Whenever they could, they stole brief, quiet moments like these for themselves, though they also feared them. As if something irreversible might happen, and it did happen, but nevertheless for decades they had been unable to give it up.
The relationship among the four friends had its own etiquette, and whether they liked it or not, it hadn’t changed since their school days. Not even during the long separations. Perhaps the deepest affection existed between Mária and Irma, though they observed each other from a great distance, not with aversion but, on the contrary, with enduring curiosity. They found in each other or in each other’s behavior something extremely engaging, so they did not deny their affection, yet, because it grew beyond normal social boundaries in their worlds, they could not reduce the distance between them.
During the summer after their graduation, they all went abroad, and when, after more than a decade’s absence, they all began to return to Budapest, with children, or divorced, or widowed, they could see in one another frightening changes in every pore; but this made no difference. Irma came back from Vienna with her husband and sturdy little twin boys; she was soon followed by Mária from Rome; and a year later, from Paris, also with a little boy, Bella showed up in a very poor state of mind; last to arrive, from Berlin, was Margit.
If she has changed so much, then I must show some change too. They had become insufferably self-willed, deceived, cheated on, abandoned, and very disillusioned women, but never, not with a single deliberate word would they admit their disillusionment to one another or to anyone else. Only to themselves. And this sufficed for them to notice everything about one another, to make fun of one another and be aware of their profoundly guarded, amusing similarities.
Nothing could undo the security of their independence.
They informed one another of the shifting elements of their lives only with casually dropped words or hints, and then stepped back — somewhat reluctantly, but acceding to liberal demands about keeping a distance — into an emotional dimension where nothing had changed.
Mária and Margit naturally quarreled constantly, argued, broke off, made up, just as they had done when they were girls; the relationship between Izabella and Irma, despite their mutual and nonbinding goodwill, remained formal, that always being its defining trait, since without the characteristically bourgeois formalities the relationship would have been impossible to make enjoyable or keep alive. Inanity, a value that served only itself, was something they both enjoyed. These bourgeois formalities were precisely what annoyed Mária most. Her upbringing allowed her to be eccentric, purposely encouraged her sarcasm, and gave her no need to conceal the supreme powers of her personality. She was crude. She thought Izabella was a dizzy hen, a silly goose, her politeness unfathomable, her sentimentality tedious, though she was also a vocal admirer of her exceptional talents.
Irma slightly opened the wound in the pad of Mária’s finger and peered at it closely, amazed.
You pressed it together quite cleverly, she said gently and quietly.
I don’t know why, but lately blood disgusts me more and more. Just the very thought that it is constantly flowing and beating inside you.
Yes, a quite unpleasant feeling. Irma looked up from the wound.
She loved the coarse and ill-proportioned features of this face so much that occasionally love stopped her breath.
Just now, when I really sucked it hard, I thought I’d throw up.
Something you don’t know what to do about, alone.
What do you mean I don’t know, asked Mária, surprised, like someone touched at a sensitive point. How do you know what I know or don’t know.
It’s not exceptional, I mean. You are not alone in feeling that way.
Even though it’s not like me, I mean feeling the disgust, aversion. At least I hope it’s not like me, she continued, sounding uncertain.
For example, I used to like roast blood on larded onions. Now I can’t even look at it.
We had a cook who added a little green pepper and sliced apple to the onions. Or pheasant blood with cranberries, heavenly, I must say.
Luckily, I’ve never had any. In a normal Jewish family one doesn’t prepare something like that. It sounds quite brutal.
And when I think how I went hunting regularly, not to mention that one keeps menstruating regularly as long as one can.
If not irregularly.
Stay a little while.
This isn’t going to bleed any more, and you probably have some healing powder in your medicine cabinet. We’ll just disinfect it, that’s all. Maybe I haven’t told you this, but in the camps we simply stopped menstruating.
One doesn’t need a camp for that, Irmuska. I left off that pretty habit of mine in the Majestic.
Except for the kapos, they kept on having their periods, and not only because they had food. And the Blockälteste, the head of the barracks, she menstruated too. They had permanent lovers, they had so-called normal sex lives and got extra portions of margarine. These are elementary conditions. All I need now is a piece of plaster and a pair of scissors and you’ll be properly taken care of.
The attention felt good to Mária, who was praying that Irma would go no further with her story, but whom she wanted to have close because, to be not the caregiver but the recipient of care was a treat she rarely had a chance to enjoy.
And telling a story was part of the care.
Mária had been taking care of Elisa night and day for more than two decades, and this period included air raids, bombings, living in the cellar, arrests during which she had no idea whether anyone was looking after Elisa in her stead, the endless days of the siege, the war. She should have interrupted, found another topic, but could think of nothing else to distract Irma with, until she remembered that when they couldn’t carry Elisa down to the cellar during air raids she took the girl’s head on her lap, right here in this bathroom. If anything should happen, at least she wouldn’t see it.
It happened, they couldn’t resist it; this is where, in their fear, they kissed and licked each other all over, surrounded by the shaking walls and bottles, they acted as two people who had reason to hurry. In her confusion, a little awkwardly, with her good hand she again twirled and then tucked behind her ear a strand of her straight gray hair.
You might even find some antiseptic pills there, she said. Médi is right: my whole apartment is one big mess.
And this is probably so, said Irma, continuing what she’d been saying before, as she found what she needed in the mirrored medicine cabinet, because in the end one’s left with nothing but one’s admirable or not so admirable traits. Don’t you think. There can’t be that many surprises. Or there can be, but nobody wants more injuries. The way your heart beats, that’s personal. But your blood is not, blood is impersonal.
Maybe that’s what you find repulsive. When one is young, one simply doesn’t acknowledge such embarrassing things.
You don’t mean to tell me that the same kind of blood circulates inside everybody.
Not in you, of course, you are the big blue-blooded exception. But think about it, she went on, her wry smile still on her lips. Your blood has its substance and its type, but even according to its substance or type, it doesn’t taste differently from other blood. Bókay always made the students in Andor’s class taste one another’s blood, a pretty hair-raising idea, wouldn’t you say, but in those days they had different ideas about hygiene. Blut is ein besonders Saft, jedenfalls, a special juice that’s not part of your character but exactly the other way ’round, you’re a part of it, along with your famous character, because you are one of the warm-blooded creatures, and I’m putting it mildly. This is annoying and insulting. What’s the good of all those original independent thoughts, what’s the point of this glorious individuality of ours. It means that you are also ruled by this enormous rabble, and who is to stop the janitors and dictators from following behind.