The Reluctant Trophy Wife

by Judith Petres Balogh

  This new woman was not just unacceptable to him, but her venom hurt him to the core. He did not bargain for that and it baffled him to realize that indeed human life is lived on many levels, not all pleasant to others. Until this unfortunate scene beautiful women appeared to him simple, one-dimensional and easily manipulated. Lena’s sudden incomprehensible assertion of independence was shocking and it rocked his fundamental beliefs.

  She wished the telephone call had not taken place, because something was irrevocably broken, partially because she handled it badly. At the height of an emotional trauma, the right words are only spoken by actors for whom a team of professionals writes the script. Common mortals, who can only rely on their own, homemade words, are prone to botch up the great scenes.

  She needed to talk to someone and her first thought was to call Adrienne, but after she considered the time difference between the two continents, she abandoned the idea and of course she was not sure whether her friend’s condition was stable enough to deal with the problems of someone else. Sarah was out of the question; the friendship was too new to burden her with a personal crisis.

  Juli néni was busy doing her usual household magic, moving about efficiently, calmly and with serious determination. No speck of dust was safe from her, and she cleaned the windows so often that the glass was probably getting thinner. In several pots mysterious and spicy things bubbled on the stove; upstairs the pillows and the counterpane were on the balcony’s railing basking in the morning sun. On her way to the kitchen, she smiled at her temporary mistress. As Lena returned the smile, she wondered if this bony, serious woman ever lost her temper, and whether she ever committed something for which she had to feel shame or regret. She recalled her beloved grandmother, whose prayer she was overheard: ‘Lord, save me from the scandal of having to be ashamed.” When Lena in her childish innocence looked puzzled, her grandmother explained, “It means never to commit such acts for which later I would feel deep shame.” Now with the single-minded destructiveness of a Pershing tank she rolled across the field making a wasteland of her marriage, and was deeply disturbed and ashamed of the damage she caused. If she could only have controlled her irritation! She finally understood the prayer of her grandmother.

  Not having a confidante with whom to share her troubles, Lena felt the need for a walk to sort out things and to put aside the nagging memory of her conversation with Clyde. What was said cannot be made unsaid; the only rational step was to get over it as soon as possible. In marriages that rest on the solid base of mutual respect and love, such disharmonies can be easily patched up and the partners can survive the crisis undamaged. However, their marriage was not of that stable kind. She may be able to pick up the shards and carefully glue them together again, but the cracks will always show and eventually the glue will give out. Prudhomme’s lines came unbidden,

  “The vase where this verbena is dying

  Was cracked by a blow from a fan.

  It must have barely brushed it,

  For it made no sound…”

  The blow was not much of a trauma, but the vase was far too fragile and could not withstand even the gentle attack of a lady’s fan. The water slowly leaked out and the verbena died. Just like this marriage, she thought unhappily. The argument caused the crack and love, or at least its anemic surrogate, will trickle away soon enough. What is one to do with dead flowers? She took her hat, sunglasses and left the house without a plan.

  The morning was cloudless; there was no trace left of the raging storm, although the flowers looked fresher, more alive after the good soak. The lake too calmed down, but the clear blue was gone. Obviously, the storm churned up tons of sand from the bottom and the floating particles colored the water to a dull muddy shade. It would take some time until all of it would settle down.

  Despite the loveliness of the day, she felt a heavy gloom; the hills and the fields dotted with poppies lost their usual gaiety; the anguish of the impending and certain change ahead of her wiped out the colors and the joys of the carefree yesterdays. Nothing much happened except a relatively mild marital fight, but it caused an ominous shift and she was deeply disturbed.

  Before she realized where her steps took her she was in the cemetery among the flowers. One of the large graves was more ornate than the rest, belonging to a family that at one time was probably prominent in the village. They were privileged residents on earth and in their after-life, as was fitting their status, they rested in a distinguished granite covered grave with a matching granite bench next to it. She sat down on it and observed the flowers and bugs around her.

  “Why would a beautiful, young lady seek refuge in a cemetery?” asked Father Paul and he sat down next to her.

  She looked up relieved. If she wanted to be truthful, she could have admitted at least to herself that she was waiting for him, hoping that he would step out from the church or from the parish house, just as he did before. However, she was not about to admit such a thing.

  “Seeking some peace and perhaps some answers,” she said somewhat evasively.

  “Are you disturbed?”

  “ Yes. No. Yes.”

  “A perfect example of an ambiguous answer.”

  He picked up a stick and drew circles and lines in the dust. Silently she watched the man, who was made of strength, unbending principles and paradoxically also of gentleness and love. If it had to be, she could confess to him and would know that she deposited her sins at a safe place.

  “Strange that we should meet again at the cemetery,” she said playfully ignoring the ambiguity she created.

  “Not so strange, because for many kilometers there are no other socially acceptable places where people could meet.”

  “There is still the store and the post office! Those two are also very proper meeting places for half the village. I missed you on Sunday at Sarah’s lunch.”

  “I missed your company too. I drove to the capital to attend a symposium. I left right after the church service was over.”

  “Sarah told me about it. Was it a good meeting?”

  “It was interesting. One of the speakers featured at the convention is an old friend of mine. When we attended the university many years ago, we were roommates. He chose science and I entered the Seminary. His presentation was about evolution, but his interpretation is different from mine.”

  “In what way?”

  “I consider evolution to be the logical process of creation, which is a constant becoming. It does not interfere with my belief in God as the Creator, but makes this world of ours in its perpetual changing and emerging even more interesting. There is nothing dull or settled about the Universe.”

  “Like a kaleidoscope?”

  “Not really. A kaleidoscope, despite its ever changing patterns is still static. Until the day if falls apart, it will always be operating within the same defined limits of mirrors and bits of colored glass,” he said and continued to work on the geometrical pattern in the sand. She watched curiously. Was it the outline of a mandala? But she found the idea of a Catholic priest in Hungary drawing a symbol of Tibetan Buddhism incongruous, and rejected it. After a spell of silence he added, “I see evolution as another manifestation of a multidimensional God, but the very same knowledge led my friend into a parched spiritual state of denial and atheism. He spent a great deal of time explaining how the various conditions and the gases around sub-oceanic active volcanoes offer the building blocks of life, and of course no God is required to do the miracle of creation, because life evolves inevitably on its own.”

  “You cannot deny some of the discoveries made by oceanographers!”

  “About the deep-ocean food chain that relies on sulfides sunlight? No, I do not deny that at all, but it does not disturb me, nor does it change my convictions. My friend talked about the oceanographers and particularly about Ballard at great lengths and with holy conviction. Everything he said was scientifically correct, proven, accepted and to a certain point unarguable. But afterward after we finished an excellen
t supper, I did remind him that if we exclude God from the process of creating and merely credit the right combination of temperature and chemical elements for creating intelligent life on earth, then through the millions of years of geological history we should have witnessed new life forms emerging periodically from the depths of oceans, since all the conditions my friend listed, are still existing there. However, we do not see any of it,” he said, and once again that inner light illuminated his face. “Existing life forms do change as they adapt to new conditions, several species have become extinct, we sometimes even discover the existence of some that were present all along, only we did not meet them before. However, we have not witnessed new and different life forms, let alone humans, emerging from the oceans. At least I know of none.”

  “Did you convince him?”

  “No. A person like my friend cannot be convinced. If he ever changes his philosophy, it would only happen if he discovered the truth on his own and without outside pressure. Fortunately, he is intelligent enough to do that.”

  She felt at peace and was content with his deduction and saw no reason to argue. Later changing the subject she remarked,

  “It seems that when I come here, I meet you. Did you take up residence in the cemetery?”

  “Not quite, not yet; but I find peace here. I don’t have time to wander into the hills, or down to the lake, but when I have an extra minute, I like to step from the parish house into the cemetery. I consider it my personal garden.”

  “Unless an American tourist disturbs your peace.”

  “You are not disturbing me.”

  He was not forcing her to reveal the trouble that drove her to the solitude of the cemetery and she read no curiosity in his calm, seeing eyes. They sat for a while silently and companionably. She was just about to say something, when a big dog walked into the cemetery with the sure gait of someone who knows the way, because it belongs there. It stopped short a few feet before the bench as if surprised to find a stranger where none was expected. After a while it must have come to some kind of a decision and moved leisurely to Father Paul, where it stood for a moment looking at him with big, sad eyes.

  “Helena is a friend,” he told the dog. “Sit down.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  excellent

  instead of “Of course she does. Whenever she feels like it, she listens to the name of Sajo. The name incidentally is the name of river. Long ago the dog owners in this country used to believe that when giving their dog the name of a river or lake, the water spirits would guard over it. Sajo is one example. Some name their dog Bodri after the River Bodrog. Usually they picked the name of the river closest to their home, such as Kerka, Pinka, Galga, Kapos, Tisza and so on. It is a sure remedy against rabies.”

  “Rabies?”

  “Yes. The other name for rabies is hydrophobia, or fear of the water, which becomes evident in the last stages of that horrible disease. People are now more knowledgeable about dogs and diseases, but the custom to name the dog after a river persists.”

  “Is it true, or just another legend?”

  “Has to be true. Who do you think would think up such fabulous explanations? Sajo, I told you to sit!”

  The dog stretched leisurely as if to show that she was not really taking Lena seriously or for that matter not even the command of the giver of her daily meals. As far as Sajo was concerned, the chance encounter was of no consequence, she was the master of her fate and she would sit down whenever she saw a reason for sitting. Displaying a heroically unbendable character she clearly demonstrated her unwillingness to accept a command or any sort of intrusion into her personal affairs. Finally, after the carefully choreographed dispassionate movements she sat down and placed her head on Father Paul’s knees. She made it evident that she did not follow a command but acted on her own volition.

  “Somehow I did not imagine you to be a dog-owner!”

  “I am not. She just visits me once a day. Actually, I believe she just comes to eat. This is how she manages the problem of her survival; it is quite admirable, don’t you think so? I have no idea where her home is, or what responsibilities keep her away all day .Perhaps she has a litter of puppies somewhere, or else she is the caretaker and companion of some elderly and sick person, who no longer can feed her. Or perhaps she is just a philosopher, who prefers solitude up to the point when hunger drives her to seek company and food. All the people in the village know her; actually they named her, but nobody knows where she lives. She is a daily guest with a huge appetite and although I cannot understand all that she communicates with her eyes, we get along well.”

  “You believe that she communicates?”

  “No doubt. Animals, especially dogs, are smart, even though we do not give them credit for it; nevertheless, they know a great deal.”

  “Do you credit them with intelligence, or with instinct?”

  He thought about this for a moment and then shrugged. “It is complicated. Perhaps it is the same thing and the main difference is only in the quantity. You and I have a very large store of memory that goes back to about the time when we were babies, or even earlier. Added to this are the memories of thousands of other people, who shared their memories with us. The sum of all that is our body of knowledge. Animals have a body of knowledge too, but I believe it operates differently from ours and it is of course far less. The way I see it, most memories of their personal life fade very quickly. I have seen dogs taking care of their litter with loving care, but when the pups were given away they got over the loss in no time. On the other hand, they retain a common memory, shared by all their kind and it goes back thousands and thousands of years. We call this universal memory animal instinct, but I call it stored knowledge, or a sort of intelligence. It is shared by the entire species, and this helps them to survive and to raise their young.”

  Indeed, she thought, all birds know how to build a nest, bees know how to gather nectar and turn it into honey, penguins know how to survive arctic cold and dogs know to bark when a stranger is in sight. Nobody taught them, but they know. The particular canine memory is universal and shared by every dog on the planet, whether it lives in Chicago, New Zealand, or in the suburb of London. It is truly an ancient and awesome memory that they store in their beautiful dog-heads. But they have no idea how to make honey or build a nest.

  “But Father Paul, if dogs only have this shared knowledge, if the body of their memories is identical and they don’t add personal coloration to their experiences, then they could not possibly have a distinct and individual character; yet, we all know dogs, including this Sajo dog, that are fiercely individual and very different from every other dog of the same species.”

  “The age-old question of nature and nurture! Dogs, because they are so smart, easily pick up messages from their environment, especially from their master. This makes them individual and different from the others. However, they will not pass on this memory to their litter.”

  “Quite an impressive philosophy of animal behavior,” she teased. “One day the world will repeat your name with the same reverence as they do Darwin’s,”

  “Heaven forbid! I am not at all inclined that way. I prefer to look at animals more in the spirit of St. Francis.”

  “You then envision seamless friendship with all created things and expect that universal peace will sooner or later prevail on earth? ‘The wolf will lie down with the lamb and the leopard with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together,’ so prophesized Isaiah, if I recall correctly.”

  “Yes, of course. It must come to that, I mean to universal peace. The time must come when we realize that the planet is much too small for us, and the only way to survive on it is to change our murderous habits. Mankind has common and devastating problems. We have but this one planet, and while it is eminently capable to survive major injuries and disasters, we cannot. The planet survived the trauma of its birth, the movements of continents, earthquakes, colossal volcanic eruptions, ice ages, bombardme
nts by huge meteors, devastating draught and immense floods, very likely even a shift of its axis, but it is still doing quite well. If it survived those, I am sure it can survive Man’s irresponsibility too. We must protect not so much the planet but ourselves. We cannot waste more time fighting each other; it is time we tackle the ills that make this world of ours a ‘vale of tears’. This is no longer the time for individual heroes and crusaders; we must face the challenges together, only so can we win in the end. Otherwise madness will reign which would finally annihilate mankind. Unfortunately, putting aside his huge ego and pet beliefs and working together for the common good is not one of the outstanding virtues of Man.”

  “But is man really capable of true friendship with all, especially when he cannot even stand half the people with whom he is related or is in close contact? Sometimes when I suffer from an exceptionally aggressive attack of Weltschmerz, I feel that it is easier to love a dog, than my neighbor. Also, this so-called friendship is woefully one-sided, don’t you think so? Have you ever been invited to your Sajo’s home? Did Sajo ever ask you to share a meal with her?”

  “I see your point. Truly, in human society her behavior would be objectionable, even insulting, but then is it always? It depends on how you look at it. I have never invited Sarah and George to the parish house to share a dinner with me. Does this make me socially objectionable and does it indicate that I am not capable of friendship? On the other hand Sajo might believe that humans do not deserve such intimacy, or politeness.”