As if she had to wander down a wide, hopelessly dusty highway without end or beginning. But every cell in her body, her every hair remembered the paradisiacal state that she had left behind and to which, due entirely to her own clumsiness, she could not return. Still, secret little footpaths might cross the long wide highway even now.
This promised a greater experience than if she had found her mother.
When she had thoughts like these, there often appeared to her the image of that woman, now forever ten years her junior, who probably always traveled on this highway of despair.
Now, however, she felt something that might be called an acquittal and it was close to happiness.
She thought she should say thank you, she was happy.
Oh, my, suddenly I am so happy. And if ephemera hadn’t entered her mind, she would have let those words spill out. But luckily she could not say them out loud because her enormous bitterness, the thin-aired plateau of her dissatisfaction, and her own grave self-rebukes filled her with ephemera. Suddenly she didn’t know how to address Ágost’s mother. Actually she had never known, and therefore avoided doing so. Hard as it was to accept that Lady Erna unceremoniously addressed her in the familiar form, there was nothing she could do about it, and she’d never dare do the same in return. Maybe after she had been discovered as a great singer. But now she did in fact want to use the familiar form with Lady Erna; having her hand squeezed by the older woman’s gloved hand not only paralyzed her sense of reality but gave free rein to her imagination and made her uncontrollable. She felt an unhindered flow of possibility, which Ágost had never given her completely nor completely withheld. She had been living with him in a state of constant agitation. The passion so unceremoniously unleashed by the mother may have been matched in every respect by the passion that alternately flared up and died away, though not completely, in the son. Gyöngyvér had to catch at the mother. And as a second, final possibility, even her early morning dream appeared. Perhaps to protect her from hope’s exaggerations.
The enormous, murky river with its deep current, this is the familiar river, but familiar from where.
Unfortunately, I have a singing lesson this afternoon, she said hoarsely after a little while, which was a quite ridiculous response from the other woman’s point of view, almost insulting and coming too late. If I could get to a phone and cancel with Margit Huber, she added hastily, as if hearing her own words had brought her to her senses, I would love to go downtown too.
She felt she had extricated herself cleverly and just as cleverly managed to avoid addressing the older woman directly in the formal or familiar form.
But now Lady Erna would not even look at her.
The voice was false.
It gave away that the singing lesson was more important. Lady Erna knew only two extremes. She either engulfed the other person, all but devouring her, not letting go, hugging the other to the point of suffocation, or she kept a proper distance, observing everything coolly and scornfully, picking at every little fault one by one. Every little mistake. Every last little weakness. As if explaining to herself why this relationship was beneath her. Don’t bother yourself, my dear, she said to herself while Gyöngyvér was going on about her singing lessons, complaining of the cost if she failed to call off a lesson in time.
It was ridiculous, it was downright painful to listen to this.
And where is this lesson, where does this Margit Huber of yours live, she asked in the same grating high tone she had used earlier to instruct the cabbie.
In Hajós Street, right behind the Opera.
I see, Lady Erna replied, as if with these two words the entire matter had been settled forever.
Just as she had not beaten about the bush with Kristóf either; if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. No betrayal fazed her, and this was a source of her strength. There was no empathy or love, nothing, there was nothing without a beginning, and in that case why shouldn’t everything have an end as well. There was perhaps one amorous exception in her life. Whenever she remembered it, she shuddered with joy and sorrow. Hatred is more persistent, unfortunately, but even that comes to an end one day. At the same time she realized that her nihilism was a strength only in the eyes of others, because at bottom she always had to choose it; that’s how it is when misanthropy is born of insult.
If not for this weakness of hers, she might not have had heart problems. Now Gyöngyvér managed to say something that made Lady Erna turn around.
At least I’d get to see some ready-made suits, she said pensively, and was happy that when talking about clothes she did not have to feel Ágost’s body inside hers, his face on her face. There’s no use looking for an English suit. Not only in black but in any color. Besides, the English style is too severe and not very feminine. If you ask me, it’s not worth having one made, either.
While the taxi waited for the light to change and an almost empty trolley passed in front of them, the cabbie watched in the rearview mirror, hoping to understand what the women were talking about, in his concentration forgetting to take off when the light changed.
But for god’s sake, exclaimed Lady Erna irritably, what makes you think I want a black English suit. I never said anything so asinine, and why would I.
Please believe me, Gyöngyvér went on, any seamstress can come up with a nice little suit in two days. And it’s something that has many uses. You can wear it with a blouse or a thin turtleneck, which is very nice. The better the fabric, the greater one’s playing field with a suit like that.
You may be right, Lady Erna replied, surprised.
Why did she have to share these delicate matters with this woman. She wanted to withdraw, not let their shoulders touch.
Yet there was something impressive and self-assured in what Gyöngyvér had said. And it was news to Lady Erna that the English suit was passé, démodé; she’d never heard English tailoring called overly severe. What idiocy. As if it did her any good to learn about English suits. Still, the contact of the shoulders felt good. Taking advantage, deviously, of what seemed accidental. What had been cut off between the gloved hands a moment ago now streamed through their coats and dresses. But, refusing to believe it might make her feel better about herself, she could not. And she let it happen for another reason: Gyöngyvér sat on the side of her heart, and her touch had a decidedly calming effect on the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Her medication had largely resolved her two attacks that morning, and she had some satisfaction in having emptied her bowels properly; in the pericardial depression, however, there remained a certain amount of tension, a restlessness that had deepened with the news from the hospital and the ensuing haste.
Very close to a fatal ventricular fibrillation.
It seems I’ll be indisposed again, she thought suddenly and for good reason. What she felt was less than the usual forewarning of an attack but more than a mind set on self-preservation could ignore. She grimly monitored her body functions and could not arrest her rising fear. Her tension was eased somewhat by the involuntary contact with Gyöngyvér’s shoulder, though it communicated tension radiating from Gyöngyvér’s body, unhindered by any excess of weight or fat.
Unexpected happiness radiated directly into the muscles of Lady Erna’s heart made tense by dread, and her pulse slowed, the auricles and ventricles working less convulsively. In proximity to the other woman, the cardiac tension she had been carrying around for weeks as a terrible ache of the soul was subsiding. Of course, she could not count on any lasting relief. Any feeling that originates in another human being, however pleasant, by necessity leads to new, possibly harmful stimulation. If you need me to calm you down, I’ll give you something, but you can be sure I shall take it back or make you work it off. And assaults of pain or pleasure are all the same to one’s system. It responds to both with agitation. Agitation raises the pulse rate, the pulse increases the blood pressure, pleasure and pain exact the same price. Young people hardly distinguish between the two payments: a young body takes joy in sensing the heart’s pursuit of either pleasure or danger.