Iza's Ballad
Authors: Magda Szabo,George Szirtes
Tags: #Contemporary, #Literary, #Contemporary Women, #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Family Life, #Genre Fiction, #Domestic Life
Iza's Ballad
Magda Szabo & George Szirtes
Vintage Digital (2014)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Genre Fiction, Family Life, Literary, Women's Fiction, Contemporary Women, Domestic Life, Contemporary Fiction
Literature & Fictionttt Contemporaryttt Genre Fictionttt Family Lifettt Literaryttt Women's Fictionttt Contemporary Womenttt Domestic Lifettt Contemporary Fictionttt
When Ettie's husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that her mother give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life, but can't seem to get it right. She irritates the maid, hangs food outside the window because she mistrusts the fridge and, in her naivety and loneliness, invites a prostitute in for tea.
Iza’s Ballad
is the story of a woman who loses her life’s companion and a mother trying to get close to a daughter whom she has never truly known. It is about the meeting of the old-fashioned and the modern worlds and the beliefs we construct over a lifetime.
**
Review
• "[A] heartbreakingly beautiful novel... George Szirtes conveys both the sophistication and simplicity of Szabó's narrative in a superb translation... Humble, wistful Ettie is a wonderful creation... Just as
The Door
won an immediate English-language following,
Iza's Ballad
is bound to become one of the most loved books of the year... This publication of
Iza's Ballad
, subtle and profound, is a cause for celebration." --
Irish Times
• "The writing has a lovely clarity and a relevance that is timeless." --Kate Saunders,
The Times
• "Szabo nails with incisive clarity the painful dynamics between the two [central] characters... A perceptive study of family relationships, bereavement and old age, it is harrowingly beautiful." --Juanita Coulson,
Lady
About the Author
MAGDA SZABÓ was born in 1917 in Debrecen, Hungary. She began her literary career as a poet. In the 1950s she disappeared from the publishing scene for political reasons and made her living by teaching and translating from French and English. She began writing novels, and in 1978 was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Hungary. Magda Szabó died in 2007.
Contents
About the Book
When Ettie’s husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that she give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life.
Iza’s Ballad
is the story of a woman who loses her life’s companion and a mother trying to get close to a daughter whom she has never truly known. It is about the meeting of the old-fashioned and the modern worlds and the beliefs we construct over a lifetime. Beautifully translated by poet George Szirtes, this is a profoundly moving novel with the unforgettable power of Szabó’s award-winning
The Door
.
About the Author
MAGDA SZABÓ
was born in 1917 in Debrecen, Hungary. She began her literary career as a poet. In the 1950s she disappeared from the publishing scene for political reasons and made her living by teaching and translating from French and English. She began writing novels, and in 1978 she was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Hungary. Her novel
The Door
was an international sensation, winning France’s Prix Femina Étranger and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and was made into a film starring Helen Mirren. Magda Szabó died in 2007.
GEORGE SZIRTES
is a T. S. Eliot Prizewinning poet and has recently won the Best Translated Book Award in the USA.
Also by Magda Szabó in English translation
The Door
Iza’s Ballad
Magda Szabó
Translated from The Hungarian by George Szirtes
I
EARTH
1
THE NEWS ARRIVED
just as she was toasting bread.
Three years earlier Iza had sent them a clever little machine that plugged into the wall and made the bread come out a pale pink; she’d turned the contraption this way and that, examined it for a while, then stowed it on the bottom shelf of the kitchen cupboard, never to use it again. She didn’t trust machines, but then she didn’t trust things as basic as electricity. If there was a prolonged power cut or if lightning had disabled the circuit, she would take down the branched copper candelabrum from the top of the sideboard where the candles were always ready in case the lights went out, and would carry the delicate flame-tipped ornament through the kitchen and into the hall, raising it high above her head the way a tame old stag carries its tines. She couldn’t even get used to the idea of an electric toaster: she would have missed crouching by the fire, the fire itself and the strange noise of the embers so like the panting of a live being. The constantly changing colour of the cinders lent the room a peculiar life; when the fire was lit she didn’t feel she was alone, not even when the house was empty.
There she was now, squatting on the stool beside the open stove, and when Antal rang the bell she suddenly didn’t know what to do with the miniature toasting fork so she took the thing with her, a piece of toast still stuck on the end of it. Antal stared at her at first, then took her arm and the clumsy gesture told her what he didn’t want to say. The old woman immediately welled up, but the tears refused to run and remained stubbornly balanced in the corners of her eyes. Her instinctive reaction was, however, governed by her more properly functioning good manners, which were a mixture of instinct and sound training. They even enabled her to force out a ‘Thank you, dear’.
Of the two smaller rooms at her disposal, she only heated the back one. When they entered it and the old woman had lowered herself to the stool again, Antal warmed his hands on the side of the stove. They didn’t speak but understood each other perfectly. ‘I need to gather my strength,’ said the old woman’s thoughts. ‘I loved him very much.’ ‘Take your time, we’re in no hurry,’ Antal replied silently. ‘In any case there is no use you coming out, there’s no one there now. At least you wouldn’t know anyone who arrived after dawn. But I’ll take you out there, because you have a right to see them too, those people you wouldn’t know.’
When they finally set off the old woman took along her string bag. She always took it to the clinic; it was what she carried Vince’s stuff in, what he asked for or what she thought it good for him to have: handkerchiefs, biscuits, the lemons he liked. The yellow globes shone jovially through the mesh of the bag. ‘She’s trying to work magic,’ thought the doctor. ‘She wants to work magic with three miserable lemons. She thinks if she shows death she is not frightened of it, it will run away. She thinks if she turns up at the old man’s bedside with lemons she will find him still alive.’
There had been a light frost overnight and the stairs were slippery because the old woman hadn’t salted them since the previous evening. He took her arm and led her down. The door of the outhouse was open, with a layer of muddy snow on the threshold, and behind it, as if ensconced in a fortress, Captain was peeking out. You could tell by the way he was digging in the straw that he had messed up his bed again. The old woman looked away; her arm stiffened and her breath came faster. ‘She has noticed Captain,’ the doctor thought, ‘but she’s pretending not to have seen him. Captain is black. One is not supposed to see anything black on a day like this, only white.’
Kolman, the shopkeeper, gazed after them from behind the glass door of the state grocer’s as they closed the gate and set off towards the taxi rank. It has only just gone seven, it seems the old man is approaching the end. Shame, he was a quiet little thing, patient, always willing to let people, children or adults, go in front of him as he waited for his can of milk. The girls loved him because he’d always bring them flowers from his garden in the summer, and when it was winter he’d bring them tea and bits of roast marrow. Well, poor old boy, time for him to go now. His daughter will have a good cry. She sent them money each month from Pest, the postman told us. What was Antal thinking of, divorcing her like that, though he’s decent enough himself and his patients speak well of him.
The old woman too was thinking of Iza as they got into the taxi in front of the cake shop. Dad has cancer, Iza had said in a strangely cold voice, some three months after she had unexpectedly rung from the capital to arrange an examination for him. Iza was scrubbing her hands in the bathroom with slow deliberate movements the way doctors did, the way she got used to in medical school. The old woman herself sank down on the edge of the tub, grabbing at the bath tap because everything had gone dark, then sprang to her feet again and rushed into the hall because she had heard Vince’s voice. ‘What are you doing, hiding in there?’ asked Vince in ill temper, but she just stared at him in repulsion and terror as one might look at an already decomposing body. She couldn’t answer, couldn’t think of anything to say.
Iza saved her, having stepped out of the bathroom behind her, raising her strong white fingers. ‘Not everyone is as dirty as you, old man,’ she said and Vince’s thin face began to glow. ‘Old man’ was what Iza used to call him; a younger, loud, shiny-nosed Iza. ‘Other people wash their hands several times a day, like me,’ said the girl. ‘Now get back into the room before you catch a cold. If I had as little salt in my stomach as you do, I’d not be rushing about so much. I’d take some pepsin.’
The old woman knew Vince suspected something. Ever since the uncontrollable agonising pains began and he started losing weight, he had become suspicious and was constantly listening out in case he caught a snippet of some conversation that might tell him why he was growing ever weaker, something that might explain the burning pain that he felt ever more frequently. ‘I couldn’t possibly shout at him like that,’ the old woman thought, and even in her current state of distress was bursting with pride that Iza
could
.
‘Come along, mama, let’s go down to the Presso for a coffee. Are you coming too?’
Vince smiled at that, proudly surveying his spindly legs: they must still look strong enough to make it down to the Presso. He wagged his head to say no and Iza shrugged, saying she didn’t care since he’d only be eyeing the women there. She grabbed her coat and gently bumped her forehead against his own beautifully shaped brow on her way out as she had done since she was a child. ‘Now be sure not to cheat on mama while we’re out!’ Vince just kept wagging his head with a sly look on his face, and his eyes, that for weeks now had looked unfamiliar, so unfamiliar that she found herself gazing at them, puzzling why they should seem both smaller and, at the same time, wider and duller than before, suddenly flickered and came to life. His conversations with Iza always had an element of flirtation, not at all like the ones you usually hear between father and daughter. They were more like friends, or accomplices – heaven knows in what!
