“I’d rather screw with you than with anyone else, but I have to save myself for my husband.” She wiped away her tears with her bra. “Marry me tomorrow and you can have me right in the magistrate’s office afterward. It isn’t that I’m timid or anything. I’d do it right in his office. And I mean it.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’d like that. We’d have all the lights turned on so you could watch the magistrate’s face.”
Mici laughed at that. But she couldn’t allow me to stay away from her too long: perhaps she wanted to prove that she could excite me even after I had seen through her — or possibly she just wanted to enjoy herself in her own way. If I went to sit by the desk with my back to her, she came up behind me and began to kiss the back of my neck, the tips of my ears. When I was sufficiently aroused, we would go back to the bed. She could be the flame of passion itself up to the moment of truth — and later again. To quote Abraham Cowley, she was the perfect outside woman .
In all her outward parts Love’s always seen But, oh, he never went within!
Instead, she offered to practice fellatio for me. I was too sceptical by then to believe her. “That’s just another of your sadistic little tricks — you’d bite it off.”
“If I was a sadist,” she countered, “I wouldn’t offer to relieve you, would I?”
“I’d rather you explained your religion to me. Once I wanted to be a priest, maybe I’ll understand it.”
“Well, you want me to do it for you or don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you.”
“I actually like it. I’ve done it for lots of boys. I like the taste of it. I’d have done it for you right away when we came in, if you’d thought of asking. I did it the first time when I was fifteen, with a guy who said he’d kill me if I didn’t give in. I had to do something to simmer him down. I didn’t like it then but now I enjoy it.”
Then, or later, we made love in the French way. We both came, but it didn’t help me, my headache only grew worse. Mici was completely satisfied. It was the culmination of her chaste dreams, I suppose: the mysterious immaculate conception.
Around seven in the morning I told her I was going to bed to sleep, and she could leave, stay or come to bed with me.
“I’ll sleep in the chair,” she decided.
I woke up around noon with the most painful headache of my life. I felt my brain moving inside my skull. Aspirins didn’t help, and I finally ended up in the Emergency Ward of a hospital, where they decided to give me a morphine injection. However, that was late in the evening of the same day. At the moment of waking I had a clouded vision of Mici sitting on top of my desk, swinging her legs back and forth.
“How do you feel?” she inquired.
“I’m so sick, I can hardly see you.”
“I feel lousy too. You should have used a little force at the right moment.” Nevertheless, she was willing to share the blame. “Ever since I woke up, I’ve been thinking of all the men I’ve missed. And all for that stupid future husband of mine whom I don’t even know yet.”
“Virtue is its own reward, Mici.”
“Don’t you make fun of me!” she complained bitterly.
How could I? In the seed of my headache was the discovery that, confronted with a naked woman, I had neither will nor sense.
“Just watch me after I get married. I’ll sleep with every man who asks me, I won’t care even if he’s a hunchback.”
This is a word-for-word translation of her statement. I’m sure I haven’t recalled accurately everything she said that night, but this declaration was too striking ever to fade from my memory. Especially since I believe she subsequently made good her resolution.
She dropped out of the College of Theatre and Film Arts about a year later. To augment her scholarship she had taken on a singing job in a nightclub, and there she became acquainted with, of all people, the military attaché of a Southern European NATO power. I have no way of knowing how much truth there was in all the rumours, but it was a fact that after her marriage to this dignitary she could be seen almost nightly with various Communist and Western diplomats at the various bars of the better hotels. Her friendship actually became a Cold War issue, because she was suspected by both sides of giving information to the enemy. One of my classmates, whose father was a deputy minister in the Department of External Affairs, told us that for a while Mici was trailed on her tęte-ŕ-tętes by both Soviet and NATO Intelligence. The diplomat was recalled by his government and Mici left Hungary with him, a few months after their wedding.
As for the turns of my own life after our unforgettable night together, I never again tried to deflower a virgin. Nor did I ever consider marrying one. Whatever else I’ve done, I’ve stayed clear of pure girls. They’re fearful of the consequences, I’m terrified of the preliminaries.
Twelve
On Mothers of Little Children
“Come, come,” said Tom’s father, “at your time of life,
There is no longer excuse for thus playing the rake.
It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife!”
“Why, so it is, Father. Whose wife shall I take?”
— Thomas Moore
The chains of matrimony are so heavy that it takes
two to carry them — sometimes three.
— Alexandre Dumas
During the remainder of my student years I had many frustrating experiences, but few with women. I owe my good luck to the dear wives who shared with me their matrimonial joys and sorrows. Our romances were untroubled and unclouded, there was no needling, nagging or quarrelling — after all, what would be the point of extra-marital affairs if they were the same as marriage? Moreover, I didn’t have to pay for their love the dues of social responsibility, at a time when I still had to study, help my mother and busy myself with all the indispensable activities of any young man. They saved me from the tragic mistake of marrying too soon, although I made marriage proposals to several of them. They also saved me from the excesses of passion: as a rule, wives are too busy to wear out their lovers. I could offer them only temporary distraction from their domestic ills, but it was joy without fear of retribution. They could embrace me without bringing upon themselves the obligation of having to wash my socks. Thus we spent our free time in happy adulteries.
Yet what stays in my memory most clearly is the misery of some of those wives, especially the ones with small children. As a rule, the mother of little children is going through the worst crisis of her life. She has had two or three pregnancies in quick succession, the periods of her husband’s first extra-marital affairs. His cooling ardour only magnifies her anxieties about her figure and her age, as her dream-world of eternal love and girlhood falls to pieces. She is faced with the impossible task of winning back her husband at the very time when she is accosted with another series of new worries and duties in looking after her little people. While she’s teaching them to walk, she herself is trying to find her balance on a slippery terrain of new reality. Will her husband stay away again tonight? Is she no longer desirable? No one needs the reassurance of a new romance as much as she does, yet the bitter irony of her predicament is that just when her husband is ignoring her, possible lovers do the same: men tend to see her as a mother. There she is, more of a woman than ever, and she is supposed to care only about the children and the household.
Once, it is true, I knew a mother who had nothing to complain about: she had an adoring and loveable husband, five handsome and good-natured boys, and she enjoyed possessing and looking after all of them, keeping a spotless and cheerful home. Yet she also had innumerable lovers, apparently having no graver problem than a miraculous excess of energy. I also knew mothers whose miseries were so overwhelming that the sedative of an affair was no use to them. Nusi was such a woman — though putting Nusi in any category is not quite fair.
I met, or rather found, her children first. I was out for a stroll on St. Margit Island (a pleasant and popular park on the Danube, between Pe
st and Buda) and saw them wandering aimlessly among the crowd: a grave-looking boy of five or so, dragging along by the hand a smaller girl, who was crying. I tried to find out what the trouble was. The boy wouldn’t talk to a stranger, but the little girl finally told me that their mother had gone to the john and had told them to wait outside, and her brother had got bored and had dragged her away. They had been looking for their mother for more than an hour, and so far none of the passers-by had paid any attention to them. As they stood a good chance of continuing to miss their mother if they kept moving around, I decided to anchor them at a refreshment stand by the bridge, which she would have to pass before leaving the island. It was a hot evening in mid-July, and when I offered the children an iced raspberry soda they consented to join me. The cold drink loosened the boy’s tongue and he asked for a sandwich.
They both acted as if they’d never seen food before. They were in fact pale and undernourished-looking, and their cheap summer clothes, though clean and tidy, showed signs of many mendings. However, they both had magnificent eyes: large, deep and sparkling.
“Are you a drunk?” asked the boy, between sandwiches.
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re just a boy too, eh?”
“I guess you could say I’m a grownup.”
“You’re lying!” he countered scornfully. “Grownups are drunks.”
“How do you know?”
“My dad’s a drunk.”
“Is your mother a drunk too?” I asked.
“No, but she’s just a woman.
“Slum kids,” remarked the kind-looking white-haired lady behind the counter, who had overheard our conversation. “They’re pretty things now but they’ll turn out monsters, you’ll see.”
As the children had had all the sandwiches and soft drinks they could take, I led them a few steps away from the stand. The girl, Nusi, hung onto my hand, but her brother Joska began to wander off and I had to run after him several times.
“He always walks away,” commented his sister. “It’s a mania* with him.”
* Mania is one of the most common Hungarian words, for obvious reasons.
“This time you stay put,” I finally told him, “or I’ll tear off your ears.”
Joska shrugged his shoulders, resigned and unimpressed. “Everybody beats me up.”
“Who beats you up?”
“Dad and everybody.”
“Does your mother beat you?”
“No, she doesn’t and Grandma doesn’t — but they’re just women.”
I was beginning to feel sorry for both the boy and his mother. “Well, I’m a man and I don’t beat you. As a matter of fact, I’ve never beaten anybody. I just wanted to scare you, so you’d stay here.”
“You’re lying,” he announced as before.
“No, I’m not. I’ve really never beaten anybody.”
“Then you were lying when you said you’d tear my ears off.”
“Yes, that’s when I was lying.”
“You mean you’ve never never beaten up anybody?”
“Never,” I insisted.
The boy thought this over for a while, sizing me up with his suspicious eyes. “Are you a Jew?”
“No, why?”
“Dad says Jews are peculiar.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know.”
Joska accepted this, too, with an air of resignation. “Maybe he doesn’t. Grandma says Dad’s just shooting off his mouth.”
I also learned that their father was a mechanic, working in a factory, that they had not only a room but a kitchen too, and that Dad often spent the night next door where there was a girl who painted herself — even her hair. Dad said that she was prettier than Mother, who, as the boy repeatedly assured me, was “just a woman.”
When Mother finally turned up, she was a surprise. She came running toward the refreshment stand, wearing a faded blue cotton jumper without a blouse, and I thought at first that she was just another thirsty girl. Though her children were fair, Nusi was a brunette, and her thick, dark hair fell loosely to her bare shoulders. Her eyes were as large and black as her children’s and flickered for a brief second as she thanked me for keeping the kids company. A strong, sexy woman, I thought. Only her cheekbones showed that she wasn’t eating enough either. The children’s news about sandwiches and soft drinks upset her.
“You shouldn’t have bought them anything even if they asked for it,” she said defensively. “You ought to know that children can’t incur debts. But I guess you expect to be paid for it all, just the same.”
Suspiciousness was obviously a family trait. I left the island with them and — as the boy was dragging his sister ahead of us — I told Nusi that I found her fascinating. She reacted with unexpected violence.
“Christ! You must be hard up if you notice a wreck like me!”
“I hate women who deprecate their looks. It’s phony.”
“There’s certainly nothing fascinating about me,” she said somewhat more calmly. Then she flared up again: “What are you, a pervert?”
“No, I just like girls with good breasts.”
“So you loaf around parks to pick up women, eh?”
“I don’t go anywhere to pick up women, I’m too busy. But I’ll try my luck anywhere if I see someone I’d like to know.”
She turned her eyes toward me for a second. There were people getting between us and the children: we had to hurry to catch up with them. We reached the bridge that led us to Pest, and we were walking over the river when she returned to the subject.
“So you’re one of those, eh?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “I’m one of those.”
Then again, with cold suspicion: “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a student, I live on scholarships.”
“That’s a nice job.” Still, she wouldn’t trust me enough to give me a date. “Why should I? I’m sure you’d change your mind and not show up.” She wanted to check her face in a mirror and looked for one in her purse, without success. “I’ll tell you what,” she finally said, “I won’t give you a date but you can come home with us. I’ll leave the kids with my mother and then you can take me to a movie or something.”
That was more than I’d asked for. “Wouldn’t your husband object?” So far we hadn’t talked about him. I was worried that he might take me for a Jew and try to beat me up.
No such possibility worried Nusi. “He’ll be out.”
“How about your mother?”
“Oh, she always says why don’t I ever go out and have a good time. But I don’t like to go out by myself and I can’t stand women friends.”
“Do you people all have a thing about women? Your son calls you ‘just a woman.’”
“That’s his father’s expression.”
Nusi had a strong and thrusting jaw, I noticed as I walked beside her. We took the long streetcar ride beyond the city to a hell of factories, slums, smog and thick layers of soot. The buildings, the billboards, even the panes of the windows were black. They lived in a five-storey building, a square, prison-like structure, and we climbed a dark, dilapidated staircase, passing by several open doors leading straight into dark kitchens. The door next to their third-floor apartment was closed. I hoped it was the painted girl’s and that Nusi’s husband was either inside there or out of the building. As we stepped into the kitchen, I saw a sight I’ll never forget. It had no window, and the walls were covered with open shelves holding dishes, pots, food, clothes and sheets. The shelves apparently served as cupboards for all the small items of the household. Besides the stove and the kitchen table with five wooden stools, there was an old armchair (the living room) and in one corner a bed, where Nusi’s mother slept, as I was to learn. In another corner there was a tub set against the wall (the bathroom). The communal toilet was at the end of the corridor on each floor. As I sat in the armchair I could see into the bedroom: two beds and the edge of a clothes cupboard. Everything was meticulously tidy and as clean as possible. Nusi�
�s husband was out.
“Mother,” Nusi introduced me primly, “this gentleman found the kids for me at St. Margit’s, so I invited him for a cup of tea.”
The grandmother looked much like Nusi, except older and stronger. She seemed upset. “I’d have made dinner for one more, but I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Actually, I wanted to ask Nusi out for dinner, if I may.”
“Why, of course, if she wants to,” nodded the old woman with relief.
“Well, if we’re going out for dinner, I might as well put on a blouse,” Nusi said, disappearing into the bedroom. She closed the door and I heard her turn the key in the lock, which struck me as excessive modesty.
“When will Dad be home?” asked little Nusi.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be home to eat.”
I tried to say that I didn’t want him to miss his wife (it was a Saturday evening) and maybe we should go out some other time, but the old lady interrupted. “Don’t worry, Joska’ll be glad to eat the extra portion.”
I looked at the boy, but he shook his head. “She means Dad.”
Nusi came back with a pretty white blouse under her blue jumper, and we left immediately. I was anxious to get out of that kitchen, though later I got used to it and even used to remember it with nostalgia, when I no longer went there.
Back in the city, we went into a quiet restaurant and asked for chicken paprikas and candles to light. While we waited for our order, Nusi mused over my good luck in being able to earn money by doing what I liked, studying. I asked her what she would do if she could make a living by doing what she liked.
“Look after a man who loved me and raise my kids.” When the candles arrived, and the waiter placed them so that they made a glowing frame for her pale face and huge dark eyes, she added fiercely, “But I hate daydreaming, nothing ever comes of it.” When we were served, she abandoned herself to the food and the task of interrogating me. Struggling with the slippery chicken paprikas, I had to answer the question (she went straight to the heart of every issue) of how long I went out with a woman.
In Praise of Older Women Page 11
