Tranquility (6 page)

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I can neither write nor read on a train; the landscape running parallel to me constantly interferes with my reading. The sight of the most stunted woods can put to shame superb topographic descriptions, which is worth mentioning only because, in contrast, people don't bother me at all. I can read all right on a moving escalator, at a streetcar stop or in a pub; the chatter of people at the next table has never done any harm to the monologues of Father Zossima or Marmeladov; the parallel speeches manage all right. Actually, sometimes it was downright interesting to listen simultaneously to an altercation over a crucial soccer game and at the same time peruse the
Critique of Pure Reason
. Only landscapes bother me, which is not a blessing. I've always envied people who can sit and read a book on Margit Island or put pen to paper in a rose arbor. For some reason I never could, so I didn't even try to look at the book the priest had given me, only kept gazing at the Plain and waited for the conductor, for the checking of tickets to be over. For years I'd dreaded the moment when a ticket-inspector would find something wrong with my ticket and make me get off the train, which of course is rubbish, still one can't have a quiet moment until the checking is over. Why can't that damn conductor come already, I thought, but quickly realized that I wasn't afraid at all. On the contrary, if he made me get off, I'd wander around in the wilderness for forty days and that would be something very useful. Without me, you can't even turn on the faucet, Mother, I thought. You'd have to be very economical with that half a kilo
of bread you have in the house, I thought. Because not even God would run down to the corner store for you, I thought. And you, Mother, happen to live almost exclusively on bread, I thought. On the best white bread of the Rákóczi bakery, I thought. If there is a drop of humanity in this conductor, he'd find some flaw in my ticket and throw me out of the speeding train into the wilderness, and you will go downstairs to do the shopping yourself, I thought. Of the monthly five hundred francs, you'll have enough for the no need for them Béres drops and the nobody sees it anyway makeup, I thought. By the way, it's not my kid sister but my older sister; you could have learned that much by now, Mother, I thought. The two of us had decided that when we were just seven. Because it would have been a stupid waste to spend a lifetime fighting over that half hour difference, I thought. So, while you were rehearsing some review about the labor movement, the two of us in the prompter's box stared each other down; the one who lasted longer without blinking became the older one, period, no questions asked, I thought. And we told you about the decision, too. At least then, you could have learned that Judit was my older sister, I thought. Good day, tickets please, said the conductor. Here you are, I said. At least you could have pretended to remember more from that labor movement review than the bursting dam and an injured eye, I thought. This is a nonsmoker, said the conductor. Sorry, I'll go outside, I said. Though one definitely pays attention when one's sex organ is injured, I thought. Just pull the window down, said the conductor, that'll be enough. All right then, I said, I mean thank you.

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When the mailman delivered Judit's first letter from America, the comrade minister of culture summoned Comrade Fenyő, the party secretary of the
theater, and told him that his heart would not bleed too much for Miss Weér, partly because he preferred buxom yet slender and swarthy actresses, and partly because the line for the various prizes and souvenir rings was growing so long that a vacancy at the top of the seniority ladder would come very handy at this time; however, as reported by
The New York Times
, Miss Weér's little by-blow's been sawing away pretty smartly on her violin out there. In short, it would be a pity to give up on someone like that; after all, we are a musical superpower, are we not? Not to mention that while fiddlers are dazzling and attractive, they are also easy to hold on a short leash. They don't scribble or paint all kinds of tripe all over the place. It would be very difficult to undermine the working classes with string quartets. In a word, he, as comrade minister, would be extremely grateful to Comrade Fenyő if he could find the Achilles heel of the maternal heart.

Thus, Comrade Fenyő – at whom everyone had dared to laugh, at least for the duration of the last five-year plan but only discreetly, of course – well, Comrade Fenyő spent a whole sleepless night racking his brain, trying to figure out where the Achilles heel of a mother's heart would be. He was even peeved a little that gone were the days when one's hands weren't tied, and then he thought what the hell, this was still a people's democracy, and the next day he asked Cleopatra to exchange her play script with one of the slave girls. “You're kidding me, right?” Cleopatra asked, but Comrade Fenyő said no, comrade Weér, this wasn't a joke and your new role is an excellent one; and if we really think about it, the people's theaters along the shore of the Tisza may also need outstanding performers of your caliber. Cleopatra responded by telling the director to get this asshole off the stage; the director, however, asked her, as his esteemed coworker, not to interrupt the flow of the rehearsal and, if she pleased, to learn by tomorrow those
few lines of her new role because he, the director, was still determined to take part in the Prague theater festival.

Then Cleopatra ran home, just as she was. Black tears were streaming from her eyes because she hadn't even bothered to remove her makeup. With a black wig topped by a glass-diamond diadem on her head, she ran through the downtown streets, in a bra decorated with glass rubies, Egyptian sandals on her feet and a synthetic silk cape on her shoulders, looking exactly as – based on the poster of a French revue – Comrade Fenyő's niece had imagined Cleopatra to look. People didn't believe their eyes. Mothers coming out of the Pioneer department store grasped and turned away the heads of their offspring, the way one rings the neck of a chicken, some wives slapped their ogling husbands around, shamelessly, right there in public, the number seven bus crawled slowly from Liberation Square to the Astoria Hotel because the passengers wouldn't allow the driver to pass Cleopatra. Only nobody realized who this half-naked woman was with her fluttering cape. They didn't recognize their actress because they had never seen her shedding real tears, only the kind that, prompted by the Vietnamese ointment smeared on the skin under the eyes, well up at the appropriate moment. The way Antony has never seen Cleopatra cry either, not even when the mailman delivered the letter from the Eastern shores. In fact, he realized only now that Cleopatra's tears were not mentholated but salty, like everyone else's, and he didn't even care that the reason he saw her cry with real feelings – for the first time ever – was that she had lost a damn leading role. He was grateful to the draconic laws of the people's democracy for these salty tears. He wouldn't have cared if they had transferred Cleopatra from the privileged camp of state-supported artists not into the tolerated but into the banned category; if her status, based on
the confidential file of her character references, had been lowered even more. Then Antony went into the bathroom for the Valerian drops and a wet towel, undid the straps of her Egyptian sandals, and wiped the dust of Lajos Kossuth Street, The Little Boulevard and the Museum Garden off her ankles and toes. And then he removed the synthetic cape too, so he could wipe off, with another towel, the beads of perspiration collected in the valleys of her vertebrae. To calm the shoulders trembling with her sobbing and the writhing of the hips adorned with a gilded sash. Then he cleaned the feathers of the ripped-apart pillow off Cleopatra's hands, and by then the sobbing was beginning to subside.

This is good, said Cleopatra, and turned around so Antony could get to the feathers stuck to her face, too, and to the real tears rolling over the stage make-up, to the pulsing artery of the long neck, and so that the heaving of her breasts, decorated with glass rubies, might be soothed with a damp kerchief.

Don't cry, Mother, said Antony and with her kerchief he smoothed the valley of the belly, starting from below the breasts, all the way down to the golden sash under the navel.

Take this junk off me, Son, Cleopatra said, and I unbuckled her belt; she raised her hip so I could remove the gilded imitation-snakeskin strap.

Bastards, they think they can turn me into an extra, she said, and I picked the feathers off her thighs.

Oh, that feels so good, Son. Do my soles, too, she said, and raised her foot to put it in my lap, but I grasped her ankle and kept the foot in front of my face.

Relax, Mother, I said, warming her sole with my breath, before beginning to massage the slender toes. I put her heel on my left shoulder because
I didn't dare put it in my lap, but I didn't want to put it back on the bed, either. We stayed like that for long minutes: she propped on her elbows, the wig half slid down on her blonde bun, and me holding one of her feet on my shoulder, the other in my hand. Maybe for the first time in my life I felt something warm in her expression, but I didn't dare raise my head, because I knew the feeling would last only until we looked each other in the eye. And of course I knew that I couldn't sit like this, with my head down, for the rest of my life. Then slowly she pulled her foot out of my hand and held it in front of my lips for me to kiss it.

Women will love you, Son, she said and hurried into the bathroom.

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One sunny morning, Comrade Fenyő called my mother into his office, offered her some Napoleon cognac and said, “No sorrow is greater than ours now that our beloved actress cannot make full use of her talent. For example, there is this screenplay with this marvelous leading role in it, and it's an international co-production to boot, which means it involves travel as well. True, only to Bulgaria, but a sea is a sea. Would you like another shot of cognac? However, comrade actress, you must acknowledge the presence of some upsetting factors in the given circumstances. Of course, these factors could easily be eliminated – well, if nothing else, these French sure know how to make a good cognac, don't they? – for instance, if your little girl came home; after all, in music we are a superpower, are we not? We have Liszt and Bartók, and Lehár, and the MÁV
*
Philharmonic; in other words, we are at a loss, we simply don't know what your daughter was thinking of. But if she came home, we'd look on her little faux pas as a study trip, and I can assure you that she could continue to benefit not only from her talent but also from her newly made contacts, applying of course the
appropriate measure of discretion and self-discipline. Not to mention that here we are with the screenplay I told you about before and all the many other leading roles, you see, desperately waiting for someone to do them justice at last. Well, here's one more for the road.” And that very evening my mother sat down and wrote her first letter, saying nothing about the leading roles but emphasizing the study-trip nature of Judit's defection, to which my sister replied only that Esteemed Mother, next week I have a concert with Menuhin, you couldn't possibly be serious, could you, when suggesting I join the MÁV Philharmonic?

But my mother didn't give up; she consulted even with the party secretary.

“Write to her that she should think of her family,” said Comrade Fenyő, and after a brief contemplation he said, no, she shouldn't write that, too ambiguous, those imperialists out there might misunderstand and think that the family here would come to harm. Rather, she should write that even existentially we honor and appreciate talents like her. To which my sister responded, Esteemed Mother, here they appreciate me and not just existentially, though for now I can send you only five hundred dollars a month. Incidentally, I'd rather be a chambermaid here in some motel than the first violinist at a concert given in honor of the Party Congress. I beg you, please don't write to me about this any more.

Mother, in response, instead of seeking Comrade Fenyő's advice, made a list of all the leading roles and state decorations she'd be deprived of by her snotty little daughter's defection and demanded that Judit return home immediately. She would not put up with walk-on parts for the rest of her life because of her daughter, that little bitch of a slut. Either she takes the first available flight home, or her mother would consider her dead from
this moment on. Mother also guaranteed that, as one does a dead person, she'd bury her daughter. She'd take all her left-behind junk to the public cemetery.

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One morning, while looking for a pill to soothe a headache, I was astonished to find ripped-open envelopes at the bottom of the Wertheim safe, because I thought that I was the one who read all Judit's letters to my mother.

When you think about it, the Metropolitan is not such a bad place. But it's terrible that you still can't read well, Son. I'm not at all surprised you couldn't graduate from high school.

It wasn't reading that I flunked, Mother, I said.

Wasn't it? Well, never mind, go on, she said, and dripped the soft-boiled egg slowly onto the toast, and I continued to read. But those letters were talking about things very different from those in the three letters addressed to Miss Rebeka Weér, care of the theater, and which my mother hid behind the medicine box in the Wertheim safe. In the third one, Judit was already using the informal address, not impertinently or disobediently, only addressing her as one woman would another. Shame spread over seven pages, ripped out of a music notebook, and I just stood in the middle of the room, realizing that beginning with my sister's first period I had been left out of certain things. I was about to replace the envelopes when I noticed my mother's pitying look in the mirror.