They laughed. Mrs Vizy glanced at her husband and rang the bell.
In came Anna in her blue calico dress, carrying a glass tray of walnut sponge fingers. She hadn’t had the time to change. Her shoes slopped on her feet. She advanced in some confusion to the table and put down the tray. She felt she ought to kiss everyone’s hand individually but there were so many of them she didn’t know where to start. She was surrounded by smiling faces. Even Tatár had stopped eating and strained his thick neck towards her. Mrs Vizy admired the dumb show for a while, then beckoned her over and with a humorous but proud gesture introduced her. ‘Yes, this is Anna. My Anna.’
When Anna closed the door behind her she heard laughter. It was as if a famous comic had taken a curtain call. The audience itself had little idea why it was laughing, but laughed all the same. The whole thing was wildly amusing: the awkwardness, the shuffling shoes, the manner of introduction. The atmosphere grew more lively. Cigars and cigarettes were lit. Vizy told some anecdote about Anna which was followed by loud guffaws.
It was into this den of jollity that Dr Moviszter, the old general practitioner, entered, having packed off his last patient at the end of surgery. He came to find his wife. He was immensely busy with his swollen list of patients. Once, in his youth, he had been assistant to a heart surgeon at a clinic in Berlin. On returning to Hungary he applied for a private tutorship at the university but they didn’t want him. He had to live as best he could. His surgery was open ten hours a day and dealt mechanically with the usual mass of amorphous humanity that swirls round general hospitals and insurance agencies. He dragged his tired body about with the aid of a walking stick. When he smiled he exposed his loose teeth and inflamed gums. A few wisps of weedy hair trembled on the crown of his head. He was sicker than any of his patients. His diabetes was at a terminal stage. Colleagues and clinics had given him up for lost.
Vizy hastened to greet him, assuring him that he looked much better than usual. Moviszter thanked him ironically. He blinked uncertainly at the assembled company swimming in the smoke of cigars and cigarettes. He felt as if he had unwittingly stumbled on to the stage in the middle of an unfamiliar performance. He couldn’t understand the reason for all this gaiety. They had to explain to him that they had been talking about Anna, the famous Anna. Vizy was prevailed on to repeat his amusing anecdote.
Moviszter did not touch the food. He retired with the men into the study. He refused a drink, but amiably clinked an empty glass with the rest when it came to a toast. Later they drifted back into the dining room to join the ladies, their cigars and cigarettes alight, their faces pleasantly rosy from the wine. Tatár leaned against the door-post listening to the conversation.
‘Still on about the servants!’ he exclaimed with horror, puffing out his narrow chest beneath the neatly fitted white silk waistcoat. ‘That’s women for you. They are incapable of talking about anything else.’
But the men, too, showed an interest in the subject and kept an ear open for what was being said. Vizy brought the wine back into the dining room. Moviszter sat himself down in the rocking chair and, closing his eyelids, gently rocked to and fro.
The subject was still Anna.
‘You know,’ Mrs Druma was saying, ‘she is pretty, too. She has quite a sweet little face. Nice figure as well. Slender. She’s really attractive.’
‘Yes,’ added Mrs Tatár in a philosophic mood. ‘These peasant girls quickly blossom once they get to Budapest. The same goes for mine, my Bözsi. I brought her from the village last year. She was thin as a rake and ragged as a scarecrow. Well, I quickly fattened her up and fitted her out with a wardrobe. I bought her a white piqué dress . . .’ She coughed at this point like someone beginning a speech. ‘Last Sunday my girls had a party. Bözsi opened the door for the guests. Ervin arrived, Ervin Gallovszky, who has recently returned from a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. What do you think happened? This boy,’ and she herself smiled at the recollection, ‘this boy kissed my hand in the hall then stood before Bözsi and formally introduced himself to her, and put out his hand for her to shake it.’
‘The servant?’ marvelled Mrs Vizy.
‘The servant. If I had not signalled to him he would have shaken hands with her!’ Her asthmatic chest heaved with laughter and turned to coughing. ‘He thought,’ she added in a strangled voice, ‘that she was my Ilonka or Margitka, or perhaps one of their friends.’
‘And what did your maid do?’
‘It was as if someone had set fire to her face. She hid her hands behind her back and – would you believe it! – burst into tears. She was in tears the whole afternoon. She refused to serve to save her life. The girls teased Ervin dreadfully.’
Tatár nudged his wife. ‘Don’t forget the cat.’
‘Oh yes, the cat!’ Mrs Tatár exclaimed. ‘When she first came to us we had a two-month-old kitten which belonged to Ilonka. It was called Cirmos. One morning I could hear Bözsi enticing her with some milk, calling, ‘This way, Master Cirmos, here’s your breakfast, sir.’ She addressed the cat as if it had been her superior. It was ages before she dared be familiar with it. You see! That’s what they’re like. Unfortunately it doesn’t last for long, they lose their innocence far too quickly. Nowadays she always wants to be visiting her village for one reason or another, a funeral, a harvest or a wedding. I have a whole tribe of relatives to put up with.’
‘My maid,’ contributed Mrs Druma, ‘takes a great interest in politics and the cinema. She is devoutly religious.’
‘And mine,’ added Mrs Moviszter, ‘is a tyrant. Etel is used to command. She promises not to dismiss us – providing we do what she says.’
‘Mine,’ observed Mrs Vizy, and all attention turned to her since she had listened to the others’ woes with a certain malicious glee, ‘mine is interested neither in the cinema nor in the theatre. She doesn’t even sing. There is no one courting her. I have never met her family. She is an orphan. She never goes out. So far she has not even taken a Sunday afternoon off.’
‘That Anna is certainly a remarkable creature.’ The murmurs of appreciation were so unanimous that she feared she had overstepped the mark, and now, having found herself the centre of attention, she felt bound in all modesty to distance herself a little.
‘Mind you, you shouldn’t envy us too much. She was far from perfect at the start. I’ve had my struggles with her. And she still has her faults.’
‘What?’ cried Vizy, wounded, raising his head from the cloud of wine. ‘Do please tell me, what fault has she?’
Mrs Vizy searched vainly for a fault. What fault can you find where there is none. She couldn’t answer.
There was a general hubbub of approval which was suddenly cut short as the object of their speculation entered.
Anna began to clear the table. They watched her even more attentively than before, taking note of her every movement. She darted between the table and the sideboard with uncanny lightness. It was as if a silent robot were moving among them. She’s like a machine, they thought, a machine.
When she had put the tray of sponge fingers on the sideboard, Mrs Vizy called her over with the air of one who had just been struck by a delicious thought. ‘Bring it here, Anna.’
The guests rose up and formed a circle round Mrs Vizy. They seemed to freeze in their positions as in a tableau with the maid as the focus of their attention. Moviszter’s chair stopped rocking and he leaned forward a degree or two.
Mrs Vizy selected two sponge fingers and presented them to Anna. ‘These are for you.’
The guests began to smile. Tender feelings flooded through them as if they were present at some almsgiving for the deserving poor. But hardly was the girl offered the fingers before she pushed them away.
‘Thank you.’
‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like them?’
‘No. Thank you very much. I don’t like them.’
A painful silence followed. It was broken by the decisive tones of Mrs Vizy. ‘In that case, girl, just put t
he tray back. I wouldn’t force you. Not for the world. You may go.’
The guests continued standing in a circle, still wearing benign expressions but slightly overcome by the confusion. Their astonishment left a horrible sense of numbness hovering about the company.
‘Did she mean to reject you?’ wondered Mrs Tatár.
‘Of course not,’ Mrs Vizy explained, ‘that’s just the way she is. She won’t eat any delicacy. She even leaves the apricot jam. What do you think she has for supper? You’d never guess. Nothing. She has coffee in the morning, and a spoonful of stew for lunch. She doesn’t want any more. As regards sponge fingers, it appears she doesn’t like them.’
‘It may be that she likes them too much,’ said Moviszter, who was still leaning forward in the rocking chair.
‘What did you say, doctor?’
‘I said she may like sponge fingers very much indeed.’
‘But she herself said she didn’t.’
‘That’s precisely why.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘Servants are often afraid to like what they like, so they convince themselves that nice things are not nice. That’s their defence. Perhaps it prevents them from too much suffering. Why should they desire things that can never be theirs? They’re right too. They couldn’t live any other way.’
‘Then what should we do with her?’
‘Why don’t you try giving her sponge fingers every day.’
‘Sponge fingers every day?’
‘Yes. Lots of sponge fingers, so many she couldn’t possibly eat them. Then you would see how much she liked them. That she liked sponge fingers better than anything else in the world.’
‘But why? She isn’t ill. A diet of sponge fingers is only good for invalids.’
‘Fine thing it would be too,’ grumbled Mrs Tatár. ‘Sponge fingers wasted on their coarse palates. Sponge fingers!’
‘This is just another of your peculiar ideas, my dear Miklós,’ Druma admonished the doctor who had once again closed his eyes and was rocking to and fro.
Mrs Moviszter lit a cigarette, went through into the sitting room and began to play a foxtrot on the piano. The ladies followed her. Vizy filled the glasses. The gentlemen sat down in their places and washed away the bitter flavour with more wine.
Having wiped his dripping moustache with his handkerchief, Tatár returned to the issue of the sponge fingers which continued to bother him. He addressed Moviszter. ‘But you know, my dear doctor, these people are after all different from us. Their stomachs are different and so are their souls. They’re servants and that’s what they’ll remain. They themselves demand that we treat them as such. The other day, for example, I rang up a friend of mine. A strange voice answered the telephone. ‘Are you an employee?’ I asked. ‘No,’ answered the voice, in a markedly impertinent manner, ‘I am a servant.’ You should have heard it. I was so surprised I couldn’t even tell why. I continued holding the receiver in my hand while this voice crackled on, growing angrier, more challenging and arrogant. They actually enjoy referring to themselves in these terms simply in order to upset and insult us.’
He sipped at the amber yellow wine and continued.
‘People have often tried to treat them with affection. I had a friend once, poor fellow he’s dead now, Karcsi Zelándy, God rest his soul. He was a sound chap, a little eccentric perhaps. His head was always full of theories. He was a vegetarian, he wore moccasins, he even went to visit Tolstoy at Yasnaya-Polyana. When he returned he was determined to tackle the servant question root and branch. He took one on and informed her that they were absolutely equal: there was to be no master, no servant, they would take turns at serving each other. At the first opportunity he sat her down at the family table along with his wife and children. He recounted the occasion to me later. Well, it was a pretty sad affair. The unfortunate girl felt awful receiving such inordinate attention. She languished there in her stained skirt with its kitchen smell, hiding her hands under the table or touching her face, and said nothing at all throughout the whole meal. She was of course tired, having been cooking and baking since the crack of dawn. Suffice it to say, the meal being finished she changed her clothes and announced that she would not stay a minute longer in a place like this. And there and then she went.’
Debating with himself as much as with the doctor he none the less addressed his pointed remarks to the latter. ‘Now, my question is, why did she go?’ and he pressed his forefinger against his fleshy nose so hard that he quite squashed it. ‘I ask because however they questioned her she wouldn’t say. Well I’ll tell you. She went because she had more brains than her master. She went because she realized that the situation was unnatural and insincere. The sincere course of action would have been for my friend to unconditionally offer her his house, his land and his livestock down to the last calf, down to the last nail. These simple people on the lowest rung of society live in absolutes. They have much more imagination than we suspect. They are not content with half-measures. They want either to be masters – and absolute masters at that – or absolute servants. The rest is all comedy. It was the same with the Romans. They also tried to perform the comedy. But,’ and here he hesitated, ‘only once a year. I can’t remember the name of the festival but the patricians dressed up as slaves and invited the slaves to take over their tables and served them with mead and roast capons. They said it was in remembrance of the golden age when everyone was equal. But when was this golden age? It’s nothing but a myth. They themselves couldn’t remember it. Besides, even our hands are different,’ and he held up his soft pudgy hand which indeed resembled nobody else’s. ‘There’s no such thing as human equality. There are only individual differences between people, doctor. Dammit!’ he wound himself up artificially like an orator in a passion, ‘masters and servants have ever been and ever will be. That’s all there is to it. It’s a fact we cannot change. So let them remain the servants.’
He looked around. His speech met with general approval. The company whose rights he had defended closed about him gratefully. He had made his point, but turned to the doctor and drew the natural conclusion. ‘There’s no alternative.’
‘But there is,’ replied Moviszter from the rocking chair, fiddling absent-mindedly with the medallion of the Virgin Mary that dangled from his watch-chain.
‘I am curious to hear it. What alternative can you offer?’ enquired Tatár, raising his large wise head.
‘Compassion.’
‘Compassion?’ repeated Tatár, happy that the argument could take a fresh direction.
‘There is a place where everyone is both master and servant at once, where everyone is equal, every day of the year.’
‘What place is this?’
‘The Kingdom of Christ.’
‘But that’s in heaven.’
‘It is in the soul.’
‘Very well, but just you try to realize it here. With the Bolsheviks and their comrades.’
‘One doesn’t have to realize it,’ responded Moviszter, with annoyance since his illness made him crotchety, it is unnecessary. That was the problem with the Communists too: they tried to realize an ideal. One shouldn’t try to realize ideals. Not one. Once you do they’re finished. Let them remain where they are, in heaven among the clouds. That’s how they remain effective, that’s how they survive.’
‘Excuse me, doctor, would you have your servant sitting at table with you?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps,’ he pondered, ‘because she doesn’t expect it. It would be precisely the comedy you describe. At least, now, here on earth.’
‘Then we’re both in the same boat.’
‘Not exactly, councillor. Because in my soul my servant is always at table with me.’
‘That’s all right I suppose,’ said Tatá, wrinkling his arched brow. ‘Why not? But let me tell you something. Your servant would never sit you at her table, not in a million years. Let them scrape together a little
nestegg and they become regular tyrants. I’ve seen them. The first thing they do is to hire a servant of their own, and they are quite merciless, quite heartless with them. God save me from criminals – turned-policemen. There is nothing worse than being the servant of a servant. You’ll find little compassion in them.’
‘That has nothing to do with the case.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Tatár started, anxious to lead the conversation on to a new track, ‘I expect you regard yourself as a humanitarian.’
‘Me? I’m nothing of the sort.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I don’t like humanity, because I have never seen it, because I don’t know it. The concept of humanity is perfectly hollow. And take note, councillor: every confidence-trickster is a humanitarian. Those who are greedy, those who would not spare a crust for their own brothers, those who are the worst of scoundrels, they all have a humanitarian ideal. They hang people and murder them, still they are humanitarians. They desecrate their homes, they kick their wives out, they neglect their parents and their children, and what are they? Humanitarians. There’s no more comfortable position. It obliges you to nothing. No individual has yet come to me announcing, I am humanity. Humanity requires no food, no clothes, it maintains a decent distance somewhere in the background with a halo round its brow. There is Peter and there is Paul. They are only people. Humanity does not exist.’
‘What about patriotism?’
‘Same thing,’ said Moviszter and hesitated, seeking the best way of putting it. ‘As you know it is a very beautiful, very general concept. Much too general. Think of the sins committed in its name.’
‘Then who or what do you like?’
‘The clergy,’ Druma teased him. ‘Miklós likes the priests. Or perhaps the Bolsheviks. I’m not too sure myself now. I do believe,’ he frowned, ‘that you are a Communist beneath the skin. No, don’t deny it, my dear Miklós!’ And he embraced him with such vehemence that the old doctor’s frail shoulder-blades nearly cracked under the pressure.
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