Temptation

  Coach rumbling at a fair old whack

  István Bethlen sitting in the back,

  Thinks the people love him true

  Love him true, so true,

  But the hell we do, the hell we do.

  When we got down to the ground floor, my mother speeded up. But as she was trying to sneak past Herr Hausmeister’s flat, the door sprang open and a deep male voice called after her:

  “Not so fast, miss.”

  My mother blushed scarlet.

  “Happy New Year,” she muttered awkwardly and gave my sleeve a jerk. “Say hello to Herr Hausmeister, like a good boy.”

  “Good morning,” I said.

  But Herr Hausmeister returned neither our “Happy New Year” nor the “Good morning”. He just stood in the doorway like some wrathful god and stared at my mother. He was an enormous Schwab with gingery-blond hair and blue eyes. His hard, red, pitted face was covered with a spider’s web of blue veins, and his large nose, with its taut nostrils, showed that he liked a drink or two. He must have been in the middle of breakfast, because his moustache was dripping coffee and he was digging around in his mouth with his beetroot-stained index finger. When he had finally unseated the little morsel of food, he said, just like that:

  “Well? What about that rent, then?”

  My mother pointed to our bundles.

  “We’re just off to the pawnshop now.”

  “Didn’t ask where you were going,” he grunted. “I asked about the rent.”

  “All them railway fares took it, you see,” my mother lamented. “I had to fetch the boy and now we won’t have nothin’ to cover ourselves with in the cold, I’m just off to hock the covers, as you can see. I’m a good tenant, you know that, I always pay regular.”

  “Were!” Herr Hausmeister replied curtly. “You’re two months behind.”

  “Is it my fault I was laid up in hospital for six weeks? I almost died of that pneumonia, and I ought to be restin’ even now and eatin’ well, the doctor said so. But I keep working from morning till night like a dog to pay that blessed rent. What more can I do? Tell me! You ain’t lackin’ all Christian feeling, are you?”

  But Herr Hausmeister wasn’t interested in religious debates. He started poking around his teeth again with his index finger. Then he merely said:

  “There’s always some excuse with you lot.”

  There was silence. My mother didn’t respond. I could see that she really wanted to go, but she didn’t dare, waiting for the all-powerful man to give her the go-ahead.

  “All I’m saying is,” he finally declared ominously, “bring me that money, otherwise I’ll have you thrown out on your ear, like that! Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” my mother replied humbly and pulled on the sleeve of my jacket. “Come on, Béla.”

  We had to walk a good three quarters of an hour to get to the pawnshop, because needless to say we didn’t have money for the tram. It being a holiday, the pawnshop was closed, and I thought we’d dragged ourselves there in vain. But my mother went inside the building, cut across the yard and rang the bell of a ground-floor flat.

  A fish-faced little old man opened the door. His eyes protruded like a carp’s, and his big bald head nodded left and right as if he were constantly protesting against something.

  “Good morning, sir,” my mother said with a humility of which only poor Hungarian women are capable when addressing their social superiors.

  Fish-face nodded, but didn’t say anything. He acted like a deaf mute. He turned on his heels without a word as if we weren’t even there and padded through the dark little entranceway that smelt of onions, towards a door. We followed him silently with our bundles.

  The door opened into the pawnshop. It was a pathetic little pawnshop, no more than one room. The old man put on the light, popped a pair of pince-nez tied with string onto the tip of his nose and gestured, still not deigning to say a word to us, for us to open the bundles. He looked at the two eiderdowns and four pillows, feeling them for a good while before finally honouring us with a high, reedy whine:

  “Three pengős.”

  “For the lot?” my mother asked in fright.

  “No, for each feather individually.”

  My mother didn’t reply, merely sighing. Then she took off her coat.

  “How much would you give me for that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why?” my mother said in surprise. “It’s a good warm coat, this.”

  “That’s as may be,” Fish-face replied, “but only the most elegant of society ladies could carry it off, and they don’t much shop with me.”

  My mother put her coat on and then just stood there, pensive, not knowing what to do.

  “Will there be anything else?” the old man asked impatiently.

  My mother said neither yes or no; I could see she was debating heavily with herself. Finally, she turned around, took off the little cross on the thin gold chain from around her neck, and—as if she wanted merely to wipe her mouth—gave it a fleeting, awkward kiss. Then she laid it down before Fish-face.

  “Two,” he said. “Five in total.”

  My mother went up closer and, reluctantly, quietly, almost whispering, she said:

  “I’m in a real bind. Please.”

  “Six,” he shrugged, and dug around in his pockets for the silver pengős.

  My mother only dared count them once we were out on the street.

  “Six pengős!” she said more to herself than to me. “What am I supposed to do with that? The rent’s twenty and we owe forty. Mother of God, what we going to do?”

  That, of course, I couldn’t say. We walked in silence towards the tram stop. It was bitterly cold and the snow crunched underfoot like glass.

  “It’ll be hard at night without the covers,” my mother said. “That old crook only gave us a pengő each for ’em. And they was so good for sleeping in!”

  “Yeah, very good,” I assented quietly.

  A few stray flakes of snow drifted in the air. The sky was low, the horizon milky white. My mother stared into the distance.

  “Still, it’s the cross I’m sorry about,” she said. “Belonged to my grandmother, then my mother.” She sighed. “Looks like even the Lord forsakes the poor.”

  She didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at her.

  “It was a fine cross,” I said.

  I felt so sorry for her at that moment that I’d have complimented her overcoat, the one Fish-face had mocked. It felt almost good to catch her arm when she slipped on the icy road. But she, poor thing, was upset even with the weather.

  “Filthy weather!” she grumbled. “Colder’n hell.”

  “It’s warm in hell,” I said, with a knowing air. “No need for covers there!”

  My mother gave a weak smile.

  “Who knows, maybe we’d be better off !”

  The tram came, we got on. The car was almost empty. My mother sat by the window, looking down, staring at her shoes. I watched her in the cold morning light. Only now did I see how poorly she was. Of course, I thought, her pneumonia. It’s what Berci had died of in the autumn. She ought to be eating well. Resting.

  “Muther!” I said.

  I hadn’t said that word in eight years; it sounded strange. It caught my mother’s ear as well.

  “What is it?”

  “If they take me at that hotel, then . . .” I wanted to stop, but I had no choice now but to continue. “Then,” I stuttered, “then I’ll get that cross back for you ’cause it ain’t for no other woman to wear.”

  My mother gave me a strange look and went back to staring at her shoes. I could see her lips were trembling.

  “It was your great-grandmother’s,” she said. “Then your grandmother’s. They’ll be prayin’ for you up in heaven.”

  Now I, too, took to staring at my shoes. The tram sped on. We were silent for a long time.

  “You ain’t a bad kid,” my mother said. “Life’s bad. Bein’ poor.”

  “Yea
h, it is,” I nodded, and that was the last thing we said.

  •

  The hotel was in Mária Valéria utca, where we’d seen all those motor cars, furs and jewels the night before. My mother looked upon this temple of the rich with an almost religious sense of awe.

  “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  “Very pretty,” I emphasized, to please her.

  We were waiting around in front of the entrance because the porter was not at his post. Through the glass, I looked at the huge marble columns of the lobby, the carpets, chandeliers and enormous armchairs, and I couldn’t help thinking once more of the Fairy Tales.

  “What you loitering here for?” said a porter dressed like a general, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere. He had said the same thing as the policeman on the bridge, and even his voice was similar, or at least it seemed that way to me. He was a bony, clean-shaven man of around forty, very tall, very thin and very strict.

  “Begging you pardon,” my mother said with an awkward bow, “we’ve come to talk to the head porter.”

  “What’s it regardin’?” he asked suspiciously.

  “A job,” my mother replied. “For the boy, sir.”

  The porter looked at me. I could see, or at least I thought I could, that he thought the idea ridiculous: such a ragged little boy in such a fine, grand hotel. But all he said was:

  “He didn’t say anything to me. Best write him about it.”

  “But, begging your pardon, sir,” my mother said anxiously, “the head porter said . . .”

  What the head porter had said the porter never found out. For at that moment a thickset little man appeared behind the glass door, at the sight of whom the porter’s entire manner was completely transformed. His surly face was filled with a sickly-sweet smile, and he simply dripped goodwill as he yanked open the door. Meanwhile he quietly scolded my mother:

  “On your way, then!”

  The thickset little man came through the door, with a servant behind him carrying his luggage. The stern porter addressed the short, ugly, thick little man with the same humility with which my mother had recently addressed him.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll fetch the car,” he mumbled and ran off, with the man’s servant, for the car.

  My mother stopped a few steps away.

  “What do we do now?” she asked desperately, as if I had any advice to give her. She was on the verge of tears in her helplessness. “Oh, God,” she moaned, “one of them black cats must’ve crossed my path. And we need the money so bad, you can see the state we’re in.”

  Indeed I could. I saw the state we were in, all right! Everyone treated the poor thing like a rag. And why? Because she was poor? Had Our Lord been any richer? My hands clenched into fists.

  “Come with me,” I said with that inexplicable conviction I always had in moments of action.

  “Where?” she asked in surprise.

  “Just come along!”

  I could see that the porter was occupied behind the car, strapping on the luggage with the servant. I grabbed my mother’s arm and whisked her into the hotel. She looked left and right in alarm in the vast, brightly lit lobby.

  “My God,” she whispered. “How we goin’ to find him here?”

  “We’ll ask around,” I said, with that inexplicable conviction. “Look, here comes someone now.”

  A boy in a scarlet uniform rushed towards us. He was a blond boy with a girlish face; he couldn’t have been much more than a year older than me.

  “Where d’you think you’re going?” he said in a voice that reminded me of the policeman’s.

  My mother smiled at him nicely.

  “We’d like to talk to the head porter, if you please, young man.”

  “Here?”

  The boy looked at us as if we’d wandered into a holy sanctuary which we were now desecrating with our presence.

  “Where could we find him?” my mother asked, just as nicely.

  “Not here,” the boy said curtly. “Please leave.”

  My mother was all set to leave, but then I stepped forward. I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. Was even this snotty little kid going to humiliate my mother? I looked him straight in the eye.

  “We ain’t going nowhere,” I said, ready for a fight. “And don’t you come so high and mighty with us on account of your fancy red trousers!”

  The boy’s face went redder than his trousers. Even his voice broke in anger as he barked:

  “Get going, or—”

  “What’s going on?” said another boy in a red uniform behind us.

  The boy with the girlish face pointed at me.

  “He’s being insolent,” he said. “I was just going to report him!”

  My mother was pulling at my sleeve, but by this point, I was no longer frightened of anything.

  “We want to talk to the head porter,” I said stubbornly. “And he was being uppity with my mother.”

  The other boy must have been about seventeen. He was prematurely aged, short, quiet, and grave. He listened to us attentively, without interrupting.

  “Come this way,” he said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, and gestured to the first boy that he would take it from there. The first boy shrugged angrily and left. We followed the short, grave boy silently.

  We didn’t know where he was taking us. He cut across the lobby with us and took us down a set of stairs into some sort of basement.

  “Where you takin’ us?” my mother asked timidly.

  “To the head porter,” replied the boy. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Oh yes,” my mother sighed, relieved, and her eyes filled with tears of thanks. “Thank you for your kindness, young man.”

  “You’re welcome,” said the boy, my mother’s humility apparently making him uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” he added later. “I’m very sorry that snot-nosed . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, and just shrugged instead. “They’re all like that. Bicyclists by nature, the lot of them.”

  “What?” asked my mother.

  “Bicyclists,” the boy repeated. “They bow up and stomp down. It’s the old Hungarian way.”

  His voice was colourless and his face so expressionless as he talked it was as if he’d been carved out of wood. But his eyes were something else. He must have seen his share of troubles, I thought.

  The fact that he treated us like human beings put my mother somewhat at her ease. She recounted, in a roundabout way, why we’d come. The boy listened to her seriously.

  “There is an opening,” he said at last. “They just let a boy go the other day. He was a fine boy, but one of the guests made a complaint about him.” He turned to my mother. “An affair involving a lady. Her Excellency.” He said “Her Excellency” with the same sense of disgust as if he’d bitten into a rotten egg. Then he looked at me and added quietly, “You’ve got to be very careful round here.”

  I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but I didn’t dare ask, because I was afraid he’d think me a yokel. Besides, the boy had now stopped before a door.

  “I’ll let him know,” he said. “Please wait here.”

  A few minutes later, he emerged with the head porter. The head porter was like a giant baby someone had dressed in a Santa Claus costume for a laugh. His big belly was protuberant in his gold-fringed uniform, and he had a great, old man’s beard, but his face was like an infant’s. A pair of tiny, light-blue eyes peeked out of that face, and a tiny nose; his skin was as pink as if he’d been born that very day, not ten minutes before.

  “Morning, Anna,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  “I’ve brought the boy, sir.”

  Santa Claus looked at me.

  “Yes,” he said. That was all he said.

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Will you show him to the gentlemen?” my mother asked anxiously at last.

  The head porter pointed at me.

  “Like that ?”

  I didn’t understand what he meant by that
“that”, and clearly my mother didn’t either.

  “I don’t understand, sir, I’m sorry,” she admitted finally.

  “Don’t you?” said the head porter. “Just look at the boy. He’s a bundle of rags. The office’d think I’d picked up a vagrant off the street. Buy him a suit and then we can talk.”

  “But sir,” my mother blurted out, “where would I get the money for that?”

  This, however, did not interest the head porter. He looked at his watch.

  “I’ve got to go now,” he said, and headed off. “Come and see me again sometime. God bless.”

  We looked at each other, but said nothing. We wandered silently around the basement. All of a sudden, we came face to face with the second boy in the scarlet uniform. We must have looked pretty despondent, because he immediately asked:

  “Something wrong?”

  “And how!” my mother complained. “The head porter says the boy’s ragged and he can’t show him to the gentlemen like this.”

  “Doesn’t he have any other clothes?”

  “No,” my mother sighed.

  The boy took a good look at me and said:

  “My clothes would fit him just fine. I’ll lend them to you.”

  “You will?” my mother said.

  “ ’Course,” the boy said lightly. “I have to wear this thing, anyway,” he said, pointing with revulsion to his uniform. “Wait for me here,” he said, and gestured to me to follow him.