The supper wasn’t going as he had imagined. Hardly had they eaten the carnival doughnuts when strangers started appearing. Gallovich introduced one of his friends who sat down with them and started drinking. When it came to the parfait two women gatecrashed the party and threw confetti at Jancsi. He had a sawdust taste in his mouth after that.
When the tables had been cleared and once the headwaiter had passed round the cigars and cigarettes, lighting them with a flickering candle, Elekes drew Jancsi aside. Jancsi was happy to let him have fifty dollars. Töttösi and Indali were also given something and they went off to dance. The blonde pussycat, a little demi-mondaine with freckles showing through her yellow make-up, put her head round the door looking for Elekes. Gallovich filled the girls’ glasses with champagne, and amused them by occasionally donning the big ox-head.
Round about dawn the bounder had the glasses taken over to another table where he continued drinking with his female entourage, leaving Jancsi on his own. The place was full of unfamiliar faces, which was not surprising since the clientele of the bar changed from week to week.
Elekes, his collar soaked through, returned from the dance floor. Jancsi grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go.
‘In vain,’ he sighed, ‘in vain . . .’
‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain . . .’ Elekes continued.
Jancsi shut up. He didn’t know what else to say. He had said everything there was to say about his successes, his dollars, his five-room flat, Daisy and all. He felt a kind of dissatisfaction. You can’t say anything to take the wind out of these fellows’ sails.
He rubbed his forehead with his dry hands.
‘Here, Elekes,’ he said suddenly. ‘I did have another friend here. Someone you knew nothing about. When I first arrived in Pest.’
‘The actress?’
‘No. Right time, wrong girl. Do you know who she was? A servant.’
‘Tut-tut.’
‘Here, Elekes; a servant, a common servant,’ and he stood up, shouting at the top of his voice in order to be heard above the saxophone. ‘What a peach though! Lovely skin. A virgin.’
‘Really?’
‘Here, old man; she was a housemaid, her heels were cracked. She was dirty and ugly. But she was hot stuff, by God, she was.’
Elekes leaned on the divan fiddling with his silver cigarette case. He was bored with his friend and was pleased when the blonde pussycat reappeared from behind the curtain and asked him to dance.
‘Elekes!’ roared Jancsi, as loudly as he could. ‘Elekes!’ and he held out his arms in supplication.
But his voice was lost. The drums in the jazzband were beating wildly: it might have been a military court-martial preparing for execution at dawn.
He remained standing for a while, his arms stretched out, then collapsed into his chair. He was quite alone, the room was empty, he had nothing left. The thought of the gang filled him with loathing. He groped his way to the toilets and let the water run on his head. On his way back down the corridor he asked the headwaiter for the bill. The waiter did his sums with lightning speed. The total was so vast that it quite sobered him up. Jancsi warned the headwaiter that he was not drunk. They got into an argument about the amount of champagne that had been consumed. The owner gathered up all the empty bottles and explained that the gentlemen had entertained ladies at other tables too. There was also disagreement about the dollar’s rate of exchange, at which point they produced last night’s edition of the Pester Lloyd as evidence. Jancsi threw them the money.
It was a quarter past five by the time he arrived back at the hotel. After he had paid this bill too he had practically no money left. He told the porter to send his luggage over to the station, for the eight o’clock to Vienna.
He didn’t go to bed but decided to get a breath of fresh air on the embankment. He walked down the length of the deserted Rákoczi út. There wasn’t a soul about. How dark Pest was compared to Vienna! He was growing bored again and started looking for a coffee house, but there weren’t any open. He struck out for the Jozsefváros district, ambling down those crooked parallel streets he had always liked exploring. This was dead too: no traffic, no music. They were sweeping up in a few corner bars where the streetgirls who had weathered the frosty night sipped their little milky coffees. Only the most desperate or the most hard-working whore still cruised the streets.
Jancsi wandered down one of these narrow streets which seemed to lead him on and on, his face turned up to the sky, whistling into the air. The sky, which in the afternoon had been filled with miraculous colours, was now almost black with snow-clouds. Rime was slowly gathering on the fur collar of his overcoat. Somewhere, about halfway down the street, opposite a vacant lot that had been empty for years, a woman was still standing in front of a slum tenement; not a young woman but a woman past forty, leaning against the gatepost with an expression of subhuman boredom on her broad and heavy face. Her hands, which had once pickled gherkins for a living, were hanging at her sides. The surprising thing about her was that she was wearing an apron and a patterned peasant headscarf. Her folksy appearance suggested domestic bliss and was calculated to awaken someone’s unsatisfied desire for neat little housewives. It was an idyll intended to appeal to the patient imaginations of uprooted countrymen making their way to city factories, or to the apprentices rolling home on Saturday night. She wouldn’t normally have dared to solicit an elegant young man so different from her usual customers.
‘God,’ thought Jancsi as he passed her, ‘how strange it would be. But,’ he thought again, ‘God, how disgusting.’
He neither slowed nor quickened his pace, but the woman loitering by the door guessed his thought and quite boldly sneaked up behind him and whispered in an indescribable voice, ‘Come in. You won’t regret it.’
There was something so awful about this – about the flirtatious and repulsive confidence of her tone – that the boy stopped. He still had his back to her and didn’t even glance round but heard her passing through the door of the tenement which was now open. Jancsi followed her.
She lived right at the back of a yard beside a lean-to or woodshed. Her door, which opened on to the yard, creaked with frost. A single lamp glowed at the centre of the table on a maroon velvet cloth. When the woman turned the light up Jancsi saw a couch, a towel and a pillow and on the wall a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm wearing his full set of medals.
Later as it grew lighter and the grey February morning pressed its melancholy face against the window, he paced up and down, lit an Austrian dritte Sort and threw a cigarette to the woman too. She bent down to pick it up off the floor, wiped it with her blouse and stored it away. She never smoked.
Jancsi felt curious and took stock of her belongings. On the table he discovered a book bound in worn green velvet, its corners tipped in copper, which shed a few pages as he opened it. It was her commonplace book. He let his eyes run over it. It was mostly messages of best wishes, and little nuggets of wisdom gleaned from the classics, particularly those which conjured up broadly symbolic images, such as the dawn of life, the anchor of hope and so forth.
He more or less read it through. Somehow he had to kill the time before his departure.
‘Who wrote this?’ he asked, pointing at one leaf.
‘A friend of mine.’
‘When?’
‘A long time ago.’
‘And this?’
‘An acquaintance from Gyöngyös. Sometimes guests write things too. Why don’t you write something?’
‘What?’
‘Make something up.’
She brought him ink in a bottle and a rather rusty pen. Jancsi pushed these aside and produced his new Waterman. He racked his brains for something to write. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Mrs Piskeli,’ the woman answered as at a police station.
‘Are you a widow?’
‘No,’ she replied and repeated. ‘Mrs Piskeli, Mrs Józsi Piskeli.’
‘Is your husband still aliv
e?’
‘He’s an upholsterer. In Transylvania. He won’t give me a divorce.’
‘It’s not important. That’s not what I asked. ‘What’s your Christian name?’
‘Ilona.’
Jancsi frowned deeply and continued in thought, his gold pen raised in his hand. Then he began to write in a round and ornate hand as carefully as if it were a copybook. He wrote.
I picked a violet in the wood,
The violet before me stood,
And whispered low so I could hear:
Best wishes to you, Illy dear!
And he signed it with his full name and, for some reason he couldn’t even explain to himself, added an exclamation mark like this:
János Patikárius!
He dried the ink by the heat of the lamp and passed the commonplace book to the woman who thanked him.
‘What lovely handwriting,’ she said. ‘You must be a clerk or a solicitor.’
Jancsi just made his train.
18
The Terror
There was ever more talk of Kornél Vizy’s pending elevation to under-secretary. The candidate enjoyed the complete confidence of the government. Many times it seemed the appointment would be made the next day but there was always some little hitch which resulted in postponement. Then people would agitate on his behalf and the whole thing would begin again. His chief advocates were Gábor Tatár and his friends. The message from parliament and from party ranks was that everything was in place.
In the meantime spring arrived. The white blossom flared on the chestnut trees in Krisztina, the oval Biedermeier entrance to the Alagút underpass shone in its frame of green boughs through the golden dust of April and cobblers in old-fashioned leather aprons took up their usual positions before their workshops.
On the Saturday before Easter Sunday, Mrs Vizy joined an afternoon procession to mark the Resurrection. From where they gathered in Attila út she could see the ancient church where Count Széchenyi had sworn eternal faithfulness to Crescentia Seilern. The banners above the crowd had begun to sway as if of themselves when Gábor Tatár approached her to offer his congratulations: she was now the wife of the new under-secretary.
The following day the news was in the press. Vizy’s most spectacular dream was fulfilled: he was an under-secretary of state – only an assistant under secretary that’s true – but with such a wide field of responsibility that it quite satisfied his ambition.
They had a continuous stream of visitors anxious to pay their compliments throughout the Easter holiday. These were received in a fitting manner. The Vizys had used the long period of suspense to smarten up the flat. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling and new bracket lamps with red silk shades cast a theatrical glow on the new wallpaper. Flasks of cognac and boxes of cigars and cigarettes took up permanent residence on the table. Vizy was already being driven about in a government car.
The party could not be postponed much longer. They had to invite all the friends to whom they felt an obligation. This was to be the biggest party they had thrown since the war. When they prepared a list of absolutely indispensible guests they found there were about thirty of them. Vizy, in his best parliamentary manner, emphasized that the evening should be appropriate to the occasion.
She for her part considered engaging a second maid, but for the time being there was no servant’s room available and the kitchen was too small to lodge two.
The party was finally held on a mild and sunny day at the end of May. By now the whole house had been transformed into a restaurant-cum-Konditorei. Etel volunteered to bake the pies, Stefi the cakes. The first whirlwind of activity lasted for days and blew itself out by the afternoon, only to be succeeded by the second. They solved the problem of seating the guests by practically emptying the study, the dining room and the living room and arranging tables in all three. The Drumas and the Moviszters loaned their chairs and silverware. The whole house sparkled.
When Ficsor, in his ceremonial uniform, opened the gates to the guests that evening the illuminated stairwell gave the house the air of an enchanted castle. A red staircarpet ran up to the first floor, where, on the highest stair, stood the host in his dinner jacket, genially waving greetings to the guests as they arrived; he looked years younger and handsomer in the knowledge that he had arrived at the peak of his career.
There were friends from the ministry, business acquaintances, some army officers and a few priests, the Tatárs with their two daughters and Jancsi in a frock coat. He brought a great basket of flowers for Aunt Angéla. At precisely nine, the minister, his deputy, and his wife sailed up the stairs. Vizy hastened to greet them two steps down, kissed the hand of the right honourable excellent lady, made some comment to the minister at which they both laughed, then escorted them in. The remaining guests were left to be greeted by Druma who acted as his representative.
Etel and Stefi served the guests dressed like the maids of the aristocracy, in white aprons and neat caps. Anna remained in the kitchen. She was preparing the fried chicken, and sprinkling fat on the tender young goslings. The other two, who came and went with their trays, brought her occasional news of the progress of the party. Her ladyship was sitting next to the minister, wearing her purple velvet dress and her big golden earrings, while his excellency was chatting up the minister’s wife and Jancsi, if you please, was flirting with the doctor’s wife. First the minister made a speech, then his excellency Mr Tatár, then Druma, and finally Vizy himself.
There was repeated clapping and cheering.
When Etel brought in the May wine and returned with the tray she informed Stefi that their excellencies had retired to the sitting room.
‘What are they doing?’
‘Talking.’
‘What about?’
‘What about? About the servants.’
‘That’s all they ever talk about anyway,’ pouted Stefi.
‘Let’s eat,’ suggested Etel.
She took a dish of the goose roast, put it on her lap, picked up the parson’s nose and began chewing it. Stefi ate in a more refined manner, with knife and fork.
‘Why don’t you eat something,’ Etel asked Anna.
‘Later.’
‘Why save it for them?’ Etel urged her. ‘You don’t need to feel sorry for them.’
‘There’s plenty in the house now,’ added Stefi.
‘That’s right,’ Etel nodded. ‘They’ll be having a clear-out here. The rag and bone men will have a real time of it. Soon they’ll want a cook and valet.’
‘Yes, and a butler,’ added Stefi with a mocking smile, ‘like we had at the count’s.’
Etel turned the food over and over in her mouth. Stefi stared into the fire.
‘Where I worked the butler even had to warm the newspapers.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they were brought in from the cold. The old count once sent the butler away to warm them up and it became a custom after that. And Etel, do you know what the cook used in the war when a really fierce fire was needed? Lard. He threw great ladles of lard on the fire. Just like that.’
‘Didn’t do you any harm, did it?’ Etel asked her, her mouth full.
She chewed the chicken necks and broke their skulls open to suck out the brains. She dipped lumps of bread into the sauce.
‘They were right to do it,’ she said, ‘while they could. At least you got some benefit from it. The main thing is that there should be enough to eat. All you ever really have is what you eat.’
Etel had still not finished eating. She gnawed and sucked at a few left-over bones. She wasn’t fussy about hygiene in such high company. She poured the remnants of the wine out of the various glasses and drank it down.
Inside someone had struck up on the piano. Etel opened the kitchen door so they could hear it properly. She nodded her head in time to the music, her white cap bobbing up and down. She looked like an old fat angel.
The dancing had begun. Ethel and Stefi pulled the tables out of the way bu
t there still wasn’t enough room and some couples spilled out into the hall. Jancsi steered Mrs Moviszter out. As a joke he danced her right round the flat, through the bedroom and back. As they passed through the bathroom on one of their circuits the young master squeezed her tight and kissed her neck. The pretty doctor’s wife burst into deep-toned laughter.
Anna, who was moping in the hall, heard them. Her ears were red from the fire in the stove. She cast a glance in their direction. She wanted to run back into the kitchen but bumped into the wall. The lamps flared up as though they were squinting at her.
The jollities lasted for some time. Moviszter made his usual solitary escape after supper but everyone else remained. Even the minister stayed put. He felt just fine. Everyone else felt just fine too. Perhaps because the minister felt just fine.
There was a gay light-hearted universal din. No one argued, they simply melted and sprawled in the triumphal atmosphere. Minor pieces of gossip circulated: who was divorced, who was dead, who had put on weight, who had lost weight. People who had mistaken one vague acquaintance for another were relieved to find, once they had realized their mistake, that the person they had been told was divorced had in fact remarried, the one that was alive was dead, and the one that was thin was in fact fat and vice versa.
The gaiety of her guests made Mrs Vizy progressively more nervous as the evening wore on. She kept suppressing anxious little yawns. She had been exhausted by her duties as hostess, and most of all by the empty congratulations to which she had to respond with equally meaningless words. She watched her husband through the smoke, far away from her in the third room, as he fluttered round the minister and bowed to the ladies with that endless reserve of false bonhomie that tends to increase rather than decrease with the spending.
Somewhere in the window recess she came upon a pretty blonde Austrian girl she had not yet engaged in conversation. She was the wife of some big businessman. As she spoke no Hungarian she could take no part in the general conversation and therefore felt as isolated as she did. Mrs Vizy sat down beside her. She told her the story of her daughter’s death in great detail. But she had told it so often that she was aware only of a stream of empty words, without even the consolation of accompanying grief. She watched the grandfather clock and could hardly wait for everyone to go.
Anna Edes Page 18
