by Magda Szabo
She recognised nothing in town even though Iza was constantly keeping her informed as to where they were, but she recalled having once been to the National Theatre to see the classic, Bánk Bán. The big ring road was quite different from how she remembered it and she felt ashamed for having imagined it the way she had seen it before, since it was obvious this was just another road full of cars, buses and trams – horses were uncommon even back home by then. But all the same. The crowds were overwhelming, as were the neon signs flashing on the buildings. Pest was much bigger than she remembered – it was an alarming metropolis.
They stopped in front of a house. She stared at it. Iza paid the driver and by the time she turned round she no longer looked annoyed. She smiled at her, stroked her shoulders and pointed to their new home.
It was a six-storey house, a cube faced in smooth masonry with a balustrade running round the top of it and fully glazed rooms facing the street. There was a mosaic next to the entrance and a young overweight mother was sitting on the steps breastfeeding her baby. The old woman tried to imagine she was arriving home but it was impossible. She just kept staring.
Iza went ahead and rang for the lift. There were a great many names on the board in the hall: vast numbers of people lived here. She pulled herself together so her expression should not give her away. She couldn’t help it, the poor girl, that she could only afford something in a house like this. She musn’t depress her with her own disappointment. And in any case, once they stepped through the door they’d be back in the old house until they had to go downstairs; they could forget where they were. What wonderful luck that they could bring everything they could with them, what wonderful God-given luck!
She felt able to smile again.
The lift stopped on the third floor and not even the door to the flat looked like any other door: it was as though someone had used a plane to cut a narrow channel into a piece of wood. Iza put down the case and the door opened.
‘Welcome, dear guest,’ said Iza. Her voice was solemn and loving.
She walked into blinding light, with a peculiar-shaped lamp on the ceiling, and nothing on the walls of the hall bar a couple of odd iron hooks for coats. Where did the girl put the old coat stand? There was a parquet floor and Captain knew how to behave, but what would happen if he ever . . . Where was Captain?
The flat was nothing like the one she imagined in Dorozs. There were two big intercommunicating rooms opening on the street side, both full of furniture. Blue, yellow, purple and black chairs were ranged in a row and the walls were coloured too. There were no lace curtains but a kind of thick, green and lilac striped canvas.
Could Iza have put all the home furniture into her room? Might her room be big enough to accommodate it all?
‘And where is my room?’ she asked. Her tongue felt dry in her mouth, as if she had a fever.
Iza opened the hall door smiling exactly as she had done when she let her into the flat, a smile that seemed even brighter than before, and opened another door, one of two practically identical doors, and reached for the light switch. ‘Here, mama.’
Once again light, light, light. It was a small square room with her old bed in the corner, and a strange new lamp by the bedside in the shape of some black bird with a sulphur-yellow umbrella in its mouth. There was a cupboard on the right and a big chair that might have been Vince’s but re-covered, her little sewing table in front of it and a tiny writing table by the window with its own chair.
There was a new bookcase and shelves on the wall, the shelves full of all kinds of strange objects. Her bureau. Nothing else. The carpet was new too, the old worn one having vanished: she was standing on a fine, deep-blue Persian carpet.
Her savings book was on the writing desk.
She needed to do something, to gain time, so that she’d know what to say. She made her way over to the writing table, picked up the savings book and leafed through it. Without her glasses she couldn’t make out the balance but she looked at it anyway as if she could read it. Her hand was shaking so much that the thin sheets trembled against her fingers.
Iza gave her a hug.
‘The other things had to stay behind, darling. What we have here has been repaired by the upholsterer and the furniture man. Isn’t it perfect and lovely? What do you think of the lamp? Is it right, do you think? Do you like it? And the carpet? Pretty, isn’t it?’
She made no answer.
‘You’re home. Look at me! Aren’t you pleased?’
‘Where’s Captain?’ asked the old woman.
‘With Antal. You didn’t want to bring the old rabbity dog too?’
She didn’t ask about the house plants, about Vince’s peaked caps or his cherrywood stick. She undid the top buttons of her coat because she felt she might suffocate. It was hot here, too hot, and she glanced here and there looking for the stove. There was no stove in the room, only a red-coloured radiator, its controls shaped like slices of lemon, like a kind of laughing red mouth.
The telephone rang in the hall. Iza ran out and the old woman sank into the armchair. She used to be able to feel every spring of it – now it was smooth, comfortable, soft. Then she stood up again in alarm and while Iza was on the phone she knelt down on the carpet and opened her suitcase. She pulled out the bottom drawer of the bureau and threw in the dry twigs so the girl shouldn’t see what she had brought with her from Dorozs.
2
SHE FELT AS if some elemental blow had destroyed everything around her and that only now did she really know what it was to be a widow, someone absolutely abandoned.
She didn’t cry while Iza was in the room, just looked pale and was more quiet than usual, but she tried to say something nice, however awkward, about the practicality of the arrangement and Iza’s helpfulness and kindness. She opened the bottom of the wardrobe and found some clothes there, mostly linen, but only a fraction of the amount she’d had at the house – all the patched jumpers, all the stitched and tacked remnants, all the thriftily squirrelled-away towels and sheets had vanished. Iza had only saved things that were in perfect order. There were no dishes, no china: Iza said the pots and pans were beyond repair since they had lost some of their enamel and it was a miracle they hadn’t all got appendicitis ages ago, besides which she had her dinner set from Jena so why should she bring along damaged stuff with handles missing when they have proper things here. The pastry board? There was the plastic worktop on the kitchen cupboard for that, it’s heatproof and doesn’t mind water, and as for the mincer, why bring that heavy thing along when there was an electric grinder here. Antal had inherited the dust catcher for the vitrine, the little porcelain shoe and the mouse without a tail, but she had brought the three undamaged Old Vienna pieces, which would look nice on the little shelf. The china shepherd wasn’t here – it had a broken neck and was dreadful to look at, so sad that one really shouldn’t keep it.
When Iza finally left her alone and wished her great happiness in the flat, the old woman struggled over to Vince’s old armchair whose cover she had always taken such care to patch and sat down. It was only the lovely shape of the chair that reminded her of its old condition, rejuvenated as it was in its new blue-and-grey stripes, looking a touch brash. All reminders of an earlier poverty that witnessed to her craft and skill, her inexhaustible invention in so lightly and imaginatively fending off the perils of the times, had vanished. The room was nice and when she thought about it she had to admit she really didn’t need any more than it contained, and Iza had replaced whatever she had thrown out: a brand-new set of towels made a multicoloured pile on the shelf and there was new linen in a nylon bag. It was a terrible experience.
She spent the first night counting the missing items. She had her old bed, it was just not the same forty-nine-year-old pillowslip, carefully patched and worn down to the consistency of a cobweb, over her pillow but a new one – and Iza had changed the eiderdown too. She went to the trouble of finding a pencil so she could make a list of everything that had not come to Pest with
her. While hunting for a sheet of paper she came across the headed sheet from Dorozs where she had drawn a plan of their new home: she gazed at the clumsy oblongs and semicircles and wept.
Vince’s house plants would not have survived here of course. No flower, except a cactus perhaps, could survive in the murderous heat of the radiator. They should have brought them all the same – it would have been a useful distraction looking after the sickly things, putting them here or there, finding a place for them. And Captain! Captain was the last living breathing creature that could make Vince laugh the day they took him to the clinic. Captain, who for some mysterious reason had stolen one of his handkerchiefs and was playing with it in the yard.
Iza had bought her handkerchiefs too, two dozen of them. The old ones had disappeared – nearly all of them had had some minor blemish.
She sat in the armchair and tried to cry silently, afraid that Iza would hear her through the thin walls and come in and accuse her of being ungrateful. As indeed she was. The girl had told her she would sell the house and anything inessential, and it was her fault for not thinking it through, not including everything that would make a dwelling look harmonious, comfortable and attractive. Iza had always teased them that their house was like a furniture warehouse and why, for example, did they have a tobacco bowl when neither of them smoked a pipe. She was right, she was always right, it was just that old people grow fond of things that mean much more to them than to the young.
She tried to think about how much money she had suddenly come into but instead of joy she felt a flush of shame: this was how Judas must have felt when he received his thirty pieces of silver. It was like selling your dependants, your best friends. What would she do with all that money?
She kept weeping and writing, noting the bill of loss and what now belonged to someone else. There were one or two things she remembered later and others she thought lost, so she had to remove them from the list; she almost cried out in relief when she saw that the silk-lined box for handkerchiefs was still here and she tapped it to make sure. The alarm clock was here too – henceforth it would tell Budapest time – and there was the picture of the little girl with the basket. Iza had hung it over the bed. Everything required for comfort was present and correct but she still felt as though she had been robbed.
She wept and noted items with sore eyes, half-blind, all the while feeling that Iza had been extraordinarily good to her, and she even experienced a kind of naive piety in remembering that there was an ancient people that buried its dead with grave goods and that the vanished things, those witnesses to their lives together, might, by way of farewell, have accompanied Vince, escorted him and become his. So she stopped weeping because she wouldn’t stint Vince anything.
She thought dawn looked different in Pest and that somehow there was no great difference between dawn and night, just that the sky was suddenly brighter again and that the traffic outside, having quietened down a shade for a couple of hours, now sounded louder. It was a while before she realised why dawn was different here. Gica’s cockerel would always crow at half past two even when it was dark; Vince would remark how his watch was fast. She wept a little more on account of Gica’s cockerel and then again because Vince wasn’t here.
She fell asleep just as she heard Iza getting up. Iza started running the bath tap at six and there was something so reassuring about her presence, her movements, her tiny noises, that the tension inside her finally gave way and she nodded off for a few hours. It was the last day of Iza’s vacation and they spent the whole day together. They even went for a walk when the old woman fancied a pretzel and Iza bought her one to munch in front of the National Theatre. They dined at the Corvin store. The town was a little frightening, a strange capital city to find herself in, amazing and worthy of respect, and she wondered why it was so different from the way she remembered it, considering at the same time how to spend her days there and how best to help Iza, who was so nice to her it was as if she were her mother, not her daughter. The old woman was starting to suspect that what she had planned back home might not be so easy to carry out; it was going to be hard to guess how she could make her daughter’s life easier, because Iza was clearly thinking the same, her hands posed in a gesture of childhood thoughtfulness.
She knew from Iza that the housekeeping was done by Teréz – she had taken time off today as she was having some teeth extracted – and the girl had put her mind at rest by pointing out what a splendid person Teréz was and that she’d be no bother to her, though she didn’t take that seriously, not for a moment. Until he was forced into retirement, Vince had always been the real help to her: the maid stayed in her corner and Aunt Emma had taught her to keep an eye on the cook, in case she was tempted to steal anything. She resolved to be Iza’s eyes and ears as far as Teréz was concerned. She’d leave the cleaning to her, if she was properly clean, but she’d do the cooking herself. She had been an outstanding cook as far back as anyone could remember, so Teréz could light the gas or whatever, then go out and do the shopping. On Saturday morning the old woman went out to the nearest stationer’s and bought an exercise book that would serve as a kitchen record of expenses. Iza didn’t have the time for all this and, as Iza herself said, Teréz never showed her the bill, only told her what it cost. But that was all right because Teréz was absolutely honest and, even if she weren’t, whoever had the time to waste precious minutes on paying a penny or two less for a sprig of parsley!
But things would be different now. Teréz shouldn’t be going on shopping sprees with Iza’s hard-earned money. It wasn’t just a question of saving and good housekeeping. Iza looked thin: she needed feeding up. She remembered how fond Iza had been of cabbage as a child. She hadn’t been eating properly since she left – what, after all, could you expect of canteen food, or the meal Teréz cooked her? When she thought about it she realised that Iza can’t have had proper food for years because she never ate with them but dined at the hotel. Iza had never wanted her to tire herself out by making meals for her.
Teréz arrived at ten so they immediately got off on the wrong foot as the old woman was expecting her at half past nine. The woman introduced herself, shook hands and announced that she’d start with her room so that madam might relax all the sooner, advising her to read or listen to the radio while she worked.
Teréz addressed her as an equal. She had an enormous bun of brown hair, a maroon coat and as soon as she put her things down she took a kind of boiler suit – it turned out to be hers – from the cupboard and got herself into it. She unpacked her string bag, having come straight over from the covered market where she had been shopping.
The old woman informed her that it would be she who would be doing the cooking henceforth.
Teréz stared at her. She had brown eyes, eyes so dark you could hardly see the pupils. The old woman thought she was mocking her. Teréz suggested that she leave it for today because that was what she had agreed with Iza, but she should feel free to cook from the next day on if she liked, so if she’d be so kind as to decide what she needed from the shops now she wouldn’t have to go back out tomorrow. She took the broom and turned on the radio. The old woman stood straight up and turned it off again, saying they were in mourning so there couldn’t be any radio. Teréz looked at her in amazement, shrugged and said, as you please, and went out. She wasn’t a nice servant. Not at all. She didn’t even behave like a servant.
Naturally, she didn’t sit where Teréz suggested she should sit but followed Teréz around, watching her every move, correcting her if she saw she hadn’t done something properly. Teréz’s answers became ever more curt and she eventually stopped answering altogether. The old woman was tired but felt she had won a victory and when Teréz eventually left, she felt she had achieved something useful and important, and that it was a good thing she had come to Pest to take over the household. She was no longer concerned about her lost furniture and her scattered belongings. She lunched and felt proud, inwardly contemptuous of Teréz’s cooking: th
e woman was all mouth, there was no real flavour to her food, you’d only upset your stomach if you ate it. And to top it all she even locked the bathroom when she went there! She’d have followed her in if she could but the bolt was shot. Of course, she could tell what she was doing from the running water. She had the nerve to use Iza’s bath!
‘Look, mother,’ said Iza, more severe than usual. ‘Please don’t annoy Teréz.’ Iza’s sharpness shocked her. ‘Please, I beg you, don’t upset her! Of course she takes a bath, thank heavens she does, she is unusually clean. Would you prefer her to be filthy? She takes a bath here because this is where she works. She doesn’t like to leave smelling of food.’
The old woman couldn’t follow the logic of this but she had to accept it. She hadn’t yet revealed that she’d be cooking from now on, thinking that would be a surprise, a kind of experiment to see when the girl would notice that everything was real again, proper home cooking. Luckily, the recipe book had not been thrown away, it was only the shelf that was new. The first thing she’d cook would be cabbage: Iza will be so happy.
Iza was not happy. As soon as she stepped through the door she took a sniff and said the whole place smelled of food. What had got into Teréz? She knew she couldn’t stand cabbage. The old woman got cross about this. She reminded her daughter how they would laugh when she was little because of the way she’d gobble it up, cooked or raw. They had nicknamed her ‘the cabbage girl’, in case she had forgotten. ‘That was years ago,’ Iza gestured, ‘a few things have happened since then – a war and a siege, for example. My appetite was different then. The poor little “cabbage girl” is a thing of the past. Please tell Teréz not to cook anything new and to stick to what we arranged.’
It was a week before Iza found out that it was her mother, not Teréz, who was doing the cooking. She discovered this from Teréz herself, who turned up in the clinic one afternoon and announced that if her mother went on pestering her in the kitchen she would be forced to seek employment elsewhere. The old woman kept leaving the electric oven on and she’d find the frying pan on the ring with nothing in it. The old woman didn’t trust the refrigerator, complaining that there was no real ice there; she’d gather up the leftovers in a saucepan and put it out on the balcony; she spilled everything, so pans and dishes had to scrubbed all the time. When Teréz told her not to let stuff drip all over the balcony she put the pan on the window ledge and Teréz said she wouldn’t be responsible if there was a gust and it all fell on someone’s head. And she shouldn’t heat up leftovers to eat the next day. Who’d take the blame if one of them suffered from food poisoning?