by Sándor Márai
“Prepare some cold chicken with mayonnaise tonight. But I only want breast of chicken. And lettuce salad.”
Then I went into the house to dress and get out into the world in search of the woman with the lilac ribbon. That was my mission. I didn’t plan it. There was nothing I specifically intended to say or do: I was simply obeying an internal command.
I was walking down the street, the sun was shining, and of course I had not the least idea where I was going or what I was looking for. I should call on my mother-in-law, I knew that much. However vague this sounds, I had not the slightest doubt that I would find the person I was looking for. The one thing I couldn’t know was that Lázár, with one word, almost his last word, had already set things up, and that I would stumble on the secret straightaway: I would simply dip into the tangled web of the world and pluck it out.
And yet I felt no surprise when I found her. Such a cheap word, “found” … I was just an instrument then, a performer in the play of fate. Whenever I think back now, I grow dizzy and feel a deep humility. I marvel at how everything turned out to be in such remarkable order, every detail immediately and closely following the one before it, everything fitting together with pinpoint precision. It was as if it had all been arranged by someone, perfectly timed, mysterious yet reassuring … I really learned the meaning of faith then. I had been like those people of little faith, abandoned on a stormy sea … but now I discovered that the world that looks so chaotic on the surface has an inner order, an order as rational and miraculous as music. The situation of which our personal destinies were a part, the destinies of three people, suddenly resolved itself: destiny was fulfilled. And every aspect of it suddenly became beautifully clear. It was like coming upon a tree bearing poisoned fruit. I was left simply staring.
But then I believed I was the active force, busy doing something, so I did just as Lázár suggested and took a bus to my mother-in-law’s house.
I thought I was simply doing a quick sweep, taking stock of the place. I might even stop there for a while to take in something of the clean air of her blameless life: it might help me recover a little from the horribly stifling experiences that had so occupied mine. I might tell her what I knew, do a little sobbing, and ask her to strengthen and console me … If she knew anything of Peter’s past she would tell me. That’s what I thought. I sat on the bus and imagined my mother-in-law’s house as a sanatorium on a high mountain. It was as if I were finding my way there from a fetid marsh. That was the mood in which I rang her bell.
She lived in the inner city, on the second floor of a hundred-year-old tenement building. Even the stairwell smelled of English lavender water. I might have been in a linen cupboard. As I rang and waited for the elevator, that cool scent hit me and I felt an overwhelming nostalgia for a different life, a cooler, leaner life free of passion. My eyes filled with tears as the elevator rose. And I still didn’t know that the power that had arranged all this was, in these moments, simply directing me. I rang the bell and the maid opened the door.
“What a shame,” she said once she recognized me. “The dear lady is not at home.”
Suddenly, with a well-practiced movement she caught my hand and kissed it.
“Please don’t,” I said, but it was too late. “Forget the formalities, Juditka. I’ll wait for her.”
I smiled at the calm, proud, open face before me. This was Judit, my mother-in-law’s maid, who had been with her for fifteen years. She was a Transdanubian peasant girl and had joined my mother-in-law’s household when there was still a proper staff. She was a scullery maid then, very young, maybe no more than fifteen. When my father-in-law died and they gave up the large apartment, the girl moved into the inner-city apartment with my mother-in-law. In the meantime, Judit, who in marriageable terms was an old maid of thirty by then—or even over thirty years old—had been promoted to the rank of housekeeper.
We were standing in the dimly lit hall, so Judit put the light on. The moment she did so I started trembling. My legs were shaking and the blood drained from my face, but I continued to stand up straight. The housekeeper was wearing a colored cotton-print dress that morning, and a low-cut dirndl—cheap working clothes. She wore a white head scarf. And round her pale, muscular, peasant-servant neck, on a lilac ribbon, hung an amulet, a cheap locket of the kind you get on the market.
I stretched out my hand without hesitating, without thinking, and with a single movement tore the ribbon from her neck. The locket fell to the floor and opened. You know what was the strangest thing? Judit made no attempt to pick it up. She stood erect and, with a slow, easy movement, crossed her arms across her chest. She looked down at me without moving as I bent down, picked up the locket, and examined the two photographs inside it. Both showed my husband. One of them was very old, taken about sixteen years ago. My husband was twenty-two at the time, Judit fifteen. The other was taken last year, the one he was supposed to have had done for his mother, for Christmas.
We stood there a long time, both of us quite still.
“Forgive me,” she eventually said, courteously, almost grandly. “We shouldn’t just be standing here. Please, do come in.”
She opened the door and led me into her room. I entered without speaking. She stood on the threshold, shut the door, and firmly, quite decisively, turned the key—twice.
I had never entered that room before. Why should I have? … Believe it or not, I had never really studied her face before or regarded it as important.
I studied it now.
There was a white painted table in the middle of the room, and two chairs. I was weak and was afraid I might lose my balance, so I slowly made my way over to one of the chairs and sat down. Judit did not sit; she stood by the locked door, her arms folded, calm and determined, as if wanting to prevent anyone else coming in and disturbing us.
I took a good look around. I had a lot of time on my hands. I knew that every single object, each tiny scrap, was of paramount importance to me here, here at “the scene of the crime”—that’s the phrase that vaguely came to mind, the phrase Lázár had used for the room where I was now sitting. It was an expression I came across each day in the papers, when they reported how the police, having arrested the criminal, would go to the scene of the crime and conduct a thorough investigation … I was investigating the room in exactly the same way. Something had happened here, or some place like it, many years ago, an event lost in the mists of time … and now suddenly here I was—judge, witness, and perhaps victim too. Judit said nothing. She did not disturb me, understanding precisely how important everything about this room was to me.
But there was nothing surprising there. The furnishings were not exactly poor, but neither were they comfortable. It was the kind of room you see in a convent, a guest room prepared for the better class of secular visitor: the copper bed; the white furniture; the white curtains; the striped peasant rug; the picture above the bed of the Virgin, complete with rosary; the little jug of flowers on the bedside table; the extremely modest but carefully chosen little decorative objects ranged along the glass shelf above the basin. Do you know what this said to me? It said: resignation. It had an air of conscious, voluntary resignation. You could practically breathe it … And the moment I breathed it I no longer felt angry, I felt only sadness and a deep, bottomless fear.
Of course I felt all kinds of emotions and sensations in those long minutes. I noticed everything and sensed what lay beyond each individual item, lapping at them like a sea. It was someone’s fate: it was a life. Suddenly I felt scared. I could hear Lázár’s sad, hoarse voice, clearly and precisely predicting that I would be amazed to find the truth much simpler, much more ordinary, but much more frightening than I ever imagined. True enough, this was all pretty ordinary. And yes, frightening too.
Wait, I want to get things properly in perspective.
Just now I was saying that I detected an air of resignation. But I observed secrecy and outrage too. Don’t go away thinking this was a hovel, one of those Pest slums where poor
servants find accommodation. It was a clean, comfortable room: a maid’s room at my mother-in-law’s could be no other. I also said it was the kind of guest room you find in a convent: little cells where the guest not only lives, sleeps, and washes, but is also obliged to consider his soul. Every object in such a place—the whole atmosphere—is a constant reminder of strict commandments issued by a superior being … There was no trace of perfume, cologne, or scented soap in the room. Beside the basin lay a common cake of tallow soap, the kind you use for laundry. Next to that some water for rinsing the teeth, a toothbrush, a brush, and a comb. I also spotted a box of rice powder and a facecloth of chamois leather. That was the sum of this woman’s worldly possessions. I took all this in, item by item.
There was also a framed group photograph on the bedside table. Two little girls, two spry adolescent boys, one of them in uniform, and a startled-looking older couple, a man and a woman, in ceremonial dress. In other words, the family, somewhere in Transdanubia. Next to them, fresh catkins in a glass of water.
A tangle of undarned stockings lay in a sewing basket on the table beside an out-of-date tourist brochure whose brightly colored cover showed children playing on the sandy beach of a faintly ruffled sea. The brochure looked worn, its corners turned down: you could see it had been read over and over again. And on the door there hung a maid’s black working dress with a white pinafore. That was the total sum of the room’s contents.
These commonplace objects implied a conscious self-discipline. You could tell from them that whoever lived here did not need to be taught order, that the order sprang from within, that she was quite capable of teaching herself. Do you know enough about servants’ rooms to know what they are stuffed with? Extraordinary objects, all those things their inner lives require: fancy hearts made of candy; brightly colored postcards; ancient, long-discarded cushions; cheap little china figurines; things thrown away by that other world, the world of their social superiors … I once had a chambermaid who collected boxes of the rice powder I had finished with and my empty perfume bottles; she collected this stuff the way wealthy connoisseurs collect snuffboxes, Gothic carvings, or works by the French impressionists. In the world they inhabit, these objects represent what we consider beautiful, as works of art. Because no one can live with just the bare necessities in the real world … we need a little superfluity in our lives, something dazzling, something that sparkles, something lovely, however cheap or worthless. Few people can live without the dream of beauty. There has to be something—a postcard, all red and gold, showing a sunset, or dawn in a forest. We’re like that. The poor are no different.
But what I was confronted with, in that room behind the locked door, was not like that.
The woman who occupied this room had quite deliberately stripped away all elements of comfort, bric-a-brac, and cheap glitter. You could see she had strictly, ruthlessly, denied herself anything the world might cast away or regard as luxury. It was a severe room. It was as though the woman had undertaken certain vows to live here. But the vows, the woman, the room—none of it was welcoming. That’s why it frightened me.
This was not the room of some kittenish little flirt who inherits her mistress’s silk stockings and discarded clothes, secretly sprays herself with Madam’s French perfume, and makes eyes at the master of the house. The woman facing me was not the normal household demon, the lower-orders lover, the alluring siren of an ailing, decadent, bourgeois home. This woman was not my husband’s sweetheart, not even if she kept his portrait in a locket suspended on a lilac ribbon around her neck. Do you know what this woman was like? I’ll tell you what I felt: I felt she was hostile but my equal. She was a woman just as passionate, sensitive, strong, worthy, vulnerable, and full of suffering as I was, as is everyone who is conscious of her rank. I sat in the chair, the lilac ribbon in my hand, unable to utter a word.
Nor did she say anything. She was not agitated. She stood up straight, as I do. She had powerful shoulders—not slender, certainly not slim, but very well proportioned. If she had walked into the house we were at last night, among all those famous men and beautiful women, people would have looked at her and asked: “Who is that woman?” … And everyone would have felt she was someone who mattered … Her figure, her bearing, was what people call regal. I have seen a princess or two in my time, but none of them had that regal bearing. This woman had it. And there was something in her eyes, in her face, something about her, in her things, in the look and feel of the room, that—as I say—frightened me. I’m reminded of the phrase I used before: conscious, voluntary resignation … But beneath the resignation there was a tense alertness. A readiness. Something that demanded all or nothing. A prowling, untiring instinct, instilled over years, over decades. A close attention that would never relax. Nor was the resignation humble or selfless, but proud—even haughty. Why do people jabber on about the aristocracy being proud, puffed up with self-importance? I have met a great many countesses and princesses, and not one was proud in that sense. On the contrary, they were, if anything, hesitant and a little shamefaced, like all aristocrats … But this Transdanubian peasant girl, whose eyes met mine so boldly, was neither humble nor shamefaced. Her gaze was cold and glittering. It was like a hunter’s knife. She was self-controlled and had a clear conscience. She said nothing, she made no move, she didn’t even blink. She was a woman fully aware that this was the crowning moment of her life. Her whole body, her soul, and her sense of destiny were living that experience.
Did I say a guest room in a convent? … Well, yes, that too. But it was also a cage, the cage of a wild animal. For sixteen years she had stalked up and down in her cage, brushing against its bars, or in another cage exactly like this. She was a refined wild animal embodying passion and patience. I had stepped into her cage and now we were watching each other. This woman wouldn’t be paid off with cheap little knickknacks. She wanted it all, life entire, destiny with all its dangers. And she could wait. She was good at waiting, I admitted to myself, and shuddered.
The locket and ribbon were still lying in my lap. I sat there, paralyzed.
“Would you please give me back the picture,” she finally said.
When I made no move, she continued:
“I’ll let you keep one of them, the one taken last year, if you like. But the other one is mine.”
It was her property. She said it as if she were pronouncing judgment. Yes, the other picture had been taken sixteen years ago, before I had met Peter. But she already knew him then, probably better than I ever did. I took one more look at the pictures, then, without speaking, I handed her the locket.
She too looked at the pictures, checking them over attentively as if to make sure no harm had befallen them. She went over to the window and, from under the bed, brought out an old battered traveling case, found a tiny key in her bedside drawer, opened the worn case, and stowed the locket away. She did all this slowly, deliberately, without the least sign of excitement, as if she had all the time in the world. I watched her carefully and registered, as it were in passing, that just now, when she addressed me and asked for the photographs, she did not use the normal class honorifics, no “miss,” no “ma’am.”
There was something else I felt in those few moments. It’s many years ago now and I see it all more precisely. This feeling all but overwhelmed me, telling me that everything that was happening just then was nothing out of the ordinary. It was as if I’d seen it all before. I was, of course, astonished by how right Lázár had been the previous night when he told me directly that the woman with the lilac ribbon, the finding of whom was a matter of life or death to me, would be so close, merely a few streets away, at my mother-in-law’s apartment. I was astonished that she was someone I had often met and had even talked to. When I set out that morning, like a woman obsessed, to find my one and only enemy in life, I did not expect my very first venture would lead straight to her … No doubt about it, if someone had predicted this yesterday, I would politely have asked them to change the subject
, as I don’t like to joke about serious matters. But now that it had happened, I was no longer astonished. I was surprised by neither the person nor the room. All I knew about Judit before was that she had been a “splendid support” to my mother-in-law, that she was regarded as practically a member of the family, miraculous evidence of what proper training could achieve. But now I felt I knew much more about her: that I knew everything. Not in words, not intellectually. I mean by instinct, as part of my destiny: I knew everything about her, and myself, despite never having spoken to her in all these years other than bidding her good day, asking whether anyone was home or if I could have a glass of water. I must have been scared of her: her face. There was simply this woman on the other side of the tracks, going about her business, waiting and aging, as I was … and there I was on my side, not knowing why my life lacked something, why it was unbearable, or what to make of the feeling that haunted my days and nights, those feelings that worked their way into my bones like some wicked, mysterious radiation, the sense that things were not quite right … I knew nothing about my husband or Judit. But there are moments in life when we understand that the most unlikely, the most impossible, most incomprehensible things are actually the simplest and closest to hand. Suddenly life’s mechanism is laid bare before us: those we considered important vanish as through a trapdoor and out of the background step figures about whom we know little that is certain but for whom—we suddenly understand—we have been waiting, as they, with their own burden of fate, have been waiting for us, for this precise moment …
And it was all exactly as Lázár said it would be: right on my doorstep.
The situation was that a peasant girl had been keeping my husband’s photographs in a locket hanging round her neck. She was fifteen when she moved from her village into town, to work for this upper-middle-class family. Naturally, she falls in love with the young master of the house. In the meantime the young master grows up and gets married. The maid and the young master see each other occasionally but are no longer close. The class difference proves ever more a chasm between them. And time ticks on for them both. The man ages. The girl is practically an old maid. She has never married. Why has she not married? …
