The Door

by Magda Szabo

  They finally managed to bring her under control when the stranger squatted down at the bottom of the door and used the handyman’s axe to hit the lock so hard that it burst apart. Trying to defend herself, Emerence fell out on to the porch at their feet. The catastrophe could no longer be concealed. Even the dress she’d worn for God knows how long bore witness to what had been happening — with bits of dried filth swirling down around legs that had always known immaculately clean underwear. Mr Brodarics telephoned for an ambulance, which came immediately. By then Emerence was unconscious. She had passed out the moment she got out into the fresh air. The two doctors — the neighbour and the one from the ambulance — conferred and she was given an injection, but the ambulance did not take her away, as her condition wasn’t considered life-threatening. She would have to go to hospital, but first he would send for the decontamination squad. It wasn’t just the patient, the flat too needed immediate attention.

  The squad arrived. First they scattered some sort of powder around, then they sprayed everything with a liquid. They bundled Emerence up and took her off to the decontamination unit, saying that once they’d dealt with her she could go on to the hospital, but first they would have to clean her from top to toe or they wouldn’t be able to put her in the ambulance. As the men were spraying and spreading insecticide around the scraps of stinking food, all sorts of creatures had leapt out and fled through the door, including some huge cats. The Health Department would have to decide what to do about the flat; it couldn’t remain as it was, if only out of consideration for the other tenants. It wasn’t possible to close it up, and anyway there would be no point. No-one would break in with the rotten food stinking the place out; the door would be boarded up as soon as the team had completed their work.

  Now this was what was missing from my life, this image of the old woman lying in her own filth, surrounded by rotten meat and fermenting soup, recovering slowly from paralysis but not yet capable of walking. Józsi’s boy, sitting with us on the bench and looking anxious, aroused a very real concern in me that there might be thieves whose stomachs were quite equal to Emerence’s Empire. The passbooks had become easy pickings and would have to be recovered. I said I’d wait for Emerence up at the hospital if he’d go in and have a good look for the wretched things. In fact the young man found them immediately. The moment he began to search, there they were, both of them, pushed deep into a gap in the upholstery at the side of the filthy lovers’ seat. He’d remembered it had been his father’s usual hiding place — the gap you could feel with your fingers between the padding.

  My husband was buried in his book — he always had one with him. I sat there, massaging my fingers — it felt as if my left arm was dead. When the old woman finally arrived, we barely recognised her without her usual clothes. She remained mute, letting them do whatever they wanted to her. Her eyes were closed and the muscles around her mouth twitched spasmodically. She was barely conscious. They connected her up to a drip and covered her up. I felt so weakened by shame and grief I would gladly have got in beside her, but the doctor told us to go home. There was nothing we could do, we were only using up her air and anyway, because she was in shock, she wouldn’t recognise us. More generally, he didn’t know what reassurance he could give us at this stage. The paralysing clot was continuing to be reabsorbed, an X-ray had established that she was largely over her pneumonia, but her heart was so worn out it was impossible to say how much more it could endure, or — he hesitated a moment — how much longer she wanted it to. It was by no means clear that getting better would solve her problems, because her illness, and the circumstances in which she had been brought here, might well have humiliated her in the extreme. Medical science had performed many miracles, but in this case it would have its work cut out. He’d very rarely examined a heart that had been so desperately overworked.

  Now for the first time, the very first since we’d stepped into one another’s lives, I saw Emerence without her headscarf. In her lightly-fragranced, freshly-washed hair, aged to a snowy white, I glimpsed her mother’s glorious, radiant mane, and from the contours of her head I was able to reconstruct the perfect proportions of that other one that had crumbled away so long ago. Emerence, closer to death than to life, had without knowing it been transformed into her own mother. If at our first encounter, our very first, among the roses, when I wondered what sort of flower she might be, someone had told me she was a white camellia, a white oleander or an Easter hyacinth, I would have laughed. But now her secret was out, exposed as she lay before us, with nothing to cover her rounded, intelligent forehead, her beauty radiant even in careworn old age. The body lying in the bed wasn’t so much undressed or half-dressed, it was above and beyond every form of costume. The simple, rational garb of terminal illness had translated her into an aristocrat. A truly great lady lay there before us, pure as the stars.

  It was then that I realised what I had done in deserting her. Had I been there, I might have been able to use the new-found fame I had already misused to persuade the doctor to leave well alone and to let her stay with us, and that I would look after her — there’d be no need for decontamination, Sutu and Adélka would help, I would bathe her and get her straight. The TV could make their programmes without me. It was more important that I ward off the shame of strangers ravaging her home, whose real nature I alone had seen. When I stood there in Parliament and received my medal, everyone would think I was a success. Only I would know that I had failed at the first hurdle. Now, in the final phase at least, down the last straight, I would have to try to make things right or I would lose her for ever. I would have to work genuine magic, to rise above myself and persuade her that what had happened that afternoon was nothing more than a dream, it had all been simply a dream.

  THE CEREMONY

  I telephoned twice that night. Emerence’s condition hadn’t changed, for better or worse. Arriving home, I sliced a few mouthfuls of meat on to a plate and made my way back to the dreaded flat. The doctor had said the animals had scattered, but they might make their way back, since they knew no other home. It was now night, and all was quiet; even if they’d been scared to death, they might have returned by now. I looked behind and beneath everything, the stench almost choking me, but the flat was empty, there wasn’t the tiniest sound to be heard. At dawn, when I ran over again, the plate of meat hadn’t been touched. For all my hoping, not a single cat had come during the night. And yet I knew it was better for them that they had vanished, that they were no longer there. I was beyond thinking practically or realistically, or even of my own interests. I breathed a silent prayer that one or two at least would turn up, so that when I’d cleaned and restored everything to order, and Emerence was allowed back, some of her loved ones might be with her. But like the decontamination people, I failed to find a single one, alive or dead. When the door came flying in they must have felt as if the whole world was exploding around them. They had fled back into the unpredictability, danger and death from which Emerence had saved them. Never again did a cat prowl around the flat — it was as if some secret signal had scared them off. Viola, who knew the way better than anyone, refused to go anywhere near the wreck of her home. After her death, the flat was refurbished and soon found a new owner, but the dog wasn’t interested. The light on the porch shone as before, without the slightest attraction for him, and every summer her lilacs bloomed in vain. He looked for her in all the places they had walked together, but never at her home. He recognised the field where the battle had been fought and lost, even though he hadn’t witnessed it himself. On that first morning the street was eerily silent, as when a head of state is grievously ill and the distressed populace mourn in anticipation; a silence not directed from above but genuinely heartfelt. The dog lay on his mat as if his throat had been cut. He uttered not a whimper. When I took him out for his walk, he didn’t once raise his head, even to glance at other dogs.

  * * *

  In my youth I took a lot of photographs, with a rudimentary camera and
no talent whatsoever. Now, when I think back to the day they gave me the prize, it seems to live in my memory like a replica of an old snap I took in which, by some optical illusion, the subject appears to be moving in opposite directions at the same moment. I had taken a picture of my mother, and when I brought the developed roll of film back from the shop, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The person I had sought to immortalise was both coming and going, her image progressively increasing and diminishing in size in a double and contrary series of movements. My family would show visitors this ghostly apparition of someone behaving in self-contradictory ways at the same point in space and time. This was how I too must have been on the day they awarded me the prize. During those hours, every thought and every action had its reverse image, within, behind and around me, as in a mirror.

  It was a busy day. It began at dawn, when I checked the plate of meat and looked for the strayed cats. From Emerence’s flat I dashed off to the hospital. I wasn’t alone. Sutu had got there before me, as had Adélka. The three of us together faced an Emerence who was fully conscious, but making it plain by her silence that she was not to be appeased, not prepared even to consider forgiveness. Sutu kept jumping up with a thermos flask, but Emerence didn’t want any coffee; or a cool drink. Nothing. In addition to her own christening bowl, Adélka’s carrier bag held two other gifts, sent as tokens of friendship. The handyman’s wife had prepared some chicken soup, and Mrs Brodarics a bowl of îles flottantes. Emerence didn’t even glance at them. She wasn’t interested, either in the gifts or the message they conveyed. The nurse told us later that visitors had been pestering her the whole day, morning and afternoon. It was the start of a national holiday weekend, and people wanted to get the visit over. But no matter who called, their journey proved fruitless. The neighbours went away rather offended that the old woman hadn’t even looked at them.

  I hadn’t brought anything. I kept looking at my watch to see how much longer I had to sit with her. I didn’t trouble her with talk, but now and then I touched her under the sheet. Each time she pulled herself away, but otherwise gave no sign that she was aware of me. After a while an exasperated doctor almost shouted at Sutu and Adélka that it might be too early to say whether she would pull back from the grave, but if she did, one thing was clear: she didn’t want anyone to witness the process. Feeding her, bombarding her with plates of food, was a waste of time. She was ignoring them and she wasn’t going to eat. Everything she needed to sustain her was being given intravenously. If they really wanted to help, they should leave her in peace. He was right. No matter who was addressing her in hushed tones, they were treated in the way she treated me, shutting her eyes to avoid having to see anyone. What I took away, as I rushed home from the hospital to put on my black dress in preparation for the festivities, and get some sort of order into the careworn features that stared back at me from the mirror, was the image of her eyeless face, resembling nothing so much as a death mask.

  The large envelope in which the award notification arrived had also contained several other useful bits and pieces, including a sticker for the taxi’s windscreen to allow us all the way through to the carpeted main entrance. This was fortunate, because I was barely capable of walking. I said not a word as we drove there, and very little at the ceremony. It wasn’t the first time that I’d been given something in a way or in circumstances that almost crippled me, and now it was happening again, as the pictures taken clearly show. Before the prize-giving had even begun they ushered us into a vast room for photographs to celebrate the great day. Even in that extraordinarily anxious time, all I could think was how tragic, and how comic. The photo of me that would be filed away in an official album would immortalise a quite surreal image — the lingering horror on the face of some ancient heroine who had looked on the Medusa. I had gone to the ceremony from a deathbed. I didn’t need a doctor to explain that Emerence would not recover, and that I was in some way responsible. She will never again be completely well, I kept thinking, as I mouthed “thank you” and “yes, but of course” and “very much” and “absolutely”; not because her amazing constitution wasn’t capable of surmounting even this hurdle, with the doctor’s care and if she would take her medicine. This was about something else, something medical science wasn’t equipped to deal with, for which it had no cure. Emerence no longer wished to live, because we’d destroyed the framework of her life and the legend attached to her name. She had been everyone’s model, everyone’s helper, the supreme exemplar. Out of her starched apron pockets came sugar cubes wrapped in paper and linen handkerchiefs rustling like doves. She was the Snow Queen. She stood for certainty — in summer the first ripening cherry, in autumn the thud of falling chestnuts, the golden roast pumpkin of winter, and, in spring, the first bud on the hedgerow. Emerence was pure and incorruptible, the better self that each and every one of us aspired to be. With her permanently veiled forehead and her face that was tranquil as a lake, she asked nothing from anyone and depended on no-one. She shouldered everyone’s burden without ever speaking of her own, and when she did finally need my help, I went off to play my part in a TV show and left her, in the squalor of advanced illness, for others to witness the single moment of degradation in her life.

  How can I truly describe her, or trace the real anatomy of her compassion — this woman who peopled her home with animals? Emerence was spontaneously good, unthinkingly generous, able to reveal her orphaned condition only to another orphan, but never giving voice to her utter loneliness. Like the Dutchman, she steered her mysterious ship entirely alone, always into unknown waters, driven by the wind of ever-changing relationships. I had long known that the more simple a thing was, the less likely it was to be understood; and now Emerence would never have the chance to make anyone understand either herself or her cats. No matter what she might say, her credibility had been destroyed by the stench that had poured out of her home and the dirt that remained there to be cleaned. The chicken and duck carcasses that surrounded her, the rotting fish and boiled vegetables, testified to what had never been true, that she was mad, not that her body had left her iron will stranded. After the stroke, how could she possibly have cleaned and tidied up, or taken the leftovers out to the bin? It was a medical miracle that she had been able to drag herself out to bring in the gifts of food at the start of her illness. A well-behaved and very mild embolism, which had begun to heal almost immediately, had made her life impossible in the eyes of an entire community, and, by taking the huge birch broom out of her hands, had annulled a lifetime of unstinting work.

  As it happened, so many people — family members, distant relations and others — flooded into the presentation room that I didn’t even get a seat, and I was glad, because it meant I wasn’t trapped in one place. I waited for them to call out my name when I would step up to the table, receive the box and then be free to go to the buffet and pretend to be eating. But I would have much preferred to dash away. I had the feeling that if Sutu, Adélka or anyone else realised what needed to be done and finished the job before me, Emerence wouldn’t be the only one to break down, I would too. If I didn’t do it myself, I would never again be able to look her in the face. But the ceremony dragged on interminably. It was the greatest formal occasion of my entire life, outshone only by the reception ceremony later that evening. But that too ended on a surreal note, which echoed one of my childhood dreams. I had always wanted to make my way up an immense stairway in a long dress, with everyone watching me and noticing my beautiful figure, how attractive I was. If one can walk badly, just as one can sing out of tune, then that evening I did it. Bent over, I shuffled miserably up the steps, shook whatever hand had to be shaken, and slipped out of the building by a side stairway, certain in the knowledge that if they did let me into the hospital they wouldn’t even remark on my dress. If I approached her stark naked or in a borrowed royal gown, Emerence wouldn’t even glance at me.

  When I think back to that day — the day I was awarded the prize — the one thing I remember, apart from
the continuing sense of helpless bitterness, is how very tired I was the whole time. My part finished towards one o’clock. The moment I arrived home I changed into my working clothes and set off for Emerence’s flat armed with cleaning implements. I was not going to leave her to her shame. There would be no need for the decontamination men. By the time they arrived I would have removed everything that shouldn’t have been there. It was the Saturday of a public holiday weekend and I was sure I’d be able to complete the job, because the sanitation workers would have already begun their break. By the time they pitched up they would find nothing but order and cleanliness. Then the bucket fell from my hands. There on the porch, taking a cigarette break, were the decontamination men. The doctor had forgotten to tell me one thing: the department had ordered immediate action, including the total destruction of all the furniture (with full compensation) in the interests of public health. I stood before them, stunned. I must have looked like a melancholy circus clown in full paint — I had changed only my dress. I still had the make-up on my face and my hair was done up in curls. But who could accept, or even consider accepting what they were about to do? Did they think they could just demolish someone’s home, like vandals?

  Nothing of the kind, replied the man in charge. First they would clean everything thoroughly, in a neat, orderly way, get rid of the dirt, scrub the floor, the furniture and the walls, then they would burn anything that was still filthy or infected. “So kindly put that bucket down, and don’t attempt to help, if you please. There’s no place here for private initiatives; this is a job for professionals, for the authorities. But you could, as a representative of the family, attest that the work is carried out in accordance with regulations. Strictly speaking, it should be the sick person herself, but I’m told she’s not all there, so would madam be so good as to act as temporary legal representative and check the inventory to make sure it is accurate, because the owner is to be reimbursed by the city council for any property destroyed? There’s no point in complaining. Please don’t argue with us. This is official.”