At three the minister rose. The air was thick with smoke. Blue wreaths of it blocked out the light of the chandelier, its glimmer as dim as a streetlamp in a November fog. Vizy was drowsing at the table, his head drooping. He heard the minister’s car revving up, and the distant dying babble of guests departing. Everything had gone well, he thought. It had been very nice and now it was over and done with. But he had started belching. He took some bicarbonate of soda and went to bed.
His wife remained at the table. She surveyed the havoc round her. A smear of yellow apricot jam stared capriciously at her from a glass plate, part of some futurist daub which included the handle of a knife, a piece of cabbage strudel, a mound of cheese, a toothpick, some mayonnaise, a patch of damp tobacco, a stain of May wine and a sprig of rank woodruff. She would have liked to tidy up, or to sweep everything off the table with her hands. She was so tired she began to ask herself why it was necessary to eat at all.
The three servants came in and she had them air the place. She sent Stefi and Etel upstairs. Anna continued to fuss with the table right next to her. She picked up a jug then put it down again.
‘Leave it,’ wailed Mrs Vizy, covering her face her hands. ‘I’m so sick of the sight of you, why don’t you just go away. For heaven’s sake, stop rattling about. Close the windows and go to sleep. You can tidy up in the morning. I want to have a good sleep.’
Her husband was already snoring though the light was on. She unhooked her dress, threw it down anyhow and almost fell into bed.
Hardly five minutes had passed – perhaps less – when the door of the dining room opened and Anna stepped in. Without lighting the lamp she went back to fussing at the table. Maybe she was determined to clear up after all so that she’d have less to do in the morning. After all the screaming and shouting it was quiet again. The snores of her master in the other room only emphasized the silence.
Suddenly there was a great clatter which echoed through the untidied rooms. It was as if someone had set off a gun. Anna wasn’t acquainted with the strange furniture and had upset an oak chair, one of the Moviszters’; it had toppled over and was lying full length along the floor. She waited to see what would happen. Her employers were in the first cycle of deep sleep and heard nothing.
A dog nearby was howling at the full moon. It was Swan, the big white dog she had often seen in Tábor utca. Anna was walking around. She ran back into the kitchen, gobbled down something in the dark, whatever lay close to hand. A chicken’s leg, a lot of pies.
Then she leaned against the hall door as if wanting to go out. But she thought better of it and ran quite loudly into the bathroom and from there through the yellow-papered door into the bedroom.
Mrs Vizy woke to find someone sitting on the bed. She rose a little from the pillow and stared at the figure. In the ambiguous moonlight it looked like a ghost, with a surrounding halo of silver mist. Whoever it was was unafraid. It put out its left hand and took hold of hers. Their wide-open eyes met and stared at each other.
‘What do you want? Mrs Vizy whispered. ‘Is that you Anna? Go to sleep.’
The visitor did not reply but carried on sitting there, holding her hand and not letting go. She was moving very slowly, and this was the frightening thing about her, the peculiar slowness of her movements. One longed to see what she would do.
Mrs Vizy put out her free arm to grasp the girl’s neck and push her away, but she did it so clumsily that the girl merely tightened her grip. She was in fact embracing her.
‘Kornél!’ she suddenly shrieked out. ‘Kornél! Who is this? Help! Kornél! Help, help!’ Then she felt a blow on her chest, an enormous blow like she’d never felt before. ‘She’s mad,’ she said faintly and sank back on her pillow.
Vizy, whose head was heavy with wine and sleep, mumbled something, then leapt out of bed and stood in the middle of the room in his long nightgown which hung below his knees.
‘What’s going on,’ he roared. ‘Who is that? Help! Murderer, murderer!’
He saw the flash of the blade, the blade of the enormous kitchen knife. The girl was waving it around. But who stood there, what she had done, whether it was a man or woman in her way she had no idea. She only saw that someone was flitting towards the door, trying to escape. Then they joined in battle. Anna was terrified that he wanted to hurt her and was as frightened as her master. Her arm, which had been strengthened by hard labour, got hold of his waist. She tried to throw him down. For a while they wrestled. At the white divan Vizy lost his balance and fell, first on to the divan then to the ground. The girl in a wild fury knelt on his chest and stabbed him wherever she could, his chest, his stomach, his throat. Then she flung the knife away into a corner and staggered through into the sitting room.
She washed her hands with soap at the tap then returned to the sitting room. Something was dripping in the other room, drip drip like a tap that hasn’t been properly turned off. The blood ran down. The man was gurgling and moving, but the gurgling was ever fainter. Anna lay down on the settee and fell asleep . . .
At six in the morning the dustman rang at the gate. Anna rose intending to take down the bin and give it to him so that she could clear up. It was a bright dawn. She rubbed her eyes and surveyed the mess left by the party, a chaos of colour, still unaware of where she was and how she had got here. Then she stopped, stood still. The doors of the bedroom were closed, only the merest slit remaining between them. It seemed she must have closed them behind her as she tottered out. She didn’t dare look inside. She listened. She heard nothing but the deep deep silence.
Then, clapping her hands over her face, she felt a surge of self-disgust. She was so afraid her heart turned to ice. She rushed hither and thither gathering up her rags and tying up her travelling pack. She must get out and escape, she must get out. The house was still sleeping after last night’s revels. She could have run up to the attic or down to the cellar or hidden behind the mangle. But she was afraid that someone would be waiting for her in the stairwell. She threw her belongings down.
She opened all the windows to Attila utca in order to feel less lonely. Thrushes were already busily singing to greet the beautiful summer morning. Trams tinkled their bells, Swabian women were carrying milk into the house next door.
Until eleven no one disturbed her. She sat hunched on the couch, her elbows on her knees. After eleven someone rang at the outside door, and kept ringing and wouldn’t go away.
‘They’re asleep,’ Ficsor shouted at him from below. ‘Stop ringing that bell. Give it to me, I’ll make sure they get it.’
It was the apprentice boy from Viatorisz’s grocery. This was the time he used to deliver the herbs.
‘There was a big party here last night,’ added the caretaker.
Mrs Moviszter sat down at the piano as was her custom and began to play and sing above. The telephone rang. Anna picked up the receiver then put it down again. The telephone kept ringing after that.
About two in the afternoon somebody beat at the door.
‘Open up. Can’t you hear? Open up for heaven’s sake. They can’t still be sleeping, can they? It’s impossible. Let’s see if we can see anything from the street.’
They did indeed go and look up from the street.
‘Hey, is anyone there? Who is there? There is somebody. I’m sure there is. Look, they’ve opened the windows.’
There were more and more voices to be heard, here, there and everywhere.
‘But I tell you, excellency, they haven’t gone away. We would have seen it if they had. Anna! Anna! Are you asleep. We must wake her. Go on, beat louder. Break the window! Smash the door down, yes the door. Prise it open.’
‘You mustn’t do that,’ she heard Druma’s voice. ‘Go straight for the police.’
The constable arrived. He had heard about the big do last night. He too tried ringing the bell then tapped the doorhandle with his key, but he felt suspicious so he sent for a locksmith. He arrived and broke the lock open. The constable asked for two witnesses
and having obtained his excellency Mr Druma and the locksmith, he entered accompanied by them and by Ficsor.
‘I told you there was someone here,’ boasted the caretaker when he caught sight of Anna standing by the settee. ‘So you’re here? Why don’t you open the door? Are you deaf?’
The constable paid no attention to her but hastened with giant strides towards the bedroom. He pushed open the doubledoors and was confronted by a scene straight out of the fairground chamber of horrors. Even he was taken aback. It was the first time he had come upon a murder like this.
He practically ran to the girl, grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her violently and uncontrollably.
‘Did you do this?’
Anna closed her eyes as if in confession.
‘Why did you do it?’ screamed the constable, his large mouth gaping under his walrus moustache, his eyes bulging from their sockets. ‘Thee’ll be hanged!’ he screamed, still out of control, passing sentence as if he were the first court of appeal.
Anna knew it. And yet her heart, which had remained in a state of frozen animation throughout the deathly tensions of the night, suddenly felt a kind of warmth rushing through it, a warm summer breeze that responded to his intimate form of address. The policeman was a peasant like her, like the lads in the village. He naturally addressed her as thee; in him she saw not the paraphernalia of office but the person who fulfils it, who was of her blood and who might have been her brother.
The hall was full of people, a mixture of strangers and fellow lodgers. They were peeking into the dining room. The constable roared at them to stay out.
‘Break it up now,’ he said. ‘It’s murder. Everyone leave the flat. In the name of the law. Are you the caretaker’s wife? Lock the gate. No one may leave this house. I’m making you responsible.’
It was old Antal, Antal Szücs the local bobby, who was taking charge. Anna knew him well. Everyone looked at him and felt reassured. It was good to see, in the midst of this awful and incomprehensible nightmare when the blood rushed intoxicatingly to one’s head, such cool level-headedness in a representative of law and order, to see him striding about and gesturing with such self-assurance. He was an enormous and healthy slice of life with his big broad shoulders and fat belly, a policeman who rose above this vale of sickness and pain and was a real pillar of society.
‘Where’s the telephone?’ he asked Anna. She indicated where it was with a nod of her head.
‘Hello,’ said the policeman. ‘District one headquarters . . .? Hello . . . hello . . . Antal Szücs, officer number 1327 respectfully reporting to the desk officer, sir . . . There has been a murder . . . a double murder . . . 238 Attila utca, first floor . . . Vizy . . . What’s his first name . . . ? Gornél . . . yes, sir . . . Kornél . . . Both are dead . . . I have apprehended the criminal . . . I have taken charge of the premises . . . Yes, sir,’ he noted the desk officer’s instructions, ‘yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . .’
He led the girl over to the sitting-room fireplace and told her to face the wall so she shouldn’t try to escape. From that time he kept one eye on her and one on the door. He took off his cap, wiped his brow. He was breathing hard because of all the excitement. Ficsor stared crestfallen at the floor. Druma and the locksmith were whispering to each other.
Within a few minutes the police sirens sounded down Attila utca. Two cars had been sent. In the first sat the officer in charge accompanied by a commissioner from central HQ, the magistrate and the police doctor. The second was packed with detectives.
‘I beg to report to his excellency the commissioner,’ Antal Szücs saluted him, snapping to attention. ‘As the officer on this beat at two o’clock this afternoon . . .’
‘Is this the murderer?’ asked the commissioner, cutting across him.
‘Yes, sir.’ The policeman pointed her out. ‘The maid.’
They looked astonished. Never in their long experience had it happened that the murderer had made no attempt to flee the scene of the crime. It was most peculiar. They quickly surrounded her as if afraid that she might try to escape now. They looked as if they were about to murder her.
‘Good,’ said the commissioner and signalled to the magistrate that they could now examine the premises.
The fingerprint expert discovered two useful and clear prints. The quilt and the pillowslip were hurried away for further examination. The photographers got on with taking pictures. Druma introduced himself to the commissioner who allowed both him and the other witness to go.
The police doctor, accompanied by the commissioner, the magistrate and the desk officer passed through into the bedroom.
Mrs Vizy lay on her back in the bed without a drop of blood on her. She looked as if she were merely sleeping. The knife had pierced her straight in the heart and she had only one large wound. She must have died immediately and painlessly as a result of internal haemorrhage.
Vizy lay by the divan in a black pool of congealed blood. He had nine wounds. A fingernail had scratched his throat, and there was a longer scratch under his eye. It was obvious he had struggled to his last breath. He died hard and – as the doctor declared – much later than his wife. His death throes had lasted a long time. His jaws were clamped together, his aquiline nose rose, stern and angry, from his drained white face, his fists were clenched. He looked almost noble in his posthumous strength; there was something fine and old fashioned about him, something that was and is no more.
The victims already bore the marks of decomposition.
Though they had seen many horrific scenes in their time the officers shrank from this bestial and merciless assault. Each time one of them crossed into the living room he wore the look of horror. Every face bore the same look since they couldn’t understand what had happened and were striving to understand it. Anna’s face alone remained clear. She didn’t understand, any more than they did, why she had done it, but she knew she had and, since she had, she knew deep down that there must have been some urgent compelling reason for it. The view is necessarily clearer from the inside than the outside.
They found the knife in the corner and put it away as evidence. They made an inventory of the furniture, measured out the room to the centimetre, made a sketch plan and indicated on it the positions of the two bodies. The doctor dictated the report.
Then the commissioner emerged and instructed the detectives to search all the rooms.
They had been waiting for this. Like a pack at a huntsman’s whistle they set off in pursuit, wreaking havoc in every room of the flat, searching everything and slamming all the doors. One tore the cover from the couch and stuck his head under as if he were looking for somebody. They raised the lid of the piano and even examined the left-over food, poking the iced cakes and fishing in the cream with a long spoon. They must have been looking for the stolen money and the valuables. They didn’t find anything.
They took Anna’s campbed to pieces in the kitchen. They found her belongings tied up in a handkerchief on one of the chairs. In it they discovered everything she had brought with her to the house: a pair of ragged handkerchiefs, a few headscarves, the hand-mirror, the iron comb, the toy trumpet and a paper bag full of burned chestnuts; only the two dresses and the pair of laced man’s shoes were missing. She had long worn these out.
‘Her bed was not even made,’ reported one of the detectives to the commissioner.
‘That’s important,’ said the commissioner. ‘Make a note of it. She had no intention of going to bed. She must have planned it in advance.’
He had Anna brought to him from her place beside the fire, and made her stand before the window facing the powerful summer light.
‘Did you do this?’ he asked her.
‘I . . .’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I . . . I . . .’
‘What’s all this “I” business?’ growled the commissioner. ‘You’re repeating itself. I asked you why you did it? Why?’
‘I . . .’
>
‘Did you have a grudge against them? You wanted revenge? Did they harm you? There must be a reason.’
Anna wrinkled her young but prematurely wrinkled brow. She kept wringing her hands and sighing. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘oh dear,’ and twice ran her hands over her hair in the absent, mannered way she had learned from her mistress.
The police doctor said something to the commissioner.
The doctor made her stand close to the window. He held his palm before the girl’s eyes and snatched it away once, twice, three times as though it were a game. He felt behind her ears and pressed hard against the area behind her earlobes. He asked her this and that. He sat her down on a chair and tapped her knee. It was then he noticed that there were two bloodstains like little poppies on her frock.
‘It’s her time of the month,’ the doctor explained. The crowd of men glanced shyly at Anna then quickly looked away.
‘Otherwise there are hardly any traces of blood on her,’ said the commissioner while the doctor continued his examination, lifting her arms and letting them fall again.
‘Only here. And here. See? Have you washed yourself?’ he asked her. ‘Where did you wash? They’ll give her a strip-search at the station anyway,’ he told the others.
The gentlemen were once again talking among themselves. Talking and writing. They were always talking and writing.
‘What did you do during the time of the commune?’ the commissioner harried her. ‘Where did you work then? For who? What was their occupation? You didn’t have a Communist lover? Some terrorist who might have left some documents with you? Revolutionary documents?’
They were forced to go back to the robbery motive, though that was hardly likely either since the cash and valuables had remained untouched.
Anna Edes Page 19
