Self (31 page)

“A Bachelor’s degree in Hungarian studies is not very useful in Canada so after that I settled down to reading in the taxi.”

Now that I knew him, I thought of him all the time. When I remembered him, in other words, when I thought of him anew as I was working on my novel or waiting tables or grocery shopping or taking a bath, it amazed me that I should have forgotten him even momentarily — and it could only be momentarily, for the simple idea of him, the word “Tito”, would trigger in me a pulse of happiness, a rippling wave that flooded my system. I went about in a day-dreamy haze in which nothing upset me, not a rude customer at the restaurant, not a stalled queue at the bank, not an impatient librarian, not a transit strike, not dropping and shattering a jar of pickles at the supermarket, nothing. A line-up of shivering prostitutes along an ugly street made me think of the sensuality of human contact. An unshaven beggar wrapped in a blanket with plastic bags for winter boots reminded me of the lightness of being. A staggering drunk was Bacchus in all his glory. In everything I saw happiness or impending happiness. It was the natural, immanent state of the world. Outright tragedy — my neighbour’s death, the old Polish woman, who slipped and broke her hip and died in her bathroom an estimated three days later; a seven-year-old girl’s death in Saskatchewan after losing herself while taking a shortcut back
home despite the determined, frantic efforts to find her by elements of the Canadian army and hundreds of volunteers, who would not give up until a bog produced her decomposing body; pictures of an African famine, personified by a skeletal, sexless child in its mother’s weak arms, both as desiccated as the landscape around them; an airplane crash, something which should have seared me — puzzled me, and then faded from my mind. Only in my novel did I acknowledge pain and misery, precisely contained. For being in such a bright mood, stable and confident, I worked on it all the better.

“One day I saw an accident,” Tito told me. “Nobody hurt, only material damage. A truck hit another. It was a mail truck. Bags of letters spilled onto the street. It was a windy day. Suddenly I was driving through a tornado of letters. I didn’t stop — I had a fare. Hours later it rained. I turned my windshield wipers on. What should appear in front of me, caught in the wiper, but a letter. I looked at it as it swung to and fro. The handwritten address began to blur because of the rain. I stopped the car and picked off the letter. I dried it on the air vents. You could still read the address, but barely. I carefully wrote it over. Then I stopped by a post office and explained what happened. The man at the counter took the letter and tossed it into a letter bin. For the next few days I thought about that letter, about the strange route it had taken to its destination. Shortly after that, I enquired about jobs at the post office.”

“You work at the post office.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a mailman.”

“A letter carrier. Yes. My third job as an invisible man.”

“Do you like it?”

“Oh yes. Less so sometimes in winter, but I like being outside and it’s very quiet in the early morning. And usually I’m finished by two in the afternoon.”

Tito had a broad build and a peculiar way of walking, with a tilt forward, always battling an imaginary head wind, and he moved with a firm tread, as if with each footstep he were Columbus claiming new territory. He had a large, blunt nose, genetically unkempt hair, eyes of a bright rich brown, clear skin that had no great talent for beards or moustaches, perfect white teeth; and a spirit that animated these features so that his face exuded vital intelligence, an alertness that was warm, engaged, alive. Yet he was reserved, my Tito. He was not one for company. That is one trait that I’m not sure I can convey in words, his way of being that so little suited being with others. It was not that he was socially clumsy. Not at all. But his careful way of conversing did not lend itself to the machine-gun rat-tat-tat of a group interacting. It wasn’t only his way of speaking; it was his very personality, his aura, a grace that demanded individual meeting. Even his gestures seemed to be only for you. My Tito was a one-seat theatre (and my one-voter constituency). Only among Hungarians did he approach gregariousness.

“Have you heard of this play that’s on tomorrow night, called
Handlet
?”

“You mean
Hamlet
? By the famous Hungarian playwright Witgom Szakespori?”

“Yes, by the famous Hungarian playwright Witgom Szakespori, but adapted. It’s a puppet show. It sounded interesting. Would you like to go?”

“Yes.”

If I had to choose a single word to describe my time with Tito, it would be that:
yes
.

The night of
Handlet
, of our first date, I discovered the delight and agony of dressing for a man.

As we walked along the snowy streets we kept bumping into each other. If scientists had been monitoring us with thermographic equipment, each touch would have registered as a bright, multicoloured flash, a flare of intense energy.

Handlet
was wonderful:
Hamlet
adapted by two British puppeteers who used their four hands to play everybody and everything on a stage the size of a television. When Ophelia went to drown herself, a hand dressed in a gown dove off stage with a little scream and we heard a
ker-ploof
that brought to mind an elephant tripping into a pool. The audience rocked with laughter. Yet at other moments it was deadly serious and we were silent and rapt; the puppeteers had extraordinarily expressive voices. Handlet, micro-dwarf prince of Danemark, was as moving as any Hamlet I’ve seen. Yorick was thimble-skulled, yet no one laughed.

A heavy snowfall had blanketed the city that day. The snow was still falling, but softly, without a wisp of wind. Big fat clusters of snowflakes crashed into our faces or dented the carpet of snow. We walked along a street that hadn’t been cleared yet. The snow came up to our knees, but it was light; it glittered as we easily kicked our way through it. Except for our voices, all sound was muffled. I was aware of a growing excitement within me. The snow was not snow to me, but gold dust. And the street lights were not street lights, but tiaras of diamonds twinkling in the night. And every other colour was not just a colour but a precious gem. Tito suggested we go for a coffee. More gems. Love is a form of childhood in the way we become
capable again of being wholly enthralled, able to believe so much so easily so intensely. Tito and I spent hours talking over cups of hot chocolate. And after that, we walked on. When we finally reached my place, late, late into the night, we lingered outside. We would wait; we both felt that. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses. We floated away from each other. “Bye, Tito. See you tomorrow.” It has only happened to me twice in my life: I could hardly see him for the fish in my eyes. A density of angelfish, clownfish, goldfish, tigerfish, starfish, a suspension of seaweed, a gentle cavalcade of sea-horses.

I closed the door to my apartment and leaned against it. “Today I have found someone to love. Today I have found someone to love. Today I have found someone to love.” The prospect it opened was infinite. It was not a promise, not a hope, not a delusion. It was a simple, defining certainty.

I have never wavered in that certainty. Don’t talk to me of the wearying effect of habit, of waking up one morning with a cold heart for the man in your bed. This never happened to me. I was with Tito for roughly three years. Once, afterwards, I counted the days and it came out to 1001, whereupon I changed my unit of measure from days to nights, and then, since days were as important as nights, to both, so that the sum was 2002 days and nights. But early mornings were special too, and afternoons after he’d finished work, so it went up to 4004 days and nights and early mornings and afternoons. I applied myself to refining the units and increasing the sum total of something that is indivisible and never-ending, that has never stopped or decreased since the night I leaned my head against the door to my apartment and repeated to myself, “Today I have found someone to love.”

“Why did you move to Montreal?”

“My mother. She remarried and he lived in Montreal. Zoltán Radnoti, a retired electrical contractor. He’s very nice, you’ll see. I was coming here regularly to see her. I liked the city, its European feel. But it was crazy. After years of studying and reading English I was finally fluent, and then I decide to move to Quebec and it’s 1980, the year of the referendum, and it seemed every Anglophone was leaving the province. I sometimes feel I’ve spent my life taking language courses.”

Tito’s French was better than functional. He could deal with any letter-carrier situation, he could get by in restaurants and stores and he didn’t miss too much in French French movies that weren’t subtitled. But rapid-fire Quebec French lost him. If he handled Hungarian like his bare hands, English like worn-in leather gloves, Slovak like mitts, German and Russian like knives and forks, then French he handled like chopsticks.

The first time was at my place. He unbuttoned my shirt. He proceeded with gravity and delicacy, first pulling my shirt out from my pants and then dealing with the buttons north to south, with a gentle east-west spreading as each one was pushed through its buttonhole. I felt a stillness, as if I were in a perfect balance, my every sense poised. My bra, my socks, my pants, my underwear came off in a similar way. Every touch, every little kiss, every breath against my skin was felt twice: once at the point of contact and then the barest reverberation, a tickle in my vulva. Such a sweet deliquescence it is. I reached his chest in a somewhat rougher way. We got to my bed. He went down on me. It felt so powerful it was nearly unbearable. I pulled him up, turned him over and kneeled over him, slowly enclosing him within me, as far as it would go, to the very centre of me, where I didn’t want him to leave,
ever, even when he came and muttered something in Hungarian. We fell asleep. The light was the clear white light of an overcast winter day.

I didn’t give a thought, yet again, to fertility. My period had ended some days earlier. Tito apologized for not having mentioned protection, but I just waved a hand, with a raised-eyebrow expression that said, It happens elsewhere, not here. Yet his semen was spermful, potent, bearer of consequence. But I was lucky that time — and time and again when I went on the pill and took it at irregular hours, sometimes later, sometimes earlier, even missing a day sometimes and having to take two. Never was there a result other than the usual ache and twist of my uterus deciding that there wasn’t going to be a baby after all and the wallpaper could go.

It’s a luck I bitterly regret now. Even then I sometimes felt a baffling ambivalence. After the shock and the anguish, after the harrowing day of thinking, “This is it. You’re going to have a baby. You’ve thrown your life away, girl,” the blood would come like a manumission and I would breathe a deep sigh of relief. “I’m saved.” But there would be an afterglow of sadness. Yet again you’ve stalled fertility, would whisper a part of my mind. Yet again you’ve not fully engaged life. What if you dared, what if you dared …? But I was always lucky, as I’ve said. When my luck ran out, it was too late.

Over the next weeks and months, we spent time exploring each other’s territories. His neighbourhood, my neighbourhood. His friends, my friends. His bed, my bed.

“Megérkeztünk. Ime lássad: ez a Kékszakállú vára. Nem tündököl, mint atyádé. Judit, jössz-e még utánam?”
“Megyek, megyek, Kékszakàllú.”
“Megàllsz Judit? Mennél vissza?”
“Nem. A szoknyám akadt
csak fel. Felakadt szép selyem szoknyám.”
“Nyitva van még fent az ajtó.”
“Ez a Kékszakállú vára. Nincsen ablak? Nincsen erkély?”
Nincsen.
“Hiába is süt kint a nap?”
“Hiába.”
“Hideg marad? Sötét marad?”
“Hideg, sötét.”
“Milyen sötét a te várad. Vizes a fal. Kékszakállú, milyen víz hull a kezemre? Sír a várad!”
“Ugye, Judit, jobb volna most volegényed kastélyában: fehér falon fut a rózsa, cserépteton táncol a nap.”
“Ne bánts, ne bánts, Kékszakállú. Nem kell rózsa, nem kell napfény. Nem kell. Milyen sötét a te várad. Szegény, szegény Kékszakállú.”
“Miért jöttél hozzám, Judit?”
“Nedves falát felszárítom,
ajakammal szárítom fel. Hideg kövét melegítem, a testemmel melegítem. Ugye szabad, Kékszakállú. Nem lesz sötét a te várad, megnyitjuk a falat ketten. Szél bejárjon, nap besüssön. Tündököljön a te várad.”
“Nem tündököl az én váram.”
“Gyere vezess Kékszakállú, mindenhová vezess engem. Nagy csukott ajtókat látok, hét fekete csukott ajtót. Miért vannak az ajtók csukva?”
“Hogy ne lásson bele senki.”
“Nyisd ki, nyisd ki! Minden ajtó legyen nyitva. Szél bejárjon, nap besüssön.”
“Emlékezz rá, milyen hír jár.”
“Gyere nyissuk valem gyere.”
“Aldott a te kezed, Judit.”
“Jaj!”
“Mit látsz? Mit látsz?”
“Láncok, kések, szöges karók, izzó nyársak.…” “Ez a kínzókamra, Judit.”
“Szörnyu a te kínzókamrád, Kékszakállú. Szörnyu, szörnyu.”
“Félsz-e?”
“A te várad fala véres. A te várad vérzik.”
“Félsz-e?”
“Nem, nem félek. Nézd, derül már. Ugye derül? Nézd ezt a fényt. Látod? Szép fény-patak.”
“Piros patak, véres patak.”
“Minden ajtót ki kell nyitni. Szél bejárjon, nap besüssön, minden ajtót ki kell nyitni.”
“Nem tudod ni van mögöttük.”
“Minden ajtót ki kell nyitni. Minden ajtót.”
“Judit, mért akarod?”
“Mert szeretlek.”
“Vigyázz, vigyázz miránk, Judit.”
“Szépen, halkan fogom nyitni. Szépen, halkan. Add ide a többi kulcsot.”
“Nem tudod, mit rejt az ajtó.”
“Idejöttem, mert
szeretlek. Itt vagyok, a tied vagyok. Most már vezess mindenhová. Most már nyiss ki minden ajtót.”
“Judit, Judit, hus és édes, nyitott sebbol vér ha ömlik.”
“Nyisd ki a hetedik ajtót. Jaj, igaz hír, suttogó hír!”
“Judit!”
“Kékszakállú, nem kell, nem kell.”
“Tied a legdrágább kincsem.”
“Jaj, jaj, Kékszakállú vedd le.”
“Szép vagy, szép vagy, százszor szép vagy. Te voltál a legszebb asszony. Es mindig is éjjel lesz már … éjjel … éjjel.…”

I spent countless hours in the company of the Hungarian language. I met the former Mrs. Imilac, Mrs. Radnoti at present, Judit to me quickly. Tito’s mother took me in as her own daughter. She was a warm and considerate woman, quick to smile, very much her son’s mother. She had a single broad streak of grey that went through her hair, a perfect complement to her naturally elegant way. Her English was idiosyncratic, her French non-existent — she had always moved within the Hungarian community, even after nearly twenty years in Canada. When she spoke with her son, I listened to their voices. Since I couldn’t understand a word they said, it was their emotions I heard. Their manner was easygoing, attentive, respectful. They seemed never to interrupt each other. Clearly, mother trusted son and son trusted mother. Mr. Radnoti — “Please! Call me Zoltán. You make me sound like old man. I’m only sixty-four” — was indeed very nice. He was a funny, unpretentious man who had a talent for making his wife laugh, which plainly gave him great satisfaction.
As for the other Hungarians I met, they were of all ages and stations. The younger the generation, the better their French and English, naturally, but whenever I met them in a group it was
de rigueur
that Magyar be spoken. I remembered in my own case how it was inconceivable that I should have addressed my parents in English. Our relationship was a French-speaking relationship. To communicate in any other tongue would have denatured it. And so with these Hungarian Canadians. Tito worried that I was bored silly on these occasions, but I assured him that I wasn’t, and indeed I wasn’t. Sitting in a room full of Hungarians was a trip to the Near Abroad, a motion-
less form of travel. For Magyar is spectacularly incomprehensible. It tricks you with the familiarity of the Roman alphabet and the dress and deportment of its speakers, but then it erupts — and you might as well be in China. Not a single morpheme will trouble your comprehension. The first time I heard Tito speak his mother tongue, with ease and delight, my draw jopped, as I put it to him later. A new Tito seemed to arise before my eyes. With a changed mien, with a different register in his voice, with expressions and gestures I hadn’t seen before. I wasn’t sure I knew this Tito. I had to tap him on the shoulder and say, “Tito, is that you?” He laughed. “Yes, of course it is.” He was Tito again, and I had another visa stamp in my passport. Even after three years I could renew my sense of wonder at his fluid gibberish.
When I didn’t want to travel, when I tuned out, then Magyar became a seashore, a soothing background noise amidst which my day-dreams could float. Anyway, whether flying for free on Malev or sitting by the seashore, I was never alone for long. One Hungarian or another invariably interrupted my reverie with words that I understood. The older ones took to me greatly. I remember Imre, a Methuselah not five feet tall, with eyes deeply set amidst whorls of wrinkles, who delighted in Tito’s Indo-European girlfriend. He would perch himself next to me, feet swinging from his seat, settle his happy eyes on my Indo-European tits and chat me up in English. After a while, by unintended imitation, my English would become as broken as his. I think he was second only to Tito in loving me.
We can stay as long as you want, I would always tell Tito. Let’s not leave because of me.
And so it would go on, this Magyar — spoken, shouted, laughed, whispered.