Temptation

  Suddenly, my father banged the table.

  “Will you stop it with this ridiculous charade!” he shouted, and pushed his plate away.

  “What charade?” my mother asked softly, without looking up.

  “Oh, you know!” my father shouted at her, beetroot red. “Even the boy knows. The whole house knows! Stop beatin’ around the bush! Out with it!”

  My mother shrugged.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Whatever you want! Anything. Tell me to go to hell. Tell me I’m a bastard. Kick me out. Do what you want. Just don’t sit there in silence like Christ on the Cross, ’cause I can’t take it. Got it?” he screamed, and banged the table once more. “I can’t take it!”

  My mother looked at him. It was the first time she’d looked at him all evening.

  “You want to go?” she asked drily, with incredible self-control.

  “This is your flat!” my father shouted. “Only you can kick me out. So go on, do it, let’s get it over with.”

  My mother once more avoided looking at him. She began rearranging the breadcrumbs on the table and didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “You ain’t got to worry about me, Mishka,” she said. “I ain’t goin’ to tell you to go to hell. I won’t scream at you to get out, and I won’t beg you to stay. You come by yourself, you go by yourself, and you stay by yourself. And let me ease your mind for you. You ain’t never been bad to me—I’m tellin’ you so in front of your son. You was always good to me, and ain’t no one ever been good to me in my life. I ain’t got so many good memories as to forget the ones I do have. You was kind to me, and I won’t ever forget it. There, that’s it. I ain’t got nothin’ more to say.”

  This was not, apparently, what my father had been expecting. I could see he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t look at my mother, but just kept blinking restlessly and shifting in his seat. Then he finally kicked his chair out from under him, stood up, paced to and fro, and hurriedly lit a cigarette. Then he stopped in front of my mother.

  “D’you know what you’re like?” he shouted. “You’re like that strongman game at the fairground people’re always punching. You never hit back, either, goddamn it—people just end up wearing their fists out on you. For God’s sake, woman, can’t you see I’m bad?”

  “P’raps,” my mother said in a matter-of-fact, serious way. “P’raps you are. I don’t know. And even if I did know, what good would it do me? What’s that matter? Someone’s either a part of you or they ain’t. You don’t cut off your hand no matter how much it hurts. If it falls off, that’s different. Then it either kills you or you learn to live without it. But while it’s there, what can you do with it? If it hurts, it hurts, you’ve got to deal with it. You’ve got to wait for it to get better, if it does get better. So I’m telling you, Mishka, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m a strange sort. You can do with me what you want.”

  Then she was silent again and started, once more, rearranging the crumbs. She sat there, eyes downcast, like a defendant in court who’s confessed all and is now waiting for their sentence. There was silence; only my father’s steps resounded as he kept pacing the room. Then he stopped.

  “You got some paper and an envelope?” he asked me.

  “Only hotel paper.”

  “That’ll do,” he said, and sat down at the table without looking at my mother.

  I put the paper and envelope down before him. He took out a pencil, chewed it for a bit, then started writing. When the letter was finished, he said to my mother:

  “Read it, Anna.”

  My mother read it and handed it back to him without a word. She acted as if there were nothing special in the letter, but I could see her lips were trembling. Then my father chucked her playfully in the side and my mother gave a weak, tired smile.

  “You read it too,” he said, and handed the letter to me.

  The letter was addressed to a girl called Gizi, whom he apprised of the situation without beating around the bush, though not without a certain amount of regret. He wrote that it was all over because “a family man, after all, belongs to his family”, but admitted that it had been good, very good, with her, that he would never forget it, and asked her not to be angry with him—life was suffering, that’s how it was, everything came to an end.

  My father leant over me and read the letter along with me—he seemed very pleased with it.

  “Your old man can write too, eh?” he joked, and started whistling cheerfully. “Would you go out and post it? I want your mother to sleep easy.”

  I took the letter down, not knowing if I was happy or sad about the way things had turned out.

  The flat was suspiciously quiet when I got back. I coughed before I opened the door to the room, but even so it was mistimed. I still caught them jumping apart. They were both flustered and soon said it was late, and time for bed.

  So I went to bed, but couldn’t fall asleep for the longest time because the bed outside kept creaking for at least two hours that night. I felt revulsion and hatred for them, but at the same time affection and pity, too. I couldn’t understand myself, I couldn’t understand them, I couldn’t understand anything. I stared into the darkness, and life itself seemed all dark.

  Patsy—I said to myself—tell me this doesn’t happen in America?

  •

  From then on, my father spent his evenings at home. What he did during the day, however, remained a mystery. He left, whistling, in the morning, came home whistling at night, and never said so much as a word as to what had happened in between. He came through the door like a guest in a house where you could only talk about pleasant and entertaining things.

  It would be hard to say who was more besotted with him: my mother or himself. He was a born actor, and you could see that he was excited by this demanding role so little suited to him—that of the paterfamilias—and that he was delighted with his performance. But sometimes I still felt he was bored of the whole thing, like someone who’s been playing the same role too long and wants to try something new. Occasionally, I noticed, he was seized by a strange restlessness, especially on Saturday and Sunday nights when the Gypsy music would filter up from the tavern.

  “Why you sittin’ round at home?” my mother would ask with forced gaiety. “Go have yourself a good time, show ’em how it’s done!”

  But my father didn’t take her up on it. He tried to turn the whole thing into a joke.

  “I can’t, my dear,” he’d say. “The markets are down. Even the stockbrokers have gone home to their wives.”

  Then they’d laugh and not bring it up again. But the restlessness still hung in the air, like the smell of incense after mass, and my mother looked like those lonely poor women praying to St Antal in the empty church when someone in the family falls ill.

  One evening, she asked my father:

  “D’you like twenty-one?”

  My father seemed to take the question badly, I didn’t know why.

  “Why?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I was just wonderin’,” my mother replied. “They say it’s a fine game.”

  “It ain’t bad.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “ ’Course not. If we had the cards, I could teach you in ten minutes.”

  “We do have cards,” my mother said unexpectedly.

  “We do? Where d’you get ’em?”

  “Never you mind,” she replied mysteriously, and produced a brand-new pack of cards from the cupboard. “Will you teach me?”

  My father had apparently not been expecting that.

  “Why not?” he said, visibly relieved. “But what I want to know is, what’s got into you?”

  “The spirit of sin,” my mother replied, and sat happily down at the table. “Go on, then, teach me this wonderful game.”

  My father explained the game, and from then on, we played so passionately night after night we’d have pawned our salvation for a good hand. My father was always the most excited amo
ng us because he was—myself included—the biggest child of all of us. He couldn’t do anything by halves. He would whoop with joy when luck was with him and curse the stars out of the heaven if he got a bad hand.

  One evening, my mother stood up mid-game, and to our great surprise, put a bottle of wine down on the table.

  “Whose birthday is it?” asked my father.

  My mother winked at him mischievously.

  “The tooth fairy’s,” she said, and poured.

  “Well, in that case, long live the tooth fairy!” my father cried, and we all drank the tooth fairy’s good health.

  From then on, every night was the tooth fairy’s birthday at our house. There was always wine in the house and later on, my mother even managed to produce other “surprises”. She would stand up suddenly mid-game, go out into the kitchen with a secretive expression and fetch rolls, cheese, pretzels and the like; once, we even got herrings. Yes, we were living high on the hog back then.

  My father loved wine, cards and women, and my mother, it seems, wanted to show him that he could get all that at home. We ate, drank and made merry, we played cards and sometimes, when the music filtered up from the little tavern downstairs, we’d sing along with the Gypsies. They were fine, heartfelt nights, these, the best of my childhood nights.

  Once, the band downstairs was playing:

  I walked in the quiet forest glade

  I saw a bird there in the shade

  And a nest made just for two

  How I fell in love with you

  “Remember?” my mother asked softly, awkwardly, and turned aside, because her eyes had filled with tears.

  “How could I forget!” replied my father, and took her hand. “What a fine night that was. What a wild night.” He took my hand, too. “That was the night I met your mother,” he said, and his rich baritone began accompanying the musicians:

  “How I fell in love with you . . .”

  •

  The way he treated my mother in those weeks, I thought he could never look at another woman. But he could. Oh, how he could! I once had the opportunity of finding out for myself.

  It happened on the boat to Margit Island. A guest had sent me off to the island to deliver a large bunch of flowers. It was a fine, warm spring afternoon, and I was wandering, unsuspecting, about the boat. I went down a set of stairs and when I got to the ship’s belly, I was suddenly brought up short. There he was, in that little oval room they called a “salon” where there was generally no one when the weather was fine. He was sitting with a very young and very pretty girl in the semi-darkness, and I didn’t have to wonder why. He saw me, too, there was no doubt about it, though I took off the second I spotted him. I fled as if he’d caught me in the act and was about to mete out some terrible punishment.

  All day, I dreaded the moment I’d see him again. I was once more consumed with plans for escape, but in the end, of course, I went home, and it all turned out very differently to how I’d expected.

  My father acted as if nothing at all had happened. He was nice to me, but not any nicer than usual, and between two games, when my mother was shuffling, he laughed and said:

  “Never be afraid of women, Béla! It’s only the ones like your mother you’ve got to watch out for.”

  I blushed to my roots, but my mother didn’t notice, since—as I say—she was busy shuffling the cards. Besides, as far as she was concerned, what my father had said was a compliment.

  “Why?” she said, almost flirtatiously.

  “I’ll tell you why!” my father replied. “There’s plenty of women in the world. Some of them are sweet as honey, others peppery as steak. Some are this way, others that—there’s all sorts. But women like her,” he said, pointing to my mother, “they’re like home-made bread. You never get tired of ’em. I’ll admit, you need a bit of steak with your bread now and then, but so what? So nothin’,” he answered himself, and looked at me. “Nothin’ at all! Even the best food gets borin’ in the end, but you always need bread. Steak is steak, just flesh and nothin’ else—but bread can also be the body of Christ, and what do steak and bread have in common? Nothin’,” he repeated, looking at me. “Nothin’ at all, and one day you, too, will realize that, my boy.”

  “Fine things you’re teaching him,” my mother scolded him cheerfully. “Look to your cards instead. It’s your turn.”

  That was it. My father continued to be all over my mother and it was no use me telling myself that he was a miserable, lying fraud, for in my heart of hearts I was strangely convinced that his kisses for my mother were just as sincere as his kisses for the pretty girl on the boat, and that was what confused me the most. Life’s awful, I thought to myself, and could no longer enjoy our evenings together. My mother’s “surprises” just infuriated me, and I wondered angrily where she got the money.

  “Do we still not have the money for that English book?” I once asked her harshly.

  My mother blushed like a thief caught in the act.

  “Did they tell you off ?” she asked in alarm.

  “Yeah,” I lied viciously.

  “Good God,” she muttered and stared at her shoes for some time. Then she said uncertainly: “Your father’ll start working, too, and,” she swallowed hard, “then we’ll get you that book.”

  “You’d better get on with it,” I said pointedly, and left.

  “Béla!” she called after me.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell your father.”

  “Why not?” I asked combatively.

  “ ’Cause . . . you know,” my mother stared at her shoes again, “I don’t like to bother him with these things.”

  There you go! I fumed to myself. I don’t like to bother him with these things. That’s a laugh! It was as strange coming out of her mouth as a fancy cigarette holder out of mine. Damned if I can understand them, I thought, but didn’t say anything. I went huffily into the other room. This isn’t going to end well, I noted, and unfortunately I was right once more.

  One night, when we were well into our cards, there was a knock on the kitchen door. My mother went out, closed the door behind her—which she never did—and spent a long time talking to someone in the kitchen.

  “Who is it?” my father asked after a while.

  “Don’t know,” I replied. “I think it’s Herr Hausmeister.”

  My father stood up and went out into the kitchen.

  “Well, my friend, what is it?” he said to Herr Hausmeister, for it really was him. “You two keeping secrets?”

  “We’re done,” my mother replied hurriedly, irritably, but Herr Hausmeister, it appeared, was of a different opinion.

  “Not just yet,” he said menacingly.

  “In that case come in and have a drop,” my father said cheerfully. “Wine loosens the tongue. So, what’s the matter, then?”

  Herr Hausmeister wiped his moustache with the back of his hand, because he had, in fact, just “had a drop”, looked at my mother, shrugged regretfully and eventually said, portending doom:

  “The bank won’t wait any longer.”

  “Who told ’em to?” my father said with undiminished cheer.

  Herr Hausmeister cleared his throat.

  “You ain’t paid rent in two months,” he said gravely. “And then there’s what you owe from before. And, well, they won’t wait any longer.”

  My poor mother, I could see, was wishing the ground would swallow her up, and I wasn’t feeling too good, either. But not even this could dent my father’s good humour.

  “How much is the outstanding?” he asked lightly.

  “A lot,” Herr Hausmeister said evasively. “But if you could put down fifty pengős, I think I could square it with ’em.”

  “You’re talkin’ like a Jew,” my father said disparagingly. “I didn’t ask you what you could square. I asked how much they’re owed.”

  Herr Hausmeister glanced at my mother again, as if to say: what can I do, you can see for yourself it’s not up to me. Then he
finally came out with it:

  “Eighty-seven pengős.”

  My father laughed.

  “Well,” he said, “you shouldn’t have made all that fuss over nothing, then. Come and pick it up this time tomorrow.”

  We looked at him as if he’d hit us each individually on the head with a stick. All three of us were convinced that he was lying, but none of us dared say a word, not even Herr Hausmeister. He, too, had learnt that it was not a good idea to tangle with Dappermishka, so he took my father at his word and slinked off quietly.

  When we were alone again, my mother wanted to say something, but my father hushed her.

  “Leave it to me,” he said with a wave of his arm, as if it were something hardly worth mentioning, and took up his cards once more.

  My mother didn’t dare ask about the eighty-seven pengős next evening either, and my father didn’t mention it at all. There was a hard silence. We played cards quietly.

  Herr Hausmeister knocked around ten. My mother stood up to let him in, but my father pushed her back into her chair.

  “Come!” he called, and carried on with his cards.

  Herr Hausmeister entered.

  “Sit,” said my father. “If you feel like watching.” He most definitely didn’t. He stood there in front of us like an executioner.

  “I’ve got things to do,” he said ominously, but failed to intimidate my father.

  “Go do ’em, then,” he said casually, and didn’t so much as look up from his hand.

  Herr Hausmeister did not go about his other business. He stood there and waited. Like a figure of fate, I thought poetically, and I could see the cards trembling in my mother’s hand.

  When we’d finished the hand, my father leant back in his chair and, with a distracted air, as if it had just occurred to him, said to Herr Hausmeister: