by Peter Nadas
She had better be careful with her.
Yet, her eyes could never have enough of the young woman’s body. She had made detailed reports of it to her best women friends.
It was her general experience that it was best to be forthright and unhesitating when talking of dangerous things. Her friends had a great laugh. What wouldn’t that Nínó make up, what fanciful new tale.
To talk openly of a mature female body was not among the conventional conversational habits at Café Gerbeaud, the Abbázia, or even the casino on Margit Island.
Ultimately: nowhere.
Although she had talked of it unreservedly, her repugnance got the better of her. What a miserable little chameleon. Her stunning figure and perfect appearance can’t be denied, even if she isn’t really beautiful. No, she isn’t. God, her low forehead right away tells you where she’s from. The less said of her mental abilities the better. And her character isn’t exactly flawless. But there was no flaw in her taste. This irritated Lady Erna, who had a broad education and a practical background in art history; she had been an appraiser for a while, and among her friends she was considered a kind of expert in aesthetic matters.
In fact, it was not the young woman’s flawless taste that fascinated her but the ascetic nature and dry austerity of this taste. She could not look at her without seeing her as a precious object she must guard and look after, precisely because she was so aware of precious works of art.
As if her surface were dry and rough, and her inside swelling with delicious juices; as if a subterranean secret vein nourished it with its fluids, a rich oasis in a windblown desert, a tiny lake hidden under drifting sand, a small secret body of water.
What first caught her attention was that the woman did not leave her things all over the apartment, as had all her hysterical, chaotic predecessors who’d stayed for a few weeks or sometimes only a few days. On the contrary, she barely leaves a trace. She eats exceptionally small amounts. She gives the impression of someone making choices from a huge wardrobe. And picks things correctly. Others, driven by greed or insecurity, keep piling up objects around them—the entire fragile, dark art trade is built on this emotional instability—but this one must be infallible when she makes her purchases. She takes the one piece that others would never choose in a lifetime. Lady Erna kept an eye on her to see whether she was a secret eater, stuffing herself at odd times and places, whether what she saw was only false asceticism or hypocrisy. It was not.
Everyone strives to be infallible. Lady Erna herself could not resist eating too much; she had a special weakness for sauces and spicy gravies, chewed every bone dry, sucked everything from chicken bones, dipped fresh bread into the fat gravy of roast meat or with a crust of bread spooned the golden cream off the top of curdled milk or the sweet icings from so many surfaces, gobbled up floating islands.
She had indulged her curiosity too. She wanted to solve the secret of this serious asceticism. She found all sorts of reasons to open the doors of the closet in which, right after moving in, Gyöngyvér had put all her little things. She told Ilona not to stop ironing; she herself would put everything back. Ilona kept silent, shrugged her shoulders and looked put out; she did not know what to make of Mrs. Lehr’s unexpected zeal. An unfamiliar scent that assailed Lady Erna from the closet bore witness to the same, almost painful parsimony that emanated from Gyöngyvér’s supple body. And because she had done this not once or twice but more or less regularly, as if to keep track of what was taking place among Gyöngyvér’s belongings, Ilona slowly began to figure out what the lady of the house was up to.
She used some inexpensive, insignificant perfume; still, Lady Erna had to admit, well, she had got it right. The scent was almost too sweet, yet overall it was rather dry and acrid; on her skin it was as if the sweetness came from summer hay and sun-dried spices. It matched her bodily endowments, as did the style with which she wore her clothes. This was her maddening quality, and this is what probably intoxicated her son.
When she opened the closet door, Lady Erna felt her heart thump in her jugular vein. This wasn’t completely unjustified, since her son kept his shirts there too. She imagined she was doing some harm to her heart with such powerful excitement and also felt that what she was doing was somewhat absurd, but she did it anyway. And if not in the clothes closet, then she rifled through Gyöngyvér’s shoes in the foyer.
Gyöngyvér’s feet, as is the case generally with dry beings, probably did not smell.
And she would tell Ilona, but more for her own benefit than anything else, that she couldn’t find this or that item.
Gyöngyvér did not wear down the heels of her shoes, either; the sight of her graceful feet filled Lady Erna with particular envy.
She removed the cambered silver lid of the ground-glass candy box in which Gyöngyvér kept her cheap costume jewelry and a few pitiful real pieces. She looked at the thin little trinkets, which Gyöngyvér must have received from previous admirers. She glanced at the sloughed-off skins of cast-off lives. The pretty candy box was among the objects Lady Erna had managed to save from her grandfather’s manor house in Jászhanta the night before the inventory was taken for the public auction. She reached in only with her fingers, to expose everything to her eyes, and chuckled, a little ashamed to think that her son, cheap and stingy as he was, would probably add nothing to this poor collection. But she did not take out a single piece, seeing none she cared to examine.
In the depth of her soul, she would have liked to have a daughter-in-law, even one like Gyöngyvér. But not one with such an empty head. Yet even resisting the idea filled her with a certain pleasure.
A kind of physical sensation, as if experiencing her son’s secret joy, or at least understanding it.
See how cleverly she covers her ugly forehead with that pretty little round hat.
Gyöngyvér’s forehead was indeed not attractive. Convex and decently proportioned, but her hair grew in close at the edges, and there wasn’t anything she could do about that; it was not the kind of forehead that could carry off bangs. Of course Lady Erna did not fail to notice that once or twice Gyöngyvér had had her hair styled with bangs cut square above the eyes. Her thick dark hair lent her appearance a kind of wildness, and, probably because she couldn’t abide this, she resorted to removing superfluous hair with the aid of resin wax; but the tiny bloody craters caused by the violence had barely healed when fresh bristles would crop out in their place.
Dark shadow on her forehead.
She longed for tenderness, sensitivity, and refinement; she simpered and grew touchy, and what the little goose could not obtain except perhaps accidentally she was trying to get to with outward show. Of course her pug nose told the world what a low mark the little waif earned in intelligence. And that filled Lady Erna with contentment, if for no other reason than that her persistent physical attraction to the young woman sometimes so confused her that she behaved more brusquely, meanly, or maliciously than she could afford even by her own standards.
All of this, however, had a less common, more delicate aspect, a more intimate map. She was still a little girl when she discovered this map; it was already drawn up.
The buggy was taking her somewhere from the house in Jászhanta, perhaps to the train station, when they turned onto a long plum-tree-lined allée. The trees had been planted when the handsome manor house was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since then they had grown enormous, some had lost branches, so there were gaps in their rich foliage, and she could see clear summer sky through parts of the towering crowns.
She put her gloved hand on Gyöngyvér’s gloved hand for a long moment, lightly. But as soon as they made contact, the light touch gained weight, as if the other hand had been waiting for hers. She felt as if they might lock.
Gyöngyvér, my little girl, she wanted to say. If she’d said it out loud, and the very thought of it made her choke, not only would it sound false, but it could be misunderstood in any number of ways, and then she would
only act out a newer, more absurd scene from one of the usual dramas. But that was what she was thinking at that moment. Her awareness was permeated with a sense of her absent daughter, along with the guilt she felt about her. She had been a big girl when they carried her off; she was in her first year at the university when they took away my little girl, though she still wore her hair in thick braids. For two weeks they left no stone unturned trying to get her back from the Gestapo on Melinda Road. Maybe not every stone. The daughter’s appearance now clung to Gyöngyvér’s mature exterior, because the daughter had never become a woman.
She never experienced the things this silly woman enjoys so freely with Lady Erna’s son. Perhaps it’s for the best.
Still, she could not forgive herself, or anyone else.
Most of all she could not forgive the dying man. She had been his daughter in every sense of the word, yet he failed to save her.
Whatever flowed from body to body through their gloved hands could not necessarily be identified as maternal love. If only one could shut off the disrupted current so easily, she thought suddenly. Still, there was something maternal here; after all, this woman belonged to her son, and she, being his mother, had to feel something of what her son found attractive in her. Or rather, it did not resemble the sensation she had not felt for quite some time at the sight of men.
In time, her desires somewhat shifted in proportion. She would dishonor the memory of her little girl if she called this strange woman her child.
Perhaps what she had to forego had already been marked on that map which, as a little girl, she’d seen in the sky framed by the treetops.
Still, even now, and forever, she must be restrained, self-possessed; no use asking why she couldn’t lose her mind, spin out of control just one more time.
Lady Erna’s other hand, perturbed by this welter of emotions, stirred a little, of course, and her small lips edged with wrinkles trembled. Helplessly and hungrily, seeking and avoiding the other’s gaze, they looked at each other while the car sped along the boulevard with the noise of rain lashing at the windows.
I don’t know what this afternoon will bring, she said, keeping her voice low if only because of the cabbie, as she grasped the young woman’s gloved hand. The cabbie, with his unusual face yet goodly mien, whom she could not place, was obviously observing them. I don’t really know how, she continued, her voice trailing off awkwardly, but I must come up with something. And in her effort not to alarm Gyöngyvér with a sudden gush of emotion, and not to lay herself open either, she sighed and, with her upper lip retracted like an animal snarling in pain or joy, burst out laughing.
Sigh and laughter followed each other.
You may not believe it, Gyöngyvér, but I’ve no mourning clothes.
And when she said this, she felt strong enough to break the flow between the two of them. As if asking for indulgence, signaling that the other person should not give the fleeting moment too much weight.
There is one big role left she would not mind playing.
Some other time.
She must now continue in a reasonable tone.
I must get downtown to the shops, if only for a short time. I’d be grateful if you’d come along, Gyöngyvér. I’ve got shoes, I’ve got handbags and coats, actually I’ve got everything, but black stockings, for example, I don’t have at all. Actually black is not my color. Well, I’m lying. If the moths haven’t eaten them, I must still have a black velvet cocktail dress and a black taffeta suit. But those aren’t exactly right for now, they won’t do at all. You can appreciate that in the circumstances I can’t deal with things like this by myself.
But I would trust your judgment entirely.
Gyöngyvér was not quick to answer, she remained silent, or she did not grasp the meaning of the unfolding scene; but she did not alter her pained smile. After so much mute and treacherous humiliation, this unexpected trust was like an even more treacherous attack; it paralyzed her. It deeply shocked her that a person could speak like this about her own husband’s impending death, so openly, so shamelessly and brutally. She could not consciously gauge all the places Lady Erna knew and had been to, how many things she had had her hands in; even what she experienced unconsciously of Lady Erna’s deeds and existence was too much for her—the familiar strong attraction and familiar proximity, which she could not avoid. Besides, she had a problem concentrating on more than one thing at a time.
When Ágost or other men before him called her at the kindergarten when she happened to be playing with the children or singing to them, when someone came in to tell her she was wanted on the telephone, she had to pay very close attention to understand the person at the other end of the line. When she left the house in the morning she became distant from him; it was as if she did not have another life besides the kindergarten.
And the same was true the other way around.
If they went out in the evening, to the Fészek Club or anywhere else, and people she did not know asked her what she did, she would say, I’m a kindergarten teacher, but then suddenly she’d be unable to explain what that meant. Hours would go by and still she could not recall what she did there. In a matter of seconds the divider in her soul would rise between things, and it was wider than the Great Wall of China. Because if something had not happened, then something entirely different must have, and the former was no longer visible. She was in constant fear of not understanding what had happened or was happening in a given moment. She got the idea that others could not grasp her incomprehension. She kept it a secret how difficult it was for her to get into the present from her various pasts. She did not comprehend how others could connect different things and times in themselves. This is why she did not feel at home except among children. She would stand by the telephone, listening to the familiar voice to which no face or expression belonged, only a possible name and a pure sensation.
Although they had been living under the same roof for half a year, she had not been this close, even in the simple, physical sense, to Ágost’s mother. Their shoulders touched, their thighs a little too, and neither of them found it necessary to move away. Sometimes Gyöngyvér keenly perceived how different mother and son were in many areas; at other times she was surprised, it nearly overwhelmed her, by how alike they were in other ways. Now, from the moment they walked out of the apartment, she had sensed nothing but their similarity. Neither physical nor mental difference existed any longer between aging woman and young son. Her entire attention was taken up with the sensation that she was in the presence not of that barrier thicker than the Great Wall of China but of a familiar attraction, an intimacy she could not avoid yet could not make her own.
This led to an insane thought—perhaps she should reach Ágost through the person of this elderly woman.
During the past weeks Ágost had quietly, politely, and brutally rejected her and not only in his sleep and not by chance. The night before, the struggle had turned brutal; it wasn’t, Gyöngyvér felt, the usual transition between two bitter fights and reconciliation, which sometimes she provoked for its gratifying excitement. Now, with the older woman suddenly opening up, Gyöngyvér felt that these two mature humans were made of much the same stuff. If only she could cross over into Erna, she might be saved. In the meantime, her splitting headache was getting worse. The realization struck her like lightning: if she could manage this, she would truly be saved. It was no longer about mother and son having identical tones of voice, skin color, deep and close-set eyes, piercing and constantly inquiring looks, of being almost perfect reflections of each other. No. Which would explain everything.
Gyöngyvér, contrary to all appearances, was not stupid. True, what she could formulate for herself, based on the reports of her senses, was usually flatter, more banal, more boring, and much simpler, almost primitive, because so much less than what she had sensed. Now, for example, she kept telling herself that if she succeeded in winning over the mother, she would not have to move out of the apartment. Which she dreaded.
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Like a child, she was euphoric that Lady Erna would save her.
The survival instinct compels no less greed from her than it did from other people. Still, she often became entangled in situations in which she appeared to have committed some unforgivable impropriety or done something immoral.
As was happening now, when Lady Erna failed to see why Gyöngyvér responded to her overture with silence. She could have gone on looking at the younger woman’s pained little smile, but she was increasingly impatient. She preferred to turn away and look, through the rainwater dripping down the taxi window, at the buildings on the boulevard rushing by. A good thing she did, because the pain and the dissembling made Gyöngyvér’s lips tremble violently. Pain assailed her in merciless waves. She nearly fainted. It was clear to her that she was not going to lose the man, but this was sheer self-deception, because she had already lost him. She sought an explanation for this loss, but there was none, and she should have accepted it like that, as something that made no sense.
They had to stop at the intersection with Podmaniczky Street; the windshield wipers creaked and clattered. Lady Erna grumbled to herself, I have only myself to blame. I had to bring her along. If I only knew why I’m so stupid, even in my old age, why am I going out of my way for this silly goose. How can I be so stupid. And how could this little foundling understand how insanely generous I have been.
Gyöngyvér sensed the rebuke, but from afar, for now she was preoccupied with what might be the great discovery of her life. Not only was the dread gone, but it was replaced by the kind of happiness that until now only this one man had given her. As if a footpath across one person’s body led to the soul of another. As if in proximity to Lady Erna, she knew Ágost’s body better. Not only did she think these general thoughts, but she saw the path before her or, more correctly, the circuitous but ineluctable paths that lead from one person to another. She must choose one, must set foot on one of them. In the exhortation lurked an unpleasant urging or reproach. But I am already on the path. As if she were failing in some way.