Parallel Stories: A Novel (56 page)

It may be a deep cut.

From behind her finger, which she kept sucking, Mária Szapáry cried along with the other two, while shaking with laughter or weeping.

Oh, my entire sixteenth century.

Her mouth filled with the taste of blood. She slid down the door until her buttocks reached the floor. She was clowning for them because she was a little ashamed of her clumsiness and the condition of her kitchen.

My entire sixteenth century is gone.

There she was, legs spread on the kitchen’s checkered tiles, in the midst of the shards that were all that was left of her majolica dishes, true museum-quality dishes from an Urbino workshop, and it was hard to believe that this was, once again, the end of the story.

It wasn’t her finger that hurt.

When someone rang the bell outside, once, briefly, she was thinking that this really wasn’t an act of fate, and it wouldn’t be worth her while to resist it.

Anybody heard the elevator, she asked, and was amazed that she hadn’t heard something she should have.

I haven’t.

No, nothing.

Could she have walked up.

It seems that way.

Should I open it, if you’d like me to, asked Dobrovan politely.

I’ll get it, came Mária’s firm response, but she was in no hurry.

She wouldn’t have trusted them with opening the door; she needed this opportunity.

That evening, Irma Szemz
ő
had made it up the stairs very slowly indeed.

She stopped on all the landings, her thoughts repeatedly carrying her away, or more precisely, for long moments she forgot where she was or where she was going. The higher she climbed, the warmer she felt, even though the gallery windows facing the inner courtyard were wide open. The white marble walls were mottled with yellow- and blue-grained pink spots, and there was silence and cleanliness. Today she hadn’t wanted to look at the concierge’s face, swollen by alcohol—and not just because he disgusted her in general. Ultimately, she was one of those people who, though unwilling to be absolutely honest, battle with themselves to become dishonest since they lack the talent for it. Every evening in the spacious, mirrored elevator cabin, Mrs. Szemz
ő
would impassively observe the uncertain, soft, slightly flat profile of this man struggling with melancholy; his eternally bowed head, his short, retracted neck, his strong, well-built body which nevertheless projected weakness and from which the sour odor of mental fustiness emanated; when he spoke, the emanation was overwhelmed by his powerfully foul breath.

She observed the essence of his neurosis, scanned his constitution, which accommodated a strangeness bordering on madness, where, one might say, neurosis found an appropriate breeding ground.

Each time she had to tell herself that he was a borderline case, she could not help him.

In 1944, Varga had helped Mária Szapáry, which had meant taking considerable risks. However, he loathed himself for this as if for some weakness.

He hadn’t done it out of conviction.

He had nothing but contempt for the suspicious characters that turned up at Countess Szapáry’s place: wandering Jews, communists and socialists forced to live and work underground, various kinds of deserters; he thought of them as nothing but riffraff. The reason Hungarians are always divided is that they always have these kinds of people among them. People who, like weeds, should be extirpated down to the last one. Varga was an advocate of a firm hand, strict social order, and Hungarian unity. The Germans, their manners smoothed by their racial brutality, and the screeching Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross men, impressed him. After all, they both meant to do only good: to make permanent order at last in this Jewish whorehouse. He himself was a member of a secret patriotic organization that has gone on operating to this day. But Countess Szapáry simply paid him off, bribed him, overwhelmed him, would not let him choose another way. That was his weakness—money and aristocrats of various ranks and orders who in his eyes, after all, did symbolize everything Hungarian, and against whom he felt defenseless.

He couldn’t very well denounce them to the authorities when at the same time, out of greed, he was helping them save the riffraff.

Two apartments opened from the gallery on each floor, on the top floor only one. Here, stepping out of the elevator, one found oneself in a space made coolly brilliant by marble all around, illuminated during the day by natural light coming through the loophole-like windows; opposite the elevator, one faced a heavy oak door. From a steel door behind the elevator one could, on an uncomfortable steel ladder, climb up to the elevator housing and gain the flat rooftop, but very few people knew about this.

In her slightly damp two-piece pearl-colored dress, Mrs. Szemz
ő
waited patiently at the oak door, on her face a wry smile that she had prepared for Mária. She had to breathe more deeply. She wanted to tell her about it right away, the whole thing. When she heard no footsteps within the apartment, she opened her handbag, took out the clean white batiste handkerchief, and blotted up the invisible pearls of her perspiration above her lips.

So what now, what should we do, asked Dobrovan in the apartment.

We haven’t decided.

Of course we have. I’ve decided, replied Mária Szapáry. Adroitly pressing one good finger on the injured one, she made a fist with which she wiped the tears from her eyes, and scrambled to her feet.

Oh, my, she moaned as she straightened up, words addressed to the other women as a new excuse and explanation, my ankles swelled up again. The most natural thing is for us to be quiet about it. We simply won’t tell her anything. As for the secondhand-art dealer, just leave her to me, she said as she left the kitchen.

I’ll call on her, I’ll take care of it, don’t worry, at least I’ll have a chance to avenge everything properly.

In the next few minutes, they forgot what they were supposed to be quiet about.

The feminine bedlam took on the air of a preparation for carnival in anticipation of Irma Arnót’s arrival.

She observed them suspiciously, with a bit of reserve, as she put down her hat and handbag and slowly pulled off her lace gloves and they rushed out into the hallway, interrupting one another with huge explosions of giggling and laughter, to explain about the great catastrophe and whose negligence had caused it. Pushing and shoving, they went back into the apartment. One could not miss the great exaggerations; they were all too talkative, too loud, too aggressive for some reason; their bones were much too large; they looked like awful human robots.

They headed for the foyer and then, led by Dobrovan, returned to the kitchen to clean up the debris.

Somewhere behind Eskü Square there’s a porcelain expert, he deals with just such cases.

And what should I do, take this mess to him in sacks. I couldn’t look at patched-up dishes.

Come, come, Margit Huber protested quickly, how can you say that, Dobrovan, that place is at the beginning of Veres Pálné Street, almost at the corner of Kúria Street.

Throw it all out and forget about it, that’s what I should do, wailed Mária Szapáry.

That’s why I’m telling you, behind Eskü Square.

It’d be more accurate to say behind the Tiszti Casino.

Why are you quibbling.

They slowly picked up everything, quieted down, swept up what they could, and all without quarreling; an ominous peace reigned in the kitchen.

I’m so sorry, I really am, Irma kept saying quietly as she helped Mária.

And while Mária amused herself finding still more pieces of china almost everywhere in the kitchen, Margit and Bella took up positions by the sink and began to wash glasses.

Maybe one day I’ll tell you, Irmuska, why those few pieces meant so much to me.

If we’re going to make some for Elisa too, called Margit Huber from the sink, would you get another glass, Mária.

But only irrepressible jealousy sounded real in this request, at least in retrospect—the wish to keep the two women from being together while picking up the shards.

Bella added a little giggle to the remark, though she was not a party to Médi’s jealousy game.

Watch it, I’m telling you, she said, as if to exacerbate Margit Huber’s hurt, there won’t be anywhere to put those broken dishes in all this mess.

And indeed, Mária had to make excuses about the overflowing trash can. What should she do if she forgot to put it out every night.

What do you mean what should you do.

Just don’t forget. It’s that simple.

Anyway, wait a bit with the fizz until I ask Elisa if she wants any.

But first she had to wash off her injured finger in the bathroom and Irma had to bandage it.

Silently they sat on the edge of the tub, not even looking at each other. Behind them the faucet dripped persistently; and since it had been dripping for months, it had left a yellowish streak on the tub’s enamel. This wasn’t rust but a sulfurous deposit from thermal water—the most ordinary brimstone, usually considered the symbol of hell. Twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, Újlipótváros received its hot water from the thermal springs on Margit Island, and not only did this water leave visible traces but a smell reminiscent of rotten eggs pervaded apartments and stairwells.

Whenever they could, they stole brief, quiet moments like these for themselves, though they also feared them. As if something irreversible might happen, and it did happen, but nevertheless for decades they had been unable to give it up.

The relationship among the four friends had its own etiquette, and whether they liked it or not, it hadn’t changed since their school days. Not even during the long separations. Perhaps the deepest affection existed between Mária and Irma, though they observed each other from a great distance, not with aversion but, on the contrary, with enduring curiosity. They found in each other or in each other’s behavior something extremely engaging, so they did not deny their affection, yet, because it grew beyond normal social boundaries in their worlds, they could not reduce the distance between them.

During the summer after their graduation, they all went abroad, and when, after more than a decade’s absence, they all began to return to Budapest, with children, or divorced, or widowed, they could see in one another frightening changes in every pore; but this made no difference. Irma came back from Vienna with her husband and sturdy little twin boys; she was soon followed by Mária from Rome; and a year later, from Paris, also with a little boy, Bella showed up in a very poor state of mind; last to arrive, from Berlin, was Margit.

If she has changed so much, then I must show some change too. They had become insufferably self-willed, deceived, cheated on, abandoned, and very disillusioned women, but never, not with a single deliberate word would they admit their disillusionment to one another or to anyone else. Only to themselves. And this sufficed for them to notice everything about one another, to make fun of one another and be aware of their profoundly guarded, amusing similarities.

Nothing could undo the security of their independence.

They informed one another of the shifting elements of their lives only with casually dropped words or hints, and then stepped back—somewhat reluctantly, but acceding to liberal demands about keeping a distance—into an emotional dimension where nothing had changed.

Mária and Margit naturally quarreled constantly, argued, broke off, made up, just as they had done when they were girls; the relationship between Izabella and Irma, despite their mutual and nonbinding goodwill, remained formal, that always being its defining trait, since without the characteristically bourgeois formalities the relationship would have been impossible to make enjoyable or keep alive. Inanity, a value that served only itself, was something they both enjoyed. These bourgeois formalities were precisely what annoyed Mária most. Her upbringing allowed her to be eccentric, purposely encouraged her sarcasm, and gave her no need to conceal the supreme powers of her personality. She was crude. She thought Izabella was a dizzy hen, a silly goose, her politeness unfathomable, her sentimentality tedious, though she was also a vocal admirer of her exceptional talents.

Irma slightly opened the wound in the pad of Mária’s finger and peered at it closely, amazed.

You pressed it together quite cleverly, she said gently and quietly.

I don’t know why, but lately blood disgusts me more and more. Just the very thought that it is constantly flowing and beating inside you.

Yes, a quite unpleasant feeling. Irma looked up from the wound.

She loved the coarse and ill-proportioned features of this face so much that occasionally love stopped her breath.

Just now, when I really sucked it hard, I thought I’d throw up.

Something you don’t know what to do about, alone.

What do you mean I don’t know, asked Mária, surprised, like someone touched at a sensitive point. How do you know what I know or don’t know.

It’s not exceptional, I mean. You are not alone in feeling that way.

Even though it’s not like me, I mean feeling the disgust, aversion. At least I hope it’s not like me, she continued, sounding uncertain.

For example, I used to like roast blood on larded onions. Now I can’t even look at it.

We had a cook who added a little green pepper and sliced apple to the onions. Or pheasant blood with cranberries, heavenly, I must say.

Luckily, I’ve never had any. In a normal Jewish family one doesn’t prepare something like that. It sounds quite brutal.

And when I think how I went hunting regularly, not to mention that one keeps menstruating regularly as long as one can.

If not irregularly.

Stay a little while.

This isn’t going to bleed any more, and you probably have some healing powder in your medicine cabinet. We’ll just disinfect it, that’s all. Maybe I haven’t told you this, but in the camps we simply stopped menstruating.

One doesn’t need a camp for that, Irmuska. I left off that pretty habit of mine in the Majestic.