The Door

by Magda Szabo

  “So, have you become so much of a slave you’re too scared to do anything for yourself? Just because the master doesn’t like animals, you can’t even have statues of them, they’re banned? Do you think this horrible shell is any prettier? But you keep it on your desk and you’re not ashamed to store your invitations and calling cards in it. Dogs no, shells yes? Get it out of my sight, or one of these days I’ll smash it to pieces. I loathe the touch of it.”

  She snatched up the shell. It was a nautilus, on a base of coral. It once sat on Maria Rickl’s console, and was left to my mother when the Kismester apartment was divided up. Emanating disgust, Emerence carried it off to the kitchen, with all the invitations and calling cards, parked it between the semolina and the icing sugar, and in its place set down the dog with the tattered ear. This was going too far. I had accepted Emerence’s presence both in the places and the events of my life, but she wasn’t going to take over the way I arranged my surroundings.

  “Emerence,” I said, with more than usual seriousness, “kindly take the little statue back to the street where you found it, or, if you don’t want to throw it away, put it where I had it, out of sight. It’s a piece of commercial junk. It’s damaged; it’s in appalling taste, and it cannot remain here. It’s not only the master who can’t stand it. I can’t either. It’s not a work of art. It’s kitsch.”

  Her blue eyes blazed at me. For the first time I saw in them, not interest, affection or concern, but undisguised contempt.

  “What is this kitsch?” she asked. “What does it mean? Explain it to me.”

  I wracked my brain for a way to explain to her the vices of the innocent, ill-proportioned, cheaply-made little dog.

  “Kitsch is when a thing is in some way false, created to provide trivial, superficial pleasure. Kitsch is something imitative, fake, a substitute for the real thing.”

  “This dog is fake?” she asked, with rising indignation. “A fraud? Well, hasn’t it got everything — ears, paws, a tail? But it’s all right for you to keep a brass lion’s head on your desk. You think it’s wonderful, and your visitors gush over it, and make knocking noises with it, like idiots, though it doesn’t even have a neck — nothing — just a head, but they go bang bang with it on the stationery cupboard. So the lion, which doesn’t even have a body, is not a fake, but the dog, that’s got everything a dog has, is? Why are you telling me such lies? Just tell me straight that you don’t want any presents from me, and that’s that. So what if the top of the ear is chipped? You’ll take a bit of pottery your friend from Athens dug up on some island and stick it behind glass. Do you have the nerve to tell me that filthy black thing is complete? At least, don’t lie to yourself. Admit it. You’re scared of the master. I can understand that. But don’t try to hide your cowardice by calling things kitsch.”

  The shocking thing was, she had hit on something that was in a way true. I did find the statue repulsive, but that wasn’t the real reason I had stuck it behind the mortar. It was as she said. I was afraid of, or rather for, my husband. The entire contents of the Heraklion museum wouldn’t have been worth causing him a return of his bad times — so I had gabbled away like a left-wing art critic. Emerence maintained a sarcastic silence. Then she buried the dog deep in the bag she always carried, and set off. On her way out through the hall she noticed the boot, standing in shadow against the wall. She seized it, and scattered the umbrellas at my feet. She was so angry she turned scarlet, and shouted at me:

  “Are you out of your mind? Do you think sane people keep umbrellas in a boot? Do you think I brought it here to be used as a box? That I’m so stupid I don’t know what’s right and proper?”

  She yanked open the hall cupboard, took a screwdriver from the toolbox and set to work on the boot. She stood with her back to me, facing the light, cursing me without pause. It was an unusual experience for me. I was never scolded as a child. My parents’ method of punishment was more refined. They hurt me with silence, not words. It upset me more if I was made to feel I didn’t deserve to be spoken to, asked questions or given explanations. Emerence tucked the boot under her arm, as if she were intending to take it home with her, and flung the spur she had removed down on the table top.

  “Because you’re blind and stupid and a coward,” she continued. “God knows what I love about you, but whatever it is, you don’t deserve it. Maybe, as you get older, you’ll acquire a bit of taste. And a bit of courage.”

  And out she went, leaving the spur on the table. I picked it up. My husband might appear at any moment, and I didn’t want any further upset. The large centrepiece glinted blood-red. I stood, dumbstruck, holding a tiny piece of pure craftsmanship, blackened as it was with age, in which someone had set a garnet. Emerence, having thoroughly cleaned everything before bringing it to the flat, must have noticed what was on it. It was the reason she had given it to us — obviously not only a single boot, but a precious stone she’d found in the centre of the silver spur. A goldsmith might make it into a piece of jewellery. The stone was flawless, wonderful.

  Once again, as I gazed at the winking, blood-red garnet, all I felt was deep shame. I was about to run after the old woman, but then the thought returned: I had to break her habit of demonstrating her attachment to me by these undisciplined, insane means. I know now, what I didn’t then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways; and that one cannot prescribe the form it should take for anyone else.

  My husband returned, bearing a large pile of newspapers. He had walked his anger off, and come back to a peaceful apartment. He searched each room to see if the offensive items had been removed. The kitchen was a surprise, but by then he had pretty much calmed down, and he realised that that area was beyond help or hurt. Ever since we’d moved in, my playful nature had been collecting the most impossible objects — it would have made no difference if we’d suspended a stuffed whale from the ceiling, like something in my great-grandparents’ vast emporium. The madly staring woman and the ducal water heater merely added to the general air of an occupational therapy museum made to look like a kitchen-diner. Luckily he failed to spot the gnome lurking in the shadow of the U-bend. At last order was restored. And once again I had misread the calm before the storm. I was enjoying it, even though Viola’s head was drooping miserably. His listless demeanour should have warned me that something was brewing.

  By midday it was clear that I would have to walk the dog. Emerence obviously intended to punish me. Fine. I would take him myself. Viola’s behaviour was demonic; he almost wrenched my wrist from its socket. For some reason a police convoy was moving down the avenue, so we couldn’t go on the grass, and the pavements still bore the remains of the junk clearance. Viola wanted to sniff everything and honour it with his calling card. At one point I caught sight of Emerence in the far distance. She was bending over to pick up a brightly painted box. I turned my back on her and dragged the furious Viola home.

  That evening it wasn’t Emerence who came but her brother’s boy, the one who visited her regularly if not often, and his beautician wife with the tiny hands. We had known them some time, as Emerence had brought them over to be introduced. “My little brother Józsi’s boy” was a kindly, good-hearted man, amused and not offended by his exclusion from Emerence’s domain. The old woman was very fond of these young people, though she was forever demanding to know why they didn’t have more children. They were saving up for a house, and for long package holidays abroad, and there was no place for a new baby in their lives. Emerence showed her disapproval, but was always giving them sums of money, both large and small, for their travels, or to replace their car. She had a lot of money, and someone sent her a monthly remittance of some kind from abroad. I once asked her who this person was. She replied it was none of my business. And of course it wasn’t.

  But that evening there was a seriousness beneath the nephew’s laughing manner. His aunt had asked him to tell us we should look for help elsewhere. She was leaving us. She would work out the rem
aining ten days to the first of the month to give us time to find a replacement.

  My husband shrugged. The morning’s surprises hadn’t exactly deepened their friendship. But I found it inconceivable that the message could be serious, that never again would I see her in our home, coming and going at all hours of the day. She’ll be back, I told myself. She’s sulking because she didn’t like my lecture on kitsch. She’ll come again, surely, if not for my sake then for Viola’s. But the nephew wasn’t hopeful.

  “Please don’t take what she says lightly,” he went on. “She never jokes. If she makes an announcement she doesn’t go back on it. Now that she’s decided, she’ll never come to your home again. She didn’t tell me what had upset her, but I long ago gave up trying to fathom her, or influence her. It’s impossible. She understands nothing of the modern world, and she takes almost everything the wrong way. When I wanted to explain the importance of land reform to her, she slapped me and screamed that she wasn’t interested in what happened in ’45; it was nothing to do with her; she’d got nothing out of the changes. So, please, never attempt to persuade her of anything. She nearly drove the propaganda people mad, she was the only one who wouldn’t pledge a penny to the Loan for Peace. It pains me to think what scenes the Lieutenant Colonel saved her from at the time. By the way, she also kicked me out today. She sent me over with orders to get lost as soon as I had delivered the message — she didn’t want to see me again for a good long while.”

  “We’re not going to plead with her,” said my husband. “She’s a free citizen. In any case, I’m the one who offended her, by not letting her turn my home into a flea market with her tasteless rubbish.”

  The nephew thought for a while before he spoke.

  “Her taste is impeccable, doctor.” He gazed steadily at my husband. “I thought you would have noticed that. It’s just that when she goes looking for presents for the two of you she doesn’t buy for grown-ups. She chooses for two young children.”

  My mind went back to when she had last set the table, both the food itself and the way she presented it on the plates. It was true her taste was impeccable. And perhaps it was also true that when it came to me and my husband, she chose for a child. Maybe it hadn’t been the gemstone in the spur that had caught her eye, she might have thought a handsome boot was just the thing for a little boy of two. And, as I’d brought Viola home, I’d be thrilled by a plaster dog.

  The nephew went on to talk about his aunt’s intention to make a will. This task was now in the hands of the Lieutenant Colonel. After what had happened that morning she wasn’t likely to be asking us for help, and he couldn’t contribute because he was an interested party — she had told him she was leaving him her money. The amount she’d set aside should be quite large. After all, she lived rent-free; somebody, he didn’t know when, had provided her with enough clothing, bedlinen and even furniture for a lifetime. The only money she spent was on food. She even gathered her own fuel from the row of trees at the edge of the wood. The furniture had probably been damaged by her cat, but they already had some nice things, so they weren’t relying on it. The money they did need, for the house they wanted to build. But they hoped the old lady would live another thousand years, there were so few good, honest people like her in the world, though — as his present visit to us showed — she was unpredictable and hot-tempered as well.

  He took his leave, and asked us, despite what had happened, to give him a call if ever we noticed that she needed help, or if she fell ill, though that had never happened in his lifetime. The old lady had never been sick, even though she did more work than five younger people put together. Whatever had happened, we weren’t to hold it against her. She was a good woman.

  It wasn’t a question of holding anything against her. My husband, though he didn’t boast about it, felt a sort of grim satisfaction; but I was plunged into gloom. We’d grown used to the absolute order prevailing in our home. Both of us, though me chiefly, had been able to take on more work because it had become ingrained in us that there was always someone there to straighten us out. My first concern wasn’t that the pattern of our lives would collapse, that for weeks I’d be unable to settle down to write, or that I’d never manage the housework. It was rather that I knew Emerence was genuinely fond of us — even, with reservations, of my husband — so how could we have given such offence, and against which of her private and rigid codes of conduct? Clearly she wouldn’t be punishing us to this extent for rejecting the little dog with the chipped ear.

  As for Viola, it was as if he’d gone insane. He soon realised that there was nothing to be done, he would have to be satisfied with us, and from then on he sprawled about as if he’d been poisoned. How he understood the significance of “Józsi’s boy’s” few words was yet another of his secrets. My husband began to analyse the situation. When all was said and done, what had taken place was unacceptable. Emerence couldn’t object to our desire to surround ourselves with things chosen according to our own taste. If she continued to make an issue of it, we’d have to get along without her. I felt tired, so tired it no longer felt real; though I had no right or reason to feel so utterly weary. Nothing had occurred that should have caused such exhaustion. I found lunch waiting in the fridge, just as before. I hadn’t been able to write a single line, but then the ebb and flow of writing involves, even on good days, being in a state of grace. The situation had drained my energy. Cheerfulness keeps you fresh, its opposite exhausts. Now I was miserable, but not because I had to look for another help. The problem was simpler. I had finally accepted that it wasn’t just Emerence who was attached to me, with the sort of feelings normally reserved for family, but that I, too, loved her.

  Anyone with a good eye would have seen that my unfailing, unvarying sociability was a cover for the appalling fact that I am capable of nothing more than friendship, and truly attached only to the number of people I might count on one hand. Since my mother’s death, Emerence had been the one living soul I had allowed to get close to me, and I was discovering this now, when I had lost her over a plaster dog with a chipped ear.

  It was a difficult evening, though my husband did his best to make things easier. He took Viola out, which I knew would be pure torture for him. Viola hauled him about and refused to obey; he always misbehaved when he had to go out with him. My husband even sat with me and watched TV, though he only liked listening to the radio. He tried all he could to be of help. Neither of us mentioned Emerence; we were each deep in our own silence about her. My husband needed to feel he had somehow won — it rejuvenated him, gave him new strength; it even improved his health. The day Emerence declared war was for him a day of victory. As he sat there, I could almost see the triumphal garland on his head. Viola went off to lie down, ignoring all our overtures; his drooping tail indicated sorrow — real sorrow. We went out to sit on the terrace, and he padded off to my mother’s room where he collapsed theatrically, as if he had been wounded.

  It was now the second evening of the junk clearance. At such times there was always a lot of coming and going after dark, and from our balcony we used to watch the people collecting. Something was clearly up with Emerence, because the brigade of workers normally under her command were busily stooping and bending away without her. The old woman had a loyal band of visitors, admirers and protégées, but among them were a select few who enjoyed special favours. These were Sutu, whose corner stand supplied the street with fruit and vegetables, Adélka, the laboratory technician’s widow, and Polett, an elderly spinster with a slight hunchback who took in ironing. According to Emerence, Polett had at one time been in service as a governess, had later taught languages, and had generally seen better days before falling on hard times. Apparently the soldiers had robbed her of everything, and after the war there was no call for either governesses or language teachers. The family she had worked for had fled to the West, abandoning her without so much as her last month’s pay. The poor old girl must have had a troubled destiny. She almost always looked hungry,
even though the neighbours were forever asking her to take in their ironing, so she wasn’t entirely without income. And she really could speak French. Her regular visits for coffee were reflected in Emerence’s ever-widening vocabulary. Among the old woman’s many and varied talents was that she never forgot what she had once heard, and she would use foreign expressions with great accuracy.

  But on that evening only Sutu, Adélka and Polett, each with her own huge bag, were out there bending and lifting in the gathering dark. So far as Emerence was concerned this was prime hunting time, but she was nowhere to be seen. I could always identify her, in even the deepest shadow, by her movements — she bobbed up and down between the discarded items like a modern-day Dorothy Kanizai scouring the battlefields of defeat for signs of life among the wounded.

  This time, it wasn’t Viola who resolved the crisis, with his primitive but effective resources. Now, probably for the first time, I felt the full force of Emerence’s power. The old woman made not the slightest move in our direction, but by some form of radar she reduced the animal to paralysis. Willpower can be projected in a great many ways, but this was the most indirect. Emerence adored Viola, and she set out to get him back by banishing him. Life continued to trundle along. I rushed around looking for help. A totally unsuitable person called Annie appeared from nowhere, and lasted a few days. Her main activity during that time was to throw herself into the bathtub after half an hour’s work, juggle with the soap while shrieking at the water, then stroll around the flat as naked as the day she was born, under the pretext of cooling off. Annie’s visitation can only have been brought upon us by Emerence’s dark powers, because someone had known I was here on my own. I had taken care not to mention it to anyone in the street or immediate neighbourhood, and yet Annie had appeared out of the blue, with impressive references, at a time when I was up to my neck in unfinished business. I took her on trial, but her guest appearance lasted no more than a week, not because of the bathroom scenes but because of Viola. He growled whenever he saw her, as he did at anyone who went near the vacuum cleaner or duster.