Štefania had gifted me a pumpkin from her own garden. She expected I would make a delicious soup out of it, as I had so done so many times at the Penzión Európa guesthouse. Little did she know that I had other plans.
The pumpkin sat on my kitchen counter for several weeks. Each time she came, Štefania would ask when I planned to prepare it. “Soon,” I would answer.
With Halloween approaching, it was now time. After sketching a crude but haunting face on it, I cut into the pumpkin. Unlike in prior years, I found that a small steak knife offered much more control and accuracy than the large chef’s knives I had employed in the past. I delighted in scalping the victim and removing the brains and guts from inside. They would be transformed later into delicious toasted pumpkin seeds.
Since the pumpkin would be displayed in the window of my derelict wooden house that gave onto the street, all the better for passersby to notice, a candle was out of the question. Instead, I inserted a small LED lamp into the base, which made the entire face glow wonderfully.
As I stood in front of my house at dusk, I was proud of the menacing but peaceful icon I had created and which was now on display for all to see. In a country that only recently learned of the tradition of Halloween, I liked the novelty of displaying something so… American.
” Kto ti rozbil okno?” asked Štefan upon arrival to my property.
I didn’t understand. Who broke which window where? I walked to the front of my house to investigate. There, I was both shocked and saddened to see that someone had broken the window in which sat my jack o'lantern.
As I examined the damage, the broken window did not appear to have been an accident, but a willful act of vandalism. But by which vandal? And why?
The answers to these questions remain officially unanswered. However, in a village of less than 250 souls, the perpetrator surely was not a stranger; I know most of the people who live here or, at the very least, know their faces. And since not many people walk by, I assume that it was someone who lives close by and frequently passes my house, either on bicycle or on foot.
As to the motive, the answer remains unclear. True, with my winning personality, I have managed to ruffle a few feathers in the village. But I couldn’t imagine that anyone would dislike me enough to vandalize my property. No, there had to be another reason.
Another possible reason in this village of Byzantine Rite Greek Catholics is that someone objected to what they viewed as a pagan symbol. This explanation appears more plausible than the first.
In defiance of this vandalism, I decided to take no action and allow others to see what this vandal had done. Neighbors came by to comment on it, aware that what it does to one, the vandal can do to the other. Then something strange occurred: the window was again broken, this time causing the pumpkin to fall backwards into the house.
I can only surmise that the vandal was dissatisfied with their first attempt, and crestfallen that I had not removed the jack o’lantern from the window altogether. So now the face was no longer recognizable from the window. They had successfully vanquished their apparent archenemy, the pumpkin.
In defiance of this further vandalism, I again took no action. I wanted the neighbors to see what someone was capable of doing in our bucolic little village. Finally and to my surprise, the pumpkin ended up on the ground in front of my house, broken into pieces. The pumpkin was not only “dead,” but annihilated.
This act could have only be performed by a human, someone with arms capable of reaching through the broken window, grasping the pumpkin with two hands, and extracting it from the house before unceremoniously throwing it to the ground. I continued to take no action to assure my neighbors of someone evil within our midst.
Whether you live in a big city, a small town, or even a tiny village, rest assured: assholes can be found everywhere!
