Louisa

by Simone Zelitch

  “Does he look suspicious?” I asked Laszlo. He gave me a bewildered smile, then rose and pulled out a seat beside him. I got the second surprise of the afternoon. There was my mother.

  She didn’t greet me, just looked at me across the tablecloth with her pince-nez glinting over her little hard eyes. I straightened and said, “Well, you finally made it to Budapest.”

  “I was finally invited,” my mother said. “Where’s my grandson?”

  “I fed him to the wolves,” I said. Actually, he was with the landlady.

  She ignored me, which was her own way of telling me nothing had changed. She took a long time about removing her hat, drawing out at least five pins before she managed to place it on the table. “I can’t even take off this thing without it being a production with all the trimmings. It’s arthritis. Watch for it, child. You’ll get it as certain as you’re sitting here.”

  “Nothing in life is certain,” said Laszlo.

  I felt as though they expected me to take sides. Really, it was just too strange, seeing that little beetle of a woman looking just as she had eight years ago, sitting there replacing the pins in her enormous hat. I tried to master myself. “How are you, Mother?”

  “I told you. Arthritis,” she said. “Where’s my grandson? I came here to see my grandson.”

  “Anna,” Laszlo said, taking hold of my mother’s arm, “you’ve got days and days to see them all—Nora, Janos, little Gabor.”

  Days and days? I swallowed hard and said to Laszlo, “You’re staying—”

  “I’m going home tonight,” Laszlo said at once. “Your mother booked a room near the train station. She wants to take Gabor to the zoo.”

  “The zoo?”

  “I am a grandmother,” my mother said, not nicely, I thought. “Grandmothers take their grandsons to the zoo. Of course, grandmothers generally don’t stay at hotels.”

  “You’ll stay with us,” I said. And all the while I was trying to remember the condition of the flat, not to mention how easy it was for me to bear my mother. Not so easy. Even as we ate the fish course with our little forks, I could feel my worst self surface.

  “I was making a joke,” my mother said. “Of course I’ll stay at the hotel. Who just appears and moves in?”

  “You do, apparently,” I said to her, and then I managed to smile. “Laszlo,” I said, “why don’t you stay too? You could take the couch.”

  “No, me? I’m going home.”

  “Please. Stay,” I said, trying hard to keep my eyes pinned on his.

  “I’ve already got the ticket. It’s a reserved train,” Laszlo said, clearly taken aback. “I’ve got my own son waiting for me. Daughter too, did I write you?”

  “Apparently, Nora likes to write letters,” my mother said to Kalman Nagy. “To everyone but her mother.”

  “Mother, that’s not fair,” I said.

  “A line or two a month? On a postcard? Well, that’s to be expected. After all, after all this time, aren’t we practically strangers?”

  Kalman giggled, and said, “I’d know you were her mother anywhere. You two are like peas in a pod!”

  I had to excuse myself from the table then, rush outside, and take a few gulps of air. Then I had a smoke and felt a little better. My head cleared, but I couldn’t take the invitation away.

  AFTER THE SUPPER ended, my mother put her hat back on, and as I couldn’t see myself putting her on a trolley, I had to hail a cab, something that brought back memories of long, stupid evenings with boys like Kalman, and also, admittedly, made me feel wistful about Adele.

  “Who would have thought it?” my mother said. “You, in Budapest. You must have quite the apartment here if you give up a perfectly good country house.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How could I forget? The healthful fumes from the express trains. All the peace and quiet. And such a rich cultural life there. Just the place to raise a happy child.”

  “Nora,” my mother said, “you haven’t changed. You always say the wrong thing at the wrong time and call it honesty. And you don’t have a feeling heart. How could you let those years pass without visiting?”

  “You never invite me to visit,” I said. “You just tell me to move back.” How could a cab ride take this long? How much worse could I get? I tried to think, was there someone, anyone, with whom I was a human being? I was a human being with Gabor. No, I was a mother with Gabor. Was the driver taking a long route? What was wrong with me?

  We pulled up, and my mother made a long, insistent ceremony out of pulling the correct change from her purse. I led her up the two flights, and as soon as I reached the landing, stopped dead.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked. “Don’t tell me you left your key at the supper club.”

  “I did,” I said.

  “Well, then, we’ll use a hat-pin.”

  “Um,” I said, as she pulled one from that hat; I should have known my mother would be an expert at breaking into flats. I could have thrown myself against the door, I suppose, or had a fainting spell, or otherwise caused a diversion, but I finally said, flat-out, “Mother, there’s a meeting going on inside. I can hear them.”

  “A meeting? Whose meeting? What meeting?”

  “It isn’t supposed to be here,” I said, though I don’t know why I said it, as it made no difference. I took out my own key and turned it. The door held firm. Obviously, someone inside had locked the dead-bolt.

  “I’ll go knock on the window,” my mother said, and before I could stop her, she’d hurried up to the window that faced the courtyard and gave it a sharp little rapping like a woodpecker. My heart stopped.

  The front door opened. There was Janos gazing out from a cloud of cigarette smoke, looking so terrified and angry that I was struck dumb, though believe me, I had plenty to say.

  But he spoke first. “You weren’t supposed to be home until after nine.”

  “My mother’s here,” I whispered, though of course she could hear me.

  “Your what?”

  “Mother. I have one. She’s here. My God, Janos, tell me Gabor isn’t in there with you.”

  Janos didn’t answer. Then, I heard a peal of laughter and an unmistakable crash—Gabor had pulled down the coatrack. I forced my way past Janos and, without looking right or left, went straight for the pile of strangers’ coats that covered my son, who by now was screaming. There were cloth coats, fur coats, coats with lush collars and cuffs, worker’s coats without linings, and I threw aside coat after coat until I reached the hard rack, under which lay Gabor with a little blood on his head, screaming his lungs raw.

  I held him and spat a little on the edge of my sleeve to wipe the blood away, and he struggled free and tried to dive back under the coats, but people were collecting them now and quietly filing out the door into the hallway. Gabor grabbed hold of one fur collar, hard, and wrapped himself in that coat so tightly that there was no getting it off of him. The owner, a short fellow with a bald head and soft eyes, just stood there for a moment with his hands loose at his sides. Then he said to Janos, “Well?”

  “Take mine,” Janos said, and he handed the man his overcoat so he could go.

  That left Janos, my mother, and me. He was so tall, she was so short, he looked so scared, she looked so angry, and all at once what I wanted to do more than anything was join my son inside that coat. I said to Janos, “Get out.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Get out,” I said. “Go to another meeting. There must always be one running somewhere, like a crap game. But don’t bring your shit here again.”

  “Nora—in front of the baby!” my mother cried out. Then, she knelt and gathered up Gabor, coat and all, in her arms. She couldn’t lift him; he was five by then, and a good size. Still, after a struggle, he settled on her lap with his eyes peeking out of the coat and was too curious to keep on crying. My mother looked up at Janos, who showed no sign of leaving. “Well,” she said finally, “the child’s a beauty. Looks like my side of the family—he�
�s got Moni’s curls. But obviously my daughter’s temper. Young man, get me a cup of something hot, preferably tea with a slice of lemon.”

  “We have no lemons,” I said to my mother.

  “Well, then, I’ll make do,” she said, “with my own sour nature.”

  I followed Janos back into the kitchen, gathering ashtrays full of cigarette butts on the way, and then I almost stepped on a wide fan of diagrams, sketched with a ruler on lined paper, crowded with figures, taking the shape of who-knows-what. I gathered them up, and when we were out of earshot, I slapped them down in front of him and said, “So you were passing these around? What for?”

  “They’re engineers,” Janos said. “The information’s valuable.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to laugh. “What do you do? Sneak into Ganz at night? Too bad you can’t do it on their payroll.”

  Janos turned to face me. “What do you want me to say? I’m not doing anything illegal. I read the journals. I make a few notes and share them with my friends.”

  “Friends in Russia, I suppose.”

  “That’s absurd. You think they don’t have technology far beyond this in the Soviet Union?”

  “If it’s so advanced, why don’t you get an engineering job there? You can’t get one here. All you get here is trouble. What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  “You want me to lie to you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Lie to me. Like the time you said you wouldn’t bring your shit home.”

  Janos sighed. The kettle was on now, and I think we both hoped it would start whistling, but the water had been cold; it would take a long time.

  “I don’t understand why you keep this up,” I said. “The Commune was, what? Ten years ago. You don’t want to be a worker. You want to wear a suit and tie and light lamp-posts. Is it because of those men in the photographs?”

  “Nora—” Janos began, but I kept going.

  “They’re in better shape than you. I hear Bela Kun’s in Russia now. I’ll bet he doesn’t have to teach a bunch of girls arithmetic. I’ll bet he thanks the White Guard every day for getting him out of some clerk’s job in Budapest. At least he’s not stuck! You may as well have stayed in that village and been a tinker! We’re just as trapped!”

  I don’t think I even noticed when I stopped shouting and started sobbing. What I wanted was for that kettle to whistle or for Gabor to cry or for something, somehow, to break through. I managed to control myself, and silence thickened.

  From the other room, I heard it: Little dog, little dog—

  My mother had found the music box. It had been a long time since I had turned the handle, and given the erratic melody, there was no question: It was being turned by Gabor. Was it possible for a heart to break and melt at the same time?

  Little dog, little dog, you will lead the sheep to me. Janos was searching for the teabags, and I looked up at him and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Janos didn’t look at me.

  “I just don’t want to turn into my mother,” I said.

  The kettle finally whistled, and he took it off the burner, letting that comment pass. I had a terrible feeling that he hadn’t understood a word I said. And honestly, did I? What was I afraid of? Really, as seen through the archway of the kitchen, my mother looked almost regal, like Queen Victoria, with her neat little body and her dark hair. Gabor seemed to like her. He had played with the music box years before, and now he was discovering it all over again. My mother held it between her hands, and he lay belly-down on the floor. My mother sang the words: Oh my black-eyed love’s a bold love, he will wander, he will stray—

  I approached slowly. From behind I could hear Janos trying to pick up the hot teacup, but I didn’t come to his aid. Rather, I crouched down next to my mother. I said to her, “So do you go to many dances these days?”

  She jerked her head around and said, “Who’d dance with me?”

  “Laszlo,” I replied. “He likes you, for some reason. Too bad he’s married.”

  “Ah, you should have been the one to marry Laszlo,” my mother said, and that more softly, barely managing to finish the sentence before lapsing back into: But my blue-eyed love’s a true love—

  But I wouldn’t let that pass. “Mother, don’t judge him. He’s been going through a hard time. This is all he has left.”

  “Since when do I judge?” my mother asked, smiling at the same time down at Gabor, who took the music box from her and stumbled off towards the door. My impulse was to follow him, but I was determined to make my point.

  “He’s remarkable in his own way. He’s stuck to his political convictions, and they’re unpopular, unfashionable. They cost him his career.”

  “Convictions?” Without Gabor there, my mother was free to stop smiling. She rose, slapping her gray dress back in place, and she said, “Convictions didn’t cost him a career, Nora. Look at the man. Look at his name. Maybe you think I’m provincial, but there are laws in this country. You think they’ll hire a Jew?”

  ALTHOUGH BELA couldn’t come in for the wedding, he sent his sister a stiff, embroidered gown. She mailed me a photograph of herself in that gown, another one I lost years later when I was forced to abandon the flat. The cotton was so white that it made her skin look swarthy, and with her curly hair and shining eyes, she looked less like a Jewess than an Arab boy.

  He’d gotten the gown from a friend in Taell al-Taji. I liked to say that name: Taell al-Taji. Sometimes, when I held Gabor, a sweetness would fill me, and I would whisper to my dark-haired son, “Taell al-Taji, Taell al-Taji.”

  I found that village more interesting than the kibbutz, and I pressed Bela for details, claiming I was his conscience. You say the Arabs work as day-laborers? And have you passed them that old leaflet written by the Jew? Maybe they’d take his advice and organize a strike.

  I used to be a pretty arrogant kid, Bela wrote. Now I wouldn’t approve of a Jew telling Arabs what to do.

  So what do you do with your Arabs then? I wrote.

  You ask me aboutourArabs, as if we owned them. You make a funny sort of conscience.

  Sometimes he would go on at length. The one thing they used our hill for was grazing and now that we’ve plowed it under, they’d like their sheep to keep on grazing there, impossible of course. And then there’s the water hole. We worked like mules setting up the irrigation system, and not everyone was happy when the people in the village started dunking in their buckets, especially since the water isn’t really meant for drinking. So their intestines react and they overcrowd the clinic. That clinic is Dori’s pet, but it’s a drain on time and resources and it was clear from the start that it brings in a lot of strangers, people we can’t be so sure we trust. Remember: none of our doors have locks.

  So it wasn’t an easy friendship. But maybe, he wrote, the best friendships are the most difficult. They are the ones that can transform you because you must come from such a great distance to know each other.

  GESTURES OF diplomacy could not help but feel a little forced, though the spirit was genuine. Ahmad’s daughter brought the kibbutz a lamb for Easter. In turn, his family was invited to the Passover Seder. In 1932, it was held in the new dining hall, a cement square with a modern aluminum kitchen, and in addition to the regular members, there were twenty newcomers from Poland who stayed in tents stretched out by the laundry room. In contrast to the regular kibbutzniks, these Poles were white and stunted, still in their European clothes.

  Tibor and Eleazar had worked on the Seder for weeks. They’d produced a series of handwritten guides to share among the tables. Seder plates held new symbolic items, olives, a grapefruit, and tamarind. The five children did a dance to represent the ten plagues, and then Dori read a poem about a girl who killed her rapist during a pogrom and lived to ride with the kibbutz Night Watch, disguised as a man.

  There was matzo baked in the kitchen; after years of practice, they managed not to burn it. There were four questions, rewritten by Tibor and asked by little Gezer, now a stu
rdy boy of eight. “On all other nights, we sit unsupported. Tonight, we lean on others and remember the strength of our comrades during hard times.”

  The Poles watched all of this with mounting confusion. They had come, almost without exception, from religious families. Perhaps it was when they reached the mixing of the bitter and the sweet on the parti-colored matzo that one of the young men broke in.

  “What about the Hallel?”

  His high-pitched, agonized voice carried all the way to Nathan Sobel, who answered with equanimity. “We have omitted it this year.”

  But the Pole had by now somehow gained the courage to rise. He was a scrawny, rabbinical fellow with a long neck, weak shoulders, and red-rimmed eyes. “Rabbi Hillel says that you must do at a Seder only four things. Drink four glasses of wine, tell the story of our redemption from slavery by the strong hand of Ha Shem, eat the bitter herb with matzo, and recite the Hallel.” Then, without invitation, he sang:

  Hallelujah, Praise O ye servants of the Lord.

  Praise the name of the Lord.

  Bela joined him, and so did Eleazar, who honestly loved the words.

  Who maketh the barren woman to dwell in her house

  As the joyful mother of children, Hallelujah.

  No one else sang. Afterwards, there was a silence you could swallow. Then out came the first course of the meal.

  The incident was forgotten in the chaos of the children’s search for the Afikomen. If they didn’t find it, the Seder couldn’t end, and Bela had hidden it in the new chicken coop, under a nest. The five children were followed by forty adults. Bela kept a steady commentary: “Closer, yes, closer now—no far, dead cold, Gabi, over there to the left, you’re hot, you’re burning hot!”

  Then it was very late. The Poles settled in their tents, and Ahmad and his wife and children took their leave. A few members tried their ragged Arabic which made the children laugh and pleased Ahmad’s wife. She was a round, shy woman who hadn’t raised her eyes from the table all through the meal, but now she smiled enough to show a dimple. Ahmad shook Bela’s hand and said, “I didn’t understand a word tonight, but that ugly young man loves God.”