Anna Edes

by Dezso Kosztolányi

  The room was full of things. Two large cupboards, two beds together with bedding, all the necessaries, a settee, a kitchen cabinet, a table. Mr Báthory opened the cupboards. He showed her the white linen, washed and apparently untouched – six blouses, three underskirts, three nightgowns – one bright-red Himalayan scarf. He spoke to her with great respect. Anna fell to thinking and a faint thrill of happiness ran through her.

  Later the daughter came home, a scowling fourteen-year-old adolescent in muddy open shoes. Her father told her to say hello so she did so then sat down in a corner. Anna cooked supper, potatoes in paprika. The three of them ate it quietly.

  The sweep escorted her downstairs. ‘What do you think?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  Mr Báthory emphasized that it was a matter of urgency.

  ‘Let’s leave it for now. We’ll talk about it after the holidays,’ answered Anna. So they left it at that.

  Just before the holidays, when she was at her busiest making poppyseed and groundnut cakes, her brother, whom she had not seen for five years since the French took him prisoner, appeared. He had grown up and had even grown a moustache. He had a whip in his hand. He had driven up from the puszta and had a present for the masters of the house. He asked how she was, then went away again.

  It was a spectacular Christmas in the house. The Drumas were the first to receive the herald with the gifts, mostly for the baby. Stefi received a gold wristwatch and Etel a bolt of canvas from the Moviszters.

  The Vizys were the last to light the Christmas tree having invited the Moviszters and Drumas for the occasion. The honourable lady and his excellency kissed each other. Mrs Vizy surprised her husband with a cigar-case; he bought her twenty-four handkerchiefs, as he did every year. The mistress handed Anna her present. It was wrapped in fine tissue paper.

  It was a waistcoat, a hardy brown woollen waistcoat. They gave it to her so she would not be cold sweeping the snow.

  As Anna unwrapped it by candlelight, Mrs Druma nudged Mrs Moviszter. She recognized the vest. It had been Katica’s present previously, and she had worn it too, but when she was dismissed she had contemptuously left it behind.

  16

  Matter, Spirit and Soul

  At Epiphany, the Vizys were returning from tea at the Tatárs where two ministers of state had been among the guests. On arriving home the woman suddenly stopped before the kitchen door.

  In the kitchen sat a stranger, a man she didn’t recognize. He was seated at the table and beside him – though some distance away – was Anna. On noticing her the unknown man respectfully stood up and bid her good evening.

  She could see him more clearly now that the lamp illuminated his pale face and silky blond hair. He wore a light grey suit and a long tie. Mrs Vizy stared at him in growing uncertainty, trying to place him in her memory.

  ‘I see your ladyship doesn’t recognize me,’ said the man in a not unpleasant baritone voice and smiled, ‘I’m the chimneysweep.’

  ‘So it’s you. I see. I didn’t recognize you. I’ve never seen you like this, Mr Báthory. Good evening.’

  The uninvited guest did not trouble them for long. He waited for the mistress of the house to go in, then, after a little hesitation, long enough not to make it seem as if he were running away, he quietly left.

  Now Mrs Vizy saw what was afoot. She shook her head in disbelief. She wouldn’t have credited it. She had never imagined that someone else had an interest in Anna, or could have an interest in a creature that belonged so intimately to her; that anyone at all might simply come in and sit down at her table. It was all so unpleasant and indelicate, a clear usurpation of her domain, as if she had found the chimneysweep calmly smoking his pipe, sprawled across the white couch in her bedroom. The impertinence of it stung her but she didn’t say anything. She broached the subject gently.

  ‘Tell me, Anna, does this man often call on you?’

  ‘He looks in sometimes.’

  ‘What do you mean “sometimes”? You mean this wasn’t the first time? He has been here before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Now and then.’

  ‘I don’t like it. You know I don’t. A strange man in my home. It isn’t done anywhere in the world.’

  ‘He calls. I can’t chase him away.’

  ‘Come, come, that’s not the way things work.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned he can stay at home.’

  ‘Then why don’t you tell him so? Why not?’

  ‘I can’t, your ladyship.’

  ‘In that case I’ll tell him. You have other things to do.’

  ‘Tell him if you like. It really doesn’t matter to me.’

  Mrs Vizy talked with the chimneysweep and he didn’t call again, but the matter didn’t end there. While Anna was cooking she would keep nagging her. ‘Was he courting you?’

  ‘He’d talk to me.’

  ‘He has filled your head with talk. He wants to turn your head.’

  ‘Where’s the butter, your ladyship?’

  ‘There on the windowsill. Careful, Anna, be very careful. He’ll muddle up your life. What sort of things does he say?’

  ‘Once he said . . .’ But at that point she went to the sink to run some water into the jug so Mrs Vizy didn’t hear the rest of the sentence.

  ‘So, what did he say?’ she persisted once Anna had put the jug on the stove.

  ‘He said he didn’t have anybody.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘And that he needed a woman round the place.’

  ‘Interesting. And what did you say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That was wise. It’s ridiculous. He’s not for you.’

  Anna openly admitted she was right, and probably thought so in her heart of hearts, but since her mistress gave no reasons she was disturbed.

  The news that Anna had an admirer did not remain a secret: the whole house got to hear about it and there were two clear opinions on the matter. Mr Báthory had taken care to secure some advocates in his absence in order to sway public opinion. First and foremost he depended on the servants. Mrs Ficsor, to whom he had promised a present if Anna could be brought round, was undoubtedly on his side. She in her turn converted Stefi to the cause and Stefi encouraged Anna to get smart and not to be so choosy or she would end up like her, unmarried and still a servant at thirty-two. The Moviszters’ maid, Etel, was not absolutely convinced. She admitted that a wedding would probably be nice but laughed and asked why a servant should get married; one is much happier as a single girl. The Durmas were firmly against a marriage. Mrs Moviszter retained a benevolent disinterest and waited to see how things would turn out.

  Everyone was full of advice. One urged Anna to hurry, another warned her against a hasty and fraught decision since she had plenty of time. Anna’s ears rang; she was almost deafened by advice, and when she tried to gauge her own feelings she found that more than anything she wanted to be left in peace. Let them decide between then. She loathed the whole affair. She always agreed with whoever spoke to her last.

  It’s impossible to say which was the telling blow, who had spoken to her most recently, who had not, or which of all the conflicting pieces of advice she finally listened to; one day, however, it happened.

  Anna was peeling potatoes when quite calmly and simply she told her mistress that she should look for another girl, since she was going to get married as soon as possible, as soon as a new maid could take over, preferably by the fifteenth of the month, or if that were not possible, by the first of the next. The notice was formal but not unfriendly.

  Mrs Vizy said nothing to dissuade her yet, but acknowledged the notice as formally as it was given. She gave Anna a long hard stare, as if she were a stranger, then proudly marched out of the kitchen.

  The blow was not unexpected, since it had been in the air for weeks, but perhaps it was all the more terrible for that.

  Anna had been with her al
most six months, longer than any previous maid. She had grown so used to her she couldn’t begin to imagine anyone else in her place, either better, or worse. She didn’t even look for anybody. After the first excitement she surrendered to a fatalistic impotence, some groundless hope which was only strengthened by her visits to the spiritualist. At a seance she asked her guardian spirit, in a rather indirect manner, what she should do; the answer came that what she feared would ‘under no circumstances come to pass’ and that in the meantime she should ‘act in a stern manner’. This reassured her.

  Shortly after this she fell ill. Her husband found her one day at noon, lying in the darkened bedroom with a cold compress on her head. A beetroot smell emanated from an open medicine bottle. Her illness, which recurred at longer or shorter intervals, always took the form of an attack. Suddenly, without warning, she was seized by a weeping fit, her head began to throb and could not be soothed for hours at a time, not until her upset stomach forced her to vomit. This then relieved the condition and the headache slowly passed away. The doctors called this ‘hysteria’ but could do nothing about it.

  Vizy didn’t even greet her. He threw a disapproving glance in her direction then turned his back on her. His wife’s illness tended to anger rather than frighten him. He took it as a personal insult that she dared to be ill.

  In the afternoon the patient’s condition grew worse; she was moaning and wailing, and clapping her hands together, then, after a very long time, she began to be sick. Anna kept bringing her the bowl.

  The doctor could only come once surgery was finished. He glumly hung up his coat and went into the bedroom, first adopting his more benign social expression. When he lit the small electric lamp on the beside table the patient complained that she couldn’t bear the light and took one of the many handkerchiefs which lay about her to cover her eyes up tightly.

  The first thing Moviszter did was to suggest that they should open the window, since the room was very stuffy. Vizy stood at the head of the bed ready for action. He addressed his wife as ‘angel’, the name she was given as a girl and the one he always used when there were strangers present. He solicitously asked after her health. The doctor chided his patient. He took her hands in his and held them for some time without saying anything. Having taken her pulse he also measured her temperature. He nodded: there was no fever, everything was all right.

  Then, so it should look as if he were doing something, he gave her the usual examination. He uncovered her body and looked it over. He knew it well enough; as a piano tuner knows a frequently tuned piano, every key and hammer was familiar to him; but he also knew that the mechanism wasn’t everything, that in order for the keys and hammers to function it needed the agency of music or life or some other force, since this tangible self-contained object was only part of a bigger scheme of things, from which it could not be isolated as easily as it might appear, since it was not a fully independent or foreign body but one whose fate was tied to everything else that lived on earth or in heaven. He sceptically went through the ritual as he had done so many times before. He pressed her stomach, poked at her liver and kidneys, asked her to sit up and breathe deeply; he listened to her lungs, tapped at her heart and politely thanked her for each effort.

  Her husband practically held his breath throughout the examination in order to facilitate the doctor’s task. Vizy belonged to that rank of educated twentieth-century men whose blind trust in medicine – which was taught at university and diplomas in which were usually awarded by the same scientific body as awarded his own – equalled that of any religious zealot. He regarded doctors as superior beings who knew more than he did about himself, so he tended to perceive them in a peculiarly mystical light. He watched Moviszter’s movements with due reverence. When the doctor shook the thermometer and the button on his cuff rattled, he thought it was the official medical rattle of the thermometer. The rubber tube of the stethoscope and the bell of the listening device awoke a similar awe in him. He waited in anticipation of the moment when the doctor who was bent over his wife would suddenly cry out that, there and then, he had finally arrived at the root of the problem.

  On the contrary.

  ‘I can’t see anything wrong,’ said Moviszter.

  ‘It’s not her stomach?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘Her lungs.’

  ‘Functioning perfectly.’

  ‘What about her heart?’

  ‘Her heart is in excellent shape.’

  ‘What should she eat?’

  ‘Whatever she fancies.’

  ‘What about a light soup?’ Vizy suggested helpfully.

  ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘Is there no prescription?’

  ‘I could write you one,’ Moviszter said in an abstracted tone. He did write one. Vizy continued solicitously, ‘I’ll send down for it straight away.’

  ‘It’s not so urgent.’ Moviszter gave the prescription to the patient. ‘If you would be so good as to take ten drops of this with a cube of sugar. You can take up to fifteen if you’re unhappy, but only then. You should rest and enjoy yourself. Is your head still aching? See – it has stopped. I told you there was nothing wrong.’

  He put out his hand to say goodbye.

  ‘Her problem is that . . .’ and Vizy glanced at his wife, ‘Angel, would you mind if I revealed your secret? Her problem is that she is highly strung. Her maid has given notice and is getting married . . .’

  ‘I see,’ said Moviszter.

  ‘This had been preying on her nerves for a week now. She can’t sleep.’

  ‘Do you seriously mean that?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘It’s certainly not very nice,’ croaked Mrs Vizy. ‘I trained her up and now she is going.’

  ‘It’s often the case.’

  ‘It’s because they are ungrateful and have no conscience. I laboured six months with her, wasted all that time. Was it worth it?’

  ‘Look here, madam. I have a patient who is seventy-six years old and who has just started to learn English. By the time she has learned it she will probably be dying. But let us suppose she doesn’t die just yet, that she survives until she is a hundred – she will die having learned English. Will that have been worth it? Is it worth it for us to start on anything even at the age of twenty? Of course it is: one has to fill in the time somehow.’

  ‘Of course she was a very good servant. But she has gone mad,’ Mrs Vizy whispered, ‘quite mad, doctor.’

  ‘Of course she hasn’t gone mad. She is going to get married, that’s all. Let her get on with it. You’ll find someone else.’

  ‘One like her? Never.’

  ‘All right, not like her. Let’s assume you find one not quite as good.’

  ‘She’ll steal from me.’

  ‘So she steals from you. Believe me it is not good for a servant to be too good. Let her be like the rest, both good and bad.’

  ‘Like your Etel? Forgive me doctor but I would not tolerate someone like her in my home. I always wonder how you . . .’

  ‘I am not exactly in love with her either. She is sometimes rude, even to my patients. Last week she told one off for not wiping his feet. But what can I do? They all have some fault. It’s natural. One just has to accept it. They’re not in an enviable position. They go to great trouble and wear themselves out and the nature of their work is such that they cannot even enjoy the fruits of their labour, since as soon as it is done it disappears: others eat it, or we ruin it and make it dirty, and it is we, we who do that. Then let it be a consolation to them that they can be just a little remiss. We should try to understand.’

  ‘But I do understand,’ Mrs Vizy nodded, the tears that had gathered at her lashes just beginning to brighten. ‘There’s just one thing I can’t understand. Tell me, dear doctor, why are they such utter pigs?’

  The doctor saw that he was talking into a vacuum so he didn’t even bother to answer but grumbled, ‘Of course, of course. As I was saying, ten to fifteen drops . . .’
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  Mrs Vizy cast him a furious glance as he was leaving. She decided never again to call down that old ass.

  But her husband, who had escorted Moviszter out, said on his return, ‘The doctor is right, quite right. There is nothing wrong with you. Why are you holding your hand to your head?’

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  ‘Very much. I spend the whole day in the office worrying about one thing or another and when I came home you treat me to this. It’s sheer pettiness. You’ll find another servant and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘But can’t you get it into your head that it is her and only her I need?’

  ‘You exaggerate. You’re always exaggerating. She’s a sound girl, I admit that, but you can’t ultimately force anyone to do anything. You must let her go.’

  ‘Under no circumstances will I let that girl go!’

  ‘What do you think you can do? You can stand on your head if you like, you won’t stop her. Must you do this to me now, just when I am most busy? I have had it up to here with this servant business for once and for all, the devil take them. Let her go to hell.’

  ‘Don’t scream at me!’

  ‘You stop screaming then. It’s ridiculous. Do you really think that nobody else is capable of doing what she does?’

  ‘No!’ screamed the woman on her knees in her nightgown and waving her arms. ‘No! No one can do what she does.’

  ‘You are abnormal,’ retorted Vizy, staring at his wife who, having frightened herself, lay down again. ‘You are quite abnormal.’

  ‘And you are as rude, as coarse, as a horse-blanket, that’s how coarse and nasty you are. You’ve been like that to me your whole life, so coarse . . . so nasty . . .’