Portraits of a Marriage (11 page)

I closed my eyes, leaned back in the sunshine and, like the wise woman of some primitive village, tried to imagine the face of the lilac-ribboned woman.

Because that face had a life—in the next street, somewhere in the universe. What did I know about her? What can we know of anyone? Five years I had lived with my husband, believing I knew everything about him, knowing his every habit, every gesture: the way he hurriedly washed his hands before meals, never even glancing at the mirror, combing his hair with one hand; the way he’d suddenly be smiling an absentminded, furious smile, never telling me what he’d been thinking of; and more—all we learn of another’s body and soul through intimate contact, however frightening, indifferent, moving, depressing, wonderful, or dull that might be. I believed it was all there was to know.
Then one day I discovered I knew nothing about him … knew less, in fact, than Lázár, that strange, disappointed, sarcastic figure who exercised such power over my husband’s soul. What kind of power? … Human power. It was different from mine: greater than my powers as a woman. I can’t explain it, can only feel it, and have always felt it, from the moment I first saw them together. But that very same man had just told me the day before that he was now obliged to share his power with the lilac-ribboned woman … And now I knew that whatever wonderful or terrible things were happening in the world, it was pointless accusing myself of selfishness, lack of faith, or lack of humility, pointless comparing my problems to those of the world of nations, the problems of those millions suffering their various tragedies, because there was nothing I could do—selfish and petty as I was, obsessed and blind as I was—except get out on the street and search out the woman I had to confront face-to-face, the woman I had to talk to. I had to see her, to hear her voice, look into her eyes, examine her skin, her brow, her hands. Lázár said—and now, closing my eyes in the sunlight, I heard his voice again as clearly as if he were sitting opposite me and we were at the party with the music, back in the dizzying, unreal atmosphere of our conversation—that the truth was dangerous but at the same time far more commonplace, closer to hand, than I could imagine. What might that “commonplace” truth be? What did he mean by that?

In any case, had he suggested where to look, had he given me a clue as to where I might find her?

I decided to visit my mother-in-law that very morning and have a serious talk with her.

I was flushed with heat. Once again I felt as if I had stepped into a hot, dry stream of air. I tried to cool down by deliberately thinking rational thoughts. I was burning up the way I was that moment I first opened—oh so long ago, the same time the previous day—the secret pocket in my husband’s wallet. Lázár had told me not to touch anything and to wait … Could it not all have been some horrific vision? Maybe the incriminating evidence, the lilac ribbon, was of less significance than I imagined? Or maybe it was just Lázár playing games again, the same peculiar, incomprehensible game he had been playing that evening some years ago? Could it be that life was no more than a terrible, extraordinary game to him, something to conduct experiments on as he pleased;
that he was a chemist working with dangerous acids and corrosives, who wouldn’t care if one day he blew up the world? … There had been something cold about his eyes, in that ruthless, objective, calm, indifferent, and yet infinitely curious gaze of his, when he said I should go to my mother-in-law’s house and “look for clues” to Peter’s secret there … And yet I knew he was telling the truth, not playing games. I knew that the danger he warned me about was real.

There are days, you know, when one doesn’t really want to leave one’s room. When the sun, the stars, your environment, everything, speaks to you, when everything is pressingly relevant and wants to say something. No, not just about the lilac ribbon and what lay behind it in my mother-in-law’s house or elsewhere. It’s reality: the truth they’re after.

Then cook came out into the garden to give me the housekeeping book and we did our sums and discussed dinner and supper.

My husband was earning a lot of money at the time, and he gave me as much as I wanted without bothering to keep track of it. I had a checkbook and could spend as and when I liked. Naturally, I was very careful, particularly at that time, to buy only the essentials. But “the essentials” is a rather general concept … I was obliged to notice that for me, “the essentials” meant many things that, just a few years ago, would have been mere vanity—impossible luxuries. Our fish came from the most expensive delicatessen in town, our poultry was ordered, unseen, by phone. It was years since I had visited the market either with or without cook. I couldn’t tell you how much it cost for the first fruit of spring, I simply demanded the staff should buy the best and most expensive … My sense of reality was a little confused back then. And that morning, with the housekeeping book in my hand, the book in which that greedy magpie of a cook had scribbled whatever figures she fancied, for the first time in years it occurred to me that all the unhappiness and despair I felt, everything I took to be of primary importance, might be the product of money and the wicked, terrifying spell it exercised over me … I thought that if I were poor I might worry less about my husband, about myself, and about things like lilac ribbons. Poverty and sickness have this miraculous power of completely changing one’s priorities; one’s sentimental and psychological values go out the window. But I was neither poor nor sick in the strictly medical sense of the term. That was why I told cook:

“Prepare some cold chicken with mayonnaise tonight. But I only want breast of chicken. And lettuce salad.”

Then I went into the house to dress and get out into the world in search of the woman with the lilac ribbon. That was my mission. I didn’t plan it. There was nothing I specifically intended to say or do: I was simply obeying an internal command.

I was walking down the street, the sun was shining, and of course I had not the least idea where I was going or what I was looking for. I should call on my mother-in-law, I knew that much. However vague this sounds, I had not the slightest doubt that I would find the person I was looking for. The one thing I couldn’t know was that Lázár, with one word, almost his last word, had already set things up, and that I would stumble on the secret straightaway: I would simply dip into the tangled web of the world and pluck it out.

And yet I felt no surprise when I found her. Such a cheap word, “found” … I was just an instrument then, a performer in the play of fate. Whenever I think back now, I grow dizzy and feel a deep humility. I marvel at how everything turned out to be in such remarkable order, every detail immediately and closely following the one before it, everything fitting together with pinpoint precision. It was as if it had all been arranged by someone, perfectly timed, mysterious yet reassuring … I really learned the meaning of faith then. I had been like those people of little faith, abandoned on a stormy sea … but now I discovered that the world that looks so chaotic on the surface has an inner order, an order as rational and miraculous as music. The situation of which our personal destinies were a part, the destinies of three people, suddenly resolved itself: destiny was fulfilled. And every aspect of it suddenly became beautifully clear. It was like coming upon a tree bearing poisoned fruit. I was left simply staring.

But then I believed I was the active force, busy doing something, so I did just as Lázár suggested and took a bus to my mother-in-law’s house.

I thought I was simply doing a quick sweep, taking stock of the place. I might even stop there for a while to take in something of the clean air of her blameless life: it might help me recover a little from the horribly stifling experiences that had so occupied mine. I might tell
her what I knew, do a little sobbing, and ask her to strengthen and console me … If she knew anything of Peter’s past she would tell me. That’s what I thought. I sat on the bus and imagined my mother-in-law’s house as a sanatorium on a high mountain. It was as if I were finding my way there from a fetid marsh. That was the mood in which I rang her bell.

She lived in the inner city, on the second floor of a hundred-year-old tenement building. Even the stairwell smelled of English lavender water. I might have been in a linen cupboard. As I rang and waited for the elevator, that cool scent hit me and I felt an overwhelming nostalgia for a different life, a cooler, leaner life free of passion. My eyes filled with tears as the elevator rose. And I still didn’t know that the power that had arranged all this was, in these moments, simply directing me. I rang the bell and the maid opened the door.

“What a shame,” she said once she recognized me. “The dear lady is not at home.”

Suddenly, with a well-practiced movement she caught my hand and kissed it.

“Please don’t,” I said, but it was too late. “Forget the formalities, Juditka. I’ll wait for her.”

I smiled at the calm, proud, open face before me. This was Judit, my mother-in-law’s maid, who had been with her for fifteen years. She was a Transdanubian peasant girl and had joined my mother-in-law’s household when there was still a proper staff. She was a scullery maid then, very young, maybe no more than fifteen. When my father-in-law died and they gave up the large apartment, the girl moved into the inner-city apartment with my mother-in-law. In the meantime, Judit, who in marriageable terms was an old maid of thirty by then—or even over thirty years old—had been promoted to the rank of housekeeper.

We were standing in the dimly lit hall, so Judit put the light on. The moment she did so I started trembling. My legs were shaking and the blood drained from my face, but I continued to stand up straight. The housekeeper was wearing a colored cotton-print dress that morning, and a low-cut dirndl—cheap working clothes. She wore a white head scarf. And round her pale, muscular, peasant-servant neck, on a lilac ribbon, hung an amulet, a cheap locket of the kind you get on the market.

I stretched out my hand without hesitating, without thinking, and with a single movement tore the ribbon from her neck. The locket fell to the floor and opened. You know what was the strangest thing? Judit made no attempt to pick it up. She stood erect and, with a slow, easy movement, crossed her arms across her chest. She looked down at me without moving as I bent down, picked up the locket, and examined the two photographs inside it. Both showed my husband. One of them was very old, taken about sixteen years ago. My husband was twenty-two at the time, Judit fifteen. The other was taken last year, the one he was supposed to have had done for his mother, for Christmas.

We stood there a long time, both of us quite still.

“Forgive me,” she eventually said, courteously, almost grandly. “We shouldn’t just be standing here. Please, do come in.”

She opened the door and led me into her room. I entered without speaking. She stood on the threshold, shut the door, and firmly, quite decisively, turned the key—twice.

I had never entered that room before. Why should I have? … Believe it or not, I had never really studied her face before or regarded it as important.

I studied it now.

There was a white painted table in the middle of the room, and two chairs. I was weak and was afraid I might lose my balance, so I slowly made my way over to one of the chairs and sat down. Judit did not sit; she stood by the locked door, her arms folded, calm and determined, as if wanting to prevent anyone else coming in and disturbing us.

I took a good look around. I had a lot of time on my hands. I knew that every single object, each tiny scrap, was of paramount importance to me here, here at “the scene of the crime”—that’s the phrase that vaguely came to mind, the phrase Lázár had used for the room where I was now sitting. It was an expression I came across each day in the papers, when they reported how the police, having arrested the criminal, would go to the scene of the crime and conduct a thorough investigation … I was investigating the room in exactly the same way. Something had happened here, or some place like it, many years ago, an event lost in the mists of time … and now suddenly here I was—judge,
witness, and perhaps victim too. Judit said nothing. She did not disturb me, understanding precisely how important everything about this room was to me.

But there was nothing surprising there. The furnishings were not exactly poor, but neither were they comfortable. It was the kind of room you see in a convent, a guest room prepared for the better class of secular visitor: the copper bed; the white furniture; the white curtains; the striped peasant rug; the picture above the bed of the Virgin, complete with rosary; the little jug of flowers on the bedside table; the extremely modest but carefully chosen little decorative objects ranged along the glass shelf above the basin. Do you know what this said to me? It said: resignation. It had an air of conscious, voluntary resignation. You could practically breathe it … And the moment I breathed it I no longer felt angry, I felt only sadness and a deep, bottomless fear.

Of course I felt all kinds of emotions and sensations in those long minutes. I noticed everything and sensed what lay beyond each individual item, lapping at them like a sea. It was someone’s fate: it was a life. Suddenly I felt scared. I could hear Lázár’s sad, hoarse voice, clearly and precisely predicting that I would be amazed to find the truth much simpler, much more ordinary, but much more frightening than I ever imagined. True enough, this was all pretty ordinary. And yes, frightening too.

Wait, I want to get things properly in perspective.

Just now I was saying that I detected an air of resignation. But I observed secrecy and outrage too. Don’t go away thinking this was a hovel, one of those Pest slums where poor servants find accommodation. It was a clean, comfortable room: a maid’s room at my mother-in-law’s could be no other. I also said it was the kind of guest room you find in a convent: little cells where the guest not only lives, sleeps, and washes, but is also obliged to consider his soul. Every object in such a place—the whole atmosphere—is a constant reminder of strict commandments issued by a superior being … There was no trace of perfume, cologne, or scented soap in the room. Beside the basin lay a common cake of tallow soap, the kind you use for laundry. Next to that some water for rinsing the teeth, a toothbrush, a brush, and a comb. I also spotted a box of rice powder and a facecloth of chamois leather.
That was the sum of this woman’s worldly possessions. I took all this in, item by item.