Elekes took a deep sniff. He could smell the delicate perfume and see the lit rooms. Perhaps it wasn’t so unlikely after all.
‘Buxom?’
‘Slender.’
‘Blonde?’
‘Chestnut brown.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Promise not to tell?’ They shook hands on it while Jancsi pondered some gigantic whopping lie, but he couldn’t think of anything. ‘Marianne,’ he sighed. ‘Liebe Marianne.’
‘Well, well,’ acknowledged Elekes. ‘She must be quite a dish. But you’d better be careful,’ he warned Jancsi, ‘don’t yield yourself up entirely. She sounds like the hysterical sort.’
‘I know, but what hysteria! Her eyes roll when I kiss her. She is delirious. And you know what, Elekes? Just listen to this . . . are you listening? . . .
Jancsi’s mouth hung open: he stood dumb. As he was talking Anna stepped into the room and announced that tea was ready. He glanced at her and then at Elekes who had turned his back and was also looking at the girl. He expected Elekes to burst out laughing and point at her, recognizing her at once in his precise description of the actress. All would be revealed.
Nothing of the sort. Elekes stubbed his cigarette out on the ashtray and followed Anna to the table. Jancsi’s spirits sank. A dull, shapeless misery descended on him, such as he felt when he was alone.
He could never cope with sadness, not for a minute, and protested vigorously against the idea of trying to understand it, or of surrendering himself to it and enjoying it. He would turn to the most artificial diversions. He was like a morphine addict: only a new shot would relieve him. He quickly poured himself a strong cherry liqueur, clinked glasses with his friend and drank it down, whistling. After tea he took his favourite book and read its irreverent parodies of high-minded poets.
Then they tried a practical joke on the telephone but it was not a complete success. They rang a mutual friend who happened to be out and they had to be content with talking to his widowed mother. They instructed her to tell her son to report the next morning at eight o’clock at the political security unit, if he knew what was good for him.
Elekes looked at his watch and, despite Jancsi’s entreaties, took his leave. He too had a rendezvous. With another actress no doubt.
Jancsi remained and continued drinking alone. With a clumsy movement he knocked the bottle over. The liqueur spilled over the white Persian rug.
Anna cleaned the rug, swept up the cigarette ash and generally tidied up, since the two rascals had made a thorough mess of the place.
The young master sat very straight. The drink had not gone to his head. He was dry drunk, so to speak, stiff and solemn. All the same he had to say something to her. He rose from the table, and approached Anna steadily without swaying. ‘Look,’ he said. He attempted to amuse her by sticking a pair of red glasses on his nose and squinting at her through a piece of parchment paper.
She didn’t laugh.
‘How horrible!’ she gasped. ‘How ugly you look!’
Jancsi took the revolver from his pocket and pointed it at her, took aim and fired. The gun mewed.
‘Did I scare you?’ he chortled and followed the girl who backed away from him holding her two arms out in front of her. ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s only a joke. Come here. I want to show you something else.’
He took a dark banknote from his wallet.
‘Have you ever seen one of these? It’s American. A dollar bill. Do you know what it is worth? A fortune. This note is French. And this one’s Dutch. It’s proper currency.’
When he had stuffed the notes back into his wallet he stretched. He felt as though his head had been pumped out and his spine were made of glass.
‘Make the bed,’ he said. ‘I’m having an early night. Their excellencies arrive in the morning. Don’t tell them I didn’t go into the office. And not a word about Mr Elekes. I’ll take care of that.’
Over the last four days Anna had done all the jobs she had been asked to do. She had darned many stockings and patched many skirts. She had tied them up in two separate bundles. She had also scrubbed the main stairs. She was ready for her ladyship’s return.
This night she waited in vain for the young master. He didn’t visit her. But tonight of all nights she was scared to be alone. She kept seeing the white face with the red spectacles. It mockingly pointed a revolver at her.
At two o’clock the kitchen window rattled. She got up and closed it. Outside a cool wind had sprung up. The trees were whispering.
Later she heard the rain start.
14
Something Very Bitter
Come the evening, it was still raining. It was a persistent steady rain, a constant blubbering that slopped in the yard. The gutters spewed up filthy water.
When she looked out Anna saw that the whole sky was one mass of grey. There was not the merest patch of blue. How good it would be, she thought, to take a long-handled mop and clear it away as if it were a spider’s web in the corner of the room.
She hurried down the stairs and waited for her masters under a rickety umbrella. Let them not know anything, let them not tell anything from her appearance, for she would surely die of shame. She draw her headscarf down over her eyes.
The Vizys, who had returned on the overnight train, were driven down the street in a coach which dropped them before the house. Anna saw her ladyship first. She was already leaning out and shouting. She wanted to know if the house was all right. Anna nodded that it was. And was all well with the young master? Yes, quite well, she answered, after a little hesitation, then waited as if she had something more to say.
Mr Vizy was the first to leap off the carriage. He was wearing his travelling cap and a leather flask was slung round his neck. Anna took the bags and made her way upstairs. Heaven knows, she was quite glad they had returned and that they could get back to their normal routine. Mrs Vizy was glad too. The maid she had left behind was still here, had baked a sweetloaf as a surprise and had kept the flat in sparkling order. This was no more than she expected of her now. On the other hand, meeting so many new people under unfamiliar circumstances had yielded new experiences, and she could view her own household a little more clearly and objectively. She was not long in recounting how the maids in Eger rose every day at four and helped on the land for practically no wages at all.
They unpacked, and drank some tea. They had been chilled through on the journey. Jancsi was still asleep. He lay on his couch, white as a corpse, his eyelids half closed, his mouth hanging open.
The rain poured down all Sunday and for the next three days. Suddenly – and rather too early – autumn was here. The little house in Attila utca grew even smaller, closer and darker. The air had cooled considerably. Cold mornings were in order. Mrs Druma, whose husband’s earnings continued to increase, bought herself a new pair of galoshes and a new overcoat. Druma himself came and went on the stairs in a transparent English mac. Mrs Moviszter drove with a coach and two to her artistic gatherings or to rehearsals. At home she recited verses in the sitting room, wearing a plunging négligé and dramatically waving her arms.
Stefi and Etal no longer idled on the gallery. They warmed themselves by the stove and wrote letters in the evening. Only briefly would they peek out to wave a hot iron, describing fiery circles in the darkness. The Ficsors lived like moles in their basement hovel. The woman would cook a thin egg soup for breakfast. Ficsor would appear like a ghost in the foggy corridors in his dripping postman’s cloak, cursing that someone had left the attic door open again. A pipe burned in his mouth. He coughed. The yellow shoes he had so famously requisitioned for himself were already worn out. It was the end of a short summer. The poor slowly divested themselves of clothes, the rich put more on.
Jancsi worked at the bank. Liberated from his self-imposed close confinement of four days he took a deep breath of genuine relief as he stepped out into the street. He no longer felt comfortable at home. His memories filled him with shame and he would tal
k to himself aloud in his nervousness. The girl was unbearable. Since Elekes’s visit that evening the whole affair seemed incomprehensible. Now that his uncle and aunt were back and the old order had reasserted itself he was unable to look at her and was in physical pain each time she entered. For the time being he took refuge with his relatives. He fled from her.
He spent much of his time in the street ogling passing women. He furtively followed each one with his eyes and mentally undressed her. He yawned his time away at the Tatárs’ party and took his leave in English. He picked up a waitress at a pâtisserie. He didn’t find her attractive but he still brought her to a quiet and modest hotel in Buda where they were glad to accommodate guests for an hour or two. After the waitress came a model; followed by one who called herself an actress. He’d meet her in a cab. He hardly ever went home for supper. Instead he and Elekes set themselves up at the Club des Parisiens, where a regular table was reserved for them.
The decor of this newly opened bar was rather showy for the times, with rows of mirrors, dripping chandeliers and gilded stucco columns. There was also the constant screaming of a jazz band. The great advantage of a jazz band is that it makes not only thought but sensation of any kind quite impossible. And this was precisely what the elegant clientele of this club wanted. It was the haunt of foreign middlemen, successful arms dealers, officers of the Triple Entente and of better-class prostitutes, those merry little war-widows, once brides of heroes, who had fallen on hard times and sought here the gratitude owed to them by posterity. They were happy to hear the black band wailing like wild animals, happy to hear its sick martial retching which drowned out their own nausea and despair. The music maddened them a little, then they danced to it.
The dance floor itself was something special. It was covered in a sheet of glass lit from below by pink electric bulbs wreathed in flowery patterns so that the whole floor looked like an enchanted ice-rink. Jancsi spent every night here and stayed till closing time. The girls knew him, cadged cigarettes off him and rather liked him. He danced the one-step with a certain formal elegance. He could often be seen swirling through the smoke, clutching a woman, his pale face bent to the floor fascinated by the brilliant lacquered shoes gliding across the glass.
It was dawn before he arrived home. The key slowly turned in the lock. He pulled his shoes off in the hall and crept to his couch on stockinged feet so as not to wake the Vizys. Anna always heard him. She couldn’t get to sleep until she heard the young master’s footsteps in the sitting room. She waited for him each night. And through the day too, constantly. She waited for him, for something to happen. Perhaps only for him to say some kind words to her, to smile at her, or, if nothing else, for him to ask her for something. Jancsi said nothing. He was glum and in a hurry. Obviously, he must be angry with her.
Yet she was paying more attention to herself now for his sake. She combed her hair several times a day, would frequently glance at the mirror and wore her best outfit, her one gingham frock, even for work.
By November the nights had grown even longer. The hooting of trains at the Southern Terminal was clearly audible. A stray engine would now and then moan in the dark, as touchingly and sorrowfully as a child.
On Sunday Mrs Vizy went to church. Mr Vizy too left early. The young master woke late. He was arranging his trousers before the wardrobe. Anna opened the windows so that she could start the cleaning. As she passed the wardrobe she gathered her courage and spoke to him.
‘Excuse me, master . . .’
‘What is it?’
‘Please forgive me . . .’
She burst into tears. She cried silently but in such distress her entire body shook. Jancsi stared at her. For a while he was completely lost for words. Is it possible he could have loved her, that he had been in love with this? She wiped her tears with her knuckles, she snuffled and her nose was as red as a drunken peasant’s. She had tied a long scarf around her waist. It brought a damp autumnal smell into the house much as a stray dog might have done. The draught was whistling through the open window as Anna’s tears rained down and kept on falling. She was muttering too, though he could only make out one word: ‘. . . shame . . . shame . . .’
‘That’s impossible,’ said Jancsi. ‘Quite impossible. Out of the question.’
‘But it’s true . . .’
‘Stop crying. Do please stop crying,’ he begged her and stopped his ears to shut out her weeping as he once had her laughter.
‘If only you’d stop crying . . .’
‘Oh, master . . .’
‘Be quiet. This is no way to talk. Will you stop it! Well. So. The first thing is: it is by no means certain. Not at all. One must wait.’
He shuddered with disgust that he had to discuss matters like this with her in such horrible intimacy.
‘Whatever the case one must wait,’ he repeated and shrugged his shoulders. He only half believed it. She might be trying to blackmail him. Nevertheless he took care to ask her each morning from then on. Anna just shook her head.
In the Club des Parisiens Jancsi buttonholed Elekes on the subject of a certain actress. ‘Look, old man,’ he began, leaning back in his armchair, ‘I’m in trouble, my friend, in deep trouble.’
‘Is that all?’ replied Elekes and leant forward to whisper in his ear.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain. We’ve used the method time and again.’
That night Jancsi stood by Anna’s bed.
‘A footbath. In plenty of hot water, as hot as you can bear it.’
The girl made the water so hot she could have plucked and boiled a chicken in it. She dangled her feet in the bowl and hissed with pain.
‘Well?’ asked Jancsi after a couple of days.
Again, she just shook her head.
‘Incredible,’ he mumbled. ‘Truly incredible,’ and he snapped his fingers.
He was in a real pickle, up to his neck. Just his luck! What a repulsive business, and what a scandal there would be next spring.
Elekes suggested a gynaecologist, someone who was particularly sympathetic to the arts, especially actresses. Jancsi thought it convenient to arrange an appointment for his actress. His pal introduced him to a sympathetic chemist who made his living currently by smuggling silk in from Vienna and smuggling Hungarian arms out to Czechoslovakia. He gave Jancsi something.
Jancsi waited for an opportune moment when his aunt had popped out into the corridor. ‘Here it is,’ he whispered to her urgently.
‘What is it?’
‘Medicine.’ He slipped four small packages of powder into her hand. ‘Hide it away,’ he insisted when she started examining the little paper sachets. ‘Then take them.’
‘Should I swallow these?’
‘You don’t understand. It’s in the packets. You open them, dissolve the powder in water and drink it.’
‘Now?’
‘Before you go to sleep. By morning it will have done the trick. But let nobody see it. Because it’s illegal. If they found out they could put you in prison for it.’
‘But then perhaps I shouldn’t take it, master?’
‘Nonsense. Of course you should. But say nothing to anyone. Be careful.’
Anna did as she was instructed. When the flat grew dark she opened the packets. They contained a white powder like fine flour. She sniffed at it. It had no smell.
She emptied the contents of all four packets into a glass of water. But she was too scared to drink it in the kitchen. She went into the toilet. Then she shut her eyes and drained the glass in one gulp.
Dear Jesus, how bitter it was, O Mother of God, blessed Mother of God, how bitter. She had never tasted anything so bitter in her life. And it only reached its peak of bitterness once she had gone into her room and lain down on the bed. Its stinking bitterness seared the roof of her mouth and burned her throat. Only poison could be so bitter. She clapped her hand to her mouth and fingered her tongue hoping to touch the bitterness, amazed that anything could be so bitter. Each individ
ual hair on her head was suffused with it.
She slept till one or maybe later. She opened her eyes wide and stared at the window. The bright orange light on the wall opposite was leaping about with such energy she was lost in wonder. Were they ringing bells somewhere? She heard the boom of distant bells which grew silent then, with a deep grumbling, approached ever nearer. She rose to see why they should be ringing bells at this hour.
Then someone came in, a vast figure, she had never seen someone so huge. How could they come in when the door was shut. The figure stood by her bed like a horse.
We-e-ell, what’s up with you-u-u? You can stay where you are. Father, dear father. Just look. His head was a piece of ham. He’ll never harm her. He’ll just sit in the chair, like the broom. He’s mad. He’ll go away.
I ought to sweep up anyway. The place is crawling with filth. I’ll pull that drawer open, and – would you believe it? – it’s full of millet.
Oh your ladyship, how you startled me. I thought you were going to fall off the wall.
What is she doing here? Go to hell, idiot. I’ll burn the omelette, the water will boil away in the pan. Let go of me.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mrs Vizy, bending over her. ‘Are you ill?’
Anna was so fast asleep she could hardly hear her breathe.
‘Anna,’ she shook her. ‘Anna. Can you hear me?’
The girl turned over.
‘She is ill,’ thought Mrs Vizy. She touched her brow. It was quite cold. Her hands and her feet were like ice.
‘Is she going to die on us?’ she wondered. She ran up for the doctor. Moviszter was out on a call and would only be back in time for surgery.
In the meantime she offered the girl tea with rum and exhorted her to drink it, it would warm her up. Anna shifted and pointed at something. She asked her to turn on the light.
‘Why?’ wondered Mrs Vizy. ‘It’s morning. Half-past eight,’ she said, frightened.
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