Iza's Ballad (35 page)

Up in the castle chamber

torches blaze and glow

laments resound and echo

through the house below.

In the middle of the chamber

raised high up on her bier

a lovely virgin bride

lies dead and cannot hear.

Her cheeks and breasts are pale

like hills in a white shroud

her beautiful eyes closed

like stars behind a cloud.

Lidia was singing along with the sick man, evidently having learned the song, and didn’t notice him as he opened the door. The nurse’s voice was quiet but clear.

Ah would it were that I

lay on that bier instead,

not you, my lovely flower,

bright virgin of my bed.

The girl glanced up at Antal – was there ever such a meaningful look? Then she quickly turned her back and shook her head as if to say she had no need for help, the patient was quiet and, however strange it might sound, he actually felt well. Deep inside him Antal heard that strange, unexpectedly happy and innocent voice, half sighing, half out of breath, aware that it was impossible to get to the source of that gentle crooning.

Her cheeks and breasts are pale

like hills in a white shroud . . .

For the first time Lidia knew that if Antal ever asked her to take the place of Iza she could do so and would not, as she had always thought, continually have to be compared with her. The joy this brought was quickly succeeded by a vague sense of regret as if it had suddenly transpired that Dr Szo
̋
cs had been born with one leg but somehow nobody had noticed. The lovely virgin whose sad history Iza never wanted to hear was palely glowing on her bier as far as Lidia was concerned, but had also become an idea, a curious symbol. ‘Good Lord,’ thought Lidia, ‘how exhausted she must be with that constant self-discipline, that need to save not only her family but the whole world. How hard to live with the hardness of heart that dares not indulge itself by grieving over dead virgins! The poor woman believes that old people’s pasts are the enemy. She has failed to notice how those pasts are explanations and values, the key to the present.’

While Vince was dying and imagined his daughter was sitting beside him, Lidia talked to him as if she were Iza. But when he died and Iza tried to give her money, she felt Iza had been lying to her in some way, that she had cheated on her feelings and that she hadn’t deserved such adulation. Now that Lidia had taken her place at her father’s deathbed, Iza’s offer of money was positively insulting to her. Here at the police station, looking at Iza’s tired face, she felt, for the first time, indifferent to her. She was over both adulation and loathing: there was no more jealousy or pity. She was so indifferent to her now that she could wish her well without any personal ill feeling; all she hoped was that, just once in her life, she might be obliged to listen to the ballad of the virgin the way that everyone heard it or would hear it in this or that form, that, like the knight, she might tread the hall in torchlight, look into the dead bride’s face and gaze at her white breast.

Iza’s mother, whom they wanted to adopt because Antal said she had become a shadow of herself, someone frightened of everything and quite without resources in Budapest, had not called on Iza in her last moments. Lidia knelt beside her the way she had knelt by Vince in March. The old woman suffered and was thirsty, and kept saying, ‘Water.’ What had Iza done to her, Lidia wondered as she gazed impassively at Iza’s tortured face. What could Iza have done to make the old woman forget her name down the narrow path that lead to her death?

5

THE DRUNK AND
the nightwatchman had to stay behind, the rest could go. The nightwatchman was waving his hands about trying to explain something, the drunk paid no attention to him. His eyes were searching for Iza. He made his awkward way over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. Iza started back. It wasn’t because there was alcohol on his breath; in fact, he had an unnaturally clean smell as though he had spent the morning scrubbing himself in readiness for the police. His eyes were full of tears as he stroked Iza’s back and muttered something. Iza retreated from him in disgust. She hated unwanted physical closeness and loathed it when people offered excuses. Cheap emotions were there to be controlled.

Domokos stood between them and gazed at the drunk’s silly frightened face. Here was the unwitting clumsy instrument of death. The nightwatchman was still explaining things to the policeman. Domokos took the drunk’s hand and shook it. Iza was astounded when she saw him sympathising with the man, saying comforting words. Why was he spending his time with that good-for-nothing sniveller who stank of shaving lotion? ‘There was nothing you could do,’ Domokos was saying, ‘and it’s too late now anyway. Don’t blame yourself.’ Domokos’s words hurt her but she didn’t want to show it. Why console a stranger, the very man whose fault it all was?

When the group split up it was like breaking the links of a chain.

Lidia was first to leave, saying a brief goodbye as she got into the car. Antal shook everyone’s hand and said he too had to go and that they could meet in the afternoon. Iza could arrange where they were to dine, whether at home or elsewhere. Gica could put on the heating and arrange everything. Gica gave him an evil look as he sat in the car next to Lidia and the vehicle started towards the clinic. ‘How easily he has learned to sit in big cars and have things on tap,’ Gica raged. ‘His father used to run about wearing trousers tucked up to his knees and never shaved.’ She remembered him – he had brought hot water to their yard also.

Then she too was sitting in a car next to Domokos and she really enjoyed it. She’d have liked to prepare a first-class dinner to impress ‘the visitors from Pest’, but both Domokos and Iza turned down her offer, saying she should go to no trouble at all and that she should cook only for Antal as usual. They would eat at the tavern. The last thing they wanted was to waste her time.

Their rejection both delighted and offended Gica. At least they knew not to order her about, not like this tankardman’s son. They’d not order dinner from her as though she were a cook in a canteen, but at the same time she was jealous and nervous because she felt left out of something and guessed that she might increasingly be left out of things as characters from her early life gradually disappeared. Vince was gone and Ettie too. Iza would be a very rare visitor now, that is if she visited at all, and the nurse didn’t look particularly friendly. As for Antal, she never did like him. She realised that sheer penury would eventually force her to revive her friendship with Kolman, though she had sworn never to deal with him again, not since he had obliged her to put her hand-picked potatoes back into the bag seven years ago. At least Kolman remembered what the town was like in their youth and was chatty with everyone who used his shop. Gica suddenly felt like crying though she couldn’t have explained why. She took in Domokos’s dog-like eyes and ginger mane and thought, ‘He’s not an ugly man.’ They took her home and she stepped proudly from the car, glancing round to see if anyone was watching.

*

Domokos was lost in his own thoughts.

It was a new experience for him to examine himself rather than others and it felt strange. Ever since childhood Domokos had loved looking at things and he could make his way among people. Being neither vain nor lyrical, he wasn’t greatly interested in himself. Before, he would have committed the hall of The Lamb to visual memory, noting those fittings so tasteful yet tasteless at the same time, those glass cabinets with local items such as the clay pipe, the glazed honey cake and the fancy needlework. He would have noted the agronomists with their briefcases and hotel bills, as they slapped down their enormous room keys on the reception counter. He would have mentally photographed the dining room. Not this time. Though the menu offered some dishes he had never heard of, specialities of the town, he didn’t linger over it but ordered a simple wiener schnitzel.

‘This is a life-changing moment,’ thought Domokos. ‘I must make a decision the way I did at the outbreak of war. It is exactly as when I am writing. I must not only decide what to write, but know why I am writing it. It’s like being at the edge of a cliff. One wrong step and I fall. I must take the right step. I’m pretty sure I want to live. I don’t know it for certain but I think so.’

Iza ate slowly, without appetite, then pulled herself together and the colour returned to her cheeks though she still looked tired and sad. From time to time she glanced up from her plate. Their chairs were close together. They were more intimate now, she thought, than at any time in Budapest, however passionate. She resolved to cut all contact with the town and to bring the matter of Antal to a close too.

Domokos didn’t know how the morning had affected her but felt there was a space behind that stiff, all-comprehending façade, a void he might fill if he wanted to. Iza looked gentle, quiet and graceful. ‘Help me,’ said the arc of her neck, said her silence, said all her calm tired movements. ‘I trust you. Heal me! I am in great pain! I dearly loved my mama.’

They walked home slowly, Domokos leaving his car in front of The Lamb. He didn’t look at the shop displays but took the odd glance at the leaden autumn sky and at the dignified yellow mass of the church. Iza occasionally nodded to someone and Domokos too bent his head as they went by. He was pale, tense and unhappy. They were already at the gate when the writer said he wouldn’t go in because he had to lie down quietly by himself for a while. The day had not been easy for him either.

‘Stay,’ said Iza. ‘Why go back to Dekker’s just because you’re tired? There’s room enough here.’

Domokos said he’d sooner rest at the clinic.

Iza looked away quickly. She was rarely wrong in her diagnoses and could read symptoms, even hidden ones, because she was insistent, careful and patient. But she was mistaken this time, though she didn’t know it, in thinking about why Domokos didn’t want to rest precisely
here
in her old family home. ‘Shall I come with you?’ she asked uncertainly. She was afraid he’d say yes. She would have hated to have been anywhere near her mother’s poor broken body.

Domokos shook his head. Iza had to relax too, he shouldn’t deprive her of her rest. He’d ring tomorrow, and they’d arrange a time and place to meet. There were crowds of people at the clinic and she must have had enough talking for tonight; they should both get some sleep. Iza agreed, though she would have preferred not to be left alone and feared letting him go too far out of her sight. She couldn’t have said why it frightened her that he wasn’t going to stay, it just did.

Domokos knew that she was begging him to stay though she hadn’t actually said anything; she simply stood at the gate, her hands clutched together, pleading with her eyes. ‘One wrong step and I fall,’ thought Domokos. ‘I’ll fall the way the old woman fell. When I was in my teens I had a statue of justice on the shelf above my bed and twice a day I prayed to it. I pray to it now. God help her, the poor thing!’

He kissed her: a long, thirsty, compassionate kiss. Iza felt how hot his face was and how his kiss was different, sadder, somehow despairing. It was not the way he used to kiss her. His expression was unusual, so flushed, so unhappy. The guardian angel that had flitted from the old woman’s side when she chased her away at Balzsamárok appeared for a moment, hovered behind Iza and whispered in her ear that she shouldn’t let Domokos go, that she should run after him, weep, plead, clutch at him. But Iza stood silently and watched as the man vanished down Budenz Alley, passing through the narrow, almost touching walls, and she did not hear what the angel said because only the old woman had ever been able to hear it after all.

She locked the gate with her key. If Gica came now she would not let her in. If anyone rang the doorbell she’d look through the front curtains and admit only those she wished to.

It was warm and dark inside. Gica had lit the fire while they were dining and had gone home. It was quiet, the sort of unreal quiet when you can hear the ticking of a clock you never normally notice. It was the old clock, the one that made a lot of noise, the wicked thing. She went into the inner room and closed the door behind her.

She knew this would be the last time she was in this house and that the brief time until the funeral would really be the last ordeal she’d have to undergo. The town would sink and vanish along with other memories, and she knew that there would be no more intercity calls to disturb her peace of mind, and that she was alone, entirely alone, answerable only to herself. When she had received her medical diploma it was an ambivalent feeling: something had vanished for ever and something was just beginning, something more grown up, something more demanding . . . The walls that observed her as a child, that watched her infant legs stumbling along and heard her laugh and cry, were now dutifully and solemnly offering her tired mind shelter for the last time. Iza was exhausted with all the tension and fear, and the previous sleepless night was taking its toll. She fell asleep by the stove in Antal’s low, wide-armed chair.

It was how Antal found her, asleep.

He thought she had gone and lit the lamp, but when he saw her he stopped beside her. The room was untidy – as if the constitutionally tidy Iza had escaped from something and had no time to cover her tracks. Her coat, her hat and her handbag were strewn over bits of furniture as if she hadn’t the energy to cross the room one last time to get to the wardrobe.

He watched her. The sleeping face was that of the girlhood Iza, pale, overstudious Iza. It was gentle, sad and full of suffering. She had Vince’s fine brow, the curve of his eyelashes and the same sharp eyes, but the old woman’s snub nose, childlike lips and soft chin – all these features combined in a single face. ‘I loved you once,’ thought Antal, ‘I loved you so much, in a way I never can and do not even want ever to love again. But it was always I who was yours: you were never mine, you were distant from me even when you were in my arms. Sometimes at night I wanted to wake you from your sleep and shout, say the word, the word that would allow you to be yourself, the word that would save you and tell me where to start looking for you so I might find you. I wept when I first realised that you were simply selfish, that you allocated bits of yourself to this or that person so as not to be distracted from your work. You never heard me weep but even if you had done you’d have thought it was a dream. You respected and loved me; men don’t cry, you thought. If I did I would no longer be a man.