Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet
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A milk offering was made to the gods every morning and every evening. A small amount of foaming fresh milk was suddenly poured in between the planks of the cowshed floor from the flower-patterned enamel pail. It seemed accidental, but this was in reality a necessary gesture, a custom kept by everyone. The bits of manure clinging to the cow hairs were tossed out, the dirt removed from the milk’s surface. You only had to blow on the foam to one side if you wanted to drink the milk straight from the pail. The milk was poured into a mug so a child could slurp it up while still warm. It is forbidden to place a knife or a fork in the milk because that will make the milk bloody and the animal’s udder sore, they believed. We may never reach into the milk with a knife, said the gods, weary in the evenings, when my mother sat, hands immobile in her lap, on the kitchen stool.
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I first saw Manci at my great-grandfather’s, she was in the cowshed and still just a heifer; I might have been four or five years old. My older sister and I had to kiss each other above Manci’s head. The adults held both of us up, this was a good-luck ritual. The heifer had been a surprise, a gift, I could see my mother was happy. Manci was hope
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itself, because no longer did the children have to keep going every evening from the New Row to the Old Village, carrying the polka-dot two-liter canister to get milk. My mother was happy the issue was finally resolved, she would no longer have to quarrel all the time with Máli, who was tired of having to strain the milk for us. That’s just putting on airs. Why bother, it’s just as good unstrained. You just have to blow off the cow hairs from the foamy surface, and sometimes the manure stuck on the clumps of hair. The herd of cows
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lived in the Tisztaberek forest, where we went to visit Manci. That was the custom. The owner went looking for its calf. Speaking to her so she would get used to his voice. To not forget her family. Sometimes we went with my father or my grandfather. I remember once the cow herd, as we arrived, was still out by the shady resting place. In the summer heat we had to wait until the relief of the afternoon to drive the herd back through the shallows of the Túr River, to refresh their bodies. The water reached up only to below their chest. My father and grandfather summoned Manci with salt, enticing her, then whispered into her ear. And the calf-eyed animal came along, she licked the salt. [ . . . ]
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Manci was thirteen years old and calved for the last time, she didn’t come home in the evening with the herd, instead she hid. She calved in the small forest next to the old mud-brick drying ditch. I was out looking for her that evening with my flashlight. We were worried because she was old. Without help, there could be problems. Manci was elderly already. For a long time already it had not been right to make her calve every year, the poor thing. The veterinarian said that he recommended once every two years at the most. Slowly, time had passed her by
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as well. Manci was a bit like a member of the family, she moved with us, got used to the new village, the shed, the herd, and the gate as well. She got used to things just like everyone else, and came home regularly, as the slow herd trudged along in the evening, carrying the setting sun between their horns. Their great stomachs swayed, their strained udders, the gods waited for them by the entrance to their houses. The gods stood
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and spit into the side of the ditch. We found her the next day. That night we had stopped searching. We knew she had hidden somewhere, as she always did. Every two years the inseminator, the Bull with a Necktie, as the guffaws called him, paid a visit. It was a comfortable job, you could make a good living. The inseminator got a service car, even gasoline money. He dosed the bull sperm into a long tube placed inside the cow. Because after the adventure with the herder, Manci could not have any more doings with a bull, only artificial fertilization remained. The next day
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I searched the village boundaries, by bike, with my mother. Manci gazed at us meekly when she caught sight of us. The calf’s hair had already been licked to shining. The little one got onto its knees with trembling legs, then stood up. It’s a bull, said my mother, half to herself. Well, now, Manci, you’re clever, she caressed the body weary from birth, grateful that even alone Manci had been able to bring a son into the world, and at this age. It was as if my mother, who could no longer give birth, envied her. She loved her very much. But our Manci
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was broken by this birth. She hardly gave any milk. Nor could she calve anymore. We kept her for months yet, but my father, who said we must put her down, was victorious. My mother didn’t want to. She wept when they took her away. Manci stepped onto the truck bed gently. Her cow’s eyes were just as sad as when I saw her for the first time. Deep black, meek, and sad. My God, my God, my mother mumbled, do not judge me.
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Ottilie Mulzet is a translator of poetry and prose, as well as a literary critic. She was awarded the Tibor Déry Prize in 2020, and her translation of Borbély’s Final Matter: Selected Poems 2004-2010 was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize 2020. She is based in Prague.