Iza's Ballad (12 page)

Back home she used to dry the clothes in the attic. She had never seen retractable washing lines before but once she learned to operate the wall-mounted system she was modestly delighted to see how easy it made washing the linen. She continued boiling water on the electric stove as before, being too frightened to turn on the hot tap of the boiler because it hissed and might explode. She rinsed everything for herself once Teréz was out of the house. She found the laundry basket with Iza’s things hidden in the bathroom wall, grabbed the fine blouses and nighties and carefully, lovingly, washed those too. Drying was more difficult as she couldn’t reach the washing lines. Iza really shouldn’t have sold the stool; if she still had it she would have something to stand on without wobbling about on this ridiculous kitchen chair with its steel legs. Normally Teréz would take the washing away in a suitcase because she preferred to wash and iron at home, then bring the fresh things back a week later in the same suitcase. She was paid extra for this. It was another thing they wouldn’t have to spend on, thought the old woman.

When Iza arrived home that day she was really annoyed. The clothes had been wrung out but her mother’s hands were clearly too weak to do it properly and everything was dripping on the floor. The hopeful look on her mother’s face, clearly expecting to be praised, immediately vanished.

‘You mustn’t do this with your blood pressure, darling!’ said Iza. ‘In any case, I hate water dripping down my neck. There is a dryer downstairs next to the shelter but as far as I’m concerned it’s much simpler if Teréz takes the clothes away. I don’t even like hand-washing at home – why should we walk across pools of water on the bathroom floor?’

She kissed her mother’s hand and face, and let her finger flutter over her pulse a moment. The pulse was strong and regular. Luckily washing hadn’t been too much of a strain. Iza went into the kitchen to heat up supper while the old woman took down the washing line, quickly removing her own things, the warm trousers and the flannel shirts so that they, at least, wouldn’t drip on Iza’s head. She spread them out to dry on the radiator in her room and turned them over now and then so they wouldn’t overheat. Clothes dried surprisingly fast, as if some invisible mouth were breathing hot air on them from below. She smoothed the washing out and put it away in the cupboard, then just stood and stared out on to the ring road. There was a blue glow out there like a blinding electric light, where men in steel masks and huge gloves were bending between the tram rails with sparks raining down beside them. It was like fire, but it wasn’t fire. It was something else. A big city fire, a Pest fire, thought the old woman. She felt lost, scared and sad.

She tried one more experiment.

Whether alone or with visitors, Iza drank gallons of coffee. As soon as people arrived she would plug in the coffee machine. How inconvenient, thought the old woman, and how tiring always to be jumping up and checking that the coffee didn’t boil over. It was a stupid way of making coffee, another of those machines. They used to drink Turkish coffee at home when they were young and Vince loved it.

The man who rang Iza almost every day had just come up for the third time since she had arrived when she surprised them with coffee. She waited a quarter of an hour after his arrival, remembering from her own time as a maid that it wasn’t done to offer things to guests immediately because people like to have a smoke and a chat first. In the morning she had gone down to the ring road and, having slowly familiarised herself with the neighbouring shops, was delighted to find a copper flask and a fast-boiling spirit stove in the second-hand shop next door. If Iza hadn’t left their old one behind she wouldn’t have had to buy another because the one they had was really good. It was what she used to heat the goffering iron on when flouncing was in fashion, to heat the milk when Iza was a baby and to make camomile tea when one of them had a toothache. This new purchase could do all those clever things, so she bought some paraffin in the household store and was really pleased by the time she got home.

As soon as she heard the guest ring the bell she measured out two spoonfuls of Turkish coffee, careful not to stint, humming to herself, red-faced and hot as she brewed it. She had never actually met any of Iza’s guests yet, because people in Pest tended to call at such impossible times, as late as nine or ten at night, and she was awake only when they arrived, not when they left. She carried on humming happily, pleased to have overcome her sleepiness and to have brewed the coffee instead of Iza. She would stay awake every time now. Old people did not need as much sleep as that. This much at least she could do for Iza. And if there were no guests, just Iza herself, she could still make the coffee from now on.

She knew her way around the kitchen cupboard by now and put two funny-shaped small cups on the tray. (But what was wrong with her own china set with its gilded rim and clover pattern? She failed to see that these thick, purple cups were any more beautiful.) She used her elbow to open the door to Iza’s room. The coffee was steaming in the middle of the tray. The sugar cubes were on a small plate as there was no sugar bowl.

Iza stood up when she entered. The man too stood up. The old woman stood beaming on the threshold.

‘This is Domokos,’ said Iza.

She was delighted that the man kissed her hand. It was nice to think that Iza’s visitors knew their manners. Iza glanced at the electric socket. Her own coffee-maker wasn’t plugged in yet.

‘I’ve brought you a little coffee.’

‘That’s very kind of you. Thank you.’

The old woman sat down, folded her hands and waited. No one said anything. That was fine, she understood they wanted to be alone, she was only waiting for them to taste the coffee and for Iza’s expression to show that she was grateful and pleased to have something made for her.

Iza poured out the coffee, took some sugar, the man drinking it as it was. They quickly gulped it down, then Iza suddenly grabbed everything and dashed into the kitchen with the tray. ‘Why doesn’t he say anything,’ thought the old woman. ‘So silent. Not handsome but not ugly either. I wonder what he does for a living?’ She was a little disappointed not to get much praise. Iza said nothing at all. The man just glanced at her and said the coffee was very nice.

She said goodnight to them, feeling very satisfied with herself. Back in her room she ground a little more coffee and prepared everything ready for brewing tomorrow. She refilled the paraffin too, then went to bed. The guest didn’t stay long since she was still awake when she heard him leaving. As soon as the door in the hall closed, Iza came in to see her.

She’d be coming to thank her. She was always a most grateful child.

Iza didn’t sit down for long, just a few minutes, and turned out the light as she left, encouraging her to sleep. But the old woman didn’t sleep; she lay in the dark, tearing at the edges of the pillow. The coffee smelled of paraffin. Everything smelled of paraffin and Iza asked her not to bother with it next time. It was nothing brewing coffee, the old woman said, she was pleased to do it. All day long she was trying to move her rheumatic limbs and it was good to be doing little things like this. ‘It was a lovely idea and thank you very much,’ said Iza, but she really didn’t want it. Not any more. ‘And please pour the paraffin out,’ she added, ‘because it’s impossible to live with that smell.’

The night was full of flashing lights as it always was on the ring road, the neon advertising signs flickering on and off, the trams rumbling past. She gazed ahead.

Tomorrow she’d pour away the paraffin though it had such a lovely proper flame, like a tiny iron stove. There was no real fire in the flat, it was all electric. Well of course paraffin was smelly. Her own sense of smell might have deteriorated in the past years, because she hadn’t noticed it.

There were no experiments after this.

3

SHE HAD NEVER
had so much time in her life.

Ever since she could remember they had gone through the list of things to do for the day so there would be no worrying about it in the evening. When she was young it was pointless having someone to help her; she’d be out in the kitchen hurrying things up or doing the cooking and cleaning herself. In the old days Aunt Emma was always chivvying her so it was wonderful – she was deliriously happy – when she finally had her own house and she could decide when to do the cleaning and any other number of useful tasks. When Vince lost his job and their own maid was gone, she suddenly bore the responsibility for everything including the troubles of child rearing. By the time she was old she had got used to doing things by herself and even after Vince’s rehabilitation she only engaged help for the really heavy work; she no longer carried wood or washed the bedding and tended to oversee spring cleaning rather than do it. While Vince was well he helped her and never made a distinction between man’s work and woman’s work, and Antal helped too, though he was a doctor, not a pensioner like Vince. Antal said housework relaxed him and he’d even go up to the attic to hang out the washing, his lines tidier, drier and much more evenly spread than Mála, the home help’s.

The old woman also enjoyed the daily struggle with housework: a month with some really good meals and a thorough clean always felt like a triumph. It was as though the house were surrounded by invisible demons, wicked little demons that had to be defeated each time because they were always scheming, always looking to burn the food and soak the winter fuel. Whenever something succeeded particularly well she could practically see the demons slinking around the house, their heads hung in shame, retreating to a cave where they could moan to each other. In the meantime everything was going well: Vince had been rehabilitated and the circuit judge had ordered a pension for him; Iza had qualified as a doctor; they had more money than they needed and there was no longer any need to struggle with the demons. But the old woman had got used to living on a shoestring and lived as frugally as before, still watching the pennies as if each penny of housekeeping might make or break their lives. Vince always praised her for this, understanding that he should still congratulate her on her bloodless victory over the demons every month when the old woman closed the squared-up accounts book, her face shining, and slipped a few notes of paper money into the childhood commonplace book she hid under the sheets in the cupboard.

Now there was no housework, no routine, no cares, no chats with old acquaintances, no need to go round the market looking for bargains or to calculate whether she could afford the perfect apple or accept the second-rate one. There was no need to scour the shops for cheap clothes, no need to wrest the bargain item from someone else’s grasp and wonder in a careless moment, when she hadn’t paid sufficient attention to the condition of her puchase, whether she could stitch a new collar on to an old shirt.

Everything stopped, in fact.

She didn’t see Iza from morning through to the late afternoon, and when she did come home it was only to ask her how she was, then to sigh and say how good it was not to be among strange faces but be home at last; then she’d go to her room to read a book, to prepare for guests, to go out, to rush to a theatre, to listen to music, or to sit at her writing desk and consult a textbook in order to write a note or to compose an article.

Iza needed silence to function: she needed it for both work and rest. The old woman had never been a great fan of the radio but, since the six weeks of mourning with its ban on music had passed and she was always alone with nothing to do, she resigned herself to it. She felt a bitter yet consoling satisfaction at not switching on the radio in the evening when the programmes were most interesting, refusing to be entertained so that her daughter should not be disturbed. At least in this respect she could do something for her.

She would have given anything to be able to help her, it was just that there was never any opportunity.

The girl had no need of her cooking nor of her coffee; she didn’t even want help when visitors called, though she had offered to make friends with Iza’s guests. The girl thanked her but refused, saying her guests always came long after the old woman should be in bed. Sometimes, when the girl was still at the clinic and Teréz had gone, she crept over to her desk, opened her folders and tried to guess what Iza was doing, even sneaking a couple of textbooks back to her room in the innocent hope of learning something of Iza’s work, not much, just enough so, should Iza be working on important things and suddenly need something, she could bring her the item without Iza needing to stand up and break her concentration. The trouble was that Iza’s books were mostly in French and Russian, so she couldn’t make any sense of even their titles and as for reading Iza’s notes, however she strained her eyes she couldn’t make out the handwriting and abbreviations. She never even mentioned such plans to her.

She no longer dared offer the slightest help, not even the simplest things such as emptying an ashtray, or tidying the room when Iza was suddenly called away somewhere. Once she had thrown out a teaspoon along with the coffee grounds and the dog ends. The janitor brought it back up in the morning and Teréz made such a fuss about it that she was too scared even to throw out dead flowers. Generally, she went in terror of Teréz.

Her window looked out over the József ring road.

She spent most of her time dragging Vince’s chair over, gazing at passers-by, at the snub-nosed buses, the changing traffic lights and the billowing canvas of the cinema advertisements stretched on nets between the two sides of the street. She looked at everything as though it had nothing to do with her. She thought of Gica, the cloak-maker, and how little work she had nowadays, though what she did was lovely, a real craft, it being a far from simple matter gathering the pleats round the shoulder so there should be no ugly creases. The streetscape below meant nothing to her however much she gazed. Occasionally Teréz would remark that the weather was lovely and she should get out a little, then she would obediently put on her coat and go down as far as the corner of Ráday Street, to the tiny playground and sit there watching children playing in the sandpit without ever feeling the point of sitting there or walking around – she didn’t know why she was doing it. Teréz’s good intentions in wanting the best for her health were wasted because the fresh air she managed to breathe under the trees was not enough to compensate her for the anxiety of having to cross a street where there wasn’t a policeman guiding the traffic and where she had to wait for the green light in order to get to the playground in the square while trams clattered next to her and cars swept by her.