‘Once I dreamt that they came back,’ Karcsi said instead of giving a straight answer. ‘I dreamt that I was home, not this home, but the home where I used to live before. In my dream, I was alone in the house, and I heard the doorbell ring, and I knew it was them, that they had died but now they were coming back to me. So I ran up to the door, opened it, and there they were. They were standing in the doorway, but somehow they were still dead.’

He scratched his palm.

‘It was a weird dream.’

I thought about it for a little while.

‘How did they die?’

‘They were shot. In the war.’

I didn’t want to seem stupid, so I didn’t ask which war that was.

After my first wake, the adults praised me for my good behavior. The next day my parents took me to the cinema, which is several hours away, even by car. I was good because I had watched. Never once looked away.

Many children don’t dare to watch. They don’t want to see what happens to the dead. Often the relatives also retreat to the house, or turn away and let the others carry out the job. Nobody blames them. It’s all right. We sympathize with their pain. A wake is not a pretty sight.

First of all, naturally, the deceased arrives. The dead are buried in light plank coffins so that it will be easy for them to break out. When the watchman sees the dead crawl out of the grave he blows the whistle. As soon as he hears the whistle the sacristan rings the bells in the church too. The whistle and bell sound across the entire village. After this, it takes about fifteen to thirty minutes for the corpse to arrive at the yard where the wake is being held. Animals can’t stand the dead, so the corpse’s journey is accompanied by howling, growling, barking, and squealing. Most of the relatives have already collapsed by this time, especially if the deceased is a roarer. Not all of them roar; some swallow too much earth when trying to get out of the grave and others just come back mute. A roarer is a terrible thing, painful for the mourners. A child shouldn’t hear its own father’s corpse roar in the night.

Eventually, the corpse shuffles through the gate, which we leave wide open. The men grab scythes and hooks mounted on the end of long sticks. The dead are not particularly quick, so the men can easily surround them and shepherd them towards the barn. The barn is prepared for the processing of the dead, the butchers are already waiting inside. When the deceased is near enough to the barn, the men step into action.