The Summer My Father Died

by Kiss, dit; Szirtes, George;

  One part of my deeply confused consciousness had accidentally managed to hear what he was saying. I don’t know whether it was an order or a plea, but it stuck with me.

  Each time I tried to get close to my mother, she let out such blood-curdling wails I froze in terror. We circled each other in the flat, tottering around like people on a tempest-tossed boat. The children hid in their room. I stumbled into the kitchen to heat up the coffee that I had gone out for in the first place when the telegram boy rang. My hand was still shaking so I had to hold the cup in both hands not to spill the hot drink. Fortunately, my sister soon arrived and she dealt with the telephone calls that neither I nor my mother was capable of dealing with. A call from the hospital told us that this being Saturday there was nothing we could do regarding my dead father. As we looked at each other in astonishment, agony and horror it was immediately clear we had no idea how to come to terms with the new reality that had crashed in on us.

  ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ I said after a while.

  Now that my sister had arrived I dared to leave my mother alone with her. My head was aching as if an enormous rock had fallen on it. All I could think of was that hot water would wash away all this absurdity. I stood very still under the steaming jet of the shower, surprised to see a long streak of red running down my leg.

  ‘I’m going to take the children out for a walk,’ I said to my mother and sister huddling silently in the hall. ‘You can discuss what needs to be done.’

  We got on the 21 bus and took a ride to the hilltop. It was a crystal-clear summer morning, there were still heavy dewdrops hanging off the leaves of the trees which surrounded the playground. The children were happy they had the place to themselves. It was still very early in the morning. We weren’t in the habit of arriving at the playground so early. By the time we got home, my sister had succeeded in getting my mother to take a tranquilliser. She was no longer a fluttering bird, but a robot. The children were starving after their busy morning. After lunch I put them down to sleep for a while, leaving the three of us to sit silently in the hall staring at the spines of the books. The ringing of the outside gate broke in on our silence. I went down to see who it was. The husband of my late friend Juli, who had died a couple of months before.

  ‘I sense there’s been some trouble,’ he said.

  ‘My father is dead.’

  Having said it for the first time I was struck by the simple brutality of the sentence. We were standing at the doorway of the Németvölgyi Road house as I had done so often before, and with so many people: with childhood playmates who always escorted each other home, then later with friends, with lovers, with chance acquaintances and neighbours. Standing just like this, my back against the door that wanted to swing to and close, or in front of it, the key in my hand, listening to someone’s story, or telling a story myself, saying simple things, passionate or bitter things, before the heavy gate through which whenever I pass I glance at the bullet holes on the metal cellar door right across the entrance – holes left over from 1956 and never repaired even when the entire house was renovated. I stood in front of the shut gate, the keys to the flat in my hands, my mouth uttering the words: ‘My father is dead.’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Juli’s husband.

  Perhaps he knew because Juli was only two months dead and he genuinely mourned her, even though he would shortly have another woman at his side. Having spent a long time mourning in the empire of the dead, he might have sensed a new presence there. Possibly it’s like the secret communication between babies: their eyes are always seeking each other out, registering the fact that there is another baby around; they recognise each other like people that have arrived from the same mysterious country, a country they still faintly recall. They can still speak the language of that country and abide by its laws, playing their – to us – incomprehensible yet systematic games. Maybe that is why those tiny creatures look at the world like wise old men; then this wisdom is slowly ground away by the loving family that tries to accommodate them to the demands of the world that now surrounds them. That is why it takes years for them to get used to it: learning is also a process of forgetting.

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’ asked Juli’s husband.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll call you,’ I said.

  We hugged each other, then he limped back to his car. Only now did I notice that he had their dog with him. How often had Juli rested her hand on the dog’s head as we were talking? It was shifting restlessly in the narrow passenger seat giving me accusing looks through the windscreen. I returned to the flat and we busied ourselves. I took the children to the playground again so my mother could have some peace. The children spent a lot of time in the fresh air that weekend. They were very amenable and were happy to go wherever I took them because they were scared of staying at home with my mother. Somebody had taken away the old grandmother and substituted a new one. The new one couldn’t smile whatever you said to her, she just cried and didn’t understand. Perhaps Grandmother was ill, too? Perhaps she too was going to die?

  I have long known that truth is always discovered the day after. It’s not in the throes of ecstasy but the next morning that truth arrives, when we first look at the figure sprawled on the bedcovers still heavy with dreams. The morning after moving in, the morning after separation, the first working day, the first kiss, the first failure, the first successful exam is the true measure of value. The point at which all-powerful weekdays claw back the time. The next day after my father’s death was a Sunday. We were plenipotentiaries of time. There was no more need to run from place to place, to portion out hospital visiting hours, to decide who should look after the children; there was nothing we could do because official life was at a standstill. The corpses were patiently waiting to be dealt with while the living were hanging about at a loss in their suddenly empty lives.

  On the Monday morning after my father’s death we appeared at the office of the hospital in Amerikai Road with a set of his clean clothes. While my mother and sister dealt with the formalities, I stood in the corridor and tried to estimate how much the world had changed since my father died. Once all the paperwork was done, we sat our mother down on a vacant seat and my sister and I cut across the tiny yard to the mortuary to see our father’s corpse. Mother didn’t want to come. The talkative mortuary assistant ushered us into the office and went off, as he said, to prepare the body. What else was there to prepare? I wondered, as I sat in the chair by the desk, glancing distractedly at a copy of the sports daily and a pocket radio in its carrying case. My sister and I dared not look at each other. The fear that had overcome us might have been even stronger than the pain. When we were finally allowed into the cool chamber, there was my father lying on a white table, covered in a dark green blanket so only his face was visible. Warily, we drew nearer. The mortuary cavalier looked on the object of his work appraisingly.

  ‘Can I touch him?’ asked my sister.

  ‘Go ahead,’ the man replied.

  My sister put her hand on my father’s brow.

  ‘How cold,’ she said. The sense of awe at the physical wonders of the world barely covered the emotion in her voice.

  I didn’t dare touch him. I didn’t even dare ask the assistant to turn back the blanket a little so I could see the childhood axe scar on my father’s right hand. Perhaps I was afraid that I’d see traces of the efforts at resuscitation on his chest and so confirm the hospital reports of his struggle for life at dawn on Saturday. We stood in silence by the cold table. My father looked calm. There remained a slight, amazed smile on his face. It was as if, just before dying, he had been pleasantly surprised by something.

  Nineteen ninety-nine was a terrible year. In the spring the mother of my ex-partner, the man with whom I had lived during my post-university years before leaving for Mexico, died. She was a generous, frightened refugee from the past who still knew how to stick the knife blade into the soil so the knife would become kosher again, how to hand-sew buttonholes, and how to gro
w flowers from seed in yoghurt cups. On the Easter visit we both knew would be the last, we turned up my trousers, sewed the torn hook back on my coat, carefully packed the plants she gave me to plant on our Geneva balcony, tasted all the pastries specially baked for the occasion and exchanged what little news we had. Then we sat next to each other on the chequered couch, arm in arm, in silence. She wasn’t scared, since she had so many people waiting for her on the other side, but the thought of the road there filled her with anxiety. We sat quietly on the couch and I kept staring at the clumsy chandelier hanging from the ceiling, something to yank me back into the ugly aesthetics of reality and prevent me from crying. Then we took a long, wordless goodbye, awkwardly hugging each other in the narrow hall that smelled of quince.

  Juli was the next to die, my one-time classmate with whom I stopped every day at the doorway of the Németvölgyi Road house, because we had so much to say to each other that we had never managed to finish before I escorted her over to her flat in the block at Alkotás Road; with whom I experienced the great enthusiasms of childhood and the first glittering passions of adolescence. Eventually we drifted apart, but each time we met the spark of genuine affection was re-lit. I hadn’t the least notion that she would die at forty-seven. The day that she was between two blood transfusions, fighting for her life, I happened to be returning to Geneva from a conference in London. Brimming with impressions, I stood exhausted under the pitiless light of the airport washroom examining my face in its mirror. I saw the skin sagging around my eyes, the hair slowly fading above my brow and the tiny lines that formed a delicate web at the corners of my mouth. Well, well, am I getting old? I asked myself morosely, but then I had to run to catch my flight. Later in the evening when, blanked out by exhaustion, I sat down in front of the computer to see what I had missed I found a short e-mail from her husband saying that she had died that afternoon.

  The others who died: My friend Tamás’s father. The father of my old schoolfriend Dobó. My university friend Ilona’s father.

  Fathers die early here. Perhaps they have had too much of history. Too much revulsion piling up in their heads, crushing their spines, scrambling their brains, breaking their hearts. Mothers survive better.

  The ten days between the death and the funeral were filled with another bout of feverish activity. The telephone was constantly ringing: settling affairs, funeral arrangements, lawyers, mother, children, relatives. People tiptoed around us as though we were carrying some serious infectious disease. One day we returned to the hospital because, in the chaos following our seeing the corpse, we had left behind the suitcase prepared for my father’s convalescence. I vaguely remember a long walk with Miki Winter and, like suddenly coming upon an island at ebbtide, the surprise appearance of my long-unseen Dutch friend Magda in the hall of the Németvölgyi Road flat.

  On the rare occasions when I was alone, all my thoughts revolved around my father’s mysterious, inconceivable departure. I still hadn’t recovered from the shock that something so important should have occurred while our backs were turned. It was no use our father being part of our lives if he escaped us at the last moment and died among strangers, far away. Just as we had not really been partners in his life, so we had not been ‘invited’ to his death. I was, at the same time, overwhelmed by an all-consuming sense of guilt. We left him to die alone in a bare hospital bed abandoned between night and dawn.

  There was not a moment’s relief from my headache ever since my father died. Medicine, walking, coffee, cold showers – nothing would shift it. I swayed from one task to another, my head splitting. I felt every last ounce of my strength was taken up in the fight against pain. One day I was seized by a terror: this can’t be normal; there must be something wrong with me. Ah, now I understand. This is it! He’s here and I’ll go to the grave with him. Help! He’s a vampire! He so didn’t want to die he wanted to change places with me, but he was late, as always, and now he’s trying to drag me with him. Help! Help! Dr Cserjés, please cut this pain from my head because I can’t stand it any more.

  In the first few days after my father died we discovered that his study was full of perishable items we had no idea were there and it urgently needed cleaning. In the previously locked drawers of his desk, in spaces between the wall and items of furniture, behind disciplined rows of books, the clutter of his life lay before us. Books, newspapers and notes going back several years were carefully arranged in heavy piles; we found stale chocolate and bits of carefully wrapped food; there were bottles of cognac, at least twenty litres of mineral water, empty jam jars, various sizes of plastic bags and first-aid kits, dozens of long-dried wet wipes (the kind they distribute on air flights), several rolls of loo paper, carefully hidden presents for a wide range of family and friends, remains of unsent letters and stacks of letters received, piles of paper with notes, poems (poems?!) neatly tied together with string, the last of which was written on the occasion of Gyuri Sándor’s death. There was a whole pile of stuff that ‘might come in useful some time’, including cutlery from the Soviet Union and torches from China; there were thirty years’ worth of manuscripts, files of diploma works and doctoral supervisions complete with my father’s own detailed notes, and a vast number of laundry and household bills, including some with scribbled notes on the back. While we were trying to bring some order to this overwhelming stock of material, I felt my father was still present in the study. Or perhaps it wasn’t him but someone else who just looked like him. One day we discovered a photograph of him standing on the balcony with my sister’s two-week-old first child: I had never seen his face like that, radiating so much happiness.

  My father’s study was a survivor’s island, fitted out with all kinds of long-term provisions. But what was there to survive ten, twenty, thirty, forty years after the war had ended? Was it a deep-seated fear that told him to be ready to run, since they might come at any moment with their loud boots and yelping dogs or, some years later, without the dogs but in silent black cars and plain clothes, treading lightly this time, to ring the doorbell in the middle of the night and take him away as they did so many others? Was it the dark shadow that could be waiting at any time behind the glazed front door of our flat, ready to sweep away in one gesture everything he considered firm and stable? Were these supplies necessary in case there was bombing, or a siege, or in case they turned off the water or the electricity, poisoned the air, or were looking to starve him out? They might be here already, breathing heavily out in the hall among the books. The bed must be ready to block the door. A person could survive on what had been accumulated here until the rescue teams arrived – for weeks, perhaps.

  Seven days after my father’s death the various clocks positioned all over the flat, all showing different times – because there was never a precise time at Németvölgyi Road – started chiming. I was on my hands and knees in my father’s study, filling the latest of God knows how many sacks with hard-as-concrete sandwiches and tins long past their best-before dates, when one of the alarm clocks started screaming. After a little while a Soviet-produced clock, complete with a now defunct thermometer, also began to ring, and then a third that I couldn’t even see because it was covered in manuscripts somewhere behind me. I got into a terrible panic. I had no idea what momentous event had set all these clocks ringing: what was about to begin or end. What to do? Where to run? What spell to mutter in order to snatch back my father from the void at the last possible moment?!

  I don’t know what my father would have said had the angel of death offered him a choice of different kinds of death. That is assuming a person can make choices about place of residence, life partner, death. People killed in the concentration camps had not just their lives but their deaths taken from them, the personal and individual death that is constructed in the course of a person’s entire life and is a part of it. The death factories of totalitarianism worked on a mass scale and were for ever inventing more efficient methods. Concentration camps and nuclear bombs emerged from the sleeves of mass pro
duction, from methods of production that had lost their rational purpose. At one point the self-perpetuating holy trinity of mass production, mass consumption and mass culture set out on its terrifying triumphal march, when the art of making qualitative distinctions was pushed aside in favour of the religions of speed and unlimited output. People in the camps did not suffer individual death; not even their death was their own. A person deprived of all personal characteristics, of a past, of loved ones, of a home, of all of life’s references, is dead before he enters the gas chamber. And this industrialised, neutral mass butchery strips away the value of life even in retrospect. If nothing, no character, no values, no merit could impede that death, if life was so easy to take away, then it was utterly worthless.

  Maybe my father’s death ‘in bed, among pillows’, as Petőfi put it some years before he was killed on a battlefield in the 1849 war of independence, was not majestic enough for the messianic faith that impregnated his life. But was it possible to dream of meaningful life and majestic death after the death camps? Was it still possible to think of a letter of farewell from the shadow of the gallows that would serve as an inspiration for posterity for decades? Was my father still longing for a hero’s death like that of his childhood idols, those shining rebels Garibaldi, Marat and Petőfi? Did he ever imagine what Petőfi might have felt as he tried to escape the riders pounding across the heroic fields of Segesvár in pursuit of him? What raged in his heart, the euphoria of perfect sacrifice or blind panic? When he heard the horse’s hoofs drumming right behind him, then stop for a moment as the horse rose on its hind legs so the descended blade might strike with greater momentum, when he felt the edge of the cold blade enter his flesh that was still hot from running, was he then glad that he wasn’t dying ‘in bed, among pillows’? And when he was lying among the high yellow corn, his face swimming with salty sweat, did he think that perhaps General Bem, who tried to keep him away from the battlefield, might have been right after all? That life, this unpredictable, transient piece of magic, was after all worth more than the terrible, pointless death that was about to overtake him in the next few moments; that the heroic death so honoured and lauded in school textbooks was only a dry throat, a choking pair of lungs and eyes starting in terror, and blood, filth and loneliness.