Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Little Fluff”

whacked Joe on the back. We both roared. I, because it was true; he, because he had no idea why. So I thanked him Hungarianly, the way it is here useful. ‘B-but – why?’ sneered he, once a handsome whelp of a lad, now snatching his hand away from the wad of money I was trying to squash in it. ‘You know why’. I crammed the notes back into his palm. Dirt poor, he pocketed it gingerly, hunched his shoulders, shook his head, turned his back. And walked off. Not for a minute knowing why.

Now, that’s what good is. Joska’s care of the worm – a

modern-day psalm.

*

May 28.

Evening again. On my usual walk through the dusk, I took the shadier path up the high hills of Sopron. At first, it went under latticed shades, the branches latched overhead. Then the track widened into airy woodlands, brighter, I saw, with returning light, roan-pink on the bark of the elms, a flickering hue of May green on the grass. Splotches of bluebells under silver birches as the terrain wound rolling under the gloam of evening’s lights. Across the hills, the melancholy cuckoos cried. On return for dinner, inside the Lövér’s reception hall, there it came extending again, life’s once magnanimous hand, as in the foyer stood two highly attractive and deeply black guests by the desk, checking in. I might have smiled to them.

‘Abend!’ spoke the woman in German, as people do in this

border town.

‘Oh hi!’ I must have chimed back in chummy Oz, ‘Nice to 123