Temptation

  As I say, this did not strike me as outrageous. I only started feeling a bit uncomfortable one morning when Exfix said:

  “You . . . boy . . . what’s your name again?” and, unusually, actually waited for my response. After I had respectfully informed him that my given name was Béla, in the most natural tone in the world he said:

  “Well, from now on, I’m going to call you András. I’m used to that.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” I replied politely, and felt a cold shiver running down my spine, though I didn’t quite know why.

  I didn’t even know Her Excellency at the time. She was nothing but a room number to me, like any other guest, and people are not generally afraid of room numbers.

  But one morning, when I went into the changing room to put on my uniform, the boys were in a heated discussion over something.

  “What is it?” I asked, because lately they’d started letting me in on their secrets.

  “Ain’t you heard?” asked Lajos. “Her Excellency’s back.”

  •

  I knew it was her as soon as she stepped into the lift. The boys had told me so much about her that when I set eyes on her, I felt like a little boy seeing a witch or a fairy in a dream, only I didn’t know which. There was something in her that frightened me so that I could hardly look at her, and there was something spellbinding in her that meant I could hardly take my eyes off her.

  Her Excellency really was “the most”. I thought her twenty-eight or thirty at the time, but now I know that it is impossible to determine the age of women like her. She might have been ten years older, but she could equally have been ten years younger. The most striking things were her eyes. They were the greyest eyes I had ever seen, light grey like a winter sky when the sun glows through the clouds, dazzling you when you look up. They were slightly slanted and below them, as if her gaze had singed her skin, there was a darker, sooty little semicircle. She had shoulder-length red hair, a delicate, straight nose, and a strange, wide, highly arched mouth that wore an odd, dull pout, the sort little children have when they’ve been crying. She used a bitter, provocative perfume whose smell seemed to linger in the lift hours after she’d gone. And she really did never wear a bra.

  I always got a strange little thrill when she stepped into the lift. She was usually buttoning her gloves at the time and went straight to the mirror, like women generally. She would adjust her hair, veil or hat, but this was clearly just a ruse, on which she didn’t insist too strongly. Essentially, she was just looking at herself. It was what the other women, too, did when they were alone in the lift, but the way she looked at herself was different. There were women who were so in love with their reflections, I thought they were going to go over and start kissing the mirror. There were others who were angry with themselves, or at least with the night before, which had left its mark on their faces. They would feel the wrinkles around their eyes irritably and usually make a last-ditch effort with their powder puffs. There were some who were more dispassionate, who examined themselves as soberly and matter-of-factly as a shopkeeper examines his goods before putting them out in the window. Some had trouble with their stockings, some with their corsets, which would make quiet little popping noises as they pulled them to and fro on their midriffs.

  Her Excellency belonged to none of these groups. She looked at herself the way a collector looks at his favourite painting, whose value and flaws he knows precisely. And she could hardly have adjusted her corset because, as I said, she didn’t wear one. She had a black silk dress that hugged her figure so tight that every time I saw her I thought she was naked and had merely painted herself black. No, Her Excellency definitely did not wear a corset, and as I realized later, she didn’t—unlike most women—wear a garter belt either. She wore her stockings doubled over at the top, and once, as she adjusted them with her back to me, I saw in the mirror that there was nothing above them for the longest way. I began to suspect that she didn’t wear underwear, either.

  She only rarely came down with her husband—most of the time, she came down with a girlfriend. The bellboys called her friend Whitewash, partly because she was as long and thin as the handle of a whitewashing brush, and partly because the make-up she used was so white, it was as if her greatest wish when applying it was for people to mistake her for a corpse. Only her thick lips, painted crimson, stuck out of this deadly pallor, accentuated even further by her smooth, shiny, coal-black hair. She was Her Excellency’s best friend. If Exfix was away, which was often, Whitewash sometimes even spent the night at Her Excellency’s. She was engaged to an oyster-faced Viennese arms manufacturer, who would stay with us whenever he was in Budapest. As to just how engaged they were, I don’t know, but the boys all said “intimately”.

  At first, Her Excellency did not walk Cesar. She would get up at noon, when the dog had already been for his morning walk, and in the evening, when she got back, Cesar had been walked for the second time as well. But one day, she did bring him with her, and it was to this I owed my luck.

  Cesar broke into barks of joy when he saw me. As always, he wanted to come over, but his owner, as usual, went straight to the mirror, dragging the dog with her. But Cesar wouldn’t let it rest. He pulled at his leash to indicate he wanted to come over to me, and since his owner was taking no notice, started barking angrily. Finally, she turned around and snapped:

  “What is it?”

  I didn’t know if she was talking to me or the dog, but I had no time to reply in any event, because just then Cesar gave his lead such a yank that Her Excellency almost toppled over.

  I caught her at the last moment. She was in my arms only for a heartbeat, but I almost burst into flames at her touch. I felt myself blush.

  Her Excellency looked at me. At first just briefly, in passing, but then her gaze returned and rested on me. She wasn’t looking at me the way you usually look at a lift boy, but . . . I didn’t quite know how myself. A vague memory flashed through me, but I wasn’t sure what I was remembering. All I knew was that my knees were shaking.

  Her Excellency smiled.

  “What’s your name?” she asked in a slightly sing-song voice.

  “Béla,” I replied, and it only occurred to me much later that I ought to have said András.

  “How come I’ve never seen you before? Are you new?”

  “I’ve been here over a year, Your Excellency.”

  “In the lift?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. I’ve served Your Excellency quite a lot.”

  “Really?” she asked in surprise, and looked at me in that strange way again.

  I suddenly realized what that look reminded me of. It was the way Manci had looked at me when I got out of bed naked. I could feel myself blush again.

  Cesar, meanwhile, was licking my hand.

  “Quite the love affair, I see,” she said with a smile. “Are you the one that walks him?”

  “No, Your Excellency.”

  “Why not, since you’re so close?”

  “I can’t leave the lift, ma’am.”

  “Would you like to walk him from now on?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  “All right, then, I’ll have a word.”

  With that, she left, but as she passed me she smiled again, brushing the tip of my nose playfully with her finger.

  10

  SO CESAR, THAT WELL-CONNECTED DOG, managed to arrange with a yank of his leash what my mother had spent a year begging the head porter for. The next day, I was moved to reception.

  Her Excellency probably didn’t even realize that she had taken on the role of fairy godmother in my life. She had clearly just gone to the manager, or whoever, and told them that from now on she wanted the lift boy Béla to walk her dog, and since lift boys couldn’t walk dogs, they had moved me to reception.

  Reception, for me, was a veritable gold mine. If I carried or fetched something for a guest, they would always tip me ten or twenty fillérs, sometimes more. Each assignment meant a tip, and each tip
a little more bread, a little less coughing, half or three-quarters of a tram ticket, a slice of the rent and a great big dollop of hope.

  The very first day, I made two pengős. When I had scraped together the first pengő, I decided to take the tram home that night. All day, I thought happily of my tram ride, but in the evening, I finally changed my mind. I walked, and with those two pengős, reclaimed my mother’s gold cross on the way. I was indescribably proud. My great-grandmother had given this cross to my grandmother, who had given it to my mother. Now I had got it back.

  I wanted to see my mother’s face as she put it on, but it was dark in the kitchen by the time I got home. I opened the door louder than usual so the sound would wake her, but someone who washes twelve hours a day is not so easy to wake. So I felt my way to the kitchen table and, as always, put the packet of food down on the table, with the cross on top.

  My mother’s eyes shone strangely when she woke me next morning.

  “Somethin’ happen, son?” she asked, moved. When I told her the big news, she started crying.

  I tried to appear calm, as befits a serious breadwinner, even attempting a very grown-up yawn. My mother held the cross in her hand and looked at it through her tears.

  “It were your great-grandmother’s, then your grandmother’s,” she whispered softly. “I told you they’d pray for you, didn’t I?”

  I didn’t reply. I pretended to be very sleepy, because I was afraid that I, too, would burst into tears. My mother stroked my head.

  “Should I have let you sleep in today?”

  “Why? What time is it?”

  “Half past four.”

  “Then I’ve got to get going.”

  “Ain’t you got nothin’ left for the tram?”

  “I had two pengős. I spent it on the cross.”

  “Oh, Lord! That cross could have waited, you know.”

  “No it couldn’t,” I said with masculine pride. “I promised to get it back when I had money, and when you give your word on something, it’s only right to keep it.”

  “Well, it were good of you, I will say that. You’ve a heart of gold, son, just like this cross.” She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand, and then added more matter-of-factly, “But from now on, I want you to take the tram when you’ve got the money, because you’ve lost a lot of weight, only I didn’t want to say before.”

  I didn’t need telling twice. That evening, I took the tram home. It’s a wonderful thing, the tram, ladies and gentlemen, and only people who’ve walked six hours a day for more than a year know just how wonderful it is. How wonderful to sit in one of those fine, well-lit carriages, looking out of the window at the streets you’d tramped so often on foot. How good to lean back in the comfortable seat, kicking your heels, not caring a damn for the weather; how good to look about, get lost in thought, dreaming of Patsy and America.

  And how early you got home! Usually, you weren’t even a quarter of the way at that hour, and now you could lounge about in a chair, read, study or hang about the house doing this and that, letting your thoughts graze in the pastures of inactivity, masticating happily on the sweet, lazy minutes. Later, your eyelids grow slowly heavy and start closing like a cat’s beside the stove—but so what? Why stay awake? You kick off your shoes, arrange yourself leisurely on the floor, pull your cap over your eyes and sleep till six thirty, like the rich. The button of your cap will leave its mark on your face, just as you’ll feel the sleep throughout your body. You’re no longer tormented by the deadly frustration of the sleepless. You start enjoying the mornings, the cold water, you start enjoying being alive. There’s no three-hour walk ahead of you; the tram does the walking for you, and you get to sit and watch the lights wither in the windows as the sky grows gently lighter and morning breaks over the city. Yes, the tram’s a wonderful thing, ladies and gentlemen. An ode to the tram! A hymn to sleeping in, and a blessing on the suburban sun that now and again shines, even on the poor.

  •

  Every day, I brought my mother home a pengő or two.

  I entered my earnings carefully in the “Credit” column of my little diary, because when it came to bookkeeping, I wasn’t kidding around. I had recorded every fillér my mother had given me since the night I arrived and now set about paying her back energetically. How nice it was to be writing in the “Credit” column at last! What joy, what pride! In three weeks, I reclaimed our bedclothes as well, but I didn’t put that into the “Credit” column, because only the rich take the “Credit” column so seriously—the poor use their hearts, even in their accounting.

  One day, I said to my mother:

  “Did you know I don’t get breakfast at the hotel?”

  “You don’t? Since when?”

  “Never did.”

  “You never said nothin’.”

  “I’m sayin’ somethin’ now. And, if you don’t mind my sayin’, my belly don’t like it one bit.”

  “I don’t mind givin’ you breakfast money, not a bit. It ain’t my fault you never said nothin’ before.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Horses eat by themselves, and I ain’t a horse. I’m a man, and what I’d like, Muther, from now on, is for there to be bread and milk in the house and for us to have breakfast together like other families.”

  “Don’t waste your money,” she shrugged. “You go have breakfast by yourself—God knows you deserve it.”

  “And you don’t? Every workin’ man and woman deserves it. Only them useless layabouts don’t.”

  “All right, all right,” she cut me off. “You don’t have to get all Commernist right away.”

  But she wasn’t upset, even at my “Commernism”. She flicked me playfully on the backside and went out into the kitchen, where I could hear her whispering excitedly with my father.

  I will never forget our first breakfast together as a family. We were all three of us a little preoccupied as we sat down at the kitchen table and avoided each other’s gaze. The smell of coffee and freshly warmed milk filled the flat; the one-room apartment was a home for the first time, and we were a family. My mother crossed herself before cutting the bread, her eyes full of tears.

  “Praise the Lord Jesus Christ,” she said as she cut into the bread, making us each a slice as thick as a prayer book.

  Then she spread a good thick layer of lard over each slice and we began devouring them with our eyes even as she was doing it. The smell of the food hovered around us like the first dove after the flood. The smell of life had returned to the formerly dormant kitchen.

  We began to eat and didn’t say a word till we’d finished everything. Then my mother put her hand on mine.

  “He’s a good boy, our son,” she said to my father. “Ain’t that so, Mishka?”

  My father decided to make a joke of it.

  “Now don’t you go makin’ yourself younger!” he teased her. “This ain’t no boy, not by a long shot.” But then he added in a completely different tone: “Boys don’t think the way he does. He’s a man, I can tell you, and not just any kind of man, at that!” and he offered me a cigarette. “Go on, have a smoke, young man,” he said, “it’ll help you digest.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, blushing, and lit up nervously.

  It was my first cigarette. It did absolutely no good for my stomach or my lungs, but all the more for my vanity. I said a hurried goodbye so the people in the house would see me with my lit cigarette and know that I wasn’t a boy, but a man, and not just any kind of man, at that!

  So I started eating three meals a day: once at home and twice at the hotel. I didn’t put anything aside for my mother, because I figured that she could buy herself food from my wages, of which I handed over every last fillér. But I quickly realized that I was wrong. Anyone who’s been hungry as often as I have can recognize someone going without. Their face is different, and their speech, even their breath smells different; but most of all, they eat differently when they do finally get the chance. One day, I watched her at breakfast and su
ddenly knew that she was starving once more.

  “Why ain’t you eatin’ properly?” I asked when we were alone.

  “I am,” she replied awkwardly.

  “Don’t look like it.”

  “What d’you want me to do? It’s how I look.”

  I could see I wasn’t going to get far like this, so I said:

  “I can bring you food from the hotel again, if you want. Lord knows, there’s enough of it.”

  “Well . . . yes, that would be good. Seein’ as how your father ain’t got no work, and . . . you know how it is. I couldn’t make the rent last month, and well, it ain’t easy, no use denyin’. Herr Hausmeister makes twelve pengős with me washing for him, but he’s still got to pay the bank and they said they’d put us out if I don’t pay by the first. That’s how it is,” she said, finishing her confession and staring at her shoes.

  From then on, I took my lunch and dinner home once more. It was a deception, a kind deception; I bought myself other food instead. It was the cheapest I could get, that much is true: bread, lard, salami, brawn, but I bought lots and lots of it. I ate so much in those days I wouldn’t be able to manage half of it today, though even now I have quite an appetite. I gobbled food like a life-saving drug and thanked my lucky stars that it gave me pleasure, too.

  I felt the same about spiritual food as well. I devoured my English words like the brawn. Each one was a little mouthful of America for me, and I said to myself gratefully: how wonderful that they gave me pleasure, too.

  “Muther,” I said one day, “I want to start savin’ up for an English textbook.”

  “English textbook?” she repeated hesitantly. “You thinkin’ them strange thoughts again?”