Abigail

by Magda Szabo

  When they were finally on their way back to the school, Susanna fell in beside Gina. She had noticed, she told her, the degree of devotion with which she had involved herself in the service, how intently she had followed the sermon, and how thoughtfully and sincerely she had prayed. “Thank you,” she concluded, with a solemn nod of her head. The girl looked at her for a moment in astonishment, then blushed. She was ashamed at having deceived Susanna, however inadvertently. She had been taught to speak the truth, and she was no coward. She opened her mouth to say that she did not deserve these compliments when Susanna turned away and hurried on ahead. Mari Kis, who had heard everything, hissed at her, “Are you mad? You’re not going to tell her you weren’t? Susanna would drop dead if you let on that you were really thinking of God knows what.”

  They were still forbidden to talk, but Susanna and Kalmár were by now a long way ahead and Torma and Mari Kis were busy telling her, sotto voce, what would happen next. When they got back to the school they would go to their various classrooms. First they would sit in their old places: if they hadn’t given her one beforehand Gina could take that of Edit Varga, who had been expelled. Then, after fifteen minutes, their new class teachers would appear, read out the timetable and hand out textbooks and so forth. The purpose of the fifteen minutes’ wait was so that the pupils could exercise restraint and observe a fitting silence to show that they were worthy daughters of the Reformed Church and could do this even when there were no teachers around. A funereal hush would fill the entire building. Neither the director nor the teachers would have the slightest idea that at the end of this fifteen minutes’ morally improving “silence” every class from the third year upwards would be holding their own service, in honor of Mitsi Horn, and getting married. The two lower years were so gormless they would sit and wait with their arms folded for their teachers to appear. They were really green.

  By the time they reached the school some of her classmates’ good humor had begun to rub off on Gina. She did not of course take the game as seriously as they did, having rather different memories and experiences and an altogether different notion of love and marriage, but she did find the general idea rather amusing—of being married to someone or something for a whole year, if only in jest. They had to mount the staircase slowly and calmly, because teachers on duty were standing looking down to observe them. The same had happened at Gina’s old school, but somehow it had felt very different there: the teachers would be chatting or even reading, and did not see it as a complete tragedy if the girls were a bit lively or noisy on their return from the service. Here in the Matula no one was allowed to say a word: you had to place your steps as carefully as in a solemn dance, and the supervisors kept telling you to tread softly and not march or stamp your feet.

  The group now split into their various classes, and for the first time Gina found herself inside a teaching room. Once again she was taken by surprise. It was brightly modern and much better equipped than the Sokoray Atala, which it outclassed in every respect. It was not in the least like a conventional classroom, more like a classical amphitheater. Between the wall at the back and the teacher’s chair there was a semi-circular row of desks every second step up, with a narrow walkway between them and a wider central aisle to allow access. Reproductions and portraits were ranged along the walls, and at the highest point in the room, behind the back rows of desks, there was a projector.

  Here, she thought, they don’t let you copy other people’s work, but at least you can see the blackboard. And, how interesting, it looks as if they use films and slides in the lessons.

  Torma let her in between herself and Mari Kis, at the end of the fourth row. No one had told her what would happen next. As they were taking their seats, an extremely plump girl took down the register hanging beside the door (“Szabó,” Mari Kis said, “Anikó Szabó.”) and with Murai standing beside her began to read out the list of names. She pronounced them slowly and clearly, stopping after each one and following it with an item from the inventory.

  —Ari: Pasteur.

  —Bánki: Olympian Zeus.

  —Barta: Homer.

  —Cziller: István Bocskai.

  —Dudás: Emperor Joseph the Second.

  —Gáti: Rodin.

  —Jackó: Johann Sebastian Bach.

  —Kis: “The Laocoön Group.”

  —Kovács: Mendelev.

  —Lengyel: Galileo.

  —Murai: Shakespeare.

  —Nacák: Goethe.

  —Oláh: The unknown chronicler of King Béla.

  —Rideg: Michelangelo’s David.

  —Salm: Bishop Matula.

  —Szabó: Friedrich August Quenstedt.

  —Tatár: The Cloak of Ivan the First.

  —Torma: The Via Appia.

  —Vajda: The Graduation Song.

  —“All done!”

  “Not all done,” said Mari Kis crossly. “You haven’t finished. What about Vitay?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Szabó, peering into the register. “Number 20. The empty aquarium.”

  Oh God, not that! At first she had thought the whole thing quite amusing, far more so than she had expected: Torma, married to the Appian Way, where she had so often strolled with Marcelle and which now came so vividly to mind, the two of them passing through the Porta Sebastiana and moving on towards the distant tomb of Caecilia Metella, and Mari Kis as the wife not of one person—or in this case object—but of three, since the Laocoön group consisted of three statues . . . or indeed four, because there was also the serpent: that was so funny it almost brought tears to your eyes. The girls were almost prostrate with laughter at the husbands they had been given; of course they didn’t dare laugh out loud, and having to suppress it made the atmosphere in the room all the more hilarious and effervescent: it was as if they had all suddenly become drunk. Rideg, who happened to be sitting beside her, pointed out that her husband had only a head, because that was all that the picture on the wall showed, which made it even funnier—to have a husband whose body stopped at the neck. But while Szabó had immediately accepted the husband she had been given, Gina’s own pleasure in the proceedings had come to a sudden end. It was amusing enough to be married to an empty aquarium, but it also made her angry. She stood up to protest. Could she please have another husband? She certainly didn’t need an empty aquarium. She wasn’t going to take part in such a stupid game as that.

  “You can’t do that,” whispered Szabó, not crossly but wanting to explain. “It’s against the rules either to choose or to change. You’re number twenty, and that’s what you get. Don’t waste your time.”

  “It’s the rule,” Mari Kis added, in a whisper.

  A rule indeed! Gina shrugged her shoulders and replied that that wasn’t a rule, it was a piece of downright stupidity.

  “You can’t do this!” Szabó whispered again. “It just isn’t possible. Everyone gets married. It’s the custom here. Do you think I’m happy with this Friedrich August Quenstedt? I don’t even know what it is!”

  “I’m not going to have an aquarium,” said Gina. “I’m not going to join in. Don’t any of you understand?”

  “Come on,” said Mari Kis, wagging her head. “Don’t be silly. This is one of our most important traditions. It has been ever since Mitsi Horn got engaged, and it’s great fun. If it’s an aquarium, so it’s an aquarium. Isn’t an aquarium human too? I never saw the likes of you.”

  Her voice was a mere whisper, and her tone was neither hectoring nor sharp, but it put Gina in such a rage she could no longer think clearly. If Mari had never seen the likes of her, well, they hadn’t seen anything yet. Gina could be impetuous and short-tempered: Marcelle had often told her off for it. The exchange had driven her to the point where she was speaking without giving any thought to what she was saying.

  “I don’t want any of this, I’m not going to have any part in it and I’m not interested in your stupid traditions. I’ve got a real man courting me!”

  “A real man?” Torma protes
ted. “How can you possibly have a man courting you when you’re shut up in here with the rest of us? Stop moaning! Why can’t you see the funny side?”

  Gina completely forgot that they were supposed to be sitting in silence. At the top of her voice she shouted that she didn’t see anything funny in their stupid games—they were all a bunch of idiots. She wasn’t used to people who behaved like that. Her friends in Budapest were the normal ones, and that included her suitors. (She only had one, but it sounded better in the plural.)

  There was an instant silence, a silence she should have realized was quite unnatural, even in the Matula. But she was thinking only of herself, of her anger and her feelings, and she failed to notice it. All she wanted to do now was to tear the shoelace from her plaits, run out of the room and hammer with her fists on the iron-studded door to be let out.

  “Very well,” said Szabó. “If that’s what you want. It isn’t in the rules, but never mind. Vitay won’t be taking part with the rest of us. Vitay will have no husband. She’ll be an old maid.”

  Gina felt she would explode. She had thought about her coming marriage a thousand times. She ran her eye over Szabó, from top to toe—the plump belly, the stumpy legs, the whole shapeless body almost bursting out of the ugly uniform.

  “You’re the one who’ll be an old maid,” she shouted. She failed to notice that at this point all eyes had turned away from her. The attention of the class was elsewhere. They had seen something she had not.

  “Who would want to marry you, you horrible fatty? Who would ever want to kiss you?”

  Szabó did not blush; she went deathly pale. Gina immediately realized she should never have let herself say that. Szabó was truly, alarmingly, morbidly overweight, like someone with a long-standing hormone problem. She did not attempt to reply. She would not have been able to even if the offence had not left her speechless, because the whole class had now risen to their feet. Gina, who like Murai and Szabó had been facing away from both them and the door, now turned towards it. There, gazing steadily at her, was Kalmár.

  “What manner of speech is this?” he demanded. “Who was shouting in that disgraceful way? Who on earth are you?”

  The class were all standing to attention. How wonderful it would have been just then if someone had come to her assistance, had tried to defend her, or at least to offer the man some explanation. But the others just stood there, gazing at Kalmár in silence. Gina had refused to join the fifth year in their game, and now, in her hour of need, they rejected her in turn.

  “Who are you?” Kalmár asked again. “I haven’t seen you before.”

  “Georgina Vitay,” she muttered.

  “Shouting in the fifteen minutes’ silence, and such language?”

  “She’s a new girl,” Torma said softly. Gina’s heart filled with gratitude. It was Torma who had spoken—Torma who was married to the Via Appia.

  “You’ve given a fine first impression of yourself, I must say. And Szabó and Murai, why were you standing next to my chair, and what were you doing with the class inventory?”

  Szabó and Murai were nowhere to be seen. They had melted away like snowflakes in the warmth of the room, absorbed back into the protective body of the class. Only Gina was left standing alone. No one came to her aid. Kalmár took his seat at the teacher’s desk and, without the slightest anger in his voice, as if there were no point in paying too much attention to this unpleasant episode at the start of the new term, said, almost laconically: “The girl who was shouting will leave the room.”

  He did not have to say it twice. Gina fled. She was shaking, as if in a fever. She now hated everything to do with her new school with a violence she would not have thought herself capable of. As soon as she was outside she burst into tears, leaned against the row of lockers that ran along the wall and wept so furiously it made her face ugly. Having nothing to dry them with she dabbed at her tears with the back of her hand: her bag was still on the bench inside the room.

  For the second time she was being spoken to before she realized. It was only when a hand was placed on her shoulder that she noticed that someone was standing there. She looked up and found Kőnig.

  “What’s the matter, my girl?” he asked. “What has happened to you?”

  How could she explain, to this person who had stood by and said nothing when the monogram was stolen from his hat? She offered no reply; she pulled herself away from him and began to weep even more furiously, as if she would never stop.

  “What’s going on here?” another voice demanded.

  A stockily built man in black, with a stern, expressionless face: the director himself. An altogether worthier opponent.

  “Why is Georgina Vitay standing in the corridor?” Gedeon Torma wanted to know.

  “I think she’s unwell,” Kőnig said quickly. “The poor girl is not at all well.”

  No! Not him! She didn’t need him to defend her. Gina drew herself up and said that she had been sent out of the room.

  “Sent out of the room? In your first lesson? And for what reason, may I ask?”

  She hesitated for just an instant, then almost shouted at him: because she had refused to be married to an aquarium!

  She knew that as long as she lived she would never forget the look on the man’s face.

  “It’s a game they play,” Kőnig explained, though no one had asked him. “They are very young, these girls. Girls of this age often play at getting married.”

  “Very interesting,” said the director, “but I don’t see the connection. How did you come to be playing this game during the fifteen minutes’ silence? And what’s all this about an aquarium? Don’t look at me like that. Answer me!”

  “Everyone gets married during the period of silence,” Gina whispered.

  Kőnig’s eyes flickered behind his enormous glasses, and only then did it dawn on Gina that this was the one thing she should never have said. She had betrayed the great secret of the school, the legacy of Mitsi Horn that had been kept from the teachers since 1914. But her regret lasted only a moment. What did it matter to her? People who tried to force her to marry an aquarium were beneath her consideration.

  “Even more interesting,” said the director, nodding his head. He opened the door to his office. “You must tell me the whole story. So the fifth year have all been married, in the first half hour of lessons after returning from the service? Come this way, Vitay.”

  He pushed the door wider and went in. Gina followed him. Kőnig tried to slip in with them, but the director told him he wished to interview Vitay on his own, and, very politely, shut the door behind him.

  CAST OUT

  The moment she finished detailing her grievances Gina’s anger began to melt away. She was left instead with a feeling of despair: what had happened in the last half hour had been the result of something utterly trivial—a simple, good-hearted bit of fun—and she had responded with blind anger. Poor Szabó, trapped in her fat, ungainly little body! How could she have had the heart to insult her? And those other poor girls! They had accepted her without question and invited her to share in the one thing that lightened their lives inside these oppressive walls—their games, their jokes, their harmless petty pranks. What stupid pride had made her say that she would never accept the aquarium and that she refused to take part? She made up her mind that as soon as her present difficulties were behind her she would stop being so proud, and would ask pardon of Szabó and the other girls in all sincerity.

  The director remained silent for a moment, then he informed her that her behavior had been so utterly disgraceful she properly deserved to be expelled from the school, but instead she would be forbidden to set foot outside the premises for a fortnight. She would be allowed to go into the garden but not to visit the town. As for the fifth year, he had still to decide how to punish them. What he had just been told was so scandalous, so abominable, so outrageous, so base, so wicked, so unworthy—that a group of girls in an institution renowned for raising its girls in a true Chris
tian manner. . . ! He might be forced to involve the entire teaching staff, and perhaps the school governors as well. But for the moment he would be sending Gina back to her class while he continued his investigations.

  Kőnig was still hovering in the corridor, but the director failed to notice him. Gina felt almost sick with remorse. If only she had not implicated the whole fifth year! If only she could have held her tongue! But it was too late now. As so often before, she had acted without thinking. When she and the director reentered the classroom she was met on all sides by a stony stare. Having so recently been sent out, she did not dare return to her seat but hovered near the door, like a bearer of bad news. Kalmár immediately stepped over to greet the director, shook his hand and made a bow. He scarcely glanced at Gina. That really hurt.

  “I hear that we are all about to be married,” said the director, “to various objects. Show me the class inventory, so that I can see who or what has had the good fortune to marry the pupils of year five.”

  The inventory was still on the desk where Szabó had left it. Kalmár picked it up, looking bewildered. When the director repeated to him what Gina had said he lowered his eyes, as if reluctant to look at his charges. The man in black ran his eye down to the end of the page, and Gina discovered for herself what Torma had said it was like when he started to shout. He bawled out his rage and indignation in a voice that seemed barely human: pagan gods and pious bishops, long-dead German scholars and famous poets married off to girls whose education had been entrusted to his care! The fifth year kept their eyes fixed on the floor. Gina learned later that this was what you did when you were being reprimanded, to show your sense of guilt and remorse. Then one of the heads looked up, emerging as from the depths of a pool. It was the slim, intelligent face of Mari Kis. And Mari Kis did not just raise her head, she indicated that she wished to speak. This was an act of such daring that the director stopped in mid-flight. Mari stood up and apologized on behalf of the class, to both the senior management and the form teacher, but what Georgina Vitay had told him was based on a complete misunderstanding. They had never had the slightest intention of playing such a game with the great men, or any of the objects, listed in the class inventory. It was just that Georgina Vitay was so homesick they had wanted to distract her with a bit of silly nonsense. The sole purpose was to amuse the poor heartbroken girl from Budapest and make her laugh. She was so very unhappy they wanted to make her laugh with a bit of silly nonsense, but she hoped in good taste. She now realized, of course, that however well they might have meant it they should not have led her so astray, because what they did was an offence against the ethos of the school, and she humbly begged pardon of the director and all the senior teachers, and of Georgina Vitay herself. She had meant no harm, and she regretted from the bottom of her heart the way it had turned out. She had let Murai and Anikó Szabó in on the joke and asked them to help, but the rest of the class had known nothing about it. It was nothing to do with a tradition, and how could it have been? Unfortunately Vitay had misunderstood this well-intentioned joke, and instead of being amused she had got very angry, and that was why she, Mari Kis, once again wished to apologize.