“It just comes?”
“Sometimes. Not always.”
“What’s it depend on?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s from God.”
“Hm.”
My mother stared at her shoes as she always did when she was nervous.
“Well, that I would pay sixteen fillérs to see!” she said eventually, without looking up.
“But you don’t have it?”
“No. Yesterday was the first.”
I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? My mother stood there for a little while and then went out into the kitchen without a word. I swore horribly to myself, but that didn’t help much. I took out my English notes and tried to learn some words. I couldn’t. My head was full of the poem. Everyone could read it except me!
You could hear Márika singing from the walkway. I threw aside my notes and walked out.
“Where you going?” my mother asked.
“To Márika’s.”
“For the paper?”
“Yes.”
My mother shrugged.
“Don’t bother. They get the other one.”
“Then maybe someone else’ll have it.”
“They don’t.”
“How do you know?”
My mother blushed, as if caught in the act.
“I asked,” she confessed, then turned around and pretended to have something very important to do.
So I went back into the room. I tried to study but still couldn’t. A few minutes later my mother came in.
“Here,” she said, “I wash for a woman that has a newsagent’s, she might let us get a look at that paper.”
“You think?” I asked hopefully.
“Yes,” she replied. “If the old lady’s in, we won’t have no trouble. I don’t know her daughter so well. Come on, it’s worth a try.”
She didn’t have to ask me twice.
“Where is this newsagent lady, then?” I asked in the street.
“In Buda. On Margit körút.”
“Margit körút?”
“Yes. Why you so surprised?”
“Won’t that be a bit much for you? Three hours there, three back? It’ll be evening by the time we’re home.”
My mother shrugged.
“It’s Sunday, I ain’t got nothing better to do,” she replied with forced levity. “I’ve brought the bread with us. There ain’t nothing else for lunch, anyhow.”
“Thank you, Muther.”
“What for?” she joked. “Keepin’ you on bread and water?”
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said, it being my turn for forced levity. “It’s good of you to come with me.”
My mother gave a little laugh.
“Anyone can go to the cinema that’s got the money, but not everyone gets to read her son’s poem, ain’t that right? Come on, then, let’s step on it, or we’ll never get there.”
The church bells had tolled three by the time we got to Margit körút. My mother went ahead to check the lay of the land.
“It’s her!” she reported excitedly. “Come on.”
The lady who owned the store was talking to an elderly gentleman when we came in. She was a dumpy, brown-haired woman with twinkling eyes. She was nice to my mother, as nice as if she’d been her favourite dog.
“Well, what’s up, my girl?”
My mother just stood there for a few moments and stared at her shoes. It seems she was embarrassed in front of the old man.
“Please, madam,” she said very timidly, “could we have a little look at one of the papers?”
“Sure,” she nodded. “They’re over there, go help yourself, my girl.”
And with that, she went back to chatting with the old man.
My mother went over to the counter but didn’t dare lift the paper off it. She bent over to leaf through it, while I looked on over her shoulders on tiptoe, heart beating wildly. Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat altogether.
“There it is!” I whispered and broke out in a sweat.
My mother leant over the paper and I leant, stretching, over her to read in this borrowed newspaper my first published poem. It went like this:
MY HARMONICA
My hands are peasant’s hands. They can’t play violin,
Can’t pluck the strings of a fancy mandolin.
They have no place in a grand philharmonica
All they have is this cheap harmonica.
A humble thing, no decoration north or south.
Only wood and tin, as naked as my mouth.
A plain wooden cradle, a plain wooden coffin
Is the song of this simple piece of wood and tin.
So easily a violin will break its strings
Like all those delicate and fancy things.
Naked you go out, as naked you came in
Is the song of this simple piece of wood and tin.
Its song a song of poverty, of life and death,
And how my mother coughs out all her breath.
Perhaps the only way of taking all this in
Is softly, by night, on this piece of wood and tin.
There is a carpenter. A poor man, so I hear.
And to this my song, he may sometime lend an ear.
Perhaps one day his father, too, will listen in,
To the song of this simple wood and tin.
“How is it?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” my mother replied. “If they printed it, it must be good.”
But when the old man left, she handed the paper to the newsagent.
“Here, madam, have you read this poem yet?”
The lady glanced at the paper.
“Look at the name,” she said.
“Some relation?” the lady asked.
“My son!” my mother said and swallowed heavily. Her face flushed a deep red, her eyes glittered. “It’s by my boy!”
The newsagent was very surprised.
“How old are you, my boy?”
“Just gone fifteen, ma’am.”
“And you’re writing in the paper?” she asked, shaking her head from side to side. “Well, Anna, this is quite something,” she said in congratulatory tones. “Let me read that poem, then.”
She put on her spectacles and started reading. I watched her face, but in vain. It was exactly the same as when she’d been talking to the old man.
“It’s good,” she said at last. “A little modern, but good.”
I would have liked to ask what “a little modern” meant, but I thought it best to keep quiet, since a poet should obviously know that kind of thing already. In any case, it can’t have been anything good. I swore right then and there never to show my poems to anyone else again. Maybe Patsy, I added later, softening.
The newsagent turned to my mother.
“You’re not sick, are you, Anna?”
“Not me,” replied my mother. “Why d’you ask, madam?”
“Because your son says you keep coughing.”
My mother became horribly embarrassed.
“Um,” she muttered, “he just meant . . . um . . . you know.”
“For the rhyme,” smiled the lady, with a professional air.
“That’s right,” my mother said, seizing on the word, and looked at me. “Ain’t it, Béla?”
“Yes,” I said, and was horribly ashamed of myself.
My mother, having thanked the newsagent profusely, was getting ready to go when the lady asked me:
“Don’t you want to take the paper?”
Didn’t I! These ladies and their questions! I glanced over at my mother out of the corner of my eye.
“I forgot my purse, madam,” she said.
“That’s all right,” the lady replied, “I’ll take it out of next week’s washing.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Yes, thank you, ma’am.”
I walked triumphantly out with the paper. My mother didn’t say anything for a while, and then she said reproachfully:
I said nothing. My mother dropped her voice, as if she was afraid of being overheard.
“Ladies don’t like poor people that cough,” she said. “They’re afraid of ’em. Won’t employ ’em. I think it’s best if we don’t show that poem to anyone.”
“I wouldn’t have shown it to anyone, anyway,” I muttered.
“Why not?”
“Well . . . it’s best to keep your mouth shut.”
“Yeah,” my mother nodded empathetically. “Best for the likes of us to keep our mouths shut. Now, you as hungry as I am?”
I nodded.
“Then let’s sit ourselves down on a bench and have our bread,” she said, what with our being just on the square at Pálffy tér.
We sat down. My mother broke the bread, handed one half to me, and bit greedily into the other. Then she opened the newspaper. She treated it differently than she had in the newsagent’s. Every one of her gestures showed that this was her newspaper, that she would work for it, and that she could do with it as she pleased. She smoothed the page on which they’d printed my poem flat on her knee, folded it double and began to read. She read differently than she had at the newsagent’s. She made her way through the words slowly, ponderously, her mouth moving a little as she read. When she’d got to the end, she said:
“It’s really somethin’.” But then, it seems, she got embarrassed, because she quickly added: “The newsagent lady said so. Did you hear her?”
“Yes.”
She looked out towards the Danube. There was fog over the river, and a ship’s horn sounded somewhere in the distance. We sat in silence for a long time. Suddenly, she said:
“He’ll be sorry for not taking an interest in you yet, your pa. Could have been his name they printed in the paper.”
“Your name’s good enough for me,” I said.
“Yes . . . it ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of. It’s a pretty common name, I’ll admit, but decent Christian folk have worn it.”
“You’ll be proud of it someday!”
“Proud? Why?”
“Because I’m going to make that name of yours famous. They’ll know it everywhere, even in America. Would you believe that?”
“Maybe,” she said pensively. “Because if a poor kid as miserable as you can have his poem printed in the paper at fifteen, then it seems to me that nothing’s quite impossible in this world.” She said nothing for a while and just stared at the Danube. “Who knows,” she said, munching on her bread, “you may really be famous someday, and then you’ll deny your poor mother.”
“I damn well won’t!”
“Why shouldn’t you?” she said softly, without a trace of bitterness. “You go ahead, if you think it’ll help. That’s the way of the world. Ain’t nothin’ to write home about, a mother like yours. And besides,” she shrugged, “where I’ll be by then, Lord knows!”
“Stop talking like that!” I snapped. “What do you mean where’ll you be? I’ll tell you where. You know where you’ll be?”
“Where?”
“In America!”
She smiled.
“Why there?”
“ ’Cause I’ll take you there. More than one poor boy has made his fortune there. And I’m going to as well, you’ll see. And when we get hungry, like now, I’ll take you to the finest restaurant, and you can eat so much you’ll have to take that white powder afterwards, like the fancy gentlemen do.”
“Oh let them drink that stuff, much good may it do ’em!” laughed my mother. “Székelygulyás is good enough for me.”
“And noodles with cottage cheese!” I added severely.
“And maybe some bean soup before?” she enquired, giggling.
“Very well,” I agreed magnanimously. “But only if it’s got smoked ham in it!”
“Yeah!” she said, laughing out loud. “We ain’t never had it so good! So when we off to America, then?”
“You think I’m joking? I’ve got it all worked out. And you know, I’m going to make a lot of money in America, that’s for sure. And I’ll get a flat for us the likes of which you’ve never seen. A real millionaire’s flat. Three rooms, central heatin’, a lavatory and everything, so we won’t have to freeze to the planks in winter. And you’ll have the finest room, I’ve got that all planned out too. And you’ll have a sofa in it like the one Márika and Árpád have, for you to lie around on all day. And I’ll even get a washerwoman in every month.”
“Washerwoman?” my mother laughed and her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “Washerwoman?” she repeated and put her arm around my shoulder. “You’re still a little boy, poems or no poems. But your heart,” she added more softly, “your heart, my boy, is as if the Lord Jesus had touched it with his hand.”
Then she opened her battered little bag and took out her handkerchief, because by now she was no longer laughing, but crying bitter tears.
8
WINTER TIPTOED INTO THE CITY LIKE a thief. In the morning, the sun was still shining and the asters paraded unsuspecting in the gardens of Buda. Gentlemen walked by the riverside with their jackets open. But in the afternoon, the sky unexpectedly clouded over, an angry north wind swept the streets, and a strange sort of precipitation beat down that was neither snow nor rain. I woke in the night to find that I was cold. There was an icy draught in the room, the window rattled, the doors creaked, and there was a mysterious banging from the roof. The wind howled so you’d have thought people were being massacred in the dark outside. In the morning, when I went out into the street, the city was so quiet it was as if everyone were at home in mourning. The wind stopped. There were sheets of ice on the river. It snowed.
It was on that day that it happened. In the afternoon, the lift broke down, and since they couldn’t fix it till morning, they let me go home early. It must have been around ten when I got back to the apartment. It was dark in the kitchen. I felt my way, with well-practised movements, to the table, put the packet of food down, and went into the room. But when I wanted to go to bed, something didn’t feel right. I went back into the kitchen and lit a match. My mother wasn’t in her bed. I looked in the room as well, but she wasn’t there either. I’d been living with my mother for more or less a year now, but this had never happened before, though it was true that I usually got home a good two hours later. Was she usually out at this time? I wondered. I was gripped by a vague sense of unease. I decided that I wouldn’t go to sleep till my mother got home, but I was so tired that the second I lay down I was overcome by sleep.
I woke to the opening of the front door. I wanted to say something, but then I heard a man’s voice in the kitchen. It was saying things to my mother. They were whispering. My mother’s voice was so strange that at first I thought it might not be her at all. She was giggling like a schoolgirl.
“You shouldn’t have made me drink all that wine,” she said. “I’m as dizzy as a merry-go-round.”
“D’you deny you had a good time?” the man asked tipsily.
“No, I don’t,” my mother said, before making some little, wordless noise. I didn’t know if she was yawning or sighing. “How long it’s been since I drunk wine. How long since I heard the Gypsies play! Oh dear, oh dear . . . What time is it?”
I heard the striking of a match. They lit the petroleum lamp in the kitchen.
“The clock’s stopped,” the man said.
My mother found that quite amusing.
“It’s on strike,” she giggled. “I usually wind it at eight. Must be angry that I ain’t payin’ it no attention. How does that song go again?”
“Which one?”
“The one you had ’em play me all the time.”
The man started humming softly in a fine baritone. He hummed a melancholy tune, and my mother joined him.
I felt an unpleasant pressure in my gut. What was going on? Was my mother drinking in secret? And bringing home men? Had she brought home other men before, and was it just that I hadn’t not
iced in the dark? I was overcome by revulsion and anger. My mother laughed.
“What you laughing at?” the man asked.
“Makes me laugh to remember.”
“What?”
“You not recognizin’ me. I’d never have thought it!”
“But then I did remember you.”
“Then! It’s easy to remember after. You looked at me like you’d never seen me before in your life. What I’d like to know is, if that’s so, why you came over and talked to me.”
“Why? ’Cause you were lookin’ at me. Weren’t you lookin’ at me?”
“ ’Course I was lookin’ at you!”
“There you are, then. When a lady as pretty as yourself looks at me, I’m going to go over and talk to her. It’s the way I am.”
“Oh, you can sweet-talk, all right, you sweet-talker!” my mother laughed again. “You should have seen your face when I said your name!”
“Well . . . it’s been a while since we saw each other.”
“Yes indeed,” my mother replied, and this time, I clearly heard her sigh.
So they’re old friends, I thought, who haven’t seen each other for a long time. That reassured me a little. But then the man said:
“Listen, Anna, couldn’t I sleep here tonight?”
“You’ve got a nerve! You lost your mind?”
“All right, all right, no need to bite my head off. I could sleep in the other room, if you didn’t want me sleeping in here.”
“I told you already I’ve got someone that rents the bed. Why d’you want to sleep here anyway?”
The man was quiet for a moment. Then he said:
“I’ll tell you like it is, Anna, I’ve got nowhere to stay.”
“But you said you lived on Váci út!”
“Oh, I was just saying that, you know how it is. Truth is, I’d only just arrived in Pest when I saw you at the station.”
“You mean you don’t live here?”
“Well, yes, usually.”
“Then why don’t you have a flat?”
“I was down in the countryside for a while.”
“Where?”
“All around.”
“What for?”
“Business.”
“You’re in business now?”
“Mostly.”
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