We returned leaving the old hag in the scarf to struggle on.
Like a child at the end of summer I smart at the passing of time. I think hard, trying to recapture, trying to repeat - in some other cycle that might take me back to where we were, so that I begin to see my own self in the faces that should belong to others - the repetitive cycles of loss giving birth to self-pity. Time! I see its many arms flailing, breaking away from me, so many days of pleasure, as fleeting as confetti, handfuls of them thrown into the wind, shining, disappearing - the illusory pages of captivity forgotten as quickly as pain. My recollections burn brighter in the dark. like fire-sticks, catching only shadows moving across us as I wave them about me, brighter yet blurred, playing tricks with my past. I can no longer look back with any certainty as to what went wrong. Time passed too slowly for us, I'm sure. Too much time to think, to ponder, to make mistakes.
She always used her teeth, that Mary. Always uncomfortable with eye contact. Most of that summer, fifteen years ago now, fifteen long summers, Friday nights and the like, we would go to the castle ruins. Mary, the wife of the son of the Publican, and me. Sometimes she'd be cursing me and everything else, other times she seemed pleased to be stuck alone with me. Only seventeen, yet after each 'meeting' feeling how I imagined a man in his thirties would feel... We always covered ourselves, but there were those moments when I found myself short, and she would bite deeper into my lip, my neck. Maybe she was nervous. Maybe she was daring me on. The Black Castle, strewn with cans and discarded rags, was my haunt, and I was the Black Knight, and she was the king's wife. The Queen of Spades. Queen of the Night. I couldn't say it then of course, but really it was me who was afraid.
An oil lamp is burning somewhere. This small room is their living place, their eating place, and, I suspect, their sleeping place. Anna's mother is pointing towards photos of her daughter. Her actions are animated not with affection but with apprehension. I catch her again muttering a name under her breath, as if someone is sleeping in the next room. On the small table beside her is a short stump with an old bees-wax candle in it, a small glass and a book. She touches the rim of the glass lightly with the tips of her fingers, picks up the book and leafs through it. The old man comes in from behind the curtain and sits beside her. She glances at him then struggles up and makes her way over to me. I stand up next to her and she points to the tops of the pages. Smeared with jam is yesterday's date and the words Kedd and Dienstag, and under these the names Kristof and Jakub in faint red ink. The facing page shows today's date and the words Szerda and Mittwoch. There are also two names on this page, Anna and Aniko. Anna? There is some scribble here. Then I remember, in Hungary people don't celebrate the day of their birth, but another day, their name day. I've been invited to this house on Anna's name day, and she's not here.
She loved passionately her horses, more than the company of her riding friends. There were only a handful of them, shysters on horseback, a clique I could not break into. I tried to befriend them, to get into them, even the secretive Katia, but the more effort I made the more defensive, the more enclosed they became. I offered to meet Pavel in the city but it was obvious he had no intention of arranging a time. And Gosia, Anna's friend from Poland, she too made so little effort that I felt like a parasite with nothing better to do with my time. What was so special, so magical about these rides that no-one else could go along? What did they get up to that needed to be guarded like that? I thought she'd be pleased I was showing an interest. So I gave up and channelled my energy into other forms of music. Nothing had come of my classical music concerts. No word from the professor I had written to with Anna's help in Pecs. I started up a jazz group of three - 'Fides' Foes,' Fides being the Roman god of honesty. Jazz standards, a handful of new tracks. What was I hoping for? We played in a couple of venues in the city, but there was no Anna to be seen.
One Sunday I took the long journey to the stables where they met to go riding. I recall I'd even bought her a small gift, a miniature grey with a flowing orange mane, wax-like. Its eyes were at once furious, startled, determined. I attached a small card with a few words, tore it off and lost it. Across the river, through the leafy inclines of Buda, the macadam turned to dust, the narrow tracks that wound their way towards the farm were suddenly taking me further than I had intended. I became aware of another picture altogether. At which precise point it materialised in name I cannot recall, a wandering of the mind's eye, a slip in time and place... The green hills of Buda that unfolded before me suddenly took on a lusher hue. In the jade confusion of trees and fencing that separated my senses from the place, I felt a shudder, as if, as they say, someone had kicked dirt over my grave. The eye-level cottages and open gates, the brooks and bridges, the sea breezes pulling at your shirt... I was back once again, on top of the morning, cutting through the lanes towards Coynes Cross, the coastal paths and bottomless pockets of the Wicklow Hills... A flood of recollection overcame me, Saturdays afternoons, stout and crackling fire, the stench of stale beer, soaked into mats; slanderous, wise gossip, egits the lot of ya, cries soap from his stupor, the crack of the early evenings, the bar full of family... a'yuz all right there lads? jeez, you'd think we'd nottin' better to be doin'... and they go on talking, each one of them, looking in from the outside, fleeting days to be sure, fleeting lives... and the fire crackles on, and the young lad sups like a man with the others, while through the window his reflection paints him as a boy...
At the stables I was met by Pavel who seemed on this occasion to be post-affection. Stephen, Steve, he said. You've come to see Anna?
So? I muttered.
Look, it may not be such a good idea. He spread his arms out as if measuring the size of his fish. Well I think she will return only very late today. He looked at me as if urging me to pick up some hidden meaning, which I didn't. Look, Anna is Anna. He placed his hand on my shoulder, now on my elbow. I heard them braying, saw their tails doing cartwheels, smelt the earth in the air. What I would have given for a morsel of their telepathy now! As he laid out the platitudes all the way to the forest, I grew hostile, sick of the easy-come easy-go quips, tired of the unspoken though barely concealed implication that I was one of the great sock-washers of all time. I said nothing. You are very close I know, he continued, but she is... well, how to say, like Sandor maybe, she likes the wind in her hair, to be free.
A very strange Christmas came and went, for we were now plainly formal with each other. We drank in the New Year at her flat and I felt for all the world the waiter, taking the coats, bringing in the nibbles. In mid-January Katia went abroad for a couple of months, to get away from home where I gathered things were difficult. Anna didn't go riding so often. I was pleased, not to mention relieved. One night, unable to escape one another in any other way, we managed to drink ourselves into a state of mutual submission, agreeing to allow each other more space. And in this space, after many days and many gallons of bitter red wine, we drew closer again. I lifted the weight of my expectations and she rose up higher to meet me, lighter than before. She seemed suddenly to have more time for me, as if something standing between us had been removed. We stayed in more often, and although quiet she seemed happy for us to be occupying one space. My affection grew as it had done in the beginning; once again she allowed her whispers of pleasure and humour to reach my ears.
During February our chores became purely hedonistic. An earthier, heavier passion seemed to have been released through the lifting of my possessiveness, and the more physical energies rustling within us were unleashed. We locked ourselves away, played inane games on her computer, guzzling wine through the long wet evenings. Her kisses smacked of Bull's Blood, the scorpion within her was not hunting now but playing, playing with me...
As I glare at the photos on the walls and shelves she is smiling in all of them. And this is how I remember that brief interlude. I see her face, her lovely pink lips like duvets puffed up in pleasure, turning in victory from the colour monitor towards me, resting her head on my shoulder, smoking - An
na not stern, but with unspoken strength.
During March the weather improved. Katia had returned and they began riding together once more, leaving earlier, returning later. The two of them would sit in the baby Fiat for simply ages, while I, patiently, willingly, hovered at the window, wondering when she would remember I was inside. It was there, at the window, that I first heard the whisper of my own pallid reflection. I did not believe. The few yards between window and car became a thousand miles... If only I had been busier. Like a perpetual mirror time expanded all around me. Time, in my head, unfilled, causing me to wonder where she was, who she was with... This was nothing new. I'd always envied the way friends in Europe kiss each other on the cheeks, the way she and Katia did on greeting and on leaving each other. Katia too was an only child, living with a mother she loved and a step-father she despised. Tall and quiet, her wide eyes spoke of a wish to be alone, of a need to be safe. She was something of a mystery, kept herself to herself, rarely acknowledging me. Even so, something prompted me to run out to her car one night as they talked and shout a lot of nonsense at the startled faces inside:
What's going on? What have I done to you? Who do you think you are?
The old man is shaking his head. I am uncomfortable here in this dark place, and in my thoughts which form like concentrates of bitterness inside me. The mood here now seems tight and morbid, as if we sit in a dead man's house. There is something else, I feel the corners of my eyes catching the air itself moving about us, old air trapped here for many lives, air that struggles to breathe itself. There's a photo of a young Anna with her parents, she's sitting on a pony, they are all laughing. How light, how together they seem.
The last time I saw them was outside Anna's flat on April 4th - Liberation Day! I had phoned all week to try to make my peace, with both of them. She opened the door and stared in disbelief.
Anna! Thank God... Hi!... I didn't mean...
She looked startled, but composed herself quickly.
Actually you did. And we are still very upset, and angry. Really! I was shocked! She shook her head. You know, I can't believe you would be so hen-brained. To come back here!
Can I come in? I ventured.
She paused. Spite contorted her features, her eyes became narrow, she fixed them on me like a bayonet - her scorpion's tail primed. You think you're so wise. Sandor is more intelligent than you and he eats hay for breakfast. She put her hand on her hip. She changed her tone. You are really crazy!
Anna! I didn't know how to counter, nor even how to start.
You use my flat like it is your... your...
But she looked different. She had cut her hair.
You follow me around like a dog, you talk to me like an old woman! I just wanted you to be my friend! But you ruined everything.
I stood there and said nothing. How could she be so angry? Is one stupid outburst too much? Am I not human?
She shook her head. You think you're so clever...
As she spoke I heard nothing but the words I myself had practised many times before, lying beside her, sitting together at the foot of the sofa, words that she had never received because they were never spoken. Anna, I like you, I like us; Anna, let's go to the forest, this very night... and after that sorry incident, I'm sorry, I was green, afraid... forgive me, you should know me by now, I am not good at filling spaces, spaces where I want... All of this I could not tell her. Even as I felt the curtain being drawn between us, the door closing on me, finishing us, I could not break my silences, the multiple folds of my heart's protection... I couldn't tell her how close she had become to me.
She seemed to have stopped and was eyeing me coldly.
You know, Katia is my friend... she paused again. But it doesn't matter anyway. You're not welcome in my flat. Take your dreary music and your depressing books and leave me alone.
She stared hard.
I could think of nothing to say, nowhere to begin.
And now you should leave, she added finally, and closed the door.
I hung around outside and felt the eyes of the street glaring at me. It was almost evening. The dying sun was reflected in all the windows. Everywhere I looked seemed a confusion of light and shadows, faces in the leaves, whispers in the leaves. Later on Katia drew up in her little green Fiat and bibbed. A different woman, prettier, livelier somehow, dashed out with her things and jumped in beside her. She didn't greet Katia with a kiss, she just looked directly at her, motioning to her to drive off. The sun was by now clipping the trees, it flashed across the back window of the car as they turned the corner and disappeared. In her haste she'd left the gate open. I made my way to the bus-stop, not knowing if a bus would come. As I waited, this time on the other side of those pale green shutters, points of nails dug in my palms. Light veils of smog hung over the pinkish disarray that was Pest. I felt a drugged butterfly fluttering in my stomach, and a fist within trying to clasp it, to crush it... a thousand glints of light like shards of glass entering my lungs - and the emptiness of a city swelling in my heart.
A week or so later it was the shaky hands of her insensible landlord locking the gates to her garden-flat, the stable staff hadn't seen her and no-one at her office could tell me where she had gone. But there was no doubt, she had gone. I felt poisoned, but the pain was not that of a sharp instrument, not that of a sickness of the flesh, it was a constant lashing of sounds, her words... You think you're so wise... take your dreary music... your depressing books... leave me alone... I played on at the restaurant but with only the clumsiness of self-pity in my hands, the discordant pangs of a man curling over his failings like a child, trying to play on as the poison stiffened his fingers, turned his mind. Sometime later that month I arrived late at the restaurant. Klara came over to me with a worried look. They've been trying to contact you for days, she said. But before she could go on the manager himself appeared, one Lajos Hanzo, in his beige trousers and blue jacket, cool, steely-eyed, his calm manner disguising an almost paranoid efficiency. As unaccustomed as I was to managing his intimidating presence, I remained unusually calm. And then I heard it, strange that I hadn't noticed, someone playing from the far side of the lounge, something by... Beethoven? Accomplished. Light. Hmm! Hanzo motioned with his eyes for Klara to leave us.
I must tell you you're not needed tonight Stephen. He looked about him.
So I hear, I said.
Please, Klara.
He ushered her back to her tables and stood before me, absolutely motionless, as if daring me to speak. I stepped back towards the front entrance, the soft spattering of keys dampered by doors closing behind me, down a side road leading to the river from where tourist boats were pointing towards Buda. The greens and reds of the Casino boat-lights floated like leaves on the black dappled surface of the Danube. The air, scented with the street after recent rainfall, seemed cold and unfamiliar, as did the cobbled passages, suddenly dank and unattractive without a familiar voice in my ear or a hand to hold.
I wandered through the orange drizzle of the night, through a straggling city centre where something seemed absent, along Vaci Utca, where dealers cast late-night glances up the street. On I walked, weary yet determined not to stop, flashing figures winking at me - dresses of red and blue bulbs that peeled away towards the entrances to all-night clubs, convoys of seemingly tireless taxi-drivers, purple-lipped women leaning lethargically against walls below black squids, restaurant hands lifting tables, stacking chairs, old and young couples pacing slowly, seemingly not talking to one another, past the locked church at Deak Ter, winos queuing up for tea from a charity truck, mighty trees dull against a night sky always lit-up like dawn, permanently breaking over the rats of the city... carrying in my legs and in my eyes everything that meant nothing... anger? ridicule? I could not compute, or dispel... On I walked, until the harsh beams of on-coming traffic through the wet city mist stung my eyes, blinding me to the wide pathways that lead me round in circles, to the long avenues waiting patiently for their carriages of fools, to
all the many possible worlds co-existing in this bustling city, this dazzling emptiness, this Paris of the East...
Kiskutya - A Musician's Tale Page 6