Yet the countess did not forgive him his early-morning unpleasantnesses. Occasionally, and bluntly, she gave him a piece of her mind.
Listen to me, Varga, she would say, thrusting a twenty-forint bill into the man’s hand. I’ve already told you, you have two choices. Either you politely open the gate for my guests, no grumbling, or you give me a key and I’ll open the gate myself.
Which the concierge would not risk, and not necessarily for the reason he gave the countess.
It was indeed strictly forbidden to let tenants have a key to the main entrance or the elevator.
He could have ignored this prohibition, but he feared losing the extra twenty- and hundred-forint bills he managed to extort with his grumbles.
Who needs a gin fizz, asked Mária Szapáry casually as she came in from the kitchen.
She stopped under the too-bright ceiling lamp.
I’ve got a lemon, for a change.
The two women whom she was addressing were deep in conversation outside in the dark, by the railing of the enormous rooftop terrace.
One of them, wearing a blue, abundantly shirred calico skirt, a rather rustic starched snow-white blouse with leg-of-mutton-sleeves, with a red coral necklace on her daring décolletage and a wide soft-leather belt at her waist, the ensemble giving her a strongly theatrical appearance, turned irritably and, with her eternal smile, replied.
We don’t need anything, that’s for sure, Mária, but speaking for myself, I wouldn’t mind a gin fizz.
Same here, called the other woman, who, despite her finely patterned, richly cascading dark silk dress, seemed a more modest and insignificant person.
The gin fizz meant that they were again living the way one should live in peaceful conditions.
They could afford all sorts of superfluous things.
Their bare elbows touched lightly on the railing. Until now they had been talking not to each other but into the darkness, to themselves. They were both past sixty, but their postures retained their former elegance, in which there was not only diligently invested hard work — they exercised, hiked, swam at the Lukács Baths in the morning — but also some deception. They began their evening easily and always saw to their appearances, but the tension between them was noticeable. That peculiar antagonism or irritability that aging people provoke in one another. The strict rules of card-playing kept them from speaking much. They spared each other their daily worries and, to reveal as little as possible of these efforts, paid great attention to their attire and their enduring smiles. By the wee hours, however, they grew heavy, their makeup wore off, and in the heat of the card games their hair became mussed, which they didn’t even bother to fix. By then it would have been superfluous to talk about anything.
They looked at the third woman, without having to be ashamed of anything.
The glass wall of their hostess’s big living room was kept wide open from spring to fall.
Surrendering to the splendid view, every evening they would stroll out on the terrace for some fresh air and to exchange a few confidential words. Now, however, they paid no attention to the city, which with its glittering lamps and bridges barely registered on their absentmindedly contemplative countenances. Southward, one could see all the way to Gellért Mountain; to the north, though, past the island sunk in darkness, the bleak shadow of the Árpád Bridge was hovering above the river, shining metallically with the reflection of arc lights, and beyond that was nocturnal wilderness. The lowlands of Fót, where artillery fires had first flared in December 1944 and seemed so close that people hadn’t known whether to be hopeful or fearful. They were talking quietly into the space before them, cutting into each other’s monologue with unguarded words and sweet, almost dutiful smiles; their gaze roamed over the ridges of the Buda hills, resting occasionally on the range’s distant peaks blending softly into one another.
There, in the west, where later the front moved on, something of the twilight red was still shining, making the mass of mountains glimmer in dark blue; their eyes were drawn to the meeting of light and darkness.
The noisy little tugboat, towing at least six linked and fully loaded barges upstream, had just reached the pillars of the Margit Bridge, and there, between the pillars, the engine noise was so compacted and amplified that involuntarily the two women raised their voices.
A truly brilliant idea, Mária, continued the woman in the silk dress, almost shouting, but I think we should wait for Irma. We could invent a little holiday for her. Let’s say the festival of lemon blossoms or something like that.
The card table waited for them at the open terrace door; around it, four hard-backed and probably not very comfortable chairs, to the side a tea trolley on which Mária Szapáry put a pastry tray as she raised her eyes, surprised and mistrustful, to the two women on the terrace.
The faience clinked on the glass surface.
Is something wrong, she asked. You probably came with bad news again, didn’t you.
The two women on the terrace exchanged glances, losing their smiles. They had no secrets from each other, and if they did they couldn’t keep them. But with Mária Szapáry they had to communicate differently.
No, nothing at all. There’s nothing wrong, nothing whatsoever, replied the woman in the silk dress, her voice rather colorless. We were just mulling over something that has to do with Irma, actually.
I don’t really know what to do, added the other woman, who, because of strong French cigarettes or perhaps naturally, had a slightly rasping voice but a most contagious smile.
The breeze coming off the river caught the tiny funnels of the freshly watered white and mauve petunias hanging in abundance from the terrace railing and gently wafted the sweet fragrance into the spacious, almost empty apartment. Mária Szapáry would be put out if her friends spoiled her good mood. The summer evening was too lovely.
The fragrance of the petunias did not overwhelm the stench of carrion that, try as she might, she could not but imagine smelling. Neither could she pretend she did not sense the tension in the other women.
I’d be grateful if you shared it with me, she said, slightly irritated at her own politeness, as if declaring right off that maybe they shouldn’t and please don’t expect any advice from me, she couldn’t offer advice about anything, anyway. She wore wide, gray linen trousers that seemed rather tight across her belly, and white, yellow-soled, down-at-heel linen shoes. Her white blouse, with long sleeves rolled up to her elbows, looked more like a well-worn man’s shirt. In her nonchalant appearance, there was something quite masculine, strong and free, or, at least by common conventional standards, something blatantly not feminine. As if nothing compulsory in her wider surroundings had ever affected her. She took a step toward the other two. Never a piece of jewelry on her, never any makeup. They weren’t to think she wanted to stick her nose into things. She had two quick and characteristic movements for fixing her heavily graying short-cropped hair, parted in the middle: constantly brushing it off her forehead, and tucking it behind her ears to keep it from falling forward, which it always did, immediately. Perhaps this was her only visibly compulsive habit.