“Thanks for everything,” said Mária. “Wait a moment. I’ll just take the herd up and then I’ll come down to help clean up the car.”
“Come, come… I’ll see to it tomorrow. But do come back… for at least an hour or so.”
The four dogs stayed locked in the workshop until three in the morning and chewed up everything that they could sink their teeth into. Henryk saw Mária up to the flat. She surveyed the battlefield but did not despair. “Well, it’s time for a spring-cleaning anyway.”
Henryk stayed. When Jeff and Doug came back, he introduced Mária as his fiancée.
“Indeed?” Mária seemed dubious.
“I don’t get it,” said Jeff, thought Doug. Henryk repeated: “My fiancée.”
“Are you sure about this?” asked Mária again.
“Congratulations!” said Doug, nodded Jeff.
Mária later pointed out that he might have discussed the matter with her first.
“Well… I’m sorry. So what do you think?”
“Not so fast. First we have to get to know each other better.”
“But I’ve got to know you already!”
Mária shook her head. “There are many things about me that you don’t know. Important things.”
“So tell me.”
“I can’t do it just like that. In due course. All in good time.”
Henryk had to resign himself to a wait.
Dear Grammy,
I’m still doing fine. The firm HEJED Co. continues to expand, but this time I want to write about something else. I think that perhaps this is my HEJEM, my place, forever.
I have met someone, a girl, and if it were up to me we would get married tomorrow. I’d be delighted if you could meet her. Could you not come over again? Let me send you a ticket!
His grandmother telephoned at once. “I will come, but let’s wait with this a little. Don’t rush things. First you should really get to know each other well.”
“That’s what she said, too.”
“Clever girl.”
These were busy times for Mária. She was making wall-hangings, an insurance company having ordered four large ones. She sat at her loom from the crack of dawn and stopped only to take the dogs out the regulation three times a day. If Henryk wanted to see her, it was during these walks that he could do so. They went on the wider pavement of the upper quayside, following the frisky little herd and apologizing to the more easily frightened pedestrians.
“Tell me, do you believe in reincarnation?” asked Mária.
Henryk was at a loss. He had never asked himself this question and so had no answer. When he was small he had attended church, and his grandmother would certainly have liked him to become a proper white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but as no one around him took God seriously, he too thought religion was just empty ceremonial which he gave up as soon as he could, just as he did the scouts.
Reincarnation was the cornerstone of Mária’s view of the world. Death is also, simultaneously, birth or rebirth. After the decay of the body, the soul lingers on for about a century and a half, following various paths by way of purification; only after this can it begin its next life. Someone who was born a man in a previous life generally becomes a woman, and vice versa.
For Henryk the prospect that after his death his soul could have a second helping in another being was new, exciting and tempting; nevertheless, he found it difficult to believe.
“You don’t have to believe it,” said Mária. “When the time comes you will find it as natural as the fact that the sky is blue.”
Henryk was not convinced that this would happen, much as he might long for it. In the course of further conversations he discovered that Mária shared the views of a German philosopher called Rudolf Steiner, who was well known at the beginning of the twentieth century. “He was a spiritual visionary. There are people possessed of the ability to see on a higher plane, that is to say, they can see things that others can’t. They say you can be born with this ability, but it can also be achieved by self-education. In our time, the path of self-education is more common. Man today has lost his ability to see within. We possess what are called spiritual senses, but these cannot operate of themselves and have to be developed by the individual. I have many books on this; if you’re interested, I can lend them to you.”
The vast majority of the books were, however, in German. Henryk knew no foreign languages; he had English as his mother tongue and Hungarian as his father tongue.
Spiritual vision and self-education: so many unknown spheres. Just as hard to believe as reincarnation and at the same time just as attractive.
It turned out that Mária spoke English, German, and French very well, and even some Danish. A lover of opera, she could also manage some Italian.
It’s true, thought Henryk, I really don’t know her well.
“Why did you never go to college?” asked Mária.
“I came here instead. This is my university.”
“Aha. So you didn’t have the courage to take on a degree.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it’s true anyway, isn’t it?”
Henryk thought about it a while and then admitted it was. “How did you know?”
“It’s typical of Pisces.”
“Pie seas?”
“The astrological sign. You are Pisces, aren’t you?”
Henryk had no idea. Mária asked when he was born and when she heard the date, nodded: “Yes, that’s Pisces.”
Mária was well versed in the art of casting a horoscope, something she had learned from her grandmother. She cast one for everyone she came into contact with and who gave their permission.
“You ask for permission?”
“Of course. It’s a very intimate matter. Things can be revealed that the natives… the person concerned won’t perhaps be happy about. Or they won’t be happy that I’m the one to have revealed them. So… can I cast yours?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the exact time of your birth? Hours and minutes. I need it for the ascendant.”
“I’ve no idea.”
He called his grandmother to ask, but Grammy did not know. “In those days we were not on smiling terms.”
“Smiling terms?”
“Yes. You know, we were not very pleased that she had married your father… In fact, not in the least pleased.”
“And why have you never mentioned this before?”
“Did you ask about it?”
“How can I ask about something that I have no idea about?”
There was silence at the other end of the line, then a quiet sniff or two.
Henryk changed the subject. “You haven’t asked about Mária…”
“How can I ask about somebody I know nothing about?”
They both put down the receiver offended.
Mária said that she could calculate the ascendant only on the basis of the exact place, day, hour, and minute of the birth, though she had heard of astrologers who were somehow able to calculate it from the subject’s most important life events. She wrote to such an astrologer in Szeged, giving her the dates of the death of Henryk’s mother, the disappearance of his father, his arrival in Hungary, and the date the two of them had first met. She was not satisfied with the answer (which had cost an astronomical ten thousand forints). “She says your ascendant is Aries. But I see nothing of Aries in you. Aries are fiery, liable to set their home ablaze, repeatedly dashing their heads against brick walls. Of course, you may be Aries nonetheless, but the planets in the twelve houses are so arranged that your ascendant is less typical of you than your Sun, that is, Pisces.”
“Well, now, is that good or bad?”
“I can’t put it like that. How interested are you in this?”
“Very.”
Mária nodded and launched into a detailed explanation. She did not tell fortunes from the stars, she only drew conclusions about the subject’s personality. That is, certain basic traits, with which the subjects can do what they wish and are able to. In her view one’s horoscope influences the nature of one’s fate no more than some 25 percent; the rest is down to genes, family background, upbringing, and self-development. Be that as it may, those born under the sign of Pisces have some difficulty in negotiating the boundary between themselves and the world. They are often lonely. Being the twelfth sign, the most complex, it yields the most sophisticated personalities. Pisces generally evince some sensitivity to art, perhaps even some artistic ability; there are, for example, many musicians among them. “They put on the pounds easily… though you show no sign of that yet. Have you heard of Enrico Caruso?”