The Angel Makers

by Jessica Gregson

  ‘Be careful with your teeth,’ she always says to Sari. ‘You never know how much you’ll miss them.’

  Sari can’t guess how old she is, perhaps seventy or even eighty, but Judit’s still so strong and able that it makes Sari want to revise her opinion downward. Judit says it’s a hard life that makes her look so ancient, but always follows that comment up with a cackle of such sublime enjoyment that Sari can’t tell if she’s being serious or not. Judit has the sort of face that inspires fear in children and, if they’re honest, in some adults too, and she seems to enjoy it; at any rate, she does not go out of her way to dispel any of the rumours about her that clog the lines of village gossip.

  Now Judit comes striding out of her kitchen, glass in hand. ‘Sari – aren’t you supposed to be at the funeral?’

  Sari grimaces, yanking her boots off. ‘It’s mostly over. I got sick of it, Judit, sick of the people and the words and the crying. It’s all wrong.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t go,’ Judit says. She eases herself down onto the wooden floor so that she’s on eye level with Sari, who’s still tugging at her right boot. ‘You know István and I don’t see eye to eye. Maybe I should have been there, to keep you company.’

  Sari shakes her head vehemently. ‘Don’t be stupid. It would have made you as hypocritical as the rest of them. Besides, I can look after myself.’ Her voice breaks on the last word and abruptly, she claps her hands over her face. Judit puts a twisted hand on her shoulder but doesn’t hug her, because that would seem contrived. Sari’s shuddering violently, but Judit doubts that she’s crying. In the fourteen years she’s known the girl, she’s never seen her cry, and she doubts that this’ll be the first time. She thinks there’s probably something wrong with the child’s eyes that makes weeping impossible.

  In time, Sari stops shaking and takes down her hands; for a moment she sits there in the unnatural stillness that makes people fear and distrust her, before she brushes a hand roughly across her face. ‘Sorry,’ she says stiffly.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Judit replies. ‘Wait.’ She goes into her kitchen and comes out with a small glass full of clear liquid, which she hands to Sari. ‘Drink this,’ she says. ‘It’ll do you good.’

  Sari gulps it down in a couple of mouthfuls, making a face. ‘God, Judit, it’s worse than the stuff you made last year. This is why my father always bought it from the Mecs, not from you.’

  Judit shrugs. ‘It’s still good for you.’

  Footsteps crunch on the road outside Judit’s window. ‘There, the funeral’s over,’ Sari says. Her voice is deliberately light, but Judit picks up her meaning.

  ‘And so what’s going to happen to you now?’

  Because that’s the question, really. The house where Sari grew up with her father – it’s hers now, and all Sari wants is to go back there, move through the rooms that held her father’s presence. But it’s not done; girls don’t live alone, nor do women, unless they’re widows, and while Sari’s used to telling herself she doesn’t care what the village thinks, she hardly wants to make herself more of an outcast than she is already. And then…

  ‘Well, there’s Ferenc,’ Sari says.

  ‘Yes. Ferenc,’ Judit says slowly. ‘He seems like a good boy.’

  ‘He is,’ Sari replies. She feels a general, unlocated fondness for her probable future husband. The idea of marriage still repels her slightly, but she understands her father’s thinking now. These past couple of days she’s had a hard, cold nugget of fear lodged somewhere between her lungs, and oddly, it’s been the thought of Ferenc that has made her feel slightly better. At least there’s one person who has to be nice to her, who has to take care of her (although, she adds swiftly, she can take care of herself).

  ‘It seems like the obvious next step—’ Judit starts, but Sari shakes her head violently.

  ‘No, not yet. Not until I’m eighteen. I promised. I can look after myself until then.’

  ‘All right, all right!’ Judit raises her hands in surrender. ‘But at least tell me how you intend to provide for yourself until then?’

  Sari flushes. It’s not that she’s shy, but she is proud, and supremely unused to having to ask for things and so it’s hard to get the words out, even though she suspects that Judit knows what she’s going to say.

  ‘I was thinking,’ she says slowly, ‘I was thinking that maybe I could work with you. I could help you, and start learning about what you do. If you’ll let me.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ferenc still feels hot from where Sari’s eyes landed on him at the funeral. The feeling is almost painful, and unbearably exciting. He is sad about Jan’s death – his putative uncle, after all – but now he is wracked by a wild hope about what this will mean for him, whether he’ll have a chance of Sari sooner rather than later.

  Until six months ago, he had barely thought of her, and on the rare occasions that he did, it was with the same mixture of pity and derision that most of the village men did. He had torn through his adolescence with his mind filled with images of blondes, luscious curves, succulent pink and cream skin, and if someone had told him that a scrawny black-haired child would sneak into his subconscious like Sari has, he would have laughed.

  And then …

  He remembers the exact moment that it happened. Six months ago, spring: mosquitoes rising off the river like fog; flowers bursting out of the trees and the ground; heat hanging like a hint of smoke on the midday air. He’d gone with his father to see Jan Arany – for what? For some minor misfortune or mishap, probably – and they’d been sitting at the old, lined kitchen table, Jan dispensing advice as best he could.

  Ferenc had been only vaguely aware of Sari’s busy, mercurial presence behind Jan, until Jan had asked her for something and she turned around, raised her head and her eyes – those eyes! – seemed to physically hit Ferenc across the table. He couldn’t have described the rest of her face if he’d tried; it melted into the background compared with those eyes. Pale, icy blue, surrounded by thick dark lashes, but it wasn’t the beauty of the eyes that was astonishing; it was their knowing, searching, piercing quality. They weren’t the eyes of a fourteen-year-old, and Ferenc felt laid bare, as if he’d never been seen before.

  And that was it, that glance. She climbed into his head through that glance, and there she stayed, sometimes lurking uncomfortably just below his daily thoughts, and sometimes breaking the surface – mainly, predictably enough, when he was masturbating. He used to do it to the memory of a twenty-year-old Austrian blonde he’d seen bathing at Lake Balaton, but now his fantasies were invaded by Sari. The Austrian beauty, who used to gaze at him adoringly in his ardent dreams now stared at him with Sari’s severe glare, or, at the crucial moment, her face would split apart and be replaced with Sari’s visage. It was troubling, and unsettling. Ferenc did everything he could to rid himself of this dream-Sari. After a humiliating muttered conversation with Father István he tried fasting, and prayer, and cold baths, but to no avail. He was not an intellectually sophisticated man, but the irony of the situation did not escape him – the one person who could have rid him of the dreams was the one person who must not know about them, on account of their subject being his daughter.

  But in the end, it was Jan who settled the matter. Ferenc would like to believe that it was just one of life’s odd but fortuitous coincidences, but fundamentally he knows that Jan didn’t deal in coincidence, particularly where his daughter was concerned. Six months ago, Ferenc was blinded by Sari’s eyes; five months ago his father asked him to take something over to Jan’s. Ferenc agreed, reluctant because he had come to dread seeing Sari, avoidance being the only tactic that had even the slightest effect on the dreams.

  As it happened, either by luck or judgement, she wasn’t there.

  ‘She’s at Judit Fekete’s,’ Jan explained, in response to the question Ferenc refused to ask. ‘Sit down,’ Jan added, gesturing to the empty chair opposite him, and as Ferenc handed over the couple of coins his father owed Jan,
Jan opened a bottle of wine, sloshing a few inches of thick, blood-red liquid into a glass, pushing it towards Ferenc. ‘Have a drink.’

  Uncertainly, Ferenc sat and took the wine. To his surprise, it was good – not up to the standard that Ferenc was used to at home, of course, but still full-bodied and tasty. He realised two things then: that Jan knew his wine; and that he was deliberately setting out to please or impress. Both these realisations startled him. Jan was not someone who tended to try to impress, doing so naturally or not at all. Ferenc sipped silently at his wine, unnerved.

  ‘So,’ Jan said suddenly. Ferenc waited for the rest of the sentence, and when it didn’t come:

  ‘So,’ he responded helpfully.

  ‘My daughter,’ Jan said.

  Oh. Ferenc felt every inch of his body tensing, as if Jan was staring into the heart of his most shameful masturbatory fantasies. He cleared his throat awkwardly, staring at the table.

  ‘You like her,’ Jan continued.

  Ferenc gulped. ‘Well, yes,’ he stammered.

  Jan smiled. ‘That’s good.’

  Further disquieted, Ferenc sat silent. He felt like a dog being teased by a cat, large and lumbering with Jan swiping at this foot and then that foot, turning him around and about.

  ‘Have you given any thought to marriage?’ Jan asked finally.

  So that was it. Part of Ferenc wanted to laugh: it was absurd, surely, the idea that he could marry Sari? Sex was one thing, yes, and he couldn’t deny that he wanted that, but marriage? Ferenc’s no grof, but he’s no peasant, either; his father’s family had worked their way up to a position of wealth and importance by herding for the local aristocracy over the past couple of hundred years, and the land that they own, the places they go, the people and things they know – they might as well inhabit a different world from the rest of the village.

  ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ Ferenc replied.

  He had thought about it, though; he could hardly have reached the age of eighteen without the idea of marriage having occurred to him. It had always been assumed that he would never marry anyone from the village, that he’d have to look elsewhere for someone who would be his equal, and it was with a shock of something that could have been trepidation, as much as excitement, that he realised that if he were to marry anyone from Falucska, Sari, whose mother was his aunt, would seem to be the leading candidate.

  ‘I was hoping that you might consider my daughter.’

  A memory floated to the surface of Ferenc’s thoughts. He’d met a girl a few years back, in Budapest, while on holiday with his parents. She’d been small and mousy, with glossy brown hair and a frightened expression, but his parents had introduced them with great joviality; it had obviously been important and desirable that they get on with one another. He had tried, but every story he had told her, of swimming in the river in the village, of climbing trees and catching frogs and romping with dogs had caused her to shrink back with barely disguised fear and revulsion. Afterwards, he had spoken of her to his parents in disparaging tones, only to be rebuked by his father, who had told him that she was from a good family, well brought up, the sort of girl likely to grow into a marriageable woman. It was the first clue Ferenc had ever had of how much things were likely to change once he was neatly married off to some carefully socialised woman. Sari, he thought, she wouldn’t be like that at all.

  ‘I think—’ Ferenc began, utterly unsure of what he was thinking, but Jan held up a hand to halt him.

  ‘I don’t expect you to decide right away, of course. The two of you hardly know each other. But I’m not well.’ Jan’s voice became heavy. ‘Sari doesn’t know – or maybe she does; it’s hard to tell what she does and doesn’t know – but I’m not going to be around much longer. I know what the village thinks of Sari, and I’m worried about what will happen to her after I’m dead, who will protect her. I know you’re a good boy, Ferenc, and I’m sure you’ll be a good man. I’ve seen the way you look at Sari, and with your background, you’re less superstitious than the rest of the people here – you can see what little truth there is behind the things that people say about my daughter. Also, her mother was from your family, so I feel your family would be more likely to accept her.’

  Ferenc nodded. This was all very strange, but it was possible, perhaps, wasn’t it?

  ‘Her age is an issue, of course,’ Jan went on. ‘She’s only fourteen – too young for marriage. You know, her mother – your aunt – she was married to me at just under sixteen, and it was too young. She was happy, I think, but certainly not ready to be a mother. I have my suspicions that it may have had something to do with her death – her age, I mean. Aside from that, though, Sari is different. She’s not some featherheaded little girl who wants nothing more than to be a wife and a mother. She’s clever, and outspoken, and difficult. She needs to learn to trust you, and she needs to become her own person before she becomes your wife. I’m talking to you about this now because of the state of my health, but the last thing I want is for her to marry now. I would want you to wait until she’s eighteen.’

  Four years? That gave Ferenc pause. Jan seemed to expect him to decide, if not immediately, then soon, but how was he supposed to know now what Sari was going to be like in four years? She could grow ugly in that time; he’d seen it happen. But Jan was looking at him with such implacable expectation of agreement that there seemed nothing else for it.

  ‘That sounds – very sensible,’ he replied at last. Jan smiled slightly, knowingly.

  ‘I have talked to Sari about this,’ Jan said, ‘and I must tell you she’s not overly keen on the idea. But that’s to do with the idea of marriage, rather than with you, and she’s agreed in principle.’ He smiled more broadly. ‘She did grudgingly admit that you seem nice.’

  ‘Well. Good.’ It was a start, after all.

  ‘Yes. I should talk to your family about this, obviously, but I wanted to mention it to you first. You don’t have to decide to anything straight away, but come back tomorrow, and you can start getting to know Sari. Make sure you’re making an informed decision.’ Jan heaved himself out of his chair, and gave Ferenc a clumsy, yet awkwardly affectionate clap on the shoulder – under the force of which Ferenc swayed slightly. ‘You’re a good boy,’ he said, in a tone of dismissal, which Ferenc took as the hint to leave that it was.

  So it began.

  Ferenc had tried hard over the summer. After his talk with Jan he went straight home and spoke to his father, recounting his conversation with Jan and Jan’s proposal. On hearing it, Ferenc’s father laughed, a short amazed bark, which faded as soon as he saw the gravity in his son’s eyes. ‘You’re not seriously…’ he began.

  ‘I am. I told Jan I’d consider it.’

  After that, Ferenc’s father was silent for a long time. He spoke briefly to his wife, who was also silent for a long time. Ferenc felt disapproval wafting off them like steam, especially from his father; his mother, he knew, felt a certain degree of familial obligation towards Sari, and while she didn’t want to bid goodbye to pleasant fantasies of a smiling, pretty, pliant daughter-in-law (or, even better, a daughter-in-law with money), she grudgingly admitted that it seemed somewhat fitting to think about bringing Sari into the family. She capitulated first, and worked to bring her husband round – meanwhile, Ferenc found reserves of patience and persistence he never knew he had, and started to woo Sari.

  Their first official meeting since the decision had been made was not comfortable. With Jan playing the role of chap -erone, the three of them sat awkwardly around the table, drinking thick, black Turkish coffee and saying little. Jan would pass some obvious remark, about the weather, or a piece of village gossip; Ferenc would reply by smiling manfully and attempting a witty riposte, and Sari sat almost entirely silent, drumming her fingers on the table at intervals, her eyes sliding around the room – window, chair, table, ceiling – never settling on Ferenc’s face. After twenty minutes or so of this purgatory, there was a tentative knock on the door; J
an heaved himself grumpily to his feet, and an unhappy Ferenc rocked back in his chair, feeling that this must be his cue to leave, although he’d got nowhere. He hadn’t realised until that moment how much he’d wanted this to work out, how reluctant he was to contemplate marriage to some insipid urbanite after he’d considered Sari. Jan’s muffled voice came from the hallway, and then the sound of a door opening and closing, as someone from the village was led into what served as his consulting room.

  ‘Well,’ said Ferenc, nervously, and then she did it, hit him with those bright, fierce eyes, and asked:

  ‘Do you like to read?’

  ‘Oh, well, I—’ he faltered, and then asked, ‘Do you read?’

  She nodded, slightly contemptuous. ‘Of course. Magyar and German. My father taught me.’ She got up and picked a book off the shelf, thrusting it at him. ‘Here,’ she said. He turned it over in his hands; a fat, blue volume, pages furring slightly at the edges from overuse. He opened the cover, and there, in German: Jane Eyre, von Charlotte Brontë. Looking up at Sari, he found her staring at him intently. ‘Have you read it?’ she asked.

  He shook his head apologetically. ‘No. I don’t really get much time for reading, with, you know, the farm, and – and things—’ He shrugged, trying to indicate a weight of important, manly tasks sitting on his shoulders, precluding all leisure activities.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, her voice flat. It was obvious that she was disappointed, and Ferenc felt an almost tangible gust of her frustration and stark intelligence.

  ‘You could tell me about it,’ he suggested diffidently, and she looked up sharply, scrutinising his face for possible mockery.