Ervin Lázár - The China Doll

A very old literary trope is that of the stranger coming to town. The stranger in his newness is able to reflect the mores, the evils, the hopes and the hypocrisies of the town and, usually by the time he leaves (whether he leaves on his own or is chased out differs depending on the story), a lesson has been learnt.

To the nameless village of Ervin Lázár's story, The China Doll, the magnetic Csurmándi has arrived. He speaks in sweeping tones, and his words echo the sayings of the Hungarian people post-WWIII. The villagers suspect he has come from somewhere, probably nearby. Maybe from “Dorog, or possibly the county seat.” Either way, he's not from around here.

Csurmándi was a bundle of energy and self-confidence. His dark eyes gleamed above wide cheekbones. The locks of hair falling over his forehead were like the wings of a bird about to take to flight. His hunched shoulders too suggested staunch determination. You could tell that he was supporting walls on his swarthy shoulders, the two supporting pillars of a new world.

Csurmándi tells them that “from this day forth, everything here is yours!” Which is nice, but puzzling. The villagers don't know what to make of it. Suddenly a woman, one Mrs. Lajos Bűtös, begins to cry. Csurmándi frowns, and wonders why. Her daughter, her daughter has died! Not recently, but she did, and that means she can't be here to listen to Csurmándi's words. No matter, says Csurmándi. Exhume the girl, bring her to him. He tells them:

“Man,” he said very quietly, “for us, impossible is not an option.”

Others step forward. They ask about their own children. Csurmándi tells them the same. Excitement and incredulity spread through the villagers. They don't believe their children will come back to them, but they want to, and Csurmándi, Csurmándi is so calm, that perhaps it might be true.

That night, they exhume Mrs. Bűtös's daughter.

When the spades reached the coffin, the people waited with baited breath. Mrs. Bűtös stood by the gravesite like a ghost, her eyes round, her kerchief pressed to her lips. The men hoisted up the coffin and placed it next to the freshly dug out earth. The rotten boards gave way, falling into palm-size pieces, and the little girl’s mourning smock revealed flashes of itself before the eyes of those who’d gathered around her grave. It was as pristine and white as snow.

Ferkó Császár, a drowned child, is also exhumed. Where before his family could not stand to gaze upon his deformed dead body, he now looks as fresh and young as he did when alive.

And now here Lázár tips his hand. If these children may be brought back, then what of the adults? One woman wants to bring back her mother. The others say no, Csurmándi specifically warned that only children were appropriate. But Lázár's villagers, drunk with the possibility of regaining their dead family members, ignore the admonition, and the woman's mother is exhumed as well.

The results are suitably horrific. Instead of the pristine bodies coming to life as Csurmándi promised, the greed of the villagers instead causes them to revert to their horrific years-old dead selves. And Csurmándi, quite naturally, is nowhere to be found.

Lázár's message is clear. It's an old, but always relevant message – don't be greedy, don't ask for more than you deserve, don't cheat the system to get ahead when you know it's not right. It's an essentially conservative message in that it dissuades from striving to reach the stars, but it's also, if we are to be honest, a wholly sensible lesson to learn. Lázár's language is rich with the physicality of the dead children as they are exhumed, it lavishes attention upon the process and their bodies, both when they are pristine, and when they crack and rot back to what they were before Csurmándi worked his magic.

And Csurmándi? He is the hope of the Hungarians immediately following the second World War, when it seemed that everything was possible. Well, it wasn't, and part of the problem was the ravenous appetites of the citizenry. Lázár's metaphor doesn't quite extend to the terrible hardships and mass executions experienced under the Communist regime, and then the brutality of Kádár's rule. But it works well and can, if one wishes, be completely ignored as a metaphor, for the writing is strong enough to hold up without worrying about all that unsettling business. The China Doll is a strong story, well told and worth reading, but it stops shy of greatness.

The China Doll by Ervin Lázár is a short story from Words Without Borders' August 2010 edition, Writing from Hungary issue. All of the work reviewed is freely available online.

See Also

Other stories from the Words Without Borders August 2010 edition, Writing from Hungary issue include:
---Esterházy, Péter - Kornél Esti’s Bicycle Or: The Structure Of The World
---Háy, János - Lou's Last Letter to Feri's Wife
---Kornis, Mihály - The Toad Prince
---Parti Nagy, Lajos - Oh, Those Chubby Genes
---Tar, Sándor - Slow Freight

Also of interest: Index of short stories under review