CW: DV/IPV
Margit keeps an expectant vigil at her husband’s bedside. He’s gaunt and grey with a boyish shock of reddish-blonde hair. Childlike, right down to the urine stains spread across the coarse wool blanket she pulls up to his chin.
The smell is overwhelming. Stale urine, the ripeness of his body, and the lingering stench of poison. Well, arsenic itself has no smell. But the flypaper she boiled all night was sickly-sweet, like rotting fruit. Now it permeates every corner of the house, from the linen curtains her mother had sewn, to the dish towel she uses to dab his sweat-soaked brow.
She stayed up all night during Laszlo’s shift at the prison camp. Skimmed the slicks of greasy foam that lined the edges of her best cast iron pot. Carefully collecting it in the small glass vial Midwife Fazekas provided. Fazekas promised it would be quick and painless. Fill the vial to the top, he will be gone within the hour.
Nine hours now. Nine hours of writhing and coughing and moaning. Of watching Laszlo wrestle with death, never one to back down from a fight. Margit touches her belly, feels the fluttering life inside her. Only one can live. But she’s beginning to fear Laszlo’s strength of will. He survived the Great War. Dear God, what if he pulls through?
Laszlo doubles over coughing, the straw mattress below him dark and damp with sweat. She hears herself saying “Rest, rest. I’m here.” It sounds like someone else. The spit at the corner of his mouth glistens, flecked with blood, dark and purple. She cleans him up. The blood, it has to be a good sign, right?
They say men come home from war changed. Darker, harder, filled with rage. But Laszlo’s rage started long before the war. They’d been married under a year when she first saw it, in the chickenhouse. She was mid-sentence, mid-argument, when she heard the crack against her cheekbone. Felt pain bloom behind her eyes and cascade across her face. The hollow ache as air left her lungs. The iron tang of blood, welling in her sinuses.
It took her a moment to put it together. The pain, the blood, the reddened knuckles, the taut muscles in his neck. It made his blue eyes seem even more intense, laced with danger. Now, at his bedside, she cannot even remember what it was they argued about.
It didn’t matter.
The arsenic went into the clotted cream she’d poured over his kiffle. His favorite confection. Margit thought back to the first she ever made. It was a gift for Laszlo. She’d needed her mother’s help, Kneading the dough, mixing the honey and poppy seeds into a thick paste. She’d shown little interest in the kitchen growing up. It was so tedious. So much less interesting than the newspapers her father read, or the rich gossip from girls who’d gone on to normal school. She cared more about landwehr troop movements or the price put on Rosika Schwimmer’s head than the alchemies of flour and sugar.
What she wouldn’t give to be back with her mother. Her rough hands guiding the rolling pin, spreading dough until it is as thin as newspaper and perfectly even.
She had been sixteen years old when she made that first kiffle. She brought it to Laszlo at his family farm. They stood outside in the cold as he removed his leather gloves. He was already flushed from reshoeing the horses. But even so, as he devoured the kiffle, his ruddy cheeks flared. His look made her face flush in return. The sudden warmth in her core spread to her limbs with an unfamiliar tingle. Then he leaned down and kissed her. The sweetness of his mouth and the heat in her core was everything she had ever wanted.
That’s how her mother’s recipe had become hers. They would marry a few months later, just shy of her seventeenth birthday. And now the same recipe, her Mother’s recipe, poisons him.
What has she become?
The girls in Margit’s village do not marry for love. But in cosmopolitan cities across Austria-Hungary, other women are rich with ideas of modernity, demanding ever-greater autonomy. Women like Rosika Schwimmer, whose noisy demands for equality and massive protests in the streets of Budapest make headlines. But Nagyrév, with its cobblestone streets and tidy square patchwork of farm fields, still operates much like it has for hundreds of years. Marriage is a matter between parents, girls traded like horses or stores of grain.
Margit’s parents were the exception. Lovers, granted permission to marry only when Margit was due to emerge from the womb. She’d grown up with the nasty whispers, but also the care and affection that blossomed within their walls. When she confessed Laszlo had caught her eye, her mother and father smiled at each other. Plans were set in motion. It was to seem a transaction like any other, but the family would know the truth: Margit, like her parents before her, would marry for love. It was their gift to their first and only surviving child.
Soon, supervised visits were arranged. Lanky and painfully shy, Laszlo hunched over in his chair in her parents’ modest sitting room. He only spoke when asked, his answers brief and jumbled. But under the table, he nestled his foot against Margit’s. She felt his kiss on her lips, the heat in her belly. But what must her parents think? Nothing like her father, loquacious and romantic. And nothing like her mother, witty and wickedly funny. But his touch was everything. She wanted nothing else but this quiet, tongue-tied bean stalk of a man.
They married Easter weekend, Laszlo stuttering his way through the Húsvéthétfő verses in a way that made her cry tears of joy. She presented him with an egg she painted, a handicraft passed down in her family, lapis blue lined with intricate gold knotwork.
In the kitchen, the egg now sits on a shelf, in a small wooden display box. Mere meters from the cast iron pot where the poison brewed. Margit can’t look away. The egg, the pot. The beginning and the end. A sob escapes, a loud short burst of regret. She slaps her hand over her mouth, startled by the noise.
Margit pours Laszlo a cup of water from the kitchen’s red enamel pitcher. She brings it to his lips. He coughs, sputters, but then sits up and drinks hungrily. He lies back down, eyes fluttering and says “Margit, Margit.” before he passes out. He may survive after all. Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it was food poisoning, and she will nurse him back to health and all will be well again. Maybe it will leave him with a weakness, and she will care for him. If she spends the rest of her life as his caregiver, who is to question her loyalty, her devotion? She could choose to remember sweet, shy Laszlo, the boy she once loved. Nothing more. Nothing else.
The days she spent unable to stand up straight from broken ribs, the bruises that mottled her cheek, her wrists, her back. Were they reason enough to end a life? Rosika Schwimmer would probably poison a man for less. Free from the obligations of the countryside, alive with the buzz of liberation. But not Margit. Margit with the swollen lip and loose tooth, making his meals, mending his clothes, minding her business. She never once thought to poison her dear Laszlo. And if not for the war, she never would have.
When he was drafted, Laszlo looked so handsome in his uniform. Margit watched his retreating form in the back of an artillery truck with every other able-bodied man in the village. Still tall and thin, his form had filled out, as fine a form as a man could have. It was quite a point of pride for Margit, her handsome husband whom she had married for love.
For a while, Laszlo was a carefully constructed memory. A brave soldier fighting for his country. She kept the house and the farm, arms growing strong and hands rough. She wrote him love letters, impassioned and florid, as if writing a penny novel for some imaginary audience. And his showered her with praise in a way that reignited her love for him. Or at least her love for their story.
The construction of the camp in Nagyrév started eight months into the war, a military prison built on the outskirts of town. Flyers were posted in the town square advertising jobs for women. Cooks, cleaning ladies, even security guards! Margit, carrying a wheelbarrow full of fresh bulgur for the farm’s new litter of calves, had been feeling strong and self-sufficient. She kept returning to the words: security guard. The words zapped her insides. She thought of a black uniform, shiny black shoes. A silver revolver in a leather holster. She imagined she stood in an army of women led by Rosika Schwimmer, standing tall and proud.
The next day, Margit got up early to finish the day’s chores before sunrise. Then she saddled a horse and rode to the camp.
The warden was a small man, with small glasses, his head reflecting the single bulb of the barren office’s ceilings. Two stories below, prisoners in matching tan coveralls and caps milled about. They talked loudly in a language she could not understand, waving their arms in a way she associated with drunken arguments.
“Dagos, all of them.” the warden said, nodding at the prisoners below. “Better if we had them shot, if you ask me. All that noise.”
The warden smiled. Margit smiled back, to make sure he felt his joke was appreciated.
“Margit. I see your husband is away. That’s got to be difficult.”
“If I could help the war effort here at the camp, I would feel connected to him.”
“And you can cook and clean, I assume?”
Margit shifted in her seat. She needed to pick her words carefully.
“Yes, sir, I can.” She replied, “But I was hoping to apply to be a security guard. You see, I am quite strong due to farm labor. And quite used to wrestling large animals, cows and sheep, should they get out of line. I believe I would be quite capable.”
The warden smiled and cleared his throat.
“I don’t see someone of your stature able to handle such duties.” he replied, and then busied himself with cleaning his glasses, the conversation clearly over.
Margit thought for a moment. In the corner of the room, rations sat in wooden pallets. The same stale stuff served on the battle lines. Stuff her cows wouldn’t eat.
“Sir, are you a fan of steak? Fresh cheese?” she asked. The warden looked up from his glasses. Margit could practically hear his stomach rumble.
Margit enjoyed watching over the Dagos, with their loud voices and hairy arms. She was not given a black uniform or shiny black shoes. But she did have a revolver, the Rast & Gasser Model 1898, the same model given to Austria-Hungary’s servicemen. It was holstered in tan canvas against the dusty blue of her coveralls. She loved the weight of it against her hip, and how the handle felt when she gripped it, a threatening gesture she used on any man who dared look her way.
She slowly came to know the prisoners. Not their names, but their personalities. There were The Players, older men who played checkers with a competitive fever, using a set made of light and dark rocks. The Fighters, boisterous and loud, hosting boxing matches in the courtyard. The Athlete, a calisthenics enthusiast, The Brewer, whose fermentation experiments she found and destroyed at least once a week. And The Lovers, whose secret trysts she allowed to carry on in the shower stalls. And then there was the one who sat apart from the rest, reading. The Librarian. The only time he looked up was when she swept the courtyard. She put her hand on her revolver, and he would look back down.
One day, his stare lingered. Margit felt herself soften. His brown eyes held no threat, no promise of violence. She did not take her hand from the revolver. But when he smiled, a broad smile that creased the corner of his eyes, she couldn’t help but smile back.
The next day, ashamed at her lapse, she confiscated his book. No reading material was allowed, after all. In English, it was called “Letters of a Woman Homesteader” by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. That night, Margit tried her best to read it. But her English was not sufficient. She knew it was about a woman running her own farm. Her curiosity for the material burned.
The next day, she had marched up to The Librarian. One hand on her revolver. She waved the book at him.
“Tell me. What is this about?” She asked, in Hungarian.
“No Hungarian. Or, only little. Pretty fucking bad.” The Librarian replied in broken sentences. His efforts made Margit laugh. “I’m Pietro, by the way.”
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?” Margit asked.
“Yes, I studied German.” Pietro replied fluently.
“German, then.” Margit said. “Now, the book. What is it about?”
“It is the letters of Ms. Elinore Stewart, a homesteader on the American frontier. She set out to prove that a woman could be a successful rancher,” Pietro says.
Margit’s hands slide away from her revolver. She sits down a few feet away from Pietro, hands him the book.
“Read it to me.” she says.
“Will you tell me your name, at least?”
“Margit. Now read.”
Every day, Pietro would read, translating on the fly from English into German. He’d ask if Margit could do all the things Elinore had accomplished, from slaughtering cattle to aiding calving, the bloody mess of it all. Margit might have exaggerated a little to compete with Elinore, but it was not far from the truth. Her tales of farm life delighted Pietro, who had been raised in a small fishing village and had never laid a hand on a cow. She always watched him as he laughed. Admiring his hands as they pushed back his dark hair, grown much too long, out of his face.
She brought more books, and spent countless afternoons reading with him. From James Joyce to Arthur Conan Doyle, her days became filled with thoughts and ideas far beyond Nagyrév. Her letters to Laszlo became less frequent. His stopped altogether. She started hoping he was not coming back.
The day she kissed Pietro, the gates to the prison had been left open. The warden had quit earlier in the week. The women running the camp had almost all taken lovers of their own. Supply lines had run dry. There was no food, no toilet paper, no washing powder. The male personnel had fled or been recalled, no one knew the whole story. It was a sign of the times, a war being lost. The gates were open, the prisoners free to go. But Pietro stayed to be with her.
The kiss ignited a familiar fire in her core. The warmth of his lips on her mouth, on her neck. The way his hand tentatively ran down her body, across her ribcage. The feather-light touch caused her to shiver, nerve endings alight with sensation and anticipation. She willed his hand to go lower, lower.
And it did. Pietro’s hand slid down, curling around the curve of her hip. As he pulled her close, her breath escaped with a gasp. Her heart hammered in her chest and her body shuddered. Every place their bodies came into contact left searing marks behind, branding Margit’s flesh. His hand slid beneath her coveralls, cool and dry, his calloused thumb finding the crevice of her inner thigh.
Margit wanted so much to live for this moment, and this moment alone. She understood that what she’d felt with Laszlo was only kindling, a thatch of straw that quickly burned to ash. But Pietro’s lips, Pietro’s hand as it slid in towards the center of her body, entering her, transporting her? It was that same heat, flaring into pure incandescence. But even as she came to know the ecstasy of Pietro’s touch, the fever generated by their bodies, the alchemy of her own skin, she could not stop thinking about Laszlo. The shy boy she loved. The handsome man she feared. The soldier who could return at any moment. She found herself wishing the war would take him, as it had so many men.
The integration of Italian soldiers into the fabric of village life was seamless. Loud, fearless, generous men who played house while husbands were away. Margit wasn’t sure it would have been the same if her father was still alive, but her mother was relieved to see her so happy. Pietro moved in, learning the rhythms of farm life, of milking, of lovemaking, of bread baking, of reading in front of the fire.
A few months later, Margit sat in the outhouse and counted the days since her last period. Too many. Not off by days, but weeks. She inspected her undergarments one last time, willing the blood to materialize. She had always suspected that she was infertile. Her mother had struggled so much, miscarriages and stillbirths, each one wracking her with grief. When she and Laszlo did not get pregnant right away, she’d felt it was likely her doing. Her fault.
Laszlo did not demand she bear him a child. But he did once comment bitterly after their stiff and painful love-making that perhaps if she really wanted one, it would happen.
Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s why she had gotten pregnant with Pietro’s son. A jolt went through her at the thought. A son? How could she possibly know? Nonetheless, she felt sure. It would be a boy, born of her adultery. A bastard child.
The Midwife Fazekas came to town not long after. Fazekas was short and solid, always in black. She kept her dark hair under a Russian babushka, like an old woman, although her age and ethnicity were unclear. Prior to the war, newcomers had been rare. But the prison camp had changed that. It was soon well-known she could help with an unwanted pregnancy. And that’s how Margit ended up in Fazekas’ modest home, the one she rented from the sheepherders on the steppe, the only hill in the entire village.
Margit sat on Fazekas’ chaise, perched on the edge. Sweat seeped into the linen paper of the letter from Laszlo, announcing his return. Fazekas had uncurled the letter from Margit’s fist. She walked to her desk, pressed out the wrinkles against the wood. She donned half-moon reading glasses. Then she looked up at Margit.
“Your husband’s return is imminent.” Fazekas said.
“Can you help?” Margit asked.
Fazekas walked back over to Margit, inspecting her face. Studying her.
“Is that what you want?” Fazekas had asked.
Tears rolled down Margit’s face. The life inside her fluttered, insisting upon itself. But what choice did she have?
Fazekas produced a handkerchief and handed it to Margit. “I may have another option. Would you like to hear about it?”
Margit nodded, swallowing away the flash of hope that zapped her throat.
“If only one can live, which will it be? Your baby or your husband?”
The room started to tilt. Although she knew the spinning was in her head, Margit could not hold on. Fazekas held her, softening her fall. On the floor, on her hands and knees, Margit struggled for air.
“Breathe.” Fazekas had said. Margit willed the air to re-enter her lungs. Then she sat up on her knees. Fazekas crouched beside her, a hand on her back. As the spinning subsided, Margit had never felt so steady.
“My baby.” Margit said.
Fazekas got up and walked back to her desk. She produced a small glass vial, and a box of common flypaper, a popular brand readily available at the general store.
“For when your husband returns. It will appear as if he’s succumbed to food poisoning.” she said. “A sadly common ailment here in the countryside.”
Laszlo’s return had been without fanfare. There were no parades or welcoming committees. He returned to the farm and its daily rhythms without so much as a word about the war. He had a subtle limp, but did not speak of it. And he seemed to never sleep. Farming by day, guarding the prisoners at the newly reopened POW camp by night.
The flypaper and vial sat in the kitchen cupboard. For two weeks, it was like the items had a low vibration that thrummed through the house. When the soldiers returned, some women fled with their Italian lovers. But not Margit. Her mother was not in good health, and who would run the farm? That’s how Pietro ended up among a few dozen men who had stayed, going voluntarily back to his cell. It was up to Margit. To save her lover and her child, Laszlo had to die.
Margit spent her days cooking and cleaning, taking care to hide her growing womb in layers of aprons and undergarments. Sometimes, Laszlo would wordlessly pull her close. He’d kiss her face and neck, his breath hot and sticky. She’d feign illness, feign her time of month. But the time for putting him off was fading quickly.
In his third week of night shifts, she finally pulled out the flypaper. Her heart hammered, and her palms felt clammy. She pulled out her cast iron pot. Filled it with water from their red enamel pitcher. Tossed in the flypaper, stoked the fire. The sickly-sweet that wafted from the steam had been nauseating. She tied a handkerchief around her nose and mouth to avoid vomiting. And she sat there all night, stirring and skimming. Willing herself to only think of Pietro, his kind eyes and rough hands and soft lips. And the baby. Their baby.
Now, Margit can think of nothing but Laszlo. Dying in their bed. The bed where she’s betrayed him with another man. The guilt is overwhelming, sickening. Morning light cascades across his face. Margit gets up, kneels next to him. His breaths are farther and farther apart. Great big sighing gasps. The breath of the dying. She’s witnessed it many times. With animals on the farm. With her own father.
Margit lays her head on Laszlo’s chest. His inhalation raises her up, and slowly sinks down as the rattle of his lungs fills her skull. Then his chest caves and goes still. Another breath is not coming. She whispers “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” as hot tears roll across her cheeks and her head pounds painfully.
Margit sits up and wipes her tears with her apron. Covers Lazlo’s face with the wool blanket. Margit isn’t sure if regret or relief floods her, but her body trembles.
She gets up and walks to the kitchen. A jolt of fear goes through her as the sickly-sweet smell of the flypaper fills her nostrils.
Every inch of the place must be scrubbed. She fills a bucket with borax and castile soap, adding just enough water to make a thick paste. Then, a few drops of precious lemon oil. The smell of lemon releases the tension from her neck. It easily overpowers the sickly sweetness. Margit has a plan. Start with the floors. Then the walls, the curtains, and the cabinets. She’ll leave only the blankets and the bed alone. There it will mix with the smell of urine and death, and no one will think anything of it. An hour or two should do it. Then she can call on Fazekas.
The work is not easy on Margit’s pregnant body. Her knees throb and her hands swell, knuckles puffy and red. But she pushes through. On hands and knees, scrubbing a section at a time. Rinsing with water from the red enamel pitcher. Then mopping it up. The room smells more and more like lemon and less and less like poison.
She’s reached the far corner of the kitchen. On her hands and knees, she scrubs the floor under the decorative egg. She stops and kneels. Looks up at the egg. Tears threaten, but Margit won’t allow it. There is too much to do.
As she returns her scrub brush, a strong hand wraps over her mouth. Another grabs her shoulder, wrenching it painfully as she’s pulled up from the floor. Margit tries to scream, but her mouth is firmly pressed shut by the intruder’s hand. For a moment, she believes she is being arrested. This man is with the police, and she’s being hauled away for murder. And then he speaks. Rasping, hoarse, and right in her ear, he whispers:
“Who is he?”
The grip loosens. Margit slowly turns around. It can’t be.
Laszlo.
“I see your condition,” he says.
“Laszlo, I…”
Lazlo grabs her by both arms.
“Don’t lie to me. I’m not blind.”
His grip tightens.
“You fuck another man while I’m at war? And then you try to rid yourself of me?”
A dark veil shrouds his eyes. Margit freezes. Braces.
The sharp crack against her jaw sounds like a gunshot in her ears. Pain thunders across her left cheekbone. Margit’s vision goes blurry and she’s overcome by violent nausea. She vomits at his feet.
Laszlo takes her by the neck. His grip causes bile to rise, but there’s nowhere for it to go. Laszlo shoves her against the kitchen cupboards. Her skull rattles along with the dishes inside. Margit tries to beg for mercy. But she can’t speak.
Margit braces for another blow to her face, her ribs. A familiar dance. But his punch to her swollen belly surprises her. She doubles over, coughing and gagging, sharp pain radiating down her right hip.
Praying to a God she no longer believes in, she sees the pitcher to her right. The cheerful red enamel gleams in the morning sunshine. A guttural scream starts somewhere in her bowels, far below the throbbing injury to her stomach. And as the scream snakes up her spine and through her chest and up her throat and finally escapes her lips, she picks up the pitcher and swings it over her head. It comes down on Laszlo’s skull with a sickening wet crunch. His mouth is frozen in an O of surprise as blood seeps over his left eye. She brings the pitcher down again. And again. He stumbles backwards with each blow until he is back at the foot of their bed.
Margit drops the pitcher. Lazslo’s face is bloodied and bruised. He takes one limping step towards her, lurching forward. She shoves him back into the bed. Takes the pillow next to his head, puts it over his face. A giddy laughter rises in her throat. His limbs tremble as he weakly attempts to pull her away, but has no strength left.
“Pietro.” Margit says. “His name is Pietro. He is the father of my child and more husband than you have ever been.”
Laszlo goes still.
Margit dresses in black, as she will for a full year. She’s in Fazekas’ exam room, on the chaise, sweating through freshly boiled linens. She bears down through gritted teeth and screams.
“Good, one more.” Fazekas presses gently on her abdomen. “Almost there.”
Margit pushes again. She can feel the pressure release, a slippery pop as the baby’s head finally crosses the threshold from her body and into the world.
Fazekas bends down, tends to the child. A loud cry announces the infant’s health and vigor. She wraps the infant in a blanket and places it on Margit’s chest.
“A boy.” Fazekas says, “In perfect health.”
Margit is overcome with tears. Unlike any she has ever experienced. Great heaving sobs of relief, joy, love, and something she can’t identify. A fierce undying need that will never be filled. Relieved only by the scent of his small shock of brown hair, the weight of his head as it rests against her neck.
“Should I let the father in?”
“Yes.” Margit says. “Of course.”
When Pietro rushes to her side, he cries as well. He holds his son tenderly, inspecting his hands, his tiny toes. Then he looks at Margit.
“La mia bellisima mama.” he says.
He kisses Margit tenderly. Her forehead, her eyes, her lips. And they stare at their son together, rapt with adoration and awe.
“We should call him Pietro.” Margit says.
When Margit and Pietro exit the exam room, they are surrounded by Fazekas’ patients. The women crowd in, cooing and clamoring for a look. The child stares wide-eyed, too young to feel any fear as they touch his rounded cheeks and small hands.
A woman Margit recognizes from the camp touches her arm. She looks as if she is due soon. She smiles warmly, knowingly, at Margit.
“He’s beautiful, Margit. We are so lucky to have Fazekas in town to take care of us, are we not?” she asks.
Margit looks around the room at Fazekas’ patients. The men who accompany them? Italians. The chess players and the boxers, the athletes and brewers. She recognizes them all. And the women all dress in black, like her. In the traditional dress that can only mean one thing. She looks back at the woman, who smiles radiantly in the way only a woman who is pregnant and in love can smile.
“We certainly are.” Margit says.
Taking Pietro’s arm once again, Margit looks out the window at the town below.
It has looked like that for centuries. Nothing in Nagyrév has changed. Not the cobblestone streets of the main quarter, nor the tidy green squares of the farm fields, nor the sun sinking past the hillsides beyond.
All is as it always has been, and always will be.
Liz McClintock is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter who loves to explore women’s secret inner lives. Many of her stories center on complicated women navigating the darkest corners of human behavior. She graduated from UC Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA program, is an alumna of the Black List x Women in Film Episodic Lab, and won the UK’s 2025 Outstanding Screenplays Competition in the true story division. She currently has two features and a television pilot in development. “The Angelmakers of Nagyrév” is her first published short story. Her favorite revenge story is the cult-classic Jennifer’s Body (2009).
