The Door

by Magda Szabo

  I changed the bedding in my mother’s room and lit the fire. Journalists kept popping in, to be mildly surprised by the first great clean-up, that afternoon, of a room that hadn’t been heated all winter, while Viola barked non-stop. I now realise why it never occurred to me that things might go wrong. For the first time in my life I was in the limelight, caught and held in its blaze. Everything else barely sank in. To be fair, no sensible person would have doubted the feasibility of my plan. Everyone knew that Emerence was fond of us, that we didn’t use my mother’s room, that it would make Viola happy, and that even in her moments of darkest suspicion the old woman felt sure that if I had promised I wouldn’t allow anyone into her locked apartment, and had accepted responsibility for the creatures living with her, I would keep my word. In fact there was only one detail that worried me — the moment when she realised that it was not just me standing there, the one person on earth to whom she might open her door, but also someone else, her archenemy, the doctor. Though I suffer so badly from stage fright that I break into a cold sweat at the very thought of being before a camera, I was more afraid of that moment than of my planned television appearance.

  We had arranged to meet the doctor on Emerence’s porch. At home, I even managed to serve lunch. Viola was not at all his usual self that day. At first he barked continuously, then later he fell silent. When I took him downstairs for his walk, he immediately insisted on going back inside. When the doorbell rang, he didn’t even lift his head. But he wasn’t asleep; he was watching. I ought to have understood this total dejection, but I wasn’t Emerence. I didn’t realise why he went berserk with rage when he saw me leaving the flat without him. I took the cat-coffin, giving the others a rather confused account of how it fitted into the plan to bring Emerence’s belongings to our flat. Józsi’s boy arrived at the same moment as the car from the studio. The driver brought the message that they were very sorry but the make-up people were already waiting, and before that we had to talk things through with the director. Unfortunately they had miscalculated when I needed to be there, and we had to leave immediately, so would I please get in?

  I told him I couldn’t come immediately. I had something to do which couldn’t be postponed — it wouldn’t take a moment, they would have to wait. The driver gave me five minutes. In theory it should have been enough — all I had to do was run over to Emerence’s, take the cat in its coffin through the opened door, and let the others pull her out and bring her home. While they were reasoning with her I’d lock her door, come back to the apartment, give her the key, reassure her that everything was in order and that no-one would be able to break in, and then — after the broadcast — I would sit with her and persuade her that we’d get along perfectly together, and I’d take good care of her menagerie for as long as she remained ill.

  Persuade Emerence! How could I have imagined that? I had obviously taken leave of my senses, believing what I wanted to believe. And in the midst of all this turmoil, I was trying to think what sort of questions I would have to answer in the studio. When the moment arrived, it was exactly a quarter to four. The driver ostentatiously pointed to the watch on his left wrist and spread out the five fingers on his right hand. Fine. I had given my word. Five minutes and no more.

  It was the very end of March, cold but fragrant with the violets that teemed in Emerence’s garden. Even the grass beneath her window was lilac. The doctor, Mr Brodarics, the handyman and the nephew were waiting in ambush. I had warned them not to make a move until I had taken the package from her. Meanwhile the whole street was aware of what we were up to. It was like a canvas by Breughel, with people gathered in brightly-coloured groups. They all knew each other, and fully approved of the solution we had finally reached. The handyman pointed out the stench around the door. It had been disturbing the day before, now it was even thicker and more oppressive. Had he not known it was impossible he would have thought there was a corpse in there. He knew that smell from the siege of Buda.

  I asked everyone to retire to one side, as I would have to be completely alone at the door, and even the onlookers in the street moved back, though they would have paid serious money to watch us rescue Emerence in the teeth of her protests. When the porch was completely deserted, I knocked on the door. Emerence asked me not to enter, but to give her the box, then stay there and wait. The man from the TV honked his horn in front of our house. I couldn’t respond, I was watching the door moving and Emerence’s hand starting to appear. I could see nothing of her face. She had either been sitting there in the dark all along, or had turned the lights off, because behind the door it was pitch black. The stench that came pouring out made me desperate to put my hand in front of my nose, but I stood there, straining like a dog at a shoot. It really was like the aftermath of the siege, with the stench of decay wafting out from the flat, mixed with that of human and animal excrement, though it was impossible to take in every detail in the heat of the moment. I handed over the box. The TV man honked a second time. Emerence closed the door, and I heard the light switch click inside. The doctor peered around the corner and I signalled him to wait. As the TV man honked yet again the door opened a crack and Emerence produced, not the box, but the corpse itself, wrapped in a shabby little coat. The box had proved too short; at full stretch the animal wouldn’t fit inside. I held it in my arms like a murdered infant.

  She would have slammed the door, but the doctor had already forced his foot into the narrow gap and Józsi’s boy was rushing forward. Whether they actually went in, or hauled her out with the help of the handyman as we had agreed, I couldn’t be certain. I ran off towards our apartment carrying the dead cat. Outside the gate, passing through the lines of Breughel figures, I was seized with nausea and threw the corpse in a rubbish bin. The horn was now unremitting, but I rushed up to the apartment, filled with the insane feeling that if I didn’t run hot water over my fingers that minute I wouldn’t be able to utter a sound, no matter what questions they asked. Why was everything happening in such a topsy-turvy way, in such confusion? Emerence would now be on her way to us, resisting all the way. They would be dragging and pushing her along. I should have been there with her, but it was impossible. I wasn’t there, and there was nothing I could do about it. “Would you do something for me?” I asked my husband — he told me later my voice was unrecognisable, as was my face. “Don’t wait for them to get here. Run over and lock the place up, before the whole street looks inside. And don’t you look in either, and when they bring her up, you must give her the key and tell her I’ll take care of everything myself. The TV man won’t take his hand off the horn, I really can’t stay to explain any of this to her myself.”

  He promised. I ran to the car, he towards Emerence’s flat. The old woman was nowhere to be seen, nor was the rescue squad. All I registered was some sort of noise, a deep rumbling. I acted as if deaf. I fell into the TV car and we raced away from the street.

  WITHOUT HER HEADSCARF

  When you do something truly unforgivable, you don’t always realise it, but there is a certain inward suspicion of what you have done. I told myself the bad feeling clamped up inside me was stage fright. But it was simple guilt. When we got there it became clear that even after all the rush, we were still running late, and I found myself in front of the camera without makeup, with my nerves in a jangle, looking a wreck. I could sense that the interviewer wanted more from me, some more original ideas, but even as I responded to his questions my mind was elsewhere, on the problem at home. We had agreed with the doctor that if her illness appeared not to be serious, and disaster not imminent, she would stay with us. If it proved more grievous, or indeed life-threatening, the ambulance would take her. But all this would have already been decided by the time I got home.

  There were a large number of people involved in the programme, and it dragged on. Even then the meeting didn’t end with the interview, because they wouldn’t let me go. I couldn’t wait to get away, and yet it was also my hour of glory. For the first time in my life I wa
s in the world of television. Had I strongly insisted, they would obviously have let me go, but this was no ordinary experience, meeting the people I watched on the screen every day. I knew I ought to rush off, but I didn’t. Finally it occurred to me to glance at my watch, and I was shocked to see the time. Then nothing was fast enough. I asked for a taxi and we raced away.

  When I stepped out of the car the day was almost over; the street was silent and strangely empty. The only noise was coming from our flat, where Viola was complaining bitterly. So, I realised, Emerence wasn’t with us. If she were, he wouldn’t be grieving. I knew, without being told, that the situation was more serious than I had imagined — something I should have understood a lot earlier, on the day Emerence suddenly gave up working for us and told us to fend for ourselves. But lately I had paid attention to nothing but myself. I got out of the taxi outside our apartment. The rubbish bin was a step away; I peered inside to see if that appalling bundle was still there, as of course it was. With a shudder I slammed the lid back down. But I didn’t go on up the stairs. Instead I set off to check that my husband had actually locked Emerence’s door.

  Standing at the window in the villa, the handyman was closing his shutters, gently, the way he treated everything. What followed was not what I expected — that he would wave to indicate that he had something to tell me, and reveal what he had witnessed while I had been mouthing platitudes at the TV studio. He pulled the blind shut, and the thick wooden slats separated his face from mine. This man does not wish to speak to me, I thought. Terrified, I started to run through the garden. I’d been in such situations before. Lit from behind, his face had worn the same expression you sometimes saw on the faces of nursing staff — you approached the patient in a hospital ward, but someone else was in their bed, and the sister calmly, with no trace of emotion in her voice, sent you off to the chief doctor who had something to say to you. Merciful God, how had things turned out so very differently from what we had planned? Surely the door hadn’t been left open? Surely her cats hadn’t scattered in every direction? That was the very first moment — there were countless more to follow — when I shuddered at the realisation that, whatever kind of award I’d received, even if I’d been not just a contributor in a group discussion but had the entire TV network for a day, with every member of the government wishing me peace and comfort while I broadcast all the humiliations I had suffered to the four corners of the world — even then I should never have left Emerence alone, to face whatever it was that had happened. My much-lauded imagination had run only so far as to reckon that that evening I would have to clean her place up and get rid of the stench, whatever its cause, so that no-one in the building would complain. But now I knew I should have been with her at the precise moment when she lost her independence, when they forced her door open, even if it was only wide enough to let a doctor in, and took her protesting from her home — that idea had never entered my head. The prize, I reflected bitterly, had already begun to work its influence. I had rushed off in a TV car towards its radiance, away from illness, old age, loneliness and incapacity.

  Once on the porch, I lost the ability to walk. I remained frozen on the spot in my smart shoes. I expected bad news, but not on the scale that now met me. No imagination could have conjured up what appeared before my eyes. Emerence’s door was neither open nor closed: she no longer had a door. It was propped up against the wooden slats of the washroom, with the lock still in place. It had been torn off its hinges. Its middle section was missing — someone had hit it with a hard object and only the top half was intact. It was of the sort you see in Flemish paintings, the door split across the middle with the upper part folded down, and a smiling woman leaning out with her elbows on the half-door, as if posing for her portrait. I imagined Emerence gazing out from under her headscarf, taking stock of the situation; that I wasn’t there; that the doctor was standing in my place, ready to grab her. The reconstruction went no further. I was so weak I had to sit on the bench and try to pull myself together. I knew I couldn’t avoid it. I would have to walk into that stench. I rested for a few minutes, then steeled myself to go. I remembered where the click of the light switch had come from, that particular night. I felt around for it and then turned the lights on. This time there were no mysterious sounds of scurrying and rustling. The silence was total. If the cats were still hiding in there, they must have flattened themselves out somewhere in their terror.

  The light, which on the previous occasion had seemed so oppressively stark, once again spared nothing. In a room that had once been as clean and sparkling as polished glass, I stood among human and animal excrement. Stinking piles of rotten food were strewn around the bare floor or on sheets of newspaper. The christening bowl had been overturned and armies of maggots swarmed around the contents. A half-rotten raw fish and a carved duck were in a similar state. The food brought by callers had been dumped on the floor, and God knows how long it had been since Emerence had washed or tidied up. Even the cockroaches were dying. The horror spread out before me was covered by a thick white powder. It was as if some obscene, verminous, medieval Death’s head had been sprinkled with fine sugar, while just below the surface, the teeth in the faceless skull maintained their sardonic grin. Emerence was nowhere to be seen, nor were the cats. None of the windows were closed — the casements and the shutters had been taken off — but the suffocating smell of disinfectant still lay heavy in the room, not the usual chlorine and air freshener, but something altogether more brutal. Quantities of this kind of powder weren’t to be found in kitchen cupboards or even in shops. It wasn’t only the doctor and the ambulance who had called. The decontamination unit had been as well.

  When I arrived home my hands were so rigid with terror and guilt I was incapable of turning the key in the lock. I had to ring. My husband opened the door. He had never scolded me for anything, and he didn’t then. He shook his head like a man who had no words for what had taken place, and went off to make tea, while Viola crawled towards me, cowering. As I sipped my drink, my teeth chattered against the cup. I asked no questions — the key to Emerence’s flat lay on the table. Nothing was said about my television appearance. My husband waited for me to force the tea down my throat, then he called a taxi and we set off, still without speaking, for the hospital. The first time we spoke to one another was when we learned that although the doctor had assigned her to a ward, where she was known about and expected, she hadn’t yet appeared. How was that possible? Hadn’t they taken her there? “They are bringing her,” the sister said, “she just hasn’t arrived. First they took her to be decontaminated. In the state she was in when they found her, it wasn’t possible to put her in a bed.”

  I didn’t at first understand what she was saying; I stared at her stupidly, and slowly sank to the ground. We were surrounded by helpful members of the nursing staff. Could they get me anything? — I was looking terrible — some medicine, or would I like a cup of coffee? I wanted nothing. We sat and waited. By that stage it had become impossible not to ask my husband for details. He told me what he had witnessed.

  By the time he reached Emerence’s flat, the doctor had managed to seize her arm. She was fighting him off but was unable to offer much resistance because, as the doctor and the ambulance man discovered, she had suffered a mild stroke. The brain haemorrhage had been largely reabsorbed, but she was barely able to use her left arm, and the left leg not at all. She must have been totally paralysed for days, but her amazing constitution had already begun to fight back. She had managed to snatch her arm free, yank the door shut and bolt it. She refused to answer any questions. By then everyone in the neighbourhood who had any time to spare was out on the porch. For a while she remained mute, ignoring their pleadings, but when the doctor threatened to call in the authorities she shouted out that if they didn’t leave her in peace she would kill the first person who touched her door. Respect for her was so great that no-one was prepared to resort to violence. A total stranger passing along the street, drawn by all the shouti
ng and discovering what was going on, did make an attempt to force the door open. But just as the lock began to move a plank was smashed open, not from the outside as might have been expected but from within, and through the gap, as in a horror film, an axe shot out and flailed about in all directions. After that, no-one dared go anywhere near the door — not least because of the stench that came billowing out.

  For about a week following the stroke she had been totally unable to walk. She had lain there, propping herself up on her elbows. Somehow she had to resolve her desperate situation without moving out of the flat, and she must have reasoned with herself that if she didn’t let anyone know how helpless she was, no-one would discover the truth, no doctor or ambulance would come, and there would be no hospital. Faced with the two horrors, she preferred the one she had previously decided on. If the cats could see to their own needs then she wouldn’t have to drag herself on all fours on to the porch, and her secret would be kept. If she recovered from the illness she would make everything right again as soon as she could move. And if she died, none of it would matter. She would no longer know about anything. She had proclaimed often enough that, among many other things, she did not believe in the afterlife. Meanwhile the animal and human excrement lay rotting. Between and around it the piles of food, raw and cooked, had also disintegrated, and were either fermenting or covered in mildew.