturbed. To amuse oneself
,” and then lowers her pointer.

Draped across the corrugated rubber flooring is a long piece of cloth or fabric—perhaps something the Indian dropped from his bag of textiles ages and ages ago? But when I look closer, I realize it’s not cloth at all— It’s skin.
My
skin. I take off my clothes and begin searching. Although I find the usual flakes, the smaller peels, I find nothing that resembles this pelt, this shedded towel of epidermis.