The Door (14 page)

Despite her years, Emerence too had all those opportunities, or at least she did have at the time of the Great Change; but she had nothing but scorn for the twists and turns of history, and told the party "educators" to their faces that she didn't want speeches from anyone, on any subject. The place for sermons was in church; she'd been set to work as a cook when still a child, and no-one asked her then if she minded; by the age of thirteen she was a menial in Budapest, so her visitor could go straight back where he'd come from, and he could start by getting off her porch; she worked for her living with her hands, not her mouth, like the propagandists, and she didn't have time to listen to rubbish. When the real crackdown came, it was a miracle that she wasn't locked up. There was something monstrous, deformed, in the contempt she heaped on everything. Those propagandists must have lived through the most agonising moments of their lives when Emerence acquainted them with her political philosophy. In her view Horthy, Hitler, Rákosi and Charles IV were all exactly the same. The fact was that whoever happened to be in power gave the orders, and anyone giving orders, whoever it was, whenever, and whatever the order, did it in the name of some incomprehensible gobbledegook. Whoever was on top, however promising, and whether he was on top in her own interests or not, they were all the same, all oppressors. In Emerence's world there were two kinds of people, those who swept and those who didn't, and everything flowed from that. It made no difference under which slogans or flags they staged national holidays. There was no force that could overcome Emerence. The propagandist, shocked to the depths of his heart, gave her a wide berth thereafter. She couldn't be fended off or stopped in her tracks; he couldn't take a familiar or friendly line with her, or even make simple conversation. She was fearless, enchantingly and wickedly clever, brazenly impudent. No-one ever managed to persuade her that even if one granted the absurd distinction she insisted on, that merit depended on whether one swept or not, it was up to her alone whether she wanted to join those who didn't sweep themselves but got others to sweep for them, because now, in 1945, the state was offering her that choice. Her final trump card, if all else failed, was to play the poor old lady for whom things of this world had become too much, and stare dreamily into space, as if it had all come too late for her. The hopeful young activist would insist: "All roads are still open to you, my dear madam. You come from peasant stock; how could it be too late for you? They'll take you off to study, or send someone here to explain where you should present yourself. They'll assess your aptitudes, which are clearly exceptional. You'll catch up in no time at all. You'll qualify, and be an educated person." Educated? That was the torch that ignited the oil-well of her anti-intellectualism. Those exceptional qualities of mind became instantly apparent when she gave vent to her hatred of the written word. She was an orator of real stature, a natural.

Emerence could barely read. Her writing was crabbed. Addition and subtraction she managed with painful difficulty, and they were the only arithmetical skills she retained. Her memory, on the other hand, worked like a computer. On hearing the radio or television blaring out of people's windows, if the tone was positive she immediately contradicted it, if negative, she praised it. She had no idea where any particular place might be found in the world, but she related news to me about various governments with impeccable pronunciation, reeling off the names of statesmen, Hungarian and foreign, and always with a comment: "They want peace. Do you believe that? I don't, because who then will buy the guns, and what pretext will they have for hanging and looting? And anyway, if there's never been world peace before, why should it happen now?" She dismayed the representatives of a number of women's groups when they tried to get her to their meetings, or at least shake her hostile indifference. The street committee and the local council treated her as an Act of God, and the priest was entirely in agreement. Emerence was a born Mephisto, utterly perverse. I once told her that if she hadn't fought non-stop against the opportunities she'd been offered, she might have been our first woman ambassador or prime minister; she had more sense and intelligence than the entire Academy of Sciences. "Good," she said. "It's a pity I don't know what an ambassador does. The only thing I want is the crypt. Just leave me in peace, and don't try to educate me. I know quite enough already. I wish I knew less. Those who want something from the country are welcome to have it, since you tell me it's so full of opportunities. I don't need anyone or anything. Understand that once and for all."

And in truth she didn't need the country. She had no wish to join the people who oversaw the sweepers. But because she sought nothing for herself it never occurred to her that in her eternal negativity she was political. Had she behaved like that under Horthy, her employers of the time would have found it highly amusing. Józsi's boy told us she did once, during that period, spend a few days in prison for making inflammatory statements. Every phase of her life must have followed the same horrendous pattern. When she did get going, it was best to keep clear, and people fled when they heard her sounding off about Gagarin's space flight, or the dog Laika. When Laika's heartbeats were first broadcast she denounced it as cruelty to animals. Later, she consoled herself by claiming they'd used a ticking clock — no dog in its right mind would rush over and volunteer to sit inside a marble, or whatever it was, and race round the heavens for fun — who could believe that? As for Gagarin, she was a real prophet of doom. Projects like that should be left well alone. God usually ignored us when asked for something, but he invariably granted what we feared. If she levelled the score with a neighbour who trampled her flowerbed, why shouldn't God do the same to his intruders? The heavenly bodies weren't put up there for people to wander round. The day Gagarin died, when she was forced to see for herself the reaction of a shocked and horrified world, even the hopelessly dim Adélka stayed away. She stood on her porch, gesticulating vehemently, telling anyone who'd listen how she'd predicted that God wouldn't tolerate us exceeding our powers. She used other words, but that was her meaning. She was the only person on the entire planet who felt no more sorry for the young man who burned up like a star than she would have for Kennedy or Martin Luther King. She looked on East and West equally, without bias or sympathy, declaring that there were sweepers and their bosses in America too; that Kennedy was one of the bosses, and a negro who hadn't yet made it into the circus but still travelled around performing non-stop must be a king among sweepers. Everyone had to die one day. She'd shed a tear for all of them as soon as she could find the time.

Years later, when Józsi's boy and I met beside her grave and talked about how impossible it was to change her view of the world, the young man spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He reckoned peace had arrived too late for his aunt. His father had taken a more rational view of things. He had never forgotten the hard times they had been through, but he was both contented and progressive. But Emerence had been prone to these bitter outbursts all her life. I must have noticed how peculiar they were, a hostility almost without an object. She was as much against Franz Josef as she was against anyone else in a position to influence the history of the nation, even for the good. I didn't tell him about the lawyer's son. I sensed that the cause of her rage somehow lay with him. In the end it was the Lieutenant Colonel who provided an explanation: Emerence probably hated power no matter whose hands it was in. If the man existed who could solve the problems of the five continents, she would have taken against him too, because he was successful. In her mind everyone came down to a common denomination — God, the town clerk, the party worker, the king, the executioner, the leader of the UN. But if she experienced a sense of fellow feeling with anyone, her compassion was all-embracing, and this didn't extend only to the deserving. It was for everyone. Absolutely everyone. Even the guilty.

I could have said more than anyone about that, because the old woman had confided in me. But I wasn't stupid. All it needed was for me to give them the full picture. On one occasion she was kneeling in front of me, using a damp cloth to pick dog hairs off the rug — Viola was shedding his winter coat. Sitting at my typewriter, I heard her talking away. "Dear God," she muttered into the damp cloth, "I hid the German because his leg — what little was left of it after the machine gun caught him — was falling off. I thought, if they found him they'd beat him to death. Then I stuck the Russian in with him, at the closed-off end of the cellar. They just stared at one another. Now you never heard that, and you never will, and if you once open your mouth about it you'll see what I do to you. When I moved in, there was no-one else living in the building, only that old cripple Mr Szloka, the one I later buried. The owners had gone to Switzerland, and the other tenants hadn't yet started to drift in. I went all over the villa, from the attic to the basement, and I saw it would be possible to make a perfect underground hiding place if I arranged the firewood in the right way. There was a tiny door behind it, opening on to a windowless space. So I dragged the wood in front of it, and I hid them all in there, anyone who was on the run. You can imagine the look on their faces when I moved the Russian in with the German. He must have been hit in the lung because his blood was all frothy. They babbled away at one another, neither understanding a word. I hid their weapons — I have them to this day — not that they'd be worth using, they make so much noise. But I knew how to. My boss was an officer and a big hunter.

"They died, both of them, before they had time to make friends. That night, I laid them out in front of the house. No-one has ever worked out how they came to be lying there, side by side, so peacefully. I also hid Mr Brodarics in the same place. Rákosi was after him. As if I'd just hand him over! He went off to the drilling site with his helmet on each day, and when I found him the oil wouldn't come off his hands. A spy — the hell he was a spy! Whoever said that about him was the real spy. So yes, I'd just let them take him away, and leave his poor wife, who scrubbed and cleaned all day, to fend for herself. And besides, Mr Brodarics showed a real respect for people. Often he would crouch down beside me when I had to light a fire for the cauldron. He showed me how to use less coal. I learned the secrets of fire from him — everything has its secrets, even embers. Rákosi's man arrives. I open the gate. Where is he? Well, he certainly isn't here, I say. The others took him away early this morning. But make sure you get him — he owes me money for bottling jam. So he survived it all, in my little nook. After that it was empty for a while, but then I hid a member of the secret police. He'd collapsed in the garden. He was a decent man, someone I knew. It would have been a real shame if anything happened to him. He helped me out when my arm was broken — he set up the drying rack — so why shouldn't I have hidden him? But as for the other one, the one I took in later, I wouldn't put my hand in the fire for him now. But I kept him for a few days because he was so miserable. He was sweating big clear drops like a dog when he sees them lifting the stick."

I listened in silence. St Emerence of Csabadul, the madwoman of mercy, who asks no questions but rescues all alike, since whoever is being pursued must be saved, the Grossmans and those hunting the Grossmans; on one side of her banner a drying rack, on the other Mr Brodarics' helmet. This old woman is not just oblivious to her country, she's oblivious to everything. Her spirit shines bright, but through a cloud of steam. Such a thirst for life, but so diffused over everything; such immense talent, achieving nothing. "Tell me," I once asked her. "You only rescued people? You never handed anyone in?" She glared at me, with hatred in her eyes. What did I take her for? She hadn't even informed on the barber, though he had cheated her, robbed her of everything. Even his dreams were lies. When he left her and made off with his loot, she said nothing. If he needed it, let him have it. But from that day on, if a man got close to her, he reminded her of the barber, and she wasn't going to lose everything she'd put together again, especially not the money. She made a plan for the future, and there were no barbers, or Kennedys, or flying dogs in it. There was no place for anyone but herself, and the dead she would gather in.

She threw down what was in her hand, and rushed out. She had remembered that she had to collect a prescription for someone who was sick. She asked if I wanted her to get anything. I stood there gazing after her, wondering why she still stuck with me when I was so very different from her. I had no idea what she liked about me. I said earlier that I was still rather young, and I hadn't thought it through, how irrational, how unpredictable is the attraction between people, how fatal its current. And yet I was well versed in Greek literature, which portrayed nothing but the passions: death and love and friendship, their hands joined together round a glittering axe.

Something else Emerence also almost never referred to was the part of the country where she was born, not far from my own birthplace. I was forever disparaging the city, its water, its air, and at the start of spring, when the sodden earth began to thaw and mists rose between the lingering mounds of snow, I would be seized with nostalgia and yearn to be back home. Emerence didn't join me in these little outbursts, though she too noticed the fragrances bearing the message of the season and the barely visible shoots of green, not yet a full canopy, or a bud, not even a baby leaf, appearing on the branches, reminding us that work was beginning in the fields; and in our villages the new-born light, diffracted in spring's prism, would bring back the girl who once jumped and danced without a thought or care — the girl I once was, the girl she had been.

On one such day, in late February, I received an invitation from the Csabadul library. I immediately dashed over to Emerence and asked if she would go with me if I accepted. She wouldn't have to listen to my talk, just travel with me, and while it was going on she could visit the cemetery or look up her relatives. She left me with no real reply, and I took this as a refusal, but I agreed to do the lecture anyway. Eight weeks stood between us and the appointed date, and a good month later she brought up the subject of the trip. She asked whether we would have to spend the night there, as that would be out of the question, but if we could set out early and be back by the evening, it was conceivable that she might come. Sutu had offered to sweep the pavement, and Adélka would do the bins, so if I still wanted to take her, she'd come. This surprising decision had breathed a hint of colour into her normally pale face. She went on to ask if, when we got there, I would refrain from telling anyone how we were connected. This really annoyed me. Did we treat her like a mere employee? I offered to introduce her as my husband's relative. I couldn't pass her off as one of mine because her family would know otherwise, but she might well be related to someone they didn't know in Budapest. The look she gave me, blending ridicule and forbearance, was unlike anything I'd seen from her before. "The master would be delighted," she said drily. "Don't trouble yourself. I was just curious to see whether you'd agree. But you did. And yes, you did because you're so stupid. You understand nothing. What do you imagine they think I became? A king? They put me into service when I was still a child. My family aren't dreamers. I shall tell them I am a caretaker: it's a perfectly respectable job."