I still don't know why we called our vineyard neighbour Uncle Gilice when I was a child. We might as well have called him Uncle Bloody. At least I never heard the poor yam bellowing, but his whistling still makes my ears ring. There is not a hungry blood-cat that would not have understood the craft.
The old man was a thin, thin man, and I don't know where he could have been so angry. I suppose he kept it in his big sheepskin cap, that's why he didn't dare take it off his head, even in the middle of summer.
It was enough for him if our shadow fell in front of his gunyhut (hut - ed.).
- Hi-i-i-i, picked-picked bad cologne! Hold it right there, let me tie your collars tighter!
But we carried the neck and neck so far away that we couldn't have been caught on horseback! But it was not long before Uncle Gilice was howling around us again:
- Windswept people of Hi-i-i-i! Hold on, let me take you to the dog catcher!
He couldn't get us to love him at all. If he saw a child as big as my fist, he would gape at him like a catfish. You'd have thought he'd have swallowed it.
- Hi-i-i-i, there is no worse commodity in the world than a child! It's even more wicked than a slug! For the slug eats only the leaves of the tree, but the child devours the fruit.
And no one ever hurt Uncle Gilice's trees. Surely even the tadpoles were afraid of him: of course we were!
His vineyard bordered ours; once his big mirror-apple tree dropped its best fruit right at my feet. I have never seen such a smiling apple since, yet I never thought of biting into it. It would certainly have caught in my throat. Fearful of being burned, I held it between my two fingers and threw it across the field. At that moment I heard a fearful roar:
- Hi-i-i-i, I've never seen such a child since I've been in the world!
I put my foot in my palm, but Uncle Gilice got the sleeve of my shirt.
- Hi-i-i-i, little brother, I won't let you go until I reward you. Uncle Gilice knows honor!
The first time I visited Uncle Gilice's vineyard, I thought I was in a fairytale garden. I don't know what the old man must have done to his trees, but you couldn't tell what the harvest was like. The plums were the size of apples in my country, the apples looked like one in four, and the beautiful golden pears had to have each branch supported individually.
- Look here, brother! - Uncle Gilice tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a peach tree. There were no peaches on it, only a single one, but not even a fairy's tooth could have dug into one of those. The size of my fist, one side red velvet, the other side yellow velvet.
- Hi-i-i-i, that's the famous jingling peach that the prince once travelled halfway around the world to find. You can't take it away, because it'll ring if you touch it.
But even then, Uncle Gilice looked at me as if he would very much like to stop seeing me. I hurried out of the house, but a week later I was still dreaming of the peach that Uncle Gilice had shown me as a reward. He knew what honour was!
Well, how many times the following summer I remembered the peach bell! It had been a bad year; the trees had not even produced leaves, let alone fruit. There was no sign of pears or apples in the six borders. We were glad when we got a Jerusalem artichoke, when we were very proud of ourselves.
All the more famous was Uncle Gilice's ringing peach. God blessed him this time too: he had just a hundred of them. It was worth a hundred gold pieces in this time of need.
No diamond is guarded like Gilice guards his tree. All day long she swarmed around it, and when the fruit began to ripen, she even went to sleep under the tree. And he had no confidence even in himself. He said to the vine-grower, Imre Sós Sós, the little wine-grower:
- Brother Imre, have two eyes on this tree, for if one piece falls short of a hundred, you may go where the shore breaks. If thou catchest any man, neither mercy nor grace shall be shown him, though I were myself.
Imre Kisborus Sós said only that:
- Don't worry, master, I'll be there too!
And that was a big word, because Imre Kisborus Sós was such a big man that he could have been a poplar tree at the end of the vineyard.
But on the third morning, one of the hundred peaches, the most beautiful, the most ripe, ringing peach, was lost.
Uncle Gilice roared so loudly that every swallow on the vineyard migrated to the other hill. They thought that the werewolves were going to hold a kingdom meeting here.
- Woe to you, Imre Sós Sós! - Uncle Gilice gritted his teeth.
Somewhere in the third vineyard lived the piper, but Uncle Gilice was there as soon as the icy rain in front of the smoky piper's hut.
It was very quiet, only the corn leaves rustling in the wind. Uncle Gilice made a funnel out of his palm and squealed:
- Hey, Imre, Imre the grapevine!
Imre Szőlőőcsősz did not show himself, but the rattling in the corn grew louder. There must be a hamster around. Uncle Gilice unfolded the leaves and suddenly his head snapped back.
A small child with pale, sickly eyes crawled on a wicker pony on the ground. The weather was very bad for him. As soon as he saw the angry uncle, he curled his smudged little mouth into a smile, and held out his skinny little jug in a boastful gesture.
- Bajack, bajack!
That was it, peach. The golden peach with the golden flesh. The hundredth, the velvetiest, the ripest.
Uncle Gilice was bending down to the child, when suddenly the long shadow of Imre Sós Sós, the Little Cucumber, was cast upon him. The big man bent his head like the withered top of a poplar tree, and could scarcely utter a word or two:
- Here I am.
Uncle Gilice suddenly lifted his head and began to gape. He wanted very much to howl, but to no avail: he could not help it. Instead, he coughed and gagged.
- Well... uh... nini, is that you, Little Cucumber Salty Imre? Well... well... well... what do I want to tell you... well... well... do you hear, my son Imre, while he's in the peach, bring one every day for this sick brat! Do you hear, do you understand, do you know? Nono!
Uncle Gilice hasn't been swaggering for a long time. The vineyard has fallen into foreign hands, the peach tree has grown old, the leaves are as scarce as the hair on an old man's head. But when I pass by it, I always hear it as if many angels were ringing on it with sweet silver bells.
