Temptation

  As for the clothes shopping, it didn’t happen. My father bumped into an old acquaintance on the way and was so pleased to see him he left me simply standing there. He merely called back to me from the corner and said:

  “We’ll get that suit on your next day off!”

  But we didn’t get it on my next day off, either; we never did. He had a good heart, but a terrible memory. When he was with me, I think he would have done anything for me, but when he wasn’t, he may very well have forgotten that I existed at all. Besides, my next day off happened to be a Sunday, and then after that he had something to take care of, or I did, and somehow something always got in the way. When we did meet from time to time, he would ask:

  “When we going to get that suit, then?”

  “On my next day off,” I’d reply, but on my next day off something would always come up.

  In the end, he stopped bringing it up. To be fair, I was also partly to blame. I felt very alienated from him in those days, especially from his money. I dare say the suit, had he actually bought it, would have given me great pleasure, but when it came to saying something, to bringing it up, to asking for it, I wasn’t going to go that far.

  So, over time, we forgot about the whole thing. My mother who, God knows why, had also forgotten about it, one day really did “adjust” his old brown suit for me, and I felt elegant enough in that, though I must have looked quite ridiculous. For her “adjustments” consisted of taking up the sleeves and hems, which—of course—did not change the cut of the suit at all. You could have got two of me into it.

  That said, my father loved to give, and did give plenty . . . when he didn’t forget. Once, when my mother asked him for money, it turned out he didn’t have a bean.

  “I met poor Jóska on the stairs,” he told my mother, “an’ he told me the trouble he’s in.”

  “How much did you give him?”

  “Don’t know. Whatever I had in my pockets.”

  “You didn’t even check?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You want your head examined, you do. Why d’you keep doing things like that?”

  “Why?” my father shrugged, laughing. “It’s just my nature.”

  •

  I remember another occasion that was typical not only of my father, but of Hungary at the time.

  One evening, my mother came up from the laundry room laughing.

  “That Márika!” she said, but had to stop there, she was laughing so hard.

  “What’s happened to her now?” asked my father, because something was always happening to Márika.

  “See for yourself !” my mother replied, pointing out of the window. “She’s got quite an audience.”

  We all looked out. The “audience” was gathered on the first-floor walkway; about a dozen ladies were standing around Márika, who was talking away, nineteen to the dozen.

  “Her and Rózsi havin’ a fight?” my father asked, because that was how it looked from here.

  “ ’Course not. She’s bargaining.”

  “What for?”

  “Rózsi’s baby carriage.”

  “How come?” my father asked in surprise. “She in the family way?”

  “ ’Course not,” my mother said, with a dismissive wave of the arm, and laughed again. “But Árpád’s finishing his apprenticeship on Saturday and she’s going about tellin’ the whole house how they’re going to go and make a baby right away. They’ve got his birthday all planned out, and they’ve given him a name and everything. He’s going to be Árpád, too.”

  “What’ll they do if it’s a girl?”

  “That’s just it!” giggled my mother. “She says it won’t be a girl, because them scientists have figured out some way to make sure. Árpád got it from a book.”

  “And? How d’you make sure?”

  My mother was embarrassed to say in front of me, but my father laughed at her for it.

  “You don’t have to worry about him,” he said. “He don’t believe in the stork any more, anyway. Out with it, what’s this scientific method, then?”

  “Well that you,” my mother was flustered, she had to reach for the words, “you . . . she says you . . . um . . . that if in the moment it’s better for the man, it’ll be a girl, and if it’s better for the woman, it’ll be a boy. And that Saturday night, Árpád’s going to do it so it’s better for Márika.”

  “Easier said than done!” my father teased. “Judging by that slip of a man, my money’s on it bein’ a girl.”

  “Don’t be so mean,” my mother told him, but she, too, giggled to herself.

  Downstairs, the “audience” was still around. Márika just wouldn’t shut up.

  “She hagglin’ about the price?” asked my father.

  “Nah, they’ll have agreed on that by now. She’ll pay in instalments, a pengő a month for nine months. Trouble is, Rózsi don’t want to give it to her till she’s put down five pengős. And Márika wants it now.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Just to look at, she says. She wants to picture little Árpád in it, ’cause she thinks it’ll be easier then, poor thing. Because, you know, she’s so crazy about that little boy that ain’t even been conceived in her yet, the waiting’s nearly killin’ her.”

  My father didn’t say anything for some time, just watched Márika with a smile. Then he said:

  “Nine pengős is too much for that pram. I’ll get her one for half that, and she can have it right away. Go tell her.”

  “No chance,” my mother protested. “Don’t you go doin’ something crazy again. That poor woman is going crazy for that pram, and you’d forget about it in half an hour.”

  “I won’t forget,” insisted my father, and indeed, he didn’t.

  The next day, he brought Márika a baby carriage—as a present. It wasn’t a used one like Rózsi’s, and not a cheap baby carriage, either. It was a refined, upper-class little carriage, and it must have cost a fortune.

  “Oh my God!” wailed my mother. “How much did you spend on that?”

  “Six days,” my father said. “The seventh was free.”

  We never found out how much it cost. It remained a secret, like everything about my father.

  On Saturday night, we all went down to give it to Márika and Árpád. My mother and I went ahead while my father stayed back with the pram, for effect. We were expecting a great to-do, but what we saw when we got there had nothing festive about it at all. Márika’s face was swollen with tears, and Árpád was blinking behind his thick glasses like a cat in a thunderstorm. We didn’t ask what was going on out of politeness, and pretended not to have noticed anything.

  “Evenin’,” we said.

  “Evenin’,” they said.

  Then there was silence. I thought they might have had a bit of a fight, as married couples sometimes do, but that the surprise would cheer them up. But when my father wheeled the pram in, neither of them so much as looked at it.

  “You needn’t’ve bothered,” Márika said. “We don’t need a pram.”

  “Don’t need it?” my father looked at her, astounded. “Why not?”

  Márika’s eyes welled up with tears.

  “What for, if there ain’t no one to put in it?”

  “What you talkin’ about?” my mother asked, bewildered.

  Márika threw herself onto the couch and started weeping and moaning.

  “There ain’t going to be no little Árpád!” she bawled. “No little Árpád!”

  “Did the doctor say so?”

  “ ’Course not.”

  “Well then?”

  “The printer’s!”

  “What d’you mean, the printer’s? Didn’t Árpád finish his apprenticeship?”

  “Yes, but they fired him the second he did, damn the lot of ’em.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’d have had to pay him a decent wage now, that’s why. And they didn’t want that, the bastards.”

  There was silence.
What was there to say? We knew what this meant.

  My father looked at Árpád.

  “But they liked you so well!”

  “Liked me!” Árpád shrugged. “As if that means anything these days. Your bourgeois is just a bourgeois, all they care about is money. They took a kid on in my place, and gave my work to the oldest of the apprentices. That’s how it is now, everywhere. I’m not the only one.”

  “And we’d decided on his birthday and everything!” Márika sniffed. “Oh God, what about his birthday?”

  “He’ll get a job elsewhere,” my mother said, trying to console her. “Won’t you, Árpád?”

  “Of course,” he nodded, but his voice lacked conviction.

  “Get a job, in this day and age!” Márika grumbled, her bitterness bursting out of her. “I’m no Commernist, but as far as I’m concerned they can go and hang every last one of them bourgeois. Bunch of murderers, fit for hangin’! Murderers, murderers, murderers!”

  “Stop shouting,” Árpád scolded quietly. “You know Herr Hausmeister’s a stooge.”

  “To hell with Herr Hausmeister!” Márika screamed at the top of her lungs. “To hell with the whole world!”

  My mother sat beside her and put her arm around her shoulders.

  “There, there,” she said, comforting her like a child. “Calm down and think it over. It ain’t the end of the world. Ain’t you even going to have a look at the pram?”

  She took her over to the pram, at the sight of which Márika’s face transformed miraculously.

  “It’s brand new!” she cried. “And it’s so beautiful! My God, I ain’t never seen anything so pretty. And it’s got brakes and everything . . .” Her voice suddenly grew sober. “How much is it?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Free,” replied my father. “It’s a gift.”

  “Gift?”

  Márika’s mouth hung open, and then something happened that I’ve read a lot about but never believed existed: she started laughing and crying at the same time.

  “Thank you!” she said, throwing herself around my mother’s neck. Then she started thanking my father and finally, she even came and hugged me.

  “It’s even got his name on it,” my father pointed out.

  “His name?” Márika asked, amazed. “Where?”

  “There.”

  Márika had clearly never seen anything like it. She knelt down in front of the pram and read out the sparkling metal letters:

  “Á-r-p-á-d.” Suddenly, she was crying again. “Oh, little Árpád, what have they done to you? What about your birthday?”

  She pressed her head frantically to little Árpád’s pillow as we stood around the fine, melancholy pram the way people usually stand around the open grave at a funeral. I’ve never seen a sadder baby carriage than that one, with a young woman robbed of motherhood wailing in it instead of her baby.

  Yes, that was what became of the festivities. The next day, I saw that Márika had pulled the little table away from the window and put the baby carriage in its place. There it stood in pride of place; I saw it every day when I walked past their window. Meanwhile, Árpád would ride into town every day, pedalling all day long, but all that did was wear out his tyres—work he did not find. One day they sold the fine old couch I had admired so often, and all the other furniture in turn. In the end, there was barely anything left besides the bed, but the baby carriage still stood there in the window. Márika would not hear of selling it.

  She became obsessed with little Árpád. One day, when they no longer had so much as a crust to eat, she told Árpád that, come what may, she wanted that child—she didn’t care about the rest. Árpád tried to make her see that she had no right, that she couldn’t take responsibility for the child, but much good did it do him. It escalated into the hell of an argument. Márika was screaming so loud she roused the whole house. The next day, she did admit that Árpád was right, but the day after that, she found another reason to fight with him, and that’s how it was from then on. The rosy peasant flush left her cheeks and she grew stiff and thin. She became common, vulgar and querulous.

  One evening, when I was just getting ready to leave for the hotel, she came charging over to ours like a woman possessed.

  “Look at him!” she screamed, pointing out of the window. “He’s off to sell my baby carriage!”

  Poor Árpád really was taking the carriage to sell it. I’ve never seen anyone pushing a pram so miserably.

  “You’ve got to stop him!” Márika pleaded. “He’s got no right! Thief!”

  “Leave him alone,” said my mother, trying to calm her. “It’s hard enough for him as it is.”

  “I won’t let him!” Márika screamed full force and made to run after Árpád. My mother held her back, dragged her into the kitchen and locked the door behind her.

  Márika threw herself onto the floor and sobbed, kicked and screamed, shaking her fists as if she’d lost her mind.

  “They’re killin’ my baby! Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!”

  I could still hear her hysterical shouting in the bar, and my hands clenched into fists, like hers, whenever I saw the people dancing. Murderers! I echoed.

  But then I grew ashamed. What right did I have to accuse them? Every day the papers wrote about the thousands of children dying in China, and what did I feel about that? Nothing. That was the truth. Dreadful, I’d say, and turn the page. If someone came and asked me whether it was forty or four hundred thousand children who’d starved to death in China, I wouldn’t be able to say. It was all meaningless. Numbers that said nothing, that were as far from my heart as China itself and could never shock me as much as that single Hungarian child who’d never even been conceived.

  Such is man. So limited, so miserable. That is what they build on, that’s what makes them so strong and immovable. They’re building on a solid bedrock: human stupidity. We ought to make gangs of these poor, miserable mothers, the Chinese and the Hungarian, and the others too, all of them, every one, so they could shout together into this deaf world’s ears until everyone’s hands clenched into fists:

  “Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!”

  16

  THERE WAS ONE NIGHT OF THE WEEK that was unlike the others. It was a strange night, hard to describe. Even in the very moment of waking, I was seized by a physical sense of excitement at knowing that that night I was free, and could do whatever I wanted until tomorrow evening. Perhaps tonight, I thought obsessively, and stretched like a rooftop tomcat. I was naked, the summer evening was peeking in through the window, and the scent of the lilacs drifted up, even here to the third floor. At these moments, there was no one home. I would potter sleepily, move things to and fro, wash with needling scrupulousness and take a good look at myself in the mirror.

  Everything was still so fine. I stood in front of the mirror and thought of those many thousands of women who were also standing before the mirror, prettying themselves up, getting ready; maybe one of them was doing it for me. What’s she like? I wondered, staring into the mirror longingly, as if I could see her there. These were the finest moments of all. Everything was still possible then, and anything could happen.

  I dressed like someone getting ready for a very special, very important event, though I didn’t know myself what. I had no one in the world, not even a mangy dog out there waiting for me, and I had no idea where I was meant to go. I had a date with fortune; I was waiting for my Great Adventure, that particular Fateful Encounter.

  I boarded the tram feeling that “something would happen”. God knows what I had in mind. Maybe a miracle would get on at the next stop and “something would happen” that had never happened before. Needless to say, nothing happened. The suburban tram trundled sleepily along, peopled by the poor, not miracles. Tired working-class girls dozed on the hard wooden benches. They were coming home from work, and on their care-worn faces, you could see that at the very most they were dreaming of a square meal, if they dreamt at all. No, there are no miracles between Újpest a
nd Nyugati railway station.

  I got off at the last stop and wandered aimlessly around the city. I looked at the women as if I really was waiting for someone, a very specific someone, and was afraid of missing her among the crowd. Occasionally, I would stop in front of an advertising column, where young lovers would arrange to meet, and pretend that I, too, had a rendezvous—don’t ask me why. I don’t know. I just stood there and waited. There was an electric clock on top of the column and I watched the hand jumping ahead and tried to look impatient like those happy lovers who get to wait and agonize.

  Sometimes I would spot a girl across the street and follow her. Something drew me like a magnet, something set my fantasy alight. Women are so beautiful from afar, and looking at them like that, from behind, the imagination runs wild. Maybe it’s her, I thought. Yes, maybe she’s the one. I would follow her for some time, and then . . . turn away; though some were pretty, and some even looked at me invitingly, but . . . I don’t know. All of a sudden, I just didn’t want them.

  I was thinking of her. I imagined what it would be like if she came walking down the street, right now, and . . . Make-believe! I told myself. First of all, she never goes anywhere on foot. And even if she did, and we met, then what? Nothing. I would say hello, she’d say hello back, and then move on. I went through all that clearly, rationally, in my mind, and then I went back to daydreaming about what would happen if she did come walking down the street . . .

  “Oh, is that you, András?” she’d say, flicking the end of my nose playfully with her gloved hand. “Where are you off to?”

  “The cinema.”

  “Oh, really? That’s where I’m going, too.”

  I’d say nothing. We’d be standing very close to one another, and I could smell that exotic, bitter perfume, her red hair glinting in the light.

  “Would you care to come with me?” she’d ask. “I’m going to the UFA.”

  The UFA was the best cinema in Budapest at the time. That’s where I would usually end up, though it was expensive, at least by my standards. The cheapest seats, in the first two rows, were eighty fillérs. In a cinema in the suburbs, I could almost have got a box for the same money, but of course those were only little fleapits, whereas here I could, in principle, have even bumped into her, and people will do many things for their principles—even, sometimes, die for them.