Anna Edes

by Dezso Kosztolányi

  Mrs Vizy found their guest less inconvenient than she had feared. The bank had lent him some gravity. By nine he was out of the house, returning for lunch at half past two. After this he would roll a cigarette at the table, or tend his nails and make conversation with his aunt.

  ‘Poor Ilonka,’ she teased him.

  ‘Why, Aunt Angéla?’

  ‘Take my word for it, dear. It’s because you men are incapable of real love. You are attracted to one or other pretty face then you forget her. Andere Städtchen, andere Mädchen. You needn’t pretend. Don’t lead the girl on.’

  Jancsi blushed and protested feebly; he was flattered that she took him for a rake. He made disparaging comments about women. Mrs Vizy chided him, while taking pride in her manly nephew. In his face she read secret debaucheries.

  By four he was already prepared for the evening. He rinsed his mouth with scented water and waited for Elekes, who arrived dressed to the nines, wearing a monocle. They left for the beau monde.

  At home he bothered with nothing but his clothes. He saw nothing, he heard nothing. He would look for something he actually had in his hand. He had been with them three weeks and was still calling the servant Kati, mixing her up with the maid back in Eger. He would have been pushed to recognize her in the street.

  Anna, for her part, had her hands full with him. She would wake him each morning at eight, and leave a gold-rimmed cup full of cocoa, a croissant and a glass of water on the chair beside the couch. The young gentleman found waking rather hard. It took half an hour of coaxing before the thought of the bank roused him; then, panic-stricken, he would throw on his clothes, upset the glass of water or the chamberpot, snort over the washbasin, leave the taps running, flood the bathroom and trail wet footprints across the newly polished floor. He really required a maid of his own.

  When he had stopped whistling – he was a real songbird, continually whistling – Anna would go into the bathroom which would still be heady with his scent. She swayed dizzily in the misty perfumed air. She tidied away his nail files and scissors. Once she pressed one of his sprays. Cold scent shot out of it so terrifyingly fast that she immediately replaced it on the shelf.

  Jancsi never communicated with her but by way of command. As he was leaving with Elekes he stopped at the kitchen door to ask her to tell the good lady of the house that he would be home for supper at such and such a time.

  Late one afternoon Anna was alone, doing her ironing in the hall. She was steaming a pair of trousers with a damp cloth. The board was placed across two chairs. Jancsi dashed in at the door. Seeing that she was in the way, the girl started to move the board, but the young gentlemen motioned her to let things remain where they were, took a few steps back to the door and leapt clean over the ironing. He stopped at the dining-room door to see the effect he had made. Anna was ironing with an indifferent expression on her face, her legs gently spread. Her calico dress clung to her limbs. Her feet were bare.

  At the beginning of October, Ferenc Patikárius invited the Vizys down for the grape harvest. They decided on a four-day round trip. Vizy asked the ministry for a few days off. At first the arrangement was that Jancsi would accompany them, but he preferred to continue at the bank, since he wanted to stay in Pest and visit the Tatárs or go to the cinema. Mrs Vizy instructed Anna on what to cook for the young gentleman. They left on a Wednesday from the Southern Terminal.

  Jancsi escorted them to the station, since the Vizys, who remained provincials at heart despite their twenty-five years in the capital, laid much store by these formalities. They had a first-class half-cabin. Vizy overwhelmed his wife with courtesies. He offered her the window-side seat, ran out for a magazine and was generally solicitous for her comfort. Aunt Angéla nodded.

  As the train jolted into movement she leaned out and once more admonished her nephew on the platform to take good care of everything, especially the house. Uncle Kornél waved with his handkerchief.

  Jancsi whipped off his straw hat and shouted after them. ‘Hurrah!’ he cried. ‘Hurrah!’

  12

  A Wild Night

  The train was still drawing away, he could still see Aunt Angéla’s face and Uncle Kornél’s handkerchief, when all of a sudden he decided – and the decision took even him by surprise – not to return to the bank as he had intended, but to go home and there and then sweep Anna off her feet.

  The thought was so deliciously exciting, his throat went dry. He clung to an iron pillar and looked up at the station clock which was showing precisely twelve. He took a deep lungful of the foul smoke-sour air.

  Outside, before the station, he had the sensation of arriving in a strange town where a million new experiences were waiting for him. He took no notice of Baross tér, its colours bursting with brilliant light and its sombre eponymous statue, he saw only Anna in her chequered dress, ironing at the board balanced between two chairs in the narrow hall, her feet bare, her thighs gently spread, and he felt a keen desire to be there now, to embrace her from behind, and, as was the custom with servant girls, unceremoniously to upend her like a sack of flour.

  He started to run. The warm October noon scorched his clothes. He leapt aboard a passing tram but leapt off again at the next stop. He whistled up a cab and promised a large tip if the man drove fast.

  How slowly the fellow drove. Each turn of the wheel seemed an eternity. In the meantime the image that so unexpectedly presented itself to him continued to haunt him, teasing him, moving, ever more lithe and lively, like a film. Anna put the iron down, smiled uncertainly and sat in his lap.

  But neither she nor the ironing board were in the hall. Where was she? In his confusion Jancsi looked into the kitchen.

  ‘Is it dinner time yet?’

  ‘Already?’ asked Anna, at the stove. ‘I thought. . .’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought it would be at half-past two as usual.’

  ‘Oh. No.’

  ‘I can have it ready in a few minutes.’

  ‘I say . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What is there?’

  ‘Clear soup.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Roast veal.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Poppyseed pudding.’

  ‘Poppyseed pudding,’ Jancsi repeated, frowning. ‘Poppyseed pudding.’

  ‘Is it not to your taste, sir?’

  ‘Oh yes. Very much. I’m very fond of poppyseed pudding. Very fond.’

  He was babbling without any idea of what he was saying. His brain however was hard at work, comparing this girl in this wholly new situation, quite different atmosphere and different dress, to the one who was ironing in the hall the other day, and he was trying to bring the two images together to realize the object of his desire. Anna was no longer barefooted. She was wearing her shoes and this disturbed him even more.

  In the dining room she laid the table for him alone, giving him Uncle Kornél’s place. He looked around and once again felt the heat surging through him as it did at the station. For several minutes he was incapable of movement. He was alone, quite alone with her.

  On tip-toe he hurried through into the bedroom. He looked for the key in the flush door, transferred it from the outside lock to the inner one, locked it several times, then opened it again. From here and the dining room one could lock off the entire flat. The hall door was covered in milky glass. No one in the corridor could see through that, not even in the brightest light.

  He was deep in thought. He touched a pillow and shivered. He contemplated the tall mirror and established that it was big enough to show the reflection of two naked people kissing and embracing. He stroked the bedcover. Everything in the room, each object, each piece of furniture became an element in his design and glowed with its electricity. The deserted flat no longer looked like a family hearth: it was a den of vice, a willing accomplice that silently played along with all his plans.

  He lifted the writing case, poked around in it, explored the cupboards, tugged
at locked drawers, sat down in all the chairs and spread himself across the divans, even Aunt Angéla’s divan. He had never rested on it before. He buttressed himself with cushions and propped his shod feet on the white silk cover. So what if he messed it up! No, on the contrary, he gloried in the knowledge that all this was someone else’s and that he could do whatever he wished with it; some inner excitement led him on, a youthful instinct for vandalism, tempting him to kick things, break the locks and open everything, to foul, wreck, cleave and smash the lot.

  He planned his assault for dinner. Anna served up the soup but didn’t glance at him. He deduced from this that she must already suspect something. Over meat he noticed what appeared to be a little smile flickering at her lips: if he addressed her now she would laugh out loud and ruin everything. He decided to hold the plan till the sweet course. Nevertheless when it came to it he said, ‘Thank you,’ and left it at that.

  After dinner he lay down on the couch in a mood of helpless fury and despair, covered his face with his hands and cursed his own stupidity. He was incapable of speaking with women, particularly when he most wanted to. His remarks at such times were so obscure they didn’t understand him, or so offensively crude that he blushed from ear to ear at his clumsiness. Usually he could do nothing but joke with them. This was all right in its fashion as far as Ilonka Tatár and her crowd went but was absolutely useless with Anna.

  In any case there were many things about Anna that put him off. Her hair was straggly like most peasant girls’, drawn into a narrow knot, since servants, unlike their superiors, quickly lose their rich thick head of hair. He noticed a light down on her upper lip which in the heat of the kitchen had gathered a few beads of sweat. There was a small spot by her nose. Her figure was far too thin. Only her eyes were beautiful, and her teeth.

  Jancsi tried to console himself and take away his desire by dwelling on her faults. She was as bony as a boy, she had a moustache, she sweated, a bright summer spot glowed by her nose and she had that stump of a bun on her head. But the longer he pondered the more clearly he saw it was in vain. Far from abating, his fever actually grew. The little imperfections which had at first rendered her strange and almost unattractive now made her all the more tangible, all the more suited to the purpose for which he had selected her. He groaned as he lay and turned over.

  For Anna this was the first day she could work without supervision. She bustled about happily as if she were head of her own staff. As soon as she had done the washing up, she took his excellency’s jackets and trousers from the wardrobe to dry-clean them with a spot of benzine. As she struggled through the door with the great heap of clothes she spotted the young master on the couch. He was lying stiffly with a glass tube sticking out of his mouth. She had no idea what it was.

  ‘Are you ill, sir?’ she asked him.

  ‘Not at all,’ cried Jancsi, taking the thermometer from his mouth and shaking it without looking at it. ‘I thought I might have a temperature, so I decided to measure it. I seem to have caught . . .’ and for no reason at all he emphasized the last word, ‘a chill.’

  But his mind was elsewhere. ‘Now’s my chance,’ he thought. ‘One joke, any common joke, some rib-tickling, side-splitting vulgar joke and she’ll reel with laughter and fall flat on her back. That’s the way with maids. On your back, Susie! . . . Leap on her, raise her skirt. What can happen? At the worst she’ll slap my hand. So what. She’s no virgin anyway. You’ve just got to look at her. Her tits are small and loose. The upright sort. Elekes said as much. But she might be a hot little tart. A sweet piece of fluff. A kind of peasant whore.’

  He encouraged himself with words like these and others cruder still: it was like licking honey from a milk-jug, the sweetness of the words irritated his throat. They made him cough.

  Anna was speaking.

  ‘I could call down Dr Moviszter, sir. He’s usually at home at this time. He hasn’t even opened the surgery yet.’

  ‘No need at all,’ laughed Jancsi in a heavily forced manner, and propped himself up on his elbow to survey her.

  He was thinking. ‘Ah! she is looking into my eyes. I was wrong at dinner. She suspects nothing. But why should she suspect anything? Her sort don’t understand innuendo, they’re too simple. I ought to say something. Nothing crude, something with a touch of subtlety. Every moment is a moment wasted. If I fiddle around for too long then it will all come to nothing. I’ve already lost today. There are only three days left: Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Sunday’s too late. Do something.’

  He opened his mouth, convinced something would come out. His mind was blank. He merely repeated her name.

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Look here Anna, I shall stay at home the rest of the day. I won’t go out. But if I ring, come to me at once. Wait a minute, Anna,’ he added though she hadn’t moved. ‘Yes. That’s all I wanted to say.’

  She went away. Jancsi sprang up and dashed to the dining room door but froze there. It would be ridiculous to run after her in the kitchen when she had only just left him. No point in ringing either just yet. He turned his thoughts elsewhere and lay back on the couch which was still warm from his own damned heat. What was the matter? He couldn’t understand it. He had never felt anything like this, only once perhaps, on that one occasion.

  Yes, it was then, on his return from Vienna after his exams, travelling alone in that dimly lit carriage on the evening train. He pressed his eyelids in the effort to remember.

  It happened shortly before they crossed the Hungarian border that he noticed a low-browed woman with a large hat-box in her lap. It wouldn’t fit on the luggage rack. She looked exhausted and neglected, vaguely sickly. She wore a thick grey dress of broadcloth. Her heels were worn down. He had no idea who she might be, how old, whether married or single, whether German or Hungarian speaking, but as soon as he saw her he could not take his eyes off her. Above the train the sky was dull and leaden. Rain was slowly trickling down the panes and the air was as close as in a steam bath. As the conductors shouted out the names of the stations their voices died in the soft cotton-wool mist. Before he could speak to her the woman got off at Bruck on the border. She struggled with her hat-box and dragged her feet through the mud beside the rails under the pounding rain. She hadn’t brought an umbrella with her. She kept walking until she faded into the grey. For a long time Jancsi stared after her through the window. He would have given his life to follow her, to take her hand and kiss her drooping mouth, then take supper with her in the room of some frontier hotel, where there was only a single table, one cupboard and one bed. He had forgotten all this the next day.

  Obviously Elekes was lying when he said it was easiest with servant girls. Perhaps they were the most difficult of all. Furiously he changed clothes and went out.

  He started off for the Tatárs but turned back on the Zerge Steps and crossed the Alagút tunnel beneath the river into Pest. He sat in a cinema and watched a seven-reel romantic film from Italy. Then he bought a ticket for the Pathefon and listened to Wagner’s Flying Dutchman. It was growing dark outside. The half-light emboldened him. He imagined taking the girl quite simply by force, with one wild cry. He scampered up the stairs.

  The kitchen, however, was empty. Like a murderer who bursts into a room with a dagger drawn to find his long intended victim absent, he flopped on to the kneading stool and laid his head on the table. At least it felt good to be here, in this ugly kitchen with the lingering smell of benzine.

  Anna was startled to find him there.

  ‘Where were you?’ Jancsi enquired.

  ‘At the butcher’s, getting a chop for supper.’ And she took a package wrapped in newspaper from her basket.

  Jancsi waved it away. ‘I don’t want it. I won’t have any supper tonight. Some black coffee will be enough.’

  So he had a black coffee. He stood before the window and watched the night. At ten Ficsor locked the gates, Mrs Moviszter stopped playing the piano and the house grew quiet. The
maid’s room was dark. He too undressed and turned the light off.

  For a while he stood in his nightshirt in the dark. It was impossible to tell what he would do.

  He took a step. The boards creaked so loudly that everyone in the house must have heard it and suspected what was going on. He stepped back. Once more he hesitated, then slowly, yard by yard, he felt his way forward as cautiously as if he were a piece in the endgame of a chess final. The floorboards snapped like machine guns. Gritting his teeth he decided to run, no longer caring what anyone thought of his night excursion. Door-handles shrieked, doors wailed.

  He had arrived in the blackness of the kitchen. He held his arms before him and felt his way to the wall. He had no idea where the bed was. He tried to locate it.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ he asked quietly and uncertainly.

  ‘No,’ answered Anna immediately, her voice wide-awake.

  ‘I . . . I thought,’ stuttered Jancsi, ‘I thought . . . you know . . . you might be asleep already.’

  He found the bed. With a daring that terrified even him he sat down on one side of it. There was a tiny noise, some light sweeping of cloth against cloth, a hesitant movement.

  The girl sat up. Only then did she know she was not mistaken, that, incredibly, somewhere in the dark a voice was really asking if she were asleep.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ asked Jancsi in a choked voice.

  Anna just sat in her bed, simple and honest, as if she were ill and were waiting for the doctor to examine her. She didn’t quite understand the situation. She had heard stories of masters visiting their servants at night, even that the maid might be her master’s lover and that occasionally a child might be born. There was such a girl in Kajár who was dishonoured by a lawyer from Pest. She had heard the girls gossiping of this and much more. Despite the fact that all such seductions happened in this way, she was filled with a stupid sense of wonder.