by Magda Szabo
The collective punishment did not much bother the fifth year, and Gina prepared for her visit to the staff residence as if it were merely a social occasion. When her lessons were over she changed into her dark-blue uniform. On her way to supper Miss Gigus asked her why she had put it on. She replied, loudly enough for everyone around to hear, that she was going to the staff quarters to apologize to Mr. Kőnig for insulting him in a satirical essay she had written and she thought the uniform would be a sign of respect. Miss Gigus turned round abruptly and raced off to the teachers’ table as if fired from a gun: now the class knew that everyone in the building would be aware of what had really happened the day before and what would follow that afternoon. Within minutes the entire staff, with the exception of the director, before whom they always exercised discretion, and of course Kőnig himself, would know too. The whole school would watch in fascination as the funeral procession of Vitay, Kalmár and Susanna set out, supposedly to complete the poor girl’s punishment but in fact to insult him as he had never been insulted in his whole life, and to destroy any last vestige of hope he might still be nursing in his more optimistic moments that the scurrilous essay had not been directed at him. But for the moment he was in excellent humor, asking for a third helping of the vegetables. Miss Gigus did not dare look at him.
The excitement during the meal was so palpable that the director had to speak sharply to the girls, something he had never had to do before. It was the turn of the seventh year to provide the reader, and fate had decreed that Déak would be the one to continue the soul-uplifting tale from Switzerland. It had reached the point where the virtuous maiden had resolved, from a mixture of humility, duty, affection and gratitude to her adoptive mother, to offer her hand not to the upstanding Theophilus but to her godson, a gibbering, pockmarked, hunchbacked youth, and to submit to a life of loving self-sacrifice in which she would fill his gloomy, bumbling days with joy and sunshine. The girls were shaking with suppressed laughter. Every one of them knew by what magisterial coup Kalmár had seen off Kőnig’s claim on Susanna, and they felt that if she were capable of falling in love with someone simply out of pity then it was only right that she be shown the error of her ways.
The atmosphere was so electric that the director asked each of the teachers in turn what was agitating the pupils. The only one who offered a coherent reply was Kőnig, who told him in all innocence that even in a tranquil institution like the Matula people could be affected by the war, or perhaps it was the change in the weather, because young girls were very highly strung.
In the few seconds she spent standing outside Susanna’s door waiting for Kalmár to join them, Gina felt a strange sensation rising in her, as if she were slightly drunk, but when she finally set off for the staff residence, with the two adults on either side, the exhilaration melted away. She felt no pity for Kőnig. In fact she found the whole business rather distasteful. She and he were mere bit-part players in a drama acted out between Kalmár and Susanna; it was a matter between the two of them and there was nothing she could contribute. Susanna was downcast and deathly pale, Kalmár simultaneously offended and triumphant. As they passed the window with the view of the niche in the wall Gina wondered whether, if Kőnig had known earlier in the day what was in store for him and had written one of those messages to Abigail to tell her that he was facing a crisis, she would have come to his aid? Did she help everyone out, or was it just the pupils?
Kalmár unlocked the grille at the entrance to the corridor, and for the first time ever Gina found herself inside the staff residence. The idea of having to repeat the story of the Sokoray Atala in the presence of the man she had humiliated did not now seem quite so amusing, though she was sure he would not rage at her but simply behave as if nothing important had happened. Kalmár knocked on the door, waited for his colleague to answer, and stepped back to let Susanna enter first.
By the time Gina was inside, Kőnig was already on his feet. He must have been marking work: there was a pen in his hand and a pile of exercise books on his desk. Now her heart really began to thump, and she felt desperate to get back to the other girls. His room was beautiful, fitted out with exquisite taste—even in this most difficult moment she could see that—and it took her by surprise. The larger items of furniture must have been his own: the school would never have provided him with all those antiques. The two pictures on the walls were the work of well-known painters, in fact masterpieces. She had been to museums and galleries with Marcelle often enough to know that.
“Aha,” he said, and stood there smiling. “This is a surprise! Welcome, all of you. Do please have a seat.”
Despite the invitation there was nowhere for Gina to sit. There were only three chairs in the room. She could not directly see the look on Susanna’s face, but she sensed what it must be from the way she was holding herself: “This is going to be very unpleasant, so be on your guard.” Kőnig’s smile, which she could see very clearly since Kalmár had placed her directly opposite him, vanished, then immediately returned, broad, radiant and unshakably serene.
“Mr. Kőnig,” Kalmár began, in the tone he reserved in his history lessons for announcing national disasters, “we have come to you on behalf of year five, the Sister as their class prefect, myself as class tutor, and Vitay as the guilty person concerned.”
“Guilty?” Kőnig looked puzzled. “Of what is she guilty?”
There was no reply. Kalmár embarked on his important revelation, but before he got to the point Kőnig burst out laughing.
“You aren’t still bothered about that essay she wrote? The poor girl has already had her punishment. She had to spend the whole night copying out a psalm, as I heard. I gave the class an unsuitable subject and the blame is entirely mine: write a satire, anything goes, and that includes insults. They are young and inexperienced. Vitay simply described me as she sees me.”
This was even more painful than she had feared. She stared at the carpet and could hardly breathe.
“Of course, even if that is how she sees me, she should not have said so. But she is still very young. She’ll learn better in due course. Is that not so, Vitay?”
Gina did not reply. What could she possibly say?
“Mr. Kőnig is not in the least like that,” Susanna said in a hoarse whisper, though her voice was usually strong and clear.” Your teacher has a noble heart, magnanimous and forgiving. Thank him, Georgina, and beg his pardon.”
“Thank you,” Gina responded, almost inaudibly. “I beg your pardon.”
“Now look, this really isn’t important. It’s not a tragedy and it wasn’t one yesterday. It’s just that these are difficult times and I didn’t want to worry the Bishop or the director. So let’s just forget about it. Do you like dried plums?”
The question took them so much by surprise that they just stared at him. He dipped his hand into an elegant wooden box in which dark plums were lined up like soldiers on parade.
“Mitsi Horn brought these this morning. They are from her own garden. Do try one, Sister.”
Susanna could only shake her head, and Kalmár also declined. Gina stood rooted to the spot. More than ever she wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else. Once again she had the feeling of being caught up in a play, a play in which she had a totally insignificant role and whose plot was impossible to follow: just as the tragedy reached its climax one of the actors smiled and asked the others if they would like a dried plum. Seeing that no one was ready for a little light refreshment, Kőnig ate one himself, a gesture that made it perfectly clear that he had no idea how he could be of further use to his visitors, that he had drawn a line under the matter of Vitay’s essay and it was no longer of interest to him. It was obvious that the visit had been futile. His insatiable appetite and total indifference struck them as downright insulting; Kalmár had been denied the pleasure of embarrassing him, because he had not been embarrassed; Susanna was left feeling that there was nothing she could do or say. The man had not been in the least disturbed in the way she had expected; he seemed
interested only in his stomach, and perhaps in Mitsi Horn. It isn’t worth even trying to make fun of him, Gina thought. He’s so utterly insensitive he doesn’t even notice.
They took their leave. Kalmár went back to his room and Susanna to the chapel, where Gina felt sure she would give way to tears, something she would never normally do. Once again Kőnig had failed to grasp what he had done. Perhaps he had not consciously intended to reject this second approach by her because he had simply not seen it for what it was, but he could scarcely have made it more obvious that he was perfectly happy on his own.
She made her way back to the day room. There she was besieged by questions not only from her own class but from messengers from the two senior years wondering how the story had ended. Her description of the elephantine placidity Kőnig had shown was received with bitter disappointment. They had expected something quite different, either far more serious or simply farcical. She had to tell the story at least ten times, and was still being interrogated when they went out into the garden. They had “chosen” to go there for a short break instead of their usual afternoon walk, after the director had sent his assistant Suba to tell them that he had decided the garden would provide them with all the fresh air and exercise they needed, but if anyone missed the shop windows and the passers-by and would rather go into town, they should think of the Bishop’s visit of the day before, and the satirical essays. They wandered around the wintry enclosure no longer feeling quite so happy. The statue of Abigail gazed on in silence.
It was later that same evening that she spoke again. Gina found another note in one of the exercise books in which she wrote her homework. The message was rather chilling.
THERE MUST BE NO MORE OF THESE SCANDALS. THE REST OF THE STAFF ARE NOT KŐNIG, NEITHER IS THE DIRECTOR. THIS IS AN ORDER. ABIGAIL.
THE ATTACK ON THE AQUARIUM; THE GENERAL’S FAREWELL
The message reawakened Gina’s curiosity and fired her determination to find out who was so attentively following her fate from afar—this unknown person who knew so precisely what was happening inside the school walls and continued to help her. Over the next several days she spent every spare moment wandering around near the statue. She slipped out into the garden at the most unlikely moments, even when she had not had permission, receiving several reprimands in the process. But she saw nothing. She met not a single soul, came across not a trace of the real Abigail. Mari Kis asked her why she was always sneaking out there. She said she was dying of curiosity to know who was hiding behind the statue. “Don’t be so stupid,” Mari told her. Gina was surprised by the anger in her voice. “Nearly everyone has tried, but no one has ever succeeded. Even Aradi, and she’s really clever. Abigail taught her a firm lesson. She realized that Aradi was trying to find out who she was, so she wrote and told her not to poke her nose in or she would come to the same end as Psyche in the myth—you remember: she dropped burning oil from her lamp on the sleeping Cupid and he woke and left her forever. If you carried on prowling around the statue and did find out who she was, the same would happen. So for heaven’s sake, stop! What would we do without Abigail?”
By now Gina was becoming increasingly impatient to see her father again.
In their last telephone conversation he had told her that they would meet again soon. On the Wednesday of the following week he appeared without warning.
A great number of things happened on that late November morning, but it was only much later that she saw the connection between them. Every episode or image associated with that Wednesday fused in her mind—the gaping mouths of the dead fish, the filing cabinet standing open, the glazier’s assistant with his huge mustache, and the General. She tried time and time again to separate the images from the events and to focus on her father alone, but she never succeeded. His figure always returned, but next to his grave and solemn face, in a strange twinning of opposites, would be that of Mráz, his sharp features bedecked with his huge mustache, and the lifeless fish scattered like precious stones across the parquet floor and the carpet in front of the open drawers.
The series of events started early, shortly after morning prayers, when most of the pupils were already in their classrooms and the teachers still in the staff room. The director had begun the day with his colleagues, as he did every morning, having accompanied them as they filed out of the chapel, glancing back all the while to see if they were behaving as they should. He took out his bunch of keys and unlocked the door to his office. The fifth year were still on their way up to their classroom, and had just reached the top of the stairs when an uncanny howling, unlike anything any of them had ever heard, arose from behind the office door. The teachers, the ancillary staff and the deaconesses all rushed to the scene, fearing the worst—it was the sort of terrified screaming you might hear in Africa when a huge roar brings the shocking revelation that there are lions nearby and you had better run. The only member of the ancillary staff on that floor was Suba; he had dashed into the office, which was right next to the fifth years’ classroom where they were now lining up to go in, and had run out into the corridor again, bellowing for the cleaners to come. If he had kept his wits about him and not lost his head in the extremity of his panic he might have realized that there was little point: the cleaning was done only when lessons had finished; the staff room and the director’s office were seen to after evening prayers, when no teacher was likely to be around and the director had withdrawn to his apartment and had his telephone line transferred across. (By nine in the evening every room in the building would be ready for the next day’s work and awaiting the onward march of learning in a state of absolute spotlessness.) He should have realized that screaming would be pointless: none of the cleaning ladies would be anywhere near, as they were all either helping out in the kitchen or dealing with the dormitories and other places used by the girls. But he certainly had his reasons, and the class quickly discovered what they were. The aquarium had been smashed and all the fish were dead.
The director’s collection of fish had been the subject of ongoing debate. According to Mari Kis he was a widower only in appearance: he now had a second wife; it was either one of the fish or, at the very least, a water-sprite, and he kept her in his aquarium. She was a fish only by day; at night she changed into a woman. No one had ever actually seen the director gazing tenderly at anyone or anything other than his fishy darlings. If Suba hadn’t been drunk (but then, how could he have been, and on what, inside the walls of the Matula?) then something must have happened to justify those incoherent bellowings. From the sound of them every one of those miraculous creatures in Gedeon Torma’s aquarium, the ones with the lacy tails, the brilliant blue damselfish and other exotic species, must have been lying on the floor stone dead, the parquet flooring ruined and the carpet a battlefield.
The whole thing was utterly incomprehensible. When the cleaners finished their rounds at nine the director had personally locked all the doors, just as he did every night, and had seen for himself that everything was in order inside his office. So who on earth could this madman be, to break into the Matula after dark and vandalize an aquarium? How could he have opened the door? And with what? No one apart from Gedeon Torma had a key to the office. There was of course a duplicate, kept by the porter, who lent it to the cleaner on duty for the short time that her work took her. On the previous evening, at 8:45 p.m. precisely, the widow Botár had hung it back on the board before his very eyes, and it had remained there for the rest of the night alongside all the other keys.
Kalmár, who was in charge of the first-floor corridor on that particular day, did his best to calm the assistant down. “Pull yourself together!” he snapped. “You’re setting a bad example to the children.” The director came flying out of the office and told him to take the debris and the unfortunate victims away. Kőnig was still standing at the door of the fifth years’ classroom, where, having set them a particularly difficult Latin exercise to prepare for his lesson, he had been waiting for them to arrive. Suba finally realized tha
t there was no point in screaming and that the cleaners were not going to abandon their work in the kitchen. Kalmár promised that he would get him some help with the office, and looked at the class. They gazed back with eyes full of hope and anticipation. They had of course done the preparation, but it would be far more interesting not to have to do the lesson and nose around the director’s office instead: what an enticing prospect, and what opportunities that would give—so much to see and take in, to hear and touch and handle. Looking for a girl to volunteer for this exciting task, his eye fell on Oláh, then moved on, and she clamped her mouth tight in annoyance. She should have known. It was disgraceful the way he had favored Vitay ever since she had demolished Kőnig in that essay.
Gina’s position in the class had changed since the Bishop’s visit. She no longer enjoyed the same degree of sympathy from Susanna, but Kalmár had made her his pet. It was not that he ever allowed her to get away with a bad answer; rather, it was as if they were party to the same secret. He treated her less like a pupil and more the way a young man might an adolescent girl who had a private understanding with him. It was that they both despised Kőnig.
Having recruited Gina, he told Suba that the fifth-year girl would sort out the office for him and sent him away. He should telephone the glazier and get him to ask his assistant Mr. Mráz, the mustachioed handyman who maintained the school windows, to come and see what could be done with the smashed aquarium. And he should ask Mr. Éles, as the natural history teacher, to send a new one and some ornamental fish for the director.
Kőnig stood at the classroom door listening with obvious admiration to the way his colleague was dealing with the matter—so speedily, so imaginatively and with such decisive energy. Ever since the visit he had paid him with Gina and Susanna, Kalmár had treated Kőnig with an unvarying courtesy edged with a hint of contempt. He now asked him if he would mind letting Vitay miss his lesson. The question was politely put, but was in fact insulting, as he had already claimed her. Kőnig nodded as if to say, “But of course,” and the other girls marched inside behind him with daggers in their eyes. He gave Cziller the exercise books to hand out. Murai’s last thought before she gave herself up to the fascinating task of translating Ovid from Hungarian into impeccable Latin (it was his poignant farewell to his family and to Rome as he left for exile) was that, as Susanna had so obviously rejected Kalmár, then perhaps if Vitay made a bit more effort she might take her place. Kalmár was young, Vitay was attractive, and her Feri was far, far away.