Katalin Street

by Magda Szabo

  The children listened to the peroration from behind the curtain. The words passed mostly over their heads. “Glory,” “manliness,” and “honor” meant little to their ears, apart from Bálint, the oldest of them and the most capable of understanding such concepts. It made him feel how unthinkable it was that he should be forced to become a doctor when there was such glory in the life of a soldier, and he waited with mounting impatience for the play to begin so that, onstage at least, he might proclaim something he would never otherwise have the chance to express—what a joy it would be to hold a sword in his hand, and how willingly he would give his life for his country should the need ever arise.

  Irén, wearing her royal crown, was surprisingly, almost shockingly beautiful. Her father had felt that if she were to represent Hungaria she should appear in something rather grander than mere folk costume and had dressed her as an angel, without wings, in a long white pleated dress. The belt around her waist was studded with brightly colored stones, and on her head was the crown of St. Stephen, which Mr. Elekes had made himself from cardboard, taking considerable pains to bedeck it with artificial pearls and colored paper. Henriette, her page, stood throughout the prologue with her eyes fixed on the curtain. Even though she knew she would have nothing more to do than kneel at Irén’s feet holding the national coat of arms, she found the prospect terrifying. Irén too was apprehensive. She had the major role, and Blanka, whose behavior on these occasions was always unpredictable, might well do something to put her off her lines. Blanka was the only one who was both aroused and amused by her situation, bowing merrily before her regal sister in her boy’s costume. This was Blanka, with her dumpy little body, as she had been before she could even talk. Her soft curls, which Mrs. Held had attempted to tame with the application of a curling iron, had defied correction, and she fidgeted constantly while her father was speaking. Bálint had to grip her hand to stop her from hitting her father with her rifle while he was speaking on the other side of the curtain. When the applause died down Mr. Elekes returned to his place, and the Prologue metamorphosed into the Producer. He leapt onto the side of the stage and whipped the curtain back. It slid smoothly along the wire attached to the walls on either side with picture-hanging nails and wrapped itself around him as if he were Lazarus, a most patient Lazarus contentedly swaddled in his shroud.

  The scene thus presented drew yet more applause from the onlookers. Irén was seated on a throne, her hands in her lap, the crown glittering against her dark hair; her gaze was fixed on the audience, her body perfectly, almost preternaturally still. At her feet knelt Henriette, pressing the national coat of arms rather too firmly against her knees. Mrs. Held’s heart was torn by the sight, and her husband felt so sorry for the girl he quite forgot how much he had been looking forward to the children’s play. Excellent teacher though he was, when it came to Henriette Mr. Elekes’s instincts invariably let him down. Again and again he forced her to appear in front of audiences, but she had absolutely no self-confidence and any kind of public performance was a torment to her. Mr. Held squeezed his wife’s hand, a gesture that betrayed how very much they both felt for their little girl in her fear, and how they would have liked to rush up to her on the stage and pluck her away back home. Every so often the heraldic shield wobbled in her hands, and the mountains and the river behind (represented by swathes of cloth) trembled in sympathy.

  Looking at Irén-Hungaria, the Major found himself unexpectedly moved for the second time that day. His friend never explored new ideas, his pronouncements were never qualified, and if, on occasion, more was expressed in his plays than he intended, it was purely by chance, a random effect. There on the makeshift stage sat Irén, the crown of the sainted king on her head, the trembling page at her feet. The page was white with fear, an orphan such as no orphan had ever been, and it was her presence that made it so harrowing. Hungaria herself looked unimaginably defenseless and alone. His eyes sought out the producer to try to determine from the look on his face whether he too had noticed the grim significance of the scene, but the schoolteacher was still covered by the collapsed curtain. There was only Mrs. Temes, the prompt, sitting with the script in her hand at the far corner of the stage.

  Happily, the image of Hungaria sitting beneath her sacred crown with the little page trembling at her feet did not oppress him for long. From behind the curtain appeared Blanka, the child in a boy’s costume, tiny rifle in her hand, a sturdy bag hanging at her waist, her plump little body straining against the tight trousers. She was in excellent form and, just this once, did not forget her lines.

  She represented the Enemy, Hungaria’s Enemy. She was nameless, from no particular country, the perennial foe come to attack the homeland, with a rifle trained on Hungaria. As a child Blanka had a penetrating voice—she had always enjoyed it when she was allowed to shout—and the adults giggled at her vigorous, well-articulated delivery. This did not please Mr. Elekes. He had intended the scene, and in fact the entire play, to be deadly serious.

  Blanka began to heap insults on Hungaria. She accused her of every kind of base behavior, announced she would deprive her of her shield and crown, and threatened the page with her gun. The brief moment of good humor produced by Blanka’s unexpected appearance vanished, and for the second time Mr. Held’s heart skipped a beat: Henriette’s lips were white with fear. It was clear that even in a play she could not bear to be threatened.

  Then, with great dignity, Irén stood up to deliver her lines. She spoke beautifully, refuting in verse every allegation raised by the foe. In terms charged with far-reaching significance, she begged for help to defend her shield and her crown, crying out to every corner of the compass the one word, “Help!” Once again, the Major felt that he could no longer bear to look on and see his country presented thus onstage: it was a truly horrifying play. Her father-producer had dressed Irén as an angel, but her feet had been left bare to allow her to turn in supplication in every direction. Mrs. Temes lowered her exercise book: clearly the girl needed no prompting. Mrs. Elekes, entranced by her daughter’s performance—and not actually listening to what either she or Blanka were saying—went on munching her sweets and basking in her children’s cleverness. Tense as ever, Mrs. Held kept her eyes on her own daughter and ignored Irén. Finally, Bálint appeared.

  The audience thought they had never seen such a handsome boy as he, dressed in his Hussar’s uniform, and never had a sword been drawn with such grace. His part was also in verse, and he too spoke his words well, words of comfort for Hungaria: she had nothing to fear; he would fight for her; she need not fear for her shield, her crown, or her future. He was at her side. If necessary, he would lay down his life for her.

  From behind the curtain Mr. Elekes saw Irén smile as she turned to face Bálint. It rather shocked him: she was supposed to look at him with devout fervor. It was only when the girl realized that Bálint had neither seen her smile nor taken the least notice of it—and hadn’t returned it—that her expression became serious again. Bálint went on with his script, knowing that everything in it was true. Mr. Elekes’s distinctive verse style exactly expressed his newfound sentiments—his readiness to die heroically, and the conviction that he, and only he, could save the country.

  Irén, however, saw not Bálint the Hussar but Bálint the young man, and she hoped that he had noticed how very pretty she looked that day, how very grown-up in her full-length dress. Bálint was seeing something rather different. Standing before him in her long white robes and jewel-encrusted belt was not Irén Elekes but the embodiment of his country. He finished the speech, then fell to his knees, as instructed, and laid his sword at her feet. This brought his face close up beside Henriette’s, and he saw her open her mouth as if she too wanted to cry out for help, or at least catch her breath. Bálint was very fond of Henriette, but this gasping for air like the fish in their garden pond filled him with a strong desire to smack her. Then he raised his eyes and gazed up at Irén.

  For the first time he realized who she was.
All thoughts of his father’s birthday and the family play vanished, along with his lines. Beneath the sacred crown and the Hussar’s busby their eyes met, to the exclusion of everything else. Bálint had no way of knowing that she felt the same physical reaction that he did, or that what he experienced at this moment was indeed physical. These were the first moments in their lives that he, with the sword in his hand, and she, with the sacred crown on her head, had any premonition of the thing that would later drive the two of them remorselessly together. All he felt in that instant was how wonderful it would be for the play to stop, to speak no more lines, and to remain just where he was, by her side.

  He had no choice but to carry on. Blanka was at her most entertaining that afternoon and now she raised her rifle and began hurling abuse at him. Bálint grabbed his sword, leapt to his feet, and tried to wrestle the gun from her hand before she could take aim at either Irén or himself. At this point, according to the script, she was supposed to hand the weapon over, but she didn’t. Instead her face became white and contorted with rage. Mr. Elekes and Mrs. Temes hissed furious instructions at her, to no avail. Bálint, following an adult instinct for the first time in his life, hurled himself at her and, being so much stronger than she was, managed to tear the weapon from her hand, whereupon her rage turned into a loud howling. Mr. Elekes was still struggling to disentangle himself from the curtain so that he could bring his daughter to her senses and get her to surrender to Bálint, then lie down dead at his feet for him to plant his boot in triumph on her chest and raise his sword towards Irén, to signal to the guest of honor that the finest soldier in the world was a Hungarian. It didn’t happen, at least not in the way they anticipated. Without a word or even a sigh, Henriette keeled over, overcome by stage fright.

  The performance came to a halt. Her mother’s embrace soon restored Henriette to herself, but the play was over. Still in her costume, Blanka got a thoroughly good smacking from her mother. Only Bálint and Irén were left on the stage. Irén took off her crown, Mrs. Temes drew the curtain, and the two of them stood there, shut away from the other two, the sinner and her victim. Once again Bálint felt that disturbing and shameful impulse for which he had no name. He blushed bright red and fled from the scene.

  Memories of this little play returned to trouble him three times in his later life. The third and last was in 1952, when they began to question him at the start of his disciplinary hearing. Blanka was seated close by, in a corner of the room. Instead of attending to the questions, his mind, in something of a daze, somehow dredged up the lines Blanka had spoken that day. After a long pause, and to the amazement of the party official present, he returned not the sort of answer that was expected but a line of verse: “I shall attack you, I shall vanquish you, I shall chop your arms and legs to pieces.”

  The first occasion when it came back to him was ten years after it had taken place, on the day Henriette died. On his return from the hospital that night a tearful Mrs. Temes had led him outside to a chair she had placed beside the fence, so that he could use it to look over. Standing on it he saw the girl lying on the gravel path in the moonlight. Her neck was twisted to one side, just as it had been in that moment in their childhood when she had keeled over at Irén’s feet.

  The memory returned again shortly afterward, when he was taken prisoner during the siege of Budapest. As the line of captives moved off he suddenly thought of Irén. By then she was his fiancée, though she had no idea what was happening to him, and the Irén that came to his mind was not the slim, serious-minded university student but a vision clad in a white dress with a waistband of gleaming stones and the crown of St. Stephen on her head. The Russian guard had no idea what was passing through his mind when he suddenly came to a halt and stood there, his face buried in his hands, until they prodded him to keep moving. The guard could not have known that in his mind’s eye Bálint was seeing himself in that scarlet Hussar’s costume, with his little sword, the busby on his head, and also the Major, who was now dead, and the Helds, who had been taken away, and Henriette, who had been killed. He was trying to think where the Arrow Cross fanatics might have taken the crown of St. Stephen.

  1944

  I HAVE always been an early riser, but on that particular day I was up even earlier than usual.

  Blanka had the blanket pulled over her head and didn’t notice as I crept past her. I stood at the window and looked at our garden in the morning light. That year almost all the flowers we had planted happened to be red and the garden was ablaze with them. They made the golden light of the sun seem almost green.

  I had been in love with Bálint for so long, and so ardently, that on this morning of our engagement my feelings were of two distinct kinds—not just how passionately, almost oppressively happy I was but that what was to happen seemed the most natural thing in the world, almost preordained. For what other conclusion could there have been to a love that reached back to our innocent childhood? It seemed to me that the flowers opening and flooding the garden with their scent, the rain having suddenly stopped the night before after persisting on and off for so long, and the sun shining in my face all existed because today was my day. From the window I went across to the mirror. I saw my face looking as radiant as the sun that shone on the garden on this special morning. I was beautiful, I was young, and I was happy. . . .

  That moment was again in my mind, years later, when Bálint and I stood in the registry office contemplating each other. We were smoking, and I was thinking how our hands in particular betray the passage of time, and how large and ugly mine had become. We had invited the two witnesses, Timár and my head teacher, to an Italian restaurant, and as we took our places, man and wife for the very first time, Bálint suddenly started to guffaw. At the same time, he was choking and gasping for breath, and our two friends stared at him in surprise. Timár topped up his glass and urged him to drink, his manner implying that this was a man who had gone through a very great deal and had obviously not yet come to the end of it. The head teacher shot me a worried glance—he clearly didn’t think that kind of laughter was appropriate at a wedding—then he dropped his gaze. At this point a sense of the ridiculous welled up inside me too, and Bálint and I sat there, at opposite ends of the table, looking at each other and roaring with laughter. I have no idea what the weather was like. I seem to remember it was nice.

  By this time Rose was no longer with us, to my considerable dismay. I had really loved her, and my disappointment at losing her was heartfelt. She had looked after Blanka and me since birth and had helped us all in a great many ways. Our mother had been completely casual about our diapers: either they were forever falling off or she would simply forget to change us. When we cried she invariably assumed we had colic and plied us with chamomile tea. She would do that for us, but she didn’t change our diapers.

  I too was frightened when the bombing started but much less so than the grown-ups. It always amazed me how pathetically terrified they became. I had difficulty understanding what death might mean, least of all my own. But Rose was so terrified she did something that none of us had thought her capable of. She had been really happy living with us, she adored my mother and viewed her performances and her unpredictable changes of mood as so much merry entertainment. Her leaving us meant that we—that is to say, my father and I—had to do everything for ourselves, and later when he was conscripted into the army, it all fell to me.

  Our mother, having sworn in complete sincerity that we could leave everything to her, proceeded either to do nothing at all or to do things in such a way that made even more work for me. We had to excuse Blanka from the household chores, as far as we could, because she was about to take the last of her school exams and needed to perform reasonably well. She was hoping for a job in the hospital where Bálint was in his first few months as a doctor, and she was in a complete panic, frantically cramming and declaring that whatever she learned one day she forgot the next. Frankly, I couldn’t find it in my heart to ask her for help.

  Fo
r our engagement the Major came back from the front on a three-day leave. He left his batman behind, so the preparations were carried out by Mrs. Temes. The Held family were represented only by Henriette: they had a great many problems at this time and these included not being allowed to employ servants.

  On the eve of the event we worked late into the night. My scatterbrained mother was so excited by the fact that her daughter was about to get married that she stationed herself on guard duty, sitting on the sofa to watch and shout out suggestions every now and then, most of them completely impracticable—though I was just as happy listening to them as she was yelling them out. My dear father gave himself up to the role of father of the bride, contented, complacent, even a little moved, wandering off from time to time to check on Blanka, who was confined to our bedroom with her schoolbooks, or taking a moment to sit and rest beside my mother on the sofa. When everything was at last ready, he escorted Henriette to the door of her house: that had been the strict condition on which Uncle Held had allowed her to come. Night and the hours after dusk were especially dangerous for them, and while Mr. Held was still personally protected by his war-service medal, Henriette was never allowed out of the house on her own even by day.