Temptation

by Janos Szekely

  One morning, Árpád could not get out of bed. Márika sold what furniture was left, but that was only enough to feed her husband for a week. Then she had to sell the bed, and where there’s no bed, there’s nowhere to be bedridden. Árpád got up and dressed, but never went into town again. His trips had always been in vain, it’s true, but he could still come home in the evening and tell his wife:

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Now, there was nothing to say. He sat silent in the window day in, day out, in the place where the baby carriage had once sat, staring at the passers-by with such a glazed expression, he might as well have been blind.

  The first time he vomited blood, Márika ran to my mother in tears. She must have felt terribly guilty; I could hear her blaming herself through the door. She ate more or less nothing for two whole weeks, cramming every available morsel into her sick husband. Márika was a good soul, but the gods, unfortunately, had crammed her soul, too, into a human body, and the human body does strange things if it goes unfed for two weeks. On the third week, she called Árpád a lazy pig, burst into tears, felt horribly guilty and apologized; but a few days later was even meaner. Since she couldn’t blame herself for her problems and, as a devout Catholic, could no more blame the Trinity, she blamed poor Árpád for want of anyone else. You have to blame someone.

  I remember one exchange between them. On one of my days off, I visited Árpád and what I saw shocked me so much I couldn’t speak for several minutes. It wasn’t so much Árpád that shocked me, for I saw him every day in the window, but more the room, which I hadn’t seen in months. It was completely empty. There was nothing but two battered suitcases in it and a raw wooden crate serving as a table. Only the lighter spots on the bare walls indicated where the gilt-framed mirror had hung, where had stood the bed, the wardrobe and the couch—those lighter spots stood out on the wall like tombstones in a bare crypt.

  Márika noticed my shock and burst into tears.

  “At least if we had a baby!” she sniffled. “If only we had a baby.”

  “Yes,” muttered Árpád, “then he could be starving to death now right along with us.”

  That was what had occurred to me, too, but not Márika. Her eyes flashed at Árpád.

  “At least I’d know what I was starving for!” she screamed, a frantic hatred in her eyes.

  Árpád did not reply. What could he have said? He blinked, pale, behind his thick glasses which exaggerated his bloodshot eyes frightfully. He began to cough, pressing his handkerchief to his mouth, and before he put it away, sneaked a quick look. None of us said a thing—a nasty silence descended on the room.

  Suddenly, Márika began sobbing loudly. Árpád went over to her, stroked her head shyly, awkwardly, and—as if in response to her silent self-recriminations—said:

  “You’re just hungry, that’s all.”

  No, it couldn’t have been easy, hating Árpád, but when God gives he gives with both hands, and eventually even gave Márika a reason to hate him. Árpád started going out at night. Rarely at first, then more often, and eventually every night. By that point, they were no longer on speaking terms—screaming terms, at most—and whenever Márika screamed “Where were you last night?” Árpád would just reply:

  “I was busy.”

  “He won’t tell me no more,” Márika complained to my mother. “He just sits there in the window, all silent.”

  In the building, where everyone knew everything about everyone else, they knew about Árpád’s mysterious wanderings, too. Previously he had been the most respectable young man in the building, the ideal with which unhappy wives reproached their husbands. They’d turned away from Márika some time before, because she’d become foul-mouthed and had quarrelled with half the building, but they liked Árpád and pitied him—and couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. Was he drinking? No, no one ever saw him come home drunk, and besides, they knew he didn’t like alcohol. Was it gambling, then? Not a chance. What did he have to gamble with? Did he have a lover? Well, yes, that was the most plausible version, it’s true, but somehow no one wanted to believe it. Árpád? . . . Ah, nonsense, people would say dismissively. But then, where did he go all night?

  “Maybe he’s working?” I once suggested during the course of one of these conversations in the building, because I didn’t want people to gossip about him even more.

  “Nah, his wife would know,” Rózsi replied, and of course there wasn’t much I could say to that.

  Then the one-eyed wheelwright took the pipe out of his mouth and said:

  “Maybe he’s got some work that’s . . .”

  He fell silent. He was a decent man and didn’t want to cast aspersions. I could see he was sorry he’d said anything at all. But Rózsi, who would have sold her grandmother for a juicy piece of gossip, was all over it like a vulture.

  “It could be,” she enthused, suddenly officious. “He is a printer after all . . .”

  And she looked at us as if to say, you know.

  “Ah, nonsense,” I said angrily, but I must confess, the suspicion took root in me too.

  Their money’s got to come from somewhere, I reflected, and even if they were starving, they still had to pay rent. But I soon found out that Árpád wasn’t printing dirty pictures or counterfeit money—or doing anything at all, in fact, that would allow him to pay the rent.

  One night, about six, I woke to the opening of the door and heard Márika’s voice in the kitchen.

  “I’ve figured out what that good-for-nothing’s up to!” she said, full of excitement.

  “Shh!” my mother chided, “Béla’s still sleepin’.”

  Márika dropped her voice to a whisper, but whatever she said got my mother so excited that it was now she who forgot all about whispering.

  “How d’you know that?” she asked aloud.

  Márika was quiet for a moment, then said evasively:

  “Somebody told me.”

  My mother didn’t ask who: that sort of thing wasn’t done in Újpest. If someone wanted to tell you something, they’d go ahead and tell you, and if not, why bother asking? I listened attentively.

  “What d’you say to that, then?” I heard Márika say.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “What d’you mean, you don’t believe it?” Márika asked testily.

  “I don’t believe it,” said my mother “Árpád was always a Social Democrat.”

  “Was,” Márika said, emphasizing the past tense. “Now he keeps cursin’ them, too. He says they sold out the proletariat to Horthy.”

  “Lots of people say that,” replied my mother. “Men’ll say anything if they’ve got too much time on their hands. It don’t add up to anything. Not a bit of it. It’s all gossip, just talk. But what d’you mean, he’s doin’ underground work?”

  “He’s turned Commernist. He’s gone and joined the Commernists.”

  “Come off it, there ain’t even a Commernist Party.”

  “That’s why they’re working underground.”

  “Then how could they have seen him?”

  “They just did.”

  “They only saw him working for a party—I’ll bet that’s how all this started. But he must be working for the Social Democrat Party, always did. He always went to their meetings, I’ll bet that’s where he’s going now.”

  “All night?”

  “He’d come home late at night before, too, when they had a meeting. Now he ain’t got the money to come in once the gates are locked, so how’s he supposed to get home? Must sleep at a friend’s.”

  “More like the Devil’s!” snapped Márika. “He’s gone and got mixed up with the Reds. I have it on good authority.”

  “Good authority!” grumbled my mother. “Good authority. I’m a good authority, too. And I say Árpád’s always been a good man, and good men ain’t Commernists.”

  “Then he ain’t a good man.”

  “Stop saying that! Stop bein’ so ungrateful to God, that gave you such a good man.
Before, you was all over him, had nothing but kind words for him, and now you’re always goin’ on at him. Why? He’s the same man now he always was. Árpád ain’t changed, oh no, Mári, not a bit.”

  “Just me, eh?” Márika burst out. “It’s all my fault, is it? Forever going on at poor Árpád, listenin’ to gossip. D’you really think I made all this up? Well, if you must know,” it slipped out of her, “Herr Hausmeister told me!”

  “Herr Hausmeister? . . .”

  My mother’s tone was strange. There was suddenly silence in the kitchen.

  “And how does that pockmarked Kraut know?” my mother asked after a while.

  “He knows. He knows everythin’. Anything goin’ on in Újpest, even the coppers come to him to ask. And it’s good of him to tell me. The coppers would have paid for that kind of information. So you can call him a pockmarked Kraut all you like, he means well.”

  “Oh sure,” my mother said pointedly. “He means well with all the ladies. And they treat him well in return. And what do they get?” My mother’s voice suddenly changed. “Listen, Mári, is it true you went to the pictures with him?”

  “Me?!” Márika cried. “Who told you that?”

  “People.”

  “Don’t you start!” Márika’s voice faltered, and I could hear her crying. “All because I went to the pictures with him one time?”

  My mother did not reply. Márika, too, was silent for a space, and then said:

  “Goddamn the bloody Jews!”

  As to what the Jews had to do with Herr Hausmeister and the pictures, my mother seemed to have just as little idea as me.

  “What’ve they done to you?” she asked.

  “It’s all their fault!” sobbed Márika. “They’re the ones that seduce these poor jobless folk. Look at what they’re doing to ’em! In the end, they all finish up thieves or Commernists. And the bloody Jews get money for it from Moscow. Damn their eyes!” she screamed, and went on cursing the Jews for quite some time.

  •

  Herr Hausmeister’s power grew in direct correlation with the misery in the house. There was still huge demand for flats on the outskirts of the city, and people lived huddled on top of one another in terrible rented tenements; when an apartment did become available, they wouldn’t rent it to anyone who was jobless. The unemployed ended up on the streets when they got evicted, trying to make do as best they could. The older ones begged, the younger stole, and all of them sooner or later reached a point of starvation where they were capable of anything. Fourteen-year-old girls would go to the “Mauthner” for a square meal, sixteen-year-old boys would throw themselves on anyone halfway decently dressed walking the streets at night. The government looked on the jobless the way villagers do on the hungry wolves hanging around the edge of the village in midwinter. There was still no jobless assistance, only more and more police, and constant warnings to the populace to beware of beggars. In the end, no one dared open the door when they rang—they grew afraid of them and chased them away. They became the lepers of the capital, shunned by all. They fell through the branches of society like maggot-infested apples, to roll aimlessly in the streets for a while and then rot in the sewer. Their next abode was either prison, a brothel, the hospital or the cemetery, and whoever wanted to skip the intervening stations on the way to a pauper’s grave drank lye when they got served their eviction notice.

  Who got that letter depended entirely on Herr Hausmeister, and all the residents knew it. They were deadly afraid of him and were willing to give up what little was left of their dignity so they could stay in their miserable bed-sitting rooms and keep the family together somehow, despite everything. I suspect that by this time, it wasn’t only Mátyás who left home when Herr Hausmeister wanted to talk about the rent, and I know—as everybody else did, too—that my mother wasn’t the only one working for him for free.

  But he never made anyone, oh no, far be it from him! He merely asked people for a friendly favour, that’s all. He would say to the unemployed watchmaker:

  “Jóska, you’re not doing anything, why don’t you fix this watch for me? Belongs to a friend of mine who ain’t doing so well at the moment, so it would be a little friendly favour.”

  No one, of course, dared refuse these “little friendly favours”. The watchmaker fixed the watch, the repairman fixed the radio, the tinsmith patched the bath, the upholsterer redid the couch, and the carpenter made the cribs and the coffins. Herr Hausmeister had a lot of “friends”; in the end, half the building was working for him. They knew full well, of course, that Herr Hausmeister pocketed the money for their work, but they also knew that there was such a thing as an eviction notice, and there wasn’t a single person in their right mind who would have refused a little “friendly favour”.

  Only Old Gábor dared to, but he wasn’t really in his right mind, poor man. This odd evangelist of the cheerful coffin was finally driven mad by his poverty. He’d always been a bit “funny” as people used to say of him, but previously you would hardly have noticed, when he wasn’t talking about his happy coffins. It’s true that he said some pretty crazy things about the Jews and in praise of the war, but no one really noticed that because they weren’t all that much crazier than the headlines in the right-wing newspapers, whose authors were apparently sane. His obsessive tidiness, too, had deceived people. They admired his punctilious neatness, and needless to say it never occurred to them that that, too, was merely a symptom of his illness. They were in awe of his flat, which really was the neatest in the house. He was forever cleaning and repairing it. A single scratch on a piece of furniture had him running for his plane; he became agitated if he saw a speck of dust, and would berate the lodgers if they moved a chair from those four little red-white-and-green circles that marked the position of the individual legs on the floor. He was very particular about his appearance, too, and I’ve rarely seen a cleaner, neater, more handsome old man.

  “He’s a bit funny,” the residents would say, but fundamentally they took him seriously, and they only realized he was actually crazy when he fell from his obsessive neatness into the other extreme.

  One day, he told us he was retiring, and from then on, never washed. He was no longer willing to clean, either, and his flat became covered in spiders, insects and cockroaches, while he himself was filthy and went about in rags. He stopped shaving, too, and his wild prophet’s beard ran all the way down to his chest, his hair hung to his shoulder, and his moustache drooped wetly into his mouth. His eyes grew empty and glazed and he dribbled constantly, like a baby. He nailed up his coffin in a big black box “so the competition didn’t get sight of it” and that was the end of his professional life. He never picked up another plane or hammer, and from then on sat idle in front of his flat all day, forever watching the gate, as if expecting someone. On the rare occasions he went down into the courtyard for a walk, he would inform the neighbours where he was and even while he was walking round and round, would shout up to them more than once to see if anyone had called for him. He always walked beside the wall, slowly, carefully, almost pressing himself against it, and was painfully careful only to step on every third cobblestone. If he ever lost count, he would quickly go back and—much to the amusement of the children—start again from the beginning.

  Sári, Böske and Borcsa still lived with him. He got enough from them to pay the rent, and didn’t care about the rest. Áron the Sabbatarian fed him; he came twice a day bringing food. Áron was hardly rich, either—he got ten pengős a week as a watchman, but his friend nonetheless took it for granted that he fed him. It’s not like he was grateful either—quite the opposite. He treated the Sabbatarian like a servant, grumbled and snapped at him, would take the food out of his mouth. Old Gábor ate a lot. He gobbled the half-chewed mouthfuls hurriedly, his face a reddish purple as he ate, his brow covered in sweat. He was the only person in the building to put on weight. He did so in a funny way—he was like a sponge soaking itself with water; he grew puffy and soft. He never talked to anyo
ne—barely said a word to Áron—and whenever Herr Hausmeister passed him, he’d growl:

  “You ought to greet your elders, even if you ain’t our race!”

  The only reason Herr Hausmeister didn’t kick him out, I think, was that even he didn’t dare cross the Sabbatarian. Anyone who can sue a big company and stop them tearing down the house could do plenty more, he must have thought. Besides. Old Gábor’s behaviour did nothing to damage his reputation anyway. Quite the opposite: it proved you’d have to be crazy to pick a fight with Herr Hausmeister.

  And Herr Hausmeister was far from crazy. His fortunes swelled like a pregnant sow, and the better he did, the stingier he got. He didn’t even want to buy his wife milk, though the “consumptive” woman’s days really were numbered. There wasn’t much life left in her, but even that little was a little too much for Herr Hausmeister, it seems. He was clearly scared the milk would help. Before, he’d been merely waiting for her death like people hoping they’d win the lottery, but now he was certain it was imminent and that made him impatient, like the last half-hour of a train journey.

  Once, when he wasn’t home, she became unwell and one of the tenants called a doctor. The doctor told her to eat better, to drink at least a litre of milk a day and prescribed all sorts of medicines. Herr Hausmeister did, grudgingly, pay the doctor, but wouldn’t hear of buying the drugs. This led to such a row that it brought half the house running outside their door.

  “You ain’t drivin’ me into the grave!” shrieked the wife. “I’ll outlive you yet, you filthy Kraut!”

  “You won’t outlive the lice on your head!” Herr Hausmeister replied gently, and from then on gave up putting milk in his coffee just so his wife wouldn’t get any milk either.

  But his wife outsmarted him. She was a nasty piece of work, too, and had been stealing from her husband for years. She had five hundred pengős saved, if I remember rightly—they found it stuffed in her mattress after she died. She started feeding herself from these secret funds. When her husband went out, she dragged herself to the door and asked one of the women passing by to do some shopping for her. Márika was the first one she decided to trust, and Márika did as she asked. The trouble was that when it came to bringing her the change, she’d deducted the price of two litres of milk, not one.