Abigail

by Magda Szabo

  So it was you again? Gina whispered. Her heart was beating wildly. Another message, and in a place like this! You risked your life on such dangerous terrain? If only I could see your face, you wonderful person! If only you would speak to me, and tell me how the work is going, and what my father is doing, and when he will come!

  When this most distressing of services finally ended the congregation sang the national anthem two full bars ahead of the organist, such was their hurry to get out. The Chaplain came down from the pulpit, clinging to the handrail as if he were terrified of falling, and disappeared from the building without delivering the usual prayer of dismissal from the Bishop’s throne. Instead of enjoying the usual after-church stroll the girls were taken straight back to the school, with their teachers almost running beside them down the street. You would have thought that they were returning not from a church service but from some appalling spectacle.

  Gina was aware of Mari Kis chuckling beside her, and of Szabó and some other girls behind her whispering about what sort of person it must be who would play such tricks on both the church leaders and the civic ones as well. But she remained silent, and kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, not even glancing up as they passed Mr. Hajda’s window, now ablaze with little St. Nicholases and devils made of something that looked like chocolate. The yearning to gaze into the eyes of this unimaginably brave person who had so sensationally cocked a snook at his pursuers made her blush, and a warm glow surged through her body despite the intense cold she had endured in the church. Only he could have smashed that window the night before!

  The window, smashed during the night but repaired only in the morning . . .

  She realized she had inadvertently stumbled on what the people pursuing him had only just grasped: in their quest to discover who had entered the church through the broken ground floor window the previous night they had looked everywhere in the presbytery and the church itself, poked around in every cupboard and every nook and cranny and questioned one and all, so now they knew it must have been someone who was familiar with the ways and practices of the church, who knew that the service would start with the opening procession to the hymn boards, and who could be sure that once the display had been set up correctly no one would check it the next morning. Never had she been as desperate to see anyone’s face as she was now, and to gaze into it, blank and veiled in mystery as it was, the face of that unknown person out there, whether smiling or deadly serious. And never in her life had she felt so much respect for anyone other than her father. The walk back to the school was pure agony, not least because she had to listen to Kőnig blowing his nose again and again, pulling an endless stream of handkerchiefs out of his pocket and telling everyone he really could not conceive what sort of person would take pleasure in playing such a trick, and that he would not mince his words with Mráz and his glaziers for not having repaired the broken window immediately the night before. It couldn’t have been because of anything to do with the defense measures. Did you actually need light to repair a window by? Surely a skilled craftsman could fit a new pane in total darkness with his eyes shut, even if it wasn’t possible to take the whole frame out?

  DOCUMENTS

  Years later, when Gina thought back to the events of that fateful December and those first few months of the new year, up to that moment at the end of March 1944 when she finally left the fortress, she often asked herself if things would have turned out differently if she had been stronger, if she had dealt better with that period of isolation, or shown greater self-discipline, and she had repeated bouts of tearful self-recrimination. Abigail had told her many times by then that what happened to her father was in no way due to her, and had nothing to do with Bánki’s act of loyal friendship, her own failure in that Bible knowledge test, the stormy atmosphere of that Christmas, or even the events of that memorable March evening. The words whispered on that chilly violet-scented evening were not the ones that betrayed her father: that had been done long before, by the person from the counterespionage unit who, as they later discovered, had been following the movements of the General and his family for over a year. Once they had tracked her down it would have made no difference where anyone phoned the General in his villa from: his enemies had long known exactly what he was up to. It was irrelevant, even, that thanks to Bánki’s letter they had known since Christmas that she was hiding in Árkod. The purpose of the hunt she was subjected to in the following days had not been to kill her. What was she but a terrified rabbit fleeing through the forest of the wider war? The real prey, her father and his associates, had been prisoners in Germany ever since the country was occupied on March 19. She would have been of use to them only if they had needed her to compel him to reveal the names of those of his colleagues they had failed to trace, his co-workers in a project that was doomed from the start. By then she had been assured that, whatever else happened to him, he had died with his lips sealed. Abigail had told her that he would have done that even if the alternative had been to sacrifice his daughter, but he had been spared that fate by the actions of the dissident of Árkod. He had been able to depart this life in the knowledge that his beloved child was safe.

  But those revelations lay in the distant future. What the immediate future held for Gina was the winter of 1944, the bleak winter of the Great Plain with its fearsome storms and mountains of snow. Meanwhile Christmas was approaching, and it would be even harder to bear if she could not hear from her father.

  In the dormitory and the day room the subject of every sotto voce conversation was which train would be taking them home, and when. Their time in the sewing room and for handicrafts was spent making gifts for their families; Susanna had allowed some of them to dip into their pocket money to buy what they lacked the resources to make for themselves. Although her father had told her that they might not be able to meet at Christmas, Gina still clung to the idea that he would come. She was increasingly conscious of the fact that if the fortress offered her the best possible protection then it might shelter him too—Gedeon Torma would surely let him sleep in that very pleasant room used by visiting priests and the inspector of schools. She too was busy making a surprise present for Christmas, something that would be the work of her own hands.

  Among the more popular choices at the time were embroidered book-covers and cushions decorated with motifs from folklore. She chose neither but settled instead on a bookmark to be used in a Bible. She was a little unsure of how much actual service it would be to the General—she had rarely seen him with one in his hands—but she thought he might be glad of it as coming from her and keep it for use in some other book. She had difficulty finding a suitable quotation to embroider on it, so she asked Susanna for advice. With the air of cool reserve she had maintained towards Gina ever since the Bishop’s visit, the Deaconess reminded her that at the end of term there would be a competition to see who knew their Bible best. If Gina revised for it she might find something she thought particularly appropriate for her father.

  Gina had been aware of the existence of this annual competition, but it had never struck her as something that might interest her personally. Compared to the other girls her knowledge of the Bible was extremely poor. She could recall a great many phrases and quotations, but had no idea where they were from, and she confused things that Jesus had said with the words of Paul the Apostle and the four evangelists. But from then on she devoted every spare moment to reading the scriptures, and one evening, in the Book of Psalms, something came up that would do for the bookmark. She had gone to ask Susanna for some fabric and some beads and the prefect had written on the bunting “Psalm 140, verse 7,” and then, without consulting the text, immediately quoted it: “Oh God the Lord, the strength of my salvation, Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle.”

  December came. On some days the time passed quickly, on others at a snail’s pace. When she thought of how long it had been since she had last seen her father it felt more like months than weeks, but when she thought of how much she stil
l had to do the days seemed to last just seconds: the sun had barely risen and it was already evening. The girls were now so caught up with working on their presents that they asked Susanna if they could give up their afternoon walk. She looked at them as if they had addressed her in a foreign tongue and ordered them to fetch their hats and coats. Nor were they given permission to stay up later than the rules allowed, or do their homework in the afternoon rest period; nothing in their routine was to change, and no one took the slightest interest in how they were supposed to prepare for the competition while carrying on with everything else that they had to deal with. The one minor easement was that in their half-hour reading sessions they could choose to study the scriptures rather than works of literature. If the director had ever happened to look into the day room and seen the full twenty heads bent over their Bibles, he would have nodded with satisfaction. That was exactly what he imagined a well-brought-up and respectable Matula girl would want to spend her free time doing. By great good luck they were also able to use Kőnig’s lessons. For the entire week since the scandalous service in the white church he had lain in his bed with some sort of fever, the result of a cold.

  Talk about that notorious event was still very much alive in the school because the investigators had now paid a visit to the director. That piece of information proved far too interesting for Suba to keep to himself. He had also told his favorite, the older Aradi, that the matter had been smoothed over and the cantor cleared of suspicion. Everyone had agreed that even in the house of God there could be no hiding place for the mysterious spy, or whatever he was: they would be on his trail night and day. Kőnig’s lessons were supervised by either Susanna or Elisabeth, neither of whom taught Latin or Hungarian, and they both allowed the class to read the Bible instead.

  Bánki knew the scriptures better than any of them and everyone wanted her to test them. At first she obliged one and all; then one evening she became suddenly withdrawn. She seemed anxious and touchy, and she turned everyone away. Her attitude was all the stranger because her mother had come to see her that day, and after such visits you were expected to be especially nice to everyone in your moment of happiness. But not Bánki. She was almost rude to one girl who approached her, book in hand; she shouted at her to leave her alone and dashed out of the room. Gina was in the washroom when this happened, trying to clean ink stains from her fingers, and she looked up in amazement as Bánki burst through the door with the face of someone who could no longer endure her sense of bitterness and burst into tears. Gina put down her nailbrush and tried to get her to say what had happened, but Bánki was too upset to answer; her sobs became even louder, and she ran out again into the corridor, clearly unable to bear being questioned. She eventually managed to calm down and went back to the day room. Cziller asked her what her mother had brought her. “Nothing,” she replied sadly. Cziller shrugged dismissively. There was no mother on earth who would come to the Matula and not bring something for her daughter from the magical world outside. Bánki must be out of her wits to do something like that—hiding the sweets or whatever she had been given. Shame on her!

  Oláh was the next best on the subject of the Bible and stepped in for her. Gina went over and stood beside Bánki. Some of the other girls were now trying to comfort her: her behavior was impossible to fathom. She just sat in their midst opening and closing her Bible and glancing at her watch, as if waiting for bedtime. Something’s happened to her, Gina thought. To her or her family. Something that Cziller would never be able to imagine. She was crying her heart out in the washroom. Something really bad has happened at home and that’s why her mother forgot to bring her anything.

  Gina had always been attracted to Bánki, and in the past few weeks they had become particularly close. She was one of the more serious members of the class. She was more grown up than the others, she took things more to heart and often wore a pensive look on her face. Gina had the feeling that even if she didn’t have the sort of material problems that many of the others did, or was an orphan like Torma, she must be harboring some sort of burden, one she could never talk about, just as she herself had to keep silent about the things her father had confided in her. That night in the dormitory, when everything had gone quiet, she lay awake for ages listening to hear if Bánki were crying. But there was nothing: perhaps she had got over whatever it was that had upset her.

  Gina was almost asleep when she became aware of something moving on Bánki’s bed. She wasn’t crying; she was getting up. By the glow of the nightlight Gina watched her take her dressing gown from the hook, step into her slippers and make her way quietly out. Gina put on her own and followed her.

  She was in the washroom—where else could she have been?—crouching beside the laundry basket. When Gina came in she raised her head. She wasn’t crying: it might have been easier for her if she had been. Her face was the face of an adult in absolute despair.

  “Are you in pain?” Gina asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She nodded.

  “Did your mother really not bring you anything?”

  Unexpectedly, Bánki smiled, as if to say, My God, she’s still thinking about sweets!

  “Can I help you in any way?”

  Again Bánki shook her head.

  “Can you tell me what it’s about?”

  “I can’t,” she replied quietly.

  “You can’t, or you aren’t allowed to?”

  “Not allowed to.”

  “Is it very bad?”

  She nodded her head to indicate that it was.

  “Could anyone help?”

  Bánki answered that with a wave of the hand: no one.

  “Not even Abigail?”

  She had put the question so naturally she was struck by the realization that for her too Abigail had become such an obvious source of help in times of need, and one that everyone could rely on.

  Bánki considered. Her eyes reflected a great many things, but among them now was a glimmer of hope. Then she shook her head again. The only way to contact Abigail was to write to her and she didn’t dare put her troubles on paper. Not knowing what to say, Gina stroked her shoulder, and Bánki suddenly buried her face in Gina’s neck. She did not cry. Instead she put her cheek against Gina’s and whispered, “Thank you. God bless you!” as if she were about to part with her forever.

  Gina was on the verge of asking if perhaps her mother had come to tell her that she was going to remove her from the school before Christmas when the door opened. Standing there was Susanna.

  For two girls to go into the washroom together at night was absolutely forbidden. Bánki tore herself away in terror. Gina felt a moment’s bitterness. All she had wanted to do was to comfort the poor girl and now she was in trouble again. Susanna was very gentle, terrifyingly so.

  “Go back to your beds,” she said quietly. “Anna, stop mooning around here, put everything out of your mind and get some rest. You will need to be fresh in the morning. I was watching you this evening. I know you have had some bad news. When we give way to despondency and doubt we lose our faith. I would have thought you might have made better use of the Bible you know so well.”

  Bánki lowered her head. Susanna’s reproach seemed to have given her some comfort.

  “The Book of Daniel is a good one to start on,” she continued. “Go back to the dormitory and hold your head up high. Vitay, you too. Off to bed. I can’t see why you should be here. Do you also have some particular cause for grief?”

  How Gina would have loved to shout in her face, “I certainly have!” What could the prefect be thinking? That her little world corresponded to the real one, the world beyond the school: that nothing existed apart from the Matula? Did she have a cause for grieving? She certainly did. And so did Bánki. How nice it would be if one could put everything right by opening the Book of Daniel. The mocking nickname the Cock-a-doodle-doos had for them leaped into her mind. For the first time she found herself thinking of Susanna
as a “holy tripe sausage.”

  The Deaconess escorted them back to the dormitory. She told them that she was on night duty and would be patrolling the corridors at regular intervals. If they took the risk of leaving their beds again to go and gossip in the washroom she would put the two of them in detention and they could ponder their spiritual shortcomings at leisure. Neither of them dared open their mouth. Even when they were back in their beds they said nothing. Bánki tossed and turned constantly. Listening to her restless movements Gina felt profoundly sorry for her. When Torma was in any kind of pain she would moan and whimper, and Cziller emitted little groans, but all Bánki did was to shift around in her bed in silence, like a thoroughly miserable adult not wanting to burden the children with her pain.

  Abigail, you who work miracles!

  Bánki had said she did not dare put her troubles in writing, but Abigail knew everything, so perhaps she already knew what Bánki’s mother had told her and realized that she needed help because she was so unhappy. They were not allowed to keep things like exercise books and writing materials in the dormitory, so she lay in the dark and tried to plan what she would say to Abigail in the morning.

  Dear Abigail,

  Something very bad has happened in Bánki’s family, but I don’t know what it is. She is too frightened to write it down or even talk about it. If you know what has happened and can do something to put it right, please help her. But quickly, because she is very upset.

  Vitay

  The next morning before prayers she opened the Book of Daniel. It did little to help her. It was about a king called Joachim and some young men with unpronounceable names and it made no sense at all. While they were on their way to the day room to collect their books she pretended she had some homework to finish and scribbled down her message to Abigail. When they reached the corridor that led to the classrooms she nipped out into the garden, leaving her coat behind in case anyone should suspect she was going out and praying as she ran that no one would see her drop the note into the stone pitcher. In that respect she failed, but luckily it was only Kőnig who had seen her. He opened the door from the teacher’s quarters just as she was scurrying back. She stopped, came to attention before him and greeted him, with rather bad grace. He stood there looking at her, and at the snow on her shoes.