by Magda Szabo
The hospital corridor was teeming with doctors, and the matron could be heard on the phone from outside her office. “No questions, please,” the doctor said when he saw us, clearly impatient to give us the news. After I’d gone, Emerence had at first lain in silence, tugging at her headscarf and refusing to answer when spoken to. This wasn’t unusual behaviour. There’d been other times when she’d indicated she wanted to be left in peace. Some time after eight, when the nurse looked in to switch off the light, Emerence demanded to be sent home immediately, that very night. She had to search around the neighbouring houses, in the gardens, where her loved ones were waiting for her — no-one was looking after them or feeding them. They explained that this was impossible, for so many reasons. First of all, it was evening, so they couldn’t give her a discharge note; in any case, there still wasn’t anything to sleep on in the flat. Her manner became harsh and domineering, and she loudly informed them that they needn’t bother to take her, she was quite strong enough now to overcome her cursed weakness. She had to go that minute, she couldn’t stay, she really needed to. Then she actually tried to leave, throwing herself out of the bed. Of course she couldn’t walk, or even stand. As she hit the floor, or perhaps even while she was falling, a new embolism, triggered by the Lieutenant Colonel’s revelations and her subsequent meeting with me, paralysed not her brain this time, but her heart. I would never have believed it possible, but even in that surreal moment, as they were giving me the same facts that Viola had communicated without words, I found something else to take away from Emerence. I robbed her of the last thing she had of which she might have been properly proud, the well-deserved applause for a dignified finale in death. Though she continued to lie there, having been put back on the bed, from then on no-one paid her the slightest attention. The moment I saw her I had collapsed in the doorway as if struck down, and the entire medical team turned their attention on me. It was some time before they managed to bring me round. They wouldn’t let me leave, but kept me in for a week. So now the visitors with the christening bowls came for me, Emerence having gallantly vacated the stage of public attention. They put me in a room with a telephone and a TV, attended to all my needs, watched over me and comforted me. I bathed in the warm glow of sympathy, rather like the newly honoured Toldi, leaning on an invisible spade, having just received the glorious message of pardon from King Lajos, with the dead body of my servant Bence at my feet, and above my head romantically shredded clouds bearing a legend of legends. My husband came every night, but only after nine, when he could be certain of not meeting strangers. Everyone else approached my bed with smiles of encouragement; his face alone never lost its expression of pity and overwhelming grief.
INHERITANCE
I often think back to how simply it all went in the end. Emerence placed no further burden, no more insoluble problems on her few blood relatives and loose circle of friends. Like a truly great commander she settled everything around her in person, with a single impressive gesture. If there was nothing to be done about herself, nothing she could do, then better to put an end to it. Humankind has come a long way since its beginnings and people of the future won’t be able to imagine the barbaric early days in which we fought with one another, in groups or individually, over little more than a cup of cocoa. But not even then will it be possible to soften the fate of a woman for whom no-one has made a place in their life. If we all lacked the courage to admit this to ourselves, she at least had done so, and politely taken her leave. Now it seemed as though even government departments with no personal knowledge of her, and officials overburdened with work, were behaving as if ordered by her not to drag things out. The tenants’ book had ended up in the lovers’ seat along with other soiled documents, but the Lieutenant Colonel managed to arrange her burial without a scrap of paper changing hands, and the hospital found it quite natural that an excitable patient of some eighty years should be carried off by a heart attack. Dates were quickly named for the probate hearings and the cremation service. This was deemed to be only a preliminary burial, since Emerence’s last resting place, according to the will, was to be the Taj Mahal, still waiting to be built. Józsi’s boy showed me the relevant invoices and asked me to speak to the reverend minister about the church burial. I didn’t agree to do this immediately because, in truth, I didn’t want to. In this one particular at least I hoped to act in accordance with Emerence’s wishes — she had never wanted a religious funeral. But the nephew thought the street would be scandalised and criticise him for not doing the right thing. We decided we wouldn’t prepare a death notice but rather announce the time of burial in the paper. He informed the Csabadul relatives by letter, and they sent their condolences. Regrettably, other engagements prevented them saying their farewells in person; but they thought it proper all the same for Emerence to have left what she had to her younger brother Józsi’s son, since they had never really provided for her (not that she would have asked) and in any case they had long been out of touch. And if the nephew intended to gather together the dead relatives from Nádori, they certainly would have no objection, but would in fact be grateful.
We were drawing up the list of what remained to be done, on the site of Emerence’s former court, the entrance to the Forbidden City. Viola lay at our feet, supremely indifferent. I could now bring him here, to the old woman’s former home, without a qualm. He behaved as if he’d never been there. For three consecutive days my husband had listened to his sobbing, then the whimpering died down and finally he fell silent. Then suddenly he gave up posing as a rag rug, stood up, shook himself, stretched his body, and looked at my husband as if he’d woken from a dream. From that day on he had no voice at all, quite literally: he never again drew our attention to anything. He never again expressed either pleasure or protest. At most, if he was ill he might snarl at the vet. But till the end of his life, he never barked again.
The Lieutenant Colonel had arranged for the probate hearing to be on the same day as the funeral. We arrived at the council building at nine in the morning: myself, the nephew and the Lieutenant Colonel. There was no on-site inspection. The Lieutenant Colonel presented the Health Department’s records and explained that there was still one room containing personal effects which he had inspected some years before — beautiful old furniture — but nothing else. The deceased had owned all the usual things found in a well-equipped household, but a good part of the kitchen contents had been destroyed. If they wished they could go and verify this. But there was no wish to verify anything. Józsi’s son stated that while she was alive Emerence had supplemented his income, and the personal effects were for me. It was over in ten minutes. The young woman who conducted the meeting smiled and asked me to let her know if the deceased had been hoarding any treasure, in which case there would be tax to pay, and I promised to comply. The proceedings had been swift and courteous. They even offered us coffee. We were all in black, including the Lieutenant Colonel, in the uniform he wore when detailed to receive heads of state. We went in his car to Farkasrét Cemetery. Józsi’s boy advised us that Emerence’s real home would be up by St Stephen’s Day, 20 August. By then the exhumations at Nádori would have taken place, and he would receive us again on 25 August, at the newly built crypt, for the final deposition of Emerence’s urn.
A crowd of mourners in black darkened the square where the bier stood. I didn’t see it for myself, but I was told afterwards that every self-employed person in the neighbourhood had shut up shop for the funeral — the shoemaker, the woman who decorated scarves, the soda-water vendor, the tailor, the invisible mender, the waffle maker, the podiatrist, the furrier and of course Sutu. On the door of every one of their shops was a sign with variations on the same text: Closed until two for family reasons. Attending a funeral. The shoemaker put it more concisely. All he wrote next to his opening hours was E.M.E.R.E.N.C.E. Mournful music played in the distance. The urn was surrounded by countless tiny bouquets, but I couldn’t bear to look at it. Józsi’s boy and the Lieutenant Colonel le
d me to the family pews. I was worried that the minister might not come. He and I had spent a painful half hour in deep discussion. It was so like a dialogue from the time of the early church fathers, brought up to date by a contemporary problem, that it could have been published in a theological journal. The priest’s position was this: how could anyone lay claim to a church funeral who had, at every step of the way, made it clear that she had turned her back on Heaven, who never visited the house of God, and who systematically outraged the faithful with her pronouncements? When I tried to make him understand what sort of person Emerence was, he looked at me coldly and replied that he had to consider the point of view of both God and the Church regarding a request for ecclesiastical services from an individual who did not practise their faith, was actively obstructive towards members of the religious community, lived an irregular life, and never took communion. “She’s not asking for it,” I replied. “I am. And so is every well-disposed person. It is appropriate, as a form of homage. She may have heaped expletives on the Church as an institution, but I’ve known few devout believers who were as good Christians as this old woman. What she said about predestination was that she didn’t believe God was a lesser person than herself. When Viola did wrong she always took into consideration that he wasn’t human, and didn’t punish him for all eternity, so how could the Lord have been so unjust as to damn her before he had judged what she had done with her life? This woman wasn’t one to practise Christianity in church between nine and ten on Sunday mornings, but she had lived by it all her life, in her own neighbourhood, with a pure love of humanity such as you find in the Bible, and if he didn’t believe that he must be blind, because he’d seen enough of it himself. She’d been all around the neighbourhood with her christening bowl. The learned and rather severe young man neither consented nor refused. He asked when the funeral would take place and escorted me to the door very politely, but without any show of sympathy. As he did so, he let me know that it was a pity Emerence had never given him the opportunity to get to know her better qualities.
So when his gowned figure actually appeared, I was deeply moved. His address was intelligent and based on crystal-clear logic. He acknowledged the valuable contribution made by those who worked with their hands, but he also warned the congregation not to think only of the bread by which we all lived, and not to imagine that religion was a personal matter between ourselves and God, or that the life of faith could be lived in private, unconnected with the Mother Church. In an icily correct but effective speech he bade farewell to the old woman. His words were so utterly devoid of feeling it was impossible to reconstruct the real Emerence from them. As I listened I felt a dull numbness, like the effect of chloroform, rather than the primal, anarchic agony you usually feel when you encounter someone you have loved now turned to dust, in some object like a little bowl, and you are required to believe that it is still the same person who once smiled at you.
The crowd of mourners was now so great you would have thought Emerence had had twelve children, each of whom had a similar number of their own, and had worked all her life in somewhere large, such as a factory. The main thoroughfare and side streets were darkened by the flood of her “followers”. Some stood near the priest, clinging to the words of his correct eulogy and its message of consolation, others had placed themselves further away and were luckier, in that they could weep. We made our way slowly towards the columbarium, where I placed a small bunch of flowers from our garden next to the urn. A prayer was intoned, then they cemented a plate over the opening. Sutu was choking on her tears, Adélka was all stiff attention. She had her eyes fixed on Sutu, not on Emerence in her urn.
If someone stabs you in the heart with a sharp knife you don’t collapse immediately, and we all realised that the loss of Emerence hadn’t yet made itself felt inside us, that it would hit us only later, that only later would we be struck down. That wouldn’t happen here, where she was still to be found, if only in the impossible form of an urn. It would more likely take place in our street, where she would never sweep again, or in the garden, where injured cats with their velvet paws and stray dogs would prowl in vain, with no-one now to throw them scraps of food. Emerence took with her a part of all our lives. The Lieutenant Colonel held himself through to the end of the service as if called to be guard of honour; Józsi’s boy and his wife were weeping heartfelt tears; but as for me, I cannot cry where people can see me, nor did I feel that this was the time for tears. That would come later; they weren’t to be given so easily.
When everything was over, most of the mourners stayed on. Since Emerence’s death Adélka had become louder, more assertive and somehow more shrill, as if Emerence’s forceful personality had restrained her and kept her in the background. Now she was popping up all over the place, apparently arranging some sort of post-burial get-together, perhaps over tea or a glass of beer, and her clientele continued to stand around chatting. Sutu remained an isolated figure and soon left. She’d been black-listed from the moment she made her offer.
We made our way home. The Lieutenant Colonel had asked the nephew if he wished to be present when he opened up the inner room for me. His team was coming that afternoon, we’d be clearing out the flat and he was going to check the inventory he’d promised the Health Department. Józsi’s boy said he preferred to go straight home, since this part of Emerence’s will didn’t concern him. We should give the keys to the flat back to the tenants’ committee, and I could take home whatever I could use and give away what I couldn’t. His wife obviously wanted to come, if only to see what I had inherited, but he told her not to be so nosy. If anything had been meant for them, Emerence would have seen to it. What they had was quite enough, and for it they were inexpressibly grateful to the old woman. They went off home in their own car. The Lieutenant Colonel drove us back, as he had brought us. My husband got out at our apartment and we went on to Emerence’s. The street was empty. I had read Adélka’s mind well. She’d obviously organised a funeral meal somewhere near the cemetery.
The axe was still there on the porch, propped up in the corner, and with it the Lieutenant Colonel prised off the boarding his plain-clothes men had nailed over both the outer door and the inner one that had lost its key. He asked if I wanted him to go in with me. “Please do,” I replied. Emerence was a mythological being and my inheritance might be anything. There was no priest now to wash away my tension with words of calm reason.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked. “Emerence loved you. Nothing bad could ever come to you from her hands. I went in once before, and everything was covered in sheets. She had a full set of furniture in there, and a very fine mirror. So come on.”
We stepped in together. It was pitch black inside and at first we could make nothing out. Of course — the shutters. The Lieutenant Colonel felt along the wall. Near the door, some of the disinfectant smell had seeped through (the place hadn’t been aired for God knows how long), and we began to cough in the choking fumes. Finally he located the switch. The instant the light came on he shoved me back into the outer room, the one now fully restored to order. He’d glimpsed me struggling with nausea, as if poisoned by gas. Only when he’d thrown every window open did he let me back in. But I’d already seen all I needed of Emerence’s bequest.
You see this kind of thing in films, but even then the eye has difficulty believing. Dust inches deep covers the furniture; spiders’ webs fly into the actors’ faces and hair with every move they make. If she had once protected her things with sheets, they must have been taken off immediately after the police inspection, because they were nowhere to be seen. I stood in the most beautifully furnished room I had ever seen. I brushed the side of my hand along one of the armchairs, and a pale-pink velvet glowed in its gilded rococo frame. I was standing in a salon of the late-eighteenth century, a museum treasure, the chef d’oeuvre of some craftsman who supplied the aristocracy. For the house I had never bought I now possessed a drawing-room table with porcelain inlays on which shepherds chased aft
er lambs, and a little couch with tiny gilded legs as slender as those of young kittens. As I patted the upholstery the dust billowed up and then drifted down again. But the blow had split the fabric, which tore as if killed by unkindness. A console mirror rose all the way to the ceiling. On a small table stood two porcelain figurines, and, between them, something at last alive, a perpetual clock, showing the days, the phases of the moon and revolutions of the stars. It was still working. I went to dust it off, but the Lieutenant Colonel stopped me.
“Don’t touch a thing,” he warned. “It’s dangerous to move anything. The covers have perished, the furniture’s dead. Everything here is dead, except the clock. Let me lift it down.”
I wanted to take the figurines in my hands, or look to see what, if anything, there was in the console, and I didn’t listen. I grasped the handle of a drawer. It didn’t respond. I would have to play with it, to learn the special secret movement to which it would yield, which only the family would have known. What followed was very different. Suddenly everything around me became a vision out of Kafka, or a horror film: the console collapsed. Not with a brutal swiftness but gently, gradually, it began to disintegrate into a river of golden sawdust. The figurines tumbled down, along with the clock. The frame of the console and its table crumbled into nothing; the drawers and legs were no more than dust.
