Then how could she explain it to her.
I’m thinking of early spring, she said, close to desperation, before budding time. And just imagine, the first thing I did was clean the window.
It was also like that in Vienna, tired and hopeless, you can see there, too, that winter destroys everything. This is probably not so in places that don’t have such long, dry freezing periods. I thought — and this is going to be my third answer, though it is strange, very strange, that it’s only the third one. One recovers slowly. The two boys — I must find them somehow. As if they were lying about there, in front of the building, and they should be told to get up, the ground is too cold. As if I couldn’t remember anything.
Believe me, I wouldn’t tell this to anyone else, because one shouldn’t say things like this for others to hear.
I knew very well they were no more.
The big difference is that mountain grass doesn’t give out in the winter, on the contrary. I’d say that was a kind of fixed and certain bit of knowledge about the essence of the world. I may be absurd, and it’s risky to say, but the moment a single person goes missing, the essence of the world changes. But it was not completely unimaginable that I might find Andor back home.
Because until then I myself wouldn’t have believed, and I didn’t, that they were no more.
I understand.
But that’s only the logic of things.
Now I do. I’ve never understood it completely.
Probably not completely, but maybe you understand some of it. Don’t imagine it as if you remembered either one or both of them, or anyone else. If anyone, I’d remember Andor more because he caused me more grief, and that has a shadow, or leaves long shadows behind, the grief and pain. Let’s be clear: lovers’ pain. But there is this: my sons, these two naked words, the possessive and the plural noun, together comprised all one’s knowledge. Or rather, it’s a place that has not remained empty, though you feel its emptiness. But there is no memory, and this must be very strange for you to hear from my mouth, but there isn’t, one does not remember. That is the big stinking truth.
Damn this rotten life, I beg you, please give it a little time. Of course I understand, it would be so good to understand.
Everything I had done earlier was nothing but hubris, crude maneuvers. Only my perfect lack of guile could excuse it, and we were all guileless. Anyway, it had a lot more to do with brute force than with consciousness. And while she seemed relaxed and impassive as she went on talking, she recognized that Mária was growing restless and resistant, a response that might have been intensified by the noise of the two tugboats passing each other, and she realized that she had to finish up, bring things to a close. No, memory is something entirely different, I had to discover that, she said, defying Mária’s restlessness, impolite but not unjustified — after all, it was Mária who had wanted to hear, who had asked to be told — and that was the reason that after a while I would have given up my practice even if they hadn’t shut it down. That is why I couldn’t do it properly anymore. The work can be done only if one believes there is memory, but not only is there no memory, it’s also better that way. It seems that in the overall scheme of Creation it was decided not to include memory. But now I also think we should drop this whole subject.
For long seconds, as they arranged the delicate proportions of fairness and politeness between themselves, they stood silently in the light of the opaque lampshades, their eyes wandering over each other’s features.
Two figures of almost equal height only an arm’s length apart, but without the expectation of touching each other. No empathy, no murderous impulse, neither such love nor such understanding. Everything they felt was either more or less than necessary. One woman was strong and solid, with a weighty body; the other was delicate, extremely thin, down to her bones and tendons, yet not with the air of someone whom the next gust of wind would blow away.
One lamp hung from the ceiling, the other was above the sink; their bleak light was fractured by the unusually large white wall tiles and aging surfaces of the mirrors.
Now let’s take a deep breath, said Mária, her words accompanied by one of her loveliest smiles, forget that I asked you, or what I asked, as if nothing had happened, don’t be angry with me. And now we’ll go in to see Elisa. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, believe me I don’t, Irma, but I feel such hate.
For what.
Myself.
I feel it.
If you feel like seeing her at all.
Why wouldn’t I, Mária, answered Irma lightly, even though what she wanted to say was, why harbor so much hatred, there’s no reason for it. It’s hard to hear something like that. She really couldn’t have had a good reason, at least no personal reason, or maybe only a little. Still, Irma couldn’t say this out loud. She could not absolve Mária because of the dead ones, though her sons were not on her mind now. No. She couldn’t. Just as Mária could not go farther than she had.
This was the last word that could be uttered.
And we’ll drop the story, at least for today, she continued, well disciplined and composed, because she understood correctly the stubborn silence emanating from the other woman. If I may say so, we’re going to forget it.
They both laughed a little at this, and found it mutually enjoyable to intertwine their laughter.
It’s correct, that’s right, it is, Irma replied. If there is no remembering, how can there be forgetting. There is no forgetting either.
One of them had to continue with her loveliest, most attractive laugh suffused with suffering, the other with the pleasure provided by the workings of the mind, both of them neutral toward each other.
In truth, they both felt bad about this brief conversation and impulsively concealed their bad feelings from each other.
With your permission, I’ll go first.
Of course.
And while she unsparingly reproached herself, she could not help being happy about Irma’s coming with her. She treated her friends cautiously; she did not burden them overmuch with the sick woman. Irma was the only one to whom she had entrusted, albeit under pressure, the story of her and Elisa. Which, for quite a time in the late 1930s was the topic of avid, excited gossip in upper-crust circles.
Irma did not follow her in right away; politeness and consideration demanded that she hang back a little in the bathroom doorway. Which was useful, because she needed time to forbid herself to think of her sons. Although she would witness the scene, she should leave some time to be shared by just the two of them.
But her hesitation had another, no less delicate reason.
According to the rules of her profession, she couldn’t feel repugnance for anything or anyone in theory, because repugnance, again in theory and in the parlance of her profession, would indicate that she’d been unable to analyze something, that there was something in that other person or in herself she could not see or perhaps deliberately tried to avoid. No matter how often she rehearsed these reasons and arguments, she had to admit that from the moment she laid eyes on her, as they say, she felt a most profound physical aversion to Elisa Koháry, whom she had known slightly when the younger woman was still healthy.
By the time Irma returned from Vienna, this woman was simply there, belonging to Mária, and there was no way to get around her or to separate her from Mária.
Mária had been taken away from her.
There were hardly any opportunities for brief, private conversations, and for this reason she simply loathed Elisa.