In Praise of Older Women

by Stephen Vizinczey

  And all this time I already knew the woman who was to be my first lover — had known her, in fact, ever since I came back from Austria. In our spacious baroque apartment building there lived also a middle-aged couple named Horvath, whom I met in the elevator soon after we moved in. They both approved of my interest in literature and encouraged me to borrow books from them; but since Mr. Horvath was away from home a great deal of the time, I actually used to get the books from his wife, Maya. She was an economist by training, but didn’t work, and was usually at home in the afternoons. She never invited me to sit down, but when I had decided what I wanted, she would hand me the books with some friendly remark. I was tremendously impressed by her casual way of referring to centuries as if they were people.

  “This is a bad century,” she once told me. “You shouldn’t read these modern novelists — they’re strictly inventors. Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy — they can tell you a lot about how people feel and think about things.”

  Thanks to her I became an enthusiastic fan of the nineteenth-century French and Russian novelists, and they taught me a great deal about the women I was to meet in my life. One thing I learned from them was that women were often attracted by a young man’s awkwardness and inexperience. Thus I finally brought myself to confess my ignorance to Mrs. Horvath. I decided to ask her advice about girls and the ways and means of seducing them.

  I ran into her one Saturday morning in the wildly decorated and high-arched entrance hall of our apartment building. The sun was beaming through the tall open doorway, lighting up the dust on the stones and in the air. She was taking some letters out of the mailbox.

  “You’re growing fast, András!” she said when she saw me. “You’ll soon be taller than I am!”

  She asked me to stand beside her, and indeed we were the same height. It struck me that Mrs. Horvath was shorter than many of the teenage girls I was going out with. That made me look at her. I didn’t see much of her though, for I was experiencing one of those swooning sensations and the cramps in my stomach which always overcame me whenever I stood close to a woman, even an unattractive stranger on a bus. I do recall noticing her delicate bony wrist and the colour of her dress, which was yellow. But I can see Maya clearly now, the way she always looked: a small, dark woman in her early forties, with a most peculiarly beautiful figure. She was thin and delicately boned, but had large breasts and hips — enormous in contrast to the rest of her body, yet still in pleasing harmony with it. Her body was Western dualism in the flesh: with her soft face, light lips and thin shoulders she appeared an elusive and sublime creature (perhaps that was why it had taken me so long to begin to wonder about her as a woman) but her affirmative breasts and buttocks manifested an earthbound voluptuousness.

  As she walked back to the elevator — that old and romantic elevator of carved wood and glass, where we used to bite into each other later on — she remarked with a trace of concern: “You’re growing too fast. Watch you don’t get consumption.”

  I was on my way out to an early and, as I well knew, pointless date. I watched her until the elevator doors closed, and for the first time I tried to imagine her nude. I began to wonder whether she loved her husband. They had no children, they had been married for more than ten years — and did I not know from reading novels what ten years of marriage could do to people?

  After supper I took back their books, which I hadn’t finished reading. Although it was a Saturday evening, she was alone.

  “I’m having some espresso, won’t you join me?” she asked. “I was just thinking this afternoon that it was rather rude of us, never inviting you to sit down before.”

  “I’m not complaining!” I protested happily.

  It was also the first time she remarked on her husband’s absence. “Béla had to go back to the office — they make him work too hard.”

  She led me into their big living room, which I had always liked: two walls were covered with books up to the ceiling, there were shaded lamps, small gold armchairs, and a great many little tables. It was a room furnished in the modern manner, but had the light elegance of antiques and soft colours. As we sat down to have coffee, at opposite ends of a long, low table, in those smallest possible armchairs, she asked me how I was getting along at school. I told her that school was fine but the girl I was going out with was driving me crazy with her giggling. Not really expecting an answer, I watched her covertly as she poured the coffee: the two top buttons of her yellow velvet housecoat were undone, but the material held together above her breasts.

  “Maybe she’s giggling because you make her nervous,” she said. “When I was young I used to titter a lot myself.”

  “You’re too intelligent for that,” I insisted. “You couldn’t possibly have giggled all the time.”

  “Well, I suppose I didn’t when we were kissing.”

  Perhaps if I hadn’t been reading Anna Karenina I wouldn’t have been struck by the fact that she was referring to such an intimate matter as kissing to a strange kid who came to borrow books. But as it was, I felt this small confidence must have meaning. I began to hope.

  “My girls giggle even when they’re kissing,” I lied, wanting her to realize that I had got at least that far with women.

  However, Maya was apparently more interested in the general problem. “I suppose it’s more unnerving to be a boy than a girl,” she conceded. “It’s the boys who have to make fools of themselves.”

  “That’s my trouble. I don’t like to make a fool of myself.”

  She looked at me in that detached but friendly manner of hers. Very unlike a mother, but perhaps like an intelligent and sympathetic social worker.

  I took a deep breath and plunged in. “I can’t get her to make love with me.” This was to be a casual statement, but my voice got shaky midway through the short sentence.

  “That often happens to grownup men, too. So you shouldn’t be too upset about it.” She seemed to be amused about something.

  “But I’ve never had a lover, so it’s worse for me,” I countered — bold and petulant. “My problem is, I don’t know women well enough. I don’t know what to say at the right moment. I suppose I should ask you. You’re a woman, you must know.”

  “You should talk with my husband. He might be able to give you some advice.”

  I decided that her husband had a mistress and that she knew it.

  “Why, does he have a girl friend?”

  Less amused, but with a greater interest in me (or so I felt), she gave me a meditative smile. From this conversation, I remember most vividly her face: I was struck by how expressive it was. One of my chief irritations at the time was the blankness of the faces of my young girl friends. As soon as they got nervous, their faces became tight, smooth masks: there were no lines on them to turn this way or that way, giving me a clue as to what they were thinking. But Maya’s face, with the fine lines of her forty some years, expressed all the shades of her thoughts and emotions. And while her ironic expression wasn’t the one I was hoping for, still it helped me to keep my balance on the edge of the small armchair.

  “Let’s see,” she said thoughtfully, “what could I tell you about girls? Something helpful.”

  “Just tell me what you think — why wouldn’t a girl want to go to bed with me?”

  “I suppose you’re too nervous.”

  For a while after that I sat silent, listening to my heart beating, loud as a bell.

  “But I don’t think you’ll have much trouble. You’re a handsome boy.”

  This soothing remark gave me enough strength to get up. I went around to her end of the low table to pour myself some more coffee, and crouched at her feet. Her face looking down at me was now curious: it was a kind of relaxed curiosity, but with a warm glint in the eye. I felt she was waiting for me to do something. I wanted to touch her leg, but my arm didn’t feel capable of reaching out. It was as if the muscles had suddenly lost contact with the nerve centre — I had the sensation that I was only wearing my limbs like my
clothes, that they didn’t really belong to my body. To overcome my stupid fear, I tried to remember all the bleeding and dead people I had seen on the road to Salzburg. I tried to think of Hiroshima, World War III, I tried to convince myself that compared with all the catastrophes of the world, this business was minuscule. At worst, she would say “Leave me alone,” or something like that. It would certainly be just a minor event. But all I could do was brush her ankle, as if by accident, then straighten up quickly.

  I asked for two other books and went home. There’ll be a next time, I told myself. She’s obviously attracted to me, otherwise she would have thrown me out.

  I went to bed exhausted and depressed.

  Next day I had a date with Agi, the girl with whom I was so furtively necking at the time. I took her to a movie, and told her I had fallen in love with someone else and thought we shouldn’t see each other any more. I broke the news while the feature was being screened, hoping that Agi wouldn’t argue and disturb our neighbours, and indeed she didn’t. Later on she even laughed at the celluloid jokes. This convinced me how little she cared for me. I was ashamed of the way I kept chasing after her for what she would not give. But as soon as we came out of the movie, while we were still in the foyer, she began giggling nervously.

  “I thought you were in love with me .”

  “Yes, but you said you wanted to stay a virgin.”

  “I said I’ll stay a virgin until I’m seventeen.”

  “That’s a lie!” I protested. “You said no such thing!”

  “Didn’t I?”

  We stood in the foyer beside some stills of the Next Attraction. Agi put her arm around me — she had never done that before, it had always been the other way around — and began to speak in a deep and sexy voice.

  “Only until I’m seventeen. And my birthday’s coming up next month.”

  I noticed then, and on many occasions since, that when you’re ready to break up with a girl she suddenly becomes affectionate, even if she doesn’t care for you at all.

  “You mean to tell me that you’re going to make love with me next month?” I asked Agi belligerently.

  “Oh, I didn’t say that. You can’t plan these things, can you?” Red-cheeked and chubby, she was giggling happily again.

  “Then what’s all this about your birthday? What do you get out of it, playing stupid games like this?”

  I left her right there in the foyer, and although that movie theatre was in the centre of the city, about three miles from our apartment house, I felt so exhilarated that I walked all the way home. There’s nothing like leaving behind a girl who’s been playing hot and cold with you, just so you will hang around with a desperate grin, attracted and miserable. There’s nothing like the glorious sensation of cutting the cord of your frustrations, walking off for good, free and independent. It may seem odd, but parting from that overweight and underdeveloped girl was one of my deepest emotional experiences. I had a physical sense of freedom: I felt strong and invincible. Possibly because I was hopeful of a beautiful, passionate and intelligent woman — though she was only a daydream then, really — I felt I was cutting myself loose not only from Agi, but from all pointless and joyless fooling, which until then I had thought I could not do without. Walking home from the movie that late Sunday afternoon — it was spring again, and I was going to be sixteen — I felt the master of my destiny.

  Two days later, when I took back the books I had borrowed, Mr. Horvath was at home: they were sitting in the living room, reading and listening to music. I exchanged the books, thanked them and left, cursing myself. Whatever I was hoping for, it was apparently all in my mind.

  Yet I went to their apartment to borrow books with increasing frequency: in fact, before long I was visiting them every second day. By this time I didn’t believe in God, but I used to pray desperately for her husband’s absence. My prayers were answered, apparently, and I found Maya alone every time but one during the next two weeks. I liked her better in a blouse and skirt than in her yellow housecoat: a two-piece costume gave greater emphasis to her fragile yet full figure. I thought she was the most sensuous woman in the world. She was always friendly but detached, and this manner of hers (which I’ve since observed in many educated women) drove me out into a stormy sea of hope and despair. She also developed a warm but ironic smile for me — she later told me she was wondering how long it would take me to approach her — which did nothing to clear away my doubts about her feelings. But the glint in her eyes was my beacon. Though it never seemed to draw nearer, it kept me drifting around the shores of her body. When I caught sight of her bare arm or looked at her skin uncovered by the open collar of a blouse (she had a golden-brown complexion, as if she had a suntan all the time), I thought to myself — now I will go to her and kiss her shoulder. I did not, alas, do anything more daring than continue to ask her advice about how I should go about seducing my date, pretending that I was still going out with that overweight juvenile. Of course everybody now seemed juvenile in comparison with Maya. I felt as though her soft musical voice were stroking me, like warm fingers, even when she said something that deeply embarrassed me.

  “You don’t have to pretend that you read books so quickly,” she told me one evening. “You can drop in any time you feel like talking.”

  Finally I thought up a clever line for approaching her. I decided I would let her know that I didn’t care for teenage beauties any more, and then would say: “Tell me, what should I do to get you to make love with me?” I planned not to look at her while saying this, and to look out the window if things got too bad. No matter how she reacted, at least I would know where I stood. I was just reading The Red and the Black for the second time, and I was sure that Julien Sorel himself wouldn’t have been able to contrive a more disarming approach. On my way to her apartment, whenever I took the stairs instead of the elevator, I used to stop on the landing where there was a mirror built into the wall and, turning to face my image in the glass, I used to say it out loud. “Tell me, what should I do to get you to make love with me?” I also practised a slightly self.mocking smile, which I thought would be most appropriate. I had no doubt of my success, yet I failed to speak my line, no matter how often I rehearsed it. My confidence evaporated as soon as she opened the door and smiled at me.

  After two weeks of this dreary display of cowardice and weakness, for which I despised myself, I decided to visit her right after school in the early afternoon, when Mr. Horvath could not possibly be at home. Determined to speak up this time, I climbed the stairs (they lived two flights up from us) and paused after every step to postpone the moment of the showdown. I was already picturing myself on my way back down, remorseful and bitter that I hadn’t had the guts to say anything. “And this ridiculous business,” I thought, “will go on forever — until she gets bored to death with me. And then I won’t even be able to visit her any more.” When I looked into the mirror, I saw myself trembling, and decided I was not up to going through with my line, not any more than the last time, or the time before that. I turned around and went back to our apartment.

  There’s a passage in The Red and the Black which was very much on my mind in those days. It’s about young Julien Sorel’s fear of approaching Madame de Ręnal, who has engaged him as tutor for her children. Julien decides that he will find out how Madame de Ręnal feels about him, by taking her hand as they sit beside each other in the garden — in the evening, after dark, when no one can see them. When I went back to our empty apartment that afternoon (my mother was still at the office), I took out the book and re-read the passage.

  The château clock had just struck a quarter to ten, and still he had not dared to act. Infuriated by his own cowardice, Julien said to himself: “The moment the clock strikes ten, I will do what I’ve promised myself all day I would do this evening, or I will go up to my room and blow my brains out.”

  After one last moment of suspense and anxiety, during which Julien was almost beside himself, the clock above his head struc
k ten. He felt each fatal stroke resounding in his chest with the force of a physical blow.

  Finally, as the last stroke of ten was still reverberating, he reached out and took Madame de Ręnal’s hand, which was instantly withdrawn. Julien, no longer quite knowing what he was doing, seized it once again. Although he himself was trembling with emotion, he was struck by its icy coldness. He squeezed it convulsively. She made one last effort to pull it away, but in the end she left her hand in his.

  After reading the words over and over again, I threw the book on the bed, slammed out of the apartment and took the elevator upstairs. “If I don’t have the guts this time,” I resolved, “I’ll go down to the Danube and drown myself.” I decided to postpone my suicide until it got dark, because passers-by might notice me in the daytime and fish me out. When I rang the Horvaths’ doorbell, I wasn’t quite sure whether I would be able to ask Maya my question, but I was certain that if I failed I would kill myself that very night.

  Six

  On Becoming a Lover

  … a springlike enchantment! And don’t think Tm talking about anything

  else but love in its sftictly bodily sense. Even so, it is the domain

  of a chosen few.

  — Alexander Kuprin

  I made myself at length master of the post of honour.

  — John Cleland

  The apartment doors in our building were about ten feet high, of thick wood covered with cracked white paint, and each had four huge concentric circles with a glass peephole at the centre. The glass and the yellow tin disc behind it glittered even in the semi-darkness of the corridor. As there was no sound from inside except the echo of the bell I had just rung, I began to stare at the shining glass and then to run my eyes around the protuberant circles, following them around and around until I became drunk with dizziness. After all this excitement and mental — I might even say spiritual — preparation, I’d come to see Maya when she wasn’t home. I leaned giddily against the button of the doorbell with my palm. It gave a loud, uneven and off-key ring, which was the perfect musical expression of my state of mind; I remember I enjoyed listening to it. If Maya was out, it certainly wasn’t my fault. I wouldn’t have to take that walk down to the Danube after all. Thus I asserted myself, pressing the bell without interruption, with the happy boldness which overcomes us when we face danger that doesn’t exist. I couldn’t possibly describe the effect that the sound of slow, soft footsteps from inside had upon me — except to say that never again in my life did I press a doorbell for more than a couple of seconds.