Dóra Igaz: A Boy from the Team
'Yeah, right. And Mars bars are made in outer space!' he squealed into the phone. Then another line jumped into his head and he threw that one in for good measure: 'And Hitler was a nice guy!' – Children's literary translator Anna Bentley introduces Dóra Igaz's A Boy from the Team.
20 October 2020
According to the book’s publisher, A Boy from the Team by Dóra Igaz (Pagony, 2018) is the first novel by a Hungarian writer that tells 10-12-year-old Hungarian children about how the Holocaust happened in their country. The author weaves together two threads; one from the present day, the other a personal story from 1944. When Danny, an 11-year-old Jewish boy in the present day, goes to his friend Tóbi’s house, he is already troubled by something he has overheard about his great-grandfather being sent to a 'deathcamp'. Then Tóbi’s grandfather tells the boys how, in 1944, he watched the gendarmes take away one of his football-playing friends. Danny and Tóbi, who interact on social media and play video games, gradually realise how similar they are to those boys from the past. They struggle to understand why people in 1944 acquiesced in the persecution of the Jews and determine to take action in their own time to combat the casual anti-Semitism voiced by some children in their class.
To speak out or keep your head down - this is a choice which may not seem so clear-cut when you are immersed in the situation. In a nod to Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness, she describes how the outrageous events happening before the eyes of the boy in 1944 ’seemed so natural’. Igaz’s readers will conclude that in the battle between good and evil, the baddies do sometimes win, that the silent majority can also be culpable, but that everyone can do something about this. This is the story of those who failed to act.
Dóra Igaz has written a series of books for young children about going to the doctor. Before tackling the Holocaust in A Boy from the Team, she also wrote for children about the internet, sibling rivalry and starting school.
We Don’t Make Jokes About Hitler (An Excerpt from Chapter Three)
There wasn’t much of the day left. A quick dinner and shower, then he logged in briefly to the class’s chatroom. The girls were discussing something lame like what they had to take in the next day for technology. Tóbi and Pete were deep into who was going to score the most goals at the weekend League match. This reminded Greg that they hadn’t been able to play their match at school because of the weather. He tapped in, were gonna wipe the floor with you lot, which made Dani laugh out loud. There were several reasons for this – one, it was insane, that Greg, of all people should forget the apostrophe in 'we're'. He was the best student in the class. Two, the comment itself made no sense as they never knew ahead of time who was going to play who. But, anyway, it sounded good. And Danny answered in the same tone, just switching from chat to the telephone to avoid any chance that he would make a spelling mistake.
'Yeah, right. And Mars bars are made in outer space!' he squealed into the phone. Then another line jumped into his head and he threw that one in for good measure: 'And Hitler was a nice guy!'
He was shocked when his father snatched his mobile out of his hands and switched it off. Then he braced himself for the usual scene. Other times, when they cut him off for something he’d done wrong, his parents started shouting. Now, though, there was silence, a really weird silence. Danny had no idea what was going on.
'What is it this time?' He looked from his mother to his father.
The silence went on and Danny was getting angry now, really angry. Not only because of the disconnected telephone but because his parents weren’t telling him anything.
'What?' he repeated a bit louder. 'It’s not bedtime yet!'
'Where did you get that from?' said his mother finally, not in her usual 'I am mad at you' voice but more sadly, and Danny still didn’t know what to make of it. Why was his mother cross with him? He wasn’t even sure what she was asking him, for that matter.
'Where did I get what from?' He raised his eyebrows in bafflement. ‘The Mars bar thing or the Hitler thing?’
'Don’t make a joke out of it!' his father burst out, and slammed the phone onto the table so hard that Danny thought the screen would crack. 'You of all people!'
For a moment Danny looked daggers at his father. Then he shrugged his shoulders. OK, no jokes. Have it your way.
'Can I get my phone back?' he asked, when he felt the atmosphere had softened somewhat. To his great relief, his father pressed his mobile back into his hand. He didn’t usually get it back so easily once it had been confiscated. Danny had no idea why this time was different, but he thought it better not to inquire. Instead, he went into his room and closed the door behind him. He had an hour before bedtime, and he wanted to make the most of it.
The others were still online, so he could chat some more. Normally, he would have been interested in the game the others were talking about, but he decided to say goodbye to the class. Mum and Dad were talking, and he could hear it through his door. They weren’t whispering, but they were talking in such low voices that Danny felt sure what they were saying wasn’t intended for his ears. He decided to listen and find out what they were talking about. He opened the door a crack and stuck his head halfway out.
Dad was walking up and down the room, as if he was all wound up and wanted to work off the tension through his legs. His mum was sitting with her chin in her hands, staring straight ahead. She looked sad, and Danny could only assume that the previous topic was still in the air, but as to why that might be, he couldn’t make out at first.
'We shouldn’t have jumped on him like that.' said his mother. 'He had no idea what he'd said.'
'Worse luck!' snorted his father.
His mother nodded. Then she shook her head. It seemed she herself wasn’t sure if she agreed with his father.
'He's only little.' she said, playing the trump card she could always rely on. 'He doesn’t need to know about all that stuff just yet.'
'What, that we don’t make jokes about Hitler?' said Dad, so loudly that Danny froze in the doorway. Mum made soothing motions with her hand. It wasn’t clear if she was trying to dampen down the volume or what he was saying. Whatever the case, Dad heaved a great sigh, as if he didn’t know how to go on either.
Danny could feel his pulse pounding in his throat. He was afraid his heart was beating so loudly his parents would be able to hear it on the other side of the door and then he would never know where this conversation was leading. Though it looked as if it wasn’t leading anywhere. Mum was silent. And so was Dad. Some kind of secret was trembling in the air or something, at least, that his parents wanted to keep from him. Because they thought it wasn’t for kids. Like the graphic novels he’d borrowed once from Pete and his parents had confiscated. Or like yesterday’s action film on the TV. Always the kind of things that Danny found the most interesting, if only because they were disapproved of.
'He ought to know about it,' said his dad now so quietly that Danny could hardly make out what he said. He looked over to his mother for clarification.
'If you’d seen how he and his friend were playing with toy cars…' sighed his mum. Both Dad and Danny could see that the conversation was coming back round to the 'he's only little' line again, and Danny was cursing the day he'd got the Matchbox cars, or the fact that his mother had seen him playing with them, at least. Dad was shaking his head though. He seemed to want to pass right over this point.
'His great-grandfather was just his age when he was sent to a deathcamp in 1944,' he said even more quietly than before. Danny thought, at first, he had misheard the word. Then, when his mother answered, he was sure he had understood it right. Deathcamp. His father had really said that. Deathcamp!
He didn’t want to eavesdrop anymore, but he didn’t move. He was hanging on to hear in the hopes that what they said next would clear up what this was all really about. But his mother didn’t say anything and his father didn’t go on either. And Danny felt it was the silence itself that was bringing him out in a sweat.
When, at last, he got to bed, he went out like a light. Later in the night he awoke with a start. As moonlight was shining into his room, he thought at first that was what had woken him up. He even got out of bed to pull the curtains more tightly across, but, though his room was now plunged into complete darkness, he still couldn’t get back to sleep. That word was echoing in his ears. It was worse than the nightmares he had had after that gory action film. Dreams he could shoo away if he wanted to, and he always had the option of turning off the TV at the scariest parts. But he didn’t know how to deal with this. What bothered him most was that he hadn’t the foggiest what it meant and he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Dóra Igaz was born in 1970 in Budapest. She completed her college studies at Tel Aviv University and the Faculty of Arts of Eötvös Loránd University. Her books, written with a teacher's eye, place the typical problems of primary school students at the center of their action. A Boy from the Team boldly tells 10-12-year-olds of the Holocaust, and in a way that all readers easily identify with the protagonist, Danny, today's boy in every way.
Anna Bentley has been translating Hungarian literature since 2015. She graduated from the Balassi Institute, Budapest’s Literary Translation Programme in 2018. Her translation of Ervin Lázár’s well-loved children’s book Arnica, the Duck Princess was published by Pushkin Children’s Press in 2019. Bentley translated Anna Menyhért's Women’s Literary Tradition and Twentieth-Century Hungarian Writers (Brill, 2019).
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