by Magda Szabo
“You aren’t singing?” It was Susanna.
She was standing behind her. Gina had not noticed her come in. The gratitude she felt rose up in her and she had to stop herself from rushing towards the dear, kind person who had saved her without even knowing what she was saving her from. But she stayed where she was. She knew that any such behavior would bring instant correction—girls were not allowed to touch, let alone kiss, a member of staff. And she realized that if Susanna was indeed protecting her she would want her to keep very quiet about it.
“Your time is up,” the prefect said. “Your class have finished their sewing, so you can go and join in their games in the day room.”
Gina left the room walking very circumspectly, holding her Bible out in front of her and taking care not to jingle the coins in her pockets. Susanna did not follow her, so she went down to the end of the corridor and poured the money into her bag. Then she slipped into the day room, fully aware that the Saturday relaxation period before supper would not bring her very much pleasure. The fifth year knew some rather spiteful little games and this session would give free rein to their mood: the teacher in charge that evening was Kőnig, who never seemed to notice anything.
The game consisted of one person leaving the room while the others decided who she was supposed to be. She would then be called back in, and her task was to find out who they had decided that person was by putting questions to people she called out by name. Oláh drew the first lot. She slipped out quickly while Kőnig dozed. It was impossible to guess what he was thinking about, but they could be sure that he wouldn’t hear a word, and even if he did hear he would have no idea what was going on.
Mari Kis nominated Gina with a toss of her chin. That’s right, Gina thought. Go ahead with your little prank, you lucky people. Pretend that Oláh is now Vitay, and use your questions and answers to show what a nasty, loathsome person I am. Enjoy your little frolic if it makes you happy. Our soldiers are dying at the front and no one in the country knows the truth. And neither do any of you.
Oláh was called back in and put her first question to Torma.
“Human or thing?”
“Human,” said Torma with a smile.
Oláh turned towards Ari. “Real or fictional?”
“Real,” Ari confirmed.
“Am I a boy or a girl? Salm.”
“A girl. Feminini generis.”
“Do I know this person? Lengyel.”
“Only too well.”
“Am I a Matula girl?”
“That’s what you think you are.”
“Do people like me? Vajda.”
“About as much as a goat likes having his throat cut.”
“Good God, why? Mari Kis.”
“Because you’re scum.”
Oláh’s eyes lit up. She’s got it, thought Gina. Who else could it be but me? Who else here is liked about as much as a goat likes having his throat cut, who isn’t a real member of the school or a true member of this form, and who is considered scum?
“Good God! What have I done?” was the next question. Oláh’s eyes shone with suppressed mirth as she gazed round her classmates. Equally amused, they returned her gaze but said nothing.
“So what can I possibly have done? Vitay.”
“You stupidly betrayed a secret,” Gina replied quietly. Everyone’s eyes were now trained on her. Her face showed no emotion. Vitay was neither complaining nor angry, or even embarrassed. She had denied nothing, nor had she pretended not to understand the thrust of the question. As strange as the feeling was, they could not shake off the impression that she was playing with them, but playing the way an adult does when joining in with the children. But that made no sense. If she wasn’t hurt, or fuming with rage, then what was the point of it all? Oláh was thoroughly confused. She had expected an entirely different answer, something altogether more tearful and angry, that would have set her up for the final thrust. But what could she ask her now? She thought the game would have been more fun than this.
“I know who I am,” she said sulkily. “Who’s going next?”
By the rules of the game it should have been the person whose reply had produced the answer. But Vitay? Could they let her join in? How would that work? They couldn’t have the same person again, and there was no one else who would make it worth the while. The class stood silent. Not even Mari Kis could think of a solution.
Kőnig looked up. Strange as it might seem, it was as if the sudden absence of noise had a greater effect on him than its opposite.
“Who was this person,” he asked, “that you identified so quickly?”
“Augustus Caesar,” Szabó replied sulkily. “But we aren’t playing anymore. May we talk instead?”
“But of course,” said Kőnig. And he sank back into his ruminations.
Gina went over to the window and stood with her elbows resting on the sill. She couldn’t see out because the view of the garden was blocked by the blackout lining, but at least she was away from the others and did not have to hear Mari Kis telling everyone about her latest crime, and how it surpassed all the others. She tried to imagine what it would be like if every window in the country could be left open and every street flooded with light, and there was no war and none of this dying, no burdensome secrets, no danger or destruction. She thought about her father, and the car, now approaching Budapest, its horn sounding from time to time, and remembered that moment when it sang out to her Gina my child, and she thought of Feri, who almost certainly must know everything her father knew, being so clever and wise, and so unlike anyone else she knew; he was part of Auntie Mimó’s circle, he always spoke of her father with great affection and he had so often asked if he could visit her at their home, even though, as she also remembered, every time she raised the subject the General had replied that no officers would ever be allowed there and Lieutenant Kuncz was no exception. Perhaps he especially wanted to keep Feri away from the house to avoid putting him in danger? But surely a lieutenant would attract less suspicion than a general?
The bell rang for supper. Kőnig—it singled him out for special derision—was chronically afraid of catching a cold: even if he was going by way of the internal corridors rather than through the open courtyard he would always tie a scarf round his throat and take his overcoat, which he kept hanging on the window latch instead of on the rack. As the class were about to leave he lifted it down and discovered to his amazement that there was not a single button on it. Oh my God, tomorrow’s church collection! Gina thought. They’ve stolen his buttons. They must have started collecting already. And though her mind was filled with other, more serious matters, she almost laughed at the faces he was pulling, and at Mari Kis dancing around him with a face of sympathy and concern and asking had he been on the tram that day, because, you know, people often lost their buttons in the crush, and, what a shame, they were such lovely pale-gray buttons too, every one as bright as a coin, and how hard it was going to be to find new ones to replace them. Kőnig moaned and groaned, and then, as always, resigned himself to what had happened and led the class off to supper.
Gina ate only half of hers, pleading her illness. Yes, she was on a special regime but no, she didn’t want any of the stewed fruit, she really couldn’t eat a thing. Susanna asked her who she wanted to give it to. Gina stared helplessly in front of her, knowing that none of the girls would accept it. But then that notorious gourmand Kőnig called out from the staff table and put in his bid for the unwanted delicacy. The other teachers lowered their eyes, as did Gedeon Torma, fighting down the urge to bark a reprimand at the glutton. Gina flew to Kőnig’s side with the dish and set it down before him, desperately wanting to see it disappear and not to have to look at it again: now at least she wouldn’t have to explain why the class had refused it. Miss Gigus and Eszter Sáfár muttered something to one another, Kalmár shook his head, and Murai whispered, “This Kőnig is capable of anything.” They were even angrier with him than usual because if he hadn’t been such a barrel of lard
Vitay would have had to pass the wretched bowl of stewed cherries round the table.
Things were calmer during evening prayers. The Chaplain was talking about the honor of being a Christian woman. His theme was that, “As the scented rose adorns the rose bush, so do the virtues of long-suffering, patience, gentleness and neighborly love adorn a Christian maiden.”
All my life I have been a wild thing, Gina reflected. I am impatient and impulsive, and I have never learned to love people who annoy me or try to hurt me. Now I shall try to learn these virtues, and I shall do so for the sake of my father: for him I shall seek to be gentle and patient.
She looked around, though to do so was considered inappropriate and was in fact forbidden, and caught the eye of Piroska Torma. Torma gazed steadily at her for a moment, then turned her eyes away. It was only later that Gina learned that she was thinking the same about herself, how she lacked these adorning virtues, as did almost everyone else in the class, and how could they hope to be welcomed at the Lord’s table at Christmas if they had not themselves forgiven Vitay?
The class did not go for their usual bath before bedtime, having already done so after shoveling the coal. Instead Susanna allowed them an extra hour of reading or quiet conversation, as they preferred, in the dormitory. Being back again was a change for Gina, and, after the loneliness and silence of the sick bay, a welcome one. But no one spoke to her, not even to say hurtful things. She was not mentioned once: it was as if she had never existed. She made no attempt to read; she just snuggled down in the bed in which she had not slept for a week and thought about her father, and their last conversation, and what she had been taught about the war by Kalmár and at her old school, and what people had said about it at Auntie Mimó’s.
Salm stood guard at the door while the girls giggled away. Tubby little Szabó was doing an elaborate oriental dance in her nightdress; the others had gathered round her and were doubled up with laughter. Gina wanted to fall asleep quickly, but it was impossible. Too much had happened during the day, she had far too much to think about, and somehow the bed felt different; it felt more like the one in the sick bay, even though she had made it herself the previous Sunday morning. Of course! Susanna had been poking around under the mattress; she must have put it back differently . . .
It was now very late. Only the nightlight was on, and the class, worn out by their games and their laughter, were deep in slumber. She decided to get up and deal with the problem: she really needed to sleep. From now on she would have to be strong and fit, and she had promised to take better care of herself. She slipped out from under the quilt, pushed back the sheet and gently lifted the mattress to make it level and put it back the way it had been. She slid her fingers underneath it, and drew them back as quickly as if they had been cut by a knife. For a few minutes she squatted beside the bed, her heart beating wildly; then she recovered herself, pulled out everything her hands had felt and spread it out on the bedcover: her powder puff, her comb, her pocket diary, her purse, the photograph album, the key to the house—everything that had been there before, and then . . . the letter, the farewell note, the one she had so earnestly begged Mari Kis to give her back. There it lay, the very page she had torn out, unharmed and intact. But the words she had written seemed to have grown in number.
I despise the lot of you. Carry on with your stupid little games in this prison. I’m leaving.
I KNEW WHEN YOU TRIED TO RUN AWAY THAT YOU WOULD NOT DO SO WITHOUT LEAVING A NOTE. AS SOON AS YOU LEFT FOR MITSI HORN’S I GATHERED UP YOUR BELONGINGS, INCLUDING THIS UNFORTUNATE NOTE. TEAR IT UP AND MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR CLASS—THEY ARE A FINE BUNCH OF GIRLS. IF YOU ARE IN DIFFICULTIES, WHY NOT TURN TO ME? YOUR SECRET IS NOT THE ONLY ONE I KEEP.
ABIGAIL
AIR-RAID PRACTICE
All this time she had been crouching down beside the bed. Now she fell to her knees and laid her head on the bedcover next to the letter and the precious mementos of home. Her eyelids began to droop, as if weighed down by the immensity of what had occurred, as if the reality of what she had seen was too blinding to contemplate. Abigail, you worker of miracles, you who always come to our aid, who resolve all our little difficulties, why did I not fathom your secret when I was first told about you? What, in my contempt for the credulity of the others, when I still thought of them as childish and stupid, made me think that you too were just another example of Matula imbecility? Why was I so slow to understand that in this forest of rules and instructions and prohibitions there might be someone, not a mere stone statue but a real person hiding behind it, ready to help anyone with a genuine need? My classmates are totally unforgiving, and any kindness shown here by the staff, when it is ever shown, is remote and impersonal, simply the way of the school. This place gives me security, but there is no warmth. I ran away because I was desperate for human contact. I did not know then that I am not alone, that there was someone here who cared about me, was here to help me, who had been watching over me without my ever suspecting it or asking for it, and doing so even when I refused to believe that such a thing was possible.
Who are you, Abigail? You live with us here in the Matula, you move among us, shout or smile at us, are so familiar to us that you can walk in and out of the dormitories without attracting attention, or rummage in our pockets and leaf through our exercise books. You always know what we are whispering about, you see everything, and yet no one ever even notices you. There is someone inside these fortress walls who lives a secret life, who keeps their face hidden, someone who shouts at us and scolds us, treats us either with obsequious politeness or presents him or herself as harsh and overbearing, so that they can maintain that disguise and move around freely; someone who understands that we are all far from our parents and relations at home, and also knows how much the school demands from us, that it is often more than we can bear, and that it puts us in situations in which any one of us might come to grief. Who are you, Abigail, you whose true face no one has ever seen, whom we know only by the actions that you’ve been carrying out inside these walls for thirty years? You must be either the same person who heard the young Mitsi Horn weeping or you are constantly being replaced by a new Abigail, like the Cumaean Sybil. She changed too. A fresh young priestess would always take over, don the dread robes of the underworld, and continue the tradition. Are you old, or young? A woman, or a man? What does your real face look like? When I stand before you in your everyday form, do I like you or am I afraid of you? How could you know me so well that you knew I wanted to run away, and that once I had decided to do so I would never go without leaving a note? If you hadn’t discovered that, or worked it out for yourself, how could you have been so sure that I would do what I did? You couldn’t possibly have overheard what I told Susanna in the sick bay. If only I could see you, and take you by the hand! As it is, I can’t even thank you for what you have done. Who are you, Abigail?
She opened her eyes again. The sheet of white paper lay there before her eyes, but its physical form told her nothing. Any member of the school, any of the teachers, the deaconesses, or indeed the pupils, could have shaped those capital letters; the school had its own distinctive way of writing them, one that imitated the slender elegance and open clarity of print. So that was no help. If she wanted to track down Abigail’s secret she would have to follow a different trail. The person she was trying to identify must be truly remarkable if they did not share the general Matula view of what was unacceptable or indeed criminal. They would have to be immensely brave to take on the enormous risk that one day they might be exposed. Any one of their colleagues with different ideas about how to educate children might easily realize who they were and unmask them. But which member of staff was clever and resourceful enough to come unfailingly to the aid of those needing help, in so many different situations?
And thus she knelt before the familiar objects, racking her brain and making no progress. Abigail would not be Abigail if she or he were the sort of person who might easily give themselves away through their actions. It mu
st be someone very un-Abigail-like, someone, say, like Gedeon Torma, with his dreadful bellowings and unbelievable demands for conformity, or Susanna, with her puritanical streak that could verge on the terrifying, or even Kalmár, who was so aloof and so distant, and so strict. It could be any member of the teaching staff who was adept and quick-witted enough, able to react at lightning speed, and a good enough actor never to have given herself or himself away in all these years, moving quietly among the girls at every level in the school, and standing with arms opened wide behind any one of them who might slip on the narrow path that wound through the thousand-and-one prohibitions and injunctions of the Matula, ready to catch her as she fell and hold her until she could stand firmly again on her own two feet.
Midnight.
Yes, Abigail, I am coming. I know that you want me to sleep.
She stood up and put on her dressing gown. She gathered up her newly recovered possessions and the letter, and tiptoed out to the washroom. The first thing she did was to destroy the piece of paper, tearing it into pieces small enough to make it impossible for anyone to reassemble it; then she took her belongings out of her handbag and laid them where she had on the first occasion, under the box of geraniums. On the way back she met no one, and none of the girls so much as stirred in their slumbers. She put her bed in order and lay down. Now at last she could sleep. For the first time since she had fallen out with the class she felt that someone, some unknown person inside those massive walls, was thinking about her, and had smiled, she fancied, at the look on her face when she discovered her precious belongings.
The next morning the groans of the others told her that the wake-up bell had rung half an hour earlier than usual. No one knew what was happening until Susanna ordered them to line up and at last they were told. The service would not be taken by the Chaplain. It was to be a visiting priest from the city, one of the leading lights of Árkod theology and a well-known preacher. Especially good behavior would be expected from every one of them, and the purpose of the early waking was to give the prefects time to make sure that their charges would rise to the occasion, would behave as they should in church, and would set forth to hear the word of the Lord immaculate in both person and dress, and with their hair done with a respectful and modest grace, in honor of the distinguished speaker.