Katalin Street Page 19

  I listened, utterly chilled by this moment that had overtaken and overwhelmed us both. I should have told him not to concern himself about me, to pity himself rather than pity me. Irén Elekes was no more. She might never have existed. While I had Blanka at my side I had felt complete, whole, perfect. I believed, as she did, that I had been born to be that way. Then one day I realized that I had never been either what people thought me or what I had imagined myself to be: I had believed in it only because there was someone who loved me so much that she took all my sins upon herself, even before I—had I not been a slave to convention and essentially a coward—might have been able to understand what they would be. But Blanka was gone, leaving me to perpetrate my crimes by myself, and the people I lived with kept out of my way in fear and trembling. Only Pali was able to put up with me, because he had no memory of my younger self. I sat and contemplated myself and the rest of us, in the new apartment, where Bálint would be coming to live in the hope of recovering the peace and calm he had known in his father’s house, and I saw him standing there in amazement at me shouting at my mother, hurling a plate to the floor, slapping little Kinga when she got on my nerves, or back in the kitchen utterly exhausted after a long day at school, brandishing a cup at the men that someone had forgotten to wash and complaining to one and all about the miserable life I led.

  So there we sat in silence. Neither of us spoke the words we should have, and this time it was I and not Bálint who saw that whatever we did say would change nothing. I looked at the statues standing around us, those strange forms that were little more than blocks of stones piled on top of one another rather than carved, and I imagined them directing their eerie, unseeing gaze at us. Then I turned my head away. I had heard Bálint heave a sigh, or rather not a sigh but a yawn, a yawn not of boredom but of sheer exhaustion, and I suddenly realized that I wanted to yawn too. I was inexpressibly weary. It was like finding myself able to sit and rest at last after years, decades of being pursued and hunted down.

  We said nothing about the practical arrangements, and nothing about the details. We knew it wasn’t urgent, that there would be plenty of time. Pali would see to whatever had to be done and make it all happen with the minimum of bloodshed. My pupils were lining up. When I went back to join them, Bálint went with me, as if he couldn’t bear to leave me alone for a minute. I conducted myself admirably. I spoke thoughtfully and clearly, and even added a few remarks about the displays. Conscious that I might have been seen crying on the bench, I did my best to make them forget my loss of composure even as I deplored the sort of strength that could summon up the self-control needed to force oneself to be what other people expected when I would have much rather have stayed as I am: I was tired of everything and everyone, above all of Bálint. We set off, and I knew that never again, as long as we lived, would I really be myself, and that what had happened, and was going to happen, would be meaningless, pointless, and far too late.

  My colleague walked at the head of the group, the two of us at the back. It was midday, the sun was shining brightly, and as we left the gallery we chatted about the weather. Our distorted shadows writhed on the pavement, and I watched them flitting along beside us in the strong sunlight. Two vast blocks of stone stalked ahead. Their shadows had neither eyes, nor hands, nor feet. They were just limbless trunks.

  1968

  THE TREES were very old, but every spring their branches were thick with leaves and they showed no sign of disease. The leaves never fell early because the people in the street loved the trees, and every evening, in the dog days of summer, they threw buckets of water over the roots. Henriette walked down the street more often than the others did, and she was the first to notice that the avenue was being cut down. When she got home that evening she told her parents and the Major about it. The news greatly upset her parents, as the trees had a special place in their memories, so she decided that the next time she went home she would resurrect them: the street looked maimed without them. “It won’t be possible while they’re still taking them down,” the Major advised. “You must wait until they’re all gone. Only then will you be able to restore them.” So she waited until the tree surgeons and their machines had finished, until nothing was left of the row of trees and the work on all three houses had been completed. Then she put everything back, houses and trees together. The Major had been right. The trees came back at once, took up their old places, and submitted to the laws of the seasons, just as they always had.

  A few weeks later more building began, and again she started to worry. Henriette knew nothing about overpopulation and shortages of building land, but now she was afraid that after the trees the part of the riverbank that hadn’t been built on would be next and the view from their houses of the Danube glittering between the trunks would be lost. The street would be completely changed. So far they had built only on the left side, never on the right. She felt it would be very hard to have to wait until all the construction work had been completed and normal life had resumed in her three houses before she could make it all disappear again and restore the old view of the riverbank.

  By the time the houses on the other side of the road were finished their beloved view of the Danube had indeed gone. It was as if an enormous hand had gathered it up and whisked it away. The city planners declared Katalin Street an area of special historic interest, and a row of single-story houses appeared, facing Castle Hill and built in a style that harmonized with the existing buildings. They even had gardens. They weren’t as large as those of the houses on the left-hand side, but they went all the way down to the river. You could see newly planted trees and flowers through the low wire fencing.

  Henriette loved the Danube. Whenever she was back in her bodily form and found herself walking along the bank, she felt compelled to observe the shape the street was taking. She would stop from time to time, peer over fences, and watch the new residents sunbathing, playing cards in the garden, all the usual everyday events—the postman ringing a doorbell and handing over an envelope that would be instantly torn open; someone carefully prizing the cap from a bottle of beer and taking a hearty swig, leaving a line of foam across his lips.

  Occasionally these people would speak to her as she stood looking in. This delighted her but it also left her feeling embarrassed. The young men sometimes teased her, but she never reacted and after a while they always left her alone. On one occasion some teenagers hit her with a football. The boy responsible never apologized, he just asked her to throw it back. She did and said nothing, but as it sailed through the air she suddenly remembered how much she had loved playing with a ball, and the next time she came she brought her own with her from the house in Katalin Street and bounced it ahead of her, with gentle taps of the hand, all the way along the waterfront. The place smelled of water, river water. She wandered up and down beside the Danube, bouncing her red ball as she went.

  Gradually she came to know the residents of the new houses on the other side of the street.

  In the officer’s house there was a boy, a tough-looking fellow with blond hair, who was often in the garden when he wasn’t doing his homework. Next door there were two girls, a quiet one with dark hair and a smaller one who never stopped talking. They often played with the boy, losing themselves so completely in the game that Henriette really envied them, and sometimes she made her ball bounce into their garden so that the game would stop while they returned it. Occasionally she caught sight of the parents, the officer leaning on the fence explaining something and laughing, and the father of the girls, an incompetent-looking shortsighted little man who was always fussing about while his wife sprawled on a deck chair reading glossy magazines, or getting something for the children to eat.

  One day Henriette had a strange experience with this woman. She was standing in the street looking in and watching the girls eating, when the idle, slovenly mother unexpectedly came up to her and handed her a doughnut over the fence. The plate was chipped, and it wasn’t exactly clean. The woman smiled at her
and told her that as she had shown so much interest in it she might at least try one. Henriette took it, since it had been offered, and stared at the doughnut in confusion, no more able to thank the woman than to explain why she didn’t want it, or why she had been standing there watching. As soon as the woman turned her back she broke the doughnut into small pieces and scattered it on the water. The fish darted towards it, large brown fish, their mouths gaping wide to snatch it. The children saw what she had done and the younger girl began to shout angrily about what sort of idiot would throw her doughnut in the river. The older one nodded her head reproachfully, and the boy ran out, grabbed the plate from her hand, and told her she needn’t expect anything from them again in a hurry, so she could clear off and go to the devil. It was a long time before she dared bounce her ball outside their house again.

  There was another house on the new side of the road where no one had spoken to her yet. It stood empty, and whenever she didn’t want either to stay in Katalin Street or to be where the Soldier was, she went there instead and dawdled about, bouncing her ball.

  One day she arrived home earlier than usual. Mrs. Held had upset her. The day before she had gone off to a spa with her nurse, a place she used to visit in childhood, and had come back in one of those ridiculous old-fashioned bathing suits people used to wear for paddling in the sea. Henriette hated it when she regressed like that, and she also had a horror of the nurse and the way she talked down to her mother. She was so desperate to see the real Mrs. Held that she almost hurled herself into the kitchen. She had heard her mother humming inside, and she went and nuzzled up to her for ages until she had calmed down and washed her mind clean of the image of that unreal child with the bucket full of shells.

  Mrs. Held had put some apricots into a bowl, but Henriette left them there and went on to finish her usual tour of inspection. Later on, when she was absorbed in the old children’s game in the garden and had completely forgotten about them, her mother signaled to her from the kitchen window that they still hadn’t eaten the fruit. Bálint went inside to fetch the bowl and ran back with it to the others. Blanka snatched it from his hand and started to divide the contents up, and Irén put some vine leaves on the steps to serve as plates. Blanka counted out the apricots in a singsong rhythm: one-two-three-four. Henriette looked on with the delight that filled her every time she noticed that this Blanka had included her in the share—all too often in their childhood she had forgotten that the fruit belonged to everyone and divided it into three, as if Henriette simply didn’t exist. The dentist’s drill hummed away, Blanka handed out the fruit, counting as she did: one-two-three-four. The sun was shining brightly.

  They sat down on the bottom steps and Blanka immediately started to wolf hers down. That was when Henriette first heard the noise. She didn’t take much notice at first, but after a while it struck her as odd to hear something other than the whining of the drill. This was quite different—a scraping and bumping sound, as if large objects were being lifted and dumped on the ground. It seemed inconceivable that her mother would be moving anything around in the house that would make so much noise, so she ran inside to take a look.

  Mrs. Held was in the sitting room. She heard Henriette come in and turned her head.

  “What’s that sound?” Henriette asked.

  Mrs. Held replied that it was probably just the ship. There was one sailing along in front of them. “Look how beautiful the Danube is today, and what an unusual blue. That’s a very large ship. What kind is it?”

  Henriette stood beside her, following her gaze. From the window she could see the line of trees and the new houses in between them. They were in the way, and the river was no longer to be seen. The door of the last vacant house across the road was open, and workmen were moving in and out of the porch, carrying furniture from a truck. The furniture would pause briefly at the door, then continue on its way and disappear into the house.

  “Can you see the flag? It’s a German ship,” said Mrs. Held. “I wonder what they have on board.”

  She saw furniture and suitcases, and the residents of the new street. The shortsighted man, the officer, and an unknown woman were standing at the door, with the slovenly woman beside them, holding a bag. The children were capering about between the boxes and odds and ends, enjoying the general chaos, then suddenly they started to run. A car was turning into the street, near the church. They ran in front of it, then followed it all the way back to the front door. To their delight a man got out, with a little girl on his arm. He set her down, and the two girls, the one with large eyes and the little blonde, immediately took charge of her and raced with her into the garden. The boy went after them, at a slower pace, and the grown-ups watched them, laughing.

  “There’s another ship,” said Mrs. Held. “Go and call Bálint, so he can see it too.”

  Henriette went out, not into the garden but straight across the road to the newly built side, and followed it along to the end. She turned the corner next to the church, went down to the waterfront, and stood beside the fence where she usually played with her ball. The garden was full of lumber—armchairs taken outside and piled high with clothes, stacks of books, bed linen, and a bench heaped with cushions, pillows, bed linen, and towels.

  The boy saw that she was back again and ran to the fence. The others followed and they all stood facing one another. The workmen were now carrying a white enameled glass sideboard toward the foot of the staircase, and a dentist’s chair, with the drill dangling down like a snake. The smaller girl put out her tongue at Henriette.

  “It’s that girl with the ball,” the boy said. “The dumb idiot who likes feeding fish.”

  “Shush,” said the dark-haired girl. “We don’t even know her.”

  “Dumb idiot,” the little blonde repeated. “Dumb idiot, who likes playing with her ball!”

  “Get the hell out of here,” the boy said.

  “Shush,” said the dark-haired girl again. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

  Henriette barely heard her. Her eyes were on the little one and the furniture. Beyond the girl, in the middle of the garden and in front of the piles of bed linen, she could see the footstool. She couldn’t make out the pattern on the upholstery because the underside of the frame was toward her. She stood with her face distorted by the pain of concentration. Voices came from inside the house, calling the children back. The feet of the newly arrived child seemed to tremble, as if she wanted to go back and be with them. She was a timid little thing, with pale skin and dark eyes.

  “Let’s go,” said the boy. “We’re in charge of this kid. We’d better take her back. Come on.”

  The blond girl dashed off, her shoes slapping on the flagstones as she ran between the piles of bed linen and disappeared through the door. The dark-haired girl followed her slowly, as if in two minds. There was a pleasing calmness about the way she walked, a kind of gentle dignity, though she could hardly have been ten years old. The new arrival looked up at Henriette, hesitantly. The boy was still there.

  “Are you still looking at the idiot?” he asked.

  The little girl said nothing.

  “She’ll throw you in the river too, like her doughnut.”

  Henriette didn’t understand what he meant by that, but the remark disturbed her, it was so strange and terrifying. She gazed at each of them in turn.

  The boy started to lose patience.

  “All right, stay there then. If you get bored, we’re inside the house.”

  He thudded off.

  The child looked round and realized that she was alone at the fence with a total stranger. She panicked, and the blood rushed to her face. Fearing that she might run off at any moment, Henriette put her hand through the wire fence and touched her. The little girl allowed the touch, but acted as if it was hurting her, and Henriette pulled her fingers away. She had no idea whether her touch was like other people’s or whether it might possibly be bad for the child to be touched by her. From inside the house she could hear
laughter, an argument going on, and a regular stamping sound coming from somewhere, as if there was a game in progress, with singing and dancing.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the child. It was the first time she had spoken since she had been killed, and she wasn’t sure she would be understood. The little girl didn’t reply. She just looked at her in wonder, as if uncertain whether she was allowed to talk to a stranger; her mouth opened and the lips glistened, but before she could say anything the other children had darted back along the garden path, seized her hand, and run off with her and through the now empty doorway.

  The furniture, the suitcases, and the bed linen vanished. Someone closed the door from the other side, and she could no longer see either the workmen or the grown-ups. Now, as from a great distance, she saw the children holding hands in a ring. The little one must have been too inept, because she hadn’t been invited in. She stood apart, watching the other three. Henriette leaned on the fence and listened. She wanted to hear what they were singing. But they noticed that she was still there. The dance was abandoned. The boy bent down to pick up a stone and made as if to throw it. She ran and found herself on the waterfront again, then beside the church, then disappearing through the Helds’ front door.

  That day she arrived back at her usual place of residence rather earlier than usual. There was nobody around: not the Major, not her grandparents, not the Helds. There was only the Soldier. They stared at each other for a while, then he asked her once again how he could find his way home. For the first time since they had met she looked at his face with neither fear nor horror. It was a simple face, young, a little stupid. Once again she said nothing.