Family of Farmers

By Terezia Kontova

In a world where one’s field isn’t just a piece of land but a reflection of their identity, each patch of soil represents a person’s legacy, dreams, and their very essence. Family of Farmers tells the tale of such a world, where every individual is intrinsically connected to their field, and through it, to the very fabric of life itself. Dive into a narrative that intertwines personal destinies with the ebb and flow of nature, reminding us of the deep-rooted bond between mankind and the earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035832835

Terezia Kontova

Terézia Kontová has Slovak-Hungarian-Jewish roots. She has written three books in English and self-published on Amazon – The Uphill Hike won the 2018 San Francisco Book Festival Honorary Mention, The Heartbeat attained the Honorary Mention in the 2019 San Francisco Book Festival, and The Manual Workers’ Family won the 2020 Eric Hoffer Awards.

Book preview

Hana

Hana married well. A farmer herself, she married a farmer. They were farmers surrounded by farmers in a society where everyone worked as a farmer.

Hana and Jozef were assigned new fields after they got married. The clerk told them, The president made a decision and he made a good decision because the president only ever makes good decisions.

The president stood at the top of the hierarchy. He assigned one field after another every time a person got married. Only then could a field be switched for another. The previous one was assigned by random chance. There was no place for random chance after a person got married.

I take you as my husband, Hana said to Jozef before the wedding, because I know you’ll give me lots of children. It says so in your medical record. And I had it examined carefully.

I take you as my wife, said Jozef, because I know you’ll be a good mother. You went to this school or another and I talked to your classroom teacher.

Once Jozef and Hana found each other, they knew they were made for one another.

They lived like everyone else in the world. Everyone’s house looked the same and their furnishings looked the same.

Houses for married couples were different from houses for families, and houses for families were different from houses for bachelors or spinsters, but only in terms of size.

The houses were white with black furniture with red lights illuminating white floors, walls, and ceilings and covering the black furniture.

Neither Hana nor Jozef knew which fields were assigned to them. They were to find out when the time came. They were assigned their fields for a reason. The president knew what kind of reason but they did not.

Before long, Hana was pregnant. She kept going to her field daily but couldn’t dig up anything but dirt and rocks.

Why did I get this field? she asked Jozef hopelessly.

You’ll find out when the time is right.

But I’m pregnant and about to give birth. I need a field that yields results more than other fields!

Jozef embraced Hana saying they needed to wait and be patient but days passed and Hana couldn’t dig anything up.

Weeks passed; months passed.

Hana suffered from morning sickness. Sometimes she vomited but she enjoyed eating.

Don’t worry, the president knows what he’s doing.

Hana wondered if the president could have made a mistake. Perhaps he read their records poorly. Perhaps he misjudged the relationship between Hana and Jozef.

The president makes no mistakes, said Jozef, because he presides over many people. And those rule out any mistakes.

Hana smiled and felt happy for a while.

Her belly grew and grew and the situation called for more and more urgent measures. But nothing could be done.

When Hana came to the hospital, the doctor immediately asked about her field.

It hasn’t yielded anything yet.

Well, the hospital is also a field, said the doctor.

And he was right. The hospital where the doctors worked had been dug out of a field. The president assigned this field and that field to these and those physicians, and as they were digging in the field, they dug out the hospital.

If you have no results yet, you’re not entitled to receive care at this field or another, said the doctors.

Seeing the cruelty of her fate, Hana turned around and left.

Jozef tried to help in any way he could. He begged, wept, yelled and raged but all for nothing. A person whose field didn’t yield results couldn’t access anything, be it food, doctors, money, services, or property.

My field is good, said Jozef to Hana.

Hana’s tears looked like drops of blood in the red light of their house. Drops of blood which seemed to stream down Hana’s cheeks and drop on her swollen belly.

How will I give birth when I can’t seek a doctor? Your field won’t do anything for me. I can’t use your money to find physicians for my baby. You know the law of the land.

Jozef turned sad as she was right. He tried to hide his feelings of failure, but Hana knew the truth.

In the morning, Hana got up and went to look in her field like every day before. She dug and dug. Suddenly, her water broke. At that moment, small dwarves began jumping out of the field. They jumped out of the dirt, rocks, and the depths from underneath Hana herself as though the water was gushing from a spring.

Who are you? asked Hana, in labour pains.

We are your field, said the dwarves.

And what exactly do you intend to do?

We’ll act as your doctors.

And so they helped her deliver the baby safely and correctly. In fact, the dwarves were gynaecologists.

Hana went home with a daughter in her arms. She told Jozef everything.

Your field did that?

Yes, dwarfish gynaecologists jumped out of my field at the right time; when I went into labour.

How fortunate! How fortunate!

At last, Hana was able to go to the office and claim money, goods, and services. After all, her field had just yielded results.

Your field will be yielding results during labour. We’ll be taking women in labour there and farmers from other fields so that they can give birth there. You’ll be entitled to wages. You’ll be entitled to medical services. As of now, you’re officially a citizen of this country.

Hana knew all this very well. This was how the society worked.

Earth isn’t what it used to be, she told Mária, her daughter. People all over Earth do nothing but work in their fields. Their magical fields. You’ve got one too. And when you get married one day, our president and his team will assign you a new field.

Earth had been sparsely populated since WWIII but thanks to WWIII, it had come alive with magic. And the fields were born. And this new Earth was born. Those who survived the war knew this Earth was their home and they had to adapt. And so this new system was born. This new society.

Hana, Jozef and Mária became a proper family, at last, like all the other families in the fourth millennium. Finally, both parents had fields that yielded results.

Every field on Earth was different and so, every family on Earth was different.

This is us and this is our field, said Jozef one time in the house and hugged his wife and daughter.

Jozef

As a child, Jozef was assigned a field which yielded cereals. He grew them for days, months, and years in spring, summer, autumn and winter. The cereals always grew in the exact same way.

When he got married, he was assigned a field which yielded footballs. At first, he rejoiced, thinking he would make up for the childhood he had lost to field work and that he would get to play football. He was sadly mistaken, however, as the footballs grew slowly and there were few of them.

Jozef desperately waited for every football to grow so that he could sell it at once and make, at least, some money.

Hana was unhappy as they needed the money for their family and their developing child. They had expenses; clothes, food, and services, and the few footballs per day couldn’t cover them. Therefore, Jozef decided to cast a spell.

The fields were all magical which is why they all understood magic. So, the only thing left for Jozef to do was to hit the nail on the head.

He went to the neighbour’s field. There were five siblings who were all small children and also all boys, who worked in a single field. Their field was a notebook and pen factory but not just any kind of factory; it was buried deep in the ground. And so, in order to reach it, the children had to spend months digging a huge hole.

Watch out! yelled Jozef and kicked a football over to them.

The boys liked that very much. They decided to play the game.

Watch out! yelled Jozef and kicked a second, third, and fourth ball over.

Before he knew it, Jozef was kicking over one football after another with every football he’d found in his field until the hole was filled with them. But the boys were angry now and no longer finding it funny. They couldn’t play with dozens of footballs, on the contrary; it gave them extra work and caused them issues.

But Jozef was very happy. There, at the place from which he kicked away the footballs, away from his field, there was the roof of an enormous factory. Jozef had worked a miracle in his field.

As his little siblings had a notebook and pen company buried in their field, by some miracle, he had a football factory in his. He decided to ask the boys to help him.

Accept these footballs as a gift and come help me.

The boys were kind-hearted and so they and Jozef dug out a hole to the bottom and there was Jozef’s new factory.

We aren’t angry with you but you could have asked or discussed this with us; maybe asked us for permission.

I acted impulsively. The idea just occurred to me and I needed to put it into practice at once, said Jozef as an excuse.

When you kicked those footballs into our hole, you broke a few windows in our company building and a few doors.

I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to.

That’s alright. It’s a field. What it yielded it will regrow. It will repair itself.

And indeed, the broken windows grew back and the broken doors grew back into the frames.

I’ll give you more footballs, said Jozef and took the boys to the new business. It was full of cages and in the cages were hundreds of footballs. Whenever he took one out, another grew back.

You’ll be rich, rejoiced the kids.

Does it work the same at your place?

There are shelves and closets in our company. They hold hundreds of notebooks and pens. And when we take some out, new ones immediately grow back, just like those before.

We’re quite lucky, then, laughed Jozef happily.

That day, Hana laughed as well.

I’m no longer worried for our family! Our child will be well provided for thanks to this business of yours. Our family won’t go hungry or live in poverty.

And she was right.

Jozef took his footballs and went from field to field, looking for business in each one. And will wonders never cease? Sometimes, people suggested they play football together. Jozef, who no longer felt sad, had enough time to go back to the time of his childhood that had been cut short.

Jozef’s childhood had been about growing cereals. Jozef’s adulthood was about footballs, playing, and walking around fields where he looked for new business. Sometimes, he had to remind himself that he had a family and was no longer a small child. When that happened, he liked to visit his friends from the neighbouring field, and together, they drew in their notebooks with their pens, depicting the difference between childhood and adulthood. In this way, he always remembered he had responsibilities while his friends didn’t know anything about responsibility.

Once, he came back home