Tranquility (7 page)

Poor thing, she said while taking the music sheets out of my hand. She held them like a dead rat, with two fingers, her eyes colorless, like those of animals beaten to death, and I knew that from that moment on we'd be
living our lives differently. The rules we had followed until then had just lost their validity.

My poor little nobody, she said and left me there alone.

.   .   .

She came back late in the evening, together with a stagehand who wore a sleeveless shirt and carried a prop casket on his shoulder.

Over here, my mother showed him the place, kicking aside the clothes strewn on the floor, shoved five hundred forints into the boy's hand and closed the door after him.

I was still sitting on the bed.

Come, lie down, Mother, I said.

Get out of my room, she said, but I didn't move.

She opened the coffin with her foot and threw in Judit's letters. Then all the sheet music from Paganini to Stravinsky, then the music stand, the strings and the resin. From the birth certificate and the left-behind clothes to Judit's coffee mug, she threw everything into the coffin. Then she fished out the yellow shoebox with the photographs, sat down next to me and without moving a single muscle of her face, she lobbed them in, one by one. As if she were separating the chaff from the wheat: anything with the slightest hint at Judit Weér's existence would go into the coffin, the wheat into my lap. I looked at the print of the Virgin Mary on the wall I was facing and listened to the sound of the photos – taken at Mother's Day concerts, birthday parties and class outings – as they hit the wood of the coffin. I knew that I appeared in most of them, too. And didn't feel a thing. Not even fatigue. Simply nothing.

Then she looked around the apartment once more to make sure she
hadn't missed anything. In the bathroom she found a slip, in the maid's room an old schoolbag.

The schoolbag was mine, I said.

All right, she said, and threw it back among the suitcases and other odds and ends.

It was really mine.

Then she brought in the toolbox from the pantry and began nailing the lid. She bent all the nails because she didn't hold them right. After the fifth or sixth try, she shoved the hammer into my hand and I nailed down the lid all around. It would have made no sense to tell her to ask one of the stagehands to do the job. Or maybe it would have, only I didn't think of it at the time. Except for thinking of how to drive in the nails, my mind was blank. Then I said, Goodnight, Mother.

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In the morning, she went to the Catholic bookstore where, besides books, one could buy everything necessary for religious rituals. From phosphorescent rosary beads to holy-water basins for home use, from veiled Virgin Marys with the infant Jesus made of plaster of paris to three-dimensional Golgothas; in short, everything the domestic light industry could produce or was possible to purchase from wholesalers of the Vatican to facilitate religious observance. She purchased ten blank death notices and filled them all out before I got up.

Good morning, Mother, I said.

A-ha, she said, and with her pearly letters she continued to copy from the telephone book the mailing address of the Ministry, because she was sending death notices not only to my sister, but to the theater's party secretary, the Minister of Culture and Education, and to János Kádár himself.

She showed no signs of madness. I stopped behind her and watched how she licked the stamps and stuck them to the black-bordered envelopes.

Why don't you stop that, Mother, I said.

Don't you stick your nose into this, Son, she said and removed my hand from her shoulder.

.   .   .

Then she left and paid for twenty-five years' use of a plot in the rear corner of the Kerepesi cemetery, among the children's graves grown over with creepers against the brick wall separating the cemetery from the rubber works where, when they test tires, the sighs escaping from the valves sound as if the dead were breathing in the ground. The gravediggers made faces because section eleven was their nightmare, that's where the roots of linden, chestnut, and plane trees get all tangled together and there is no shittier job than trying to cut through them with axes; even carving a grave out of rocks is easier than that. In the end, they chased away the pheasants, cut all the weeds and dug the hole without realizing they had become honorary stagehands and without appreciating how well they fit their temporary roles. For example, stonecutter József Smukk was so terribly fond of Finlandia vodka that it took him but a few minutes to carve my sister's name, date of birth and death into a prefabricated imitation stone obelisk; he also gilded the letters and saw to the transportation of the monument. The funeral director overlooked the lack of a death certificate; to be more exact, a carton of American cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch bourbon that Mother purchased in the Kigyó Street foreign currency shop with the money Judit had sent her became my sister's death certificate. In short, all the obstacles, including the objection that nobody's been buried here for the last thirty years, were overcome, the four gravediggers grabbed their
tools and to the rhythm of the rubber factory's fitful ventilator kept hacking away at the underbrush, cutting and sawing the roots until they managed to dig a proper grave for Judit Weér's material mementos.

.   .   .

That shirt is dreadful. Put on something presentable.

I'm not going, Mother, I said.

Of course you are; now get dressed.

I've told you, Mother, I'm not going.

Have it your way. You do as you please.

Cut it out, Mother, please, I said.

This is strictly my own business, do you understand?

Yes, Mother. But she'll never forgive you.

You're wrong, Son. You've no idea how many things one can forgive oneself, when it's necessary, she said, and then changed and ordered a taxi with a roof-rack.

.   .   .

The cab driver was very sorry, but Madam, please don't be angry, I am not a hearse; but my mother produced two thousand forints from her purse and suddenly it turned out that if it's very necessary, even a coffin may be considered ordinary luggage. The driver girded his loins, but the coffin proved to be lighter than he had anticipated; instead of heaving it up to his shoulder, he simply carried it out under his arm. He put it on the roof rack and secured it with a set of elastic straps; my mother, wearing a black two-piece suit, feather-light sandals, and carrying a huge velvet pocketbook, took her place on the rear seat of the Zsiguli.

Let's go, she said, and they took off for the Kerepesi; they drove down the main avenue of the cemetery, all the way to the rear, to the children's
graves, but neither the party secretary, the Minister of Culture and Education, nor János Kádár was standing by the open pit, only the four gravediggers. My mother told the driver to wait; they'd be done in a few minutes. So while the coffin was being lowered, the cab's meter kept ticking. The four gravediggers hurled the clods at the Paganini and Stravinsky scores at two forints per shovelful. They were taking their time, the longer to stare at my mother on whom the black silk suit looked as inviting as it had at the time she bought it and put it on the first time in the dressing booth of a department store on Alexanderplatz.

The effect produced was not exactly what the GDR garment industry had expected from this two-piece suit. The designers could hardly have imagined that wives of actors, recuperating from postnatal depression, would fall victim to a lifetime of depression because of these suits. That secret mistresses of theater managers would have their stomachs pumped because of this secret weapon of a suit; that hundreds of women would want to burn at the stake this silk skirt and this two-buttoned silk jacket under which the straining nipples were filled with the cyanide that had poisoned a decade of their marital life. But no less eagerly was the little silk suit wished to the fiery stakes by former assistant directors, apprentice butchers, and waiters who even years later would wake in a sweat after dreams of almond-smelling breasts, and in the morning slap their own daughter and yell, don't ever let me catch you wearing that rag again, because the poor kid happened to be trying on a second-hand silk dress in front of the mirror. As I was saying, this was not what the GDR garment industry had in mind. The designers meant to create a simple, conservative summer outfit – to be worn with a blouse, of course, say, a cream-colored one – that office workers between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five would wear to the cinema
on weekends. But already in the dressing room on Alexanderplatz my mother realized what enormous power lay in that little silk thing, weighing hardly an ounce, and she was not even put out by the fact that she hadn't had her period for the third month in a row.

.   .   .

Let's go, she said to the driver a few minutes later because she wasn't too keen on watching shovels at work and by the time the gravediggers covered the pit she was sitting in the much-tried leather armchair in Comrade Fenyő's office, asking whether the Party was pleased with her; after all, though her correspondence had been unsuccessful, she did draw the right conclusion from it, namely, her daughter was not simply a stray sheep, but a downright traitor to her country who in the interest of her career was unscrupulously ready to betray not only her own mother but also the entire working class. A miserable nobody, a worthless little strumpet. And as Comrade Fenyő probably knows already, my mother said, she had not just broken off contact with her, but for her, as of that moment, her daughter was dead. Therefore, both as a mother and as an actress, she once again complied with socialist morality. For a while the party secretary thought my mother was pulling his leg, making a mockery of everything he stood for, and was reassuring the comrade actress that the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party would not put up with such an attitude, but within seconds, he realized that my mother's remarks were not cynical in the least, that she most seriously meant every word she had said. And then he spat in my mother's face.

.   .   .

She dropped her work permit into the sewer just outside the backstage door as if it were only a candy wrapper emptied of its sweet stuffing, but when she got home she hardly had the strength to close the shutters. She
managed to kick off her sandals, undo the buttons of her silk suit before she plopped down on the bed.

I've got a migraine, bring me a wet cloth, she said.

I'm moving out, Mother, I said.

I see, she said, and while she stumbled out to the bathroom for a wet towel, I threw some clean laundry into my bag.

From the door I looked back at her, lying in the darkened room among the bits of scenery she had falsely called the Weér inheritance. The silk jacket has slid off her belly, in place of her face only a wet rag. Her nakedness was like that of the dead, in whom only the corpse washer and God take any delight. I wouldn't have cared if instead of tears, Comrade Fenyő's saliva had spilled from my eyes, if only I could feel something. But I only felt I was suffocating. If I don't get out of here now, I never will. At least I should hate her, I thought. The way Judit did, I thought. Or as did the wives, full of sedatives, who, through the small window of the crematorium would love to watch her and her silk suit becoming charred while they press the faces of their husbands to the fireproof glass and say, take a good look at her, you can still climb in and fuck her.

I'm leaving now, Mother, I repeated, not really addressing her but the wet rag stuck to her face.

I'll lock the door, I said and locked the door, and then walked to József Boulevard though I had no idea where I should go. Then I remembered that not long ago the Krémers had offered me the use of their peasant house – anytime I wanted.

.   .   .

That was the period when peasant houses, with their adobe walls, fresh air, and farm wagons decorated with flowers in the courtyards, were becoming fashionable. The peasants were amazed at how eagerly these Budapest
intellectuals were traipsing around in the mud, how expertly they repaired collapsed earthenware ovens, painted brown old hay carts and adorned them with geraniums, ingeniously transformed stinking sauerkraut kegs into tables, milking pails into chairs, and made reading lamps out of broken pottery. How enthusiastically the little ones splashed about in the kneading troughs while their fathers sharpened the scythe with an iron rasp and their mothers smeared the baker's peels with boat varnish. The peasants were agape when the female presenter on TV was simultaneously reading the latest news in the studio and planting onions in the adjacent garden; leaning over the fence, the peasants asked how something like that was possible. And the presenter explained that the news had been prerecorded, today's technology was advanced enough to solve problems like this, and the peasants responded that they understood the technology very well, but what they wanted to know was how could Saturday's news be presented on Friday. How can anyone know the news in advance? Becoming visibly flustered and confused, the presenter asked the peasants about the local soil; was it all right to stuff two seed onions in each of the little holes, or maybe she should put in three? And the peasants said the soil was still good around here, we only put one in each hole.

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