Iza's Ballad

by Magda Szabo

  She had shut herself away in the kitchen for the last three weeks and wouldn’t let Iza say anything about Vince’s impending death. Iza didn’t force the issue; she heard the old woman moving about, listened for a while, then went out and left her alone. The old woman knew she meant well, that she wanted to sort out the future so there would be no terrible surprises if what was forecast to happen should happen; she wanted to discuss with her what was to be done about the house and about her life. But it isn’t proper to speak about what should happen after someone’s death while he’s still alive. Until Antal arrived, until Lidia finally rose from her position beside the bed, however unconscious Vince was, there was still hope.

  Offices were just closing for the night and the street filled up. She walked a little faster because she didn’t want to meet anyone. She gazed at passers-by as they headed home. There was something determined about their expressions, a kind of frozen gaiety. No one ambled or meandered, all were rushing to get home. The shops were full, children were crying, the traffic was heavier. Car indicators were flashing. She envied them their hurry in some way; she had never consciously thought about how someone was waiting for them. No one was waiting for her, only the dog, Captain.

  She pulled up her collar to cover her face and looked at the ground so if someone greeted her she might not be obliged to notice them. It started raining: a sharp, slow rain, not even quite rain yet, just a spray, and the pavement suddenly flashing light and the windows misting up. Her face, her brow and skin registered the dampness though not a drop had fallen at her feet. Invisible rain was what Vince had called it. The dragon spout stood empty, open-mouthed, as if it were gasping for air. Kolman wasn’t around: she didn’t have to talk to anybody.

  The first thing she saw at the gate was Captain. She turned her gaze from him and leaned against the table that stood under the entrance arch from autumn through to spring. The caution was unnecessary. Captain took no notice of her and was not looking for tenderness. She didn’t know whether she welcomed this or felt worse for the animal’s indifference. Iza was right: Captain was stupid.

  Now she was alone for the first time since the morning, utterly alone.

  She could let herself go, allow herself to rest on the arm of the wickerwork chair and wonder what life would be like once all sense of responsibility had been removed. She didn’t want to be at home, she feared the evenings, feared the two beds, one of which had finally become redundant. She couldn’t sit here for ever, of course; she had to go in. Go in now, or half an hour later – what did it matter? She set off towards the yard, then stopped again. A light had gone on inside, in the bedroom.

  It wasn’t terror she felt but something else. She sank back into the chair, put her string bag down on the ground, and stared at the lit window. The light inside seemed much more real than Vince’s face with its mysterious expression had been just now. Perhaps this is what reality was, that burning lamp inside; that none of the events of the last few months had actually happened, that Vince was still alive, the afternoon had been no more than a dream, that the eleven weeks that had just passed, and that the sight of Vince’s wasted body that had grown so terribly hollow as if it had been preparing for ages to become a vehicle of mortality, were all just dreams and reality was the small, comical, slightly plump figure of Vince as he once was, who was waiting for her at home and who was not really ill.

  She felt weaker than she had done at any moment that afternoon. She shut her eyes and rested her head against the back of the chair. The garden, the still bare garden, was rustling around her. Blackbirds, she thought. Then again they might not be blackbirds. The light is on. Anything at all might be making that rustling sound. It might be angels. Or clouds. Anything.

  By the time she looked up, the window was dark again.

  The disappointment was so profound that she hadn’t even the strength to shed tears. She leaned on her thighs and covered her face with her hands. The rustling faded away and there was no more noise at all: it was as if some deaf creature were living nearby. Then the front door creaked open and there was Iza standing in the doorway.

  3

  SHE HAD COME. Her daughter was standing next to her. She wasn’t alone.

  Iza was wearing a black jumper and you could see from the state of her eyes that she had been crying. The old woman felt ambivalent about this; she resisted the implied call for help – it would have meant running over to her, stroking her as she used to when she was little, calming and consoling her, saying there was nothing to cry for. She was too much aware of her own need to lay her head on Iza’s shoulders and let it all out. It was a strange moment: they hadn’t experienced one like it before. Iza had never needed anyone’s help: if something went wrong she took it on the chin with no complaints, and when it came to decisions she didn’t ask for advice, she simply announced what she was going to do. There was the time after matriculation when she suddenly declared she was going to apply to medical school, another time when she announced she had found a job, that she was about to marry and, later, the time she told them she was about to be divorced and had found new employment in Budapest. It was the first time in her adulthood that Iza showed she was capable of suffering like everyone else. The old woman was relieved. It was as if her daughter had escaped some terrible danger. At the same time she was in a panic on account of her own suffering; it upset her deeply to see Iza crying and she was desperately wondering how to help her.

  Iza didn’t kiss her, didn’t even touch her. The old woman realised what her daughter was thinking: she was thinking this was a bad time to touch or hug each other because then they’d have no strength left to cope with everything that had happened.

  ‘Come along,’ said Iza. ‘You’d better get an early night. Come along.’

  Iza picked up the string bag, put her arm through it and set off indoors. The old woman stumbled after her. There was a fire lit in both rooms now and all trace of the unwashed breakfast things had vanished. It was tidy, that particular Iza form of tidiness so characteristic of the girl. It was as if she’d been doing nothing but tidying for hours.

  Antal must have been shouting that he had rung Iza in Pest and that she had got tickets for the afternoon flight. Her heart gave a great lurch and she closed her eyes. She was terrified of flying, wouldn’t get on a plane, not for all the money in the world, and she hated it when Iza wrote to say she was coming by plane rather than rail. Every flight was a form of blasphemy, unnatural, terrifying, especially this swoop over the clouds, racing against that certain something, to get to where Vince was.

  Iza took her hand.

  Now she had her right hand too, in the same way she tried to deceive Vince all those months, her fingers open as though in affectionate play but really to check her pulse. Her heart rate was all over the place. How odd that Iza could tell all that just by feeling with her fingertips.

  ‘I’ll make you some tea,’ said Iza. ‘Your hands are cold as ice.’

  She went out to the kitchen. The big room immediately seemed unbearable, almost frightening. Iza had put on the main light as soon as they came in, the light they only used when there were guests. It was unusual, this light, somehow harsh, improper. She turned it off and turned on the small one instead, then she stopped the wall clock and covered the big mirror with the knitted berliner shawl. By the time Iza returned with the tea she sat hunched on the sofa beside the fire. Iza froze on the threshold, the steaming mug in her hand. The clock had stopped, showing a quarter to four: the whole aspect of the room was peculiarly changed now that the mirror was blind.

  ‘She knows,’ thought the old woman. ‘I told her back then.’

  Iza’s mouth twitched but she didn’t say anything. She waited for the old woman to drink her tea, then snatched the shawl from the mirror and put it round her mother instead. She opened the cover of the clock face, moved the hands to the right time and set the thing going.

  The old woman shuddered when the mirror glistened behind her once more. She felt
something had been taken from Vince, the last thing that belonged to him, and she didn’t even dare glance at it. The silvery surface was so alive, so much like a lake; she was afraid he might appear and start swimming, that something, or someone, would shimmer out of it. Even the sound of the clock hurt her; it meant the wheels were moving round though Vince was beyond time. Might it be easier coping with the world like this? Iza didn’t believe in anything that old people believed in.

  Iza took the mug from her but stayed close, next to her legs. She was always beside her at every moment of crisis, ever since she was born, not like a child at all, more like a sister. When the first lodger at the old house in Darabont Street made a remark about Vince, Iza answered for him. Iza was just a baby when Vince lost his job and would have known nothing of the circumstances at the time. There she was, defending her father, her face chalk-white with indignation, and the lodger just stared at her: she so small, not quite eight years old, as if her little body were entirely compounded of some dry, defiant passion. When she went to the dentist Iza usually accompanied her and they had their teeth done together, Iza always first in the chair, and she couldn’t be a coward afterwards because Iza would not utter a cry when the dentist was drilling or removing a tooth, the only evidence of her pain being a faint fluttering of her eyelids. Iza helped manage her money, helped her cook and even with her spring cleaning when there was no other help; she would help without being asked, of her own free will, as if it were the natural thing to do. Now here she was again, sitting at the end of the divan, clutching her hands. How they adored her, she and Vince, from the day she was born. A tear crept into her eye as she thought of how Vince would never see his daughter again.

  ‘We are not to weep for him,’ said Iza.

  The old woman looked up at her through her tears because she had heard this from her before. It wasn’t a matter of medical concern; the cook had said the same thing when her first child died and she was choking with tears mourning for her little boy. They were still in the nice flat then, the old flat, her cook a gaunt old woman who never went anywhere – summer or winter – without her umbrella, to which she had fixed a porcelain button with a picture of the Empress Elisabeth on it. ‘You mustn’t shed tears for him,’ the cook said, when they took baby Endrus away. ‘He won’t get any sleep on the other side if you do. You mustn’t weep for him.’

  ‘You’ll not be alone,’ she heard the girl saying. ‘You’ll sell the house and stay with me in Pest.’

  Now she really started crying: the relief, the sense of being saved and liberated, suddenly burst in on her. All those terrors, everything she was afraid of – empty evenings, pointless days, lodgers, long days with nothing to do – all these had come to nothing. By the time Iza came home from the surgery she would have everything prepared for her and they would spend all their free time together, as they did in her childhood. She knew she would not be left to fend for herself but this was more than she had dared hope. She had never even thought of it. No, Vince should not be buried in the garden, no, he should be buried in Pest so that they could both visit his grave.

  Iza kissed her and now at last she felt secure under the shawl; they could relax. The girl’s mouth was cold as if every part of her felt the cold separately, her lips most of all. She was thirty-nine years old when Iza was born and didn’t think she’d ever hold a child in her arms again, and that they’d remain for ever as they were, with just the memory of the dead little boy. Then one day she was there, she had arrived, quicker to speak than to walk, a serious, wise, grown-up sort of child. She had never known anyone like Iza and there was much she couldn’t understand about her: she could only grasp a fraction of her life, of her books and the world she moved in. She didn’t know Iza’s new flat, the place she’d moved to somewhere on the Ring. Vince was already ill by then and they couldn’t take the trip to the capital to visit her there. How comfortable to live in a new flat! How astonished Captain would be to find himself on an upper floor.

  She only realised she had dropped off to sleep when she woke with a start to the sound of the doorbell.

  At first she thought she was alone and threw off the shawl in panic, but then she saw that Iza was standing in the room, her forehead propped against the window, examining the dark yard outside. The clock had hardly advanced from the point when she fell asleep; a dream was about to overtake her when the bell rang and dispelled it. Who could it be? Their old circle of friends had dispersed after 1923. Until Vince’s rehabilitation they lived like hermits. Those of their old acquaintance who would have returned to them after the war, when Vince’s reputation was spotless once again, were dismissed by both Vince and Iza – she herself would have let bygones be bygones, but not those two. At home – their home! – they entertained only the most select company: Kolman the grocer, their neighbour Gica who stitched cloaks, the newsagent, the tobacconist, a retired postman, a female teacher with whom they spent the evenings on the bench in front of the museum, Dekker, Antal and a few students with catapults and grazed knees from the school on the corner, invited into the garden by Vince who taught them how to make arrows and hooks for fishing. Everyone knew that guests were not welcome after six in the evening because they’d be drinking their last coffee of the day, and once Vince was approaching eighty he tended to go to bed at seven. ‘It must be Kolman,’ thought the old woman and hastily warned Iza. Kolman knew nothing as yet and would keep them talking for ages. He was always interested in what was going on and there wasn’t a day when he didn’t drop in if he failed to see her in the shop.

  ‘I won’t let him in,’ replied Iza perfectly calmly. ‘Go and lie down, I’ll send Kolman away.’

  How good she was here, she couldn’t send him away by herself. She had never been able to turn anyone away. She heard the hall door open and was sure she’d been right because she heard Captain’s happy snuffling. Captain was scared of strangers but not of Kolman because he always brought some leftovers from the shop, some cabbages or carrots. She couldn’t hear anything else, only the animal snuffling and the patter of his nails as he entered the house. Kolman made no noise of greeting, neither did Iza. Why the silence? Kolman was a loud man usually. It must be that he had heard all about it, that’s why he was so quiet. She sat up and straightened her skirt. There was something strangely unsettling about the silence.

  It was Antal.

  She didn’t recognise him at first, seeing only that he was a man to judge by his outline, but Iza turned on the light again, which frightened her so much she leapt off the sofa and looked to escape into her bedroom.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Iza. ‘You see, it wasn’t Kolman.’

  She felt ashamed and sank back on to the sofa, throwing the shawl across her knees. She understood from Iza’s tone that she didn’t want to be left alone with him, that she shouldn’t leave them, so she remained where she was despite all her instincts to the contrary. It was silly, of course, because they always behaved as though nothing had happened between them and she wouldn’t have to witness any embarrassing scenes. While the marriage lasted – that tense, nervous love – they were always disciplined in company, almost unnaturally so, and now they would continue to be courteous. They had been like this ever since they parted seven years ago, ever courteous.

  But she still didn’t like seeing them together. Iza had loved Antal, not that she ever spoke about her feelings, but you could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes, the way they followed him, even though she didn’t know why he had left her. Something terrible must have occured, which was all the more terrifying since they had lived here together with them, under one roof, with only a wall to separate their bedrooms, and they had never been heard to quarrel or to raise their voices, no, there was never a cross word between them. Then one day they simply announced it: they were separating and Iza gave no reason for it. It was not as if Vince would have asked; his face simply clouded over, he shook his head, kissed first Iza, then Antal, then went out into the kitchen.

>   ‘Mama is very tired,’ said Iza. ‘Don’t stay too long, please.’

  She spoke gently as if sister to brother. Antal was carrying a suitcase, their suitcase, and she immediately recognised it. Guessing what would be in it, she took a great gulp and turned away. She felt that if Antal opened it and she had to set eyes on Vince’s grey housecoat and the mug with the forget-me-not pattern that Lidia had already hidden away that morning, she’d have to leave the room.

  Antal shoved the case under the table as if he shared her feelings: let it be hidden.

  ‘I’m not even going to sit down,’ he said, bending to Captain, who had pushed his way through the half-open door into the room, and starting to stroke the dog’s ears. ‘I just wanted to see if mama needed anything. You weren’t sure this morning whether you could get here today. When did you arrive?’

  ‘At twelve.’

  They both looked at her. The old woman’s head suddenly cleared: she had not felt so awake since the morning. She must have misunderstood something, or Iza had misread the clock. Her father had died at a quarter to four. It was impossible.

  The silence in the room seemed to have thickened. The old woman stared at her daughter. Iza’s face was flushed, even her brow. Antal looked away and stared at the carpet.

  ‘Last time I saw him we were playing cards,’ said Iza, the most frightening thing about her voice being that it was calm, not angry, not defensive, not offering any explanation. ‘He’d had a really good day, he was fully conscious and laughing. I’ve seen enough people die to last me a lifetime, I want to remember my father’s living face.’