‘No, God bless you. Have a drink, you old Bolshevik!’
Druma proceeded with a vivid description of what the Communists had done to a genteel sixty-year-old woman who had been imprisoned with him. Every night at precisely midnight they led her out into the yard to execute her. They made her kneel down, pointed their guns at her, and spent minutes taking aim at her forehead. Vizy riposted by pointing out that his dining room and sitting room had de facto been requisitioned from him.
‘That is of course what they want,’ Tatár smouldered, ‘a role change of world historical significance. They want you down in the cellar and the caretaker up here in your flat. It’s a merry-go-round. As one bucket goes down so the other comes up. Myself, I do not doubt for a second that you could produce an outstanding breed of gentlemen from the raw material of caretakers. But this would take about three hundred years. They would first have to be fed to bursting point till they are disgustingly fat, then have the time to grow bored of it all. Their sons would have to learn riding and swordsmanship as our sons do, their spines would have to grow a little straighter, their feet and hands a little more slender. In the meantime we would slowly get used to baked beans and the room in the basement. Slowly we would grow as scraggy as they are. But this too would take some time. And what would be the point of it? No point at all.’
The conversation drifted on to politics. Vizy had been quiet till now, since he did not like to commit himself to any view and believed theoretical argument to be sterile. Now he took the floor. He talked about office matters, committees and programmes of reorganization.
If only the whole world could have seen him in this mood! ‘It’s our turn now!’ he proclaimed, and rested his hand on Gábor Tatár’s shoulder in a sweeping gesture of solidarity, as if he were seeking comrades-at-arms for the great battles ahead. As was his habit at such moments his eyes darted to one side and his face assumed a sly expression of readiness and rapaciousness transfused by the basest overwhelming greed, but within a moment he had reassumed control of his features and modulated the expression into one of enthusiasm for the common good.
If one had asked him what the aim of politics was or what was the goal he had been seeking under various governments since his early youth, he would have summed it up neatly in one sentence: ‘The eradication of corruption.’ He shrank from recasting the latinate diction into common Hungarian terms, because that would have made it too obvious and it would have lost the patrician gravity he associated with Cato. He preferred to leave it as it was in its cloaked, passionate generality, and refused to countenance the possibility that politics might be merely the eternal agitation of those who are hungry and unable to escape from mediocrity, that every political system assumes power only to place its allies in favourable positions so that it might weaken and crush its opponents. Corruption to him was invariably associated with the activity of other people, people who sped by in official cars on their way to rendezvous with their girlfriends, and he was all the more inclined to condemn this because he remembered one delightful night when he too swept past the trees in the park with an actress friend in an official car borrowed for the occasion from a friend, and recalled the feelings of pleasure that mingled in his breast when, at the end of the ride, the peaked chauffeur duly saluted him with an enthusiasm he wouldn’t have summoned even if he had been generously tipped.
Moviszter was growing bored. He continued rocking for a while in his chair then shuffled into the sitting room where the women were huddled round the chess table. They were still discussing the subject which had sparked the debate between their menfolk.
Mrs Vizy was engaged on a long monologue of lamentation. ‘Certainly she works hard enough. But what does she want?’ she asked with some annoyance. ‘She gets food, she gets lodgings. She even gets clothes. She can bank her earnings. What else could she desire in these difficult times? What problems has she? She doesn’t have to maintain this large flat, she doesn’t have to bother her head with what to cook, or how to find the money, she can live without a thought, without a care in the world. I often think that nowadays it is only servants who can live really well.’
The women sighed as though they had all chosen the wrong career, and now regretted that harsh circumstances utterly prevented them from becoming servants.
The doctor beckoned his wife over. He complained that he was tired. He was always in bed before ten because by seven he had to be on a crowded tram on his way to the hospital. Mrs Moviszter stubbed out her cigarette. The Tatárs too began to make moves to leave. They wanted to get home before their front gate was locked. Mrs Druma stood in the hall with her ear pressed against the kitchen door.
‘What is she doing?’
‘Working, no doubt,’ said Mrs Vizy. ‘Let her.’
But Mrs Druma had already opened the door. A figure stood by the waste basket in the dark kitchen with a man’s black shoe in her hand. She was polishing it.
‘Good-night, Anna. Goodbye. God bless you,’ the voices hummed at her. Anna mumbled something.
‘What did she say?’
‘She was begging your pardon,’ translated Mrs Vizy. ‘She can’t open the door for you because her hands are pasty.’
‘Pasty?’ enquired Mrs Druma.
‘Paste is what the servants call shoe polish.’
‘Pasty!’ repeated Mrs Druma. ‘Fancy that. Pasty!’ and the thought of hands being ‘pasty’ kept her amused all the way up the stairs to their flat.
10
Legend
The Vizys were still chewing over the events of their little party.
‘Did you hear him? I should feed my servant sponge fingers. Sponge fingers!’
‘Crazy, quite crazy.’
‘Because that’s what she likes best. I’ve never heard anything like it.’
‘And that wasn’t the end of it. There was his usual twisted logic. You know what I mean. Tatár soon settled his hash.’
‘I don’t intend to let her become a primadonna. That’s all we need.’
‘It looks as if he has finally lost his marbles. He’s a sick man. He’ll be lucky if he survives two months. They don’t even bother to measure his sugar level any more. Did you notice how the flies kept landing on him? He was constantly waving them away. Poor fellow. He’ll soon be pushing up the daisies. What will become of his wife?’
‘But you were at fault too. What was the point of praising her to the skies in front of everybody? They might try to entice her away.’
The doctor infuriated her. She kept Anna on an even tighter rein. She had never employed a caretaker’s assistant but now Anna was pressed into this service too. Once a week she had her scour the stairwell, clean the attic, and when there was nothing else to do she ensured that the Ficsors kept her busy. It became Anna’s job to put out the rubbish. When the dustcart’s bell fell silent in front of the house she could be seen in the sunshine struggling with the waste bins of three households, tipping their grimy contents into the cart. She was also given a basketful of stockings to mend so that she should not get bored in her spare time.
Mrs Vizy tended to be neutral in expressing her satisfaction. She told the Ficsors that the girl would do. This was quite difficult for her since she was almost beaming with delight. But she controlled herself in the interests of education. She put on a hard face, but it was only a mask.
The month ended on 15 September. She paid Anna her wages. Not as much as she had paid Katica, who had been overpaid, but she let it be known that she would be prepared in time to give her a raise. And she didn’t deduct the full cost of the minor. Only half of it.
Anna needed no money so she asked Mrs Vizy to bank it for her or to buy her something. Mrs Vizy bought her a headscarf on the market in Roham utca.
On the fifth Sunday she deliberately sent Anna out to have a walk round town. Anna wore the gingham frock in which she had arrived. The desolate Sunday light trembled on the granite of the pavement. An interminable day of empty idleness yawned before her. She d
awdled at gates, then ambling vaguely down Logodi utca arrived at a square with a church and a large hospital, a square ringing with noise louder than the cawing of rooks at the end of autumn. It was a place where servants tended to promenade: Swabian girls cackled and muttered and linked arms, chattering in their incomprehensible lingo, just as they would have done back in the village, going about in gaggles as always. They formed chains around the traffic islands where the gas-lamps stood, obstructed passers-by and held up the traffic. The trams had to ring their bells extra loud so that they could proceed. Anna was the only lone figure among them.
On her way home, by the Vérmező, a Romanian soldier pinched her breast. She took shelter in a doorway and waited for the soldier to disappear. Near the Southern Terminal she bought some sticks of barley-sugar at a sweet stall as a present for little Bandi in Árok utca.
Servants, when they visit their previous employers, always say, I’ve come to visit, if you don’t mind.’ The employers don’t mind. It breaks up the daily routine, and once, after a little uncertainty, they have recognized the exservant, who is probably a little thinner or a little fatter, or at any rate older than she was, they too begin to reminisce about the old days and the time that has passed since. They receive a guest whom they treat as a guest. They offer her this and that. The guest for her part stands rather more self-consciously, burdened with graver memories, in a room whose every object she knows more intimately than the owners. Her arms, accustomed to heavy work in this very place, hang inactive and useless by her side; she cannot behave with the familiarity she once did when, willy-nilly, she was an extra member of the family; and it further depresses her to reflect that in her absence family life has continued as before, and that however kindly they receive her now, she has not been irreplacable. Everyone feels this now and then, but she feels it more completely, more disturbingly, and when the friendly visit comes to an end, without realizing it she grows sad and departs with a painfully stupid expression her face. Only ghosts, the revenant dead, feel quite like this.
It was Bandi who had once given her his toy trumpet as a memento. Now she gave him the barley-sugar. Bandi stared at her in wonder. Confused memories whirled around his little head. The barley-sugar had the required effect. He sat in her lap. She was the one he had once loved most of all, and whom, at the age of one and a half, he had called Mamma not Anna. But when she began to tell him about the magic knife and the host of birds that flew out of it, he no longer listened. He had forgotten the magic knife. Anna said goodbye and arrived back at 238 Atilla utca well before six.
All things considered it was better at home.
Mrs Vizy spent the morning in the kitchen. It wasn’t necessary to keep an eye on the maid any more, but there is nothing more interesting than a kitchen, which is after all the laboratory of life. Here she could discover what happened at the market, what was cooking at the Moviszters or the Drumas, or simply watch Anna pottering about in her usual amusing fashion. The food which is about to undergo its miraculous transformation before it finds its way on to the dinner table, is still strewn about the kitchen in its raw state. The water that will go to make the soup is throbbing in the big iron pan; the carrots, the leeks, the kohlrabi, the celery, the black pepper are all boiling in the pearly saline liquid along with broken eggshells that serve to reduce the froth or scum floating on the top. The smaller pans are bubbling and dripping too. The maid quickly snatches the saffron and the ginger from the shelf, cuts the onion into thin slices, her eyes and nose dripping, grinds the nuts and crumbles the bread roll, chops the parsley, splits the eggs dividing the yolk from the albumen, scrapes the turnip, guts the rabbit, dips the meat in the flour and throws it into the pan where the hot fat sizzles and hisses.
There was only one thing Anna wouldn’t do: she couldn’t bear to kill live chickens. She would rather run upstairs and call Etelke down to perform this most common of exotic murders. The old servant would graciously gather up the carefully chosen sacrifices, take them out to the standpipe in the yard, and with one dextrous movement wring their necks, and chop their heads off with a large kitchen knife, the blood spurting up to her elbow, sometimes even flecking her face. Anna turned away. Even Mrs Vizy found it hard to stomach. She knew it was necessary but would still ask Etelke how she could do it. Etelke would roar with laughter and say that whatever had to be had to be.
Mrs Vizy gave Anna to understand that she wasn’t happy for her to spend too much time with these other servants. Etel wasn’t a suitable companion, she was an old hag, loud and impertinent, and as for Stefi she snubbed her in any case and wouldn’t be seen in the street with her. What would she want with such people? They laughed at her behind her back. Once or twice she actually denied Anna was at home, would not let them into the flat. Anna saw that her mistress was right. She made no great effort to seek the others out. Why should she go vainly chasing after them?
Instead she patched and mended things in the kitchen. A chicken scampered cheeping around her feet. She had personally bought it from the roost in order to keep it as a pet. She knew each chick by its feathers and its voice. Like most village girls she thought of a chicken much as she thought of other birds. She gave it little saucers to drink from, fed it with crumbs and talked to it. At night the chicken would jump on to her bed and sleep at her feet.
When they were together Mrs Vizy talked of Piroska and Anna of her stepmother, that gaunt young peasant woman who one winter night had chased her from home. Ficsor wrote to Anna’s father, István Édes, to tell him of her new job but he never replied. He was fed up with her. She, for her part, slowly made herself at home in her environment. She no longer mentioned her previous employers, the Bartoses, nor did she hear any more about her predecessor, Katica. Those times were gone. She felt increasingly proud that her masters were richer than the Drumas or the Moviszters. She was happy when they gave her a new rolling pin. She referred to the sieve as ‘our sieve’, to the corkscrew as ‘our corkscrew’, and all these things were finer than the ones upstairs. She admired Mrs Vizy’s clothes too, especially that black silk dress she wore to the seance on Wednesday afternoons. Mrs Vizy would joke with her, ‘Look, I put this on just for you.’
After all Mrs Vizy found her maid quite a pleasant companion. Maids fulfil much the same function for their mistresses as whores do for their husbands. When they’re not needed they can be sent away.
One particular evening, after the great political upheavals were over and all the heated debates had flared and settled, Vizy was waiting for supper in his study. They knew he was working so were careful to keep quiet. The beautifully tidy study was shrouded in silence: the inkwell, the sealing wax, the scissors and the stuffed owl lined up in their ranks on the desk. Vizy was writing to Ferenc Patikárius, his brother-in-law, who had charge of their vineyard in Eger. The letter was hard to compose. The easier it was to dictate memos to his secretary at the ministry, the more difficult personal letters became. He stopped, reread the contents, dusted the ink, and read through once more before finally licking the envelope, lighting the candle and marking the seal with his signet ring. He gave a great yawn. His heart, lungs and liver were in good working order, his stomach soundly digested whatever he deposited in it, and yet it seemed to him he was suffering. He fell prey to that ennui peculiar to bureaucrats who are left to themselves. He looked into the kitchen and tried to hasten proceedings. His wife was chatting to Anna who still carried the freshness of village life about her. Vizy too would have liked to sit down here and chat but his wife ushered him out. She told him that Anna should not disturbed, that she was a servant and not a tourist attraction.
Yet however she tried even she could not keep Anna’s light hidden under a bushel. The girl was a daily caller at Viatorisz’s shop. The grocer would greet the extraordinary servant with a generous wink. As his place was a local hub of gossip for all the women that shopped there, everyone got to hear about her. They mentioned her name at the baker’s and the butcher’s and at the laundry; even t
he undertaker knew about her. Even the enormously fat policeman, who would always respectfully salute the Vizys when they passed him on his beat along Attila utca was aware of her existence.
Her fame took wing. At first it was just in the immediate neighbourhood of Attila utca, Krisztina tér and certain points along the Krisztina and Attila körúts, but soon Pauler utca, Mikó utca, Logodi utca and Tábor utca were also ringing with her name. Once there, within a week it had spread into the Vár into Úri utca where the Tatárs lived, the Bástya sétány, Ferdinand tér and the Vienna Gate tér. Her reputation had lodged itself in the minds of men and women everywhere and was still growing.
They spoke of an exemplary servant. Many had not yet seen her and knew her only by her Christian name. She had not even taken a definite form in their imaginations. Those who knew about her felt like members of a society of the superstitious who had heard of a miraculous cure; some potent religious icon; they could not understand the supernatural powers at play but took them for granted.
Eventually the news spread full circle and came back to the Vizys. One day a friend called Vizy at the office asking whether Anna had a sister or an aunt since they needed a reliable servant.
Mrs Vizy was preparing packages for the poor at the Mária pharmacy. As usual the assistant chemist was chatting with her as she weighed out the prescriptions, and all of a sudden she too mentioned Anna. She talked about ‘your Anna’ with a knowing smile.
When Anna appeared at the market with her straw basket on her arm, the vegetable traders whispered to each other: ‘Vizy. You know, the councillor. Him in the ministry.’ When Vizy appeared, however, the whisper would go: ‘Here he is, the man I told you about. That’s him. Anna’s master.’
In the evenings the gentlemen of Krisztina would walk out with their wives. One woman suddenly stopped dead. She stopped listening to what her husband was saying and was staring at a particular point as if she had seen an apparition.
Anna Edes Page 10
