Chapter №2 – Hungarian Maid Tutoring

The sun shines, the birds sing, and Boris? Boris likes to take a nap. He’d take a nap forever if not for the fact that he eventually gets hungry like any other human being.

For the first time in a while, Boris managed to lazily stretch his arms and rub his eyes without having to run away from artillery shells. He’d have nothing to lament, if not for the fact that he was stuck in a body not of his own. That still felt weird for him, something which he’d probably never get used to. Beggars can’t be choosers however, and Boris was at least happy that his last wish before dying was being fulfilled somewhat. Being with a bunch of Hungarians beats being on the frontlines… Not by much, but one of them is the better option. He watched the snowscape outside, the only elements breaking the endless sea of white being a brick fence surrounding the area. Boris was actually quite curious as to how somewhere like Budapest would look; he hoped to travel for a while around the Austro-Hungarian Empire if he could get himself out of house arrest by somehow petitioning the mad scientist keeping him captive.

However, his rest was not to continue further. Boris heard a knock on his door, and in entered the maid from yesterday with two brooms and a small outfit in her hands. “Yashen mern, eadhenchik. Savayla, pachalye.” Much to Boris’ chagrin, she pulled off the blanket and left Boris out in the cold. While Boris wasn’t a stranger to sleeping out in the cold, the tiny little body he currently inhabited was. He felt a jolt of cold running up through his feet, and decided that humoring his captors would be better for now.

The woman gave him the outfit, left one of the brooms near the bed, and mumbled some more gibberish which Boris didn’t even bother to listen to. He was trying to listen to learn, but such overwhelming chunks of text were hard to try to even begin parsing. When the woman stopped speaking, Boris could only shrug and tilt his head, unable to communicate the simple fact that he didn’t understand anything. The maid grumbled with great annoyance, muttering some words which wouldn’t be written text even if Boris understood them, pointing at the outfit she had brought in again then back to the broom. Then she picked the outfit, a long black linen dress with nothing going for it, and handed it to Boris. It was quite the small outfit, and Boris looked at it while trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with such an item that seemed useless for an adult man like him.

Soon he remembered his situation, and realized that the woman was probably trying to get him to wear the outfit she had brought. Boris would kindly refuse and request a pair of pants and a coat if he knew their language, but he also didn’t want to stay in the thin nightgown he had been given. He wondered whether such treatment was against the Geneva Conventions, but he also hadn’t heard about mad scientists who obey international treaties in the first place. Boris took the outfit with him to somewhere behind the door of a nearby cupboard, the confused gaze of the woman following him, and he quickly dressed himself in private as was common courtesy when there was a lady (of non-intimate status) in the room.

With warmer attire having been acquired, Boris felt ready to do something other than lay in bed like eating food, or having a drink. The maid watched in horror as Boris copied a trick he had observed from the girls in his village: he gathered the excess fabric of the dress from the bottom and tied it in such a manner that it resembled a pair of shorts. This wasn’t too uncommon to do while working in the fields, and Boris was thankful that he had spent his youth lying under the shade of trees and watching everyone else work. However, the maid seemed all too nervous to see Boris walking around with his ankles (and knees) exposed, something quite uncouth to do in any polite company. She tried to untie the “shorts”, Boris tied them up again, and this struggle went on for a while until Boris received a firm kick on his bum that broke his resistance. He was quickly finding out that his body was useless against adults way bigger than him.

Over was the struggle with outfits, and now came Boris’ struggle with the broom. He was handed the damnable device, and the maid led him out the room and into the corridor full of miscellanea. There were portraits of people who were probably important, porcelain vases on tables, a few silken sofas… Boris quickly theorized that the mad scientist keeping him here must have gotten rich from his mad experiments. It made sense: a madman skilled enough to transfer Boris to a whole another body must have had many wealthy clients seeking aid and paying big money, or so was Boris’ theory about how there could be so much wealth on display. Despite this display of wealth however, the corridors were dusty and seemed abandoned. There weren’t as many servants and retainers running around such a place as Boris imagined there should be, though he didn’t exactly know better considering he came from a remote village in Montenegro which even God had probably forgotten the existence of.

Slowly, with the dust around him and the broom in his hands, Boris realized what he was about to be tasked with doing. As he guessed, the maid stopped somewhere along the tracks and readied her own broom along with a dustpan which had been stashed away at the corridor. “Toya mil’e yarilflegle, eadhenchik.” Considering how much he had heard the word “eadhenchik”from the maid, Boris guessed that it must be a title or name given to him. The maid impatiently looked back at Boris, only turning back when he himself began sweeping with the broom towards the dustpan. Boris wasn’t exactly a man of hard-labor, he was far from it, but he had learnt in the army that resisting one’s superiors ended with having one’s posterior receiving a swift kick, or worse.

At least, unlike when he was cleaning the army’s makeshift latrines, there were no artillery shells going around him while he was doing cleaning. Calm, peace, quiet, and a crap ton of dust… Not the best atmosphere to be sure, especially when Boris thought he was being held captive by a mad Hungarian scientist. Being a captive man forced to work didn’t sit well with him, and he was pretty sure that the Geneva Conventions forbid penal labor for prisoners of war.

An entire hour, or two as Boris’ had shut off his brain after a few minutes, passed before the maid paused her sweeping and placed her broom leaning on the wall. The dustpan was completely full at this point, testifying how little the corridors were cleaned. So were Boris’ lungs full of dust, causing him to cough as if he had smoked three packets in a row without pause (which had happened once when French resupplying missions were successful in bringing them plenty of supplies, and the entire squad had lit up in celebration). He joined the maid in sitting next to her on the sofa, an awkward silence between them.

The maid didn’t look to be in any sort of good mood. Her eyes were staring through the window to somewhere in the distance. She didn’t make any sound, other than the ruffling made by her taking out a dry loaf of bread from her apron. Then came by the crunch of hard break, followed by the grumbling of Boris’ stomach. The maid paused her snack time, looking like she was pondering something for a bit before extending the bread to Boris “Toy’da koriyen nay-fil mi, eadhenchik?”

“Yes, this eadhenchik is very hungry.” replied Boris. He’d never hesitate whenever he was offered free food. “Thanks, lady of unknown name. This makes up for you having kicked me earlier.”

“…een.” The maid made a sound as if she was agreeing to something, despite her not having understood Boris either. “Laghaneskom nay-shtonli’ye?”

“Nope, I totally don’t understand what you’re saying.” Still, Boris was having fun with “conversing” with someone. “You Magyars have a very weird language.”

“Sto?”

“You. Magyar? Mȁđarski! Du bist Ungarisch?”

“…nay?”

I guess this Hungarian doesn’t know any of those languages…  “Me, eadhenchik?” Boris pointed towards himself. The maid nodded her head downwards in response with an “een” coming out of her mouth. I guess that means I got it right? Or, it might be the opposite if the Hungarians are like the Bulgarians… Argh, foreigners are so confusing.

Boris decided to experiment further with words. He pointed a finger towards the maid “You, eadhenchik?”

The maid replied by shaking her head and pointing towards herself, “Nay, eadhen.”

Boris shook his head “Nay?”

“Een, nay en nay.”

Then Boris nodded downwards like the maid had done “Een?”

“Een, een en een.”

“…een.” Boris now knew how to say “yes” and “no” …probably. For all he knew, he could be insulting the poor lady in front of him. ‘En’ must be something like ‘is’ considering how she’s using it. He had one last theory to try. There was something else I wanted to try, a thing I heard her say. “Sto?”

“Sto en…”The maid shrugged. She couldn’t find a way to verbalize or show such a vague concept. “Milya nay-shtonli.

“Sto en?”Boris pointed at himself. “En eadhenchik.” He tried to probe the meaning of sto by answering his own question.

“Umm… Een, toya en eenli. Toya en eadhenchik.”

“Sto” means “what”, then. So, if I get the other words correctly… This time Boris tried to talk without using hand signals using some of the words he had heard. “Milya en eadhenchik?”

“Een,” The maid pointed at Boris “toya en eadhenchik.” She then pointed at herself. “Milya en eadhen.”

“Toya” must be “you”, and “milya” is “me”, then. Or something close to those anyways. Boris didn’t want to think about how many grammar rules he was probably breaking while speaking the language of the lady in front of her. Thankfully, learning a language didn’t seem too hard when he had found a convenient private tutor to help him out. Exposure was the best way to learn a language after all, and Boris would be exposed to the local language a lot if he was to be kept captive here. Learning Hungarian might be useful if I ever tour Budapest, thought Boris idly. He had heard that the wine and the women flowed freely there, though he’d probably not participate in the latter until he got his old body back.

While Boris had been thinking idly, the maid got up and headed for her broom again. “Savayla, eadhenchik.” He understood this command to be directed towards him, and Boris obeyed his one and only conversation partner / language tutor.

The day went on, then a bit more time went on, as Boris worked with the maid and slowly chipped away grammar and vocabulary from her…