Iza's Ballad (26 page)

She had secretly been hoping that Gica would meet her at the station but the cloak-maker wasn’t there, so she had to make the five-minute journey by herself from the tram stop to the house where she was to stay, which was no easy job because the luggage was heavy. She kept stopping and changing hands, looking out for the street. How much work they had done around here. They had even fixed the pavement since she left and there were new postboxes along the way. There had never been such bright red boxes here before.

She proceeded carefully because she had needed to take care down this road in the past, ever since a wartime shell had ripped up the cobbles. The road was smooth now. ‘Vince,’ she whispered to herself. She inwardly repeated her husband’s name as she walked, continually swapping the weights. Once she crossed Budenz Alley she’d be in sight of the house.

She trudged along the narrow terraced street and stopped on the corner. She dropped her luggage. She didn’t put the bags down, she dropped them as though she wanted to dispose of them. The house she had lived in was no longer there.

She stood and sobbed. Of course the house was no longer hers but she did want to see it all the same, having imagined in Pest how she would feel, and it was precisely from this angle and distance that she had wanted to see it. It was the spot where she used to rest on returning from the market. The disappointment was so bitter she could hardly move; she couldn’t understand what had happened to the house, how it had managed to disappear. A great tide of anger was rising in her. The house was in Antal’s possession now – Antal had made it disappear somehow. Instead there was a strange building standing in the place between Gica’s house and the other neighbour.

The old woman had never worn her glasses in the street because, out of an innocent kind of vanity, she wanted to keep her short sight a secret. Iza had insisted she wear them in Pest but as soon as the train started she had put them away in her handbag and she didn’t want Gica to see them. It was only when she got much closer to her old house that she saw what had happened: Antal had painted the fence and repaired the front walls. The colour had changed, as had the surface, and some rough yellow material now covered the old greyish-white wall. Instead of shutters there were blinds, the same blinds Iza had in Pest. The letterbox was now framed in some sort of metal and the dragon-shaped spout had been painted red. It looked almost alive, like a real animal.

She could have walked through the gate if she wanted to because she still had the old keys at the bottom of her handbag. She hadn’t meant to hide them from Antal – it was just that she didn’t go home after the funeral so she couldn’t hand them over to him. If she wanted to she could go in, see the rooms, the garden and Captain too. But you don’t just walk into other people’s houses, you need a permit to enter an old relative’s home too; it would be like breaking in.

The newsagent was absorbed in his sports magazine and didn’t even look up, which was a good thing because she didn’t feel strong enough for a conversation. She turned her face when she passed Kolman’s shop too and hoped they wouldn’t notice her in the noontime traffic. Kolman was used to seeing her in her old coat, not in this new one with its otter-fur collar and that modern hat pulled over her eyes. Iza had taken away her old coat and bought her a new one in its place. She felt she was being ungrateful for not liking it, but she only liked decent, well-worn clothes, honest signs of poverty, believing, with Vince, that it was bad to rouse other people’s jealousy and that, as two helpless elderly people, it was best not to look as though they were comfortably off. They were always anxious about being burgled. Had they not needed Captain as a guard dog they wouldn’t have had a dog at all. Kolman didn’t see her and she arrived at Gica’s door undisturbed.

She had just put on the heating.

Everyone recognised that Gica had principles – she herself regarded her poor lifestyle and empty woodshed as principles – and she was of the opinion that overheating rooms was bad for your health and that she would only start heating the house once the snow started falling. The old woman had heard this innumerable times from Gica, and had experienced it too whenever she dropped in to see her about something: the fire really was not on till November was out, except for the tiny flame in the boiler; but this time she was convinced Gica would overcome her principles and have a warm room ready for her. After all, people behave differently with guests than they do by themselves.

Gica told her she had received Iza’s telegram only in the morning and that she hadn’t got the fire ‘blazing’ until she arrived just in case the visit had to be postponed and the fire would have been on for nothing. The room felt damp after the central heating in Iza’s flat; it was cold and smelled of smoke. Gica was delighted with the roast chicken and was pleased to receive the pastries and the ashtray, though she was less enthusiastic about the latter. She said she expected to see the old woman in better health and asked if she had been ill. The question surprised her. She sensed that Gica was in some way getting at Iza and she set feverishly to praise her daughter.

Gica was full of news. She had harsh words for Kolman, who was so puffed up with pride he could no longer see straight. When it came to the bathroom she apologised for not heating it but the boiler was out of order. The old woman shivered at the thought of bathing in cold water and felt ashamed at her own obstinacy; she had stuffed the bath towel into the suitcase after all and it had turned out to be useless. She went out, fussed around the freezing bathroom, but her fingers went numb and she was hardly able to use the towel provided. Feeling ashamed of herself for doing so she turned the control on the boiler. Water came out, of course, the boiler was working. She blushed on Gica’s behalf. It was dreadful that just for a couple of kilos of fuel Gica was prepared to bath in the cold.

Gica was friendly and full of conversation. She said she had finished her shift early at Antal’s so she could be at home when her friend arrived and asked if Ettie fancied nipping over to see what had happened to the house since it was sold. The old woman rejected the idea and said she would rather go to the stonemason’s, as planned. They had agreed in the post that as soon as she arrived they would pay for the headstone, which the mason would then drive over to the plot while they bought a wreath and some flowers. Then they’d walk down to the cemetery and inspect the stone in place. By the time All Souls’ Day arrived they could have lights around the new headstone. ‘Will you stay till then?’ Gica asked, closing her friendly round eyes when she answered yes.

They went the back way, that’s to say not towards Budenz Alley but down Dobos Street, where in the last six months new buildings had been constructed on the old vacant sites. The houses were just like the ones in Pest, thought the old woman. Each multi-storeyed building reminded her of what had once stood there: they had all been single-storey, one was the rope-maker’s shop, the other belonged to the man who made sieves. Now there were neither houses nor workshops, but offices and a clinic of the sort Iza worked in.

Vince’s headstone cost a fortune and when she saw it she felt cheated.

Iza did not interfere in how she spent her money but the old woman felt that anything she received for Vince’s possessions or the old furniture should be spent on him, so she had ordered black marble, the most expensive in the mason’s shop, and from all the plans and drawings faithfully sent to her by Gica she chose the most showy. But now that she stood before the grandiose black stone with its overwhelming carved roses, the stone on which their two gilded names appeared next to a bare date, it felt sadly like bragging. The old woman knew nothing about art but she sensed that what she was looking at did not represent Vince, not even her own sadness, that it represented nothing, in fact, and that it was, in short, clumsy and vulgar.

Iza! Iza again! The comfortless truth of her words. Iza with her cigarette as she waved her hands about in the dusk: ‘Forget the headstone, mama, just get the grave dug and forget memorial stones. What do you want one for? A wooden memorial is more like him, less loud, more modest.’ But the old woman wanted to do something special for Vince and had spent a fortune on the black marble she was now sadly contemplating. When she was a young girl she had had angels carved for Endrus’s headstone, light and charming figures, and for years – for decades after – she felt they were like playmates to this tiny boy. At night, when the body was not subject to the normal laws of decay, she imagined the stone angels playing with Endrus, all flying together. Now that she was seventy-six, looking at the new headstone, she knew the dead really die and that there was nothing you could give them by way of commiseration, no sadness, no love.

Gica’s face was bright with pride and the stonemason was strutting around beside them. It was years since he had been given such a satisfying task. The last time was a good fifteen years ago, the headstone for a bishop, another commission with Gica acting as go-between. He felt a little wounded by the lack of enthusiastic praise. The old woman had said a rather hasty goodbye. Other mourners usually stayed longer to admire his work. ‘Maybe in the cemetery,’ thought the mason. ‘Maybe she’ll be more talkative there and be less stinting in her praise. The stone will be in place by four this afternoon.’

On the way back the old woman thought of Vince’s arms, so much thinner than they used to be, and how his body had practically wasted away. There had been nothing in the drawing to suggest that the finished memorial would be so huge: everything in it looked delicate and small. ‘You’re no good at proportions,’ Iza had said and showed her on the wall what three metres would be like. ‘A stone that size? What for? It can’t be nice!’ The old woman didn’t believe her and thought she was exaggerating. She was out of sorts at the florist’s choosing the wreath but eventually succeeded in finding one Vince would have liked if he were alive because it included fresh-smelling pine cones decorated with resinous young pine buds and red berries that reminded her of the rose hips she used to make jam each autumn. Apparently Gica felt that she too ought to buy something since she had, after all, been involved in the choice of headstone, so she bought a wreath bristling with chrysanthemums so purple the old woman couldn’t bear to look at them. Vince had hated scentless flowers and would often say that purple chrysanthemums were like red cabbage.

They dined on the roast chicken, the old woman and Gica taking just two bites each. Gica made some
rántott leves
, beating two eggs into the soup and it was good, nice and warm. Gica talked chiefly about Antal, saying she didn’t have to tidy much after him; he was clean and decent and not at home much, usually only after supper. He had renovated the furniture and the place looked nice and modern. Captain was spending a lot of time hanging about, but there was no getting rid of him because Antal was fond of him. The main room was pretty well as it was. It was where Antal kept the bits of furniture he had not had renovated.

She didn’t want to listen to Gica talking like this because the house was calling her again, the house where Captain was still snuffling around the place and the flowers on the windows would be coming into leaf as they did this time each year. Gica said it was likely she wasn’t going to work for Antal much longer because the doctor was getting married, to a nurse, and she wouldn’t like to get in the way of the young lady.

The old woman wasn’t interested. Iza had Domokos now and Antal’s love life was his own affair. It was going to be all too tiring to keep track of everything or even imagine it. If she felt anything at all it was a kind of faint joy that Antal, who was a good boy, was free to go his own way.

The afternoon was a trial to her.

When she saw the grave with its overlarge headstone that she had chosen with such love, such care and such inconsolable sadness, she felt that this was the moment Vince really died, that now he was undoubtedly, eternally dead. While there was only a wooden headstone there she didn’t consider the loss to be beyond doubt, and there was a moment at the funeral when she thought everything going on around her was a mistake because if they levelled the soil again and pulled out the wooden memorial Vince might step from the grave, shake off the earth and admit he was joking, then they’d go home and she’d serve up some dinner. But the gold letters of his name surrounded by those black carved roses, the two clear dates and the text reading:
Died 7 March 1960
was incontrovertible proof that it had really happened; now that the fact had been declared it was for ever. The old woman felt that the ton’s worth of marble that weighed on him had ruined his last chance of climbing out and escaping, that there was no hope left that he might suddenly take flight from among the clods in a sweet resurrection.

She thought of Iza, of how right she was not to want to see this, and she bent her head and covered her mouth with her handkerchief. Gica linked arms with her, thinking she was unwell, and could see that she was almost incapable of taking a step. The stonemason’s wounded pride was somewhat mollified because he saw the stone had made a great impression.

It was cold at Gica’s, much colder than in the morning when she was still warmed through by excitement and expectation, as well as by the weight of baggage she had been carrying. A weak fire was licking at damp bits of wood and the old woman opened and immediately closed her suitcase as she remembered that she hadn’t packed the shawl after all last night – she didn’t want to hurt Gica’s pride by suggesting that she didn’t trust her hospitality in preparing a warm house. One of Gica’s cloaks lay unfinished on the sofa. She pretended she wanted to examine it more closely so she pulled it over her, drawing the plush silk up to her chin. She gazed at the fire: not even its colour seemed quite real and it didn’t warm her. Gica was quiet, she too must be tired. They didn’t talk.

Antal arrived shortly after six.

As Gica ushered him in she was muttering something about what a pleasant surprise it was, how she wouldn’t have believed it and what honour he was doing them by calling, and of course she told him dear Etel would be visiting. Gica was watching the old woman’s reaction as she was saying this and saw how tears sprang to her eyes the moment she saw Antal. There was no Iza here to restrain her so she hugged and kissed Antal as she would her own child. Antal of course looked at her in two ways as he always did. ‘Just watch their eyes,’ Vince would say. ‘Both Antal and Iza look at you in two different ways: they see you as their mother but also as your doctor. You can never be sure which pair of eyes they are using at any one time and what they see there.’