by Magda Szabo
She had a pure, impressive, soprano voice. She must have been in the capital a long while — had I not at one point studied linguistics I would never have known from her accent that she came from our part of the country. Thinking the question would please her, I asked if she was from the Hajdú area; she just nodded, and agreed that she came from Nádori, or, to be more exact, from its sister village, Csabadul. Then she immediately changed the subject, in a way that made clear she had no wish to discuss the matter, she was in no mood to reminisce. It took me years to realise — as with so many other things — that she found my question pushy and prying.
Emerence had never studied Heraclitus, but she knew more about these things than I did. Whenever I could, I would rush back to my old village to seek out what had gone, what could never be brought back, the shadows that the family house had once cast on my face, my long-lost former home. And I found nothing, for where has the river wandered whose waters carried away the shards of my early life? Emerence knew better than to attempt the impossible. She was saving her strength for the time when she might actually do something about the past, though I would not understand what this meant until much later.
What I did gather that day, when she first pronounced those two names, Nádori and Csabadul, was that they were never to be mentioned, that they were for some reason taboo. Right, I thought, let’s discuss the business in hand. Perhaps we could agree her hourly wage; that should mean something to her. But no, she didn’t want to rush her decision. She would decide what we were to pay her when she had some idea of just how slovenly and disorderly we were, and how much work we’d be. She would set about getting references — not from the old schoolmate, who would be prejudiced — and when she had, would give us her answer, even if it was no. I stared after her as she calmly strolled away, and there was a moment when I dallied with the thought that the old woman was so odd it might be better for all concerned if she turned us down. It wasn’t too late — I could call out after her that the offer no longer stood. But I didn’t.
A mere week later, Emerence reappeared. We had in the meantime bumped into her more than once in the street; but she had greeted us and passed on, as if she wanted neither to hurry the decision, nor slam a door shut before it had even opened. When she did at last call round, I noticed at once that she was dressed in all her finery. I instantly understood this language of clothes, and shifted about awkwardly in my scanty little sun-frock. She wore black — a finely-woven long-sleeved dress and gleaming patent-leather shoes. As if our previous discussion had never been interrupted, she announced that she would start the next day, and would be in a position later in the month to say what her wage was to be. As she spoke she stared stiffly at my naked shoulders. I took comfort in knowing that my husband would escape censure, sitting there, in thirty-degree heat, in his jacket and tie. Even in a heatwave he never wavered from the habits he had acquired in England before the war. The two of them beside me, thus attired, must have looked like a demonstration of dress code created for a primitive tribe, to which I belonged, inculcating the respect for external appearances considered appropriate to human dignity. If a single being in this world ever approached Emerence in his attitudes and values, that person was my husband. Naturally, for that reason, it was many years before they truly took to one other.
The old woman held out her hand to each of us in turn. Thereafter, she never touched me if she could avoid it. If I offered my hand, she would brush my fingers aside as if waving away a fly. She didn’t enter our service that evening — that would have been unworthy, improper: she enlisted in it. As she was leaving, she said to my husband: “I wish the master good night.” He stared after her. There was no man on the planet to whom this magnificent word might less apply. But that was how she addressed him until her dying day. It took a while for him to get used to his new title, and answer to it.
* * *
No formal agreement dictated the number of hours Emerence spent in our house, or the precise times of her arrival. We might conceivably see nothing of her all day. Then, at eleven at night, she would appear, not in the inner rooms, but in the kitchen or the pantry, which she would scrub until dawn. It might happen that for a day and a half we would be unable to use the bathroom because she had rugs soaking in the tub. Her capricious working hours were combined with awe-inspiring accomplishments. The old woman worked like a robot. She lifted unliftable furniture without the slightest regard for herself. There was something superhuman, almost alarming, in her physical strength and her capacity for work, all the more so because in fact she had no need to take so much on. Emerence obviously revelled in her work. She loved it. When she found herself with free time, she had no idea where to begin. Whatever she took on, she did to perfection, moving around the apartment in almost total silence — not because she was over-familiar or snooping; she simply avoided unnecessary conversation. She made demands, more than I had expected, but she also gave a lot. If I said we were having guests, or visitors turned up unannounced, she would ask if I needed help. Usually, I declined. I didn’t want it known among my circle of friends that in my own home I was a person without a name. It was only for my husband that Emerence had found a title. I was neither “the lady writer” nor “madam”. She didn’t address me directly until she was able to place me in her scheme of things, until she had a clear sense of who I was and what title was appropriate for me. And in this too she was right. Until your attitude to a person is clear, any such defining term will be inaccurate.
Emerence, alas, was perfect in every respect; at times oppressively so. Her response to my timid words of gratitude was to make it clear that she didn’t want constant approval. There was no need for praise; she was fully aware of what she had accomplished. She always wore grey, reserving black for holidays and special occasions. An apron, changed daily, protected her dress. Paper tissues she held in contempt, preferring snow-white linen handkerchiefs that crackled with starch. It came as a pleasant relief to discover that she did have some weaknesses after all. For example, she might stay silent half the day, for no apparent reason, no matter what I asked her. And I couldn’t fail to notice that she was terrified of storms. The moment thunder and lightning approached she would drop whatever she was holding and, without a word of warning or explanation, rush back home to hide. “She’s an old woman,” I told my husband. “They don’t come without manias.” He shook his head. “This phobia of hers is both more and less than a mania,” he said. “Clearly there is a reason for it, but it’s not something she considers our business. When did she ever tell us anything significant about herself?” As I recall, she never had. Emerence wasn’t much of a talker.
* * *
She’d been working for us for over a year when one day I had to ask her to take in a parcel for me, which was supposed to arrive that afternoon. My husband would be out examining and it was the only day on which the dentist could see me. I tacked a note on the door, telling the messenger who to seek out in our absence, and where. Then I ran over to her little flat. I had forgotten to mention it while she was tidying up. She’d just finished at our place and could only have been home a few minutes. There was no response to my knocking, but I could hear someone rummaging around inside, and the fact that the handle did not budge was hardly surprising. No-one had ever seen Emerence’s door standing open. Even when she could (with great difficulty) be entreated to come out, the moment she was back inside she bolted everything up again. The whole neighbourhood was used to it.
I called for her to be quick. I was in a hurry and there was something I wanted her to do. At first my words were met with the same steady silence, but when I rattled the handle she shot out so fast I thought she was going to hit me. She came out, slamming the door behind her, and screamed at me not to pester her outside working hours. She wasn’t paid for it. I stood there, scarlet down to my neck with humiliation. It was an extraordinary outburst, totally uncalled-for. Even if she did, for some strange reason, feel demeaned by my summoning her out of her
private domain, she could have said so a little more quietly. I mumbled what I had come to ask her. She made no reply, but stood there glaring at me, as if I’d plunged a knife in her arm. Right. I bade her a polite farewell, went back home, phoned the dentist and cancelled the appointment. My husband had already left; I was the only one free to stay and wait for the parcel. I wasn’t in the mood to read, I just dawdled around the flat. I kept wondering what I had done to deserve such a deliberately insulting and hurtful rejection. Besides, it was so untypical of the old woman. Her behaviour was usually so formal as to be almost embarrassing.
I was a long time on my own. To complete the ruin of my day, the package didn’t arrive. I had waited in vain. My husband didn’t return at his usual hour either, but stayed on with his students after the exam finished. I was leafing through a book of reproductions when I heard the key turn in the front door. It wasn’t followed by the usual words of greeting, so I knew it wasn’t my husband. It was Emerence, the very last face I wanted to see on this evening of torment. By now, I thought, she will have calmed down, she’s come to apologise. But she didn’t even glance in. Not a word was said. I could hear her busy with something in the kitchen. Shortly afterwards, the door slammed and she’d gone.
When my husband arrived I darted out to fetch our usual supper of two glasses of yoghurt. In the fridge I found a cold platter of rose-pink chicken breasts that had been cut into slices and then reassembled with the skill of a surgeon. The next day I thanked Emerence for her conciliatory treat, and held out the newly washed plate. There was no “My pleasure, and good health to you.” She denied all knowledge of the chicken and refused to take the plate back. I still have it today. Much later, when I telephoned to chase up the undelivered parcel, I discovered that I’d hung around the whole afternoon for nothing. The package was in the pantry, under the bottom shelf: she had brought it in with the chicken. She’d stood there waiting at our front door, given my message word for word to the courier, brought it in without telling me, and disappeared off home.
It was a major event in our lives. For a long time afterwards I thought her slightly insane and felt that we would have to make allowances for the idiosyncratic ways in which her mind functioned.
Many things served to strengthen this belief, not least the details provided by the local handyman who lived in the same villa as Emerence and was widely respected. He filled his spare time by doing odd jobs and collecting payments. I gathered that since he’d lived there — about a thousand years — not one of the residents had got beyond the porch that fronted Emerence’s home. Guests, he said, were never invited in, and she took it very badly if anyone unexpectedly called to her to come out. She kept her cat inside, and never let him out. You could sometimes hear the animal mewing, but you couldn’t see what was in there. Every window was boarded over with shutters that were never opened. What else might she be hoarding in there, beside the cat? Even if she did have expensive things, locking them away like that was a very bad idea. Anyone might think she was hiding something of real value. It could lead to her being attacked. She never went out of the immediate neighbourhood, except perhaps for the funeral of someone she knew. She’d walk with them down that last road, but always scurry off home, as if in constant fear of danger. So there was no need to take offence if you weren’t allowed in: her brother Józsi’s son and the Lieutenant Colonel were also entertained on the porch, summer and winter alike. They had long accepted that entry was forbidden even to them. They laughed it off. They were used to it.
Hearing all this produced a rather alarming picture in my mind, and I became even more troubled. How could anyone live in such a shut-off way? And why wouldn’t she let the animal out, if she had one? The villa had its own little patch of garden, with a fence around it. I thought, in truth, she must have been a little gone in the head. That idea lasted until one of her longstanding admirers, the laboratory technician’s widow by the name of Adélka, revealed, in an epic narrative, that Emerence’s first cat, a great hunter, had decimated the stock of a pigeon breeder, a tenant who had moved in during the war. The man found a radical solution. When Emerence explained that the cat was not a university professor amenable to reason, and that it was, unfortunately, in his nature to enjoy killing even when well-fed, the pigeon breeder wasted no breath suggesting she keep the beast under lock and key. He tracked the noble hunter down, grabbed hold of him and strung him up from the handle of Emerence’s front door. Returning home, the old woman had to stand there, under her own porch roof, while he gave her a formal lecture: he had been forced, regrettably, to defend his family’s only guaranteed livelihood, with the instruments of his choice.
Emerence said not a word. She released the cat from the wire, the ‘instrument’ the executioner had chosen over ordinary rope. The corpse was a shocking sight, its throat gaping wide. She buried it in the garden, where she had buried Mr Szloka, and that led to the man being later exhumed, which brought more slander on her name, because the cat-hangman called in the police. Fortunately the matter was smoothed over.
But none of this brought much joy to the pigeon-breeder. He could never get her involved in an argument; she looked straight through him; and on official matters she communicated through an intermediary, the handyman. However, the animals remained linked in some sort of dark bond. One after another the pigeons fell over, dead. So the police returned. The Lieutenant Colonel was then only a Second Lieutenant. The pigeon-breeder accused Emerence of poisoning the birds, but the autopsy found nothing in their stomachs. The local vet decided that they had died from an unknown bird virus. Other people had lost pigeons too, so there was nothing to be gained from pestering his neighbour and the police about it.
At this point the whole house ganged up against the cat-murderer. Mr and Mrs Brodarics, the most highly respected couple in the building, made a submission to the local council that the ceaseless coo-cooing at dawn was disturbing their sleep. The handyman declared that his balcony was constantly covered in droppings. The lady engineer complained that the birds triggered her allergies. The council didn’t order the pigeon-breeder to destroy his stock, but they made it clear to him that people were disappointed, and wanted retribution, a proper punishment for the hanged cat.
Punishment duly arrived. The cat-murderer suffered a fresh disaster. His new consignment of birds perished as mysteriously as the old ones. Once again he tried to lay charges, only this time the Second Lieutenant didn’t bother with an autopsy, he tore a strip off him for wasting police time. The hangman finally got the message. He hurled abuse at Emerence on her porch and, as his final act, despite a complete lack of incriminating evidence, did away with her new cat, before moving away to one of the leafier suburbs.
Even after his move, he continued to irritate the authorities with a stream of fresh charges against the caretaker. Emerence bore this persecution with such gentle serenity, and so much good humour, that both the council and the police came to like her very much. Not one of the allegations was taken seriously. They had come to realise that the old woman’s character would always provoke anonymous accusations, the way magnetic mountains attract lightning. The police opened a special dossier on Emerence. In it they filed away the many and varied depositions, dismissing them with a wave of the hand. Each time a letter arrived, even the newest man on the job could recognise the pigeon-breeder’s private lexicon, his rambling, baroque turn of phrase. Policemen regularly dropped in on her for a cup of coffee and a chat. As he rose steadily through the ranks, the future Lieutenant Colonel took each new recruit aside at the first opportunity and introduced him to her. Emerence prepared sausages, savoury scones, pancakes, whatever took his fancy. She reminded young men from the country of their old village, their own grandmothers, their distant families. They in turn never troubled her with the fact that the charges against her included murdering and robbing Jews during the war, spying for America, transmitting secret messages, regularly receiving stolen goods in her home and hoarding vast wealth.
Adélka’s revelations eased my concern, especially after I had to call in at the police station about a lost certificate of identity. While I stood dictating my particulars the Lieutenant Colonel passed through the hall. Hearing my name, he had me sit with him while the new document was being made out. I thought the reason for his interest must be that he knew my work, but it turned out I was wrong. All he wanted to hear about was how Emerence was and what she was doing. He’d heard that she was still working for us, and was anxious to know whether her nephew’s little girl was back home from hospital. I hadn’t even known the child existed.
I think at the beginning I must have been rather afraid of Emerence. Although she looked after us for over twenty years, during the first five of them it would have taken precision instruments to measure the degree to which she permitted real communication between us. I make friends easily and chat away to complete strangers; Emerence imparted only what was essential. She finished her jobs quickly and carefully, always aware that she had countless other things to do and other calls to make. The twenty-four hours of her day were crammed full. And yet, even though she allowed no-one within her four walls, news raced to her door. The front porch of her flat was like a telex centre. Everything about everyone was reported there — death, scandal, glad tidings, catastrophe.
She delighted in providing for the sick. Almost every day I would meet her in the street, carrying a covered dish on a tray. I could always tell from its shape what she was holding. It was a large christening bowl. From it she served up food to anyone the local grapevine pronounced in need of a good meal. Emerence always knew exactly where she was needed. She inspired trust because people knew they could open their hearts to her without expecting her own confidences in return; they would get only commonplace remarks and well-known facts. Politics didn’t interest her, the arts even less. She knew nothing about sport. She was aware of her neighbours’ marital problems, but she never passed judgement. What she most enjoyed was studying the weather, since her visits to the cemetery depended entirely on her fears of a possible storm. She was terrified of them, as I have already said. The weather dictated not only what qualified as her social activities but, in autumn and winter, her every waking hour. Once the bitter cold arrived, everything was dominated by what fell from the sky. Her jobs included clearing the snow from almost all the larger houses around. She never had a moment to listen to the radio, except late at night or in the early hours, but she could tell what the next day would bring by walking down the street and looking at the stars to observe the brightness or fading of their fires, as her distant ancestors had done long before weather forecasts existed. She even used the names given them by her forefathers.