Iza's Ballad

by Magda Szabo

  Domokos looked on as, crestfallen, faced with the wreck of her good intentions, she turned to him with a half-smile and thanked him for his support at this difficult time. He saw Gica’s broad and scrubbed face, behind whose silly words about a new coat, a mohair scarf and a lot of five-hundred-forint notes there glimmered a truth, a truth to which he had been an unconscious witness in Pest, the flickers of which, much against his own will, he was even now reconstructing into a truth as solemn and blinding as the sun. ‘So that’s decided,’ thought Domokos. ‘Settled once and for all.’

  Antal and Lidia found themselves next to each other, their shoulders almost touching. Antal’s pagan-god face looked grief-stricken. Lidia was standing with her back to the windowsill, the flowerpots, the flowering cacti and house plants framing her like some ungainly autumnal bridal costume. You might as well have stuck a feather or a sprig of myrrh in her hair, it was that inappropriate. The only accessories that would have suited her at that moment would have been a set of scales in her fine, strong left hand and a bright sword in the more tremulous right one.

  They registered their particulars, the place names, the dates, everything necessary. Domokos could feel Iza tug at his arm when she heard the nurse’s details: Lidia Takács, born 5 October 1932 in Karikásgyüd.

  4

  IT WAS THE first time, in all the time she knew her, that Lidia saw Iza for what she was.

  When she first saw her she had been only a few months at the clinic. She felt in awe of her each time she appeared down the corridor. At that time, of course, she felt in awe of every doctor because doctors could tell her what needed to be done and how to save people’s lives, but Iza was more than that. People still talked of this remarkable woman who had moved to Pest, the older nurses often mentioning her. One day when Iza dropped in looking for Professor Dekker as usual, someone introduced her to Lidia. Lidia, this is Dr Szőcs who used to work here in the rheumatology department. So this was Professor Dekker’s favourite, Iza, the ex-wife of Antal Antal.

  Every month she came. Lidia was wild about her and imagined her at the spa with thick glass walls behind her next to a hot bubbling spring. How brave she had been in the war, helping to sabotage the clinic. How she worked alongside the men when it was rebuilt. Everyone she worked with was full of praise for her hard work, quick intelligence and decisiveness. Beyond that, they stressed what a really good person she was, and what a good child she was to her mother and father.

  Iza was Lidia’s role model.

  The porter would tremble with joy whenever she arrived from Pest. ‘Dr Szőcs is here,’ he’d announce as he rang the upper floor and Lidia would hang around the lift so she could be the first to welcome her. Simply being close to her would improve Lidia in some way, even if it was no more than Iza remarking, ‘What do you do with your plants to make them grow so beautifully?’

  Then she fell in love with Antal and her feelings towards Iza became more complex.

  Everyone at the clinic knew who had divorced whom: those who worked there knew a great deal, not only about colleagues but about patients and even members of their families, nor had Iza made any secret of what had happened. It clearly hadn’t occurred to her that the truth could be unflattering to herself. Her friends who, at one or other moment of confidence on the night shift, had asked her about it always received the same answer: ‘It’s the way Antal wanted it.’ Dekker swore, people wagged their heads and for a while Antal was subject to a certain level of hostility, his colleagues giving him a frosty reception. Somebody put it like this, that if Szőcs wasn’t good enough for Antal how, for heaven’s sake, were simple mortals to relate to him?

  When Iza went away to Pest, somehow everything had returned to normal. Antal hadn’t remarried and people at the clinic understood that increasingly he preferred to be alone, that he was becoming some kind of lone wolf figure. ‘The problem,’ his friends said with some sympathy now and the older ones nodded, ‘is that an awful lot can happen in a marriage that makes living together difficult. No one knows what Szőcs is like as a woman, none of us has any experience of her in a relationship and she’s been with Antal since her fresher year. God knows really – it doesn’t matter.’

  They forgave Antal, even Dekker did.

  Lidia was in despair because she had fallen in love with the kind of man that could have married Iza.

  Iza talked to everyone sincerely and without reserve, while Lidia could only talk to the patients, best of all to seriously ill patients; her own reserve tended to break down with those who most required her, she was not really a chatty person otherwise. Nothing exciting had happened in her life, her diploma results were good but not outstanding, she was just a child during the war so couldn’t run around bearing arms or delivering illegal leaflets the way Iza did. One summer she had some voluntary work helping to regulate the river but every young person in the village helped in that, as did others from round about Dorozs. Out of uniform she disliked her blonde hair and grey eyes: Iza was dark, with blue eyes.

  She knew that, if she very much wanted to, she could become part of the group that occasionally went around with Antal but somehow she didn’t want to do that. Antal’s relationships with women tended to be brief even by the standards of the clinic and they always aroused the unpleasant suspicion that their nature was essentially biological. Lidia wanted more than that: she was interested in Antal’s cares and problems; she’d have like to see him bad-tempered and depressed, then to cheer and comfort him, to feed him when he was hungry and help him in his work if she could. She would have liked to talk to Antal, to get closer to him in more than the physical sense, to talk to him about flowers, about the way some patient suddenly got better, even about what clothes she should wear and what she should read apart from textbooks. Lidia was vulnerably and innocently in love with Antal, and once she became aware of that she looked at Dr Szőcs with different eyes.

  She gazed at Iza with longing now and adored her even more. Iza’s all round personal excellence was now rendered even more excellent by the secret power that had bound Antal to her and possessed him body and soul. Under normal circumstances the thought of inheriting another woman’s husband would not have bothered her so much, but it would be impossible even to think that she should follow Iza in Antal’s bed. Once someone had lived with Iza they could never forget her, thought Lidia, and even if they pretended to, she, Lidia, would always be compared to the other woman. Who could possibly compete with the memory of Iza? And if Antal could be dissatisfied with Iza, why should he even notice her?

  She tried to rid herself of this plainly hopeless infatuation the way one might cure some childhood ailment, the kind treated through minimal medical intervention and a little physiotherapy. Her long hard hours of duty didn’t rule out opportunities for meeting other young people. There was a lively group of young people working at the clinic. Lidia laughed and danced with young men, went to movies with them, ran along the beach in the summer and went tobogganing with them on the pine hills in the winter. She pelted them with snowballs and kissed a few by the bust of the local poet the way all young people did. But then Csere from the finance office made overtures to her, at which point she stopped for a while, frightened to do anything. She feared she had led on Csere without meaning to.

  It was not easy weaning herself off Antal because she saw him regularly and talked to him all the time, but that was only about impersonal things, about things that mattered deeply to patients but not to the two of them. Lidia would see him in the buffet or in front of the clinic with whatever woman he had in tow at the time, and that upset her and she felt faintly angry, thinking, ‘What does he see in her? In what way is she different from me?’ The only time she was truly jealous – and even then the jealousy was mixed with pride and love – was when Iza appeared in the corridor and knocked at the door of some room looking for Antal while he was down in the cafeteria leaning a little too close to some woman or running hand in hand with another through the boxwood meadow. Whe
n he did meet Iza he would discuss matters as he would with a man and the professor was always there with them.

  Lidia almost wept for shame when she realised for the first time that she was jealous of someone who had not lived with her husband for years. It was a comic but heartbreakingly childish state of mind. She suffered every time she saw Iza with Antal, but was at the same time happy because she could at least be in the same building as Dr Szőcs. Lidia’s years of faithful infatuation took on an extra dimension because of this strange new feeling.

  There was a time when she completely forgot she loved her but saw that her attraction – because of Antal – was not unambiguous. It was when Iza brought her father to the clinic and Antal asked her and Eszter Gál to look after him. Lidia watched Dr Szőcs teasing the patient, saw how she helped feed him, what patience she showed and how she’d cover the bed with silly gifts, hoping to amuse him, but she also saw how, sometimes after a visit, she’d step out into the corridor and rest her head against the window and look down over the wood as if the trees could respond, as if the wood could tell her why those we love have to die. But whenever the old woman appeared, tapping awkwardly across the stone floor, Iza’s handkerchief disappeared and she smiled at her mother, saying, ‘He seems to be a little better today, my dear, so don’t go weeping at his bedside.’ It was what she always said. Every time.

  Tending Vince Szőcs had a calming effect on her. By concentrating on him she could forget Antal. A person can forget everything when her mind is on something else, even such things as never were. Her devotion to Antal was ridiculous, ridiculous and superfluous. Iza was once again what she had been before: an adolescent crush. ‘She’s such a good person’ were the first words she heard about her before she got to know her. And she really was, and it was odd now to think that at one time she regarded Iza as an invincible rival. Lidia felt ashamed of herself.

  Then one night she got into conversation with the judge.

  She thought he was in pain or needed something, but she saw she was mistaken. Vince gave a smile, tried to stretch a little and in a voice that was fully awake said, ‘It has been years since I last dreamt, Lidia, and now, half asleep, I have been dreaming again. Just imagine it, I was at home. At home!’

  A nurse must be willing to listen at times like this.

  She adjusted Vince’s pillow and blanket. She was happy to touch him, pleased to do what was necessary. The judge was a clean, quiet, refined little old man, gentle in manner and courageous. ‘You’ll be out dancing soon,’ Dekker used to say when he looked in. ‘My father-in-law is already much better,’ grunted Antal, who was a hopeless liar. When the old man was expecting his wife he’d ask for a double dose of painkillers so she shouldn’t worry about him. When she asked how he was he might perhaps complain that he didn’t feel quite fresh enough. ‘Give me some painkiller, Lidia,’ he would say. His small eyes were intelligent and wise. Lidia would turn away at such moments and fuss about on the table so he shouldn’t see her face. It’s not easy when a patient suspects that he is not likely to live long.

  Lidia loved Vince, not because of Antal or Iza, but entirely for himself, for undertaking his heroic role in the usual comedy enacted around those who are incurable. He understood that Iza thought he knew nothing and was wanting to amuse him, so he played cards with her while his strength lasted. He knew what the old woman was hoping to see, so he kept smiling and waving at her with his thin hands that were worn to a shadow. When left alone his body stiffened and he tried to look stronger than his medication allowed. He asked for a radio and for newspapers as long as he could hold them. He joked with visitors. He slept better when Lidia was on the night shift near him and he would pay her compliments when he woke: your complexion is like wild roses, he would say.

  He would usually have to be half asleep before he spoke directly of his feelings, only once the painkillers they stuffed him with started working and his snow-white fingers could move across the blanket. He whispered, but not in a flat voice, rather dreamily: like someone preparing to go to sleep, his words articulated into syllables, like a child with a secret who finally gets around to talking about it.

  Lidia listened to him.

  Sometimes he spoke about Iza as a child, about her lisping, her pinafore, her pigtails and bunches, about the old woman’s younger body, about her first evening dress which was pale blue, and the crown of forget-me-nots she wore in her blonde hair when it was pinned up. There were times she found him crying, wanting to talk about his feelings of shame on being drummed out of his post like some common criminal. She even heard him whispering about how the old woman once cursed him because he lost his job. However often she asked him to forgive her for it Vince could not forget it to this day.

  She discovered a great deal about Antal too.

  The cardboard figure of Antal became a firmly rounded man in the old man’s conversation. It shook Lidia to discover how good he was to live with. ‘Why did he leave her?’ he fretted. ‘Such a decent boy and she loved him so. Why did he leave her, Ettie, have you any idea?’

  Lidia had plenty of opportunity to think why Antal might have left Iza. No one at the clinic had a clue. Nurses who had worked with him for years said no one had ever caught Antal being unfaithful while he was married and he always got on well with his wife. Everyone knew Iza had only ever been interested in Antal. They knew how they fought together to establish Dorozs, they knew Iza’s extraordinary capacity for work and the shy smile she saved for Antal alone.

  But now the truth was out. Vince knew no more than anyone what had happened between them.

  That night, when the judge started speaking unexpectedly, Lidia leaned close to him. The old woman had stayed longer than usual that day and it was hard for him to sleep after such a visit. The world pressing in from outside and the world within, the world he was well accustomed to, did not quite match: his spirit resented the health surrounding him and undermined the interests of his body.

  ‘Where were you born, Mr Szőcs?’ the nurse asked.

  The judge smiled and his weak wrist shook a little as if he wanted to make some kind of gesture. For a few days now he had been incapable of completing a movement without help. ‘Far away,’ he said. ‘Out in the country.’

  ‘In a village?’ asked Lidia.

  ‘Rural’ in rural speech means anything that is neither the capital nor the speaker’s home. Kázna, Dorozs, Okolács, Kusu . . .

  ‘Sort of,’ said the judge. ‘A place called Karikásgyüd.’

  Lidia stared at him. She too was born in Karikásgyüd.

  The naming of the place established an intimate connection between them, drawing them closer together. ‘It’s nice there,’ said the judge. ‘The shore is red before spring and sulphur-yellow after. In my dream I was standing on the dike, not afraid of the river. The water was gurgling under the mill wheel.’

  ‘The old dike is gone,’ said Lidia, shaking her head. ‘We have a concrete dike now. The river has been regulated.’

  This conversation marked the beginning of a strange period when the judge seemed to be getting better. It was a mystery from a medical point of view, an inexplicable three days during which Antal couldn’t be certain of his patient’s condition. Dekker shrugged and Antal rang Iza in the middle of the night. Lidia was passing his office and heard what he was saying: ‘Papa is suddenly well, he feels no pain, I have no idea why.’ Lidia hurried on, her feet silent down the corridor.

  They carried on talking eagerly to each other.

  Lidia had seen the flood memorial in the square at Villánytelep, inscribed: To those who died in the Gyüd flood, and had learned in school about the disaster that hit the village in 1887. She knew the row of willows and the old dike that the judge’s father was guarding, the one at the bend of the river that she later helped break up one summer when a concrete dike was erected in its place. Everything the judge remembered had vanished: the mill, the old dike and the small thatched houses, all gone. They discussed each street, lane
, passage and meadow. Vince told Lidia about the Gyüd that was still a part of his inner life; the nurse told him about Gyüd as it was now with its enormous cooperative farms, its health centre, the machine stores, and the peasants roaring up and down side roads on their motorbikes. There were times they found it hard to understand each other because Lidia called streets and alleys by their new names whereas the judge used the old names. Parts of Gyüd had entirely changed and the nurse would have to draw maps of the village so they eventually realised that either they were talking about the same place with two different names or that these were parts of the village that had not existed at all the last time the judge visited home. Vince tried to prop himself on his elbows and his constantly pale face glowed a little. They talked about the mill where Lidia used to play, which was demolished and replaced by an electric one. Lidia said she was born near the old wooden building and the first thing she would hear on waking was the fresh sound of water as it bubbled through the lock. The judge knew nothing about later developments. The papers had written about the channelling of the river and the building works in the summer of 1953 but it was the only period in Vince’s life when he neither listened to the radio nor bothered with the papers: it was the time the divorce was going through.

  They talked about each other’s private lives too.

  The judge had lived a long time and Lidia listened how, as he spoke, the village where she lived just a few years ago came to life again. She met the judge’s father, the biological one, and the other, real father: the River Karikás, teeming with fish and crab, that actually supported them financially, who got into a temper one day, rose and killed one-third of the village population. She got to know his terrors, how the child Vince listened through his two blue windows at dawn trying to gauge the mood of the river, imagining how things were at the dike. She heard about Dávid, the teacher at the gimnázium, about law school, about Aunt Emma, about Darabont Street and even about Captain.