The Angel Makers (36 page)
The more people they talk to, the more comfortable Béla is becoming, and, the more suspicious Géza is. No one in Falucska seems to behave like a normal person. Francziska was as twitchy as a man just back from the front; then there was Mrs Gersek’s pathological raging, Mrs Gyulai weeping like a martyred saint, Mrs Kiss’s unbearable air of self satisfaction. Even Sari Arany is strange; that degree of selfpossession and intelligence in a place like this can’t be natural. But in the end, of course, it’s Béla’s view, not Géza’s, that matters. Géza finds this an increasingly insupportable idea.
Evening is darkening the sky like a bruise, and Béla thinks that he hasn’t felt this way since he was a child at school, who had taken a groundless fancy to the daughter of a neighbour. His heart had sunk when Sari had been unable to eat with them at lunchtime – an illness to tend to, apparently – but she had seemed genuinely sorry, particularly when he said that they would probably be leaving the next day, after a valedictory talk with Francziska Imanci.
Then her face had brightened. ‘As it’s your last night here,’ she suggested, her voice slow and drawn out like honey, ‘why don’t we eat supper together tonight? Géza, too, of course. Rózsi and Judit will be all right without me for one evening, I’m sure.’
Béla’s not quite sure of the propriety of this, but finds that he doesn’t care; it’s as if his heart is no longer beating, but instead jumping up in great, breathless leaps. He looks at himself in the mirror – not an overwhelmingly handsome man, no, but acceptable, surely? He smoothes down his wavy brown hair one last time, and leans in to the mirror to check that nothing untoward is caught between his teeth. It’s nothing more than a dinner, nothing more, but maybe he won’t see her again after tonight, and that makes any effort worthwhile.
Sari arrives as the sun is nodding below the trees. She’s abrought
gulyás
– ‘I made it myself,’ she says, smiling shyly. ‘Rózsi’s is better, but I wanted to make it myself’ – and a bottle of red wine. They sit at the weathered wooden table and the flames of the lamps rear up towards the ceiling.
Géza looks bored and says little, but to Béla, the minutes slip by like the tiny silver fish that race through the river outside the cottage. Conversation is awkward, stilted, as Sari tries to draw out the obstinately close-mouthed Géza, and Béla wishes as hard as he can that Géza would leave – surely it can’t be pleasant for him sitting here in that glutinous silence? He wills him to go and finally Géza gets to his feet, with a polite bow in Sari’s direction.
‘Thank you for the meal,’ he says, ‘I don’t wish to be rude, but I have to write up my notes from today’s interviews.’
Béla narrows his eyes, knowing perfectly well that the notes were written up in the afternoon, but of course he doesn’t argue. Raising an unmistakeably sardonic eyebrow in Béla’s direction, Géza leaves the room – for a split second, Béla has time to woefully realise that Géza will be totally unmanageable when they get back to Város, but he’s swallowed by Sari’s gaze before he has time to muse on it any more.
As soon as Géza is gone, their conversation seems to catch alight; no longer sluggish, it snaps and burns between them. It’s dark outside, and with her face half-shrouded in shadow, Sari seems to let go of some of her inhibitions. While their discussions before have been impassioned, they’ve also been impersonal, whereas now, Béla feels sufficiently emboldened to ask Sari about herself.
She talks a little about her fiancé, Ferenc, the one who died; her words are precise and carefully chosen, but Béla senses a weight of grief behind them. She talks also about her interests, about the books that she wishes that she could read, about her passion for reading plays that she wishes that she could see performed. She says a few words about her father, how he infused a love of learning into her, and what a shock it was when she learnt that a formal education was more or less and impossibility for someone like her.
Béla sips his wine – it’s not bad, he’s surprised to note, not bad at all – and he finds himself asking what he’s been wondering for days. ‘Do you ever think about leaving?’
Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘Leaving the village? And going where?’
‘I – I don’t know. Budapest, maybe, or – or one of the towns.’ He deliberately doesn’t mention Város.
‘I thought about it, of course, when I was younger, before Rózsi was born. What was keeping me here? No family, no husband; most of my friends have left, either with their families or alone, and those who are still here …’
She doesn’t need to elaborate; she’s spoken to him of Lujza before, of the broken woman the war made of her. ‘And someone like me is always going to be on the outskirts of village life. What did I have to lose by leaving?’
She shrugs. ‘I would have needed money, more money than I’ve ever had access to. I have no family here, it’s true, but I have no family anywhere else, either, and no friends in towns or cities who could take me in while I tried to find a job. And what job could I get, anyway? I have no skills that would be useful in a town. I can’t sew with any degree of skill. I’m not a great cook. Perhaps I could be a maid, yes, but then would my life in the city, as a maid, be any better than my life here, as a midwife? I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy books, or go to the theatre, and I wouldn’t have the friends or the respect that I have here.’
She sighs suddenly, with such force that the flame of the lamp flickers. ‘When I was young, I didn’t care about that sort of thing so much. If I’d just had enough money to get me to the city in the first place, I would have been prepared to take a chance on the rest of it. Now, with Rózsi, it’s impossible. When you have a child, you can’t take risks any more.’
He licks his lips, trying to find the words. ‘Would it be different if you did have a friend in town, who would help you to find work, and to find somewhere decent to live?’
Sari looks at him sharply. ‘Mr Illyés?’ Under the intensity of her gaze, he stops caring about finding the right words; any words at all will do.
‘I don’t want to offend you, or to – to suggest anything improper at all, I can assure you of that. But over these past days that I’ve spent here, I – I can’t claim that I know you well, of course, I’ve known you for such a short time, but I think that perhaps I know you a little, maybe, and understand you a little, and it has occurred to me – forgive me, please – but it has occurred to me that you are out of place here, that you have a – an intelligence that is wasted here, and that would serve you well elsewhere. I earn good money, and I have more money that I inherited from my parents, and I have no family, and so I could quite well afford to – to give you the money to come to Város, and to find you a place for you and Rózsi to live, and to – to support you for as long as it took for you to find work.’
That’s it. His voice sputters into silence. She’s still looking at him, her expression utterly unreadable. He can’t look at her, his eyes sliding relentlessly from her face.
‘Mr Illyés – Béla,’ she says at last. ‘That – that’s a very, very kind offer. But …’
He holds up a hand. ‘Please. Don’t decide now. Take some time to think about it. I will give you my address in Város, and you can let me know of your decision. My offer will always be open.’
She smiles at him. ‘All right. I promise you that I will think about it. But you know, Judit is a concern. She’d never get on in the town, but I couldn’t just abandon her here, after everything that she’s done for me. And when she dies, what would the village do without a midwife?’ She checks herself. ‘I’m sorry. I really will think about it.’
‘For
your
sake, Miss Arany, yours and Rózsi’s. Perhaps you should stop thinking about the good of everyone else for a moment.’
They sit in silence for a while, lamps casting wavering shadows on the walls, until a gust of wind rattles the windows, and seems to rouse Sari.
‘I should be getting back,’ she says, and casts an eye around the disordered kitchen. ‘I can come back for the pots in the morning.’
He nods, and gets to his feet. ‘Can I walk you home?’
Sari shakes her head. ‘No need. Anyway, I’m going to drop in on Éva – the person who was ill this afternoon – see how she is.’
‘All right.’ She opens the door to leave, and then with a swift, fluid movement, she leans towards him and kisses him on the cheek. In an instant, Béla’s nerves are laid bare to her. He feels every atom of her smooth lips as they brush his cheek, and the smell of her hair – herbs and clear water – fills his nostrils, fills his whole head. He’s almost thankful when she pulls away. What should he make of that intensity of feeling? He can’t speak, but thankfully, she just says, ‘Goodnight, Béla,’ and is gone without expecting an answer. Sari crunches home through the first frost of the season, the stars fizzing and crackling above her. It occurs to her that ten years ago, the offer that Béla has just made would have filled her with clear, uncomplicated joy, rather than the muddied, calculated sense of relief that it brings her now – a relief that’s not tied to the offer itself, but to its motivation, what it says about his feelings for her, what it means for her safety and her escape. She feels a dislocated breath of sadness, but it leaves as quickly as it arrived.
It’s going to be all right
, she thinks, a bubble of certainty that breaks free of her and sails through the sharp night air.
In the dim, warm light of the kitchen, Béla leans with one hand on the closed door, and with the other, unbuttons his trousers, and takes himself in his hand. It only takes a few moments. Afterwards, he doesn’t even feel shame, like he normally does. Instead, he feels cleansed, as if his soul’s been wiped cleaner than it’s ever been in his entire life.
Morning, and Béla can hardly force himself to listen to Francziska’s words. The same affirmations and denials that he’s heard so many times before wash over him, making about as much impression as the ripples of a puddle on a Budapest pavement. He can see the twitching end of Géza’s pencil out of the corner of his eye, and thinks sourly that he hardly needs to listen, in any case, as Géza’s doing all the listening for him. Asking the questions, too, something that Béla has presented as a special treat, but which is really a treat for Béla himself, allowing him to drift off and fantasise unmolested.
Their bags are packed and they plan to leave around midday. One of the taciturn old men of the village has, according to Sari, offered to give them a lift in his cart as far as a nearby village, from whence they will be able to pick up the train back to Város, and they should be there by nightfall. After an uneasy night, Sari’s smile when she knocked on the door first thing was like balm on a wound, and he realised after hours of troubling uncertainty that she will take him up on his offer. Perhaps not straight away, but he’s prepared to wait, especially now that he’s certain – because surely she couldn’t smile at him with such warmth if she were determined that they would never see each other again.
His head jerks slightly as Francziska says something particularly vehement, but it’s of no consequence, and he lets himself slip back into daydreams again, making a mental wager with himself that Sari and Rázsi will be in Város before the end of the year.
Béla’s roused by silence, and realises that Géza and Francziska are both looking at him expectantly. Clearly, the interview is over.
‘Well,’ he says jovially. ‘That concludes things, then.’
Francziska eyes him warily as they both get to their feet and move towards the door. Béla mumbles thanks and apologies, trying to make her see that it was nothing personal, they were just doing their job, and that she’s certainly managed to put their minds at rest. She nods and smiles and they move towards the door, collecting coats and bags on the way.
And then everything seems to happen at once. Géza picks up his case and as he turns towards the door, the case, gripped lightly in his hand, describes a shallow arc in the air, knocking against the side table that stands by Francziska’s door. Béla turns towards the sound of the disturbance, a reprimand for Géza on his lips, and they all watch as a narrow, inelegant vase on the table shudders, pirouettes slowly on its wide base, and falls on its side. From its gaping top something small appears, rolls inexorably across the top of the table, falls, hits the floor, and shatters, leaving glass fragments and white powder patterning the floorboards like an exploded star.
Sari had made her promise to get rid of it, of course, but Francziska hadn’t quite been able to make herself do it – you never knew when you might need it, she’d thought – and now she curses herself, silently, with every foul name that she can think of, as Géza kneels on the floor, collecting a few grains on the tip of his finger. They both turn towards her, questions rather than accusations on their faces, and Francziska realises that she could still have got away with it, at exactly the same time as she realises that she’s just given herself away by the expression of frozen, abject horror on her face.
‘It wasn’t just me,’ she says.
As soon as Jakova Gersek sees the two of them coming up the path to her house, she knows what they’re there for, and something curdles inside her. When they tell her that they’ve come from Francziska Imanci, she feels nothing but disgust and contempt for Francziska. Jakova has always known that Francziska is a coward, that if discovered, she would want to spread the blame as widely as possible, and she’s not surprised that Jakova’s name was the one Francziska chose to give up; the stupid bitch, too superstitious to implicate the midwives, as if they have some sort of power to curse anyone who acts against them. Well, Jakova certainly isn’t that stupid; it comes of being one of Orsolya Kiss’s friends, and as soon as it becomes clear that her flurry of furious denials are falling on deaf ears, the decision to spread the blame still wider isn’t a difficult one.