Abigail

by Magda Szabo

  The director leaned angrily over the table and seized Torma’s exercise book—and the page under the blotter with it. She was almost sick. Everyone saw the blood drain from her face.

  “A black man in black clothes with a black name, black in his rages and black in his dreams,” the director read out. “What is this nonsense? What can Mr. Kőnig tell us about this?”

  My God, thought Gina. If he recognizes himself! What have I got Torma into now?

  “I am aware of all this,” Kőnig said, through a blocked nose. “These references to black are an echo of Babits. They were asked to come prepared to write a character portrait. Either a straightforward one or a caricature.”

  “Aha,” said the Bishop, and he put Gina’s essay down. “But aren’t they a bit young for that sort of thing? In my opinion the writing of these caricatures as a stylistic exercise is something for the seventh or eighth years. I have nothing against lightening the task of essay writing with something more amusing—the girls have quite enough cares and sorrows already—but we should make sure that the satire does not become hurtful or demeaning. Who was the model for. . . ?” He glanced down at the name on the exercise book and read out the name: “. . . for Georgina Vitay?”

  “Who was the model for Georgina Vitay?” the director repeated, like a dark echo, after a moment’s deliberation and with a quizzical expression on his face. Torma breathed a deep sigh of relief. Every teacher, the two deaconesses and every girl in both classes knew that the crisis had passed. Gedeon Torma had thought the matter through and decided to catch the slender rope that Kőnig had thrown him. If he was to avert a scandal he would have to become an accomplice in the man’s readiness to forgive. The alternative was to denounce the two fifth-year pupils, and the gravity of their offence against the respect they owed the school would call for the ultimate sanction. In addition, the Bishop would be left with the impression that such abominations were possible in the Matula. And if in his fear of the Bishop the director went along with the ruse and accepted Kőnig’s explanation, then Vitay and Torma would be spared for the time being, and what followed would be a purely internal matter. It would be kept within the school walls and run its course without his superior hearing anything more about it.

  What could she say, about who her model had been? She could think of no one. Her horrified glance went from one watching face to another. Kalmár’s eye twinkled with merriment: she had never seen him show such pleasure before. Susanna was sitting at the head of the table, utterly mortified. Only her headscarf could be seen, nothing of her face. She was really taken in, Gina reflected. She never noticed that we were writing two essays. She couldn’t see what was under the blotting paper.

  The silence was heavy and oppressive: unbearable in fact. Eventually someone spoke and answered for her. Again it was Kőnig. She could hear the smile in his voice as he told them that it was an imaginary figure, most probably someone she had read about, not a living person. The girl had been told she could base her portrait on someone she had come across in a book. The director swallowed audibly, as if he were nursing tonsillitis, but he said nothing, and the Bishop let the matter of the caricatures drop. He rose and went over to the sixth years’ table. Nacák later told them that she had overheard him discussing the apples that Vitay had mentioned: were they a biblical reference, or something from pagan folklore, or perhaps Greek mythology? Not at all: in the Matula the only logical answer was that they were an echo of some passage in the Old Testament.

  Nothing more could happen before prayers. The Bishop stayed on to make himself available to the teaching staff. During the meal the fifth year, who normally devoured their food like wolves, took tiny mouthfuls and nibbled at them nervously. The pockets of their uniforms were filled with the shredded remains of their compositions à la Vitay. The evening prayer was led by the Bishop. The strongest voice when the hymns were sung was Kőnig’s.

  When the visit was over, and he was taking his leave of the assembled school community in the foyer, Susanna kept the fifth year back. She waited until the other classes had filed out and the rest of the staff with them, then planted herself before them, completely silent, and with a sad and somber expression on her face. They stood to attention, their hearts beating, waiting to see what would happen and feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It would have been easier to bear if she had raged at them, but she just stood there, saying nothing. They remained like that until the director returned from escorting the Bishop to the gate. He did not come into the foyer, he merely addressed them from the entrance. Georgina Vitay was not to go to bed until she had copied out the line from the First Psalm: Blessed is the man who walketh not in the council of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, five hundred times, in red ink, in a fresh exercise book. Torma was to stay with her and illustrate each line with an initial letter executed in black: that might serve to free her from her urge to write the word. Susanna dismissed the class with a nod of the head, and then, still maintaining her silence, took a bottle of red ink and two exercise books from the wall cupboard, directed the two offenders to a desk with another silent gesture, sat down near them, opened her Bible and immersed herself in it.

  It was almost daybreak by the time they finished. Torma had had to wait for short periods while Gina worked her way to the bottom of each page and she had managed to catch a few short bouts of sleep. Gina was still wide awake. She felt tense and restless. She felt no self-pity, though she had long wearied of the business of writing and her wrist ached. Her feelings were divided. She had been punished before in Budapest when she had misbehaved, and she knew that the class would not hold it against her for having made them endure those torrid several minutes because of what she had put them up to; nor was she concerned about the effect it might have on her relationship with Kőnig. He was stupid, but he was certainly no fool. Like the director, he must have known perfectly well what lay behind that reference to a surgeon. No, what really worried her was Susanna, and what her attitude might be. Susanna had not uttered a single word to them throughout the entire episode. She had scarcely raised her eyes from the Holy Scriptures, had responded with a simple nod when the time came to collect the two exercise books, and merely glanced after them to make sure they were on their way back to the dormitory. What upset Gina most was that not once had she reproached them, and she had given them no opportunity to apologize. In truth, what they had done had not been so very dreadful. She and Torma had been chastised for their disrespectful compositions and had submitted to their punishment, and even if everyone—apart from the Bishop and the Chaplain—knew what the truth was, they could not now be punished for their real crime because Kőnig had said he had given them permission to write in that vein. If he had been willing to smooth the matter over, why was Susanna so unforgiving?

  The moment they had turned the corridor and were out of her sight, Gina put the question to Torma. Torma simply groaned something unintelligible: she was beyond sensible conversation. Gina expected to fall asleep as soon as she got into bed, but for some reason she could not stop thinking about it until at long last she dozed off, and for the rest of what remained of the night she kept waking, trembling from head to foot, from a fitful, formless dream that gave her no rest at all.

  A VISIT TO KŐNIG, AND ANOTHER MESSAGE FROM ABIGAIL

  The next day she struggled to get out of bed, and if Bánki had not helped her do her hair, button up her blouse and lace her shoes, she would have been late for morning prayers. Torma could barely stand. She stared so fixedly ahead from her aching eyes that seeing her the Chaplain grew thoughtful: this was a thoroughly decent girl who took every reproach to heart, and Vitay, how strained her face was looking! But what could one say? Christmas was approaching, and it was a good time for serious soul-searching.

  Neither of the girls had any idea what was said during that morning service. Torma sang along with the others because she had grown up in the Matula and there was not a single hymn she c
ould not intone in her sleep, but Gina did not even open her mouth. Her eyelids were raw and she kept them firmly closed. Susanna stood near them, immersed in her prayers, with eyes and ears for no one. As always, all the teaching staff were present, including the director. Kőnig showed not the slightest sign of being offended by the unmistakable portrait Georgina Vitay had painted of him: he belted out the hymns and psalms at the top of his voice, which could be clearly distinguished among those of the other teachers.

  The first lesson of the day was taken by Kalmár. He had barely begun testing them on their preparation when Susanna appeared. She was such a rare visitor to the class that normally her arrival would have received a delighted welcome, but on this occasion the class were still suffering from a bad conscience and the faces that turned to meet her were distinctly troubled. Kalmár was no less surprised than they were. He almost leaped from the dais to greet her, his eyes shining with pleasure: he was sure that everyone must have realized she had come to listen in on his lesson, and the one he would deliver now would be one to make the very walls glow with emotion. Everything that he felt towards her, everything he had been either unable to express or unwilling to put into words, would be subtly woven into it.

  But Susanna had not come to observe. She directed not a single smile towards the class, refused a chair and remained standing by the door, from where she said what she had come to say. She apologized for interrupting the lesson, but the matter could not wait until the afternoon. There was a matter still to be resolved following the Bishop’s visit. She had spent a long time during the night considering what to do about it, and had decided to ask Mr. Kalmár, as the class tutor, to help her get to the bottom of the regrettable events of the day before. If Mr. Kőnig had not, in his extreme kindness, sought to protect the girls responsible—girls who obviously held him in such high esteem—and if the matter had not been decided in the presence of the Bishop, she wondered how differently it might have ended. She intended to find out what lay behind what happened, if only to help the class regain their self-respect. And perhaps they might also learn to respect the concepts of neighborly love, not to mention compassion and the spirit of forgiveness, and draw the right conclusions from this episode about what was proper and acceptable; in short, what sort of behavior was expected in the school.

  The air turned frosty. Susanna remained with her back to the green door like a stern angel guarding the gates of paradise: it was as if she had suddenly realized, as had Gina and everyone else in the room, that the atmosphere had cooled not only because of the effect her words had had on the girls, who were now tearful as well as anxious, but because of Kalmár’s reaction. There was a tension, a charge of undeclared feeling in the air, something that had strayed in from the adult world beyond the school walls, and even the pupils were aware of it. They all, including the guilty ones, now knew that Susanna’s wrath was driven by something else, by a parallel emotion that was so hard for them to imagine that they had never before noticed it. They had finally understood that Kalmár loved Susanna but that Susanna did not love Kalmár. And what was so bizarre and incomprehensible about it was that Susanna must therefore love Kőnig—he of the flap-eared hat, the impossible Kőnig, and that she who was too proud ever to respond to an attack on her own authority was capable of acting to defend his. They felt that no man could endure a greater sense of disappointment than Kalmár must be feeling at that moment, and that somehow Susanna had offended them too, for how was it humanly possible to be attracted to someone like Kőnig?

  If he had failed to conceal his emotions earlier, Kalmár had been trained by the Matula well enough to make sure that no one saw how rejected he felt now. The only change in his expression was that the joy vanished from it and he became once again schoolmasterly and impersonal. He invited the Deaconess to take a seat at the desk, where she would have a better view of the class, stood beside her like a presiding judge, and did his best to give both her and the girls the impression that he too had been giving thought to the matter that weighed on her heart.

  He too, he declared, intended to look into the unfortunate events of the day before. He wished to draw their attention to Mr. Kőnig’s extreme magnanimity, and to reproach those who had so abused the gentle and selfless heart of a good man. He also needed to explain to them that if someone did alter the facts in some way, if the intention was merciful and done to spare one’s fellow man, it might be wrong but it was not strictly speaking a sin, and should not be seen as such; in fact it was a worthy and noble thing to have done.

  Susanna lowered her head and they saw her face turn scarlet. Like the girls, she realized that Kalmár had just declared, in everyone’s hearing, that his colleague was a liar. Kalmár went on to say that he would hold a formal inquiry into the matter, so could he and the prefect now be told exactly what that satirical portrait was about?

  His words were so direct, so unimpeachable, so perfectly in keeping with the school’s pedagogical ethos that they could have been printed on a board alongside quotations from the Bible and posted up as a guide for aspiring teachers. At the same time every one of them had a covert meaning, and no one in the room failed to understand what it was: What you are really after, Susanna, is revenge for this person, the school clown. What sort of woman are you if you can turn down what I offer you and make a stand on behalf of a creature who is so unworthy of you?

  Gina lowered her gaze. What could she possibly do? It was thanks to her that the class were in this mess: she couldn’t allow them to bear the consequences, it was unthinkable. But perhaps there was a way out? If the director had said nothing when the Bishop was present, then the matter was hardly likely to come before him a second time, and if she were to be punished again it would probably not go so far as to involve expulsion. Susanna was simply warning them to leave Kőnig alone. Gina was not afraid of Kalmár. It was most unlikely that he would take revenge on her on behalf of his colleague. She asked permission to speak, stood up and repeated what she had previously told the class. She explained to Kalmár and Susanna that the idea of writing a double essay came from the Sokoray Atala and that she was the one who had suggested it. Susanna listened without once taking her eyes off her. Kalmár played with his piece of chalk, steadily breaking the full length of the innocent stick down into stubs far too short to use. When she stopped speaking he asked the rest of the class how many of them had also written a double essay, and they all stood up. Susanna watched in silence as he demanded that they hand them over, only to be told that they had all been destroyed. The class were mightily relieved that they had not failed to do that. It would have been all they needed—Kalmár seeing what they had written about him, and Susanna having access to the literary effusions they had produced on the subject of her love life.

  Kalmár said that although Vitay and Torma had already undergone a night’s punishment it would not be right to leave the matter there. For the next two weeks the entire class, including Vitay and Torma, would be banned from borrowing fiction from the library and would be excluded from the showing of any films. On the latter occasions the Sister would set them more useful and improving tasks. As for the instigator, Georgina Vitay, she should present herself after lunch at the staff residence and ask for Mr. Kőnig, tell him the full truth, that she had monstrously ridiculed him, and very humbly beg his pardon. This would be done in the presence of the prefect. And to make the punishment complete, he would personally accompany the Sister and Vitay as the class representative.

  What a brilliant plan! It exceeded their wildest dreams. Once again the girls felt that Kalmár had been the perfect choice as an object of yearning. The idea that Kőnig would have to sit and listen while it was made absolutely clear to him, in case he had ever doubted it, that he had been ridiculed to his face, and that all this would happen that very evening, in his own lodgings and in front of Susanna, made their own punishment seem trivial. Twenty faces turned to the prefect to hear what she would say. She must by now have realized what she had brought down
on Kőnig’s head: if she had said nothing the scandal would have been forgotten in a day and rarely mentioned again; no one would have been insulted and nothing serious would have happened. It had merely been necessary to punish the fifth year for writing some ill-conceived caricatures, and they would know better next time. Now both she and Kőnig would get what they deserved, and all this in the presence of Kalmár.

  Kalmár asked her if she was satisfied with the punishment he had imposed. She turned to look him full in the face, said nothing, and did not thank him. She simply nodded her head and left the room. No one, probably not even Kalmár, could ever explain what happened next. When, two days later, they began to prepare for his next lesson, they found he had filled their exercise books with incoherent notes. It was as if he had scribbled without knowing what he was saying, and even the dates were wrong. Not one of the kings he listed had even been on the throne at the time he suggested, as could be plainly seen on his wall chart.

  By lunch, thanks to the breaktime rumor machine, there was not one girl in the upper forms who did not know about the Sokoray Atala tradition and the way Georgina Vitay had introduced it into the Matula. Kerekes had sent the older Aradi girl, the tall standard-bearer, to the second-year classroom to fetch a protractor and she had been almost sick with excitement when she saw what was on the blackboard. They were writing an essay on the first topic on the list: “The Pleasures of Fido: a story based on the passage we read.” She was barely able to stammer out that she had come for the protractor. Fido was the nickname she had given her fiancé, a Dr. János Jablon, because of the doggy look in his eyes whenever he showed affection. She decided that as soon as she had a spare moment she too would write about the pleasures of Fido, whom she was to marry in the summer as soon as he was given leave to return from the front.