I would have been glad to comply, if only I had understood what they were talking about.
I was amazed at them, at how they could prattle all this nonsense to me while Ilonka Weisz sat on another bench, dangling her feet and pretending not to know what the girls and I were talking about. This is how people talked in Damjanich Street, and this sort of talking was understood in Dembinszky Street too, but I had a lot of trouble with their words. People there used different words and actually behaved differently from the way people did on Stefánia Boulevard. I could not imagine what callous behavior was or what I should do so as not to be callous. I also didn’t understand why on earth anyone should be softened, or what was meant by softening her heart toward me. Steel could be softened; or we say that cheese, water, or a spring breeze is soft. To soften a person implies that the person first is hard. Ilonka Weisz wasn’t hard, just a common little girl with a big mouth.
Except she detested me for some reason and that was pretty confusing. Her detestation was attractive in a way, but I didn’t know what to do with it.
On Stefánia Boulevard, one would say to something like this, well, that’s her problem.
The change might have occurred one day when she was coming from her lesson just as I was going to mine, and to my huge surprise I saw she did not detest me so much. She said something to me or, I don’t know, maybe she asked me something, and I answered her politely. I didn’t understand why she had changed so suddenly. Before that, she’d turned her head away whenever we met by chance in the staircase or on one of the landings and then, to be sure I had no doubts about her feelings, she’d make a face to show me that my sheer presence disgusted her.
Or maybe they had already planned what they were going to do and that’s why she was friendlier, out of plain calculation. From then on she always had something to say about the piano teacher, the lesson, Szilvia and Viola. One day she said I should go up to their place after my lesson because her mother would be going to work then.
The piano teacher gave her free lessons, and she practiced on the teacher’s piano because they didn’t have their own.
Because of all the beds in their apartment, they couldn’t fit in even an upright piano, Viola said, and they didn’t have the money for it either.
The image of the congestion in their apartment scared me and did not make me want to go there, though she repeated her invitation many times and always added that she would be alone.
Come on, Szilvia said, they’d have plenty of money for a piano if only they knew how to economize. The reason we have money for everything is because Daddy makes sure every penny goes a long way.
They squander everything, I’m telling you, they’re a bunch of spendthrifts.
But we’re telling this only to you, confidentially.
We’d never say this straight to Ilonka, not for anything in the world.
The truth is they haven’t got enough money to rent even a lousy old upright for her.
On the Stefánia, no one would have said anything like this. And if the girls talked so arrogantly and conceitedly about Ilonka Weisz, then why did they call themselves her best friends.
It always seemed to me that Aréna Road was a real border between the two sections of the city. On the other side of this border, one did not understand many things.
There were three siblings in the Weisz family; Ilonka had two older brothers, Ernő and Dezső, famous hoodlums in the neighborhood who avoided school, but Ilonka was considered such a great and brilliant musical talent that the piano teacher could not let her go to waste. Many people in the building had a great respect for the piano teacher; they called her an unselfish soul. True, the boys lugged up wood and coal from the cellar every Friday afternoon for her, and their mother scrubbed her floors during the spring and fall cleanings, thus giving proof of the family’s gratitude, but the boys showed absolutely no interest in Ilonka’s piano studies.
Neither did her mother, she just let it happen, if it had to happen; she had enough troubles of her own.
I did not talk to anyone about these things, but Viola and Szilvia told me about them along with many other matters. They gave me the impression they never stopped prattling. The moment one of them stopped the other continued, and sometimes they spoke over each other’s words so that I couldn’t understand either of them. I learned important things from them about everyone; without them, I wouldn’t have found out where Ilonka Weisz lived.
When she came from the piano teacher, we met on the landing between the first and second floors; their third-floor apartment opened from the rear staircase. After a while she stopped asking me to go with her to the third floor after my lesson.
One time she said, I am so alone. But I couldn’t go with her, because anybody in the building would have seen my secret. After her lesson she went down to the mezzanine, crossed the courtyard, and from there went up to the third floor by the rear staircase.
People also called the rear staircase the maids’ stairs.
Another time she said I was callous, since I wouldn’t listen to her when she complained of loneliness.
Szilvia claimed she would rather die than have to use the maids’ stairs to go home.
She hadn’t finished saying what she wanted to say and Viola was already annoyed.
Sure, you’d die; come off it, why this foolish talk. Why do you have to make such a tzimmes over the maids’ stairs.
Szilvia began wailing that she didn’t know who was talking more foolishly, but if you really want to know, you’re making the bigger tzimmes.
And would Viola talk so casually if she had to share a toilet with strangers.
Of all the foolish nonsense; somebody, please hold me back. You’re only saying that to protect your sweet little Ilonka.
They were talking as if each of them knew in advance what the other one wanted to say and lost interest the moment she said it.
I don’t remember seeing maids in this building. One recognized maids from far away. I explained this maids’ stairs business to myself by thinking that Ilonka’s mother must have been a maid once, and the name somehow remained stuck to the stairs.
When I told my grandmother about Ilonka’s existence, about the girl whom the piano teacher taught for free and let practice in her own apartment, my grandmother nodded and said that was a very decent thing to do and we too might help the girl by buying her sheet music.
She’d write a letter about this to the piano teacher and give me the money to take to her when the time came.
Somehow I tried to protest, saying that no one had asked us to do this.
I was terribly ashamed of my grandmother’s eagerness and sorry I had told her about it. I told her the story only so I wouldn’t despise Ilonka Weisz as much as she despised me.
Grandmother looked at me severely.
She asked what sort of help I thought was help that had to be asked for. What makes help really help is when we give it without being asked.
But I sensed this wasn’t going to turn out well. Ilonka would detest me even more because of this. And then I had better tell my grandmother what I did not want to tell her.
I asked her if it mattered that Ilonka Weisz detested me.
She said, why shouldn’t it matter, of course it did, it mattered very much.
Then let’s not buy her sheet music.
She did not reply for a long time; she was thinking. It’s impossible to buy someone’s empathy, I was right, we should not give the impression that that was our intention. However, we were talking about two different things and they could be separated sensibly. With this gift we would show our appreciation for Ilonka’s talent. Grandmama would solve this problem in such a way that Ilonka wouldn’t even know about it. And I should somehow make her stop detesting me; I should also think seriously about what I might have done to offend her.