So it’s no secret to me that you have a great talent as a draftsman too.
She is flashing her bright eyes at me so that I won’t look at her scar.
Madzar did not fail to see that the women were playing an old, well-rehearsed game.
But the scene was brief, with every word passing smoothly and quickly among them. They prattled on as if their words scarcely touched them. And then they had to be busy with the luggage, giving orders as to where to put what. Hired carriages were waiting in front of the station. The porters put the bags and suitcases of the young ladies and gentlemen, along with their easels and drawing boards, into a bus. Waiting for the Szemzős was the Hotel Korona’s black-lacquered, crest-adorned light carriage with its cheerful coachman and two black horses, groomed to a high shine.
The spoiled little city boys ran to them, they wanted to make friends with the horses or at least to stroke their nice shiny coats. But the horses were leisurely and contentedly feeding from the nosebags hung around their necks. They swatted at horseflies with their tails, their skin quivering, or, by way of warning, kicked a bit in the rapturous boys’ direction.
Madzar did not understand how the black hackney could be waiting for them since he hadn’t ordered it the evening before, but he was also busy thinking that the boys might soon get into trouble. Anxiously he watched how the horses endured the boys’ aggressive adulation.
But I expected only you, he said stealthily to Mrs. Szemző. His stifled voice was filled with rebuke.
I reserved the nicest corner room for you.
As if asking, how could I have known you’d be coming with your entire family.
Which was something Mrs. Szemző did not understand. She had so many other things to worry about in any case.
Where did you reserve and what sort of room — in other words, she didn’t know what to do with the amorously reproachful emphasis in his sentence. No doubt she was embarrassed occasionally by her own quite erotic fantasies about Madzar, that they would do this and then that, and how the man would behave in this or that position, but their real contact neither allowed nor called for such delicate intonations and details. Cautiously, seeing Madzar’s agitated state, she quickly came back with a question as to whether he had received her telegram.
Of course he did, came the man’s indignant, aggressive reply.
Why would he be here if he hadn’t.
I should have wired earlier, Mrs. Szemző added apologetically, and speaking a little too loudly. Doing this at the last minute wasn’t very considerate of me, I admit, and her hand in the white doeskin glove rested for a brief and intimate moment on Madzar’s arm. As she had done a few weeks earlier in the empty seventh-floor apartment from where they could look out, between the blocks of the Palatinus apartment buildings, at the same Danube.
It was dizzying to look at the same river here, and this shared feeling — existing simultaneously in past and present — dazed them a little, as if from the renewed thrust of another insult.
And the reason I didn’t was so as not to burden you too much, Mrs. Szemző continued her sentence. So that you wouldn’t have time to make any preparations, and she was surprised to see how simple it was, despite the proximity of her children, to keep her composure. And wouldn’t even think of changing your schedule because of our family’s little excursion.
Madzar could not control himself so elegantly.
What do you mean by not wanting to be a burden, he asked in the same reproachful amorous tone he had used before, but then quickly regretted having opened his mouth. The emotion bruised the flattering image he had created of his own self-discipline. It’s not just me, my mother is waiting for you with lunch. For weeks, I’ve been doing nothing but work for you, he cried in a voice of stifled desperation.
And what shouldn’t I even think about then.
Oh my God, how embarrassing, cried Mrs. Szemző. If only we hadn’t already promised. Who would have thought your mother would be so kind as to wait for us with lunch. But now I really see my mistake. I should have asked well ahead of time if such a visit would be convenient for you. But I could not restrain the boys from going to Mohács — they do not know Mohács at all. You won’t believe me, she said, and reluctantly let go of Madzar’s arm — but the feeling of closeness only increased and remained in the flesh and in the marrow of the bones.
And now her voice changed too. For me, she’d be waiting with lunch for me, she asked, her voice no stronger than a breath, her eyes wide and wet.
As if they had mutually insulted the other’s sacred, grand human secret and foreignness.
Neither of them understood the other, and that hurt them both, or rather they both had to pretend not to understand the other. In Madzar’s mind arose the painful suspicion that indeed he was fatally misunderstanding or had fatally misunderstood something, though he could not comprehend what. It would have been senseless to ask who had deserted whom since their last encounter. At any rate, Mrs. Szemző looked out to the water, to the water flowing past ever since then, displaying on its surface the power of the driving current and the unevenness of the riverbed. It is my fault, ultimately, only mine, she thought, continuing to cry out inwardly. Their respective work had revealed themselves to each other, and she had ended up too close to this man.
Their glances, made painful with self-accusation and mutual incredulity, met once again.
They did not have much time for clandestine glances or stolen moments in which somehow to comprehend this, their very first public lovers’ quarrel. As contrary to their intentions, they found themselves in an impossible situation and had quickly to extricate themselves from the incomprehensible awkwardness, but they could not clarify anything: swishing her silken skirts, the black-haired lady approached to take her leave of them. But not before she made Madzar promise that the next morning he would come and join the students for sketching and watercolors. And in a moment she had read it all on their faces, perhaps more than was realistically possible, but she gauged everything by their stiff posture, in which one could not separate reality from opportunity. The two of them tried hard not to let her see anything. Nor could they have forgotten Mrs. Szemző’s energetic husband in his white linen suit, standing only a few steps away, busy with the porters and sending urgent glances in their direction because of the children. This is no time for long conversations. But luckily the two boys, all excited by the horses, were running back toward their mother. They ran to her in their identical white shirts and dark-blue pants fitted with suspenders, as if the horrible realization hit them like a blow to their bodies that a total stranger was now threatening their absolute power over their mother. They hung on her neck, pulled her down with their weight, telling her to come see the horses and, mainly, not to leave their father’s side for even a moment. They were demonstrating to the stranger, brazenly and shamelessly, their unbelievable power over everything. Madzar could see with his own eyes that this Mrs. Szemző was not an independent person; her two sons had her branded and shackled. Dr. Szemző, on the other hand, could relax and feel that they were all safe for at least a few moments. In all this emotional and social chaos and cacophony, the black-haired lady, swishing her yards of silk and rattling her ivory bracelets, whose name Madzar did not catch at the first or second hearing, arranged to be at the Hotel Korona with the Szemzős in an hour and a half.
For a drink, as she put it.
By then it would be clear whether they’d all go together for lunch somewhere, or to some restaurant, which someone must have already arranged with someone else.