The Book of Fathers (57 page)

“What are they called?”

“They’re still called Milady, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis,” said the brunette holding the four leads not in her hand but wound around her neck.

“Sorry, but those are strange names.”

“Haven’t you read
The Three Musketeers
?”

“I’m American, we don’t read books, we just watch TV all the time,” said Henryk. He meant it as a joke. His pronunciation of the Magyar consonants brought a smile to the girl’s lips. Henryk brought out his notebook with his list of recently learned Hungarian words, and started to write the names down: “Milady, Athos, Porthos … what was the fourth one?”

“Aramis.” The girl had faint freckles on her cheeks.

Henryk swallowed hard. “May I walk you home?”

“Easily done. I live right here. Ciao!” The girl herded the black Labradors through the gate. Henryk could not take his eyes off the muscular legs, hidden by her skirt to mid-calf.

The following evening he hung about that part of the road, in the hope of bumping into the girl and the dogs again, but in vain. The third day he decided he would wait
around by the gate until they turned up. Ten minutes later the girl and the dogs came down. “Waiting for us?”

“How did you know?”

“Saw you from the window.”

Henryk introduced himself. The girl’s name was Mária Zenthe. Her hand shook Henryk’s firmly. He asked if they could meet on purpose, as it were. Mária gave him a long look. “Difficult.”

“Because of someone?”

“Yes.” She pointed to the dogs. “Because of them.” She explained that they could not be left alone for any length of time, as the pups would certainly trash the flat.

They were quickly on first-name terms. Henryk suggested a weekend trip north to the Danube Bend. Mária was hesitant: this number of dogs is too many for a car. Henryk insisted that there was plenty of room in the Cherokee Jeep.

They set out for Szentendre, towards the Danube Bend. The girl spread some old towels on the back seat and gave the dogs the signal “in you go!” and they obediently hopped in. Henryk could see in the rear-view mirror that they were looking around with faintly bored expressions, like Madison Avenue ladies in their limos.

Mária joked that she was a rag-and-bone woman. The bone referred to the dogs, but the rag was genuine: she designed, sewed, and wove carpets, curtains, wall-hangings, and cushions. She had recently graduated in applied arts. She was a native of Hódmezövásárhely and had come up to Budapest to take her degree. She had had a serious relationship and was now poring over its ruins. Milady had originally belonged to her ex, József, but she was so fond of Mária that after the split they agreed Milady would be hers. József was a sculptor in metal. They lived in his workshop-cum-flat. Mária could stay until she found a flat of her own and make a living, that was the agreement. József had meanwhile
moved back to his mother’s. Hardly had he removed himself from her life than Milady became pregnant and gave birth to eight pups from a father unknown, which Mária had seen only from a distance, a German Shepherd possibly, or a cross of some sort. When József heard of the mésalliance he seemed to turn on Milady. Since then he had taken no interest in her at all. The newborn pups had looked like little black rats; five she managed to give away, three remained with her. “I don’t mind. I’ve grown very fond of them.”

“I can see why,” he said, the hot breath of the four dogs on his neck.

It was as they were passing the new estate at Békásmegyer that there was the first sign of problems. Aramis started quietly to retch, his head and neck in spasm.

“Whoa!” said Mária. “Better stop, he’s going to throw up.”

Henryk, however, could not move over in time, and Aramis emptied the contents of his stomach on the seat and the car floor, with plenty left for Henryk’s back. Mária was all profuse apology as she tried to limit the damage with Kleenex. As soon as they set off again, it was the turn of Porthos to vomit. And so it went on. The dogs threw up steadily, one after the other, and the inside of the Cherokee Jeep was pervaded by the acrid smell of the acid from the dogs’ stomachs. Mária tried desperately to calm the dogs down, pleading with them and shouting at them by turns, but they just stared at her balefully, as if all their sad, dark pupils reflected the same thought: Sorry, but we have no choice but to submit to the call of nature.

Mária would gladly have turned back but Henryk said it was a shame to let this spoil their day. “Anyway, I don’t think there can be anything left to bring up now.”

In Szentendre and then in Visegrád they made quite a stir with the four black dogs. Henryk behaved as if he were the owner. They got back about ten in the evening, the dogs asleep on the back seat.

“Thanks for everything,” said Mária. “Wait a moment. I’ll just take the herd up and then I’ll come down to help clean up the car.”

“Come, come … I’ll see to it tomorrow. But do come back … for at least an hour or so.”

The four dogs stayed locked in the workshop until three in the morning and chewed up everything that they could sink their teeth into. Henryk saw Mária up to the flat. She surveyed the battlefield but did not despair. “Well, it’s time for a spring-cleaning anyway.”

Henryk stayed. When Jeff and Doug came back, he introduced Mária as his fiancée.

“Indeed?” Mária seemed dubious.

“I don’t get it,” said Jeff, thought Doug. Henryk repeated: “My fiancée.”

“Are you sure about this?” asked Mária again.

“Congratulations!” said Doug, nodded Jeff.

Mária later pointed out that he might have discussed the matter with her first.

“Well … I’m sorry. So what do you think?”

“Not so fast. First we have to get to know each other better.”

“But I’ve got to know you already!”

Mária shook her head. “There are many things about me that you don’t know. Important things.”

“So tell me.”

“I can’t do it just like that. In due course. All in good time.”

Henryk had to resign himself to a wait.

Dear Grammy,
I’m still doing fine. The firm HEJED Co. continues to expand, but this time I want to write about something else. I think that perhaps this is my HEJEM, my place, forever.

I have met someone, a girl, and if it were up to me we would get married tomorrow. I’d be delighted if you could meet her. Could you not come over again? Let me send you a ticket!

His grandmother telephoned at once. “I will come, but let’s wait with this a little. Don’t rush things. First you should really get to know each other well.”

“That’s what she said, too.”

“Clever girl.”

These were busy times for Mária. She was making wall-hangings, an insurance company having ordered four large ones. She sat at her loom from the crack of dawn and stopped only to take the dogs out the regulation three times a day. If Henryk wanted to see her, it was during these walks that he could do so. They went on the wider pavement of the upper quayside, following the frisky little herd and apologizing to the more easily frightened pedestrians.

“Tell me, do you believe in reincarnation?” asked Mária.

Henryk was at a loss. He had never asked himself this question and so had no answer. When he was small he had attended church, and his grandmother would certainly have liked him to become a proper white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but as no one around him took God seriously, he too thought religion was just empty ceremonial which he gave up as soon as he could, just as he did the scouts.

Reincarnation was the cornerstone of Mária’s view of the world. Death is also, simultaneously, birth or rebirth. After the decay of the body, the soul lingers on for about a century and a half, following various paths by way of purification; only after this can it begin its next life. Someone who was born a man in a previous life generally becomes a woman, and vice versa.

For Henryk the prospect that after his death his soul could have a second helping in another being was new,
exciting and tempting; nevertheless, he found it difficult to believe.

“You don’t have to believe it,” said Mária. “When the time comes you will find it as natural as the fact that the sky is blue.”

Henryk was not convinced that this would happen, much as he might long for it. In the course of further conversations he discovered that Mária shared the views of a German philosopher called Rudolf Steiner, who was well known at the beginning of the twentieth century. “He was a spiritual visionary. There are people possessed of the ability to see on a higher plane, that is to say, they can see things that others can’t. They say you can be born with this ability, but it can also be achieved by self-education. In our time, the path of self-education is more common. Man today has lost his ability to see within. We possess what are called spiritual senses, but these cannot operate of themselves and have to be developed by the individual. I have many books on this; if you’re interested, I can lend them to you.”

The vast majority of the books were, however, in German. Henryk knew no foreign languages; he had English as his mother tongue and Hungarian as his father tongue.

Spiritual vision and self-education: so many unknown spheres. Just as hard to believe as reincarnation and at the same time just as attractive.

It turned out that Mária spoke English, German, and French very well, and even some Danish. A lover of opera, she could also manage some Italian.

It’s true, thought Henryk, I really don’t know her well.

“Why did you never go to college?” asked Mária.

“I came here instead. This is my university.”

“Aha. So you didn’t have the courage to take on a degree.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s true anyway, isn’t it?”

Henryk thought about it a while and then admitted it was. “How did you know?”

“It’s typical of Pisces.”

“Pie seas?”

“The astrological sign. You are Pisces, aren’t you?”

Henryk had no idea. Mária asked when he was born and when she heard the date, nodded: “Yes, that’s Pisces.”

Mária was well versed in the art of casting a horoscope, something she had learned from her grandmother. She cast one for everyone she came into contact with and who gave their permission.

“You ask for permission?”

“Of course. It’s a very intimate matter. Things can be revealed that the natives … the person concerned won’t perhaps be happy about. Or they won’t be happy that I’m the one to have revealed them. So … can I cast yours?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the exact time of your birth? Hours and minutes. I need it for the ascendant.”

“I’ve no idea.”

He called his grandmother to ask, but Grammy did not know. “In those days we were not on smiling terms.”

“Smiling terms?”

“Yes. You know, we were not very pleased that she had married your father … In fact, not in the least pleased.”

“And why have you never mentioned this before?”

“Did you ask about it?”

“How can I ask about something that I have no idea about?”

There was silence at the other end of the line, then a quiet sniff or two.

Henryk changed the subject. “You haven’t asked about Mária …”

“How can I ask about somebody I know nothing about?”

They both put down the receiver offended.

Mária said that she could calculate the ascendant only on the basis of the exact place, day, hour, and minute of the birth, though she had heard of astrologers who were somehow able to calculate it from the subject’s most important life events. She wrote to such an astrologer in Szeged, giving her the dates of the death of Henryk’s mother, the disappearance of his father, his arrival in Hungary, and the date the two of them had first met. She was not satisfied with the answer (which had cost an astronomical ten thousand forints). “She says your ascendant is Aries. But I see nothing of Aries in you. Aries are fiery, liable to set their home ablaze, repeatedly dashing their heads against brick walls. Of course, you may be Aries nonetheless, but the planets in the twelve houses are so arranged that your ascendant is less typical of you than your Sun, that is, Pisces.”

“Well, now, is that good or bad?”

“I can’t put it like that. How interested are you in this?”

“Very.”

Mária nodded and launched into a detailed explanation. She did not tell fortunes from the stars, she only drew conclusions about the subject’s personality. That is, certain basic traits, with which the subjects can do what they wish and are able to. In her view one’s horoscope influences the nature of one’s fate no more than some 25 percent; the rest is down to genes, family background, upbringing, and self-development. Be that as it may, those born under the sign of Pisces have some difficulty in negotiating the boundary between themselves and the world. They are often lonely. Being the twelfth sign, the most complex, it yields the most sophisticated personalities. Pisces generally evince some sensitivity to art, perhaps even some artistic ability; there
are, for example, many musicians among them. “They put on the pounds easily … though you show no sign of that yet. Have you heard of Enrico Caruso?”