He was aware that he had much to answer for. He was among those who had in recent times been referred to as ‘old Marxists’. Having been for twenty years a fully paid-up member of the Party, he regarded himself as one of the Red aristocracy and his pride in this was no less than that of a real aristocrat in his family tree. Naturally he had acted as the official representative of the household. He collected rents, executed the orders of the Communist government, cautioned the ‘bourgeois’ against plotting, beat his breast and drew attention to his shaky legs which had been ruined by years of climbing stairs. It was whispered that he had requisitioned two pairs of tan-coloured shoes and first-class rations for himself while allotting second-class rations only to the owner of the house who bore the lower classification of intellectual worker. His greatest crime though was that on the day Mrs Vizy was dragged off to parliament, he deliberately disappeared, returning only late at night, and that Vizy, who had wanted his support in the matter, had had to wait forlornly in his kitchen. The Vizys made no secret of the fact that they intended to break his neck at the first available opportunity.
He fingered his neck and felt his poor head which had lately grown to resemble a bruised apple, the kind so cheap and plentiful they spill from baskets at the market. But Mrs Vizy affectionately invited him to sit down and placed her hand on his arm.
‘Look here, Ficsor, you might be able to help me out. Bring this girl here immediately. I’ve already dismissed the other. Your kindness will not be forgotten.’
The caretaker started for the door which promised his freedom. She delayed him.
‘You say she has spent three years in service in Pest? How come I have never seen her at your place?’
‘Bless you, ma’am, she’s that kind of creature. She doesn’t go anywhere. She is neither to be seen nor heard. She is very quiet.’
‘I hope she is strong though. Could she manage these four rooms?’
‘Her? She could manage eight. She’s a village girl.’
‘And she’s reliable?’
‘You will see that for yourself, ma’am. I’m not going to make speeches about her, all I will say is . . .’ he hesitated.
‘Is what?’
‘That the honourable lady will be satisfied with her.’
The caretaker returned at noon, beaming. He had spoken with the girl, she was willing to enter service and would come tomorrow to discuss the arrangements.
But she didn’t keep the appointment for the events of that day upset everything. Budapest was occupied – not by the Allies as Gábor Tatár and Vizy had forecast – but by the Romanians, who had crossed the River Tisza and, against the wishes of the great powers, taken control of the city. They swaggered about the ragged and hungry streets in their brand new uniforms like guests of honour at a historical occasion. They raised their trumpets to the sky and blew upon them constantly and deafeningly; it seemed they were unable to proceed a step without this musical accompaniment which was plainly supposed to evoke memories of the Emperor Trajan’s all-conquering Roman legions: the startled, dishonoured country rang with the sound.
This was something that neither Hungarians nor the Romanians themselves would ever have been able to imagine, not in their wildest dreams. They glanced at each other astonished at this miraculous turn of events. It was literally incredible. Hungarians at their windows watched Romanian vehicles cruising the streets below but they didn’t believe it. Not even the Romanians could believe it straightaway. Head waiters scraped and bowed before them, lift-boys conducted them up and down in elegant conveyances, they came and entered as they pleased. It was all a little overpowering. A dream. All heaven lay before them, nothing barred their way. At first they didn’t know what they should ask for and in their childish greed they grabbed at showy knick-knacks rather than things of real value.
They started by confiscating telephones from private flats. Two lorries piled high with them trundled down Krisztina körút trailing cut wires. Then they began to appear in stores, in factories, in hospitals. In one hospital they were received by an elderly director wearing an old-fashioned frock-coat, who, on the point of tears, delivered a stuttering official protest in broken French, referring to the ban imposed by the great powers of the Entente. The officer waved him away: doors opened and materials and equipment, including patients’ apparel and bedding, were whisked away in the name of compensation or reparation.
To civil security however they took a different attitude and strictly punished any attempt at looting or disorderliness They went from house to house rounding up terrorists and led them away. Pale and handcuffed, the terrorists hung their heads as they departed. They had begun to dance to a new tune, just as Ficsor had forecast.
The Vizys’ house was humming like a hive during the nervous intensity of these historic days. First it was the elegant figure of the lawyer, Druma, dashing up the stairs and waving his briefcase to announce that conservatives had taken over the government and expelled the ruling social democrats. Then it was Mrs Druma who ran screaming through the house with her child in her arms because of some affray in the street outside. Then Etel declaimed that yet another Communist had been allowed to retain his post. Patients leaving Dr Moviszter’s heart-and-lung surgery gathered by the Vizys’ door vehemently discussing political events. The next day it was Stefi, the Drumas’ counter-revolutionary maid who used to attend rallies after she had finished the washing, who returned home flushed and full of arguments, and loudly held forth from the gallery of the second floor, demanding the rope for every Red or pinko.
On the rare occasions Mrs Vizy ventured out she collared Ficsor at his place by the stairwell.
‘Look here, what religion is this girl?’
‘Catholic, your ladyship.’
Mrs Vizy approved. Catholic girls were nice, more modest, less headstrong and demanding than the Protestants. It’s true they tended to be careless, were continually singing and were easily ruined. Once they started downhill they were unredeemable: they fell directly from heaven through to hell.
Once she accosted him in Krisztina tér. ‘Where was she born?’
‘In Kajár. She’s the daughter of my sister-in-law. I told you she came from down Balaton way.’
This was good news. One summer, when her own daughter was still alive, they had stayed at Balatonfüred for their holidays. The occasion held pleasant memories for her, full of the noise of waves, of children’s laughter and gypsy bands. She also seemed to remember hearing someone praise ‘the Balaton girls’.
At the market she bumped into Ficsor’s wife.
‘What in fact is her name?’
‘Well!’ marvelled the big woman. ‘Does your ladyship mean to say she doesn’t know? It’s Anna.’
‘Anna,’ repeated Mrs Vizy and was immediately attracted to this soft, feminine name, since she hadn’t yet had a maid called Anna, nor indeed any relation with whom the association might have been confusing. ‘Anna.’ She mouthed the name again and found it had a reassuring sound: it fell upon her soft and white, like manna.
Ficsor did all he could to entice his relative away. He wasted no time in his campaign and he and his wife hastened to take turns to call at Árok utca. He knew what was at stake. Every morning he saw Communists being dismissed from their jobs. A young man slunk by the gate, mopping at a thin ribbon of blood which issued from his temple. Such sights made him redouble his efforts. But he had little to show for them yet. So far he had succeeded only in talking to Mrs Cifka, Mrs Bartos’s sister-in-law, who was part of the revenue-inspector’s household. The inspector would only let the girl go if Ficsor found them a satisfactory replacement. He couldn’t convince Anna either. She hummed and hawed and failed to understand the situation clearly; she had grown fond of the children and felt sorry for them. Once she promised to call round but failed to do so. Later she said she had ‘thought better of it’.
Mrs Vizy continued to pester him. ‘Why haven’t you brought her along yet? I’d like to see her at least.’
<
br /> ‘It’s laundry day today.’
‘You mean she does the laundry as well?’
‘Naturally. She washes and irons. She’s a real gem.’
Next time there was another excuse. ‘She is taking the children for a walk.’
‘Little Bandi, you mean?’ she asked, for by now she was intimately acquainted with the family’s circumstances.
‘Yes, the four-year-old.’
‘Now look here, don’t lead me on. Be honest now. I have to know for certain whether I can count on her.’
‘Of course your ladyship can count her. I mean that most sincerely.’
The caretaker disappeared for a while. He worked overtime at the post office and spent only a few furtive minutes at home. Mrs Ficsor’s story was that he was at the girl’s house. The end of the month was approaching with alarming speed. Mrs Vizy was already considering keeping Katica on, who since being given her notice – probably because the ties between them had been loosened – seemed somehow less annoying. Katica had fixed up a job at the chemists and was due to start on the fifteenth. It very much looked as though now, just before winter and in the midst of this general confusion, she would remain without a maid, her husband would be gloomier than ever and they would once more be in the position of being unable to receive visitors or to go out, it would be like those two bitter months after the departure of Lujza Héring, the memory of which still evoked nightmares and oppressed her.
It seemed as though she would have to give up Anna. But she was determined not to surrender so meekly. Her late father had been a colonel of the hussars, and both her grandfathers were military men. She had inherited enough of the fighting spirit of her ancestors: though some were centuries distant now they lent her strength for the siege. She took on the whole town. She spent whole days walking to and fro. She called on long neglected acquaintances to enquire whether they knew of anyone available. They usually responded with a sympathetic smile. This was her Calvary: she was all too intimate with the stations of her cross.
For the first time in her life she turned to the police, but the police had other headaches. The wagons were in constant use, overspilling with rich human cargo. The unpainted benches in the yard were packed with suspects – Communists of minor or advanced age, children, old men, women in silks or rags, their eyes red from weeping, all awaiting their fates. Mrs Vizy left her calling card with the officer appointed to deal with servants.
He knew what she wanted and admitted her without an appointment. He looked at her with a certain indifference, like a neurologist with an incurable patient. He comforted her as best he could then directed her to the domestic agency.
And so, without too much hope, she set her foot on the road again. If nothing else they could give her some information. Little tin tabs in red and blue and green advertised the availability of cooks, housemaids, wet nurses and every kind and grade of domestic servant: it was a veritable long vanished Canaan, as anachronistic as those empty restaurants whose windows proclaimed in gold lettering, Fresh Dishes Available – Day and Night, or those tobacconists that promised Native and Foreign Brands but sold only cigarette holders and flints for lighters.
There wasn’t a maid to be had in the whole of Buda. She tried district after district and it was only on the Pest side, in Ferencváros, that she found one or two. The agent bowed respectfully before her: she knew him well, as she did all the others. He was a pale, foxy-looking scoundrel, with a silver watch-chain dangling from his waistcoat. He fawned on every customer and, in the interests of the business, referred to the servants as his ‘ladies’. His voice sank to a whisper as he offered his merchandise.
The unemployed female workforce sat by the wall in basketwork chairs, like parsley vendors in pathetic fancy dress. They fell silent when she entered. They tried to look directly and unconcernedly before them, concentrating on the fact that the contract involved the agreement of both parties, but they could not take their eyes off this unknown woman on whom their immediate fates might depend, and they stared at her with a mixture of wonderment and contempt.
She only had to glance at them to know that this was shopsoiled material, the kind that’s left behind after the sales, rejected by everyone. After all who would send their daughters into service at a time like this when money has no value, when peasant farmers were swimming in home-produced lard and could afford to give their children piano lessons? Nevertheless she decided to question some of them. The first did not rise from her chair but sat crosslegged throughout. The second stood up but there was something ironic in her servile expression: she herself asked for the return of her employment logbook while the rest nudged each other, grinning impertinently, and instinctively withdrew from Mrs Vizy.
Only one was keen to come, a grey, sixty-year-old cook with eyes like poison, who, according to the agent, had worked in the finest country inns, who would have offered to scrub the floorboards had she not been so weak and exhausted through having given all her energy to the slop-buckets of inns at Cegléd or Kecskemét.
What use had she for such people? She stared, dejected, at the mosaic tabletop where filthy paper flowers attempted to raise the tone of the establishment. The air was thick with the female odour of the servants.
By evening she had developed a headache – a migraine on one side of her temple; it was a long time since she had suffered from one. She wrapped her head in a towel and sat in the dark room, wondering why she allowed herself to get so upset. It wasn’t the failure that bothered her so much, since she had prepared herself for that, it was a sense of guilt that she had been faithless to Anna, that she had somehow betrayed her by looking at others, and she resolved, come what may, to obtain only her services.
5
Ministry and Mystery
Mrs Vizy fought this heroic battle alone. She didn’t even tell her husband that she had dismissed Katica. Secretly she sought out Druma, whose reputation as a counter-revolutionary ensured that his office was besieged by the relatives of harassed Communists who wanted to entrust their defence to him.
The young lawyer’s normally flushed face was now aflame with the fever of history. He would gladly have packed Ficsor off to prison for a minimum of five years, but the matter of the servant, he felt, was perhaps a little hazy from a legal point of view. In any case he had a letter typed and forwarded to the Bartos household, advising them that according to the letter of the law they should be prepared to release the girl from her contract.
Vizy was rarely at home, and then only to bolt down his dinner and supper. He was morose, nervous and uncommunicative. His wife would not have dared to irritate him with such trifling matters. Whenever she asked him where he was going or where he had come from he would merely mutter the words: the Ministry, in a tone so low and secretive that it sounded as if he had said: the Mystery. And indeed the vast universe of politics and public affairs was, for him, a form of mysticism, and anything that fell outside its scope was necessarily so piffling that it wasn’t worth thinking about.
The ancient yellow building that housed the ministry was a babble of confidential voices. Whenever Vizy entered its portals his senses responded to its murmurous atmosphere, and as he climbed the stairs an unctious smile of self-esteem settled on him as if to say that while everything here pertained to public life, it was nevertheless his own domain, that he felt far more at home here than back at the flat. Once more the doorman greeted him. His well-groomed secretary met him in the hall with a list of his appointments for the day, readily sorted and annotated, which he quickly surveyed before deciding who should actually be admitted into his presence. To those already there Vizy apologized for keeping them waiting and bade them take a seat. He complained of the pressure of work, and joked that he was so busy that he couldn’t even fit the angel of death into his schedule. He played upon the little key of his buzzer with the delicacy of a concert pianist. He adopted an official tone with provincial visitors, called in references for some, examined others’ individual files, gravel
y shaking his head as he read the file’s contents, criticizing it in a friendly though patronizing manner calculated to demonstrate his superiority. Then he would generously offer the visitor a cigar and if it was accepted he would produce his keys from his back pocket and unlock one of the drawers of his desk, not too quickly so as to prolong the moment of pleasure, and lay the gilded box before him and lift the lid to reveal the cigars with their ribbons, the official ribbons that marked the advance in his career. And while he was busily lighting the visitor’s cigar he would make a mental note that there was now one cigar less, and quietly close the gilded lid and lock the box away again.
He liked this ritual and he liked the spirit of the place. At noon a bell rang to announce the arrival of the minister. The building was in a moment transformed to a temple. Even the grave official trees in the yard took on a more ceremonial air in their cast iron hoops. Have you seen His Excellency? Is he in a good mood this morning? I need to wheedle some money out of him for that damned chamber of commerce. Good morning, your Esteemed Excellency. Good morning, your Excellency, your most obedient servant. He was surrounded by friends who had emerged from counter-revolutionary cells in Austria, from estates in the provinces, all scrubbed and scented, breathing a confection of eau de Cologne and Egyptian tobacco. They embraced each other, slapped each other on the back and celebrated his return since they had heard something to the effect that he had been violently carried off to parliament. They too complained of their various trials and tribulations and how they had been robbed of this or that by those blackguards. Nevertheless here they were, they were still alive, the old and the young for once on equally intimate terms with each other, low-grade salaries with high-grade ones, like one big happy family. They swam in a bath of charm and filial sentiment, all ready to be of service, in and out of office, granting everyone the respect due to their title, maintaining a military discipline and a certain self-discipline as well as knowing that all was up for grabs, and that in the due course of their careers any one of them could ascend the ladder of success to the topmost rung. This was Vizy’s world, far more than the flat: it was his universe.
Anna Edes Page 4
