‘Are you afraid?’ asked Jancsi, still perched on the side of the bed. ‘If you’re afraid I’ll go back.’
Anna was a little scared, but felt flattered by the young gentleman’s interest in her and her fear of him going away was stronger than the thing she first feared.
‘No.’
Jancsi lay down on the edge of the iron bed. The girl drew back to the other edge. There was space enough between them for another.
But they were already under a common quilt, that coverless maroon woollen quilt which Jancsi had regarded – even though it was Aunt Angéla’s – as so dirty and unattractive as to be fit only for a pox-ridden invalid. Now he drew the quilt up to his nose.
The forbidden heat was quite astounding. He felt as if he were passing into an immediate fever and would burn away in its flames. He moved his legs through the darkness with lustful stealth, into the unknown depths of the servant’s bed, expecting each moment to come upon something filthy or bloody, some terrifying object of horror, a bedbug perhaps or a toad. His trembling fingers stroked the ragged cotton sheet.
At his feet something stirred: a black form. Frightened he cried out. ‘What is that!’
‘The chicken. Off with you,’ Anna clapped and chased the chicken off. It scuttled from the bed into a corner of the kitchen where it fell asleep standing up.
Jancsi drew closer, not hurrying, slipping first one finger then another towards her. He was hardly able to bear the excitement. There was no need for caution. He laid his left arm across the girl’s breast.
Anna let him. A pleasant warmth began to rise within her. It was love. She knew she was being embraced. Back in the village the boys had often caught her up and touched her breasts for a joke. But then she started to laugh, loudly and with good humour, ‘If only they could see me!’
‘Who?’ started Jancsi in a panic, snatching his arm from Anna’s breast and straining to hear a noise on the stairs. Somebody was slamming a door. ‘Not my aunt and uncle?’
‘Not their excellencies.’
‘Then who?’
‘The young ladies,’ laughed Anna from her heart, teasing and coquettish. ‘The noble young ladies.’
‘Them!’ snorted Jancsi, flattered by the thought. ‘What do I care for them.’ His superciliousness condemned a vast congregation of doting paramours to death with the merest gesture. ‘I don’t want them. Not them, nor the noble young ladies. Because I’ve had such lovers before – your honours and your worships,’ he said translating them into terms a servant might understand, it’s not them I want. It’s you. You are beautiful.’
‘Why didn’t you please to say so this morning, sir?’
‘You noticed then. Was it when I came back from the station? Or at dinner? Was it already at breakfast?’
‘If you’d told me in the morning at least I would have been beautiful all day.’
‘No,’ pleaded Jancsi, deeply affected by her rough wit. ‘Don’t say that, don’t. You are beautiful,’ he croaked with desire. ‘I swear you are.’
‘That’s a sin, young master,’ she lectured him.
‘Why is it a sin?’
‘To swear so lightly, on a bean . . .’
Jancsi resolved to put a stop to this. Such broad peasant banter seemed to mock his pale desire; he longed for silence, a hothouse silence which would nurse them towards consummation. Again he extended his arms over her breasts. Anna evaded him with a single movement.
‘Listen, my love,’ he pleaded, and gabbled in an effort to prevent her common, mocking laughter. ‘Don’t laugh, don’t say anything. Not a word. Just listen, my dear. I won’t hurt you. I swear. You are so beautiful. I love you. Only you. I love thee.’ Having addressed her formally so far, he whispered the last pronoun. It signified intimacy and seemed to link their identities so closely it inflamed his desire; even as he spoke the roof of his mouth broke out in a feverish rash. ‘Thee, thee. Say it. Thee. You say it too. Say it to me. Thee . . . thee . . .’
The girl wouldn’t say it. She was reflecting on the immense distance this one little word could bridge. Jancsi’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness; he could make out the shapes of things: he could see Anna. Her two white breasts glimmered and lit the night around her. He plied her with questions about her lovers, if she had had any and if so who they had been. For a while Anna gave short ambiguous answers then ceased to answer altogether. Had she taken belated offence at his earlier demand that she be silent? Jancsi interpreted her silence to mean that she had been more or less anybody’s and that he was merely the last in line. All the better, he thought and made moves to take her by force, now with flattery, now with violence.
Anna easily beat back his awkward advances. When he tried to grab her round the waist she gave him such a shove the bed almost collapsed. ‘No,’ she said harshly.
‘But why?’
‘Because you mustn’t, that’s all.’
‘Listen . . .’
‘Would you please leave me alone. Go to your proper young ladies. And stay there.’
Would you believe it? She didn’t even call him sir or young master. She appeared to have assumed mastery of her bed. Jancsi pressed his head into the pillow case, biting at its edges, his face streaked with tears and spittle. She could hear his bitter sobbing. He lay on his stomach.
Then an arm suddenly closed round his neck and she embraced him with such intensity it almost hurt. He couldn’t breathe. Slowly he sank into its ecstasy and allowed himself to be immersed in this enervating, liquid warmth where he could drown as sweetly as in a bath of sugared milk.
She was terribly strong, this peasant girl, and even thinner than he had imagined. As he encircled her she seemed utterly without flesh, simply muscle, sinew and bone: he felt her frail skeleton, her pelvis, the crucible, that secret well of creation. Several times they rose and fell in the pattern of death and resurrection.
Then they talked for a while.
A little after midnight a carriage stopped before the house. Someone rang and the caretaker opened the gate. They whispered to each other, wondering who this late visitor might be. Whoever it was passed their door and made his way up to the second floor where he knocked. They heard Dr Moviszter’s voice. A few minutes later two people came down, the doctor sat in the carriage and they drove off. It was an emergency call.
Around dawn Jancsi noticed the light on the wall opposite and asked Anna who lived there. Then he returned to his own bed, along the route he had followed the night before.
The sun was not yet up. His heart was pounding with happiness as he threw himself on to the couch. It was done at last. It was monstrously delicious. He was convinced his conquest was unique, that never in the history of the world had anyone committed a sin like his. But that was why he enjoyed it so and was unashamed of it.
Ilonka Tatár must still be asleep. Her father is bearded. At the end of each party he always comes and chats benevolently to the young men and has a piece of left-over cake. Her mother keeps a careful eye on proceedings, gauging their progress with a glance of approval or disapproval.
Jancsi laughed out loud. At last he understood why he had been so scared of girls, and why he was so happy when these formal rituals of courtship were over and he could dash home, whistling all the way. But this girl’s relations were complete strangers to him. She was as unattached as a bird on the tree.
As he crossed the hinterland between waking and sleeping he was still marvelling at something. That this was all there was to it, that this most important of human affairs which adults take such care to hide from the children, was itself so childish, so comical, so like a game.
He began to nod and as if to echo his thoughts, an ugly smile of triumph spread across his face.
13
Love
Jancsi was sitting in the armoured vault. The bank was gloomy. It was a typical morning in the office. The department head passed him a file with a column of figures as tall as a skyscraper. His task was to add it up. His pencil clambere
d up it, storey by storey, then he lost count and had to start again a few floors lower down. In the end he grew bored with it, pushed it aside and stared at the window.
He thought of Anna’s mouth. He hadn’t even kissed her lips yet. When their flushed faces touched during the night Jancsi had turned away in disgust at the thought of a servant’s mouth. Now it seemed even more exciting than possessing her body: the abasement of kissing those pale cracked lips, to press them apart with his and to prevent them from closing till the two of them were united in one breath, till they were crushed and squeezed together like exotic fruit.
He took his hat and sneaked away.
He found her in the dark bathroom.
‘Stay,’ he panted and kissed her. The kiss was strangely cool. It failed to satisfy him. Again and again he raided her mouth, pushing past the gates of her teeth to find her tongue which had a peculiar piquancy for him. Its wetness was intoxicating.
‘More,’ he cried. ‘More, more.’ He was a child gorging on strawberry cream. As soon as he finished he wanted to start again.
Anna, who hadn’t seen him since they were together, blushed in her shame and leaned back against the tub, fainting with happiness. He could do what he wanted with her. She had prepared his cocoa in the gilt-edged cup at eight as usual and left it on the chair: he had drunk it and left. She would have thought it perfectly natural if he had failed to recognize her again after their midnight encounter. This new situation surprised her more than the original night visit.
‘Why don’t you kiss me back? Why don’t you speak? You don’t love me. O thou . . . and I . . . thou,’ he stuttered the ultimate interchangeables of love once again. When his satisfied lips fell from hers and he stopped to take breath she slipped out of the room.
‘Wait!’
Jancsi caught her in the hall and kissed her again. From there they moved to the kitchen. In every place the kiss tasted different.
‘Go to the window,’ he commanded her. ‘Here. In the corner. Next to the wardrobe. Into the light. I want to look at you. You look at me too.’ He watched her with a wild intensity.
The eyes are the furthest outposts of the brain: stationed on the projecting ramparts of the skull they are themselves an observing, independent organ of intelligence. Somewhere in the fever of recognition, when existence itself irrupted into the cosmos, they knocked two holes through their walls of bone, and peered out through narrow slits to discover the purpose of creation.
But these two pairs of eyes were fixed entirely upon each other, exploring, searching and striving together for enlightenment and blessing.
‘Now,’ said Jancsi, ‘you are not to touch me, nor I you. This is what you must do.’
He placed his arms behind his back. Their lips became the only point of contact between them.
Anna obeyed him as readily as if he were asking for a brush or a shoehorn.
The next day he didn’t go into the bank. He telephoned to say he had a throat infection. He put on his fine woollen shirt and his white flannel trousers with the smart leather belt and lounged about the flat without his jacket. They had the whole day to themselves. Occasionally someone would ring with a bill that Anna would pay, or with a letter, but otherwise they were undisturbed.
Anna came in with the brush and pan. She wore a fancy headscarf and looked very pretty. She looked like an actress at the operetta, a soubrette, the archetypal sexy maid.
Jancsi asked for her hand. Only her hand.
‘Give it to me,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Just give it.’
It’s dirty,’ she protested and started to wipe it on her apron.
He seized it all the same. He held it as gently as he would a butterfly, he stroked the palm which had touched many disgusting things in the line of duty, he enclosed it in his own delicate pampered hand and squeezed it tight. There was something in the roughness of those blistered fingers that was indescribably sweet. He took each of them separately and began confusedly to kiss them, not knowing what to do with the object of his desire. Suddenly he closed his lips about her hand.
‘What are you doing?’ the girl exclaimed, outraged, isn’t sir ashamed of himself? He should leave me alone!’ She snatched her fingers from his mouth and, blushing deeply, ran to the refuge of her kitchen, where she fell to sulking. This was too much for Anna. She didn’t understand.
At night when he came to her barefooted and the floorboards creaked beneath him she was glad and was not afraid of showing it. She had already made space for him in the bed. It was only in the daytime she couldn’t bear this hocus-pocus. She didn’t understand that her young master was descending the ladder of desire and that since he had succeeded in completely possessing her he was trying different approaches, each one a rung lower in his descent from heaven to earth. There was much she didn’t understand.
After the kisses and the squeezings of the hand came the moment when he began to address her as a social equal. He asked her to address him in the same terms and drop the ‘young master’ tag. He quietly repeated her name, the most lovely of feminine names, a flirtatious name full of conditional promise. He could be with her for hours saying nothing else. Before he kissed her he would first ask humbly for her permission.
He was seized by ridiculous whims. She constantly had to be changing her clothes for him. First he would send her out to put on her gingham frock but she was to return on bare feet. Then he had her change into calico and wear her laced shoes. Nothing would absolutely satisfy him. Once he actually asked her to wear nothing but Mrs Vizy’s evening wrap about her naked body. This she firmly refused to do.
Later he started to talk so much it made her head spin. He knelt before her. He lay down on the floor. He told her that at midnight, when everyone was asleep, they would creep into the garden and make love until dawn among the ash trees and lilac bushes. And that in the evening they would hire a carriage and drive out of the city to some country tavern where they would have supper and that they would make the barman believe that she was his bride, and after that he would even take her to America, buy her high-heeled shoes and long silk stockings and a sparkling tulle skirt such as actresses wear, and that they would roar along the highways of New York in a large sedan, her head on his shoulder. Anna just shrugged her shoulders and laughed at him.
On Friday the young master had her lay the table for two. When she brought in the first course he demanded that she should eat with him, or at least share his dish, sitting down, face to face with him. Anna would not have sat down, not for the world.
It took him long enough to persuade her to come to his couch just the once in the daytime. She did so on the last day, on Saturday afternoon.
Jancsi closed all the shutters and lit the chandeliers as if it were night. First he took her to the bathroom and sprayed her all over with scent. The girl stood solemnly in the cloud of perfume, only shrieking once when the spray tickled her breast and ran down her belly. Then they went into the sitting room and consecrated every inch of it with kisses and embraces. Their pilgrimage concluded on the couch.
Round about seven Jancsi lit a cigarette. He longed for something new.
‘Anna,’ he yawned, ‘bring me the telephone.’
The girl brought the handset over with its fifty-foot extension trailing behind like an enormous dead snake.
‘Thank you,’ said Jancsi, already raising the receiver. ‘You may go.’
He rang Józsi Elekes.
‘Is that you? . . . Nice of you, I must say . . . you never even enquire after my health . . . I haven’t been in for three days while you . . . No, old man, no . . . something bigger than that . . . I’ll tell you all about it . . . No, not over the phone . . . All right, come round straightaway . . . Fine . . . I’ll expect you . . . Hello, hello . . . What? . . . I don’t understand . . . And you with mine. Ratface yourself.’
He slammed the receiver down, smiled at his friend’s bold suggestion and felt pleased with his own response. He tidied hi
mself up, sat down at the piano and played the one piece the knew, a popular one-step. He hummed the English words.
You made me love you
I didn’t want to do it,
You made me want you
And all the time you knew it . . .
Elekes was knocking at the door but he was still bawling and hammering at the piano:
You made me happy
Sometimes you made glad,
But there were times, dear,
You made me feel so bad.
‘So?’ enquired his friend. ‘You weren’t ill?’
‘No,’ Jancsi replied.
‘In view of that I must say you look pretty awful.’
‘Really?’
Jancsi stood before the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale. He was glad. ‘Perhaps I do. I do in fact have a headache.’
‘What, with an empty head like yours?’ Elekes never lost an opportunity to show his wit. ‘What can possibly ache in that?’
‘Leave off, Elekes. This is a serious matter.’
‘Are you in love?’
By way of answer Jancsi tinkled a few high notes on the piano. They made an ugly piercing noise.
‘Single or married?’ Elekes probed. ‘Where did you pick her up?’
‘In the konditorei. The Gerbeaud.’
‘A tart?’
‘An actress.’
‘Ah. Which theatre?’
‘Here and there. She’s a dancer.’
‘I see. And when did you cook her goose?’
‘Wednesday night. I got talking to her in the little bar. You wouldn’t believe it, old man! What a wildcat! What a demon! She came with me there and then. In her car. She has a car. We’re lovers.’
‘And where do you meet?’
‘Here.’
‘Hm,’ thought Elekes and smiled jealously. ‘You miserable so and so. So you bring her here?’
‘Every day, since the old folk left. Every night. And during the day. She has just gone, this minute. She was still here when I rang you. Right here.’ He pointed to the couch.
Anna Edes Page 13
