by Magda Szabo
She looked around. There were no neck chains or jewelry in the drawers, only seals, metal ornaments, figurines and ashtrays. All cost considerably more than her weekly pocket money, which was regularly topped up by Auntie Mimó.
“And I would like to buy you something,” she said. “As a memento. To remind you of me when I’m not there.”
They glanced briefly into one another’s eyes, then both suddenly averted their gaze, as if too much had been said in the silence between them. The jeweler watched uncomprehendingly. He could never have known that what Gina’s look had declared was: And I shall do as much for you, though there is nothing to celebrate. This ashtray here you would see as the sort of thing you gave someone simply out of politeness. Nobody knows better than I that you don’t smoke. But after bringing me all this way and telling me nothing about where you are taking me, or why we are going there, you can’t just hand me a present the way you used to.
And this was the answer in his eyes: Well then, give it to me as to a stranger, if that is what you wish. That’s what we’ve taught you to do, Marcelle and I. If you are made a gift by a stranger you should give one in return. One day you will ask my pardon for this. May God grant that we both live to see that day.
They took to the road again. The countryside east of the river was very different. Gina did not know the Great Plain, or indeed any other place like it. Her trips had been only to the great cities of western Europe, or to snow-covered mountains and the sea. Everything she knew about it, and its general character, she had gleaned from the poems of Petőfi, but his lines celebrating the Puszta had never really struck a chord with her. Now, as the car raced steadily eastwards, she could see nothing but the work of autumn going on in the fields, the occasional white homestead in a distant smallholding, a few thinly wooded copses or isolated clumps of beech trees dancing in the breeze, and murky canals filled with water the color of copper. Then the wind—the distinctive wind of the Great Plain—sprang up. They found themselves enveloped by three of the four elements, water, earth and air, and she experienced something she had never known in her life, something altogether new, to which, as she sat there huddled in the car beside her father, feeling altogether overwhelmed and infinitely sad, she could put no name. Much later, when there were no more secrets to distract her, and her eyes were no longer blinded by misery to such important new experiences, she would look back and remember her first encounter with the Great Plain, in the bleak light of autumn, so different from the deep luxuriant glow of summer.
Árkod, she thought. We’re going to Árkod.
She had an excellent memory. Everything she had ever learned about the country’s geography had stayed with her almost word for word. “Árkod, the oldest university city in eastern Hungary; population 70,000; 97.5% Protestant; developing industries; its medieval guilds were world-renowned. The university is twinned with similar institutions in Scotland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany. Also known for its outstanding commercial school, for the Reformed Church Gymnasium for Boys, and for the Bishop Matula Academy for girls, the first institution of pedagogic excellence in Hungary to accept full-time female students.”
So here was the answer! She had to stop herself shouting it out. Árkod was not a city she knew, and she had no idea what sort of school the Bishop Matula might be, but even if it were paradise on earth it was a very long way from Budapest: she had never thought she would be quite so far from the capital. Well, if she couldn’t go home on Sundays, perhaps her father would be able to visit her. But then, Árkod was almost on the eastern border: it wasn’t somewhere you might just nip over to on a whim. This was worse than she had feared in her darkest hours. What was going to happen to her? Why was everything going against her? What had she done so wrong? The whole business was unimaginable.
“Don’t say a word,” the General said, his eyes fixed firmly on the road. “I beg you, don’t make things more difficult than they need be. It’s bad enough as it is.”
Ever since she had been a child the two of them had been so close that they would often come out with the same remark in the same instant, or one of them would smile at the other and tell them what they were thinking. This time she would say nothing. There was nothing she could hope to achieve by it anyway. She sensed her eyes growing heavy with the strain of holding back tears, and she allowed them to close. She tried to calculate how far it might still be, and what sort of reception she would receive when she arrived, and what the other girls would be like: in short, she was looking for a source of strength in her misery. Then everything became confused and all thought faded away. The next thing she knew was that she had slept, apparently for some time, and that her father had spoken to wake her. The car came to a halt.
She pulled herself up and blinked. The countryside looked just as it had when she had fallen asleep. Trees tossed and swayed in the same watery light. But in the near distance there rose a cluster of tall towers, dozens of them, on a small patch of ground, some standing apart, others in pairs, like twins, and the sky above the city that now appeared beyond them seemed to be impaled on their tops.
“You were up early this morning,” the General said. “I’m glad you managed to sleep for an hour or so. I’m sorry I had to wake you, but we’ll be there in a few minutes, and I won’t be able to say a proper goodbye once we get to the city and the school. It’ll have to be here, with no one else around, just the two of us.”
She gazed at him in silence. Was he going to tell her at last? It was not what she had been expecting.
“Promise me that you will take good care of yourself. As if you were an adult. As if you were not yourself but your mother, the mother who is no longer with us. Do you hear me, Gina?”
She heard, but she did not understand. Why was he suddenly so anxious? Here, alas, there would be little need for her to exercise caution: she would be under constant supervision by the teaching staff.
“Give me a kiss, and, I beg you, when I leave you at the school please don’t cry, or at least not in front of me. I would find that very hard to bear.”
He should not have said that; it was quite unnecessary. He should have known that she would never make a scene in front of strangers. She needed no instruction on what to feel, and she would certainly never expose what was private between them to the eyes of people they did not know. They kissed, awkwardly and unhappily. It was as if the words that had been left unspoken had changed things irreversibly.
They set off again, and a few minutes later they were in the city. Gina could not decide what she felt about it. She had never before set eyes on such a town. Árkod bore little resemblance either to the capital or to any of the provincial cities she had been to. Later, very much later, she came to see that it was indeed like nowhere else, a unique entity, a world set apart, a world of black and white. He drove on until they reached the school. He seemed to know the way rather well. It took them past a large, four-square-looking church, almost as white as chalk, its dome covered in huge glittering stars. Next to it was the entrance to a side road, named after Bishop Matula, and there, straight down at the end, a vast white edifice stood before them: the school itself.
Another squat, four-square building, Gina thought. Four-square, severe, stark-white. Tiny windows covered with iron bars; iron bars across the entrance. It must be terribly old. It isn’t like a school at all. More like a fortress.
Getting inside the fortress was not easy. The barred entrance was shut and they had to ring. They waited for what seemed ages before anyone noticed their arrival. The person who finally opened the grille, a somber man with a mustache, was as squat and stocky as the building itself. The caretaker in Gina’s old school was always smiling, always attentive to the girls, even when he had to tell them off for dropping peanut husks or shrieking in the corridors. This new face now turned towards them and they were questioned in detail about whom they wished to see, and for what exact reason. No glimmer of gaiety or humor ever crossed it—an unmoving face of stone, the face o
f an idol. On the General’s insistence the man finally made a call on the internal telephone, leaving them to stand on the other side of a metal screen that separated the inner vault from the huge courtyard until at last someone, presumably the director, managed to persuade him that the visitors were telling the truth: there really was a Georgina Vitay on the register, and she should be allowed to enter with her father. The porter opened a hinged section of the grille and held it open for them.
They were taken up a side staircase to the first floor, over stone steps worn down in the middle by the tread of countless feet. Once again Gina had the impression that here too the white was somehow whiter, starker than elsewhere, and that, after lively, elegant, teeming Budapest, everything here was broad, four-square and blank. Apart from one or two plants, and rows of black plaques with biblical quotations in gold lettering, the corridors were bare. The door to the director’s office was surmounted by a huge coat of arms—yet another square, if spared the usual black and white by the need for color in heraldry: on a gold background two hands came together in prayer around a Bible or book of psalms; around and above them flowed the semi-circular inscription, Non est currentis. Gina had studied Latin since the third year and she was rather good at it, but she could make nothing of what she read: the three words taken together seemed to make no sense. Non—“not”; est—“is.” Put together: “is not.” Currentis was the present participle of the verb currere, “to run,” in the genitive case. “The person running has nothing” or something like that. But what did he or she not have?
The corridor was empty. No doubt the school term was not due to start until the following day, or perhaps the pupils were not allowed to show themselves outside the classrooms or near the staff room? The General’s hand was already on the door handle when he felt Gina’s touch. Somewhat vexed, he looked round. Why prolong the moment? Doesn’t she realize how hard this is for me too? She’s going to plead with me once again to take her home and not send her away. As if that were possible!
“When will you be getting married?” the girl asked.
The look of stupefaction on his face said more than words could ever have. This was Mimó’s doing! Mimó with her obsession with love and romance and her stupid fantasies: only Mimó could have dreamed this up. My poor little girl, my poor unhappy little girl! But surely she doesn’t really think that that is the reason why I’ve brought her here?
“Never,” he replied. “What sort of idiocy is this? Whatever put that silly idea into your head?”
Her father never lied. The shadowy figure of the unknown woman faded away: clearly her father had no intention of making that change in his life. But why then could she no longer stay with him? Opening the door, he left her no time to ponder these questions. They stepped forward, and were obliged to continue because their presence had been noted from within. In passing over that threshold, Gina was entering her new world, the one that represented her new home, the one that would so totally transform her life: she was like a child being born, or a dying man exhaling his last breath.
The walls of the director’s office seemed even whiter than the white outside, and the man himself blacker than black. There were no pictures, just a few charts and a map of Europe pinned with blue flags representing, as she later discovered, foreign institutions twinned with the school. The full suite of furniture included a fortified cupboard, a second desk of the roll-top variety and, to her surprise, a large tank of fish.
She took it all in as uncertainly as if she had been anaesthetized. She seemed to be in another world, floating on air. It occurred to her that, although her father and the director were addressing each other in the familiar second person and chatting away like old acquaintances, the man had not even shaken her hand. He had merely glanced at her, nodded, and offered a chair to the General but not to her. Her father handed over some papers and an amount of money. It was obviously a large sum, to cover her enrolment, her expenses and the equipment the new school would provide. He was given a receipt, asked to read through some documents and sign his acceptance of the school rules and conditions. One clause detained him for what seemed ages, but in the end he signed.
“Sister Susanna will be the prefect assigned to her,” Gina heard the director say, as if she were not standing in the room right beside him. “Letters should be addressed to the relevant Sister, indicating the name of the pupil.”
“I would prefer to telephone,” said the General, “and not to write. I really don’t have the time. How often can I ring her?”
“Every Saturday. The girls are given their post on Saturday afternoon.”
That was good news. So they would not be totally out of contact. And if they could talk to each other every week, she would always have something to look forward to.
“Otherwise, everything will be as we agreed last time.”
The General nodded briefly, but did not look at Gina. It was as if he was feeling guilty about something. The girl allowed her gaze to stray out of the window. From where she was standing it was clear that the side of the Matula that faced the road was just one part of a vast U-shaped building that stood open to the rear. The director picked up the telephone and asked the porter to take Georgina Vitay’s luggage up to the dormitory and to send Sister Susanna down to his office. She immediately began to wonder if she really would be able to keep up the disciplined and adult bearing that her father expected of her at the school. She felt even less sure of that now than she had been when she thought that he intended to marry. The director had made repeated reference to the Sister Prefect, so she knew that a Deaconess was on her way to meet her, and now there she was in the flesh—a grave-looking young woman, someone who smiled at her at last. Gina would have liked to return that beautiful smile, but she found herself incapable of doing so. Her face remained stiff and unmoving. All she wanted was to escape from the room and put an end to the unbearable tension. Her strength was utterly exhausted.
The director introduced her: “Georgina Vitay.” Then, as to a babe in arms, he instructed her: “Georgina Vitay, say ‘goodbye’ to your father, say ‘goodbye’ to the director, and off you go.”
“Bye,” she muttered, not daring to look at her father.
“That is not how we address a parent,” the director said.
“I wish you good day, Father.” She sighed.
The General stood up, put his hand on her shoulder and, with infinite tenderness, began to steer her in silence towards the door. They were just about to leave the room when Susanna stopped her with a touch. With another smile, she lifted the chain from around Gina’s neck—the newly purchased silver chain with the solemn, frowning moon.
“The girls are not allowed to wear jewelry or other adornments,” she explained. “Would the General be so kind as to take it with him?”
The little moon tinkled softly as it fell on the table in front of her father. Once again there was no exchange of glances between the two of them; both kept their eyes fixed on the carpet. The silence was like that when a bee wanders in through an open window and drones on and on, without ceasing.
“Thank you,” said the Deaconess. Gina stood and waited, not knowing how, in this blunt, four-square world of black and white, she should address the director. Would “good day” be enough?
“I wish you good day, Director, sir,” Susanna sang out to her, as if to a first-year pupil.
“I wish you good day, Director, sir,” she whispered, her neck flushing crimson. Never in her life had she felt so hapless, so perplexed, so utterly out of her depth. Marcelle, Auntie Mimó and her old school had between them taught her everything she needed to know for her life in Budapest. Here, she was totally disoriented; she could make sense of nothing.
“Good day to you,” the director said, and promptly turned his back on her.
In her felt-soled slippers, Susanna glided down the corridor in silence. Beside her, Gina’s leather-soled shoes made an embarrassing clatter and she desperately wanted to take them off. They came t
o a low door cut into the wall, one that might have been designed for a child. It led to another wing of the building, no doubt where the dormitories were. They stopped, Gina turned and looked back. If she could stand there for just a minute or two she might see her father once more, and run towards him, press herself against him and feel the familiar warmth of home, the warmth of her old life, now already further off than a dream. But Susanna took her by the hand and gently led her through the tiny opening.
NEW ACQUAINTANCES
Never before had she been in such a strange building, with such a tangled branching-out of corridors.
As she discovered later, the renowned Bishop Matula Gymnasium was an old monastery dating from the Middle Ages, which explained the massive outer walls, the vaulted ceilings and the unusual shape of the classrooms. The inner walls had been either cut through or taken down and moved to create suitably large spaces out of the old monks’ cells. On the other hand, the furniture and fittings were rather more modern than in Gina’s old school, and everything sparkled with cleanliness. Through a door someone had left open she glimpsed the white tiles of an enormous built-in bath. Susanna immediately closed it, as if it were somehow improper for anyone to set eyes on a place where the girls would strip naked, even when there was no one in there.