It was unlikely that she hadn't heard the last few sentences spoken in the room, and even if she hadn't caught their meaning, filled as she was with the excitement of her own activities, it was impossible that she wouldn't have sensed from the intonations, just from the way the three of them were standing — far apart, frozen in place, stiff in the grip of their emotions — the awesome tension in the room; but she was not to be distracted, and with a deliberate but not rude gesture she swept me aside, in her high-heeled slippers she stepped quickly into the room, and with a solemn face, as though she were blind and deaf or incredibly stupid, made her announcement: Come on, everybody, dinner's on the table!
Of course she sensed what was going on, but with her gentility and fastidiousness, her long stiff waist, puritan humorlessness, fuzzy upper lip, and chiseled, somewhat dry features — at the moment made more lively and feminine by the kitchen heat and the excitement of János's presence — Grandmother was like an antediluvian creature of bourgeois decorum; she came, and with the cruelty of her obtuseness she plowed through events and phenomena of human life that, in her view of the world, could not be reconciled with the demands of propriety and dignified behavior, as if to say with her superior air (in which there was nothing aristocratic because she was not above but only bypassed the things she was critical of) that what we cannot find solutions for is better left unacknowledged, or at least we should not let on that our eyes see everything, and with the illusion thus created we ought to facilitate the inevitable unfolding of events, and we ought to deflect, stall, wait, let ride, and evaluate things before taking action, because action is judgment, and that is a very tricky business! as a child, I was terribly disturbed by this attitude, disgusted by the lying it implied, and a very long time had to pass before, in light of my own bitter experiences, I made its wisdom my own, before I understood and could sense that seemingly phony, willful blindness and feigned deafness require much more flexibility and understanding than openly demonstrated sympathy and helpfulness; her approach assumes more considerateness and a greater allowance for human fallibility than so-called sincerity, a more forthright, truth-seeking response, does; her mode of behavior is a way of curbing innate aggressiveness and hasty judgment, albeit at the price of another kind of aggressiveness; at that moment she must have been in her element; without batting an eye she entered the room as if it were a drawing room in which guests were making small talk while sipping aperitifs; just how fully aware she was of the seriousness of the moment became apparent when, without giving herself time to catch her breath, she turned to Father, expressed surprise at seeing him there — we'll need another setting— and in her most casual manner, in a kind of chatty, slightly military tone, told him he should take off his coat, wash up, and then let's go, yes, everybody, she wouldn't want the food to spoil! and she had already turned to János, to whom this playacting was addressed, the performance meant to say that no matter what happens, we are a normal, loving, smoothly functioning family; perhaps it wouldn't be inappropriate to interject here that the last qualifier points to the wise moral of bourgeois propriety, to its practicality, which was that life must remain functional at all times and at all cost; this won't be much of a lunch, just something I've thrown together, she said, smiling; she looked at János for a long time, giving him a chance to collect himself, then gently touched his arm and told him he couldn't possibly imagine how happy she was to see him.
My grandmother's staunchly resolute dissembling in itself could not have cooled emotions which had reached the boiling point, or steered them to the calmer waters of reason and understanding; in their present state, it was not only difficult to see how these murderous emotions, which required clarification, could be cooled from one minute to the next, since they all desperately needed to arrive at the truth, but was also conceivable that Grandmother's obvious falsity might be the last straw, and all the anger, shame, despair, suspicion, and pain that had erupted during those few moments, seeking solace in a palpable truth, would now rain down on her head; Mother turned red with hatred for her mother, as if she wanted to yell at her to get out! or to fall on her, grab her by the throat, and smother that detestable false voice, but she was prevented from yielding to the impulse by their moral code, my parents' the exact opposite of Grandmother's, whose essence lay in making the finest, most subtle distinctions among the means of their tactics and strategies in pursuit of a certain end, between their legal and illegal conduct, and in making these distinctions they must remain appropriately discreet and unpredictable, which is what ensured them of moral superiority and practical power; therefore, any extreme manifestation of word or gesture, would be tantamount to treason, a betrayal of their mutual trust; they wouldn't allow themselves to express their emotions freely, the inner conflict of their secret lives had to remain a secret; this was the restricted area they guarded with the same conspiratorial means they had used to set it up, they had to settle everything between themselves and totally exclude a hostile and suspicious outside world; for me, the most remarkable thing about this whole scene was the way the two modes of behavior — nourished by two totally opposite motivations and with dissembling and illusion for their common ground — wound up blending peacefully into each other.
Of course, later they continued where they had left off, but for the moment Father, as if really in the midst of some frivolous chitchat, said yes, of course, he'd wash up promptly, he was on his way, and this was a kind of warning to Mother, whose face turned even more deeply red, but she readily reached for her robe, if only to turn away so she could hide her face, trembling with rage; she said she'd have to change, she wouldn't want to come to the table in her robe, she'd hurry, it would only take a minute; and the nervous twitch of embarrassment on János's face quickly dissolved into a smile, as if by this rapid change he was protecting what had to be kept secret; this was habit, too, the conspiratorial smile matching most precisely the genuine joy, expressed with phony exaggeration, which Grandmother had beamed at him; in their own way both smiles were perfect, since by hiding their feelings both Grandmother and János managed to produce real emotions.
He wouldn't describe himself as happy, exactly; János grinned, and reciprocated Grandmother's touch by touching her arm, but he was glad to be here, of course, though he couldn't quite comprehend just what was happening to him; Grandmother's face assumed a properly sympathetic expression: your poor, poor mother, she said with real emotion, her eyes welling up; there was a real kinship between them now, producing, most likely, the same emotional cliché, namely how sad it was that his mother couldn't have lived to see this day, but the cliché was effective enough, and because they were looking for a possible common ground, the sigh, the pitying intonation, the misty eyes harked back to the first time they had broached the subject, soon after János's arrival; this, then, was the closing of the subject, its quiet and heartfelt burial; Grandmother composed herself and gently, consolingly, as if embracing his dead mother as well, took János's arm.