Abigail Read online

  Magda Szabó (1917–2007) was born into an old Protestant family in Debrecen, Hungary’s “Calvinist Rome,” on the eastern side of the great Hungarian plain. Szabó, whose father taught her to converse with him in Latin, German, English, and French, attended the University of Debrecen, studying Latin and Hungarian, and went on to work as a teacher throughout the German and Soviet occupations of Hungary in 1944 and 1945. In 1947, she published two volumes of poetry, Bárány (The Lamb) and Vissza az emberig (Return to Man), for which she received the Baumgarten Prize in 1949. The ruling Hungarian Communist Party immediately repealed the prize and banned her from publishing, and Szabó turned to writing fiction. Her first novel, Freskó (Fresco), came out in 1958, followed closely by Az őz (The Fawn). In 1959 she won the József Attila Prize, after which she went on to write many more novels, among them Pilátus (Iza’s Ballad, 1963), Katalin utca (Katalin Street, 1969), Ókút (The Ancient Well, 1970), Régimódi történet (An Old-Fashioned Tale, 1971), and Az ajtó (The Door, 1987). Szabó also wrote verse for children, plays, short stories, and ­nonfiction, including a tribute to her husband, Tibor Szobotka, a writer and translator who died in 1982. A member of the European Academy of Sciences and a warden of the Calvinist Theological Seminary in Debrecen, Szabó died in the city in which she was born, a book in her hand.

  Len Rix is a poet, critic, and former literature professor who has translated six books by Antal Szerb, including the novel Journey by Moonlight (available as an NYRB Classic). In addition to Abigail, he has translated two other books by Magda Szabó: The Door, which won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and was one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of 2015; and Katalin Street, which was awarded the 2018 PEN (America) Translation Prize and shortlisted for the 2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

  ABIGAIL

  MAGDA SZABÓ

  Translated from the Hungarian by

  LEN RIX

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1970 by Magda Szabó

  Translation copyright © 2020 by Len Rix

  All rights reserved

  First published in the Hungarian language by Móra as Abigél, 1970.

  Cover image: Otto Meyer-Amden, Raised Hands, c. 1920; photograph: akg-images

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Szabó, Magda, 1917– author. | Rix, Len, translator.

  Title: Abigail / by Magda Szabó ; translated by Len Rix.

  Other titles: Abigél. English

  Description: New York : New York Review Books, [2020] | Series: New York Review Books classics

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019025320 (print) | LCCN 2019025321 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681374031 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781681374086 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Fathers and daughters—Fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—Hungary—Fiction. | Hungary—History—1918–1945—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S98564 Abi 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.S98564 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025320

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025321

  ISBN 978-1-68137-408-6

  v1.0

  For a complete list of titles, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  Translator's Introduction

  ABIGAIL

  Gina is Sent to Boarding School

  The Bishop Matula Academy

  New Acquaintances

  The Legend of Abigail

  The Aquarium, and a Betrayal

  Cast Out

  Gina Prepares to Escape

  At Mitsi Horn’s; the Escape

  Disaster. The General

  At the Hajda Patisserie

  The Statue Speaks

  Air-raid Practice

  An Outing in the Country

  Caricatures

  A Visit to Kőnig, and Another Message From Abigail

  The Attack on the Aquarium; The General’s Farewell

  The St. Nicholas’s Day Service

  Documents

  Christmas

  Midnight Rendezvous

  The Árkod Dissident

  Feri Kuncz in the Matula

  St. Gedeon’s Day

  Abigail

  TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

  When Magda Szabó came to write Abigail in 1970, she was already an established figure in her native Hungary, with a growing international reputation. Prior to that, she had endured years of enforced silence and petty persecution by the ruling Communist Party—a useful time for pondering the state of her country and the long history of follies, misfortunes, and disasters that had destroyed a once great European power. It should come as no surprise then that the melancholy “condition of Hungary” should be the theme, sometimes overt, always underlying, of this work and its two companion novels—Katalin Street, written the year before, and The Door (1987). Between them they cover, in greater or lesser detail, the years from the First World War to the aftermath of the anti-Soviet uprising in 1956. Of the trio, Abigail has the lightest touch and the narrowest sweep, covering the seven months prior to and immediately following the German occupation of the country in March 1944, but it plows the same furrow. Once again Szabó’s focus is on the ways in which catastrophic public events, including war and defeat in war, affect the lives of families and private individuals. She is interested, above all, in how the victims deal, or fail to deal, with their situation.

  The tale begins in the early autumn of 1943. For the Axis powers, of which Hungary is a member, things appear to be going well: the main fighting is far away, and although the nightly Allied bombing is a concern, the only news being broadcast is positive and the mood, at least at Budapest afternoon tea parties, is complacently optimistic. The public does not yet know this, but the tide of battle has turned, the Germans are in retreat, and Hungary’s principal fighting force, the Second Army, considered dispensable by Hitler, has been annihilated in the Russian snows. Now the Führer, desperately needing to reinforce his southeastern flank and infuriated by the reluctance of his supposed ally to enforce the Final Solution, is about to invade. His coming will bring the most vicious of the homegrown fascists to power, and Adolf Eichmann will arrive to begin his unspeakable work.

  These events, though they are never described directly, determine much of the action in the novel. News of them comes to us in fragments, sometimes briefly narrated, sometimes through small details observed by the heroine, fourteen-year-old Gina Vitay. Given her limited viewpoint and undeveloped moral imagination, she will only later come to understand their meaning.

  Unknown to her when the story opens, her beloved father, a high-ranking military general, is part of an underground organization seeking to end his country’s involvement with the Germans. Aware that the situation is deteriorating, and that they will sooner or later invade, he sends her away to the Bishop Matula Academy, a fiercely puritanical boarding school at the far end of the country, where he knows she will be allowed no visitors, her mail will be censored, and, he hopes, her whereabouts kept secret. He knows it is only a matter of time before he is caught, and that his enemies will torture her in his presence to make him betray his comrades. Naturally he cannot explain his reasons, and she is led to believe that she is being sent away because he is about to remarry
(he was recently widowed) and the new woman simply wants her out of the house.

  Given her headstrong character, and her airs of big-city sophistication, her reaction to the school is predictable, and when she is “introduced” to the eponymous Abigail, the graceful garden statue of a girl that her classmates believe comes to their aid in times of trouble, her scorn is complete. There are bruising conflicts with the staff and with her classmates; she becomes increasingly unhappy and makes desperate attempts to escape, which is of course the worst thing she can possibly do in the circumstances. She has a great deal to learn—about herself, about the people around her, and above all about what is happening in the country at large. Insight will come, but only after she has been stripped of everything that has sustained her—her home, her family, her personal possessions, the mask of acquired personality, finally even her name. Her fate, and her learning experience, is intimately bound up in the fate of her country. This is a coming-of-age novel in more senses than one.

  The school setting, with its cast of clever, high-spirited girls, means that there will be no shortage of incident. Scenes of strong emotion, high drama, and breathless suspense are interspersed with wild humor. The Matula inmates, many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds, live by a very different code from hers. However unwelcome their situation, they take everything in context and strive to make the best of it. They are sustained by a spirit of joyous companionship and sisterly solidarity. They can be unimaginably fierce in defending their values, but their bonhomie is irrepressible, their courage masked by gaiety, and their merriment never without a purpose. The same is also true of the best of the older generation, struggling as they are with greater and far more enduring griefs. The book is in part a celebration of the attitudes and behaviors that enabled people not just to endure such times but to rise above them with their spirits unbroken. The contrast with the shell-shocked, guilt-ridden Elekes family in Katalin Street is a study in itself.

  The actions and attitudes of the adults Gina will have to deal with are shaped by the complex political situation in Hungary at the time. While Hungary’s involvement on the Axis side was almost certainly unavoidable, given the increasing dominance of Germany in the country’s affairs and its historic experience of Russia, an important factor for many was Hitler’s dangled promise of the return of lands taken in 1920 under the Treaty of Trianon. For zealous patriots and militant irredentists, a minority but an increasingly influential one, the temptation was irresistible. But there was also a deep opposition to the war both in high places and among the general population—not least the mothers, the widows and orphans, the anxious loved ones, and the dispossessed, whose bitterness is finally given voice in the closing chapter.

  The plot is underpinned by a characteristic Hungarian irony. Gina is clever, knows she is clever, and it is precisely her confident misreading of other people’s feelings that produces the most shattering (and mortifying) revelations—not to mention the richest vein of humor in the book. The actions of the adults around her are driven by motives and emotions whose nature she cannot even guess, though of course she tries, with both comic and humiliating results. The despised institution in which she is confined proves to be her refuge, her last true home, and the seedbed of her growth; its hated system of repression and self-mortification is precisely what she needs, first to grow as a person and then to survive in the perilous new life that awaits her at the end.

  The reader alert to the fine nuances of character and situation will find other rewards too. Gina’s stumbling progress towards self-­knowledge is tracked by a network of images, based on everyday items such as clothes, jewelry, mirrors, various gifts (most notably of an ashtray) that recur like motifs in a musical composition and merge to create a revealing pattern. Doors signify fresh challenges (and usually trouble); windows—blacked out, frosted over, or otherwise obscured—track both her incapacity to see beyond herself and her increasingly frantic dream of escape. The smashing of a glass (twice) has even wider implications. The artistry, while never drawing attention to itself, serves always to deepen the richness of meaning.

  The “mystery” hanging over the tale is, of course, the identity of the eponymous Abigail. The device is far more complex than any short summary could convey: it brings together all the major themes of the book, including those of illusion and reality, loyalty and betrayal, and finally courage. But does it matter how soon the reader realizes who this Abigail is? It is an interesting question. Szabó lays an exquisitely subtle trail of clues, all of which greatly enrich the book on a second reading, and Gina’s misguided thoughts on the subject add much to the irony. The reader will probably surmise correctly at some point, but it may be just as well to remain in the dark, sharing Gina’s confusion to the end, and then to enjoy the fully revealed work the next time around. It is a novel to which one can and should return. Claire Messud has written of The Door that it forced her to think differently about life. Abigail has that power too, for readers of every age.

  —Len Rix

  October 2019

  ABIGAIL

  GINA IS SENT TO BOARDING SCHOOL

  The change that came about in her life robbed her of so much it was as if a bomb had destroyed her home.

  Her first loss was Marcelle—the Marcelle she had always addressed as “mam’selle,” though she had never thought of her as simply the young Frenchwoman who for twelve years had slept in the room next to hers and had brought her up. Marcelle had become much more than a governess or mere employee. Just to be in her presence was usually enough for Gina to forget that Marcelle was not actually a member of the family, someone who could never truly replace the mother she had lost at the tender age of two. Marcelle always knew what Gina was struggling to express, what was really on her mind, the thing she could only stammer about incoherently, and there were moments when Gina felt as close to Marcelle as she did to her father. Whenever the governess was assailed by homesickness, or Gina reacted negatively to something said or done, Marcelle would tell her to be glad that at least she had a father by her side, and one who loved her more than anyone: she, Marcelle, had long ago lost her own parents, and now she had to earn her living from the one thing they had taught her, her mother tongue. She never failed to add that, if that was to be her lot in life, then how lucky she was to have found a home with Gina and her father. Though she had never married, it was as if here at the Vitays she had a family, or at least a daughter, of her own. Marcelle was the sort of person you would always miss when away from home as you would a real parent, and Gina knew that she was so very good to her not because she was paid to be but because she truly loved her.

  But Marcelle was no more: she had gone back to France. Gina’s father, the General, had said it was impossible for her to stay a moment longer, and he surely knew best. He would not have sent her away if he had not been absolutely obliged to. He knew as well as anyone the nature of the bond he would break in forcing them to part. But there was a war on, he explained: Marcelle’s and Gina’s countries were on opposing sides, and it was impossible for the young Frenchwoman to continue living with them. When there was peace again she would be able to return and they could carry on with their lives where they had left off. She had left all her belongings behind; they had simply been packed into trunks and moved down to the cellar.

  But Auntie Mimó wasn’t French, and even if Marcelle really had to go home, why was it necessary to send Gina away to a boarding school? Why couldn’t her education be overseen by her aunt? When she asked her father why, if he insisted on her being under constant supervision whatever the cost, his sister couldn’t just move in with them, the General shook his head. If she hadn’t been so busy clutching at every straw in the hope of being allowed to remain at home, she too would have recognized that Auntie Mimó could never be a successor to Marcelle: she was quite unsuitable. However much Gina loved her aunt, she had made fun of her on many occasions and had often thought that at fourteen she was actually more grown up than her aunt was, e
ven if the latter was a widow and by now over forty. But the moment it became clear to Gina that she would be parted from her too, the thought of losing her as well as Marcelle somehow enhanced her image. She forgot the many times she had giggled at Auntie Mimó’s efforts to preserve her long-vanished youth, her desperate need to be the center of attention when in company and the anxious interest she would take in every new item of fashion or cosmetics in the hope of a miracle. Gina also forgot just how quickly she and Marcelle had realized that those famous afternoon teas, the afternoon teas with ballroom dancing that Auntie Mimó held every Thursday and which no amount of pleading could persuade the General to attend, were arranged not for the reason her aunt gave—to provide an opportunity for her little motherless niece to make herself known, to help her learn how to conduct herself in society, and to practice her dancing. No, Auntie Mimó was simply out to enjoy herself, to show off her new clothes and her ever-changing hairdos, to dance, and, with luck, to find herself a husband. That was why the guests on those occasions were generally old enough to be Gina’s father (or even grandfather), with scarcely a young person in sight. Marcelle was no doubt right when she declared that it was not at afternoon teas and dances that a young girl would learn that fundamental something she would later need to know in adult life; and she had surely been proved right that time they found Auntie Mimó in floods of tears because her hairdresser had cut her hair badly. Life undoubtedly calls for dignity and self-discipline, and for a person to be able to react to things in an adult way it was necessary to distinguish between what was merely unpleasant and what was truly bad, especially in wartime, when all over the world people were dying in their tens and hundreds of thousands. A badly cut lock of hair was an utterly trivial matter.

  On the other hand, it was at one of Auntie Mimó’s famous afternoon teas that Gina had met Feri Kuncz, and had not failed to notice that, almost to the point of rudeness, the lieutenant had had eyes only for her. She was moreover to receive an unexpected and perhaps somewhat premature gift—the alarming, almost too joyful realization that she had fallen in love with him, and that she wanted one day to become his wife.