Katalin Street Read online

  I sat and waited for him to wake up. Knowing I was close to him made me so happy that I wanted to prolong the moment. Ridiculous thoughts filled my mind, about what he might say when he saw me—what if he had been married since Mrs. Temes last had news of him, and what if his wife came to visit us and sat down next to my husband and they told each other things that only they knew about the two of us, with Bálint and myself standing behind them laughing. . . .

  Bálint slept on, the peaceful slumber of the exhausted. I noticed that his features had become sharper, his face a little longer and older-looking. But seeing this made no difference to me. I wasn’t interested in the signs of aging, only in Bálint himself.

  I was still sitting there, oblivious to everything else, when the alarm suddenly went off. I jumped up, terrified, and he woke. The moment he opened his eyes he noticed me, stared in surprise for a moment, then looked at me steadily. He sat up, silenced the alarm, stretched, yawned, and said, “Hello, Irén,” as if we had last met the day before. I made no reply.

  I was hoping he would reach out and touch my hand, but he merely groped around the side of the bed, failed to find what he was looking for, and asked me to bring him a cigarette. His bag wasn’t in the room, so I went into the next one. While I searched for it among the unbelievable chaos I heard him getting out of bed and moving around, obviously dressing. By the time I came back he was sitting in his shirt and trousers and pulling his socks on. He put on his shoes, came over to me, and gave me an affectionate kiss. I submitted, but didn’t kiss him back. There was no point. It had been no more than a form of greeting, a kind of “good morning”—a chaste, brotherly kiss, appropriate for Henriette.

  “I came to fetch Blanka,” I said. “I’m taking her home.”

  He shook his head and waved his hand to show that she was gone. I stared in disbelief, afraid of what I feared. I simply couldn’t imagine life without Blanka. Besides, if she had been taken away and had come to any harm, how could I look my father in the eye when I went home?

  “She’s defected,” Bálint said. “I packed her off with a friend. She’ll be over the border by now.”

  He had sent her. He of all people! Blanka, who had once sent him away? The relief that my sister was safe and beyond the clutches of the tribunal was equaled only by my confusion. Once again I was completely bewildered.

  And now he came up to me, stood very close, and took my face in his hands. I closed my eyes, expecting a kiss. His mouth came very close to mine, then once again I no longer felt his breath, and he released me.

  “It’s so sad. You never could grasp the simplest facts,” he said. “Life. Death. Clean water. Life isn’t a schoolroom, Irén. There aren’t any rules.”

  I glanced up at him. The look on his face had changed yet again. In his eyes I saw something not unlike pity, as if he knew that I was unwell and I didn’t.

  “You must reassure your parents. Tell them everything’s fine. I’ll look after her apartment. I’ll move in here. I don’t have anywhere to live, so I’ll be fine right here—if I stay on in Budapest, and it looks as if I will. If I run out of money, I’ll sell her things. Her knickers.”

  It was awful. I could never tell whether he was serious or joking. I automatically picked up the duvet, shook it out, and began to tidy the room. I couldn’t stand the mess; every wardrobe door and every drawer was standing open.

  “You’re so perfect, you and your father,” he said. “Wherever you go, order prevails. I often thought of you. After living in that house of yours everywhere else seemed filthy and disgusting. Shall I see you home?”

  I didn’t answer. I just stared at him, and my busy hands came to a stop.

  “I have to be back at the hospital by ten. That’s why I set the alarm. I’m going to be a bit late, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t mind what I do these days. I’ll have to get you home while it’s still possible, before it gets too late.”

  Again I looked at him, and our eyes met. He hauled his coat on and did up his tie.

  “Aren’t you going to wash?” I ventured timidly.

  He roared with laughter and went on until he was almost choking. Again I stared in bafflement. I never for the life of me could think what to say when he was like this.

  “When I get to the hospital,” he said at last. “I do actually wash, but there’s isn’t time right now. I really must get you home safely. You never did know when to do things, Irén. Blanka was an idiot, a real idiot, but at least she knew that.”

  Before I knew it, I was out the door. He had taken my arm and was racing with me down the stairs. I had never asked, and Blanka had never told me, what happened between them in the shelter that night when Henriette died. Now I knew, and it no longer mattered. When he touched me I thought my breathing would stop. I hadn’t realized just how much I still loved him, or how very little I loved my husband. As we walked I talked without ceasing. He had insulted me once before, and now after all these years he had done so again. Even his words of praise had been somehow patronizing. I could see all that but not feel it, and I told him everything about myself, everything I could put into words. He listened in silence, striding along. Out in the streets I could see more clearly how much he had aged over the past few years, how his hair was turning gray and he was starting to lose it, and his teeth were no longer as perfect as they had been. As we strode along Blanka was completely forgotten. All I could think of was why he hadn’t asked me about the one thing that I hadn’t mentioned, the subject to which I had never even alluded: did I really love Pali, and what sort of life did I have with him?

  1961

  ALTHOUGH she had come to dread meeting the people she had once known in Katalin Street, much preferring to be with them in the form she had re-created in her mind, she did nonetheless visit them often.

  These encounters invariably distressed her, but she couldn’t bear not seeing them, and if too long a time had passed since she had last done so she would become agitated and restless. She would then shut the door to the house she had constructed for herself in Katalin Street and leave the inhabitants to their various occupations—Mrs. Elekes with her pile of cushions, Mr. Elekes correcting homework, her mother busying herself about the place, her father in his consulting room, Mrs. Temes in the kitchen, the Major reading his newspaper in his study that smelled of leather, Irén at her schoolwork, Blanka chuckling away or crying, and Bálint in the garden. She bade them all farewell, promised she would not be away very long, closed the door on them, and they went on with their lives exactly where she had left them. Sometimes when she went back, she would shut herself away in her room, taking care not to show herself in case they should suspect something that only she knew about, something she too wanted to forget. At such times it was better just to closet herself away, because she often felt an overwhelming desire to talk to her father and mother and tell them how long they had before they would die, and the circumstances in which it would happen. She avoided the Major too: she was so afraid that she would let slip what she would in fact tell him later—when the two of them first met after their deaths—where he had fallen, and how upset he had been because he’d had absolutely no intention of dying, let alone of getting involved in a war, only he hadn’t had time to explain that to the person who shot him. Mrs. Elekes she felt sorry for, seeing how she dreaded cleaning and tidying in Irén’s room, and she helped her build up her collection of knickknacks. She urged Mr. Elekes to read as much as possible and kept bringing him more books, which she piled on his desk. She spent long hours chatting to Mrs. Temes, taking pleasure in the sharpness of her mind and the clarity of her thought.

  Despite her awareness that meeting these people as they were now would always be painful, she was constantly drawn to their world. She was there when Bálint had his tribunal, there when Mr. Elekes ordered Blanka out of the house, and there when Irén got married, standing behind her in the church and noticing how grim she looked. She would have loved to have been her bridesmaid, but contrary to what th
ey had all agreed on as children, Irén wore neither a corsage nor even a wedding dress. The wedding itself was as cheerless as one could possibly imagine. The bride’s father had almost completely lost his sight, and instead of leading Irén to the altar had to be helped into the candlelit church. Blanka sat huddled in a corner, keeping herself away from the rest of the family, while a slim young man whom none of them knew made his blithe, naïve responses to the priest. Henriette was amazed that he couldn’t see how out of place he was, standing there so proud and full of hope beside Irén. Henriette would have loved to see a wedding night, but she chose not to follow Irén home. The whole affair had been so depressing she knew she should just go back to Katalin Street and take to her bed. It had been nothing more than a bad dream. There, Irén and Blanka were still young girls who shared a bedroom, and if Irén was to be married to anyone it would be to Bálint. That thin, dark-haired young man in the church was simply an illusion. A figure in a dream.

  Visiting Blanka’s new home was always enchanting in itself. It was there that she had first seen the sea, and she would have taken an even greater pleasure in the dancing of the waves had she not found Blanka on the top of the cliff, choking in the heat, sobbing and crying out. The sight made her instantly want to rush back home. Blanka had become just another of the Henriettes that swarmed around the whitewashed house, and more of a prisoner than any of her family had ever been, despite possessing a real passport that could take her anywhere.

  Hardest of all to bear were her visits to Bálint, though she yearned constantly to see him. In the prison camp, in the Elekeses’ apartment, in the village, wherever he happened to be, he lived and moved like a high-wire artiste who had been crippled in a fall, been forced back into the ring, and was now going through his routines to the best of his ability but was so afraid of killing himself, and doing everything so joylessly, that far from entertaining the audience he was simply making them nervous. Though she had yearned unceasingly for him over the years, she never spent more than a few minutes with him. She had seen much more of him, and knew far more than Irén about his private life and his irregular relationships. Irén suspected only a fraction of what went on, and Henriette always felt ashamed when she saw him with other women. She could see what worthless creatures they were, and it upset her to think how many of them would sooner or later become his lovers.

  What kept her retreating to the Katalin Street of her mind wasn’t these women but the series of setbacks that dogged his steps at every point and threatened his career. No sooner would she be with him than she would flee from his side. She wanted to see him as a young man once again and be with him as he had been—so clever, so capable, and talented—and to hear Mrs. Temes, Mr. and Mrs. Elekes, and the Major talking about the wonderful career that awaited him. She was only truly contented and spontaneous when she felt close to him as the boy he had been, when she played the Cherry Tree game with him and the other two girls. Every time she found herself starting to be drawn again to the older Bálint she felt angry with herself, and she visited him only when the desire to see him in his bodily form overcame her better judgment.

  Whenever she found herself beside one of these people in a shop, or bumped into one of them in the street, their reaction was always the same. They would glance at her briefly then look away, not particularly surprised or in any way troubled. None of them would believe for a moment that it was really her, Henriette, standing there or hurrying along beside them. The expression on their faces would soften for a moment, as if they had heard a fragment of song borne on the wind, an old song they had known and sung in childhood and not heard since, and they were thinking how strange it was that a few bars of it should have come back to them just at that moment. When they failed yet again to recognize her or call her by her name, she hadn’t the courage to address them, to explain that it really was her. She just stood there while the two of them looked at each other. It happened, quite often, that one of them would return her gaze, and sometimes they even stopped for a while. But they always moved on, visibly touched, with a distant look in their eyes, a look of wonder that the young girl they had just met should so strongly resemble someone they had once loved, someone they could never forget. But not once did they speak to her. Mrs. Elekes, Mrs. Temes, Mr. Elekes himself, and both Blanka and Irén had seen her in the street, countless times, but not for a second had they believed that it could be her, and these repeated encounters eventually discouraged her completely. It hurt her so much when they refused to acknowledge the reality of her presence and neither greeted nor spoke to her that for a time she gave up visiting them in a material form they might recognize.

  The one person she had never shown herself to in bodily form was the one she actually went to see most often, Bálint. She thought that of all people it would be he, who had so loved her, who would know that it really was her. He hadn’t panicked when he saw her lying there in the garden, and he wouldn’t take fright now—he had simply taken a long, deep breath and sat down on the seat beside the fence. She was standing behind him, looking at her prostrate body and wondering how she might pull her skirt down. She had fallen between the rosebushes, and it had slid up, leaving her knees exposed.

  She felt so confident that Bálint would find it natural that she should come back, and wouldn’t react as the others had done, that year after year she had postponed the opportunity to reveal herself to him in bodily form. She wanted something from him. All her life she had wanted it, for so long without hope. She had seen him reject Irén, had seen Irén being married, and had thought that at last he might be hers. Then she would finally enjoy the peace of mind that would enable her to endure the life that would be hers forever. What she wanted was extremely naïve and no doubt immature rather than shameful, but it was still something she could never discuss with her mother, either as she was now or as the Mrs. Held she had re-created in Katalin Street. Finally she decided to tell Bálint himself, to let him know that at one time she had thought of him in a certain way, that she had longed for him . . . and now she wanted to know whether, since Irén was no longer around, no longer part of his life, perhaps, had she still been alive, would it still be so unthinkable . . . ? Timid and shy and fearful as she was, she spent ages preparing for this encounter. When she finally made her decision and set out from Katalin Street toward the hospital, she was sure the way her face kept changing from blood-red to deathly pale betrayed to everyone what was going on in her mind.

  As always when she returned to the land of the living she was intimidated by the size of the city and the huge volume of traffic. She enjoyed walking, but there was a long way to go and she couldn’t take any form of public transport because she had no money, only a handkerchief. Crossing over the bridge to Pest she realized there must have been an accident in the city center. A crowd was gathering, drivers were waving and gesticulating; a policeman had asked one of them for his papers and he had produced a whole sheaf of them, which the officer was now carefully going through. She found it amusing, but it brought home to her that she had none of her own, and she quickened her pace. All her official documents had been left at the old house and then destroyed. As for those of Mária Kis, even if Mrs. Held hadn’t burned them they would have been of no use to her since everyone now carried the new red certificates of identity.

  When she finally reached the hospital she was told to wait for Bálint, who would appear shortly. Outside the entrance there was an old statue of St. John surrounded by benches, and from there she kept an eye on the entrance, glancing every so often at the clock on the façade. When she at last caught sight of him she felt a twinge of fear. He wasn’t alone. She recognized his companion. It was Timár. Luckily Timár got into a car, and Bálint set off on his own. She followed him. She was almost as nervous as she had been at the Major’s thirty-fifth birthday celebration, when, holding the shield, she had fainted from a mixture of happiness and sheer terror. Now it was precisely the thing on which she had pinned her hopes, the thing she had come bac
k to achieve, that made it a thousand times more difficult for her to approach him.

  He was walking very quickly. He had done so all his life, and she had always had difficulty keeping up with him. Now it was as if he were running away from her, which of course was absurd, as he hadn’t even seen her. She struggled to catch him up and by the time she drew level on the pavement she was panting heavily. Her heart was beating so strongly she feared she might be ill. She tried to calm herself down, telling herself not to worry since she couldn’t be ill, it wasn’t possible. But her chest was heaving. For the last several meters she had been positively running, and it was the sound of her little gasping noises that finally made him notice her. He turned his head to look, glanced at her briefly, then turned away and carried on walking. “He doesn’t believe what he saw,” she thought. But she wasn’t upset. She hadn’t thought it would be any different. She knew she would have to give him time to realize what was happening.

  But he walked on. Occasionally he looked round, as if to confirm that whoever had been there was still there, and promptly quickened his pace, showing not the slightest intention of either stopping or speaking to her. By now she was almost running. When he suddenly turned down a side street she knew she had hoped in vain. He hadn’t believed, any more than the others had, that it was her beside him and not some stranger wanting to accost him. It made her so miserable she sobbed in despair.