Portraits of a Marriage (34 page)

Don’t move, darling. If only you knew how beautiful you are when you lie in bed, your head propped on your arm, your hair falling over your eyes! You have to go to the museum to see men’s bodies as splendid
as yours. And your face too, yes … what can I say? It’s the head of an artist. Why are you looking at me so suspiciously? You know I adore you. Because you are gorgeous. Because you’re an artist. Because you are my one and only. You’re a gift from God. Wait, don’t move, let me kiss you! No, just here, in the corner of your eye! And your brow! No, relax. You’re not cold? Shall I close the window? It’s mild out in the street, and those two orange trees under the window are shining in the moonlight. When you’re not here at night I often lean on the window-sill till dawn and watch the moonlit Via Liguria, this sweet and lovely street. See? There’s someone stealing along by the houses, just as in the Middle Ages. Do you know who it is? You mustn’t laugh at me. Just because I’m in love with you, just because I think you are the only one in the world for me forever, my dear, it doesn’t mean I’m silly. It’s old age slinking along the Via Liguria under my window, and not just here, but all over Rome and everywhere else, all over the world.

Old age is a thief and a murderer. One day he enters the room. He has blacked his face up with soot, like a burglar. With both hands he tears the mop of hair off your head, hits you across the face with his fist and knocks out your teeth, steals the light from your eyes, the sound from your ears, all the nice tastes in your stomach … No, all right, I won’t go on. Why the mocking laughter? I still have a perfect right to love you and, see, I am not being miserly with it, I am gorging myself on all the happiness you give me. One can never have enough of such sweetness and happiness. I’m not ashamed of it, I freely confess I couldn’t live without you now. But don’t worry, I won’t follow you on my broom to the Capitol! The day will come when I no longer have the right to love you, because I am aging. An old belly, wrinkled breasts. Don’t go comforting me. I know the script. By then all you could give me would be alms. Or like alms. Or the kind of extra people pay their employees as overtime. Why do you look at me like that from the corner of your eyes? You’ll see, that’s just how it will be. I’ve learned to go when it’s time to go … Would you like to know who taught me that lesson? Yes, the man whose photograph you are holding.

What are you asking? Wait, the early vegetable van is making such a racket. Was he my husband? No, my sweet, he was not my husband. It’s that other one there, the one in the fur coat, in the corner of the album, who was my husband. He was not my second husband, the one whose
name I now bear, but the first. He was the true one, my intended. That’s if such a thing exists. The second simply married me. To put it more precisely, I paid to have him marry me, because by that time I had crossed the border and needed papers and passport. It’s a long time since I parted from the first. Where is the photograph of the second? I don’t know. I haven’t kept it, because later I didn’t even want to see him, not even in my dreams. Whenever I dreamt of him I suffered, as if I had dreamt something improper—women covered head to toe in hair, that kind of thing. What are you staring at? There’s no man anywhere whose life has not been touched by women. Some woman is bound to cross his path. And there are men … men whose lives are like one of those houses that form a through passage from one street to another. One woman simply passes his key on to the next woman. He was like that. It’s the same with women. Every woman has, at some time, had a man knocking at her door. There are modest men who tap gently and ask, “May I … just for a moment?” The sillier kind of woman starts screaming in outrage, declaring, “What nerve!” or “Why just a moment?” And then they slam the door. Ah, but later they regret having been so peevish. They start looking through the crack in the door, watching in case the presumptuous fellow should still be standing there, hat in hand. As soon as they see he has gone they are in a foul mood. And later—sometimes much later—they start shivering at night, because everything around them has gone cold, and they suspect it might have been a mistake sending the man on his way, since it wouldn’t be so bad to have a man in this cold room, in this cold bed, warming it up, close, within touching distance, and no matter if he lies, no matter if he is rude, as long as he’s there. Like you? Thank heaven you’re still here next to me. You were so brazen I couldn’t get rid of you. What are you grinning at? Thank heaven, I say. Don’t you go snorting like that, mocking and grinning, you bastard.

Enough of your sniggering. Do you or don’t you want me to go on?

Well, of course they came knocking at my door, a considerable number of them, I should say. But this, my second husband, he was only my husband on paper.

In ’48, you see, I arrived in Vienna with nothing but two suitcases, because I had had enough of democracy. The suitcases were all that remained of the good life, them and the jewels.

This man, my second husband, had been living in Vienna for some years by then. He made his living by getting married, then divorced. As soon as the war was over, he strolled into Vienna, because he was a smart guy, you know, clever enough to leave beautiful Hungary while the going was good. He had the right papers, though heaven knows how he got them. He married me, asking forty thousand for the privilege. And then he wanted another twenty thousand for the divorce. I paid it by selling jewels. But you know that. After all, there were some jewels left for you, weren’t there? There, you see. It’s good to economize. Everything was fine with him, the only problem being that one day he came to the hotel where I lived alone and insisted it wasn’t just a marriage of convenience, that he had connubial rights. I kicked him out, of course. They are so common nowadays, you know, these marriages of convenience: women marry to get hold of the papers they need abroad. There are some marriages of convenience in which three children quickly appear, one after the other. You have to be really careful. As I said, I kicked him out. By way of farewell he asked for the silver cigarette case he saw on the bedside table. I never saw him again. He went off looking for new brides.

My real husband? That’s the one in the fur coat, the one you’re looking at. What do you think of him? Do you reckon he looks like a proper gentleman? People certainly referred to him as a gentleman. It’s just that, you know, it’s hard to tell the difference between gentlemen and those who just pretend to be one and turn out to be fake. There are rich gentlemen with good manners, and there are less-rich gentlemen whose manners are nothing special, but still they’re gentlemen. There are a great many rich, well-turned-out men. But gentlemen are few. So few they’re hardly worth mentioning. They’re as rare as that peculiar creature I once saw in the London Zoo: the okapi. Sometimes I think that no one really rich could ever be a real gentleman. You might find a few among the poor, maybe. But they’re as rare as saints. Or okapi.

My husband? I told you, he was very much like a gentleman. But he wasn’t entirely, unquestionably a gentleman. You know why he wasn’t? Because he took offense. When he got to know me. I mean, when he really and truly got to know me. He took offense and divorced me. That’s how he failed the test of being a gentleman. It’s not that he was stupid. He himself knew that any man you can offend, or who takes
offense, isn’t a proper gentleman. There are gentlemen even of my kind. Yes, they’re rare, because we were as poor as the field mice with which we slept and lived in my childhood, but they’re gentlemen.

My father harvested melons in the wet country, the Nyírség. He was what they call there a Canadaman. We were so poor we had to dig a shelter in the ditch and live there through winter, together with the field mice. But whenever I think of my father, you know, I picture him as a gentleman. Because you could never offend him. He had an inner calm. When he was angry, he struck out, of course, and his fist was hard as stone. Sometimes he was helpless with anger because the world despised him, because he was a beggar. At such times he kept silent and kept blinking. He could read, and could sign his name in his own fashion, but he rarely used book knowledge, or any knowledge. He just kept silent. I do believe he was thinking, but only briefly. Sometimes he’d get hold of liquor, cheap pálinka, and drink himself senseless. But when I put all the pieces together and think of him, this man, my father, who lived with my mother and their children in a ditch full of mice, I think of him as a gentleman. One winter, when he had no shoes, the postman gave him a pair of galoshes with holes in them, and he went about in them, wrapping his feet in rags. I can tell you, he never felt offended.

My first husband, my real husband, kept his shoes in a shoe cupboard, because he had so many fine shoes he needed to have a cupboard made for them. And he was always reading books, damned clever books. For a long time I thought it was impossible to offend a man so wealthy that he even had to have a shoe cupboard. It’s not for nothing I mention the shoe cupboard. When I first entered the service of my husband’s family, it was the shoe cupboard I liked best. I liked it but it scared me too. I didn’t have any shoes for a long time when I was a child. I was over ten years old when someone gave me a pair that fitted and actually belonged to me. It was a used pair given to the cook by the deputy sheriff’s wife. It was the kind people wore during the war, low-heeled shoes, the sort you buttoned up. They were too tight for the cook, and one winter morning when I was fetching milk for the house she took pity on me and gave me these marvelous shoes. Maybe that was why I was so glad to have this great trunk, the one I left back in Pest when I skipped the democracy after the Russian siege of Budapest. The trunk was still in
one piece after the siege, complete with the shoes. I was so happy … Well, that’s enough about shoes.

Here’s the coffee. Wait, I’ll bring some cigarettes too. These sweet American cigarettes make me gag. Yes, I understand you need the cigarettes for your art. Night shifts in the local bar require cigarettes too. But careful of your heart, my angel. I couldn’t bear it if any harm befell you.

How did I come to be employed in that gentleman’s household? Well, it wasn’t a wife they were advertising for, you may be sure of that. It was only much later I became a wife there, a wife and a lady, with the full complement of old honorifics: “honorable” lady, “excellent” lady, “most excellent” lady … I was hired as a servant, a general maid.

What are you looking at? I’m not joking.

As I said, I was a servant. Not even a proper servant, just a scullery maid, essentially a cleaner. Because this was an elegant house, my sweet, a house proper for gentlefolk. I could tell you a great deal about it and what went on there, how they lived, their habits, their dinners, their conversations, their boredom. For years I went about on tiptoe there, hardly daring to breathe. I was scared. It took years, you know, before I was admitted into the inner rooms, because I knew nothing about what to do and how to behave in such refined company. I had to learn. At first I was only allowed to work in the bathroom and the toilet. They wouldn’t even let me near the food in the kitchen, I could only peel potatoes or help with the washing up … It was as if my hands were considered filthy. They had to be careful in case anything I touched got dirty. But maybe it wasn’t them: not them, not the master, not the cook or the serving man, no. It was me. I felt my hands were never clean enough for an elegant house like that. I felt like that for a long time. My hands were often red then, creased, hard, and full of sores. Not as soft and white as they are now. Not that they ever criticized my hands. It was just that I did not dare touch anything, because I feared I’d leave a mark. I certainly never dared touch their food. You know the way doctors put on a thin gauze mask when they are performing an operation, because they’re worried about infecting the patient. I held my breath when handling their things … the glass from which they drank, the pillows on which they slept. You, you may laugh, but even when I was cleaning the toilet bowl after them I was careful that the lovely white
porcelain should not be dirtier for me having touched it. This fear, this anxiety, lasted for years. It was a very superior household.

I can see what you’re thinking! You think fear and anxiety were done with the day my luck turned and I became lady of the house, an “honorable” and “most excellent” so-and-so. No, little one, you’re wrong. It didn’t stop. That day certainly arrived, but I was just as anxious then as I had been those years before, when I was only a scullery maid. I was never at peace, never happy in that house.

Why not, when that house gave me everything? Everything good: everything bad. Every harm and every satisfaction.

That’s such a hard question, sweetheart. The question of satisfaction, I mean … Sometimes I think it’s the hardest question anyone can ask.

Pass me the photograph. It’s a long time since I last looked at it … Well, yes, that was my husband. The other? The one who looks like an artist? Who knows? Perhaps he was an artist. Not a real artist, though. Not an artist through and through—like you, for example. You can tell by looking at him. He was always looking at me so solemnly, so ironically, it seemed he couldn’t believe in anything, not a solitary thing; in nothing and no one, not in himself, not even in the idea of himself as an artist. He looks tired there, and had aged a little when I took the picture. He himself said he looked secondhand in it. You know, like those pictures in the papers showing before and after. I took it in the last year of the war between two bombing raids. He was sitting at the window, reading. He didn’t even know he was being photographed. He didn’t like pictures of himself, either photographs or drawings. He didn’t like being looked at while he was reading. He didn’t like being spoken to when he was quiet. He didn’t like … yes, he didn’t like it … when people loved him. What’s that? Did he love me? No, my dear, he didn’t love me, not even me. He just put up with me for a while, in the room a corner of which you see there. That bookcase and all those books there, they were destroyed soon after I took the picture. The room you see was wrecked. And the house, of which this is the fourth floor. We used to sit there between bombings. Everything you see in this picture has been destroyed.