‘Sit down!’ she snaps, zooming past. ‘Rest! I’ll get it.’
It’s Orsolya Kiss, flanked by Jakova Gersek and Matild Nagy. Judit takes half a step backwards in surprise. There’s no love lost between any of the five women there, and normally Orsolya and her henchwomen would only come to see Judit and Sari when in the direst need, but a quick glance over the three of them doesn’t reveal any obvious illnesses or injuries. Quite to the contrary, Orsolya looks uncommonly well, her pug-like face wreathed in smug smiles.
‘Well, Orsolya, Jakova, Matild,’ Judit says, recovering quickly. ‘What a surprise to see you here. What can we help you with?’
‘Ah,’ says Orsolya, and her smile grows ever wider. ‘It’s rather a delicate matter. Perhaps best discussed over a cup of coffee. You don’t mind putting some water on, do you, Sari?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Judit says swiftly, and heads for the kitchen, while Orsolya and her friends sit down at the table, facing Sari, without waiting to be asked. Every inch of Sari’s body is tensed: she doesn’t trust these three, not in the slightest, and she thinks that she can smell trouble. The other two look slightly discomfited, nervous, and they keep fidgeting as if keen to leave, as if they’d rather be anywhere but here. Orsolya, on the other hand, sits at the table as if she owns it, the embodiment of calm, and turns her unctuous smile onto Sari.
‘Sari. You’re looking well, all things considered.’
Sari tries to smile back – it can’t hurt to try and stay as much on Orsolya’s good side as possible – but her mouth will not obey her and it’s a struggle to get the words out. ‘Thank you, Orsolya. You’re looking very well yourself.’
Orsolya ignores the implicit second half of Sari’s sentence: so what are you doing here?
‘I am well, Sari. Very well.’
The conversation stops there, and by the time Judit returns, Sari is in an agony of awkwardness; Orsolya, on the other hand, looks as though she’s never been more comfortable.
‘So,’ Judit says, as she sits down at the table, passing out cups of coffee. ‘How can we help you?’
‘Well,’ Orsolya says, with another beatific smile, ‘We were hoping that you could share some of your … expertise with us.’
Sari freezes. This is it, she thinks, but Judit appears not to have understood.
‘Of course,’ she says, frowning slightly in confusion. ‘That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? So what’s the problem?’
‘Ah, no,’ Orsolya says, sounding as if she is choosing every word with careful precision, ‘You misunderstand me. We don’t need your help curing anyone of anything. Quite the opposite, in fact.’
There’s a short, punchy silence. Then Judit says stiffly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Orsolya laughs, falsely coy, in response. ‘Oh, come now! You don’t have to hide these things from us. We don’t blame Anna in the slightest for doing away with Károly, and we don’t blame you for helping her, either. Quite why you saw fit to kill Ferenc, Sari, I can’t quite imagine – he struck me as quite a nice boy, I always thought you did very well to catch him – but then, who am I to question?’
‘What do you want?’ Sari asks at last.
‘Well, I rather thought we’d made that clear. You shouldn’t be selfish, Sari, hogging these things to yourself, only sharing them with your best friends. Things have changed around here since the end of the war, since the men came back, and we don’t really like it this way. We got used to the way things were during the war, and now … now there are a few things that we would like to get rid of, and I think that you can help us with that.’
‘And if we don’t?’ Judit asks. She is remaining impressively calm, but her cheeks have turned a bright, violent red.
‘Oh, I don’t want you to think that I’m threatening you or anything like that. But I do have a cousin who’s a police officer in Város, and I’m sure he’d be very interested to hear about a couple of suspicious deaths that have happened around here.’
‘You have no proof,’ Sari says, her heart hammering against her ribs. Her baby gives a sickening lurch inside her.
‘Perhaps not. But that doesn’t really matter, does it, if Ferenc’s parents get wind of what really happened to him? I mean, I don’t want to sound harsh, dear, but his family’s got rather more standing than the two of you have. No one’s likely to dispute any claims that they make, now, are they?’
‘And if we help you?’ Judit asks.
‘Then it’ll hardly be in our interests to tell anyone about what’s been going on, will it?’
They agree – what else can they do? A series of brisk, tacit arrangements are made; Orsolya and her friends will come back in two days, to give Judit and Sari enough time to prepare what they’re going to need. The words Judit spoke a week or so ago, about this becoming a business, clang through Sari’s head. We’re in the murder business now, she thinks to herself, and has to swallow a hysterical giggle.
As Orsolya takes her leave, Sari can’t help but ask:
‘How did you know? How could you be so sure?’
Orsolya laughs again, and puts a hand on Sari’s arm. ‘Oh, dear, no, I wasn’t sure, not at all. But in a lot of ways it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s true or not – there are enough people around here who’ll take my word over yours. I mean, what you seem to forget, Sari,’ and she leans in closer, as if imparting an important secret, ‘is that you don’t really matter around here. Neither of you do. Not in the slightest.’
1920
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lilike hadn’t really wanted to leave Falucska. She’d lived there all her life. Her world had been bounded by the flat expanse of the plain and the dizzying sky, and although she’d visited Város once in a while, she’d never really been able to conceive that it was as real as the village, that the streets that brimmed with horses and carts could exist in the same world that held the river and the woods and the marketplace she’d grown up with.
She’s adapted well, though, if she does say so herself. When her mother told her, a year ago, that they were moving to Város to be with her aunt a year ago, Lilike had wept for days, but already she looks back at that sobbing girl with pity and condescension. She had been worried, at first, that her cousins, sophisticated town girls one and all, would shun her and her country ways, and she’d barely built up the courage to speak to them for the first few weeks. But since then, they’d become so kind. Her wardrobe is littered with their off-cast dresses, and when she slips a cool muslin gown over her head in the morning, she reflects that she barely misses the village at all, any more. She had worried, a little, that her time with Umberto would affect her chances of finding a husband in Város, but she’s pleased to find that’s not the case – her cousins, when she awkwardly admits what she’s done, greet her story with congratulations rather than with censure; she understands that, since the war, that sort of thing is, if not acceptable, then at least understood.
She and her mother have never properly talked about why they left, but Lilike has a fair idea. She had tried to keep Umberto a secret from her mother at first, but before too long she had become more lax. After they’d got word that her brother was dead, her mother had barely done anything but arrange and rearrange his old clothes in the trunk at the foot of her bed. Lilike started to go out more and more, staying out later and later. On the occasions she spent time with her mother, she started to notice that her mother was starting to seem happier, but Lilike put that down to nothing more than time passing since her brother’s death until one day, heading to the forest with Umberto, she came across her mother, entwined with an older Italian officer Lilike had seen from time to time.
Saucer-eyed, Lilike had tugged at Umberto’s hand, pressed a finger to her lips, and they had tiptoed away. Later, Lilike was surprised to find that she was neither shocked nor disapproving. She remembered her mother, her hands red from washing, nursing her father through the throes of his final illness; she rememb
ered hearing her, pacing and weeping in the next room as Lilike and her brother huddled together in bed, and decided that she did not begrudge her mother whatever happiness she could carve out for herself.
She should have known that it couldn’t last, though. Lilike had adjusted fairly well to the departure of the Italians. She’d known that they had to leave sometime, and she and Umberto had so little to say to one another when they weren’t busy fucking that she had no illusions about them sharing a long and happy life together. Her mother, however, had adjusted less well, and within weeks had gone back to her old clothing re-arranging ways. Lilike started to wake in the night to the sound of her mother crying out in her sleep, twisting in nightmares she can’t describe when she wakes.
It’s the death of Orsolya Kiss’s husband that’s the final straw. He had been a second cousin of Lilike’s mother, and throughout his short, sharp illness (which had been broadcast all over the village), her mother had started to look more and more haunted. The very day that the news had gone around that he had died, Lilike’s mother had started to pack, and they had left only days later. Whenever Lilike mentioned the village afterwards, her mother would change the subject and Lilike had soon stopped talking about it at all.
When they hear about the death of Tomas Gersek, then, Lilike expects her mother to succumb to another attack of nerves, but instead she straightens her back. The Gerseks had been neighbours of Lilike’s family. Lilike remembers how, when her father had been ill, Jakova used to help her mother with her cooking, while Tomas would chop firewood and mend fences and do all the sorts of things that her father wasn’t able to do any more.
‘We should go back for the funeral,’ Lilike’s mother says, and Lilike feels a throb of excitement. She wonders which of her new dresses is likely to make the best impression back in the village.
But it’s not like she thinks it’s going to be. The journey across the plain in a rattling old cart seems beneath her dignity, and the village, cloaked in November mist, seems shrunken and silent, so different from the bustle of Város. The road to the cemetery is rutted and muddy, and even though Jakova has gone to the trouble to ask the priest from the next village to perform the funeral, it seems like a halfhearted, almost sinister affair.
Jakova, black-veiled, stands with her head bowed by the grave, oddly still; the priest can’t seem to think of anything to say, and instead of staying silent, seems to decide that he will say all the words that he can think of, in the hopes of stumbling on the right ones. Lilike is chilled; she’s wearing obligatory black, but the sharp, stylish cut of her dress and it’s trimmings seem oddly obscene among the browns and greys of Falucska in autumn, and she feels as if her heart is swelling in her chest as, increasingly panicked, she looks around for a friendly face. She spots Lujza and her family in the crowd, but Lujza’s eyes are blank and still, and she doesn’t seem to see Lilike at all.
A swirl of colour on the edge of her vision makes her look around, and there is Sari, a child in her arms with the reddest hair that Lilike has seen. The girl was a baby when Lilike left for Város, and now she’s a silent, self-possessed two-year-old, long-legged and thin, whom Sari hefts in her arms as easily as if she were a kitten. And Sari – Lilike catches Sari’s eye, and Sari smiles, a smile that stops far short of her eyes, a smile that is little more than a perfunctory showing of teeth, and suddenly Lilike understands: Sari is afraid, Sari finds Lilike’s presence frightening, and something is going on here, something that Lilike had blindly guessed at, but only now really comprehends, feeling the weight of it on her chest.
It’s all she can do to stay still and silent for the rest of the funeral. Her mother clutches her hand so tightly that Lilike is sure that she is feeling the same way. When the funeral is over, they put their heads down and walk back to the cart that they’ve hired as quickly as is decent. They do not talk to anyone. Lilike feels the ice in her chest dissolve as soon as the village is behind her, and knows that she will never go back.
1922
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Keled Imanci is hungry. It’s been three days now, and as he sits in his chair, he can hear the gurgling and growling of his stomach trying to digest itself. He’s not sure how much longer he can hold out, although he remembers someone from the front who had been a doctor in his previous life, saying that, as long as you’ve got plenty of fluids, it’s possible to last indefinitely without food. How long? one of the younger men had asked eagerly. Weeks, the man had answered.
Weeks, Keled thinks now. How many – two? Three? Maybe longer? Surely he doesn’t need much food himself? It’s not as if he works up much of an appetite; it’s hard to exercise with only one leg. He used to be able to lean on his crutch and hobble his way around the house, but Francziska took that away from him months ago – it drove her mad, she said, to hear his constant banging about. It got on her last nerve, she said, the way she was always wondering what he would knock over next – maybe the milk jug, or the pie freshly baked and cooling on the window sill?
It’s June, now, and Francziska has put him in the chair that looks out over the front porch; if he cranes his neck, he can just about see his crutch, leaning against the steps. He knows that it would be useless to try and reach it. His remaining leg is weak and wasted through lack of use. Even if he got down on his front and dragged himself across the floor, Francziska is bound to hear him thumping before he even gets close. And even if he manages to reach the crutch, what then? She’ll just take it away from him again.
In the middle of the night, the pain in Keled’s vanished leg wakes him up, and he sits in the darkness listening to his stomach. He hears the clock in the kitchen strike three, but light spills out from under the bedroom door – she’s still awake, then. One of Keled’s buttocks has gone numb, and he rocks himself back and forth in his chair. She stopped helping him to bed when he stopped eating. She’d never said as much, but the first evening that he’d sat silently over dinner, staring down at the gulyás that sat, warm, steaming and untouched in front of him, ten o’clock had come, their normal bed time, then ten thirty, and before he realised what was happening, the door to the bedroom was closed and he was sitting alone in the dark.
Four years is a long time to look after a person, Keled knows, particularly when those four years bring about such changes. On the rare occasions that he catches sight of his reflection, he barely recognises what he sees – the grey, unruly hair, the flabby face, the pot belly – a far cry from the fit, handsome man he’d been in his twenties. In some ways, he could hardly blame Francziska. She’s only in her thirties, still attractive – she could aspire to so much more than this. But still …
He still doesn’t understand why he’s so sure of what she’s doing. He’s known for years that something’s been going on in the village, of course. Back when he still had friends to visit him, they would rarely make any outright accusations, but he understood the implications of what was never said, and he knows that it’s pride that has resulted in so many deaths; the inability to believe that one’s own wife could ever rise up against one.
Keled had never had that illusion, even back before the war – Francziska had always had spirit, always prepared to shout at him or even slap him if she felt herself slighted. Hers had always been a quick temper, though, and even as he watched the funerals go past his window, even as he knew something was going very, very wrong in Falucska, he felt safe. Francziska simply did not have the temperament for that sort of behaviour.
She was a terrible cook, though, mainly because she found it boring and was unable to spend more than fifteen minutes preparing a meal. Keled had never minded this before, and so when she had spent over an hour, five days ago now, preparing an elaborate gulyás, that’s when he had started to suspect. And when she had sat opposite him at the table, fair head bent, unable to meet his gaze, that’s when he had known. Keled doesn’t want to die, but he still loves Francziska, despite everything, and so he can’t bring himself to rage at her. Instead, he silen
tly puts down his spoon and refuses to eat, and before long Francziska’s entreaties die on her lips.
Keled blinks and turns his head away at the sudden light as the bedroom door opens. Francziska stands in the doorway, her cotton nightgown transparent against the lamplight, and Keled feels a wave of tenderness wash over him as he looks at the silhouette of her thickening thighs.
‘Are you still awake?’ she asks, the first words she has spoken to him in days, and then, in a rush: ‘Can I get you something to help you sleep? Some warm milk perhaps?’
Keled nods.
Five minutes later, he holds the mug in his hand. It has been five days since he drank anything other than water, and he can smell the thick, creamy scent – it makes his mouth water. As he lifts the mug to his lips, he catches sight of Franczsiska’s face and sees that she is crying, silently, tears slipping down her still face almost unnoticed. He drinks deeply, tastes something bitter on the back of his tongue, gulps it down, drinks again. The mug is drained. For a long moment, neither of them says anything; then Francziska wipes the tears roughly from her cheeks with the flat of her hand.
‘Well, then,’ she says, her voice thick. ‘Shall we go to bed?’
1925
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Lujza knows what they think of her, and sometimes she agrees with them. Even when she was a child she had always felt as if she was a random collection of thoughts and feelings and body parts, strung together with wire, and Péter’s death stretched that wire to breaking point. It’s not that she’s mad, she thinks. She’s known mad people; every small village has to have at least one, but Lujza hasn’t taken on that role yet. She still knows who she is, and where she is; she still knows how to behave. It’s just that things get tangled sometimes.
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