The Door (26 page)

Józsi's boy took his leave and rushed off home to his family. Before he left he commiserated with me, with a kind of gauche sympathy, over the damage to the kitchen and what I stood to inherit. What they had burned, he said, was a real loss. The thought hadn't even occurred to me, and despite my depression I burst out laughing. There goes half my inheritance — hard luck! The Lieutenant Colonel and I sat for a while on the bench, with the handyman's pretty young wife, who was always so kind and attentive to everyone and had brought us coffee. But neither of us drank. We just stirred it and stared into the distance.

"So how did it come to this?" the Lieutenant Colonel finally asked.

My God, because of me, I told him. I failed her. It was a relief to pour out all the details of what had happened while he had been walking in the woods near Visegrad. If I had got through to him, so many things might never have happened, or at least not this way. Even if I had left Emerence in the lurch, he would surely have shared the fateful hour with her, the one hour in her life when she really did need help. He made no comment. He was sufficiently sensitive neither to blame me nor to offer consolation. He asked me what I planned to do. Nothing. If she survived, I would bring the old woman to live with us and abandon our trip abroad. We were due to leave in three days for Athens, as members of the Hungarian delegation to an international peace conference organised by the Greek writers' union, and we'd planned to stay on for a few days by the sea. It was to have been a real rest, but events had swept it all away. Never again would I fail her the way I had — not even if I never saw Athens again. Not even then.

He became angry, and raised his voice. I'd made quite enough mistakes already, did I want to cause even more trouble? Those foreign officials wouldn't be pleased if a delegate failed to arrive. They'd think of every possible reason, including that we'd been banned from travelling. I had no right to involve the country in my private business, so would I please go? There was no point in my staying. If the old woman died the next day there'd be nothing for me to save her from. If she lived — and the doctor was quite certain she would — she could wait for my return. One short week was nothing. During that time he would take care of everything. The door would have to be replaced, and he'd get the money from the council for what had been destroyed. There was no question of Emerence being prosecuted. If a paralysed body couldn't move, and a paralysed hand couldn't put things in order, that was unfortunate, but it wasn't a crime. The old woman hadn't endangered the public health for fun. He'd get her some furniture, better-looking and more comfortable than her old things. He'd go to the state warehouse, where they stored things from the liquidated homes of people who died intestate. There was no point in arguing with him. International relations were important. He would remain on duty beside Emerence, and my husband and I should go ahead with what was both a professional obligation and what the nation expected of us. By the time we got back Emerence's constitution would have come to its own decision. If she was capable of getting better she'd be on her feet by then; if not, they'd delay the burial. There'd be time for us to open up the other room once I got back. He'd have her empty doorway boarded up that day. When the public holiday was over he'd send someone round from the station to unpick the lock on the inner door and board that up as well. Once we were in, we'd be able to see if any more serious degree of cleaning was necessary. But he didn't think it would. Emerence had never used that room.

Back at home at last, I tore the dress off my back as if it were on fire. I hadn't even had lunch. I wanted to feed the dog, but my husband had already tried and failed. Viola had begun his hunger strike. When we took him out, he dragged himself along beside us; as soon as he had finished marking the trees, he wanted to go home; he didn't bark, he wouldn't drink. The crisis was at its height and there was nothing we could do — he was responding in his own way to what had happened. I couldn't eat either. At the Parliament they had piled my plate high, but there too I had been unable to swallow a morsel, and kept giving meaningless answers to questions I hadn't understood. I lay down for a few moments on the balcony, then leapt up, convinced that if I weren't there to care for Emerence, she would die. I alone could protect her from the horror that had engulfed us both. I rushed over to the hospital ward. Emerence was fully conscious and the doctor was smiling. He told me she was quite a lot stronger and had started to talk. She'd told the nurse to cover her up and make her decent, she couldn't bear nakedness. Later, she demanded a headscarf, and they'd given her a surgeon's cap. She painted a singular picture in it, but it had calmed her down. He thought she was beginning to haul herself out of the pit. In any case we ought to bring her some night clothes and other necessities, as she had arrived with nothing.

While he was talking to me I hardly dared look at her — not just because of what had happened, but because of what she was. She was an incredible sight in her surgeon's cap, not because it didn't sit well on her head but because it did. I saw her as a great professor finally revealing his true, perversely unused, talents. I listened to him in silence. What could I have said? It was of no concern to the doctor that she no longer possessed any towels, night dresses, or any of the things she had once kept in her wardrobe, or that what remained lay sodden with disinfectant, giving off fumes on her lawn. If I brought in my own underwear, which she would have branded indecent, she would become suspicious; she'd recognise my towels. My things weren't linen, like hers. Well, I'd have to think of something.

The moment she saw me enter the room she pulled a hand towel over her face, just as ancient kings, following royal tradition, veiled the spectacle of their death agonies from the eyes of the court. But this wasn't a question of dying — she seemed livelier than she had that morning. It was rather that she no longer wished to see me. Oh well, so be it, I thought. I trudged off homewards, first looking in on Sutu's stall. I asked her, if she intended a visit, to take Emerence whatever she thought appropriate in the way of supplies — towels and toiletries — and to make up some story about why she hadn't brought Emerence's own. Sum had company. The neighbours were trying to plan who should visit when, and what they should cook for the sick woman. I went off home again, to watch out for the Lieutenant Colonel's men coming to board up the kitchen door. I knew that I would have to wait until he came himself, whenever that was, to see at least that task through with honour. I was close to the limit of what I could bear. Circles and waving lines were dancing before my eyes. I would have given my soul's salvation for someone to shake me and say, "there's no need to weep and wail. You've had a bad dream." I felt more and more that what was happening to us couldn't be real. It seemed impossible that so many terrible things could rain down on one person.

The plain-clothes policemen arrived quite promptly with the boards. These days, coffins are no longer nailed shut but sealed with clamps; but as they reinforced the two half-doors with four upright and four horizontal planks it felt, for me, like the nailing down of a coffin. The hammering proclaimed a multiple burial: the death of a human life, the end of a home, the final chapter in the saga of Emerence.

It was time to set off for the festivities in Parliament, but I didn't feel at all like dressing. It was as if I had been ground in a mortar. First I called in at the hospital. Her condition had again slightly improved. They told me they'd given her a powerful tranquilliser and she was sleeping. She was also taking antibiotics, so there was cause for hope. But when she was awake she was saying very little, and when visitors approached her bed she would cover her face with the hand towel. There were a lot of them, rather too many in fact. They kept shaking her drip.

Emerence was alive and getting better; so I could prepare myself for the most wonderful and glittering night of my life! Well, the dress would pass muster, but no make-up expert could have done anything for my face that day. When I told the first acquaintance I met in the Parliament building that I was sorry but I wasn't feeling up to the occasion, I didn't need to explain. She understood immediately. No-one was at all surprised when I disappeared from the great hall, which that evening was more like a starry summer sky. The glitter of medals and jewellery was all around me, and from all sides the flashing lights of the chandelier danced back off the mirror-polished floor. This was how it must have been in the ballrooms of old. But all I wanted to do was go, get home as quickly as I could and, once there, to crawl into bed. Next morning, I would know with more certainty to what I was sentenced. If she died, there would be no escape. If she lived, then the power that had so far never let me down would, yet again, pluck me back, perhaps for the very last time, from the abyss over which I trembled.

I had a troubled night, mercifully free from dreams, but I kept waking with a start, thinking I could hear the telephone ringing. I had asked the nursing staff to keep me aware at all times of any change. But the receiver stayed silent. In the morning I took the apathetic Viola for his walk — he was still refusing to eat — then dashed off to the hospital.

Emerence was now visibly improved. They had just finished washing her and a sister was bringing her breakfast in on a little trolley. The moment she caught sight of me through the open door she started to fumble around and clapped the hand towel over her face. With bitterness in my heart, I knocked on the door of the duty nurse who had been with her during the night. There was only good news. If she continued to recover at this rate we could go abroad without any real concern. The old woman was going to pull through, and even be well again. But I wouldn't be able to take her home, not for some weeks, and then only under certain conditions: for instance, there was no possibility of her working. Did she have a home, where she could be cared for? "Of course she does," I thought. "If only she could see it." I replied that we had agreed she could live with us until she was fully herself again, physically and mentally.

Now it really did look as if we were going, and my husband was rushing around sorting out travel documents; but I felt little enthusiasm for the journey. I packed in a sort of reluctant dither, clinging to the ridiculous hope that at the last minute the hosts would withdraw the invitation and the conference would be cancelled. During my last hospital visit I had spoken to the doctor. As far as Emerence's physical condition was concerned, he could let us go with a full guarantee, but what was going on in her mind, he added, was the domain of the neurologist. The embolism, which was now almost fully reabsorbed, hadn't affected the speech centres. It was still hampering her movement, and one leg remained paralysed, but the cause of her silence was psychological. I thought back to the moment when I arrived at the ward and she again covered her face with the wretched bit of towel so that she wouldn't have to see me. Well, I wasn't going to irritate her any further. Anyway, Viola was the only one she wouldn't hide her face from, or look on with hatred. I turned to go, without even wishing her goodbye. As I slowly made my way home I noticed two of the neighbours walking up the hill, carrying casserole dishes. Back home, the dog was maintaining his hunger strike, but by now that didn't interest me either — I was so bitter, so wracked with guilt, and so very tired that nothing mattered. I gathered his things together, his pillow, bowls and cans of dog food, took them over to Sutu and asked her to look after him for a few days while we carried out our mission abroad. He flopped down in her little home with complete passivity, and didn't even look up when I left. It was as if he wasn't our dog. I continued packing. By now I was like a machine, without feelings. I think the only thing I did grasp was that nothing mattered, not even myself. After dinner I phoned the hospital once again, but didn't go. Why should I? Emerence was well, and eating normally. I wished her a speedy recovery, I said politely, and sent her all our greetings. By now my message was as formal as an official
communiqu�. There was no need for her to worry about her work, I told her via the nurse. Everything was in perfect order. Her friend the Lieutenant Colonel had taken over, and her flat was for her, in exactly the state she would wish, and spotlessly clean. Everything necessary was being done. I was thinking that there would be time for her to find out what had really happened after she had been discharged. I added that she shouldn't expect me (expect? she hadn't even looked at me!) for a few days. I didn't tell her we were going abroad, but I phoned Józsi's boy so he would know why he couldn't contact me if he happened to try, and we left on the night flight for Athens.

We were woken the next morning, in the hotel, by a phone call from the Greek writers' union. I was still so exhausted I couldn't understand what they were saying. It wasn't the language, or even the sound quality. I must have been suffering from a certain amount of shock, because suddenly I couldn't understand anything, in any language. I wouldn't have been able to ask for a glass of water, let alone discuss the prospects for peaceful international coexistence. At the conference we were seated in the front row, and I fell asleep almost as soon as it began. My husband took me back to the hotel, apologising on my behalf to everyone he could, and letting the chairman know what had happened to me earlier, or as much of it as could be explained. I was supposed to lead one of the sessions but by then I was stammering incomprehensibly. They took pity on me, put me in a car, sent me off to a hotel in Glifada and left me there — what else could they have done with a delegate who was so clearly ill?

Through clouds of myrtle, hibiscus, jasmine and thyme, the Aegean lay glittering before me, but I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and barely conscious of it — it was my husband who pointed these things out to me. When we arrived the water was sapphire blue; as dusk fell it turned amber; when the sun dipped into it it became a burning red. I know this from him; I saw none of it myself. I slept for almost an entire day. When I finally roused myself from this state of near unconsciousness, we wandered slowly around Glifada, though I don't remember a single building, or even the name of the hotel. The only thing I registered was that different fragrances were wafting around me, and that the waves were carrying the corpse of a dog out to sea. I thought of Viola, but distantly, as if I had merely dreamed him, and myself as well, and everything that had happened to me. The prize, Emerence, the decontamination squad, the door split open by the hatchet.