The Door (15 page)

By then I was so furious I lashed out at her in rage. As far as I cared, she could introduce herself however she liked, as a dog-catcher or someone who skinned dead animals. No-one could possibly respect her for keeping a multi-storey villa in order, plus all the other houses, and looking after us as well — and the best reason of all was the last, because, though she didn't believe it, I'd been invited to Csabadul for precisely the thing she set at nothing: my writing. There were people, even in the place where she was born, who didn't think writers were idlers; people, unlike her, who didn't dismiss out of hand names such as János Arany or Petöfi. She made no reply, nor did she mention the trip again. Right up to the last possible day I had no idea whether or not she would come. But I let things be. I was afraid that if I exerted any pressure, she'd stay at home.

In the days leading up to the lecture we carried on as before. Emerence dusted the bookshelves, took delivery of the mail, listened whenever I spoke on the radio, but she passed no comment, she wasn't interested. She took note when we dashed off to a conference, meeting or presentation by some literary group, or occasional language lessons. She saw our names on the books. She returned them to the shelves duly dusted, as she would candleholders or matchboxes. They were all the same to her, misdemeanours that might be overlooked, like eating or drinking to excess. Some childish ambition made me want to win her over to what I saw as the irresistible enchantment of classical Hungarian literature. I once recited Petöfi's
My Mother's Hen
to her. I thought this poem might appeal to her because she loved animals. She stood there, staring at me with the duster still in her hand, then gave a dry, grating laugh. The stories I knew defied belief.
What is a stone?
What was all that about?
What is a stone?
And what was this word
thou?
Nobody spoke like that. I left the room, choking with rage.

In the end, she didn't go with me on the trip. It was no-one's fault in particular. Sutu was ordered to report to the city council offices that day about the licence for her stall, and the night before we were to leave she ran over to Emerence's to say there was nothing she could do about it, she was very sorry, but she couldn't stand in for her; she had no way of knowing when her turn would come, or how long it would take once she was called. The scene that passed between them was too brutal to imagine. The more clearly Emerence came to see Sutu's innocence, the more savage her insults became. More than anyone, she'd had the same experience herself, time after time: you planned something for a particular hour of the day, and then everything fell apart because someone somewhere else had made other arrangements. She knew that Sutu was as much a captive as the rest of us. If she was summoned, she couldn't tell them she had other things to do. So there was no point in arguing about it, or insulting Sutu left and right. But she did. Sutu withdrew, a veritable Coriolanus, and it was a long while before they were on the same good terms again.

On the day of my outing Emerence arrived at dawn (much earlier than usual) to take a sleepy Viola for his walk. While I was getting ready she never left my side. She found fault with my hair, my dress, everything. My nerves were in shreds. Why was she interfering and ordering me around, as if I were off to a royal ball? As she pulled and twisted my hair, she told me she hadn't been home since '45, and then she went there and came straight back again on the next available train, after trading a little food for various bits and bobs. In '44 she did spend a full week there, and didn't enjoy it, but in those days her people were in a miserable state. Her grandfather had always been a tyrant, and the rest of her family on her mother's side were unsettled because of the circus. "Circus", in Emerence's vocabulary meant national disasters — in this case the Second World War — all those situations where women become neurotic, grasping and stupid, and men go berserk and start knifing people, as happens in the wings of history's theatre. If it had been up to her, she would have locked the youth of 1848 away in a cellar and given them a lecture: no shouting, no literature; get yourselves involved in some useful activity. She didn't want to hear any revolutionary speeches, or she'd deal with them, every single one. Get out of the coffee houses, and back to work in the fields and factories.

Only when she saw the official car turning into the street, with Nádori-Csabadul, the name of her birthplace, painted on it, did she give me my instructions. If I could find the time, would I look to see what state the family graves were in, and if possible, the old house too, where she was born, on the outskirts of Nádori? Also, if there was time, she would like me to go to the station at Csabadul and walk all the way to the end of the goods platform. That was important — the goods platform. If I came across any members of the family — there must be some, because they wrote to Józsi's boy — they weren't Szeredáses; there were none of them left, only descendants on her mother's side, the Divéks — she had no message for them, but if they did ask I shouldn't say too much, just tell them the truth, that she was alive and well. I promised nothing. I had absolutely no idea what free time I would have. Any such meeting would depend not only on road conditions but also on whatever had been organised for me when I got there. These events almost never started when advertised, because they had to wait for an audience, or for the librarian to arrange lunch. I could hardly start inquiring about cemeteries, but I would do what I could. The car had in fact arrived rather earlier than arranged. Perhaps, if I really tried, I'd manage to make time for everything she'd asked.

At the very last moment Sutu appeared in the street and opened fire. She mocked Emerence for staying at home even when she'd changed the lock on her door. She knew why she'd done it. She didn't trust her, Sutu. She reckoned that she'd be burgled on the one day when everyone knew she was going with me, and who in all likelihood was best placed to do it but her, Sutu? And she could have taken Viola too. "Go and kill yourself," Emerence coolly replied. Sutu was dumbfounded, but she stood her ground. The curse was as unexpected, and as little justified, as her own accusations had been.

And that was my last view of them from the car. Sutu, with her head turned to stare at Emerence as if they were doing karate and the old woman had struck her such a blow that she was paralysed. I called out to Emerence that I'd do my best to be back early; I hoped before midnight, if possible, because by then I'd be so tired I wouldn't be able to speak. "Tired? What from? It's those poor people having to listen to you who'll be tired. By the time they've been herded into the cultural centre they'll have had to finish feeding the animals, milking them, bedding them down, and five million other things you know nothing about. All you'll do is sit and jabber a lot of nonsense."

I was not going to start explaining how much energy it takes to concentrate for hours, in the dog days of summer, in an airless hall, with the windows closed because of the noise outside. I asked the driver to start. Frankly, I felt rather cheated. I'd hoped that for once Emerence would refrain from needling me, and perhaps ask for something, perhaps a branch from the hedge round her old house, or some other memento. When I go home I always bring back a two-kilo loaf of bread. But she made no requests. As we pulled away, Viola gave a casual yap, as if he was quite sure the separation wouldn't last for ever, and we'd both be sure to manage until the evening.

Our trip went very smoothly. We didn't stop anywhere. I'd made a habit of not eating before my arrival because they almost always offered me something at the library, and it seemed rude not even to try it. Nádori was a lovely little village. I didn't have to ask for the cemetery; it began on the outskirts, by the sign announcing the name of the town, with a scent of sage and wild flowers wafting from the dilapidated headstones. We stopped the car and I went in. A woman was watering flowers near the fence. She was old enough to have heard the names Szeredás and Divék, but she told me she hadn't been born there, she'd only come to be married, and she knew nothing about the carpenter's family. The cemetery itself was quite clearly no longer in use. Those turning to dust lay under mounds of dirt, most of them unmarked, their gravestones and wooden crosses dragged away or stolen; or, if the dead person was of any importance, they'd been exhumed by the family. Perhaps twenty resting places at most were as well-tended as the one the old lady was watering. But I continued to search for a while among the rabbit holes and molehills, and I did it quite willingly. There is something very appealing, not in the least bit sad, about an abandoned cemetery in the summer, and I strolled among the graves, overrun with weeds. But there was nothing to see. Where I did manage to make out the faint engraving, it wasn't the name I was looking for.

However in Csabadul I was lucky straight away. As I stepped out of the car in the main square, I saw Emerence's mother's family name in red, on a sign right in front of me:
Mr Csaba Divék, Traditional and Quartz Watches. Mrs Ildikó Divék, nee Kapros, Costume Jewellery.
A young married couple were working in the shop. If I had imagined I would cause a sensation by walking in with news of their relation Emerence Szeredás who lived in Pest — assuming this was the right place, and the late Rozália Divék, wife of József Szeredás did belong to their family — then I was mistaken. They hadn't kept in touch with Emerence, but they knew who she was. The watchmaker suggested I look up their godmother, another Divék girl. She was the cousin of their Budapest relative. They'd been little girls together and she'd be delighted to see me, mainly because after the oceans of time that had passed she might discover what had happened to Aunt Emerence's little girl, whom she hadn't seen since they took her back to the capital.

I now had to be very careful not to show that there were gaps in my knowledge, and that I was hearing for the first time that Emerence had a child. Pressed further, they could recall only what had been passed on to them by those who had gone before. During the last years of the war she had appeared with a little girl in her arms, who then lived with the great-grandfather for about a year. The young people knew nothing about the family graves, but the watchmaker's godmother would certainly remember everything.

Next I went to the library. As there was still a lot of time not just before the lecture, but before lunch, the librarian was happy to go along with my suggestion, and offered to accompany me.

The cousin lived in her own house. She had a distinct look of Emerence, the same tall, lean type, with the same dignified walk and bearing. You had only to look at her to see that even in old age she enjoyed life. The house was tastefully furnished, with light streaming in from the side windows, and one sensed the pride she took in her material independence. She offered pastries, lifting the platter from a fine old sideboard, and mentioned that the furniture had been made by Emerence's father, who had been a carpenter, which I obviously knew, and also a cabinetmaker. Her grandfather had the sideboard brought over when the Co-operative was formed in Nádori and the carpenter's workshop was altered to suit its needs. Now it was her turn to ask what had become of Emerence and the child after they disappeared. She thought there must either have been a very happy ending, or a very bad one, since Józsi's boy, for one, had never seen the little girl. Their grandfather, she went on, as we
tucked into the thick golden pastries, and sipped the familiar wine of the Alföld sands, had been a difficult man. He had never understood the danger faced by young girls working in Budapest, and when Emerence appeared with the child they thought he was going to beat her to death. In fact, if he hadn't just had a stroke he might well have done so, but by then he was no longer his old self. Nowadays people took these things in their stride. Even if the family weren't very happy they didn't make a show of it. Both the authorities and society at large were protective towards the young, as I might have noticed. In those days the law sought to establish who the father was, but Emerence told them nothing and she produced no official documents for the child. If her grandfather hadn't been so highly regarded, and hadn't kept the town clerk supplied with a stream of gifts, she would have been in real trouble. But the clerk smoothed everything over. He conjured up some papers for the little girl to replace the documents "left behind" in Budapest. As the father was unknown, she became a Divék. In the end, the old man grew even fonder of her than of his legitimate granddaughters. Because the child had no-one else, not even her mother, she came to adore the old man. She climbed on to him and hugged him, and when Emerence took her away the old man burst into tears. Until his dying day he complained about having let her go when she was so dear to him. But all that aside, they would love to see Emerence at any time, either on her own or with the child, though by now she must be a young woman. Sadly, the grandfather had passed away, just as her poor husband had. They were the only Divéks living locally. The family was widely scattered.

The cousin then offered to take me to the graves, even in that sweltering heat. The old man and her own parents were there — Emerence's family were in the Nádori cemetery, which had since been closed. At this point she lowered her voice, clearly troubled. No-one could be proud of the fact that their grandfather had opposed his daughter marrying a Szeredás for no reason anyone could see; the carpenter made a good living until his death, and could hardly have been held responsible for the terrible tragedy. But he had never allowed the man, or the twins, or his daughter, near him. The funeral had taken place in Nádori, and the whole family were laid to rest beside Szeredás, as if they'd been his victims. It was possible that she had got it all wrong, because she'd been a child at the time, and indeed there were people who wouldn't go near a particular grave because they loved the dead person so very much they couldn't bear to see it. The second husband still had no resting place. Emerence must have told me that he ended up in a mass grave in Galicia. But in any case, if her Budapest cousin wanted to follow it up she shouldn't leave it too long, because the previous year Nádori and Csabadul had been merged into a single authority, and there were plans to plough up the old cemetery in the near future. She couldn't say exactly where the Szeredás family were buried, because she hadn't been there since a child, but we could take a look at the nearby Divék and Kopró graves. She had been born a Divék but married a Kopró.