The Angel Makers

by Jessica Gregson

‘I’m not! It would be far too risky. It’s over. I don’t have any choice.’

  True to her word, Sari is back from the camp in an hour, having briskly doled out medicines and advice, and chopping potatoes for dinner, having warned Judit that she must be on her best behaviour tonight because of Ferenc’s presence. She knows that Ferenc already fears her slightly, and she doesn’t want to run the risk of Judit alarming him so much that he refuses to let them work together any more. That would be unbearable.

  ‘So, did you see him today?’ Judit asks.

  For a perverse moment, Sari considers asking Judit who she’s talking about, but then capitulates. ‘No. He was out by the time I’d arrived. I think he was avoiding me, but I don’t know whether it’s because he doesn’t want to see me, or because he doesn’t want to put me in an awkward position.’

  Judit doesn’t say anything more for a moment, just stumps around the kitchen, looking thoughtful. Then: ‘What you said before, Sari.’

  ‘What, what I said before?’

  ‘About not having a choice. It’s not true. You do have a choice. You always do.’

  Sari sighs, irritated. ‘It’s all very well to say that, Judit, but—’

  Judit holds up a hand, cutting her off. Her face is stern, and Sari understands that this is not a question of goodnatured teasing, or needling Sari just for the sake of the challenge: this time, Judit means business.

  ‘Don’t tell me I don’t understand. Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to be you, right now, but credit me with a little knowledge of human nature. There is always a choice, Sari, always. If you fool yourself into believing there’s not, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself. Sometimes all your options look pretty nasty, but remember they’re there.’

  Sari swallows. ‘Judit—’ but Judit is shaking her head.

  ‘I’m not going to talk about it any more, and I’m not going to question the choice you make. I just wanted to be sure that you know that you’re making one.’

  He’s been home for a week now, and in that time he’s been out of Sari’s father’s house once, the first night he was home, to Judit’s house for dinner. It was intolerable. Every step he took, everywhere he looked, the differences slapped him in the face. The way Judit’s face has aged over four years; the degree to which Sari is at home in Judit’s house, in her role as domestic and professional assistant; the way the village looks, stripped of its men (and those strange looking men, one or two, that he’d glimpsed skulking in doorways – he cannot bear to think about them, the enemy, the marks of their feet on his village, the touch of their hands in his house); the changes, each as sharp as a gunshot, as wounding as a bayonet blow, and a personal affront, directed at Ferenc alone. It is intolerable.

  From Sari’s father’s house, all he can see is the woods, and the woods haven’t changed. They are a comfort. The house hasn’t changed, either, except for the absence of Jan and child-Sari, and it is easy to conjure up their memories. Too easy, perhaps; he has found that when adult-Sari comes in through the door, there’s often a moment of vertigo, as if he’s looking forward in time. He has to remind himself that this is the present.

  Sari. She didn’t say anything, but she must have noticed his reaction, that first night he was home, and so she no longer asks him to have dinner at Judit’s house. Instead, she cooks there, and after she and Judit have eaten, she brings him a panful of whatever she has made, sitting with him while he eats it. She is often silent, but that doesn’t disturb him; she was always like that, and now, he is often silent himself.

  She will not stay the night.

  He knows that it’s proper for her to refuse, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting her, a soul-deep longing that is painful and bitter. There’s no answering longing in her eyes, however much he tries to deceive himself, and that hurts, but brings about a steely certainty. It doesn’t matter; her desire will come, and even if it doesn’t, it still doesn’t matter. They are engaged, they will marry, and then she will be his. She will be just the tonic that he needs, to build up his strength, to make him brave enough to leave the house, to reclaim his life again. It’s different, everything is different now, but she’s still his. She is still his.

  Sari is just waiting for the day that she gets used to things. So far, it hasn’t come. She sees Ferenc every day, brings him food, does his washing, and tends his wound. During the day she feels nothing but pity and slight repulsion for him, with his collection of nervous ticks, his paranoid rituals, and his intermittent illness – a fever, he says, picked up on the battlefield that has never quite disappeared; but Sari interprets things differently and sees the stomach pains that he complains of, as a sign of a troubled heart and mind. At night, however, when he is not there and so unable to inspire sympathy, thoughts of him frighten her, and he seems somehow emotionally vast and uncontrollable. This is no way for a woman to think of her fiancè, but she can’t seem to stop herself.

  He talks of marriage after the war is over – he expects it to be soon, soon enough that he is prepared to wait, for marriage while the war is still going on would be an affront to decency, he thinks. It gives her a little respite, a little time to accustom herself to the idea. She makes herself imagine living with him, and that is bearable; cooking for him, cleaning, these things she does already. Sleeping with him, though … she forces herself to think of it because she knows she must, but she still cannot see how she’s going to make herself go through with it. She knows he wants to fuck her – she’s learnt that from being in close company with men for the past couple of years. He hasn’t asked yet, he’s too shy and too jumpy to build up the necessary confidence, but every day that she sees him, he seems to relax further in her presence, and she knows that it’s just a matter of time. She could refuse, of course; he would find that acceptable, even admirable, though frustrating, behaviour; but refusal will only get her as far as the wedding, and after that she will have no power to refuse. There’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about, she tells herself, and waiting until they are married will just give her more time to build up reserves of dread. She decides that she had better sleep with him as soon as he musters the courage to ask.

  What is it that she finds so horrifying about this idea, she wonders? She realises that the problem is not just that Ferenc isn’t Marco, but something inherent to Ferenc himself. His wounded leg doesn’t help, but Sari’s never been squeamish, and if everything else were in place that would fail to put her off. She doesn’t care for the pale pink of his skin, or the insipid blue eyes and fair hair, equating them with childishness; she doesn’t like his slow, lumbering mind, or his deliberate and ponderous way of speaking – but it’s not these things that bring out a cold sheen of sweat on her skin when she thinks about being naked in front of him. It’s the way he looks at her, hungry and desperate. She remembers this from before she went away, and she had always found it obscurely flattering that she could see how much he wanted her. Now, it’s just alarming. Whether the war has added an edge to him, or whether she’s just learnt more about love, the fact remains that there is nothing tender in those eyes, he does not look at her with pleasure or pride or fondness, but with gaping need, and a desire to possess.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Later, Sari wonders, sometimes, where exactly the line was. It’s an irrelevant question. The point is that the line was crossed, and that had consequences, and whether or not those consequences were appropriate is also irrelevant. But it’s funny, really, that sometimes so much happens, so quickly, that when you react, it’s impossible to tell what you’re reacting to, and Sari wonders whether, if things had just been a tiny bit different, if things had been bad but not that bad, she would have swallowed her doubts and got on with things. It isn’t a nice thought, but then, the reality isn’t nice either.

  Ferenc is always quiet these days, but Sari is perceptive enough to be able to tell when the timbre of his silence changes. When she brings him his dinner that night – three, four weeks after he has
come home? – the atmosphere in her father’s house is like a blow to the face, and she feels the atavistic heart of herself respond, hairs rising on the nape of her neck; something is wrong here.

  He’s sitting at the table in the dark – again, there’s nothing unusual in this; it’s as if stimulus hurts him, which is why he has to hide from it, even in that house – and there’s something in the tense line of his shoulders that makes Sari think, this is not good. Part of her wants to simply leave the food on the table and slip away – surely it’s not beyond him to heat it up? – but she ignores that impulse. This is the man she’s going to marry, and so she’s not going to run away from his every mood, because soon, she won’t have anywhere to run.

  She sets the pan on the table, lights the lamp, and begins to prepare his food. She doesn’t speak, and for a long while, neither does he. It is only when she puts the plate of paprika chicken in front of him that he says, in a voice hoarse through disuse, not looking up from the table, ‘I saw something interesting today.’

  Oh, God. ‘Did you?’ Sari asks, her voice deliberately light.

  He nods, but says nothing, and starts to eat. Sari is still, but some part deep inside her is trembling. She looks down at the table, too, watching him from underneath her lashes, counting every spoonful of food that goes into his mouth, willing the meal to be over so that she can escape.

  ‘Do you want to know what it was that I saw?’

  Go carefully here, Sari tells herself. He’s trying to provoke a response and she will not give it to him. ‘What was it?’ She is suddenly thankful that she is not a good conversationalist at the best of times; her voice sounds stilted to her, but it’s not far from normal.

  ‘I saw your friend Anna, Anna Csillag, Károly’s wife, Anna. She was going into the woods with a man that I didn’t recognise. He looked like he was one of the men from the camp. They were laughing.’ There’s a pause, tight, crackling. ‘What do you think they might have been doing, Sari?’

  Feigning ignorance would be transparent, she realises. Instead, she sighs. ‘I don’t think that’s any of our business, Ferenc.’

  ‘Do you know what I think?’

  She doesn’t answer; it doesn’t seem like he’s expecting her to.

  ‘I think that Anna’s been playing the whore. Your good friend Anna. What do you think, Sari?’

  Again, she doesn’t answer. He’s staring at her now, and it’s just about killing her pride not to look him in the eyes, but she has an idea that it would just enrage him.

  ‘And I think maybe Anna’s not the only one playing the whore, Sari. When we were going to Judit’s the other night, I saw some men in the village, some men who shouldn’t have been there at all. I don’t know what’s going on down at that prison camp, but I think I’m getting an idea of what’s going on in this village. Do you want to tell me about it, Sari?’

  She can’t stay silent forever. ‘All right, yes, some of the women here have been going with the men down at the camp—’

  While their husbands have been fighting and dying for them?’ He speaks loudly, but more than anger, hurt vibrates through every word. Sari feels a lurch of pity, though not of guilt; things happen, is what she thinks, and people hurt other people, and what’s done is done. She feels sorry for Ferenc, though; deep, crushing sorrow that he feels that he and the others have been heroes, and that they’re not getting the treatment that they deserve.

  ‘And what about you, Sari?’ he asks then, his voice lowered now, but intense. ‘What have you been doing while I’ve been away?’

  ‘What? Nothing!’ Mingled guilt and fear hit her like a slap in the face, stunning her momentarily.

  ‘You’ve been going down there—’

  ‘To nurse! To help them with problems that the doctor can’t deal with! Nothing more!’ She suddenly feels flooded with outrage, and she clings to it gratefully; for a moment she’s almost convinced that she really has been doing nothing wrong, and she knows that she must believe it, if she’s to convince him.

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ he asks.

  She doesn’t know what he wants to hear, and the silence stretches between them, until, with staggering suddenness he seizes the plate in front of him, and throws it against the wall, where it shatters. ‘Why should I believe you?’ he yells.

  She has never lost her temper before, not since she was a small child, but there’s something about the tantrum that he is throwing, the wanton destruction, the fact that he is suspecting her infidelity out of pure paranoia rather than anything solid that stirs her to action and before she has the chance to judge whether she is being wise or not, she is on her feet, eyes blazing, head thrown back.

  ‘I cook for you, I clean for you, I look after your injuries, I wrote to you every week while you were away. What reason have I given you to doubt me? I live with Judit and I spend my time taking care of sick people. When would I have had time to have this affair that you’ve imagined for me? Why would I do something like this? What reason have I given you to doubt me?’

  She doesn’t shout, but it’s as if she has; the silence when she stops speaking is ringing. She’s still for a moment, then turns, takes a cloth, and starts to clean up the mess that he has made.

  When she hears his footsteps behind her, she tenses, not knowing whether to expect a kick in the ribs or a reconciliation. A series of bangs and thumps and he crouches down behind her – not an easy task with his injured leg – and puts his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, quietly.

  ‘It’s all right.’ It isn’t. Of course it isn’t.

  ‘You’re right, you’ve never given me reason to doubt.’

  She puts the cloth down and turns to him, realising that he had been testing her, rather than accusing her, that the last thing that he wants to believe is in her infidelity – such an affront to his honour would be disastrous to him, as well as to her – and so he will clutch at any straw to avoid it.

  Not knowing what to say, she says again, ‘It’s all right.’

  Ferenc shakes his head. ‘No, it’s not all right. Nothing is all right. Nothing.’

  He rocks backwards so that he is sitting on the floor and puts his head in his hands, and with utter horror, Sari realises that he is crying. She tries to think how she should behave in this situation. No matter how she feels about their engagement, leaving him weeping on the floor surrounded by scraps of food and broken plate seems callous. Awkwardly, she reaches out to grip his shoulder, and he lurches forward, wrapping his arms around her waist, and burying his head in her breasts. Immobile for a moment, she thinks like a child, and strangely, it’s a comforting thought; children, she can deal with. Tentatively she puts her arms around him and kisses his hair, and when, after a few minutes he raises his head and kisses her, pushes her down onto her back and lifts up her skirts, she feels the weight of inevitability on top of her and does nothing to stop him.

  As they have sex on the kitchen floor she steps outside of herself, able to watch the proceedings with a sort of remote interest. It’s no worse than she thought it would be, at least, but although she longed for this with Marco, with Ferenc it seems like such a bizarre thing to be doing. It doesn’t last long – a quick, sharp pain, a minute or so of breathlessness and then he slumps, face beatific, as if he’s travelled far into another dimension, while she’s remained here on the kitchen floor.

  After a while, he sits up, and that’s when they notice the blood.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, and sounds genuinely regretful. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘It didn’t really hurt,’ she says, absently; inside, she realises that she has just proven her fidelity as much as it could ever be proven in his eyes.

  ‘I love you, Sari.’ It’s the first time he’s said it in so many words. She recognises the lie behind the words, but recognises also that it’s a lie that he believes.

  ‘I know you do,’ she replies. He seems content with that.

  When she goes back to
Judit’s that night, Judit knows, straight away, and Sari is taken aback by her reaction.

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ Judit asks, with a steeliness in her tone that Sari hasn’t heard before, and it takes Sari a moment to realise that Judit’s asking whether Ferenc raped her. She shakes her head, and Judit relaxes, but it disconcerts Sari that rape was Judit’s first assumption.

  ‘Why did you ask that?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m just worried for you.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do something like that,’ Sari says, uncertain. The Ferenc that she knew four years ago wouldn’t have done something like that. The Ferenc that she knew four years ago also wouldn’t stay shut up in a house for weeks on end, and he certainly wouldn’t throw plates and food. This new Ferenc is a worrying proposition, and Sari is both heartened and depressed that she is not the only person to think so.

  She needs to think.

  ‘Anna, would you do something for me?’

  Next morning, and the sun is low and bright. Anna’s face is beautifully open and uncomplicated.

  ‘Of course. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Will you let me use your house for a couple of hours this afternoon? Just, I don’t know, go for a walk, or something, but let me borrow your house. Please.’

  Sari does not look at Anna when she says this, but she can imagine Anna’s face, full of consternation.

  ‘This is for Marco, isn’t it?’ Anna says. ‘You want somewhere to go together?’

  Sari nods. Anna’s house is perfect – set a little way out from the main part of Falucska, with a side door that can be easily accessed without being seen by the village. Anna has never met Giovanni there; she’s able to ignore her betrayal of Károly when she’s not in such familiar surroundings, but Sari is hoping that’s not going to stop her from letting her and Marco use it.

  When Anna doesn’t answer, she raises her head. ‘Please, Anna,’ she begs.

  ‘I don’t know, Sari. I mean, when Ferenc was away, it was all very well, but now …’