by Magda Szabo
Scenes of his former life drifted in and out of his bedroom door. When he was too tired to read or listen to music and had nothing else to do, he would lean back in his chair in the corner where Blanka once cocooned herself and simply watch the ever-changing procession. He would have rather liked to greet its members. He wanted to ask them if they knew each other as well as he knew them.
The actual reason why he was in the apartment at all, the reason why he had sought Irén out at that exhibition—the one episode that he could recall in every detail, that he knew as intimately as his own body and central nervous system—never appeared in the procession, either with Irén present or without her. Nothing in their daily conversations or recollections ever brought it back. Irén, it was clear, knew the password no more than he did. He had married her to no purpose. The old Katalin Street on the other side of the river was gone forever. So too were the Held families, the Major, Mrs. Temes, and Henriette.
In their free time, if they weren’t going out and there were no visitors, they sat and talked. Their visitors were few because every time Irén had guests it was a particular trial for the old people: it meant that they went to bed later than they liked, or if they did go at their usual time, they would be constantly woken by the comings and goings and noises from the kitchen late at night when Irén washed the glasses and put them away. It was at times like these that they felt most painfully that everything of their old home was gone: the Katalin Street they once lived in had been carried off by a bird to some never-never land. Now they would all have to accommodate themselves to an adult Irén who, for her part, had neither the time nor the inclination to adapt her present self to their wishes.
They often sat together and talked as a family. Mr. Elekes would perch stiffly on his seat, all attention, while his wife flopped exhausted in an armchair. Kinga would cuddle up against Bálint to watch the others in fascination. She found their voices irresistibly funny. Everyone spoke as if Elekes were deaf: loud-ly and ve-ry clear-ly. It amused her intensely. For the old man it was almost more than he could bear. In fact, most of the time the irritation was universal and mutual. They sat together and talked because they simply couldn’t live without each other.
The moment Pali first saw Irén in Bálint’s company—it was after he had married her—he realized how futile it would be to stay stumbling around in a daze among these people. They shared some private knowledge that he didn’t—he and little Kinga. They were party to a secret from which he was forever excluded. When Irén finally sent him packing, of all their friends and acquaintances he was the only one who understood why she had done so, the only one who wasn’t shocked and outraged that she had “traded him in” for a man who had no future, was generally considered an incompetent doctor who had fallen into his profession by mistake, was not particularly attractive, was visibly older than Irén, transparently not in the grip of some wild passion for her, and had already left her once before for someone else—as Irén herself had told him. He knew that this wasn’t about Irén and Bálint, or about himself and Irén. It was about something he couldn’t put his finger on—something that bound these people together. They tossed coded words at one another in a kind of ball game, allusions incomprehensible to himself and to his child that made their eyes light up and left old Elekes tittering with amusement. Once Pali had overcome his sense of insult and hurt he was simply glad to be able to go without guilt, to be able to “leave them to it,” playing their weird family games by themselves, behind closed doors.
But even when they did manage to evoke the secret world they shared, the heightened spirits and raised voices never lasted long. The performance quickly exhausted them. The game had no resolution, it brought no release, like desire aroused but not followed by a full embrace. They were too few to support the weight of the images their words conjured up from the void; they ached with longing for the dead, and the mood in the room started to sag, seemed to press down on their heads, like a collapsed ceiling. Before long, they would realize it was pointless—but all too soon they were at it again, because they still hadn’t come to terms with it. They hoped that if they clung to one another and held one another’s hands, and if they could hit upon the right words, then perhaps they might find their way out of the labyrinth and somehow make their way home. And until that happened they would have to endure this unreal, impermanent abode in the sky, so close to the water. Even a bird needs somewhere to perch and rest. There were four of them making the journey, perhaps five—Blanka was still alive, and she still wrote occasionally. If just one of them could find the way back, then they all would. Mr. Elekes would recover his sight and lead the way. Mrs. Elekes would slowly relax, she would put on weight, become idle again, and start to sew cushions. Irén and Bálint would rediscover their old love, and Irén would grow gentle, soft-spoken, a fairy child once again. The sun would once more shine out of Bálint. His confidence would return, and with it the prospect of a great medical career.
Henriette was with them on one of these occasions. She did not assume a physical form that they could see, but she was there. She listened in sorrow. She knew that without the ones who had died their quest was in vain: they would never find their way back to Katalin Street. Kinga was still a small child at this time, and she saw Henriette. But when she tried to explain that there was someone else in the room, she simply wasn’t believed. Her grandfather recited a rhyme about naughty little girls, and Irén gave her a slap on the hand and told her not to tell fibs, it wasn’t nice, then picked her up and took her off to bed.
THE HOUSE stood at the tip of the promontory, high above the reach of the waves, but the sea was audible throughout the long day, sometimes just a murmur, sometimes much louder. If you gazed out over the garden wall it was visible all around, ceaselessly hurling itself against the rocks as if it had some eternal score to settle with the edge of the land.
Blanka’s sleep was never entirely unbroken, but in summer she was often awake all night. She found the heat intolerable. Her husband, her mother-in-law, and the servants took this in their stride, allowing her to sleep all day, whenever and for as long as she wished, and even when she wandered restlessly about the house, refusing food, they made due allowance. When the Dog Star raged she would pace back and forth in a thin nightdress, until either her husband or her mother-in-law found her “almost naked,” and insisted she put on a dressing gown. They knew that as soon as the heat abated she would calm down and be her old self again, gentle and amenable.
For example, she faithfully observed the Sunday dress code. This greatly endeared her to her mother-in-law, who knew what a sacrifice it was for her, in the intense heat, to don the traditional island costume for women attending church, sweltering inside her black robes and black head scarf purely to please the family. The demands Blanka made on them were so few that they readily forgave her erratic behavior in the summer and waited patiently for her to recover her usual self. If they noticed her becoming abnormally restless, they too stayed up all night—not a great sacrifice on an island where people often kept irregular hours: the day would start earlier and end later than elsewhere, and between noon and early evening life came to a complete standstill. During this time her husband and his mother would sit together and chat; the old lady would nibble at sweet pastries, the husband would mix himself drinks, and the housemaid went about under the slowly turning fan picking up items of clothing that Blanka had cast off at random around the room, or take a pair of slippers out into the garden for her if she had gone out barefoot. After that she would sit herself down at her employers’ feet, on the bottom stair of the marble staircase, and watch her mistress’s comings and goings with genuine curiosity. She adored Blanka, who had shown her more kindness and simple humanity than anyone in her life. She watched the way Blanka would stand at the end of the garden, gazing out in all directions. She felt so sorry for the girl that she regularly prayed for her.
Sometimes Blanka would tear her dressing gown open so that she could feel the coo
l breath of the sea air on her skin, thus exposing her breasts. Her husband would immediately shout at her. Startled, she would quickly button herself up again and fan her face vigorously, panting all the while. The family felt just a little hurt by her failure to adapt to their climate. She had learned their language quickly, spoke it flawlessly, almost elegantly, and had even adopted their religion—surely a far more difficult thing to do than putting up with the summer heat? They sometimes saw her walk the length of the stone-floored rooms—there were no doors separating them—then go into the kitchen and take a handful of ice cubes from the huge refrigerator. She never put them in drinks. Instead she would take them out into the garden and play a game, sliding them along her arms and down her neck or balancing them on her head.
If they noticed her nodding off, they would go and bring her in. She often fell asleep beside the garden wall. She never sat on a bench, only on the ground, under some fragrant trees, from where she had to be led, half supported, back to the house.
Her mother-in-law’s eyes always followed her with interest and affection. It was impossible for her not to love Blanka. She was so biddable, so fundamentally different from anyone she knew, and she showed her so much more respect than any of the uppity local girls ever did, having none of their modern ideas about life. If you said you didn’t want her to go outside, she would simply stay indoors. Never in all her time among her compatriots had the old lady come across such a refined young woman as her daughter-in-law, who never undertook any kind of useful task, apparently felt no obligation to do so, and seemed formed by nature to be loving and submissive. The only thing that troubled her with regard to Blanka was her failure so far to bless them with grandchildren, but she hoped that sooner or later the girl would bring them that supreme joy. After all, her son had married her only recently.
So they tolerated her irregular nocturnal behavior, and her husband, though he felt the sacrifice keenly, accepted her absence from the marital bed in summer. When he found he could no longer contain himself, he would fall asleep immediately afterward. Sated and exhausted, he never knew how Blanka would then waken from her near-stupor and lie fully awake, her eyes open, her body tense, her mind filled with sadness, before going out to the bathroom and letting the water from the shower pour over her until she was shivering with cold.
During the embrace, her mind was elsewhere, unlike her husband who gave himself up to it in ecstasy. She would note how oddly their sweating bodies stuck to each other or the way their skin made little squelching noises. But she felt nothing: only the intense heat, despite the fans humming overhead. No matter how much water she drank, her only source of relief was to lie quite motionless, or better still, to leave the bed and go outside into the garden and crouch down beyond the wall, fanned by the breeze from the sea.
In summer, things were of course easier during the day. After an especially disturbed night she would sleep soundly, or, if she grew tired of lying in bed, she would go down to the sea and swim for hours. The thing about the local climate she found hardest to adapt herself to was that the temperature never dropped during the night, and the long periods of wakefulness she endured as a result brought back memories that at first she had no wish to recall. Only later, once she realized that the more she tried to fend them off the more obstinately they returned to torment her, did she stop resisting them. Had she not been so lovable and submissive, and had people on the island—a place that had witnessed the birth of gods—not seen so many strange and wonderful things, her lot might have been more difficult. But her husband was devoted to her, and her mother-in-law’s sympathy made her position in the house absolutely secure.
The old lady loved her perhaps even more than her husband did. To an outsider this would have seemed all the more surprising, for, notwithstanding her willingness to submit to instruction like a child—obedient in everything that was asked of her, wearing the traditional costume for church attendance and the visiting and receiving of guests simply to please her mother-in-law, and even adopting their faith—she was still an outsider, a complete stranger. But it made no difference. She was accepted as she was, in appearance so like those other women from abroad who alone had been able to redirect her son’s love onto themselves—for he, sadly, had never been attracted by the girls of his own country. The old lady knew that those foreign women, arriving on their yachts with their pet dogs kenneled in their cabins, were rich and drank too much. They would mock her and ridicule her ancient customs; they would oppose her in everything and turn her son against her. So she had welcomed Blanka. Blanka had the same long legs and blond hair of those other fair women from the West, but she was homeless, penniless, and humble. So everyone had cause for satisfaction—her son who had attained his exotic ideal, and she who had gained a daughter-in-law who deferred to her in everything.
The house was surrounded by palm trees, laurel, myrtle, and ancient oleanders, and the steps leading up to the entrance, the open sitting area, and the inner courtyard were lined with dwarf varieties in majolica pots. The old lady had been much amused to hear that Blanka’s family back home had a collection of cacti, tiny plants that they struggled to keep alive. In response, so that here too she might have a cactus of her own, her husband had carved her name into the trunk of one that had grown into a tree. There were more smiles when they learned that her family had to bring the oleander into the house in winter to save it from freezing. Blanka would go and stand beside her new cactus and carve words of her own into the thick fleshy leaves, though neither her husband nor his mother, who were familiar with and able to read the Latin script, could understand their meaning in the foreign tongue. When they asked what she had written, she replied: just names. This won their respect. It pleased them that she was loyal, that she treasured her memories. When All Souls’ Day came round on the island they gave her a bundle of tall thin candles, as was the local tradition, to make an offering to her own far-distant dead. They were surprised and impressed by the number she lit (so many of her loved ones must have died!), and by the length of time she spent at the altar. But this too pleased the old lady. Once she herself had passed away, the girl would surely cherish her own memory in like fashion.
The mother-in-law was less pleased on those days (though there were rather fewer of them) when she was more active; but they forgave her them too. Blanka was always more alive in the winter. When her husband was away, at his office in the town or in court, everyone was surprised and intrigued to see her suddenly busy. Even the menservants would steal into the house to observe her from behind a pillar. Sitting at her husband’s desk! It was most unsuitable. The mother-in-law gave them strict instructions not to tell anyone.
On a shelf above the desk stood a white bust of the Greek father-in-law. From time to time she would sit down beneath it, take up her husband’s legal documents (of which she understood not a word), draw a series of lines across a piece of paper, and study them intently. Henriette, who often visited the island, knew that the bust stood for the one of Cicero in Katalin Street: Blanka was playing at being her father, marking his pupils’ essays. Reading the words carved into the giant cactus, Henriette had noted that all their names were there, including her own. She had also seen the number of candles Blanka had lit on the altar of the dead, not just for her own family and for the Major but for everyone she had left behind, even the Biró family governess, Mrs. Temes.
Henriette was often present in the room with her. She was curious to know which of them Blanka remembered, and in what way. It fascinated her, watching her down among the low-slung chairs and bronze-footed sofas, playing at being those people. The husband’s study might have been off-limits to her as a woman, but it was the only room that was anything like the ones she had been brought up in. In the kitchen—where again she had no business to be—the servants watched in awe as she burst into unwonted activity. Like all the girls taught by Mrs. Temes, she could cook superbly. At home she had been too lazy to make the effort, and here she thought of involving herself onl
y when moved by a wish to explore her memories and to re-create Mrs. Temes’s presence around her: the old, familiar smells quickly brought her back. Blanka was, however, the only one who actually enjoyed eating what she had prepared: anyone else who tried it would push the plate away, complaining that she had brutally overdone the spice, and that simply tasting it had given them a stomach ache.
The person Blanka most often played at being was her mother. So she sewed cushions, enormous productions covered in mysterious symbols, that ended up being given away to the servants. The servants had no idea what to do with them either. No one on the island ever put cushions on chairs (it was simply too hot) and they would discreetly “disappear.” The strange motifs that Blanka had so carefully embroidered on them did attract attention: people stared at the picture she made of a Hungarian swing well without the least idea of what it might possibly represent. It was the same with the Chain Bridge over the Danube, drawn from memory and stitched with blue thread. The image meant nothing to them. Unlike the famous lions. A god had once lived on the island in the form of a lion. Perhaps this chain bridge also stood for something sacred?
