by Wendy Teller
A sneer was smeared across his lips. "You did it this time!"
Ella started walking toward home, not wanting to talk to Miklos.
"You should have heard Mother shouting at Father!"
Ella walked ahead of him, but her ears strained to hear every word he said.
"Ede shall never set foot in this house again!"
Ella stopped and turned to her brother.
"That's what Mother said." Miklos grinned at her. "You really did it to Ede!"
Ella's throat tightened. She gulped.
"Nice work, Ella."
Ella raced home, tears streaming down her face.
Mother, waiting at the door, pushed her into her room.
"I suggest you get down on your knees, Ella, and pray to God to forgive your unclean... your blasphemous thoughts." She slammed the door closed as she left.
Ella lay down on the bed. She didn't care about Mother. Mother and her slaps. And she didn't care about Miklos. Miklos loved it when she was in trouble. But Ede. If Mother never let Ede come again. She hugged her knees to her chest and allowed herself to cry. Ede had done nothing wrong. He had only told her the truth. She was sure it was the truth. Why should Mother hate him, ban him for telling the truth? She turned towards the wall, staring at the pale green. She hated Mother.
She hated Mother all those years ago. And she hated her now. As she thought of it, she could not remember a time when she did not hate her mother. She wondered why her mother became a mother, because she didn't seem to like her children. Well, she liked Miklos, and maybe even Clara, but she certainly did not like Ella.
Ella sighed, thinking back to her younger self, sobbing on her bed. She remembered how the door had creaked open, and how she had heard Father's familiar tread. Step. Tap. Step. Tap. Father and his walking stick.
Would he use his walking stick like Father Joseph used his cane?
She felt Father's hand stroking her head. "There, there, little one." His low voice was mellow.
She turned to look at his whiskered face.
His lips turned up in a little smile. "I understand you have been informed about the forbidden fruit."
She nodded.
"I find your proposed solution to the problem of original sin ingenious." His smile grew as he shook his head. "But I don't think it will work."
He sat next to her on the bed. "And your mother is correct. It is blasphemous."
"Why would God be angry at me for trying to be good?"
He laughed. "Indeed." He pulled her up and enveloped her in his arms, rocking her. "I don't know how to answer that. I do not claim to understand God."
He held her at arm's length holding her gaze. "But I am quite sure that Mother and Father Joseph and everybody else in Nagykanizsa will think it is blasphemous. So I wouldn't talk about it anymore."
He studied her face. "Agreed?"
She nodded.
"But what about Ede?"
"Ah, yes, your friend Ede."
Ella inhaled sharply. This did not sound good. Father blamed Ede too.
"He just told me the truth!"
"Yes, yes." Father nodded. "But sometimes the truth should not be told." He pulled her to him. "Not to young girls."
She pushed him away. "You told me that I shouldn't lie."
He nodded and stroked his chin. "Yes, I did. You shouldn't lie."
"All I did was tell the truth. I didn’t lie."
"Ah, yes. I see your point. But you shouldn't ram the truth down people's throats." He smiled and tilted his head. "Especially when they don't want to know the truth."
She shook her head in confusion. "How do you know when someone doesn't want to know the truth?"
Father's kind laugh comforted Ella. "My dear child, you ask all the unanswerable questions."
"But I want to know the truth. I always want to know the truth."
He nodded, put his hand in his vest pocket, and pulled out a mint candy.
"Well, then today has been a valuable lesson for you."
He unwrapped the candy and offered it to her.
"If you insist on knowing the truth, then at least be careful who you share it with."
She took the candy and felt tears welling in her eyes again, tears of gratitude for her father's kindness.
"But what about Ede? Miklos says Mother will never allow him to come here again."
"Never mind, little one. We will change her mind. Your friend Ede is a fine young man and he will always be welcome in my house."
Father had kept his promise. Ede continued to be a member of the family, just as he had been before the Kis Maria incident.
Ede Confesses
The Kis Maria incident had been so long ago. There had been many fights with Mother, but that had been the worst. After that battle perhaps both mother and daughter backed off. Ella sighed. Her stomach rumbled. She was hungry.
After gathering things from her room, she went to the kitchen to find something to eat. She set her books on the work table, next to the bread board, the honey pot, and the jug of milk. It seemed like sacrilege to put Dickens and Twain next to crumbs and sticky sweetness. But Ella needed company. She didn't usually eat alone.
Oh, what she would do to be sharing this meal, this milk and honey, with Ede!
She wrapped the shawl Ede had given her around her shoulders and ran her fingers across the embroidered flowers. It was a poor substitute for Ede, but it reminded her of him, with the faint scent of pine. She used to think Ede picked up this fragrance by playing in his father's lumber yard, but he didn't play there anymore. Even now, when he was with her, she could detect a whiff of evergreen.
She inhaled the fresh pine scent and thought of the times they would sit side by side, reading, studying, discussing new ideas. Those discussions, sometimes battles of wits, continued until Mother called them to a meal or sent Ede home.
Time with Ede seemed like a luxury now. He'd been away for what felt like forever. Six long years. He came home for Christmas and the summer, but those interludes were never long enough. At last his schooling was complete, so he would come home and she would be able to be with him again.
But not today. And if she could not share her food with her live friend, then she would share it with her book friends, her treasures that she had read with Ede when he was home. Besides, it gave her satisfaction. She was breaking her mother's commands. She was reading. Forbidden. And eating. Forbidden. Would her mother even notice? Maybe not. Or maybe she would and threaten God only knows what. That would be better, another chance to do battle.
Ella placed a few stained napkins, used for cleaning, in case there was a food disaster next to her friends. Huck Finn might get his feet muddy in the Mississippi, but she was determined he would not get them milky in Nagykanizsa.
She opened Twain's book, much less formal than the leather-bound copy of The Tale of Two Cities. The Dickens book had been a present from Ede, so it was precious, but Huckleberry Finn had been given to her by Mark Twain. It even had a dedication to her signed by the famous author. Besides, she understood Huck better than any of the characters in The Tale. Even though he was a peasant boy, the son of a drunk, she understood Huck's need to escape.
Reading Mark Twain used to be heavy going for Ella, but that was part of the fun. She remembered how Alexa had pronounced all those dialects, so different from the English in Dickens' book.
Ella missed Alexa, her companion before Therese. Sweet plump Alexa, always smiling, dimples in her round cheeks. But Alexa had gone home to Chicago to marry her childhood sweetheart and now Ella was stuck with Therese. She sighed and looked down at her books.
Ella loved Twain's note at the beginning of the story, claiming he had used different dialects in the book. She tried to reproduce how the characters might sound, reading out loud.
Thump!
Ella jumped. Someone was pounding on the door to the servants' stairs. Who could it be? Everyone was either at the wedding or had the day off. Might it be a gypsy who had heard
of the wedding, come into town to rob the houses while everyone was away? No. A gypsy, knowing the way of locks, would just come in silently and stealthily.
Thump! Thump!
She went to the door, and slowly cracked it open.
Ede! There was Ede, the one person she wanted to see.
But he was not right. He was dressed in his formal clothes, as he should be, since he was attending his brother's wedding. But his dark hair, usually so well-groomed was mussed, his collar tilted to one side, his usually calm eyes alert, scanning her face then searching the room.
"Ella! Thank God! I thought you might not be able to hear me."
His eyes settled on her, his beautiful eyes, today a pure green melding to golden brown at the center.
"Clara said you were confined to your room, but I didn't want to try to signal you from the street. People might see me. And I'm supposed to be at the wedding. I was so unhappy you were not there. Clara told me all about the argument...."
Ella swung the door wide and stood aside, waving him into the room.
"Come join my feast of milk and honey!"
She inhaled a breath of happiness. Ede, sweet Ede, was here. How she had longed for him and now he was here.
"I can stay but a moment. I don't want them to miss me at the party."
"But there will be so many people, surely one fewer won't make a difference."
"Oh, Ella, I needed to see you!"
"And I wanted to see you, the only reason I wanted to go."
"It's more than that. I need to talk to you."
Ella held her tongue. She wanted to tell Ede about the scene this morning, how impossible Mother was, and how she knew French as well as Therese, even if she couldn't speak as fast as Therese could. But she held her tongue because Ede's face was dark, his eyes solemn. Were his lips trembling?
"In case I can't finish what I have to say, in case we are interrupted, here is an essay. I want you to read it, so you might understand what I have to tell you a little better."
He pulled several pages from his vest pocket and handed them to her.
Ella set the papers on the table, all the time staring at this agitated character. This was not the usual Ede she had known all her life.
"What's wrong?"
His eyes settled on her, serious, maybe even hard.
"I've been with a woman."
He swept his hand across his forehead, patting down the locks that were out of place.
"A professional woman."
"A woman?" Ella shook her head, studying his face, his brows gathered in a troubled look. "A professional woman?"
At last those beautiful eyes softened and a smile played on his lips.
"Oh, my Kis Maria, I should have known you would not understand."
She laughed at the sound of his favorite nickname for her.
"I've been with a woman of the night. I've had sex with a prostitute."
Her throat tightened. "Oh."
He sighed, his brow a little smoother now. "I can't stay. I had to tell you."
She shook her head. "You can stay!"
His frown faded to a little smile. "I must go. But read my paper."
Of course she would read it. "OK."
"Maybe you will understand."
"I will. I always understand you. You are the only one I understand."
A chuckle escaped his lips. "We'll see. But read it. And somehow, we need to talk."
"Yes! We must talk."
"Before I have to leave."
"Leave?" Ella gasped. "When are you leaving? Where are you going? I thought you would come home and be a lawyer."
"No, no. I can't stay here."
She gulped. "When are you leaving?"
"I don't know."
He pulled his watch from his vest pocket and looked at it. "I have to get back to the party."
He turned and was gone.
Ella looked at the open, empty door. He was here and now he was gone, like a dream that starts out well and turns dark. He was leaving Nagykanizsa. How would she survive without him? Of course, she had missed him when he was in Switzerland getting his law degree. And she had been disappointed when he had decided to get a sociology degree in Germany. She didn't even know what sociology was. She asked him why he wanted another degree. He said he had learned law was the foundation of society. But if that were true, to be a good lawyer one must understand society. So he needed to study sociology, which meant more years away from Nagykanizsa. During his long absences, Ella had cheered herself with the thought he would come home. Her lifelong friend would come home. He would not be gone forever.
But now? What would she do without him? She shuddered, shut the door, and sank down at the table, spreading his papers before her.
The typewritten letters – the ‘s’s and ‘e’s lighter, the ‘b’s blotched and slightly higher than the others – ran across the page. How appropriate for the German to be typewritten, so formal, so modern. She read the title.
"The Sorrows of Sex"
She looked down at the table and thought. Was sex sorrowful? She didn't know. She had read of love and marriage and having babies, but she really hadn't thought much about sex. She should've known sex was an interesting topic, remembering how angry Mother had been when Ede had explained it to her. But it was not something she talked about with Ede, especially since he had been away these past years, and there were so many other things to talk about.
Her eyes wandered back to Ede's paper.
"Every country, every location has its special sorrows: cholera in England, the sleeping sickness in Africa, yellow fever in the Americas. And each social strata has its afflictions: hunger at the bottom, insecurity in the middle, boredom at the pinnacle. But there is one universal sorrow that afflicts all men: sex."
Ella Reads the Essay
Ella looked up at the door where Ede had stood. This Ede was not the Ede she knew – the one who was quiet and patient and only talked when he had something important to say. This was a different Ede, as if the gypsies had taken his soul.
She banished thoughts of ladies of the night from her mind. She didn't even know if she had ever seen one. And she certainly did not want to talk about sex. Or think about sex. Ede had told her that what the stallion did to the mare on her grandmother's farm was what men did to women. It was even what gentlemen did to ladies. That was what Ede had said at the time. She had wished she had never asked him.
Now Ella remembered the hot day when the stallion was trotted into a corral with a mare. To this day, when she thought about sex she thought about those horses.
They were beautiful, both of them, the stallion coal black, the mare as silky red brown as a chestnut. The stallion stamped and snorted and reared, kicking up dirt, until Ella's eyes teared and the air smelled of hot dust and cut hay. Then, as if he just noticed the mare, he settled and walked over to her, pushing his muzzle next to hers and blowing in her nose. Ferenc had said horses didn't kiss. They blew into each other's nostrils. He had said that if Ella wanted her pony to love her, she should blow into his nostril. And she did.
So the stallion must have been loving the mare, because his nose was next to hers. And maybe she blew back, letting him know that she loved him too. The stallion moved his muzzle to the mare's neck and he nipped her, at her neck then at her withers. He thrust his nose under her belly. Now Ella could see his penis longer and straighter than she had ever seen before. He nipped the mare's hind quarter. She squawked, but stood still. He whirled around, rearing behind her. His chest settled on her rump, his front legs dangling on either side of her. His penis went into her. She stood still, her neck stretched forward, her head a little down. Then he was off her, his penis long and limp, like a cooked egg noodle. The mare nibbled hay. The stallion walked away.
Was that what Ede did to the lady of the night?
Ella pushed the image out of her mind.
She took a bite of stale bread which disintegrated in her mouth like dust, like the dust of the corral
. She soaked the bread in her milk and took another bite, a soggy bite. She spread his paper in front of her. "The Sorrows of Sex."
At least he seemed to agree with her. Sex was a misery, disgusting. At least it didn't seem to take too long.
She read the opening paragraph of Ede's paper again and considered it.
She was not hungry. Father was one of the wealthiest men in town. But he wasn't an aristocrat. And she definitely wasn't bored.
She read on.
"But there is one universal sorrow that afflicts all men: sex."
Really? Maybe it was different for men, because she was not miserable about sex. Then the next sentence:
"Sexual life is the most powerful factor in the individual and in society."
This couldn't be true. Love was important. In Huck Finn, the runaway Jim loved his family. Charles Darnay loved Lucie. But neither one of them seemed to be worried about sex.
She looked up, not really seeing the kitchen as she thought about the paper. She didn't understand, but she read further, because Ede had asked her to. He described an urgent need or desire. She felt no such thing. She had her wants: to read, to run, to talk with Ede about language and books. But she understood what she wanted and he was writing about a want she did not know.
She stared out the window. The afternoon's sunshine was dimming, making the room darker. She retrieved the oil lamp from her room and lit it, setting it on the table, so the yellow cone of light shone on Ede's paper. She settled on her chair and read again.
He wrote about the "silent sin." She didn't understand. It must be horrible and seemed to be secret, something that God could not forgive, that one must not talk about. It seemed to ruin his life. Some sin so powerful he could not control it, so horrible he was convinced he was bound for hell. That is what the priest told him.
He wrote about seeking relief from the chambermaid.
She gasped. Did Ede get relief from a chambermaid? One of his father's servants?
He wrote of the prostitutes. He said he had visited one.
