by Magda Szabo
“One evening, after I’d put the twins to bed and the house was at last quiet — Józsi was no longer at home but with my grandfather — Mother told him not to keep speaking of his fears because it would make them come true. In his terror he gabbled away: he feared the worst because he’d dreamed that if he was called up he would never see us again. And he didn’t. He was the first conscript from Nádori to be killed.
“Mother had no idea where to begin with the workshop. There was a ban on the sale of wood, so there was no building going on and the men had disappeared. But in the early days she thought we’d be able to get by without a man — she was a farmer’s daughter, she understood the land, somehow she would manage on her own. You should have seen how she struggled. I did all I possibly could to help — I wasn’t a stupid child — but we were going nowhere. At nine years old I cooked for everyone and looked after the twins. When the news came of my stepfather’s death I realised she truly had loved him. Now she was in mourning for two men, my father and my stepfather, though my stepfather didn’t even have a grave. She started to find life unbearable. Don’t think it’s only your sort who have feelings.
“She was weak, helpless, and very young. One day, when the little ones were being particularly difficult, something got into me too. I mean, I was still a child myself. She had hit me because I had spent my time playing instead of doing the chores she had given me, and I thought, ‘I’ll run away. I’ll go and be with Józsi in Csabadul. Grandfather always looks after him so well. Even if he does give him things to do, it’s not very much.’ And I would take the twins with me. Mother could do what she liked, but we were clearing off. I could get there on foot, I thought. I knew which way it was; it was only the next village, after all.
“So off we went, early one fine morning, all three of us, me with a blond child on either hand. But we’d got only as far as the threshing yard when the twins wanted to sit down and eat, and then they demanded water. So I ran to the farmyard well with the tin mug I always wore on a string round my neck. I had found that small children are always wanting to drink, and I never went out without the mug, and certainly not if it was any distance. The well was close by, but not that close: what does a child know about near and far? Just as I got there a storm began. I’d never seen one break so quickly; we’d never had such thunder, or such a hurricane, in our part of the country. In seconds the sky was transformed. It wasn’t black, as I’d seen it before, it was violet, and ablaze from end to end, as if fires had been lit between the clouds. Thunder rolled across, the noise almost burst my eardrums, but I filled the mug and ran back to where they had been, looking for those little blond heads, because when I’d looked back I hadn’t seen them, only the lightning as it struck the tree beside them.
“By the time I had staggered over to where they were, smoke was pouring out everywhere. By then they were both dead, but I didn’t realise it, because they looked like nothing you would consider human. Then the storm broke. The downpour clung to me like sweat. I stood there beside my little brother and sister, staring at the two black stumps. If they looked like anything at all it was charred logs of firewood, only smaller and more gnarled. I stood there stupidly, turning my face this way and that. Where were the little blond heads? Those strange things in front of me couldn’t possibly be my siblings.
“So, are you surprised that my mother threw herself down the well? It was all she needed, a sight like this, and my hysterical screaming. I was screaming so loud that when the storm stopped I could be heard as far away as the main road, and of course the house. Mother ran out, barefoot and still in her nightgown. She hurled herself at me, and beat me. She had no idea I’d been running away from her tears and bad temper, her endless worrying and complaining. She didn’t know what she was doing. In her despair, she wanted to hit out and destroy, to strike the nearest living thing as a way of striking at life itself. Then she saw the twins and realised why I had called her. For a second her face blazed, then she flashed past me and sped away in the rain, her wild hair trailing along the ground behind her, screeching like a bird.
“I saw what she was going to do, but I couldn’t move. I stood there, next to the tree and the corpses. The thunder and lightning had stopped. If I’d run for help at that moment they might have saved her. Our house was right by the main road — the threshing yard was just beyond the garden — but I stood there as if bewitched, my mind blank. My brow was dripping wet, but my brain had gone numb. No-one could love the way I loved those two little ones. I stared at the stumps. I still couldn’t make myself believe I had anything to do with them. I didn’t cry for help. I stood there gaping, and then began to wonder vaguely what my mother was doing all that time at the bottom of the well. What was she up to? What could she possibly be doing? The poor woman had fled from me, from the terrible sight, from her fate. She’d had enough of everything. It’s like that, sometimes. Suddenly you want to end it all.
“I gazed around for a short while, looking at this and that, then walked away at a calm, leisurely pace. There was no-one in the house, so no point in going there. I stood beside the main road and called out to the first person who passed by, to come and speak to my mother, because she’d gone into the well, and my brother and sister — the ones with the yellow hair — had disappeared from under the tree, and there was something black there instead. The neighbour had been strolling by, and now he ran to her, and in the end he sorted everything out. They left me with the headmaster while someone went for my grandfather. Grandfather took me away, but he didn’t let me stay with him, only my little brother Józsi; and when the gentlemen came from Budapest looking for a maidservant, he handed me over at once. They took me away as soon as the funeral was over. I didn’t understand a thing about the funeral, though I did see my loved ones again, because both coffins were open, my mother in one and the twins in the other. The sight of my mother there was just as puzzling as that of the twins. Their golden hair seemed to have melted away — there was nothing on their heads, in fact their heads were no longer there. They were so unlike actual children I couldn’t cry or mourn for them. It was all too much. I could no longer take anything in.
“Do you know what I am saving up for? For a crypt. It’ll be as big as the whole world, and there won’t be another as beautiful anywhere. Every window will have different-coloured glass, and there’ll be shelves in it, and a coffin on every shelf — my father, my mother, the twins, me, and, if Józsi’s boy stays true to me, the other two places could be his. I started saving up for it even before the war, but then I needed the money for something else. They asked for it, for a good cause, so I gave it, it didn’t matter. I saved up again. It was stolen, but I started again. I’ve always got money coming in. A certain person sends it to me from abroad. And then I’ve never in all my life been a day without work. There’s enough now for the crypt. Every time I go to a funeral I look to see if there’s a building like the one I’m planning; but there never is. Mine will be different from all the rest. You’ll see, when the sun rises and sets, what wonderful bands of light it will throw through the coloured windows on to the coffins. My heirs will be able to build a crypt that everyone will stop and stand before. Do you believe me?”
VIOLA
It has always been important to me to lead a full emotional life: to have those who are closely connected to me show pleasure when we meet. Emerence’s perfect indifference the next morning didn’t exactly wound my pride, but was a disappointment after that surreal night, when she had stayed by my side and revealed her childhood self to me. I had slept free from care and anxiety, and by dawn I felt the world was a sane place after all. Not for a minute did I doubt that the operation would be a success, so completely had her words dissolved my fear. Before that night, her headscarf had concealed every important detail of her life; now she had become the central figure in a wild rural landscape, with the blazing sky behind her, charred corpses before her, and sheet lightning over the sweep of the farmyard well. I truly believed that at last so
mething had been resolved between us, that Emerence would no longer be a stranger but a friend: my friend.
She was nowhere to be seen, either in the apartment when I awoke, or in the street when I set off for the hospital; but there was evidence of her handiwork in the section of pavement outside the front door swept clean of snow. Obviously, I told myself in the car, she was making her rounds of the other houses. I wasn’t distressed, or heartbroken. I felt that only good news awaited me at the hospital, as indeed it did. I was out until lunchtime. Arriving home, rather hungry, I was sure she’d be sitting there in the apartment, awaiting my return. I was wrong. I was faced with the disconcerting experience of walking into my own home, bearing news of life and death, and no-one to share it with. Our Neanderthal ancestor learned to weep the first time he stood in triumph over the bison he had dragged in and found no-one to tell of his adventures, or show his spoils to, or even his wounds. The apartment stood empty. I went into one room after another, looking for her, even calling out her name. I didn’t want to believe that, on this of all days, when she didn’t even know if my patient was alive or dead, she could be somewhere else. The snow had stopped falling. There could be nothing in the street requiring her attention. And yet she was nowhere to be found.
I went into the kitchen, suddenly no longer hungry, and began to warm up my lunch. Logic told me that I had no right to what I expected from the old woman, but logic can’t screen out everything, certainly not such unexpected feelings of loss and sheer disappointment. She didn’t clean for us at all that day. I found the blanket lying rumpled on the sofa, just as it had been when I had crawled out from under it. I tidied up the apartment. I even washed the floor. Then I went off to the hospital again, to even better news.
I returned with my confidence boosted, resolved that when I saw her again I would tell her nothing of what the doctors had said. I wasn’t going to bore her with my private affairs. She obviously wasn’t interested. And how could I even be sure she’d been telling the truth, on that evening of the mulled wine? I mean, the things she said were impossible, folk ballads in prose. Why on earth was I so obsessed with Emerence? Was I insane?
She finally looked in late that evening, and announced that more snow was promised, so she might not have time to clean tomorrow either, but she’d make it up to us when she could. Oh, and the master was better now, wasn’t he? I wasn’t interested in either her announcement or her inquiry. I made a show of leafing casually through my book, and said that my husband was as well as could be expected and she should feel free to go. Whereupon she did, wishing me a good and restful night. She didn’t so much as clear up the empty yoghurt container I had forgotten to put in the rubbish bin, though she must have seen it. She didn’t even bother to make up the fire. And she didn’t come back later that night. There was no mulled wine, no fairy tale. It was two days before she appeared again. She cleaned thoroughly, and showed no further interest in the master. Obviously she knew by instinct that his condition was improving. She certainly wasn’t one for needless conversation.
After this, she spent even less time at our place. Our lives were dictated by different things, mine by the hospital, hers by the snow. I had no visitors, and spent very little time in the apartment. Finally, towards Christmas, I brought my husband home. Emerence greeted him politely and wished him a full recovery. Such was her nature, we now qualified for the convalescent’s free meal. I’d not been able to get my hands on the christening bowl when we met in the street: now was my chance to take a good look. Like the mulled wine goblet, it was a real work of art. Plumply-rounded, with two handles, it perched on its own little circular stand; the ceramic lid carried a flamboyantly executed Hungarian flag inscribed with the name and portrait of the great Kossuth. She had brought us a glistening chicken soup. She’d noticed me admiring the bowl the first time I’d seen it, she said: it was a very handy thing to have. She had been given it by one of her employers, Mrs Grossman, when the Jewish laws were in force. It wasn’t used for christenings then but for seeds, but it would be a shame to use it as a flowerpot. And she had masses of porcelain and glass. The piece she’d brought the mulled wine in was also a legacy from Mrs Grossman.
A charming legacy too, I thought with disgust. I was already irritated by her return to her earlier, formal attitude, and the one thing I didn’t need was the thought of her helping herself to the contents of someone’s shattered and abandoned home. During those years leading up to the Second World War I had moved in privileged political circles, mixing with people who were substantially better informed than my Hungarian neighbours about what was going on around us. If I do finally write the history of that part of my life, my earliest years — the years people don’t talk about very much — the subject will not be short of interest. I knew perfectly well what was inside those cattle trains, exactly who was being taken where and for what purpose. I would happily have returned the christening bowl, but couldn’t have done so without stating my reasons, and I didn’t want to upset my husband. At the time I was allowing him only carefully monitored doses of reality. The thought of being fed from some knick-knack that had belonged to a destitute stranger bound for the gas chamber would have made him leap out of bed, half-dead as he was. Emerence had obviously thought, like so many others at that time, if I don’t take it, I’m giving it to someone else. So I allowed her to spoon the soup out, to the very last drop, and took my revenge by not mentioning that this was the first time he’d eaten anything with real appetite.
Emerence pottered about in the kitchen for ages. Though she had always rejected my acknowledgement in the past, I sensed that this time she did expect something. But I didn’t even thank her. I set the empty bowl down before her and went back to the bedroom. I could feel her eyes on my back, and it pleased me that at last she was the one who couldn’t understand why I was offended. I was triumphant, aloof, rather contemptuous. I was sure I had discovered the reason no-one was allowed into her home. The handyman’s suspicions were justified. Behind that locked door there might well be objects of real value, treasures looted from those under sentence of death. It would certainly be a bad idea to show them off. What if someone were to recognise something — then she’d see where it all led, the pointlessness of all that busy looting back then. She couldn’t even sell her plunder without risk of discovery. What a picture! The poor Grossmans didn’t even have a grave and she was saving up for the Taj Mahal! And she didn’t open the door because she was keeping a cat in there! She would even keep an animal prisoner for an alibi. Not bad thinking — all that was missing from the story was any mention of the Grossman dowry.
She had more pride than I did. If she was in any way surprised, she didn’t once ask why the air around us had so suddenly cooled. As I have mentioned, my husband was rather reserved, especially with her, and even though he had never said as much, the old woman’s presence had, for years, made him visibly uncomfortable. Emerence vibrated like a new element that might be harnessed for good or bad. It was simply not possible to shut her out of our married life. But at least she no longer brought us gifts. I no longer felt, as I had before, that she was in charge. I believed I had discovered her secret. I didn’t even think she was particularly clever because, if she’d had any intelligence, and used it, after ’45 she would have been given every opportunity to educate herself. If she’d made the effort to study after the war she could have been an ambassador by now, or a government minister. But she had no use for culture. All she thought about was how much she could hoard, while doling out charity from a stolen christening bowl, and stupefy me, in the small hours of an anxious morning, with the sort of tale she must have heard from a fairground entertainer or found in a trashy novel in her grandfather’s attic. Storms and lightning, a well, all those crashing discords — it was too much. Now her political indifference and her hatred of the Church made better sense — much wiser to steer clear of all groups. Budapest was a large place: there may well have been surviving Grossman relatives; anyone might hear the
story of the permanently locked apartment, and start to think, and put two and two together, as I had. And why would such a person go to church anyway? What sort of thing would they believe in?
It was a hard winter. Emerence was inundated with work. My husband’s illness filled my every waking minute. The old woman and I seldom bumped into each other. Was it surprising that we almost never embarked on a real conversation?
Then I found a dog.
My husband was now able to go out again, and was starting to be his old self, though he still needed my constant care. It wasn’t the first time in our thirty-five years of marriage that he’d miraculously clawed his way out of the jaws of death, emerging rejuvenated and victorious — and at the very last moment. In all aspects of his life, winning was supremely important to him.
It was Christmas day, and the two of us had been to the clinic to collect a prescription, and were making our slow way home in a twilight thick with drizzle, when we noticed a puppy buried up to his neck in snow under the line of trees. It was a form of execution you saw in war films about prison camps in the Far East. The victim would be buried up to his ears, with sand covering his mouth so he could communicate only through his nose. He couldn’t cry out, so he whimpered. This dog was whimpering too. Whoever had counted on someone coming to his rescue was a clever psychologist. Who could pass by a living creature in the jaws of death, on the night of Christ’s birth? It was one of those moments against whose power my animal-hating husband was defenceless. He certainly did not want a stranger in our home, least of all a dog, which would demand not only food but also affection; and yet he helped me dig it out of the freezing snow. We had no plan to keep it; we imagined someone else would probably give it a home. The creature promised nothing but trouble. But it couldn’t stay where it was. It would be dead by the morning. It wasn’t in need so much of food as a vet.