Anna waved her arms round in terror then squeezed her hands to her eyes. She couldn’t see a thing. The whole world had gone black: she was blind.
Once again she fell asleep and did not wake until the masters came home and started on their meal.
Mrs Vizy was just complaining that this was all she wanted, a sick girl on her hands, when Anna appeared in the dining room with the tray.
‘Are you feeling better?’ Mrs Vizy enquired.
Anna could see everything now but she couldn’t hear. She could only see their mouths moving.
‘She must have caught a chill,’ said Vizy.
‘Of course,’ Jancsi agreed, ‘It’s a chill.’
‘All the same, I’ll call the doctor down,’ Mrs Vizy fretted.
‘Just as you think,’ said Vizy, ‘but you know what these peasant girls are.’
‘Yes,’ added Jancsi. ‘And in any case she is better.’
By evening she was feeling so much better that she herself asked them not to bother the doctor.
For days her vision was impaired and her ears rang. Once she couldn’t see the ice box, once she dropped a silver spoon and didn’t hear it fall. She also felt a great pressure on her heart, just as she did that night: she felt so small and everything around her so large.
‘Perhaps you have upset your stomach,’ Mrs Vizy quizzed her. ‘Try to remember. What did you eat? You must have eaten too much of something you like.’
One day when no one was about Jancsi skipped over to her and asked if she was all right.
‘Yes.’
‘You see. I told you.’
‘It was just that it was so bitter,’ Anna replied with a faint sickly smile. ‘So terribly bitter.’
‘Bitter?’ repeated the young master. ‘All medicines are bitter. The important thing is to get them over and done with. Well, goodbye.’
But he had had enough of this affair, and of the Vizys too who were always nagging him about his late nights. He took the issue of his accommodation into his own hands. He showed the minister’s calling card at the housing bureau and asked to move into the room in Márvány utca that he had been promised a fortnight ago. Within forty-eight hours the room was his.
It was on the third floor, not particularly big, but it did look out on to the street and – most importantly – had its own entrance. That very day he packed up his belongings, kissed Aunt Angéla and Uncle Kornél, and didn’t even return for the evening.
Jancsi sat in his new room in his beaver-fur coat. He was chatting to Elekes. There was a ring at the door. Anna brought his belongings. She put them down.
‘Thank you, Anna,’ said the young master and pressed a hundred kroner note into her hand. He escorted her to the door and told her to wait for a second. He reached into his pocket, took something from it and gave it to her. ‘This is for you too.’
Anna stopped in the street to see what it was. In the paper bag were some roast chestnuts, rather small, burnt and blackened, but still warm Hungarian chestnuts.
Now she saw that the young master was no longer angry with her.
15
Winter
The Romanians too started packing in November. The advance guard of the national army reached the Danube at eight in the morning on Friday, 14 November 1919. Pest was still officially administered by the military police when the ceremonial eagle-plumed shakos of Horthy’s cavalry swayed down Attila utca and the combat helmets of regular troops shone resplendent in the Budapest sunlight.
Everybody gathered to look out of the windows, waving handkerchiefs at the stubby lowland boys marching strictly in step. On the other side of the river people hurried to their balconies clutching telescopes, hoping to catch a glimpse of the first soldiers.
For days the wagons of this battle-kitted army continued rattling down the main orbital roads. Old bugle calls sounded once again; at nine at night they blew tap at the Ferdinand Barracks to call the poor troopers home tra-la. On the eighteenth – it was a nasty foggy morning, and the flat red disk of the sun hovered low in a polar sky – accompanied by bells and serried ranks of bishops, the supreme commander himself rode in along Fehérvári út. Kornél Vizy was there too, top-hatted, among a delegation of civil servants. Mrs Vizy was part of the ladies’ parliamentary delegation, giving out flowers and tricolour ribands draped in scraps of funereal veil.
Anna was working alone. The house was empty and silent. There was not a sound to be heard. She leaned over the balcony and shook out her dustcloth, went inside as if looking for something then came out again. As she aired the flat, pleasant bathroom smells continued hovering on the breeze: they had eaten their way into the very furniture.
‘Can you hear her?’ said Mrs Vizy to her husband as they relaxed in the sitting room after their return. ‘She’s singing.’
Anna was humming some merry little song: ‘On Friday night, on Saturday night, I’m off to meet my darling in the pale moonlight . . .’
‘That’s unusual,’ she commented. ‘She has never been one for singing before.’
‘So what? She’s in a good mood. Would you prefer her to be in tears?’
One morning she was stripping some meat on the table. There was a sharp intake of breath.
‘What happened?’ gasped Mrs Vizy who was sitting nearby.
‘I’ve cut myself.’
Blood covered her hand. The knife, a big kitchen knife, had slipped and cut her thumb clean through to the bone almost severing her knuckle. It was an ugly gaping wound.
‘Why aren’t you more careful?’
‘Please leave it. It’ll be all right.’
She washed her thumb in the sink, applied plenty of table salt and bound it in a scrap of cloth. The cloth was soon soaked through with blood.
They sent her up to the doctor. He smeared some stinging ointment over it, gave it a proper dressing, stroked her cheek, and told her it would all be healed by the time she got married. The doctor was a very kind and sensitive man.
A severe winter followed. There was terrible frost and such a thick fog you couldn’t see two steps in front of you. The sky was full of rooks. Then came the snow, burying the streets; trams ground to a halt and even the bus service across Lánchíd, the Chain Bridge, was suspended. It snowed incessantly. The fat policeman woke the local caretakers at crack of dawn and ordered them to sweep the pavements, threatening to report them if they didn’t. At five o’clock while everyone was still sleeping Anna was out in her gingham frock, the only thing she wore nowadays, gazing round at the falling lilac-coloured snow. A deep silence lay about her. Sparrows hopped from twig to twig. She broke the ice with an axe, took a spade to the snow and swept the way clear.
There was no one on the streets at that time. By eight though clerks were ambling towards their workplaces in the Vár, cigars in their mouths. Moviszter too ambled downstairs. He wore a winter cap with ear-flaps tied close round his sensitive ears. Sometimes he would stop at the gate and ask her how she was, take her aching thumb in his hand, examine the dirty dressing and declare it needed changing.
Working as she did that winter the wound kept opening up, her hand ached, froze and grew pockmarked, and coal dust settled in the cracks of her skin. All women lose part of their beauty in the winter, but servants grow so ugly that one is hard put to recognize them in their rags after having seen them in kinder weather. Anna too was becoming plain. Her hair was falling out. Every time she combed her hair more tangles remained between the teeth. She didn’t want people to see her.
For the first time she began to feel tired, a kind of drunken exhaustion so acute that once she had finished at night she couldn’t bear to lie down straightaway but walked about swinging her arms and slapping her shoulders, wandering up and down the corridor and in and out of various rooms. Once Mrs Vizy asked what she was doing in the dark. Anna shuddered. She didn’t know what she was doing there or even what the matter was with her.
The young master no longer ate with them, though he was often invited to com
e whenever he wanted, and particularly on Sundays and other official holidays. He came but once. Some time later Anna spotted him in the window of a coffee house: with a long stick in his hand he was leaning over a green table. That was the last she saw of him.
As the days passed something in her grew numb and indifferent. She forgot everything that had happened. Yet she continued suffering. For though she had forgotten everything she felt its loss. She was like an animal that lives in the eternal present, an unfed dog who doesn’t quite know what ails it and yet keeps wandering back to its empty bowl, sniffs at the rim, and, seeing it is empty, retreats dejected to its kennel, casting the occasional look back.
One evening she was wandering about empty-handed and in a daze before the entrance to the attic.
‘Pop in for a second,’ said Stefi. ‘I want to show you something.’
She brought out a pink dress, a beautiful pink dress that she had made for herself. Blushing with excitement she blurted out the secret: there would be a ball soon, a fête at which some hundred couples would perform the Hungarian Circle Dance for the assembled gentry. The girls would all be well bred, the daughters of solicitors and doctors, and she was included among them, so now she had to attend dancing classes with a very severe instructor. This piece of good luck came her way because she was being courted by a guardsman, a tall ramrod-straight youth of the kind respected by the whole community, and he had put her down as his partner.
Anna listened to her, and Stefi was pleased to have an audience at last. After this she often invited her up. She suggested they should go together to the cinema, it would be all right, Stefi would pay for both of them. Anna hemmed and hawed, said she had nothing to wear, but in the end succumbed to the temptation. It was the first time she had seen a film. Cars sped across the screen, somebody fell into a pond, a count and a countess kissed each other in the garden. Stefi talked about her guardsman. He followed her about constantly but she kept him at arm’s length. ‘Let him suffer. It doesn’t do men any harm, the beasts.’ In the meantime she explained the film. She was particularly taken with a thin actor; whenever he appeared she touched Anna’s arm. ‘See, that’s my type. Tall and pale. What’s yours?’
Anna didn’t know what to answer, she didn’t even know what she meant. In any case, the moving images and the people in the auditorium confused her. She thanked Stefi for the treat but didn’t go again. She had no time anyway.
She spent practically the whole day stoking the stoves. They had a lot of trouble with the heating. The stoves in the flat were deteriorating from day to day. She began on them as soon as she had finished sweeping the snow away. She lit a candle and stumbled down to the cellar. The cellar was deep; the damp ran down the walls and she was overpowered by its stale warmth. She filled two scuttles with coal and didn’t dare look round. There were rats here that had tunnelled their way in from the street, they squealed behind the wood-piles and frightened her. The dining room was supposed to be warm for breakfast. She heaped coals on the stove, blew on it, flapped at it with her apron but the fire merely flickered and filled the flat with suffocating smoke. It was like this every blessed day in every room.
Mrs Vizy would often get cross. ‘Why don’t you call the chimney sweep?’
‘He was here yesterday.’
‘Mr Báthory?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it must be your fault. You’re not be using enough kindling.’
Mr Báthory – Árpád Báthory, a stout yeoman with three forenames – lived opposite and did the sweeping in the Krisztina district. He was a regular visitor to the flat, clearing blockages and burning the chimney flues clear. Next day the status quo would be reestablished: lots of smoke and no fire.
On one occasion when her mistress was out she took the initiative herself and called him out. He came at once.
‘What’s the problem now, Annie girl?’
‘I can’t get it to light.’
‘Well, we’ll soon fix that.’
He leaned his ladder against the wall, kicked off his slippers and examined the offending stove barefoot.
‘I spend ages on it,’ complained Anna.
‘Too bad,’ the chimneysweep wagged his head, ‘Too bad.’ He sympathized with her as one workman with another. But he paid no more attention to her: he concentrated entirely on the stove. He shook the grating, tapped the lining and in his curiosity practically stuck his head right in.
‘The draught keeps blowing it back,’ said Anna.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘Where’s the attic key?’
In the twinkling of an eye Mr Báthory was out on the snow-covered roof and skilfully and powerfully making his way up to the ridge. He was like a cat. He stood beside the chimney stack with his broom, black against white, a black tom cat. He was fussing with the ventilation flap. Anna was watching him from the courtyard. Soon he came down the attic steps.
‘Were you not afraid up there?’ she asked him.
‘What is there to be afraid of?’
They went back together into the flat. She wanted to light the fire again.
‘Leave it,’ the sweep advised her. He reached into the still hot stove with his vast hands, emptied it out and lit it himself with a sheet of newspaper.
They squatted and watched the flames licking the walls of the stove and the shower of sparks crackling and rising.
‘It’ll burn all right,’ said Mr Báthory and stood up. They waited for the kindling to heat through before he piled some coal on as well. He knew just how much to put on without stifling it. After a couple of minutes they could hear the coal snapping and yielding to the flames. They warmed their hands at it. Warm air billowed from the stove. The iron door began to glow.
‘Well,’ laughed Mr Báthory, his teeth bright against his dark face. ‘What did I say?’
‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure, Miss Annie. Any time. Call whenever you need me.’
All three chimneys in the Vizys’ flat were merrily pouring their smoke into the sulphur-yellow sky. Every so often Mr Báthory would enquire if everything was all right.
‘Does it burn?’
‘It burns.’
‘Just as well. So it should.’
On Wednesday a heavy rain swept across the town, the wind bellowed and the house shook. The Vérmező field outside was as storm tossed as the Balaton in winter when one couldn’t see the shore.
Mrs Vizy went to the spiritualist. Anna warmed herself by the fire and listened to the storm. Golden embers breathed and collapsed in showers of diamonds. The stove’s iron door stared at her with its five red eyes.
Somebody quietly knocked at the outside door. When Anna opened it she found the chimney sweep waiting.
‘You frightened me!’ she whispered.
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re so black.’
The sweep stood in the corridor in his black trousers and belt, the black spade on his shoulder, the black rope in his hand.
‘How can you get so black?’ exclaimed Anna, half frightened, half smiling. ‘You look like the devil.’
‘Come now,’ Mr Báthory joked, ‘we’re not so wicked.’
He came in. His chain clanked in the half-light.
‘Is nobody at home?’ he asked. He moved towards the light of the kitchen. He had big blue eyes, quite improbably large eyes, like an actor in make-up.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I was going to bake some rolls. And you?’
‘I thought I’d drop in.’ But he remained standing at the kitchen door.
Anna took a tray and put in leaven, butter, sugar and salt. She poured warm milk over it and sprinkled flour on. She started mixing it. The sweep watched her working. He stood for a long time watching her then said, ‘I’ll have to be going.’
‘You’re in a hurry?’
‘I have to get home and see if my daughter’s there. She tends to stray everywhere.’
‘When did your wife die?’
‘Two years ago. In the autumn.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘She was consumptive.’
Anna put down the wooden spoon and fell to musing, like someone reading a good book, full of life.
‘The girl needs someone to look after her,’ said the sweep. ‘I can’t manage it. It needs a woman.’
‘You’ll find one. How old are you?’
‘Thirty-five.’
‘You’re young yet. And you make a good living.’
‘I’ve had offers. There’s one now. A widow in the Erzsébet district. She has a small house.’
‘There you are then.’
‘But somehow I don’t fancy her. Now if it were you . . .’
‘Stop messing about,’ she cut him off sharply, without a trace of coquetry. She didn’t feel like being praised because she knew she didn’t look pretty.
Something in her attracted the sweep: it might have been her unhappiness and this sudden pain, since a man will always sniff out the degraded, exploited quality in a woman and often find it more alluring than beauty itself. He leaned against the doorpost. He waited for Anna to finish moulding the pastry in the baking tray.
‘I must be going now,’ he repeated.
‘You really had better be going, Mr Báthory. They’ll be home any minute.’
Báthory didn’t stay to argue the toss. Once he met her in the street, by chance, and mentioned again in a general way, that really he needed a woman round the place, yes a woman. Then, as was proper, he sent a message, by Mrs Ficsor, that he would gladly take Anna for his wife if she were willing.
The caretaker’s wife positively put herself out to accede to his request. She spoke to the girl, told her how lucky she was and that not for the world should she allow such an opportunity to slip by, she praised the sweep as a sober hard-working man who had been very good to his first wife. Anna didn’t say no but asked for time to think. Báthory for his part asked her to come over and take a look at his home.
On her day off he met her at the Vérmező and escorted her to his flat on the fourth floor, ushering her into a room overlooking the courtyard. A cold wintery moonlight trembled on the frosted window, and gave their bodies a metallic, rather deathly appearance as they stepped into the dark room. They stood some distance from each other. Anna went straight over to the window and looked out. She could see the Vizys’ house and recognized a tree, then her own window and marvelled at how small it seemed from up here. The sweep lit the spirit-lamp and hung it on the wall beside the window.
Anna Edes Page 15