by Magda Szabo
“Woodworm,” the Lieutenant Colonel said. “You won’t be able to take anything from here. It’s all finished. Emerence hasn’t opened the door since she let me in for the inspection. So, this was her reward for saving Eva Grossman. As it was, it would have been worth a fortune, but you can see it’s ruined. Look.”
He pressed the palm of his hand into an armchair and it too collapsed. I don’t know why — it was an insane association of ideas — but images of the tank battle on the Hortobágy filled my mind. The chairs went down, the velvet splitting into strips and bursting from the wooden frames. The legs were turning to powder before our eyes, as if some secret chemical preparation had kept them alive only so long as they remained unseen by human eye. And I saw once again what I had seen as a girl, a herd of cattle machine-gunned by the Germans, the sky seemingly impaled on their horns, and the chair-covers, like the hides of those beasts, shredded into nothing.
“There’s nothing here you could use,” the Lieutenant Colonel said. “I’ll have it cleared away. Will you take the clock? It’s still ticking. The figurines, I’m sorry to say, were broken.”
I didn’t want the clock. It stayed there on the floor. I didn’t want anything. I didn’t even look back — that’s how I left Emerence’s home, still incapable of tears. The Lieutenant Colonel took his leave, but didn’t bother to shut the door behind him. Adélka told me that when the team of cleaners arrived and looked in, neither the shattered porcelain nor the clock were there. There was nothing, only the pulverised furniture. But I was no longer interested.
THE SOLUTION
Back home, I found Viola passive, almost indifferent. I took him for a walk. We went past Emerence’s door, where one of the tenants was doing duty sweeping the pavement, and we greeted one another warmly. I also saw Sutu, sitting in her stand again, not seeming in the least discouraged or sad about the fact that no-one was buying from her. She was eating some of her own fruit, and she greeted me politely. It was very quiet in the street; very few houses had the television on. Not quite knowing what to do with myself, I called on the priest to pay for the service. There was no-one in the office, but I found him out in the garden, reading, and he took the money for it. I offered him my thanks for his kindness, but he declined to accept them, rather stiffly. It was merely his duty, he told me. At this point we came closer to one another than at any time of our lives. He looked at me as if he’d suddenly noticed something that had escaped his attention all day, and said, “So few people are watching television.”
“They’re in mourning,” I replied. “There are a lot of country people in Pest. This silence is a country custom. It’s like Good Friday — it’s considered wrong to listen to music.”
“But she had only one relative, and he doesn’t even live here. So who are these mourners?”
“Everyone. Catholics. Jews. Everyone owed her something.”
I would never have thought him capable of this, but he accompanied me to the corner of our street, from where Emerence’s former home could be seen. The lady engineer was silently sweeping the street. The priest looked at me again. This time he had no more questions.
On the Sunday following the funeral I went to church as usual. The congregation had never been so large. There were people there who never attended. The local greengrocer Elemér, from whose mouth you heard nothing but blasphemy, was there in black, along with the Evangelical doctor, the Catholic professor, the Jewish dry cleaner, the Unitarian furrier. The service was like an Ecumenical requiem; it would have been shameful to have stayed away. Only the handyman — who never missed his Evangelical meetings — was absent. But there had been a wild wind the previous night, leaves lay scattered everywhere and it was his turn to sweep the street. As he placed the wafer on my tongue, the priest looked me in the eye, and though I should have been keeping my eyes fixed on my three fingers that symbolised the Trinity, I returned his gaze, and he knew I was honouring him for his gesture of respect, paid to the people of the street at Emerence’s funeral.
One other person was missing from the church: Sutu. We made our way home knowing ourselves without sin, and though we didn’t talk about it we felt our superiority to her. So there! Nobody needed her. The street was united, and the tenants were fending for themselves. Even I had swept the leaves, once, though I was so incompetent Adélka had taken the broom from my hands, and I sneaked off, ashamed that I wasn’t good for anything, probably not even my profession. Only Sutu took no part in the shared work, and we rarely saw her. She had closed her stall, and quite how she got by was a mystery. I had the feeling she was staying at home and waiting for something, but there was no indication whether she was still there or had gone away. It was summer, and no smoke was seen rising from her little house. Just what she was hoping and waiting for became apparent later.
The news was brought a couple of weeks later by Viola’s old friend the handyman. Caressing the dog’s ears to cover his embarrassment, he began by saying that Mr Brodarics had a message for me. The villa, it seemed, couldn’t manage without Emerence after all. They could just about cope while the weather was fine, as now, but when autumn set in and the leaves came down, it would be beyond them. Few of them were young, and those who were worked from dawn till dusk.
“Say no more,” I butted in. “Mr Brodarics is telling me the house can’t manage without a full-time caretaker, so you’re going to employ someone, if you haven’t done so already. I see. Did you advertise?”
“As a matter of fact, no.”
He looked away from me, his eyelashes quivering with anxiety. Viola suddenly lunged away from me. I hadn’t meant to hurt him, but my fingers were so tense I had unwittingly squeezed his windpipe.
“Look,” the handyman said, “we’ve known her a thousand years. She’s clean, sober, hardworking, she doesn’t drink and she’s too old to chase after men. When Sutu made her offer, it was too soon, and we were upset. But since then we’ve all cooled down and begun to do some thinking. And finally, we’ve managed to agree.”
“On Sutu,” I said, bitterly.
“No, not Sutu. On Adélka. Mr Brodarics thought we should tell you, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise.”
But nothing surprised me any more. As soon as he left I went and stood out on the balcony. Emerence’s porch was clearly visible, and there, at the table, sat Adélka. It was beautifully laid out, the way Emerence had liked it. She was hunched over a bowl, shelling or peeling something, and she wasn’t alone. The shoemaker’s wife was leaning over the bowl alongside her. At last there was no-one to see me, and I felt able to cry. My husband was unable to comfort me, though his eyes held nothing but compassion.
“The house can’t manage without Emerence, nor can the people on the street,” I heard him say. “Adélka isn’t a bad woman, and it’s true we all know her. She did well to bide her time. Sutu rushed it. So what are you grieving for now? It can’t be for Emerence. The dead always win. Only the living lose.”
“I’m grieving for us,” I answered. “We are all traitors.”
“Not traitors. Just too many things to do.”
He stood up. The dog struggled to his feet, went to him and pressed his head against his knee. Since Emerence’s death my husband had taken her place.
Once again, it wasn’t me. All Emerence’s miracles were oblique, never in a straight line.
“You’re upsetting yourself, and once again you’re not writing. You’re behind with all your work. Why aren’t you at the typewriter?”
“I can’t,” I replied. “I’m tired. And depressed. I hate everyone. I hate Adélka.”
“You’re tired because you’re cooking, and cleaning, and doing the shopping. And you haven’t been able to find anyone you can bear to have near you, because you aren’t looking for just anyone, you’re looking for the one person who will never be with you again. But Emerence has gone. Understand that, once and for all. You have binding contracts. You have to work. You should be getting on with your own work, and if you weren’t so de
ad tired you would have known long ago what step to take. Everyone in the street can see it. The Brodaricses, the handyman. It’s only you that can’t. So do it now, for God’s sake. The people in the villa have given you the message, in their own indirect way.”
I covered my ears so as not hear. He waited until I had calmed down a bit, then he lifted Viola’s lead off its hook.
“The handyman called because everyone here loves you, and they wanted to make it easier for you to do what you’ve already decided, only you don’t have the courage to admit it. How long are you going to go on dithering? It’s so senseless! You taught Emerence that nothing can rival the act of creation, so why should you feel ashamed of it before the person who succeeds her? She’ll come to see it too.”
Viola submitted passively as I fitted the leash on him. He showed no pleasure, and he made no protest. He was ready to go.
“Take the dog down, have a bit of a walk with him, and come to an agreement with her before anyone else gets her.”
“I’m not going to make any agreement with Adélka. I don’t want her. Emerence didn’t much like her, she just felt sorry for her.”
“Who’s talking about Adélka? Adélka is mawkish, weak-minded and stupid. With Sutu. She looked after everything impeccably when we were in Athens. Sutu is straightforward, brave, unsentimental. She doesn’t dither about, and as far as work is concerned, she’s as pitiless as you are.”
“Emerence.” I uttered her name with a strength of voice that seemed to know, almost independently of me, that I would never be able to say that word aloud again, not to anyone.
“Emerence is dead, Sutu is alive. And she doesn’t love you, or anyone else. She lacks that capacity, but her countless other qualities make up for it. Sutu, if you show her respect, will help you for the rest of your life, because you can never put her at risk. She has no secrets, no locked doors; and if she ever did have such a door, there are no siren songs that would induce her to open it to you — or anyone.”
THE DOOR
My dreams are always the same, down to the finest detail, a vision that returns again and again. In this never-changing dream I am standing in our entrance hall at the foot of the stairs, facing the steel frame and reinforced shatterproof window of the outer door, and I am struggling to turn the lock. Outside in the street is an ambulance. Through the glass I can make out the shimmering silhouettes of the paramedics, distorted to unnatural size, their swollen faces haloed like moons.
The key turns.
My efforts are in vain.