Abigail

by Magda Szabo

  As soon as the event finished there was a prolonged whispering among the other girls, then Mari Kis came over to Gina and stood before her. She told her that as she couldn’t go home because the boiler had exploded she could spend the holiday with any one of them. They had all invited her. There was no one whose parents would not be delighted to have her with them. They would have taken Torma too, but her uncle would not allow it. She was his only living relative, poor thing, and Christmas was the one time when he chose to indulge his idea of family life, which was why she always started the new year in a state of collapse. But Gina had only to choose who she wanted to go with. They would ask for Susanna’s permission, and the next day after communion they would leave together on the train.

  She looked at each of their faces in turn. They were all smiles, all genuine affection. Murai’s invitation was so enthusiastic she sank her nails into Gina’s arm to enforce her claim. Gina would have loved above all to go with Bánki, but she knew it was out of the question. She had given her word that she would never leave the fortress except with her father or with the person her father would send. She told them she could not go with any of them and the atmosphere instantly changed. Of course she could not explain other than to say that it was what her father wanted. It pained her very much to see how the mood had cooled. They were clearly thinking that the General must be a very proud man and probably didn’t think any of them good enough company for his daughter.

  But they soon softened towards her again, and their joy returned as they started to plan their own holidays and think about the presents they might be getting. Only Bánki and Torma had stayed by her side, Bánki because there was now this new bond between them, and poor Torma, who had nothing to offer Gina beyond her status as an orphan, which she felt even more painfully during the holidays. Gina did her best not to show her feelings of bitterness. In this of course she failed, and whenever the others caught sight of her they bit their tongues. There was no point in making her feel even worse; they themselves had only one more night in the building and the next day the train would take them home.

  During the communion service the next morning the girls’ minds were focused rather less on the sacred vows the Chaplain was making on their behalf than on what might be happening outside. They were burning with impatience to know if there was anyone waiting for them in the drawing room. For her part, Gina believed in, affirmed and, like everyone else, promised everything that service required, but she felt very little beyond a profound sense of sadness and disarray.

  By lunchtime more than half the school had gone, including most of the fifth year. When Susanna was looking the other way they hugged Gina and Torma and kissed them, promised they would write and gave them their own addresses in case Susanna took pity on them and allowed them, against the rules, to write to anyone other than members of their own family. Bánki was among those who left before lunch. When she reached the gate she turned and ran back to Gina to say she would think of her all the time, even on Christmas Eve, and that she was going to send her something that was sure to make her very happy. Gina listened in silence, forced herself to smile and kept waving until the last of them was out of sight. The other half of the school had also gone by suppertime, leaving her and Torma to wander the echoing corridors like shades of the dead.

  CHRISTMAS

  It was a very strange time.

  Her experience was by no means one of unrelieved gloom. There were some exciting moments and even some happy ones, so different was life in the fortress out of term. Most of the domestic staff had been allowed home for the holidays, as had several of the teachers and almost all the deaconesses. The teaching rooms and the corridors leading to the dormitories had all been closed off—with only two pupils staying on it would have made little sense to heat the two vast wings of the building—and Gina and Torma were relocated to a twin-bedded room in the infirmary. This made for a degree of revelry. For one thing, it was further away from Susanna, so they could risk staying up late, reading in bed and even nosing around outside the teachers’ living quarters, and when the prefect did make an occasional appearance it was now much harder for her to catch them out, as the sick bay was at the bottom of its own short corridor, behind an outer door whose unmistakable squeak heralded her approach from afar.

  Along with Susanna, Sister Erzsébet was also spending the holiday in the school, as were the director, Miss Gigus, Kalmár and Kőnig. The cook was on leave and if anyone were taken ill the community health service would send someone to stand in for the doctor, who was away. Susanna had asked the two girls if they would be willing to provide some much-needed help with chores: they had no schoolwork during the break, the days were long, and there were several things they could usefully do. Of course they said yes. It would still leave them with plenty of free time.

  Sister Erzsébet did the cooking. She loved doing it and she had excellent taste. The girls worked with her, laid and cleared the tables and did the washing-up. This was on even-numbered days; on the days in between they helped with the cleaning. That was rather more exciting because they had to deal not only with their own room but with those of the staff. The brief did not extend to the deaconesses’ rooms simply because by the time they had risen and gone down to breakfast Susanna had long seen to both her own and to Erzsébet’s, and their round was confined to those occupied by the director and the three teachers. One of the three cleaning ladies had stayed on; she saw to the sweeping and airing, but she left the dusting to them. Would there ever be a better pretext for finding out what they had in there?

  Miss Gigus had some wonderful old porcelain artifacts and a leather-covered box filled with all sorts of brooches, bracelets and earrings; they could not imagine where she could have bought them or when she would ever wear them. In Kalmár’s room they found some interesting photograph albums with pictures that immediately reminded Gina of the summers she had spent abroad with Marcelle, and Torma listened in raptures as she explained what they showed. “This is Kalmár in London, leaning against one of the lions in Trafalgar Square with his eyes half closed against the sun; this is the Sorbonne in Paris (it’s the university); and that paved road . . .” But Torma swore she knew it; it was the ruins of the old cavalry barracks; she had seen it on one of their walks, on the other side of the station. “Don’t be daft, it’s Pompeii. Isn’t that Vesuvius in the background, just above your so-called barracks, issuing smoke?” Sometimes there were women standing next to Kalmár, rather attractive women. The girls stared at them in disgust, and Torma dropped a spot of Indian ink on the face of the prettiest and turned her into the ugliest.

  Kőnig had a huge library. He clearly read a lot, in several different languages. Kalmár’s collection, by contrast, consisted mostly of reference works on Hungarian history. The director’s sitting room continued his theme of black, with a series of carved ebony animal heads that stared out at them from among black apple and pear trees in the corners of a bookcase. And there could be no doubt about how he spent his time in the holidays: dusting in his room they found the Hungarian homework books of all eighth years in the school stacked on his desk. Torma confirmed Gina’s suspicions with a nod: it was his practice, his holiday pastime, to go through them and point out in green ink any errors that the marker had failed to underline, and to pen comments at the end of the relevant exercise in black, so that the first lesson of the new calendar plunged you into instant anxiety and gloom. His bedroom was always in perfect order, even before the cleaning lady had made the bed. It was as if he could sleep only under a completely smooth quilt with his head on a pillow without a single dent in it. In Kalmár’s and Miss Gigus’s rooms a more natural and reassuring disorder prevailed, but in Kőnig’s it was all very impersonal. It was as if he never actually used the things he had. He seemed to do very little in there except gaze out of the window and listen to music—they had found a gramophone and a large pile of records. And he was the only one who always locked his drawers. They would have loved to see if he
kept a diary. He was the sort of person you could imagine writing long meditations on the full moon, or the charms of an especially good dinner. Generally, none of the teachers were in their rooms when they came to dust; they appeared only at mealtimes. The girls could never discover what they did during the day, except on one occasion when Miss Gigus’s coiffure revealed that she had spent the morning at the hairdresser’s. It was Kalmár they saw most of, prowling around hoping to bump into Susanna. Kőnig and the director they hardly ever encountered other than in the refectory and at prayers.

  Gina felt she had been given far too little to do. She asked to be given more, pleading that as she was confined to the premises she would prefer even to have too much, to keep her mind from dwelling on the holidays the others would be enjoying. Susanna’s response was that the two of them should get out into the fresh air more often, read more, play games and try to enjoy the break; she took them out walking more frequently than she did in term time, and on some completely new routes. She had already given them the pocket money they were due before Christmas; normally she would do this only for purchasing stamps and giving to charity. Torma’s allowance was passed to the prefect every month by her uncle; Gina found that with hers there was an additional envelope that her father had left with Susanna on his last trip to Árkod, for her to buy herself something if they were unable to spend the holiday together. Susanna gave her a stern warning: she should spend it wisely. The General had left her a very large sum, but if she wasted it on things that brought only fleeting pleasure she would later regret it.

  One morning she took them out shopping. Not wanting to spoil their enjoyment by trying to influence them with her inevitable looks of disapproval, she declined to go with them into the shop and stayed outside in the street, a loyal figure in the drifting snow, peering through the window from time to time to try and make out what they were doing. Seeing her standing there, Gina realized that she had begun to love her again, almost as much as she had before the Bishop’s visit. Torma had made a special book cover for her uncle, so she already had her most important present, but, she told Gina, she thought that everyone who was staying on for Christmas with them should be given gifts and they should buy some small things for the teachers and the two deaconesses. She chose diaries, cheap pocket diaries for 1944, that she planned to wrap in attractive, brightly colored paper with their initials cut from shiny cardboard and glued on. She advised Gina to look for needles and thread, and some men’s shirt buttons, because the teachers would not accept anything more expensive from a pupil; there was still time for them to sew pouches to keep the buttons in, using the pattern for the cubes they had once made from cardboard lower down the school, but with an extra button on the flap and a little loop of string to open and close it with. For the ladies they would make pincushions, but not shaped like people or the director would yell at them. In his opinion all human images, even dolls and statues, were idolatrous, but theirs would be more respectable. They would look like miniature sofas, with threaded needles sticking out of them.

  But once she began shopping Gina found that needles were very hard to come by. It was hardly surprising. Ever since the war had started even the most ordinary everyday things had been steadily disappearing from the shelves. She wanted Torma’s advice on whether she should take something that did happen to be available, a set of the thicker variety used for sewing sacks; but when she turned to look for her friend she found that she had sneaked off to the glass and ceramics counter and had just asked the assistant to wrap up a little plaster dog with a sad looking face. She’s buying it for me, Gina thought, and a warm glow filled her heart. It was hideous, and its muzzle was tied with a bright red cloth handkerchief that made it look as if it had toothache, but it seemed to her as wonderful as any of the porcelain they had at home. Torma had so little money, a few fillér at the very most, and to pay for it she had had to dig in the bottom of her bag to find the very last one.

  Gina moved on to the women’s fashion department. The things she had bought so far had all cost very little. She still had most of her pocket money left, and there was also the hundred-pengő note in the General’s envelope. She looked for something she could buy without a coupon and found an astounding nightdress. It was low cut and extremely provocative, just the thing for a shapely young woman of spirit to wear. It was very expensive, but she bought it all the same. Torma, having grown up in the gloomy and repressive fortress, would never have owned anything like it in her life. Where she might keep it and when she might get to wear it were questions still to be considered, but at least she would be the proud possessor of the sort of nightdress you saw on the posters outside theatres. Gina knew she would love it.

  Both girls tucked their parcels out of sight before they rejoined Susanna. Torma told her she had not a single fillér left, and Gina handed back her remaining ten-pengő notes. The prefect looked at her sternly, convinced that she had spent far more than she should, so Gina whispered in her ear that she hadn’t bought it for herself, it was for someone else—and not for a member of staff either, she added, so that Susanna would realize that it was for Torma, who was after all an orphan, and not think she had planned to buy something for her too. “But please don’t ask me what I bought,” she pleaded. “Promise me that for once you won’t ask me to show you what it is. Just let it be.” Susanna took them back to the school without saying another word or asking a single question. Gina breathed a happy sigh. What a wonderful day! Susanna had done a rare thing: she had shown that she was human after all, because it was Christmas.

  The days flew by in a fever of activity, racing to get the diaries and button pouches finished in time. Susanna kept coming into the sewing room to tell them to go outside into the snow, where they threw snowballs at each other like first years; sometimes they were allowed to listen to music on the school gramophone, in constant terror of damaging Hajdú’s antiquated records: that would certainly have been the end of them! The morning of the twenty-fourth brought a particularly heavy snowfall, and the kitchen corridor began to fill with the aroma of cloves and vanilla. It brought tears to Gina’s eyes: it was the smell of Christmas itself. What was happening at home? Where was her father? When would she see him again?

  Their Christmas Eve was not so much a Christmas Eve as a Christmas afternoon, but they did have a tree. It had been set up in the refectory, a plain and simple tree, all the lovelier and more touching for that, and Sister Erzsébet lit some candles. Staring into the tiny flames Gina realized it would be a mistake to post the bookmark, especially from Árkod, and she told a doubtful and non-committal Susanna that she wanted to deliver it in person. They sang the hymn “Christ our Lord is born,” and Susanna read the passage from St. Luke’s gospel describing the birth of Jesus. A prayer followed, then Kalmár switched the lights back on and Susanna blew out the candles. Everyone who had stayed on was now together in the room. The teachers were all in their Sunday best, and Miss Gigus’s dress was one they had never seen before. It was extremely elegant, with fur lining around the collar and cuffs, and Susanna had subjected it to a long and hard stare. The cleaner and the porter and his wife joined them for the prayers, but the moment they ended they asked permission to leave: they always spent Christmas Eve in their own homes, and they had invited their children and some relatives who lived in the town.

  The presents had been arranged at the foot of the tree, each with its own white label inscribed in Sister Erzsébet’s tiny handwriting. Gina saw that for the very first time they had used the familiar form of her name, “Gina.” The informality touched her deeply: in the Matula the diminutive and affectionate forms were never normally used—Torma was “Piroska” only at Christmas, as now written on her card. Gina looked for the little plaster puppy, without success, then it struck her that Torma probably wanted to keep her present a secret just as she was doing with the nightgown. As it turned out, Torma had sewn a pincushion for her and she had chosen a diary for Torma. Susanna, supervising the distribution, made no co
mment to either of them, nor did she ask what they had bought in the shop. She was making it clear that she knew they would have preferred a very different Christmas for themselves, and she fully understood why.

  Gina was given a new Bible, much grander than the one she had brought with her from Budapest. It was inscribed: “For Georgina Vitay, from the director and school staff, Christmas 1943,” and everyone present had added their signatures, Gedeon Torma at the top and Susanna at the bottom. Gina was astonished at the pleasure it gave her, though she also suspected that it had been chosen as a hint for her to do rather better in next year’s competition. Torma too was given a book, a particularly fascinating work, chosen no doubt by her uncle, entitled A History of the Lutheran Order of Deaconesses and signed like Gina’s. The director and the teachers voiced their appreciation and thanked them for the button pouches, the book holders and the “beautifully wrapped” diaries, and the ladies did the same for their pincushions. The teachers and deaconesses gave each other books, each with a title more boring than the last.