Portraits of a Marriage (30 page)

I made mistakes too. We watched each other like tigers and trainers in the middle of a performance. Never, not once, did I utter a single word of criticism of Judit; I never asked her to wear something else, to behave or speak in the least differently. I never “educated” her. I received her soul in its maturity, as a gift, the way it was created, and then as whatever life had made of it. I didn’t expect anything out of the usual of her. It wasn’t a “lady” or a glittering socialite I yearned for. I hoped for a woman with whom I might share a lonely life. But she was terrifyingly ambitious, as ambitious as a young, newly appointed officer in the army wanting to conquer and take occupation of the world, one who spends all day mugging up, practicing, training for the part. She wasn’t scared of anything or anyone. There was only one thing she feared: her own hypersensitivity to offense, some mortal wound to the pride glowing in the depths of her life, her very being. That is what she was afraid of, and everything she did by word, silence, and deed was a form of defense against it. It was something I could never understand.

So we dined at the restaurant. What did we talk about? Well, London, naturally. How did the conversation go? She answered questions exactly as though she were sitting an exam. The answers came pat: “London is a great city. It has a vast population. The poor cook with mutton fat. The English think and act with deliberation.” And then, among the clichés, suddenly something to the point: “The English know it is necessary to survive.” When she said this—it might have been the first personal observation she had ever addressed to me, the first truth she had discovered for herself and revealed for my benefit—the light in her eyes suddenly flashed, then went out. It was as if she couldn’t contain herself and had voiced an opinion, but immediately regretted it, as if she had given something of herself away, unveiled a secret, demonstrated that she too had a view of the world, of herself, of me, and of the English, and that she had been forced to speak out about it. People don’t talk about their experiences in the presence of enemies. I sensed
something strange in that moment, but I couldn’t have said what … She fell silent for a moment. Then she was back with the clichés again. The exam clock was running.
“Yes, the English have a sense of humor. They love Dickens and music.”
Judit had read
David Copperfield
. And what else? She answered calmly. She had brought along the latest Huxley as travel reading.
Point Counter Point
was the title. She was reading it on the way and was still reading it … she could lend it to me if I liked.

So that’s how things were. There I was, sitting with Judit Áldozó in a city restaurant, eating crab and asparagus with a heavy red wine, chatting about the latest novel by Aldous Huxley. Her handkerchief, open before me on the table, had a heavy, pleasant scent. I asked her what scent she used. She mentioned the name of an American beauty product, her English pronunciation perfect. She said she preferred American scents to French ones because the French were a little overpowering. I gave her a skeptical look. Was she teasing me? But no, it was no joke, it was serious, that was her honest opinion. She gave her opinion the way some people pin down facts based on experience. I didn’t dare ask her how a Transdanubian peasant girl came by such experiences, how she could be so certain that French perfumes were “a little overpowering.” And in any case, what else did she do in London apart from being a maid in an English family home? I knew London a little, and had some experience of English households, and I knew that being a servant in London was not a lofty station. Judit looked steadily back at me, expecting more questions. And even then, on that first evening, I noticed something I was to keep noticing right to the end, every evening.

You won’t guess what it was.

She would accept any suggestion I made. Shall we go here? Shall we go there? She simply nodded: Fine, let’s go. But then, once we were in the car and on our way, she would quietly say: “But maybe we could …” And we would finish up not at the restaurant I had chosen but at another that was by no means better or finer. And if I chose something from the menu, they would bring the dish, she’d taste it, push it aside, and say, “Maybe it might be better if …” And then the willing waiters would bring some other dish and different wine. She always wanted something different. And she always wanted to go somewhere different. I thought it might be fear and confusion that caused these sudden changes of mind, but slowly I realized the true problem was that the sweet was
never sweet enough, the salty never salty enough for her. She would suddenly push aside the roast chicken roasted by the best chef in the best restaurant and declare quietly but firmly, “It’s not quite right. Bring me something else.” Cream wasn’t creamy enough for her, the coffee never strong enough, never, at any place.

I thought she might be capricious. Never mind, just observe and keep observing, I thought. So I observed. I even found it amusing, this caprice, this volatility of hers.

But then I discovered the volatility had deep roots, so deep I could shed no light on it. Poverty was somewhere at the bottom of it. Judit was struggling with her memories. I was sometimes moved by the sheer intensity of her desire to be stronger, more disciplined than her memories. But now that the barriers were down, the barriers raised between her and the world by poverty, some tide had burst its banks in her. It wasn’t that she wanted more, something better and more glamorous than what I offered: what she wanted was something
different
. Do you understand? She was like an invalid who imagines she might feel better in another room; or that there might be a different doctor, wiser than her own, that she might consult; or that there was a medicine on sale somewhere that was more potent, more effective than the medicines she had so far taken. It was always something
else
she wanted: always something different. Occasionally she apologized for it. She didn’t really say anything, just looked at me. It was at these moments I felt closest to her proud, wounded soul. She would look at me all but helplessly, as if she could not help her poverty and her memories. And then a voice started speaking inside her that was louder than this silent pleading. The voice wanted something else. It started straightaway, that first evening.

What did she want? Revenge and all that goes with it. In what form? She herself did not know. She probably hadn’t worked out her battle plan. It does no good shaking the foundations of the sagging, sunken, inert structure into which people are born. Occasionally there is an accident, some particular human contact, some chance encounter or event: we wake, take a look round the world, and are suddenly surprised to find we have no home to go to. We don’t even know what to look for or how to limit our desires; what it is we actually desire. We can no longer see the horizon: the image we had has been blown out of shape. All at once nothing satisfies, nothing will do. Yesterday we were
happy with a bar of chocolate, a brightly colored ribbon, or any simple pleasure such as sunshine or health. We drank clean water from a damaged old cup, happy that the water was cold and quenched our thirst. In the evening we might have leaned on the rails of a corridor in the tenement courtyard listening in the dark to music playing in the distance and been almost happy. We might have looked at a flower and smiled. The world offered wonderful satisfactions now and then. But then comes an accident and the soul loses its inner peace.

What did Judit do? She instigated, in her own fashion, a kind of class war against me.

Maybe it was not against me, not personally. It was just that I embodied a world for which she felt an infinite longing, a world she so desperately, so feverishly envied, and tried, in a cold fury, with such unfortunate results, to enter, so that when at last she found a repository for these longings—that is to say, in me—she quite lost her equilibrium. At first she was anxious and fussy. She sent back her food. Then, to my quiet surprise, she started changing hotel rooms. She exchanged the little en suite apartment overlooking the park for a bigger one that had a view of the river, with separate bedroom and dressing room. “It’s quieter here,” she said, like a fussy traveling diva. I listened to her complaints with a smile. Naturally I paid her bills and said nothing. I gave her a checkbook and asked her to pay for everything herself. After only three months, the bank informed me—with surprising speed—that the sizable account I had opened for Judit had nothing left in it. How, and on what, had she spent the money, which for her would have represented a substantial sum, a small fortune? It wasn’t a question I ever addressed to her, of course: quite likely she would not have been able to answer. The harness of her soul had snapped, that’s all. Her wardrobe overflowed with expensive clothes selected, surprisingly, according to the best of taste, mostly entirely superfluous feminine fripperies. She shopped in the best stores, without a thought, paying by check: hats, dresses, furs, fashionable novelties, first smaller, then bigger items of jewelry. She craved these things with an extraordinary hunger, a hunger somewhat unnatural in her position. Most of the things she never wore. She was like a starved creature set in front of a laid table, who doesn’t care that nature very quickly sets a limit to our desires or that surfeit might lead to sickness.

Nothing was good enough. Nothing was colorful, sweet, salty, hot, or cold enough. Her soul was excitedly seeking something to quench her thirst as quickly as possible. She spent the morning exploring the most expensive central stores, desperately concerned that the shop not overcharge her for the item she desired. What item? Another fur? Another colorful, fashionable trinket of the season? Yes, all this; and then there were the impossible, crazy things, things bordering on the outrageous. One day I was forced to say something. It stopped her dead in her tracks, like someone arrested in the middle of a riot. She looked around as if waking from a dream and began to cry. She cried for days. Then, for a long time, she bought nothing.

But then she went through another strange period of silence, as if looking far into the distance, remembering. I was moved by her silence. She was with me whenever I wanted her. She was like a thief caught in the act: ashamed, obedient, on her best behavior. I decided not to mention it again, not to warn her. Money was of little importance, after all: I was still rich at the time, and knew by then that it was pointless saving money if by doing so I lost mysef. Because I too lived dangerously in those months; all three of us did, Judit, my wife, and I. We were in mortal danger in the strict sense of the word: everything to which we had clung had collapsed; our lives had turned into a floodplain, a tide of dirty water washing everywhere, drowning our memories, our security, our homes. Now and then we could raise our heads above the water and look around for the nearest shore. But there was no shore to be seen anywhere. Everything has to adopt a form at some stage, even rebellion. Eventually everything is reduced to cliché. Of what value was money in this quiet earthquake? Let the money be washed away with the tide along with the rest; with calm, with desire, with self-respect, with vanity. There comes a day when everything suddenly seems very simple. So I said nothing to Judit, but let her do whatever she wanted. I gave her everything, just like that. For a while she resisted the shopping plague, moderated it, stared at me in panic, exactly like a servant accused of greed, infidelity, or extravagance; and then she set out on her mad dash round town again: dressmakers, antiques dealers, fashion stores.

Hang on a minute, I’ve got a headache. Waiter, a glass of water! And an aspirin. Thank you.

Talking about it now, I feel the same dizziness as I did then. It was
like leaning over a huge waterfall. And there is no safety barrier anywhere, not a hand to reach out for. Only the water roaring and the call of the deep, and you suddenly feel that profound, frightening urge … suddenly you know you need every ounce of your strength to turn around and walk away again. You can still do something. You just have to take a step backwards, to say a word, to write a letter, to do something. Down there waits the roaring water. That’s how it feels.

That’s just what I was thinking of when I got this headache. Today I can see all this clearly, at least a few moments of it. For example, when she told me that she had a lover in London, a Greek teacher of singing. That was near the end, once she had decided to come home. But first she wanted clothes: shoes, decent luggage. The Greek music master bought her everything she wanted. Then she came home, took a room near the station, picked up the phone, and rang me, saying “Hello” in English, as though she had forgotten Hungarian.

What effect did this news have on me? I’d like to be honest with you, so I am trying to recall, to look into my heart, to check my recollection, and can only answer in a single word: none. It is hard for people to understand the true significance of actions and relationships. Someone dies, for example. You don’t understand it. The person is already buried, and you still feel nothing. You go about in mourning with a ceremonial solemnity, you look straight ahead of you when you are in society, but then, when you’re at home, alone, you yawn, you scratch your nose, you read a book and think of everything except the dead man you are supposedly mourning. On the outside you behave one way, properly somber and funereal; but inside, you are astonished to note, you feel absolutely nothing, at most a kind of guilty satisfaction and relief. And indifference: a deep indifference. This lasts a while, for days, perhaps for months. You cheat the world: you are indifferent on the sly. Then one day, much later, maybe after a year, when the dead one has long decomposed, you are just walking along and suddenly you feel dizzy and have to lean against the wall because the event has finally gotten through to you: the feeling that had tied you to the dead one. The meaning of death. The fact, the reality of it, the knowledge that it is useless to scrape away the earth with your fingers and uncover what is left of him: you will never again see that smile, and all the wisdom and power in the world is incapable of raising the dead man to make him
walk down the street toward you with a smile on his face. You can lead an army and occupy every corner of the globe, but it’s still useless. And then you cry out. Or maybe not even that. You just stand in the street, pale, aware of a loss so great it seems the world has lost all meaning. It is as if you were left totally alone, the only man on earth.