The Door Read online

  “Well, there’s an unusual present for you,” said my husband, as I buttoned the little dog inside my coat. The terrified black face peered out from under my fur collar, sniffing the air as we went, while from under the coat itself came a steady trickle of melting snow from its legs and belly. “You don’t often get a real Christmas surprise.”

  Emerence meanwhile had completed a major clean of our apartment, and every room was sparkling. Strolling back with the puppy, we had been debating where he should be housed, and had decided on my late mother’s room, with its beautiful antique furniture, a room we didn’t even bother to heat. “I hope he likes the eighteenth century,” my husband said. “Dogs only chew things until they’re about two. After that, they stop all by themselves.” I made no reply. He was right, but what else could we do, even if the poor creature snuggling into my neck was likely to destroy the whole lot? And thus we made our way, like some mysterious and very minor religious sect on its Christmas Eve procession, its one black relic borne on my neck.

  Never before then, or later, when she would have given her very life for me, did I witness such an outpouring of maternal passion from Emerence as when she saw what, or rather who, we’d brought home. We found her tidying up in the kitchen and laying out the Christmas pastries on a platter. She immediately threw down the knife and snatched the dog from my hands. She seized a duster, gave the puppy a thorough rubbing down, then placed it gently on the worktop to see if it could walk. The animal flopped down helplessly on its skinny backside. It was still frozen stiff from the snow and, in its fright, instantly made a mess. Emerence threw a sheet of newspaper over the evidence, and then searched with me in the built-in cupboard for the smallest of our fluffy bath towels. Until that moment I hadn’t realised she had any idea where our things were kept — she’d always insisted that I put them away myself, so terrified was she of taking something that wasn’t hers. But she obviously knew where these things at least were in our cupboards. She might not touch anything, but she made a note, double-checked, and remembered. Other people were not allowed secrets.

  I gave her the terry towel, she wrapped the puppy with great care, as if it were a baby, and walked up and down the hall, murmuring in its ear. I went in to use the telephone. There was no time to waste if we were to save the animal’s life. The television was on, and everything was Christmas. The lights, music and smells of the season filled the air. I had put almost everything of my past behind me, but the stardust atmosphere of Christmas lingered on, made manifest in the child in glory in the arms of the Virgin. To all this Emerence was blind and deaf. She walked up and down the hall with the little dog, wheezing out some old song in her rasping voice, in her own cock-eyed, upside-down, and intensely moving celebration of Christ’s birth. With the tightly swaddled black puppy in her arms, she rocked back and forth, a caricature of motherhood, an absurd Madonna.

  God knows how long this would have gone on, if someone from the house next door hadn’t rung the bell to call her back immediately. A pipe had burst and had to be dealt with. Mr Brodarics had already phoned the workmen, but she had to get back quickly and turn off the mains. With a face of thunder she pushed the dog into my arms and set off to wrestle with the tap and mop up water. But every fifteen minutes she came back to check how the animal was doing. Meanwhile, our friend the vet had been wheedled away from the sparklers and had taken charge of the dog. Emerence listened to his diagnosis with visible scepticism. She considered every kind of doctor foolish and ignorant. She couldn’t stand them. She didn’t believe in their medicines or their inoculations. Injections, she maintained, were given only to make money, and stories of rabid foxes and cats were spread so that doctors could earn more.

  The struggle to save the dog’s life went on for weeks. The old woman cleaned up the traces of diarrhoea without comment. When I was out, contrary to all her most passionate convictions, she pushed medicines into the dog and held it while they gave it antibiotic injections. Meanwhile, we offered it to all and sundry, but no-one wanted it. We gave it a fine French name, which Emerence uttered not once, and which the dog ignored. But day by day it grew, and as it gained health it began to reveal, like all mongrels, every charming and agreeable quality. And at last it was completely well. It proved to be far more intelligent than any of the pedigree dogs owned by our friends. It wasn’t very pretty — too many breeds had gone into its making — but everyone who saw it, and noted the extraordinary light in its dark eyes, sensed immediately that its level of intelligence was almost human. By the time we had at last accepted that nobody would take it, we had come to love it. We bought all the usual paraphernalia, including a sleeping basket which it chewed to pieces within a fortnight, scattering shreds of wickerwork all over the apartment. When it did feel like sleeping, it ignored the blankets and pillows, and lay down in the doorway on its ever thickening coat of gently curling hair. It rapidly acquired a vocabulary for everything it needed, and became a member of the family who could be left out of nothing, an individual in its own right. My husband tolerated it, even fondled it if it did anything unusually clever or funny; I loved it; Emerence adored it.

  But the memory of the christening bowl and the mulled wine goblet was still fresh, with all their associations. Of course one had to respect those animal-lovers who had watched without regret or protest as the sealed cattle-wagons rolled into the distance — the malicious rumours that there were people locked inside were so obviously lies. But I noted with a certain irony the enthusiasm with which she told stories of how geese, ducks and hens were drawn to her. It couldn’t have been easy to take your intimate friends, whom you had tamed so swiftly they would take the grain from your own mouth and leap up trustingly beside you on the lovers’ seat, and slit their throats when the time came to cook them.

  For as long as I felt that Emerence’s attachment to the dog was based on her passionate need to serve, it was all very pleasing, but when I realised that she had become his real mistress I was furious. The dog had quite different standards for each of us, behaving in three distinct ways. Towards me, he was familiar and friendly; with my husband he was quiet and almost correct; but the moment the old woman appeared he hurled himself at the door and greeted her with tears of joy. Emerence was forever explaining things to him, in a specially raised voice, with precise articulation, as if teaching an infant who was just beginning to speak. She made no secret of what she was teaching him; she repeated the same message over and over again, like a poem, and she didn’t care in the least how we took it. “With your mistress, you can do whatever you like. You can jump on her, and lick her face and hands. You can sleep beside her on the sofa. Your mistress will let you do this because she loves you. The master is silent as water, and you don’t know what lies beneath, so don’t ever disturb the water, my dear little dog, don’t ever annoy the master, because your place here is to serve. But you’re in a good home, as good as any could be, for a dog in an apartment.” As for herself, she never gave orders, the animal understood her wishes without the need for words. By this time she had even given him a name. She called him Viola. The fact that he was a male dog didn’t bother Emerence. Occasionally she didn’t so much teach as train. “Sit down, Viola. Until you sit, no sugar. Sit down, SIT DOWN!”

  When I first realised how she was rewarding him I reminded her, rather sharply, that the vet had said dogs were not to be given sugar. “The vet’s an idiot,” she replied, patting Viola’s shoulder firmly. “Sit, boy, sit. If he sits, he gets something nice, something sweet. Sugar, the animal gets sugar. Sit, Viola, sit.” And Viola sat, at first for the sugar, later by conditioned reflex and for nothing, as soon as he heard the trigger word.

  Occasionally the old woman would ask if she could take him to guard her house, as she’d be out all day clearing snow. My husband consented willingly; at least then the dog wouldn’t be hurling himself about and barking. I asked if she wasn’t worried about her cat, as I’d heard she had one in the flat, but she said she wasn’t at all concerned. S
he’d teach him to get on with other animals without harming them. Viola could be taught to do anything. If the dog did anything naughty she beat him horribly, despite my express prohibition and her own overwhelming love for him. Not once in the fourteen years of his life did he receive a beating from me. But then Emerence was his real mistress.

  I would love to have witnessed the creature’s first moments in the old woman’s domain, that empire never before revealed to anyone, but the bar to entry remained. I gathered from the fleas he brought home that he had met the cat, and that thenceforth we could expect the pleasure of their company too. The first encounter can’t have been uneventful. There was a wound on his nose and a deep scratch on his ear, and his general demeanour indicated that there had indeed been a battle in which he was the loser. Emerence had used drastic means to instil in him that “we don’t annoy the cat”. He didn’t take it as a tragedy. He came home with his chubby adolescent jowls pushing against Emerence’s knee every step of the way. After that there seemed to be no trouble. Whenever I took him for a walk I couldn’t help noticing his behaviour. As the stray cats fled under balconies for refuge, he gazed on benignly, without a hint of anger or dismay, clearly baffled by their reaction when he meant them no harm.

  Viola guarded Emerence’s home all through the winter. I put a stop to it only after a certain Saturday night, when he came home drunk. When she brought him home, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The dog was reeling, his belly was like a barrel, he was panting heavily and rolling his eyes. I couldn’t even pick him up because he kept toppling over. I crouched down to examine him. He hiccuped, and I smelt the beer. “Emerence, the dog’s drunk!” I gasped.

  “We had a little drink,” she replied calmly. “It won’t kill him. He was thirsty. It did him good.”

  I stood up. “You’re out of your mind, and you’re not to take him again. That’s final. After all we did to save his life, we’re not going to kill him by turning him into an alcoholic.”

  “Because a little bit of beer is going to kill him,” she said, with a bitterness that surprised me. “Oh yes, I’m sure, I shared the roast duck and the beer with him because he begged me — he asked for it — what was I supposed to do? He can tell me everything — he almost spoke. He absolutely loved the food and drink. He isn’t just any old dog. So he’ll die, will he — because he had dinner with me, because he didn’t, with the greatest respect, fancy the rubbish you people give him, diet food, to be eaten only at certain times, never in the dining room and never from your hand — though the only real food is what he takes from your hand, not from a bowl? I’m the one who’s killing him, the one who brings him up, talks to him, teaches him right and wrong.” She was speaking with deadly seriousness, like a teacher whose most sacred feelings had been wounded. “Or perhaps it was you who taught him to sit, and stand up, and run and fetch a ball, and say thank you. All you two do is hide yourselves away at home like a pair of statues. You don’t even talk to each other, you bang away on your typewriters in separate rooms. Well, you keep Viola, then. You’ll see how far you get.”

  The statement over — with matters of importance Emerence didn’t say things, she made an announcement — she turned on her heel and left. Viola collapsed and began to snore. He was so drunk he didn’t even notice that he’d been abandoned.

  The problems didn’t begin immediately, only the next morning, when Emerence failed to come for him. She had always served him his breakfast, given him his walk and then taken him away with her. He controlled himself and made no messes, but from six-fifteen he was whining so loudly I was forced to get up. It was a while before I realised there was no point in waiting for Emerence. She was like Jehovah: she punished for generations.

  The whole shameful scene finally came to a head outside her flat, when the dog insisted on going in, as he did every morning. I had never understood why it was better for him to be shut up with her than at home with me, where he had so much more room to flop around in. Anyway, when he realised that hauling on the leash was getting him nowhere he became mutinous, tugged furiously and then bounded along, with me in tow. He was a strong dog, I a fearful pedestrian on an icy street. Mounds of snow covered the pavement, each a potential hazard. I was terrified of falling and breaking something, but I couldn’t let go in case he ran under a car.

  That morning I was given a lesson in where the two of them went for their walk. Viola ran me through Emerence’s district. Half-blinded by the falling snow and gasping for breath, with Viola setting the pace, I was hauled to each of the eleven houses where she cleaned, hurtling from one to the next in a mindless Peer Gynt dash. Finally he tugged so hard he managed to pull me over. But we had reached his destination. We’d found the person he was looking for. Emerence was standing with her back to us, so he jumped up at her from behind, nearly knocking her over as well. However she was strong — ten times stronger than I have ever been. She turned, saw me kneeling there in the snow, and instantly realised what had happened. First she yanked the dog firmly by the stray end of the leash; then, whenever he started to whine, she hit him. I hauled myself to my feet, feeling thoroughly sorry for the animal.

  “Sit, you wicked creature,” she shouted, as if to another person. “This is not the way to behave, you scoundrel.” Viola stared at her in amazement. Emerence looked him in the eye, like a lion tamer. “If you want your mistress to let you come again you will have to promise her that you won’t get drunk, because your mistress is right, only she didn’t stop to think that nobody celebrates my birthday, or that you are the only one who knows when it is, because you’re the only one I’ve told. I haven’t told my brother Józsi’s boy, or Sutu, or Adélka, or Polett, and the Lieutenant Colonel has forgotten when it is. But that’s not how we behave when we sober up — like hooligans. Instead, we ask permission. Now get up, Viola!”

  So far the dog had been crouching on his stomach, weeping. He hadn’t moved a muscle during the beating, or made the slightest attempt to escape. Now he picked himself up. “Say you’re sorry!” I had no idea he knew how to take an oath, but it seems he did. He placed his left paw against his heart and with the right, like a patriotic statue, pointed to the sky. “Say it, Viola!” she directed, and Viola barked. “Again!” Again he barked, keeping his eyes fixed on his tamer to see how well he was doing. Instinct told him that his future depended on it. “Now promise that you’ll be a good boy,” I heard her say, and Viola put out his paw towards her. “Not to me, I already know; to your mistress.” Viola turned to where I stood, and like those pictures of St Francis and the wolf, looking guilty and a little sly, he offered me his right front paw. I didn’t take it, I was in so much pain from my knee, and so utterly furious with them both.

  Seeing his entreaties were useless he tried a new ploy. Without instruction he saluted me, then again put his left paw on his heart. I gave up. Once again they had defeated me, and we all three knew it. “Don’t worry about him,” said Emerence. “Today he’ll have lunch with me. I’ll bring him home this evening. And wash your leg — it’s bleeding. I hope you’ll be all right.”

  The order came only through her eyes, and a slight movement of the head, but Viola understood. With clear articulation, he barked at me twice, thanking me. Emerence attached the lead to the fence and resumed her sweeping. I had been dismissed. Slowly I made my way home, alone, through the thickly falling snow.

  FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS

  With the addition of Viola to the family, our circle of acquaintances widened. Until then we had been in regular contact only with friends; now, if only superficially, we got to know the entire neighbourhood. Emerence walked the dog in the morning, at midday and in the evening, but there were times when she couldn’t do the midday session because of some unexpected extra work, and then it was left to us. Either my husband saw to it or I did it myself, but Viola always led the way. He generally began by hauling his leash to Emerence’s flat, where he would have to be taken right up to the door to make quite sure that she wasn’t hiding insid
e. But his nose would soon tell him that she wasn’t playing a trick, she really wasn’t at home, and we were able to continue. Sometimes she was at home, but caught up in some task for which she had no need of his assistance. On these occasions we had to wait outside with the dog, shamefaced, until his whining and scratching finally produced her, muttering curses and ordering him not to pester her. Sometimes she wouldn’t just smack him, she told him off like an over-insistent guest, shouting things like: “Why are you dragging me out? We were together this morning and we’ll see each other again tonight!” Or she would pat him on the neck a few times, stuff something sweet in his mouth, play out the whole performance with him to its end, and only then chase him back into the street.

  If we didn’t find her at home, we had to look for her outside one of her houses. If she was found, the entire front porch ritual would be played out in the open air, and more than once Emerence took Viola through the performance with my husband or myself as the reluctant focus. This way we made the acquaintance of several of our neighbours whom we would not otherwise have met.

  Whenever Emerence had company — this was only in good weather, at those times of the year when she put benches outside her door and it was possible to sit and chat — Viola would be ordered to find his food and water bowls, which the old woman hid in different places, while the guests watched his tricks in amazement. I was often struck by how readily everyone accepted her declaration of a Forbidden City, where they could be received only on the porch. Local acquaintances, close friends and even blood relations such as her brother Józsi’s boy, all found that the closed-door rule applied equally to them.