The Man who Sold Watermelons

In all my forty-five years, I’ve never been as scared of anyone as I was of the man who sold watermelons.

It was a hot summer’s afternoon in 1970. We had been travelling for two days across Europe, towards Budapest. Robby, my younger brother, was sitting next to me in the back of the car, playing with a toy tractor. My mother had a map on her knee, but was not following it, preferring instead to look out of the window. My father was chain smoking faster than he was driving. That gave us a chance to look around, but at a price.  As soon as one cigarette was burnt to the filter, he had lit another. His window was open. I was sitting behind him. I remember that I couldn’t decide whether to open mine or not: when it was open, smoke went out of his window but back into mine; if I left it closed, the smoke seemed to drift towards the back of the car and into my face.

We were perhaps fifty miles from Budapest, but my father wanted to stop before we got to the city. He said that it was better to arrive early in the day to his mother’s house. I knew that he was worried about being back to Hungary. He was worried that we may be arrested, or perhaps worse. So tonight, the plan was to spend the night in the countryside outside Budapest, before driving in the next morning.

We were looking for somewhere to stay the night when my mother spotted an old wagon, covered in dirty white canvass, by the side of the road. A shaggy horse stood alongside. It was almost motionless, head down, grazing on the parched yellow grass. In front of the wagon, a makeshift table covered with a soiled cloth held maybe a dozen watermelons, one of them cut.

“Stop the car,” my mother said. “Let’s buy some watermelon.” My father protested for a while, but slowed and eventually came to a stop just in front of the wagon. A round man, perhaps ten years older than my father emerged and strolled towards us. My father got out of the car and greeted him “Szia.”

“Szia , hogyan tud en segít ön?” He asked how he could help us.

“How much are the watermelons? Mennyi?” asked my father, switching between English and Hungarian. His native language must have become a little rusty after fourteen years of neglect. My mother got out of the car as well. She walked over to the two men who were now in conversation. I played with Robby for a while, helping him build a house with his tractor. Then, I was distracted by a woman moving inside the wagon. She seemed to be shifting something heavy, perhaps a sac, from one side to the other.

My mother looked back at us and called. “Come and choose a piece of watermelon. They look delicious.” Robby opened the door and ran to her. I followed more slowly, trying to catch a glimpse of the inside of the wagon again as I walked. The woman was climbing down now, frowning at her husband as she did so. That made it easier for me to see inside. Two children were lying, motionless on the floor. While the adults were talking, I wandered over to take a closer look. Inside, blankets lay across the floor and embroidered drapes hung from the walls.

The two boys, one my age and the other perhaps a year or two older, were lying on the floor. Something about the younger one struck me as peculiar. He was wearing a pair of black Clarks shoes. They looked hardly worn, and certainly didn’t go with the wagon or the drapes.

My mother called over to me. “Hey, Sammy. Stop being so nosey. Come over here.” I walked over to meet her. We each chose a piece of watermelon, before getting back in the car. As we ate the watermelon, my parents were talking. The woman had said the children were sleeping. There was not enough food to feed them. The more they slept, the less they ate. So they slept quite a lot. After he’d finished his slice of watermelon, my father got out of the car to give the man a few notes. He and his wife smiled.

“Megköszön, hálát ad” the man kept repeating, shaking my father’s hand. They talked for a while. Then my father returned to the car and we drove off.

“He told me a good place to stay the night,” my father said. “It’s just a mile down the road.” As we drove towards it, I told my parents about the boys who did not move, and about the Clarks shoes that the younger one had been wearing.

“Very strange,” my mother said. “Very strange, indeed.”



The hotel that had been recommended did not have a star rating. In fact, the only reason my father recognised it was a small vacancy sign, in Hungarian, hanging on a dead tree by the side of the road. It did not look welcoming from the front. There was a farmyard, where a few chickens kept a goat company. A couple of derelict stone barns stood either side of the main farmhouse. We were shown round the back to our rooms by a short woman whose legs looked like they would not carry her for very much longer. Our parent’s room was on the first floor, while ours was on the ground floor. We had two single beds, each with a very tall and thin duvet. I had not seen a duvet before, and was a little suspicious.

“How does it stay on the bed? What happens when I roll over? It’s bound to fall off in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t worry,” my mother re-assured me.

Our parents relaxed in their room for half an hour. We played a few games and had a duvet fight in ours. Then it was time for dinner. We were given a bath and dressed smartly, before leaving our room. It was a short walk to the outside dining area, where a few tables had been laid out. We were shown to a central position, and soon made friends with the family at the table next to ours. Not speaking Hungarian, a lot of sign language was used, but we got by.

After a rather drawn out dinner, my parents were relaxing over coffee. My brother and I were playing under the table. The waiters had lit a few fires around the dining area, and the music started. An accordion and two violins appeared from the side of the building, playing dancing tunes. We glanced over at the musicians, smiling, and then in unison, turned back and stared at them. The lead violinist was the same man that had been selling watermelons by the side of the road.

The players moved straight to our table, playing first to my father. The man who sold watermelons spotted me and Robby under the table and winked at us. They then turned to my mother and played for her. First they played happy melodies, making her smile, but then switched to sad drawn out music. As they did so, I could see the expression on my mother’s face change. I had not seen anything affect her mood so directly before.

As the evening wore on, the three played continuously. They first moved from table to table. Then, playing away from the tables, they encouraged us to dance. I danced a tango with my mother, and another couple of dances with a girl about my own age from a neighbouring table. Then it was time for bed.

My mother made sure we brushed our teeth, tucked us up and told us a story. She turned out the light and both Robby and I drifted off to the sound of gypsy music still playing outside in the courtyard.

I don’t know how much later it was, or why I woke, but I found myself lying under the tall duvet, quite warm and awake, listening to my brother snoring. The music had stopped, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. There were faint sounds of conversation and glasses clicking outside, with an occasional loud laugh.

I was tired, but excited by the evening’s entertainment. Then, there were footsteps outside in the corridor, and voices. I recognised one as my father’s, and the other as belonging to the man who sold the watermelons. They were both speaking in Hungarian. Then, the bedroom door opened, flooding light from the hallway across my closed eyes. I made an effort not to open them; to lie still.

The two of them walked into our room. They were half whispering now, switching between hesitant Hungarian and broken English. The conversation was getting jumbled inside my head. I could not tell who was saying what. The voices sounded serious. I tried not to move.

“How much do you want for them?”

“Two hundred. Nothing wrong with them.”

“Still, it seems a lot.”

“They’re a good pair. But if you don’t want them...”

“Okay, okay, two hundred it is then. Do you want them now...”

“No, leave them here for the time being. He can have them when they wake up.”

And with that, they left the room.  Closing the door behind them, they walked back down the corridor. As soon as I could no longer hear them, I dashed to the door and locked it on the inside. Then, I rushed back to my bed and hid under the duvet. What should I do? Should I wake Robby? Should I tell him we had just been sold to gypsies? I closed my eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening.

The next thing I knew, there was a loud banging on the door. I sat bolt upright in bed. I must have fallen asleep. It was light now. Animals were making various noises outside. They had come to collect us, to take us away. We had missed our chance of escaping, all because I had fallen asleep. Robby opened his eyes, sat up and started to yawn.

“What’s going on?” he asked. I looked at him, then back at the door. Someone was trying the door handle now. Then, there was more knocking.

“Are you two okay in there?” asked my mother through the door.  I ran over, opened it, and hugged her leg as hard as I could. “Good morning,” she said. “How are you? Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

“I... I was afraid...” I started.

“Afraid of what?” my mother asked.

“Afraid you were the man who sold watermelons, come to take us away.”

“Don’t be silly,” said my mother. Robby laughed.

“Anyway, he’s leaving in ten minutes. If you’re quick brushing your teeth, you should just be able to catch him. You could thank him for your new shoes.” I followed my mother’s gaze, and at the bottom of my bed lay a pair of black Clarks shoes.

“They were too small for his younger son, so he sold them to your father. We bought them for two hundred Forint. That’s about seventy pence, enough to feed them for a month.” My brother looked at them admiringly.

“I wish I had a pair like that. Has the man who sold watermelons got any more?”