Magic realism in the prose of Jozef Puškáš

James D. Naughton

pp. 181-192

in: Robert B. Pynsent (ed), Modern Slovak prose, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstract

In payment I received a marked hundred-crown note, someone had drawn a tiny little heart on it with a ballpoint pen, I almost thought it was the accounts clerk VereŠ declaring his love for me in this way. … I paid with the note for something in a shop, but shortly afterwards the same marked banknote came back to me, when a certain man paid me my fee for copy-typing! It’s true I didn’t jot down the number of the bank-note, but I don’t believe anyone would amuse himself by drawing hearts on every hundred-crown note that came his way. I decided that money was always the same, however hard you try, each time you find only what you just threw out. You throwaway someting in front of you and immediately you pick it up, throw it away again and pick it up — like in a madhouse. Things have no meaning in themselves, until you perceive them for something else. … (p. 164).