Next week will mark 20 years since we joined the European Union. On this occasion, I’d like to tell a parable. Once upon a time, the members of a prison colony built on an island were set free. The colony was founded after the Great War, this is how the victors, the free Europeans and the Soviets, understood post-war reconstruction, instead of a brave new world, a Great Confinement. After many years, the Soviets could no longer feed the prisoners, and the prison administration grew tired of the constant hassle. The task was to make the prisoners believe that the colony was the new earthly paradise, but, well, you can’t dream collectively on command. The guards whipped and hanged for a while, invented all kinds of villainy, but in the end, they just got fed up with the stubborn prisoners, even malice can become tiresome. So, one day they opened the gates, ‘Everyone can go wherever they want,’ grumbled the prison warden to his vodka glass – observe, the prison warden’s best friend is always a glass.
The prisoners boarded boats, everyone in the flat boat they were brought in decades ago. The Poles, for example, had a quite decent ship, it set off swiftly. The Romanians, however, looked suspiciously at the Szeklers, lest they puncture their already unstable hull with their pocket knives. These Romanians had been schmoozing so much that even before the Great Confinement, they were given the Hungarians’ parapet, including the Szekler-Hungarians, so the Romanian ship looked like it was cobbled together from several pieces.
The Hungarians are always trouble anyway, rebellious people, they understand either the goulash or the cannon from the goulash cannon – and they’re already causing trouble. The Hungarians were punished for this, they ended up on the island with their ship having no rim, distributed to the neighboring barrack dwellers. When asked about this, the Hungarians just shrugged and said, no problem, they can still raft along, when they need to take love to the other shore, Hungarians are great love boatmen, they’ll take love across even if they have to hold it between their teeth – and if the sea pours into their boat, they’ll grab onto the deck and watch the water run off.
Now they were grinning and shouting ahoy, St. Stephen’s boat had weathered many storms, even in pieces they’re held together by being Hungarian, they said, and started rowing.
The colonial residents set out on the open sea. Liberated people were having fun, slapping the waves with their oars, making sails from shirts and pants, but before they even left the coastal waters, they met the free European fleet.
I must say, it was an impressive fleet, the newly freed prisoners were drooling. The free Europeans, however, looked suspiciously at these drooling people, “Did you see how dirty their nails are?’ they whispered amongst themselves, ’I’m not even sure they know how to eat with a knife and fork,’ grumbled the first mate to the captain, who was just inviting the leaders of the freed prisoners to dinner. ‘You don’t need cutlery for spoiled food,’ the captain shrugged, and had all the expired food from the ship’s stores transferred to the former barrack dwellers, who were grateful even for this. Heck, congealed tinned beans still seemed better than hot water flavored with chicken feet. And since they made sails from their shirts and pants, they thanked the free Europeans for their cast-off clothes too, and the free Europeans could feel like good people and buy new clothes, now that so much space was freed up in the closet.
At dinner, the captain made the following offer to the barrack dwellers: they hand over all usable raw materials, from the sails made of shirts and pants to the not yet rotted floor planks, to the oars carved from hardwood. In exchange, the fleet will tow the barrack dwellers to the Brussels port. In the meantime, they’ll give them some wage labor so they don’t get bored during the towing, and allow their daughters and sons to work on the beautiful ships. And one day they too can have such beautiful ships, the captain winked, there’s a distant port where everyone will eventually arrive, there they’ll get everything, ‘They say there the lion grazes with the lamb,’ the first mate enthused too.
One of the Hungarian leaders snapped up his head at this, saying to be careful with that grazing lion, because where we come from, they say you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The others didn’t understand, the Hungarians always come with such convoluted sayings, but they didn’t want to decipher Hungarian zoology, their vision was blurred by the mirage of EUtopia.
What a name, the Hungarians grumbled, uto-pia (in Hungarian after-drink), not even a little enticing pálinka before the job. The Hungarians didn’t understand the free Europeans’ language either, no wonder, the free Europeans used language freely too, one day a word meant this, the next day that.
They reached the Brussels port with difficulty. Sometimes the former barrack dwellers would grumble that they could perhaps go faster, but what could they do, the sails made of shirts and pants and the oars carved from hardwood ended up on the beautiful ships, the better end of the tow rope was also in the hands of the free Europeans, so they couldn’t really make a fuss. In the Brussels port, however, there was already a great tumult, because by the time they towed the barrack dwellers there, the bright-eyed Brussels bigwigs had figured that they wouldn’t go to Utopia, but would bring Utopia to Brussels.
This is where we are now. They transport the grazing lions on separate ships, a rainbow-colored flag flutters happily above the port authority andthe bells of the old churches have been removed so they don’t clang when the muezzin calls to prayer.
The former barrack dwellers rock in their boats in the Brussels port, waiting for the port authority to distribute daily rations. The Romanians look suspiciously at the Szeklers, lest they puncture their ship with their pocket knives, while the Poles, who set off swiftly, are just dismantling the masts. The Hungarians are preparing for another love project, weaving their own canvas to make shirts and pants that can also serve as sails if the situation calls for it, and the situation increasingly resembles prison times, the free Europeans have started to become Soviet-like. Others repair their ships, carving oars. And interestingly, everyone is installing weaponry, because the Hungarians might be right, the grazing lion is indeed suspicious.
The lambs just keep their silence, watching and not understanding why the grass is being taken away from them for the lions. They know that this will only make the lions hungrier, because meat-eaters think of one thing when they see hay: the herbivore, which is made of meat.
Notes:
“Great War”: Refers to World War I, which resulted in significant territorial changes for Hungary (Treaty of Trianon, 1920).
“Great Confinement”: Alludes to the post-WWII Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
“20 years since we joined the European Union”: Hungary joined the EU in 2004.
“St. Stephen’s boat”: Refers to St. Stephen, the first King of Hungary, symbolizing Hungarian statehood and continuity.
“Szekler-Hungarians”: An ethnic Hungarian group primarily living in Transylvania, Romania.
“Goulash cannon”: A field kitchen, metaphorically used here to represent Hungarian culture (goulash) and rebelliousness (cannon).
Several Hungarian idioms are used, such as “kutyából nem lesz szalonna” (literally “a dog won’t become bacon,” meaning people don’t change their nature).
Homeland Dictionary 