That darling mother was, by the by, no bigger than a medium-sized fifteen-year-old girl. She must have been very young. Sometimes she would laugh and play with her little Istványka in such a way you thought she could have done with a bit of mothering herself. I can no longer remember her face, but I know I thought her very pretty, which would occasionally make me uneasy for, like the other children, I too thought about things in black and white, and believed that only good people were pretty, strong and healthy, while bad people were ugly, twisted and repugnant, like the old woman.
Motherdarlingdear was very popular in our house. The old woman used to call her Piroshkamydear and would simply ooze honey when Piroshkamydear appeared on Sundays. This outpouring of the milk of human kindness was not so much meant for her as for her wallet, which could easily be charmed open. Piroshkamydear wore her heart in her purse, and the old woman knew just how to prise its lips apart.
“He so thin and sad this days, the boy,” she’d say, shaking her head. “I didn’t want to write, dear, but I am worrying, yes, worrying.”
That was enough to set tears welling in Piroshkamydear’s eyes and, following a long and involved discussion, send her reaching for her purse. And from then on, Istvány got eggs for breakfast.
Though Piroshkamydear wasn’t exactly heir to the royal fortune—she was a housemaid in Kaposvár, in the household of a Jewish lawyer—her little Istvány still lived among us like some kind of exalted creature. He was treated differently to an infuriating extent. He would get the tastiest morsels, and he was the only one among us to get elevenses and tea. Most of the boys had rough, horsehair blankets in winter as well as summer, but Istvány had a cosy eiderdown and three pillows, while I had none. Piroshkamydear paid for all of that, apparently to the complete exhaustion of her meagre funds. She came to visit for years on end in the same ragged little muslin dress, and when there was mud, she would hop about on her heels like a crow, for her soles perpetually had holes in them. Once, I remember she lost five krajcárs at the station and couldn’t get back because she’d only had the exact cost of her fare and not a whisper more.
But she never came empty-handed on Sundays. She would always bring her Istványka a little something; if nothing else, then some worthless little bauble she’d clearly fished out of her master’s wastebasket. For winter, she’d knit him warm little undercoats, shawls for his neck, stockings and wrist-warmers. Istványka even had gloves and a good, warm winter hat.
It was only much later that I realized just what lengths that half-pint of a mother of his would go to for her little Istványka. Once, for example, just before the Easter break, if I remember rightly, the Schoolmaster told the children to read a children’s book, and come back and write a summary of the story from memory. So Istvány told his mother on Sunday that he needed a book for the break.
“Oh, dear, oh dear!” Piroshkamydear lamented, the tears welling up at once in her eyes. “I don’t have money for it, my little dove.”
“That’s all right,” Istvány reassured her. “It can wait till next Sunday.”
“How can I, my darling blossom, when it’s two weeks till the first of the month?”
“So you bring it in two weeks’ time, then. I’ll talk to the teacher.”
Istvány tried to reassure her, because he was a nice boy, but his mother just couldn’t let it go. Her mouth drooped, she started crying quietly.
“It’s a dog’s life bein’ poor, my love.”
But next Sunday she brought her Istványka a book after all, a nice thick one, stamped in golden letters: Rules of Civil Litigation. The poor thing apparently just couldn’t bear the thought of her beloved boy not having anything to read over the Easter break when his teacher had told him to, so she simply lifted the Rules of Civil Litigation from her master, thinking there was plenty enough to read in that, and if it was good enough for a fine, educated gentleman like her employer, the Jewish lawyer, then it would surely be good enough for her little Istványka.
That was what she was like, that mother. She would have filched the stars out of heaven if her little boy had needed them.
Once, as I came into the front room, I saw her cradling her little Istvány like a suckling baby. I must have made a face, because Istvány got pretty scared. He wanted to slip out of his mother’s arms, but she wouldn’t let him.
“What’s got into you, Pistuka my love?”
“Lemme go, Mother!” he flailed. “They’ll make fun of me.”
“Who’ll make fun of you?”
Istvány didn’t dare say.
“Is it Béla?” asked Piroshkamydear, and since Istvány didn’t answer, she called me over. “Come over here a minute, Béla!”
I went over moodily.
“Here,” she said, still clutching the child on her knee, “why d’you make fun of Istványka?”
I didn’t answer, but I also didn’t lower my gaze as children usually do on such occasions. I just stood there silently, pressing my chin to my neck, and stubbornly looked the girl straight in the eyes, so she’d see that I wasn’t afraid, not even of a mother.
“You don’t have to glower like that,” said Piroshkamydear, “don’t your mother call you some nice name?”
“No,” I replied rudely and left.
Just you wait, Pistuka, I raged to myself, I’ll give you what for tonight!
I went out into the kitchen, swearing, and slumped down next to the stove. The kitchen, too, was full of visitors, and I couldn’t escape the “mother stench”. All the little maids on their day off were chatting away and they were all being so infuriatingly refined and sweet to each other, it was as if they’d left their normal way of speaking in the bottom of the drawer with their work clothes. I hated these uppity grown-ups, and I hated their children too; I hated everyone and everything on that hateful Sunday afternoon.
I took out my pocketknife and started whittling something. I’d been trying to make myself a whistle for days now, without success. I desperately wanted a whistle. At first, it had seemed just another unattainable dream, like everything else that cost money, but then I heard that you could whittle yourself one out of willow, and the idea wouldn’t let me rest.
I sat drilling and whittling in the corner for a long time. The whistle just wouldn’t make a sound, but the knife, however, slipped and sliced my left thumb so that blood came pouring out of it. I squeezed my thumb, terrified, to stop the bleeding, but to no avail. I didn’t know what to do. I had no handkerchief to tie it with, and I didn’t dare say anything. Once, when I had had a similar accident, I’d run to the old woman in fright, but she just gave me a slap so hard by way of comfort that I’d never forgotten it.
“Why you not cut throat instead, eh?” she shouted. “Do us all favour, good-for-nothing.”
But that had been back in the ancient past, when I was four. Since then, I had learnt all about rep. I just kept squeezing my thumb and kept my mouth shut. I was covered in blood—hands, feet, all over, and my stomach began to churn and my head go funny. I leant dizzily against the wall.
All of a sudden, I heard Piroshka’s voice.
“What’s the matter with you, Béla?”
“Nothing,” I growled.
“Let me see!”
Piroshka leant down to me and as soon as she saw me covered in blood in the dim light of the corner, she let out a scream.
“Good grief, how’d you do that?”
They all gathered round me. Piroshka started running to and fro as if the house were on fire. She brought some water in the washing basin, managed to get hold of a clean cloth from somewhere, dragged me out of the corner, washed and bound my finger, and then put her arms around me and took me into the front room. She chased the mothers off the daybed, laid me down, sat down next to me and cradled me the way she used to do her Istványka.
“That better, Bélushka?” she cooed. “Go on, let’s have a smile out of you, Bélushka!”
No one had ever called me Bélushka, but I would have told them j
ust where to get off if they’d tried. Now I didn’t say anything. I put up with the cradling and the Bélushka, and to my shame I found that rep or no rep, it felt simply wonderful. And that evening I didn’t beat Istványka at all.
Next Sunday was the first of the month. On the first, Piroshka would always come loaded down with packages. This time, she was clutching four or five small packets; she could easily have made one larger package out of them, but Piroshka was a cunning mother and knew what children were like. She made a separate little packet of each present, sometimes wrapping them in as many as three or four bits of paper for effect, and tying each with fancy twine.
Istvány set about unwrapping the packages excitedly as I looked on jealously from the corner. I couldn’t be angry with him that day, but this made it harder. A vague, heavy melancholy settled on my chest, and my throat tightened. I looked at Piroshka as she watched her little son, all excitement, radiant, and all at once I knew that she wasn’t crazy at all, and that hurt so much that I almost went crazy myself with the pain. I wanted to leave so I wouldn’t have to see them, but when I started heading for the door, Piroshka called after me:
“Come over here a minute, Bélushka!”
I went.
“Here,” she said with a smile and handed me a little packet.
I stared at it, astounded. I didn’t understand. Why would anyone give a stranger’s bastard son a present?
“Go on, open it! It’s yours.”
My hand shook so badly that I could hardly untie the string. Inside the package there was a box, and in the box there was cotton wool, and inside that was a lead whistle. I’d been longing achingly for a whistle just like it, and yet now I couldn’t be pleased. I just kept looking at it and my heart grew so heavy, it was as if it, too, were made of lead.
“Don’t you like it, Bélushka?” Piroshka asked. “You was after a whistle, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I stammered, “it’s lovely, miss.”
“No point giving that one things!” scowled the old woman, casting me a dirty look. “Say thanks you to Piroshka!”
My heart was so full of gratitude that I would have liked to take Piroshka’s hand and kiss it all over, but after the old woman had told me off, I couldn’t squeeze out a simple thank you. I just stood there with the longed-for whistle in my hand and stared helplessly at the floor. Then I turned without a word and ran out into the yard.
It was snowing and there was a deep winter’s Sunday silence, and it was going on for evening. I stopped in the middle of the yard and blew my whistle. It had a hell of a sound, not like my willow whistle. It made a proud, sharp, high-pitched note, the snowy trees trembling at its call. Then there was silence once more, and I sat down on a tree trunk and began, bitterly, to cry.
•
From then on, I didn’t run off on Sunday afternoons any more. It’s muddy outside, I told myself that first Sunday, and there’s a hole in my shoe. But then summer came and brought with it such a drought that they were praying for rain in church and even then I didn’t feel much like running away. Rain or shine I sat at home and waited, like the other children, though I never got another little package. But it wasn’t the packages I was waiting for—it was the woman who’d thought of them in the first place.
I never would have gone up to her, though. I just sat in an abandoned corner of the yard and waited for her to have her fill of Istványka, so she’d finally remember me, too.
“Why don’t you come over here a bit, Bélushka?” she’d say, and my heart started beating faster. I wanted to run—to fly!—over to her, but instead, I made my face all sleepy and ambled over slowly, leisurely, as if it didn’t mean a thing to me. I settled down next to her with a yawn, and sat there, silent. She, too, once asked me why I “looked so mean”, but at least she went and did something about it, not like my poor mother. She gave me a good, hard smack on my behind and ran off like a thief caught red-handed.
“You’re it!” she cried and I, grave and moody Béla, with my precious reputation, found myself running around, shrieking and playing catch.
Another Sunday, she brought cards and taught me to play rummy. We spent the whole afternoon playing cards, the three of us. Istvány and I were both so nervous, it was as if our very souls were in the balance; but neither of us was as excited as Piroshka, the grown-up.
She knew every children’s game and took them all seriously. She was the one who taught me twenty questions and charades. She was the fastest runner, the best at ball games, and even played “it” with us with great conviction.
She also had a game she’d made up herself: playing dentist. Istvány was the dentist and I was the nurse. Piroshka would chase everyone except us out of the front room, lock the door, and climb, face down, under the couch. Istvány put on the old woman’s pince-nez and await his clients, a big pair of pliers in hand. I would open the door and, with a highly officious air, call out into the waiting room for the next patient.
The patient would enter and we sat them down on the couch.
“Which one hurts?” Istvány asked severely.
“This one, here,” the boy would complain with feigned seriousness, because we’d told them beforehand that there was nothing to be afraid of, the whole thing was just a game.
“Looks like it’s got to come out!” the spectacled doctor announced. “Ain’t scared, are you, sir?”
“ ’Course I ain’t!” the boy would reply manfully, because he had no idea what lay in store for him.
For the moment Istvány had snapped his massive pliers together ominously and put the cold steel to the child’s mouth, Piroshka reached out from under the bed and gave the patient a good hard pinch, at which point the patient—in his confusion—thought they’d actually drawn his tooth and would let out a terrific scream.
Occasionally, it even happened that Piroshka would, nothing better having come to mind, grab my hand and play “this little piggy” with my fingers, as if I were an infant. The most amazing thing was not only that I tolerated this, but that I secretly liked this humiliating game, because I was the only one Piroshka played it with—not even Istvány could join in. That’s how far I’d stooped. What use dwelling on the details? Eventually, I even ended up playing itsy-bitsy spider with Piroshka in public.
I would sometimes see the boys looking on mockingly, as if to say—you too, big man? and I’d grow ashamed. If this carries on, I thought, my rep will be completely done for. But it didn’t end up carrying on.
One Sunday at the end of June, Piroshka brought with her a man with a huge handlebar moustache, and led him over, very seriously, to Istvány.
“This man is your father, Istványka,” she announced, her face crimson with excitement. “Be a good boy an’ say hello, my little dove.”
Istvány stared at the man with the moustache, not knowing what to do. At first, the poor boy couldn’t so much as move for fright, but he did eventually manage to pull himself together and timidly shook the man’s hand. The large, greying man stroked Istvány’s head clumsily.
“Fine boy,” he said, nodding, and Piroshka smiled.
Piroshka took the man’s large red hand breezily and held it up in front of Istvány’s face.
“What’s this?” she asked mysteriously, pointing to the man’s finger.
“A ring,” Istvány sniffled.
“What kind of ring?”
“A weddin’ ring.”
“What about this?” she asked, pointing to her own finger.
“That’s a weddin’ ring, too.”
“Yes it is!” Piroshka exclaimed loudly for everyone to hear. “Your father’s gone and married me, you see!”
Istvány didn’t say anything. At other times, you couldn’t shut him up on Sundays, but now he was as silent in front of his tiny little mother and his mountain of a father as if he’d soiled himself.
The moustachioed man sat down on the little bench and drew the boy between his knees.
“An’ that means you’re comin�
� to live with us, Istvány. Ain’t that nice?”
Istvány nodded yes, that was nice. Then he just stood there silently between his father’s two strong knees and you couldn’t tell at all whether he was happy or sad.
Even the old woman came out of the house at the big news and started blabbering emotionally. She launched into an emotional ode to Piroshka’s heart of gold and Christian virtues, though even the stupidest among us knew that what she was really mourning was Piroshka’s purse. She embraced Istvány and told him, terribly grave:
“Give thanks to Lord Jesus, my boy, who takes pity on little boys like you!”
“Amen,” Piroshka sighed happily, wiping her teary eyes.
She forgot all about me that Sunday. I hung around her in vain, trying to attract her attention, but she was so consumed with her brand-new, personal joy that she didn’t so much as notice me. So much for our famous friendship. My God. I was as hopelessly alone again as before. The pain in my heart was so strong, it was as if that big old man were sitting not on the bench at all, but on my chest.
It was getting dark. The visitors started packing up, Ilona brought out Istvány’s things. And then, in the midst of all the farewells, Piroshka finally remembered me, too.
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