Katalin Street

by Magda Szabo

  He found Blanka in the office, huddled over her typewriter, her back to the door. The two other employees stood up to greet him as he came in. They had never done so before. “So now I’m a martyr,” he said to himself. He smiled briefly and began to empty his desk drawers. Henriette, who was now standing beside him, watched as he packed up his belongings and reflected how strange it was that he should have so many lovers—and that he had never kissed her that way. It surprised her to realize that it still hurt her, and that a pain felt in her previous life should so linger on. Once he had gathered his personal belongings—there weren’t very many of them, just enough to fill his briefcase—Bálint was debating whether to say goodbye to the girls, when they solved the problem for him by coming forward and shaking his hand. Blanka stayed in her chair and said nothing.

  He was already outside, in the hospital park, when he remembered his coat: he had taken it off when he went to the director’s office. He felt reluctant to go back, but eventually decided to do so after all. It was one of the things that Mrs. Temes had rescued from his former home. He had found it in the trunk in the Elekeses’ house.

  Going back into the office again, he noticed that everything had been moved around. Previously Blanka’s desk had been between the two other girls’; it had now been dragged into a corner. She was standing beside it, in tears, her faced buried in her hands. The two other girls, with all the solemnity of priestesses, were setting out their things on the other two tables, which were now side by side. There was a wide gap between their desks and Blanka’s. “My God,” Bálint thought. “She’s being ostracized as an informer and a traitor.”

  He had so many memories of that face . . . howling with anguish and chuckling with laughter, riding on a sleigh, terrified of the visiting chimney sweep, cramming for her exams, and crying . . . and also the sheer joy of her, the Blanka who had yielded to his embraces on Mrs. Elekes’s camp bed in the shelter . . . and there she was again, with her little gun, now dancing around, now as a fully grown girl, in a real woman’s dress . . . and again he wanted to caress her. He moved toward her, but the older of the office workers, the more serious-looking, stepped in between them. “No,” she said sternly. “Not even God would go that far. Don’t. She doesn’t deserve it.” She took his white coat down from its hook, folded it, and handed it to him. He had to carry it over his arm as his briefcase was full.

  He left the room feeling miserable and tense—not because of what had happened earlier but because he had been unable to say goodbye to Blanka. “It’s 1952,” Henriette was thinking, as she followed Bálint out. For a moment she wondered whether she shouldn’t perhaps stay with Blanka, whose actions and attitude had completely baffled her. “What’s going on between them? What’s this all about? If I were still alive I’d be twenty-four by now.”

  IT HAD been about three months since Bálint had moved out, and by then I could bear his absence no longer. Let him do what he liked, run after women if he wanted to, he simply had to come back and live with us. He was one of us, part of our lives. He didn’t have to marry me if he didn’t want to but at least we would be able to talk sometimes. I no longer had my pride, and after everything that had happened the thought of having to say all this to him no longer filled me with dread. I didn’t know his new address, and when I asked Blanka to give him a message at the hospital to suggest a time and place for us to meet, she told me that she wouldn’t even if he were still there, but anyway he was no longer in town: he had been transferred out.

  I thought she must be teasing me, or even lying, not wanting to be the person responsible for bringing him back. But she wasn’t teasing. Then, to my surprise, she became really angry with me and, for the first time ever in our lives, began to lecture me: what sort of person was I to want him back after all he had done to humiliate me? Blazing with passion, she told me what a wonderful person I was and what a nobody he was, and what a prize he had let slip through his hands once I had accepted him. “Just drop it,” I shouted, and stared at her as if she were talking in a fever or had simply gone mad. I just couldn’t believe that Bálint wasn’t in Budapest. I thought it was a lie to stop me asking him to come back. I could have hit her for being so contemptible, so brazen, and for refusing to help even though she knew how much Bálint meant to me.

  I didn’t dare ask my father to intervene. There would have been no point. Being even prouder than I was he had been even more offended by Bálint’s departure. Mrs. Temes was so ashamed of the way he had behaved—a boy she had raised herself—that I didn’t want to involve her either. I didn’t know who to turn to, apart from my mother. She was both alarmed and exalted by the fact that for the first time in my life I was now asking for her help, sobbing in her bedroom and begging her to put an end to everything that had gone wrong. There was an unwritten rule in the family that she was a sort of junior member, someone who knew little of the world and had to be sheltered from it. But that I was suffering she did understand. She agreed to try and find out if Blanka was telling the truth, or rather what it was that she was holding back. I have never since seen her the way she looked as she set forth, having tidied her coat and her shoes and done her hair, twice.

  It was the fifth of December and the snow had already arrived. I stood by the window looking out into the garden, though there was nothing to be seen in the late-afternoon gloom. Blanka was out. She often stayed out long after she had finished work, but she hadn’t introduced us to any new boyfriends for a while and we had no idea where she went or who she was with.

  Mrs. Temes was busy in the kitchen, preparing the meal for St. Nicholas Eve. My father noticed that I had finished my work and told me to put the traditional shoes in the window. My mother still wasn’t home. He had no idea where she was, as she had gone out before he returned. I stammered something about her having gone to visit someone—a silly suggestion that he clearly didn’t believe. A little later Mrs. Temes joined us in the sitting room, with her sewing things. She too expressed wonder about where my mother could possibly be.

  Eventually Blanka arrived. She smelled of alcohol. There was a glint in her eye, something in her manner, some suggestion that she had been out having a good time with a man, someone rather special to her. She was in high spirits, almost triumphant.

  At last my mother was back. Of course she had forgotten to take her key—she was always forgetting to take it—and had to ring the bell. I was so desperate to hear what she had to say, so full of hopes and fears, that I was incapable of speech. She seemed almost childlike that evening, apprehensive, as if afraid of something. I had never seen her quite like that before. I guessed at once that Bálint wasn’t in Budapest and that things were much more serious than I had thought. As soon as she stepped inside she was bombarded with questions about where she had been, but she made no reply and simply threw down her coat. My father waited a while to see if either Blanka or I would get up, and then, since nobody else was going to, rose to his feet and went to hang it up himself.

  Blanka was smoking a cigarette and fiddling about with the radio. She was saying that I ought to go to the hospital for the turning on of the Christmas tree lights; there would be plenty of young unmarried doctors there. She meant well, but it was such a clumsy gesture that I just shook my head. Then it was Mrs. Temes’s turn to quiz my mother about where she had been. The next thing we heard was her bursting into tears.

  It was only then that we all realized we had not once heard her cry since we learned that the Major had been killed. We instantly gathered round her, and I thought, “He’s dead.” Her reaction could mean nothing else—she had been too frightened to tell us. I tried to imagine what life would be like without Bálint, but I couldn’t. I stood next to her, longing for her to take me in her arms. I never really felt that she was my mother. It was only when I was in distress and on rare occasions like this when she rose above her usual self. I waited for her to draw me to her and caress me. Instead I watched as she pulled Blanka to her. I stared at the two of them in astonish
ment, almost like an idiot. I was the abandoned fiancée, the one cast aside, effectively Bálint’s widow, and it was Blanka she had pulled over and embraced and kissed. It was as if this unprovoked gesture was a way of telling her something that no one yet understood, least of all Blanka herself.

  “What’s going on here?” my father asked, anxiously. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

  My mother didn’t answer. She just went on hugging and kissing Blanka, and then, as if in a sudden fit of madness, started to pummel her. Blanka screamed, tore herself from our mother’s grasp, and ran to the window. My mother’s weeping took on an edge of grieving, like that of a mourner at a funeral.

  I was now desperate for someone to say something, to tell me at last what they knew, to put an end to all this; whatever it was, even if he were dead, even if he had killed himself, I had to know. If my role now was to mourn for him, I was ready for it. I absolutely needed to know, to put an end to this uncertainty in which I swung between wildly conflicting feelings. Mrs. Temes gave my mother something to drink, treating her with the detached solicitude she showed to all of us when we were ill. Gradually my mother pulled herself together, dabbed her face, and became her usual self. She claimed she had been to her dressmaker to order a dress. No one believed her. We all knew she hated buying clothes; she liked only what was old and comfortable, and she had always been too lazy to go and try anything on.

  My father made a gesture of resignation. She often told lies, and even if we still had no idea where she had been on that chilly afternoon and why she had attacked Blanka, we were all familiar with the sort of scene we had just witnessed—and at least she had calmed down. The important thing was that she was back home. Sooner or later she would tell us where she had been and what had so upset her. She had never been able to keep a secret.

  Mrs. Temes went out to the laundry room. Blanka stayed sulking for a minute, then went over to kiss my mother and got herself ready to go out again, saying that she had to go somewhere, that there were some friends waiting for her. My father said no, she would have to stay at home and do some reading or mend her underwear. It was still St. Nicholas Eve in our house and there was no question that she would be spending it with us. She flounced off to our shared bedroom and my mother went into hers. I followed her in, and at last the two of us were alone. Seeing me, she burst into tears again, but eventually she spoke, dabbing her handkerchief to her eyes all the while, to avoid meeting mine.

  Because she hadn’t known Bálint’s new address she had gone to the hospital to make inquiries. The porter had told her that he no longer worked there and that he had been sent away. She went from one office to another trying to find someone who could tell her more. Finally she spoke to the director, who was just coming out of a meeting. He praised Blanka warmly, describing her as rather flighty but capable of making real progress. She retained none of her bourgeois attitudes: if she saw something wrong anywhere she would try to put it right, even if it cost her something because of her upbringing and her present connections. My mother had no idea what he was referring to, so he spelled out in simpler language what had happened to Bálint, making it clear that Blanka was the one who had drawn the hospital’s attention to the need to get rid of him.

  I just couldn’t take in what she was telling me. It was all perfectly straightforward and even now I have no idea why it was so difficult for me, why I had to make her tell the story over and over again before I could understand what my sister had done. When the penny finally dropped, I had to sit down. Up to that point I had refused to believe that what there was between Bálint and me could ever come to an end. Slamming my ring down in front of him had been pointless. I had thought it was just a question of time and all would be well again. Now there was no longer any reason to hope. Not ever.

  In such moments of crisis, when our troubles become too much to bear, often quite trivial things take on significance. My brain ceased to function, and all I could think of now was how I could possibly continue to share a bedroom with Blanka after what had happened.

  Well, I wasn’t forced to carry on sharing that bedroom. I had made myself ready to go out and was just about to leave when I found my father standing behind me in the entrance hall. He had obviously been there for some time. In his hand was the red crepe-paper-covered St. Nicholas bell that he always rang in their bedroom. Thinking about what my mother had told us had brought him to a halt while still in the entrance hall. He was holding the bell by its clapper to stop it ringing—to prevent it ringing in the festival in our house. I went and stood beside him. He said nothing, then followed me into his study.

  Again I was forced to sit down. My legs could no longer support me. My father left me there and carried on into the shared bedroom, still clutching the St. Nicholas bell. He was there for ages. I heard only his voice speaking: Blanka said nothing in reply. When he came back his face was no longer pale, it was bright red. He sat down beneath the bust of Cicero and placed his book in front of him. My mother came out of their bedroom and—something I had never seen before—sat down beside him at the desk. At that moment it didn’t seem at all odd, even though I had never known anyone who had less to do with desks and books than her. They sat there like twins, one plunged in grief and the other consumed by shame. Neither said anything to me, or to each other, and neither of them made any effort to comfort me.

  Blanka came out of the bedroom, wearing her coat and a head scarf and carrying a suitcase. I went up to her, stared in her face, my eyes blazing, and demanded to know what she had done. She made no reply. She simply touched my arm, very gently, not the often rather forceful push that I was used to, and went over to my father. He didn’t look up from his book. She just stood there, waiting for him to come to the end of his page. My mother’s gaze went from Blanka to me and from me to Blanka, her head moving from side to side like a terrified doll. Finally she made up her mind. She stood up, hugged Blanka, whispered something in her ear, then followed her as she started to leave the room. Blanka left the house without having spoken once. All we could hear was my mother sobbing. She didn’t come back to join us. She went straight to her bedroom and shut the door behind her.

  I collapsed on the sofa. In my lessons I like to teach children about the old heroes, and I think I do it rather well. My lessons are enjoyable, and I believe I have a special feel for bringing out the human element in moments of greatness. Even as a child I was enthralled by the idea of destiny and those tragic situations in which morality proves triumphant. Now, seeing my father sitting there under his bust of Cicero, I was struck by two things quite unconnected with my present sufferings. One of them I should have realized long before. I had always believed that I had been my father’s favorite, the apple of his eye. Now it was as if he were telling me that it wasn’t just my mother who loved my sister more than she loved me; he did too. I cannot think why. Perhaps there was more to forgive in her case, perhaps because she was less like him than I was, or because she was so lacking in independence, so scatterbrained and silly—God knows. Whatever love we receive always comes as a form of grace.

  The other thing I realized was that in driving Blanka out of the house he was abandoning her to a deeply uncertain future, but one whose outcome, given her idleness and fecklessness, left no doubt. In denouncing Bálint, and above all in defaming him—the Bálint we had known since childhood, and whom she had been better placed than anyone to know that he would never accept money in this way—she had attacked the entire moral order in which my father believed, and he had acted like the old Hungarian hero Dobozy, who in killing his wife had also killed himself.

  Mrs. Temes returned from the laundry room. I stayed where I was because I couldn’t bear going back into the empty bedroom, and I hadn’t the courage to go and see what Blanka would have taken with her or what she had left. I seemed to be floating, wrenched free from the laws of gravity, having lost my center of balance in this new world, first without Bálint and now without Blanka, the world that the Major a
nd the Helds had already left behind. Mrs. Temes was setting out the festive table. The wall clock was striking the hour of nine. We sat and watched it all the way to the end.

  “Well, has St. Nicholas been yet?” Mrs. Temes asked.

  The festival was one that had brought all three families together in our house, just as we all went to the Helds for the New Year and to Bálint’s house for Easter.

  My father stood up. He had forgotten the bell in our bedroom and went to get it. It was from there that we heard it ring as he shook it. Unaware of what had just happened, Mrs. Temes was standing there contentedly. My mother emerged from her bedroom, still dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. The privilege of opening the window through which St. Nicholas delivered his presents always fell to the youngest, Henriette while she was still alive and now Blanka. Mrs. Temes went and stood at the door of our bedroom, waiting for her to emerge. But only my father appeared. He drew back the curtain and opened the inner window. Outside it was freezing, and we felt the chill of winter instantly penetrate the heated room. In each of the five pairs of shoes was a red parcel. My father took his and started to untie it. His hands were shaking.

  “What about Blanka?” asked Mrs. Temes. “Is she asleep?”

  “She’s gone,” my father replied, as he pulled away the silver paper that covered the little figurine made of chocolate. My mother, glutton as she was, just stood there, not touching the sweets. Mrs. Temes looked from one to the other in total incomprehension.