The curse of Ján Ľupták’s duck

Rimavská Sobota - a small town in Slovakia is the scene of the Ľupták family drama. Photo: Ladislav Luppa (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

Decrees

In the 69 years that Ján Ľupták, Michal’s great-grandfather, was alive he had lived in four countries, although he had hardly ever left Rimavská. Ľupták was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the First World War he became a citizen of Czechoslovakia, a democratic island in a sea of authoritarianism, ruled by the president-philosopher Tomáš Masaryk. During the day, Ľupták was a cobbler, in the evenings he attended gatherings of young communists. The whole of southern Slovakia was an industrial hub which needed workers. With several friends, Ľupták set up the first Communist Party in Rimavská. The authorities did not intervene and Czechoslovakia became the only place in Central Europe where communists were tolerated.

The Second World War caught Ján Ľupták in Hungary. In November 1938, in the Viennese Belvedere Palace, Hitler decided on the division of Czechoslovakia. Southern Slovakia went to Hungary. For the people of Rimavská this was nothing new. Twenty years earlier Hungarian communists fought for the town. They failed in their confrontation with a legion of captives and deserters from the Imperial Royal Army who fought for the independence of Czechoslovakia.

Ľupták spoke Hungarian, like most citizens of Rimavská. In the end, the border is a stone’s throw away. Until today, the majority of those living there identify themselves as “Sobotians”, that is to say, neither Slovak, nor Hungarian; but simply as people from Rimavská Sobota. Language was not a barrier and people on both sides have known each other for a while. Only the new laws were cumbersome. The Hungarians forced a Magyarisation of private enterprise and in order to save his business, Ľupták changed his citizenship to Hungarian.

He was lucky that he was not a Jew. As Profesor Oľga Bodorová writes: “Jews began to settle down in Rimavská only in the 1840s. They were treated as others, their property was confiscated. Every Jew was assigned a commissioner, who managed their business.” Before the war, over half of the factories from southern Slovakia belonged to Jews. In April and May 1944, after the pro-German collaborator Döme Sztójay came to power in Hungary, three ghettoes appeared. In the summer trains to Auschwitz-Birkenau began.

Ľupták kept his head down as much as he could. He did not want to play hero. He had a wife and a son (Branislav) to care for. During the war, his second son, Ján Jr, was born. The Ľuptáks did not get carried away by the enthusiasm of the Slovak national uprising, directed against the Germans and the collaborating Slovakian government. The 18th SS division, “Horst Wessel”, set off from Rimavská to quash the rebellion, although many inhabitants sympathise with the insurgents.

For the Ľuptáks, trouble began after the war. In March 1946 the provisional National Assembly of Czechoslovakia ratified decrees signed by the president of the republic Edvard Beneš. Mass displacements ensued. Slovaks moved from Hungary to Czechoslovakia, and Hungarians moved home to Hungary. The Ľupták family, at least on paper, was Hungarian. They ended up close to the village of Békéscsaba, in the southeast of Hungary, close to the Romanian border. This was the family’s first time out of Rimavská – far away from home and in extreme poverty. There was no one to talk to and nothing to eat.

“Ján thought one should keep quiet, when, in fact, one should have fought,” Michal says. “But that is the way it is here. We succumb to circumstances like the leaves in the wind. We quell everything inside and then it just explodes.”

The family returned to Rimavská in the mid-1950s. After Stalin’s death in 1953, the Eastern bloc revived for a bit. Jazz, the French New Wave and beatniks found their way here. Students took to the streets of Bratislava and Prague and demanded an opening up to the West. Peter Hames, an author who writes about Czechoslovakia’s post-war cinema, notes that this period in the country’s history became the scene of a “cultural thaw”.

The duck

The Tomášová district in Rimavská has a rhythm of its own – work, cleaning and television, which the authorities were giving away for half price. Children played with guns and bullets dug out of the ground – remnants of the war. Few are interested in liberalisation or new trends in culture. There was no cinema in Tomášová and no cafés. Nor were there any charming tenement houses from the 1840s, like the ones that can be found in Rimavská’s square. Today, in Tomášová the contrasts are even starker. On the one side are tasteless mansions with Romanesque columns, swimming pools and golden handles; on the other, furniture strewn around the yards and shreds of a tablecloth act as the front door. Barefoot Gypsy children stare at Land Rovers.

The Ľupták family lived somewhere here after the war – Ján, his wife and grown-up sons (the older Branislav and Ján Jr). There was once a small party in Tomášová. It was the birthday of Ján or his wife, Emilia. They were both born in the springtime: Ján in May and Emilia in April. A bit of booze, some gossip and a little sorrow; maybe more sorrow than gossip. They were discussing politics and Ján was defending the communists. Branislav was on the offensive. For dinner, there was duck which Emilia prepared. She learned the recipe from a Jewish family, at whose house she served before the war. Ján looked at those Jews with suspicion. A Jew cannot go to a brothel, but he has no problem seducing a housemaid. Emilia denies this, but Ján knew better.

The duck is huge, fattened and free-range. There were certainly leftovers after the party ended. And Ján gave those leftovers to his younger son, his namesake. Whether he knew what he was doing or not, is hard to judge. Either way, the duck triggered an avalanche of conflict. Till the end of his life, Branislav would believe that his father left him out deliberately. And that he should have shared the leftovers equally. Branislav feels he has been treated like a bastard his whole life and that maybe his father thinks that Branislav was the son of the Jew whom Emilia served. He disagreed with his father, who supported the communists. And his father helped Branislav get into the military service at the Hungarian-Czechoslovakian border, even though he did not want that. Not just anyone is allowed to serve at the border. Only the best ones are chosen, or those with connections. For Branislav, the duck was the last straw. He vowed never to set foot in the house in Tomášová again.

The dacha

“They argued but no one knew why. Then they would mend fences for a while. And then argue again,” says Michal. “Grandma used to say that a Jew sat deeply inside Branislav. Communism – sure they had different opinions. But it was not always about that. It could easily have been about whether the wind was blowing or not. Or that someone hadn’t closed the door, or closed it too soon. There would be arguments that the soup was too salty or that the laundry was hung improperly. That the sun was shining; or it was raining, what have you…”

The grandma is Ilona – Branislav’s wife. She wanted to be an actress. She was even part of an amateur theatre, but life took such a direction that she became a nurse in a hospital in Rimavská. This is how she met her husband. He was dreaming about being a pilot, but ended up mending machines on a Slovakian state-run farm. Before Ilona, Branislav had another wife and son. The son is a bit like a ghost, or a bad omen. No one from the Ľupták family has ever seen him, but it is certain that he exists. When Branislav died they sent him a letter. A short note that his father passed away and there would be a funeral. It reached the addressee, the postman confirmed.

Branislav had not visited Tomášova. If he saw his family it was at Kurinec, a lake on the outskirts of Rimavská. The surroundings were similar to that seen in Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the sun. There were cottages, kayaks, boats and sunbathers. In the mid-1960s, the Ľuptáks bought a piece of land there. The three of the men, Ján, Branislav and Ján Jr, built a small dacha. By then Branislav had a son with Ilona, a three-year old named Mirek. Another one would be born soon – Ján – the third one in the family.

In August 1968 the Hungarian army entered Slovakia for another brotherly rescue. And the family was again taken over by evil. Perhaps it was, once again, the curse of that stupid duck. In Kurinec, Ján attacked his eldest son with an axe. The blade barely missed the head of little Mirek, sleeping on his dad’s shoulders. Branislav took the axe and threw it into the lake, shouting that he does not want to know his father anymore. They sold the dacha and they split the profit three ways.

Ján died in 1977 after a long battle with lung cancer. But his family found little peace. In the Ľupták family, madness is passed not only from father to son. It also passes from brother to brother. Branislav had always kept Ján Jr at a distance because he was the junior and the father’s favourite. No one had any doubts that he was not the son of the Jew whom Emilia served. And he did not take Branislav’s side when the father swung the axe. He supported the communists. The younger Ľupták cannot forgive his brother for the way he treated their father. When Ján Jr announced that the whole family will be buried in one grave, together with their parents, Branislav threatened: “Over my dead body!”

“This is the dacha.” Michal points towards a two-storey cottage surrounded by a net and an ebullient garden, ten meters away from the lake, five minutes from the forest. “If not for the madmen, we would be landowners.”

Letters

During the communist period the small city of Rimavská Sobota flourished, like most industrial towns. “We used to call it ‘our little feeding centre’. In one place you had a sugar mill, a dairy and meat plant, mills, a brewery and a canned food factory,” says Alina, a historian from the local museum. “And then it all collapsed. Now, in order to make ends meet, I run a dog breeding business on the side.”

In 1992, Slovakia’s GDP shrank by over 20 per cent since 1989. The food industry collapsed. Branislav lost his job at the state agricultural farm. The Tauris meat plant, the main employer in town, went bankrupt. The owner sold it to a private investment fund, called Eco Invest, and built a family vault in a pink palace for the money. He installed cameras next to the vault.

During communism, the authorities built a closed housing estate for doctors on the outskirts of Rimavská, on Dúžavska Street. The estate included 150 flats and a large garden for residents. The problem was that for the doctors it made no sense to move to the peripheries of the city. The estate thus stood empty. In the 1990s members of the Roma community moved in. The place is now called “black city”, descriptive of the burnt down apartments with holes in the windows and the constant bonfires. It is better not to go there at night. If a TV crew comes, it needs a police escort.

Today, Rimavská and the other surrounding cities make up the poorest parts of Slovakia. After the fall of communism, the brothers Branislav and Ján Jr were about 50 years old. They earned a modest income. In fact, they both pay the same rent, as they live next to door to each other in the Rimava district. From one side, they have a view across the river, from the other side, they can see over the tower of the local football stadium. No one knows why the two families do not visit each other. They do not even greet each other on the street.

“Sometimes the postman would make a mistake and bring one of the brothers a letter addressed to the other one,” says Michal, Branislav’s grandson. “And then it would begin. The whole ritual. Leaving the house, shouting, and so that the other one would see him ripping up the letter with a smile on his face.”

The circus continues. Mirko, Branislav’s son, the one who survived the axe attack as a child, cannot come to an agreement with his brother either. They have not spoken for over ten years.

The fire

I am sitting with Michal in the Tatra café on the square, listening to the bells of one of the churches. There are three churches in Rimavská: a Hungarian Calvinist church, a Slovak Protestant and a Catholic one for both Hungarians and Slovaks. There used to be a synagogue as well, but it was destroyed in the 1980s. Rimavská has changed beyond recognition over the last 100 years. Ján, the cobbler, remembered a historical high school building which štúrovcy – the members of the Slovak national movement – attended towards the end of the 19th century. Today, it is a tavern. In the former brothel is a fine dining restaurant. The old cemetery is now a park.  Michal knows every corner of the town. He studies in Bratislava, but he longs for Rimavská.

“Do you know what is the worst?” Michal asks rhetorically. “I have a brother and I also despise him.”

“What irritates you in him?” I ask.

“I do not know,” he shrugs. After a brief pause he adds, “I cannot explain it precisely. He is water and I am fire. Do you think this madness will ever end?”

The protagonists’ names have been changed to protect their identities.

Translated by Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

Dariusz Kałan is a Central Europe correspondent based in Bratislava, Slovakia. He writes for Euronews, World Politics Review, Polityka and Tygodnik Powszechny, among many others.

Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia, Stories