by Peter Nadas
Regularly scheduled trains depart from the outer tracks, outside the departure hall. Departure hall. Parents and relatives, relatives of children participating in the vacation operation, operation, are requested to leave the departure hall, departure hall, as soon as the children have reported in with the officials, officials. Cials. Your attention, please. Please. Ease. From tracks 3, 5, and 7, special trains are departing, trains are departing. Regularly scheduled trains depart from the outer tracks. Outer tracks. Racks. Acks.
I was racking my brain, where could I have known this boy from and from where could he have gotten a yellow suitcase just like mine. But I did not remember where I knew him from. Nothing came to mind. My suitcase might have been used more; its yellow cowhide had darkened more than his had. More precisely, even my suitcase wasn’t mine, or anyway I had nothing of my own. I had nothing and nobody, and that is why I didn’t feel I had something from which I could be torn away.
If they take me away, well, they’ll take me away.
I told Ágost he could leave me there, he could go, no point in waiting longer. He should go and change the water in his car radiator. I’d manage by myself. I meant this as some kind of bold, manly gesture but, in fact, the boy I knew from somewhere made me do it. Because of the earsplitting noise Ágost did not understand what I had said, and he answered something I didn’t understand. I was impatient, eager to take off after the boy.
Ágost was shouting that as a going-away present he wanted to give me his pen.
This stopped my breath. His offer strengthened my suspicion that I was facing a final farewell. The pen was an expensive one; he was searching for it in the inner pocket of his light summer jacket.
He wore incredibly fine things, the kind of clothes that in those years perhaps nobody else did.
But nobody had ever received anything from him.
Or he had always manipulated things so that whatever he might have bought for someone else or given as a gift would eventually always return to him or at least bring him some benefit. Ágost was not wicked but, rather, weak, insatiably greedy, and cruelly selfish. I felt ashamed, even to myself, of my contempt for his weaknesses. Perhaps my grandmother was the one who had instilled in me that bit of life’s wisdom according to which nothing is worth making a gift of except things we cling to with all our hearts. Ágost was rather far from such wisdom, yet now he was ready to make just such a gift. He was rummaging so energetically for the expensive pen that I had a feeling he wouldn’t have the strength to carry out his generous intention.
Not that he couldn’t find the pen; he was enacting for himself an entire scene created by himself about having to look for it.
Although he possessed exceptional mental abilities, Ágost was not taken quite seriously in the family. Probably Szilvia and Viola were the ones who began calling him Gézuka—Gay-zhoo-ka, they would say—which he vehemently protested. He was a very good-looking young man who with his sheer presence made the two girls very excited and threw them into no small confusion. He was also a highly skilled diplomat residing in some mysterious place abroad. But it was impossible to exchange three sentences with him without the infantile traits of his character rising to the surface. Because they were attracted to him, the two cheeky girls quickly took appropriate revenge. Renaming him, picking a particularly soft-sounding name and ending it with the diminutive given to a child, helped them to maintain a distance from him and consider him below their rank. They pumped him with questions, set traps for him, spied on him, ferreted out his weaknesses so that they could pick on him; they made fun of him and imitated him; and no sooner did he turn away from them than they’d mimic and ridicule him.
He had made his decision, but I could see that every moment that he could still possess the cherished object, every moment the expensive pen was still in his pocket, was precious to him.
Or he had gone mad.
I did not understand, I stammered and giggled like the girls that no, please, really. I wouldn’t dare dream of owning such a valuable thing; please, don’t embarrass me with it.
But he, mellowed by his own generosity, insisted, though he went on not being able to find it.
I’d look upon it as something borrowed, I said; he would merely deposit it with me for safekeeping.
I was given new clothes only if and when my aunt Irén tired of the family’s miserliness.
We’d go from store to store. Sometimes her anger was so great that she would dress me from head to toe and I was the one who’d have to insist on some balance, since in her fury she could pile all sorts of superfluous nonsense on me. Aunt Irén was an exceedingly careless woman, things dribbled through her fingers, she loved to spend extravagantly; sometimes she was simply gripped by an urge to splurge; but buying clothes for me also meant a chance to compete with Erna, which she obviously enjoyed doing. Erna hated unnecessary expenses and very strictly determined what was necessary and what was superfluous. In a mildly reproving voice, she would claim that Irén was weirdly similar to my mother in all her traits; I heard this with great alarm. And that the relationship between my mother and Irén had been exactly as intimate as that between my two cousins Viola and Szilvia, who were inseparable. I watched the girls as one who looks not only into his corporeal past but also into his possible future. With these insidious assertions, Nínó cautioned me that I would grow up in the world as irresponsibly as this nice set of females had, both of whom were probably lesbians. If I wasn’t on guard, if I didn’t resist the temptation of squandering and extravagance, inherited through the maternal branch of the family, I would wind up a big good-for-nothing.
However, she justified her son’s expensive tastes by saying that Ágost was a diplomat and having an elegant, smart wardrobe was part of his profession.
But Gézuka had no profession.
Ever since he’d been recalled from his position abroad, he had been working as an interpreter in an ordinary government office, and in his free time he translated stupid, boring political speeches and all kinds of strictly confidential diplomatic papers into foreign languages. I myself had no interest in this man or in his doings. I don’t know why, but my impression was that, compared with his father, he was an inferior mutation, and I found the old Hungarian Nazi more interesting. Irén called the lecherous old man, straight to his face, an old fascist or evil Arrow Cross man. She liked him, and he often slapped her behind; she drank much red wine with him; and because of Erna’s pettiness, she had only contempt for her. Her view was that, Jewish or not Jewish, what she looked for in a person was character. My husband is a Jew, so I can afford to hate the flaws in their character.
Believe me, I know everything about them, inside and out.
Still, I felt that everything was the other way around.
Because of her ruined marriage, Irén took her revenge on unknown people. In Nínó’s character flaws, she was looking for acceptable explanations for her own unbridled emotions. When we walked around the city, I had a chance to observe her close up, yet I failed to develop any liking for this strange trait of hers that was so intimately familiar to me, even though I sensed that my mother must have had the same trait if, as Nínó claimed, Irén and Mother had lived in a symbiosis like the one between Irén’s daughters.
Perhaps she abandoned me so heartlessly because I’m half-Jewish on account of Father’s side of the family. But then, why did both she and Irén choose to marry Jews.
The sight of our excitement and enthusiasm when we returned from one of our shopping sprees, flushed and talking loudly, throwing the packages down in the spacious hallway of the apartment on the boulevard, must have seemed to Nínó as a frontal attack on her personal convictions.
Her carefully, lovingly maintained apartment was flooded by a wave of confusing irresponsibility.
She’d say she couldn’t for the world understand why all this was necessary.
Shamming surprise, Irén responded, come, come, Erna, forgive me, but I couldn’t bear watching our favorite neph
ew walking around in outgrown rags any longer.
She was the only one who did not address Erna as Nínó.
Nínó was indignant, turned red, pardon me, what rags are you talking about.
His wrists are hanging out of his jacket sleeves and his ankles do the same from his pants. Maybe Erna hasn’t noticed how the boy has grown, and wasn’t she glad that suddenly he has turned into such a handsome lad.
I had been given Ágost’s best clothes, and my wrists and ankles could not have been showing or hanging out of the jackets and pants, for he was taller than I by at least by six centimeters. Unless I had suddenly grown since the previous Saturday morning.
Irén had a tendency to grow pale; she would never raise her voice, not for the world.
She said she had no intention of arguing but, sticking to the facts, she had noticed that my socks were wet. She had been noticing it for two weeks by then.
I slept in their house on Saturdays.
Which means you’ve let him walk around with holes in his shoes for two whole weeks. This wouldn’t be a problem in itself, no one would see the holes, but it’s autumn and it’s wet. On Sunday we couldn’t even go to City Park because of those shoes. And I don’t think there’s any point in hoping for a completely dry winter, either.
Then I have a suggestion.
Go ahead. I’m eager to hear it.
I see that you are dissatisfied with me.
I won’t deny it, sweet Erna.
I am ready to entrust the child’s care to you without further ado. If you take him to yourself, I’ll have no objection.
I assume you are willing to give me, along with him, the appropriate portion of the inheritance.
Frankly, I don’t know what you’re referring to with this sly insinuation. I am a sick woman, I’ve lived though a lot, and I don’t suffer baseless reproaches easily. Take it back. Please take back your last sentence.
I won’t take it back, but if you wish, we can discuss it in more detail.
Absolutely, but it would probably be better to pick another time for that.
The child has a right to know what we think and why, about what belongs to him.
Within a certain framework, absolutely.
Why can’t we talk about what your poor mother wanted to have happen.
Your aunt Irén is a very charming woman, Kristóf, but please, don’t be fooled. What is the meaning of this open accusation, she shouted. You slander me in front of the child, she shouted. I cannot imagine where this misleading information might be coming from, but if you insist on going on with it, I know what I must do.
Irén must have felt that she had gone too far.
I don’t insist on anything. I’m simply telling you.
Nínó, however, did not want to be told.
She must have feared that I was the source of the information, and that scared me too.
I’m not interested, she shouted. And if you have any doubt about my honesty, I’m sure the guardianship authority will be glad to be at your service. Nothing and no one will stop you if you wish to file a complaint, I can assure you. In a court of law, I’d be happy to account for everything down to the last penny, but not here in the hallway. And quite apart from any future decision of the courts, I’m ready to turn over to you the right to guardianship this minute.
Sometimes they carried on over the telephone, and that made me even more nervous because I could only guess what was being said at the other end of the line.
Irén saw she was losing, and she looked at me for help.
I’m afraid my principles of child raising and education would not be to your liking.
It was strange to hear these arguments taking place over my head. It was like a dream in which I could not see every detail and did not exist at all. Sometimes, in my excitement and nervousness, I’d get an erection, as a stray dog would when with different kinds of people among whom it hopes to find a master.
I did not help Irén; rather, I betrayed her. I kept standing there in my new clothes, saying nothing. I realized they were both lying while pretending to be telling the truth; if that was telling the truth, then that was what I was doing too.
We can find our way in the labyrinth of one another’s lies, and that’s what makes us one big family.
But we’re not talking about your principles of education, my dear Irén, you have accused me in front of the child that I made his inheritance disappear. In any case I want you to know that I have no child-raising or educational principles.
Well, dear Erna, that’s the difference between the two of us.
I beg you, Irén, let’s leave it at that.
As if they had said that nobody wanted me. And a few minutes later, as if nothing had happened, they were quietly having their tea, gingerly munching on Irén’s inimitable cream puffs.
They were talking of the rare cameos that during the past week Nínó had finally managed to acquire at a low price from someone’s estate and add to her large collection.
In fact, they were talking not about me but about themselves.
I was a burden to everybody.
I didn’t have to be a genius to realize that I wouldn’t have it any better with Aunt Irén. Word had it in the family that in addition to her husband she had plenty of passionate affairs, and what I saw was that except for discussing their clothes and dressing preferences, her attachment to her daughters was not very strong. She silently loathed her hairy, cross-eyed husband, who, to all appearances, idolized her. Irén not only accepted and enjoyed this but also knew that none of it was true. This short, bald, and very strong man who so enjoyed cutting up leather and fur with his big scissors that he had to stick out his tongue while doing it, and who had once told me I could not move in with them because with me there he’d be afraid for his daughters, was also playing a role, like Gézuka. He was certainly colder and more calculating than my aunt Erna, who was always flitting between emotional extremes but whom, when all was said and done, I loved more than anyone in the family. In the company of Irén’s husband, I froze. He believed the girls and I would have a mutually very bad influence. He gave me long penetrating looks as if he were seeing and silently enumerating all my secret sins. As if he knew what sort of person I would turn out to be.
You’ll never be a real man like me, he said, fixing me with his piercing cross-eyed look.
He glared at me as if expecting a full, penitent confession.
You will not spoil my two sweet little girls. I will keep you from that.
Which made me realize that my status would be even lower than that of the Jews, unless I restrained and disciplined myself.
Even they would have reason to scorn me.
As opposed to her husband and the others, however, my aunt Irén had an irrepressible curiosity, a kind of esthetic exultation, and because of that I could not deny her my affection. More precisely, my enchantment with her referred back to my mother’s icy silence. I sensed what might be blazing behind it. When Aunt Irén dressed me, she enjoyed finding connections between a person’s physical attributes and latent possibilities with which she might open up the essence. She enjoyed making somebody out of me whom I didn’t know. She told me it was always women, she had always dressed women, her little girls or her women friends and their little girls, yet the world, after all, was made not only of women, and this was now very different for her—a boy, she had now managed to get her hands on one, this was a novelty, a pleasurable break. The older I get, the greater the pleasure will be. Of course, with a boy she should be more levelheaded.
She was flattering me with her openness. I was attached to her.
Irén was beautiful, and I abhorred beautiful people. Her personality was considered colorful, and she never ran out of ideas, even if these ideas were very wicked.
As if her beauty were shackles from which she hoped to free herself and therefore every morning she hurled herself into the boring, gray multitude of ordinary people. This must have been the very opposite of how
Ágost felt about people; he could derive no pleasure from observing that such-and-such a person was boring this way, another boring that way. As if people’s mere commonness and insignificance offended his good taste; or as if he were jealous of everyone and of everything anyone had; as if he would even have been glad to possess the ugliness of other people.
Perhaps this attitude too was the result of their obsession with frugality. It was hard for me to understand why these two people felt this way, while I felt nothing at all.
The two of them walked about in the world with an expression that suggested someone had just insulted them in some way but they were too genteel to acknowledge it. There’s no denying that their noses were pretty high in the air, always showing the world that they would not show what they felt. And if in accordance with their upper-class will and taste they picked something out of Ágost’s hand-me-downs and, having no choice in the matter, I wore it, Nínó was very happy, not because the clothes found a new wearer or because the clothes looked good on me, but because it pleased her that once again she could save some of the money she received as my orphan’s allowance. I was given favorable treatment because of my father’s disappearance; since his comrades could not account for his body, the sum, officially called a civil servant’s pension, which the government regularly transferred to my guardian for my support, was quite substantial. But the price of success was high; something had to be given in exchange, and Nínó considered this another offense she had to suffer in the world. The shadow of loss darkened the joy of the gain. At least Erna made herself believe that the gain was greater. But Ágost could not even give a farewell look to his used clothes. I saw that he had to control himself so as not to take them back right away.
He suffered a terrible loss; gift giving pained him.
No one but his mother understood the terrible pain he had about objects he might lose. And to reduce the pain, he treated the items given to me as gifts, as if they were still his.