Budapest, 1961

According to the weather forecast, the next day was to be sunny, warm, decidedly springlike. At times like this, though, one never knew, because on the eve of ­ official holidays the forecasts were always falsified. They reported something either better or worse than what was actually expected, though occasionally they kept it real with only minor cosmetic adjustments. There was hope that this time would be one of those exceptions, since the previous days had indeed been sunnier and warmer than average, but, whatever the officials did or did not know, at dawn on March 15 turbulent northern winds were raging furiously over Hungary, a three-day hurricane which hit the capital especially hard. The false forecast, based on a compilation of daily requests and reports on the general public mood, was prepared in the disinformation department of the secret service, whose submitted recommendation could be accepted or rejected only by authorized party functionaries at the session of the political committee. At such times, the weather report, traversing strange paths, would not come from the Meteorological Institute, but would be delivered, as top secret, by a runner to the editorial offices of every newspaper, where it was the duty of the editor in chief to supplant the real report with this one before the paper went to press.

Suddenly the mercury dropped eight degrees; it was almost freezing again. Something terrible happened at the site of the official celebration, but no one knew any details. Swelling clouds sped across the sky, it was light and then it was dark, it drizzled, it was wet; closed windows rattled in the icy squalls. Festive flags were soaked and flapping wildly above Budapest’s empty streets, the national flag between two red ones. Tiles fell from roofs; from broken rain pipes water gushed freely. There were hardly any pedestrians; anyone who braved the wretched weather also risked having something fall on his head. In the general din, the streets seemed transformed into abandoned battlefields. Massive broken tree limbs lay scattered everywhere. Anyone trying to proceed by clinging to the walls of houses would get rain right in the face and water gushing from the pouring gutters down his neck. And the din reached its climax when, for a long moment at several distant points in the city, fire trucks and police cars blared as one and, blasting their sirens again and again, raced toward the center of town.

Ambulances moved in formation along the dead Grand Boulevard.

Downstairs, in front of the apartment house, the two women were crossing the street in a hurry, leaning into the wind. The mother and the lover of her son. The older woman clutched her pocketbook, within it the sales contract requiring the dying man’s signature. As far as the eye could see there was no one around, the boulevard was empty; Oktogon Square remained deserted.

The younger woman literally leaned into the wind, walking sideways against it; the older one, as though enlisting her entire body in her defense, doubled over and scurried forward as if making an escape. They both wore hats; Gyöngyvér’s a firm, tiny, round box decorated with bits of lace, the kind of hat usually called a pillbox, Lady Erna’s soft and woolly, wide brimmed and large.

The wind kept changing direction; now it rushed into the city from the north and swept across Andrássy Avenue, now it came bouncing in from the west off the hills of Buda and wreaking havoc on the boulevard. They had to hold down their hats with their gloved hands. Identically, they pressed their pocketbooks hard to their chests. With that same movement, Lady Erna also held together her short fur coat. Gyöngyvér’s broad, long coat, the color of faded violet, had a large decorative button right under the round collar, but if she hadn’t kept the coat together around her breasts, the wind would have opened it, reached under it, and made it flutter in every direction. Although the two women’s bodies differed greatly in weight, firmness, dimension, and pliancy, looking at them from above, their gaits seemed very much alike.

They both wore high-heeled, narrow, long-tipped pumps; they appeared to be toddling. And with every gust of wind their nylon-stockinged legs faltered a bit.

Before they reached the curb, the cabbie thrust the rear door open from inside and leapt out to help the older woman into his vehicle. This courtesy was surprising, because in those days taxi drivers had long ceased to fulfill this basic business obligation. Younger ones probably didn’t even know such a thing was expected. They didn’t say hello or bother with a thank-you when accepting a tip, though they did not refrain from remarks if they found the tip too small. Lady Erna saw the man’s strong profile for only a moment, when he raised his head to see out from under his cap and rain sprayed his face.

The three people appeared to be participants in a ritual, performing a sacrificial dance around a large, dimly glimmering cultic insect.

They halted abruptly, colliding gently as they walked around each other, parted by leaning away from one another, paused, and then bent over as the wet wings of the insect closed behind them.

The moment they slid onto their seats, they filled the tobacco-smelling cab with the fragrance of their perfumes.

The cabbie was a man of the old school with playful, watchful brown eyes that evinced a humorous or ironic disposition, though his face had many bitter, vertical creases. He had on a well-worn visored leather cap, which seconds earlier he had pulled down tightly over his forehead against the wind.

Private chauffeurs used to wear caps like this, a long time ago.

We are going to Kútvölgyi Hospital, she called out, in a voice not like her usual one, as if making an official announcement through her nose.

The cabbie’s playful glance did not change. He asked if the hospital would be their final destination.

His wrinkles, originating at the inner corners of his eyes, seemed to radiate all over his face.

That’s correct, our trip ends there, came Lady Erna’s brusque reply, and, so as not to be exposed to those eyes’ impersonal deep gaze, she turned away.

The driver started the cab, drove across the square, but the tension between them remained, and in the rearview mirror he quickly sized up the other woman.

She bore a tolerant, slightly suffering smile wrapped in restraint. It wasn’t easy to figure her out; the impression she gave was that with her entire devoted being she would go along with and support Lady Erna in everything that might happen. Though it was also obvious she was playing a role, and that Lady Erna did not object.

They were sitting too close together. This had never happened before. Which was somewhat embarrassing for both of them. As if trying to keep their bodies at a distance, they did not turn to each other. Gyöngyvér played her role well. Lady Erna, despite her resentment, couldn’t but admire the young woman. Perhaps she envied her son for having her and, for brief ­moments, may even have feared for her. At the same time she knew that the relationship couldn’t last and already felt sorry for the young woman about the expected complications of the breakup. Occasionally she had helped to speed up the inevitable separations. Carefully yet relentlessly she had let her son feel she did not think such and such a woman was the one for him. She admitted that a person from such a poor background, with nothing and no one in the world, who, notwithstanding, dressed so impeccably and showed such diligence in her behavior, well, however silly she might be, she must have talents of some kind.

She must be truly knowledgeable in something to which her son clings steadfastly. No questions. Of course, Lady Erna could not even think of these talents without summoning up their opposites. A chameleon, she said to herself, a common little minx who disguises her eagerness and greed in a rather primitive way.

She had better be careful with her.

Yet her eyes could never have enough of the young woman’s body. She had made detailed reports of it to her best women friends.

It was her general experience that it was best to be forthright and unhesitating when talking of dangerous things. Her friends had a great laugh. What wouldn’t Nínó make up, what fanciful new tale.

To talk openly of a mature female body was not among the conventional conversation topics at the Café Gerbeud, the Abbázia, or even in the casino on Margit Island.

Ultimately: nowhere.

Although she had talked of it, unreservedly, her repugnance got the better of her. What a miserable little chameleon. Her stunning figure and perfect appearance can’t be denied, even if she is not really beautiful. No, she isn’t. God, her low forehead right away tells you where she’s from. The less said of her mental abilities the better. Her character is not without flaws, ­either. But there was no flaw to be found in her taste. This irritated Lady Erna, who had a broad education and a practical background in art history; for a while, she had been an appraiser, and among her friends she was considered a kind of expert in aesthetic matters.

In fact, it was not the young woman’s flawless taste that fascinated her, but the ascetic nature and dry austerity of this taste. She could not look at her without seeing her as a precious object she must guard and look after, precisely because she was so aware of precious works of art.

As if her surface were dry and rough, and her inside swelling with delicious juices; as if a subterranean secret vein nourished it with its fluids, a rich oasis in the windblown desert, a tiny lake hidden under the drifting sand, a small secret body of water.

What first caught her attention was that the woman did not leave her things all over the apartment, as had all her hysterical, chaotic predecessors who had stayed for a few weeks, or sometimes only a few days. On the contrary, she barely leaves a trace. She eats exceptionally small amounts. She gives the impression of someone making choices from a huge wardrobe. And picks things correctly. Others, driven by greed or insecurity, keep piling up objects around them—the entire fragile, dark art trade is built on this emotional instability—while she must be infallible when she makes her purchases. She takes the one piece that others would never choose in a lifetime. Lady Erna kept an eye on her to see whether she was a secret eater, stuffing herself at odd times and places, whether what she saw was only false asceticism or hypocrisy. It was not.

Everyone strives to be infallible. Lady Erna herself could not resist eating too much; she had a special weakness for sauces and spicy gravies, she chewed every bone dry, sucked everything from chicken bones, dipped fresh bread into the fat gravy of roast meat or with a crust of bread spooned the golden cream off the top of milk, or the sweet icings from so many surfaces, gobbled up the floating islands.

She had indulged her curiosity, too. She wanted to solve the secret of this serious asceticism. She found all sorts of reasons to open the doors of the closets in which, right after moving in, Gyöngyvér had put all her little things. She told Ilona not to stop ironing; she herself would put everything back. Ilona kept silent, shrugged, and looked put out; she did not know what to make of Mrs. Lehr’s unexpected zeal. The unfamiliar scent that ­assailed Lady Erna from the closet bore witness to the same, almost painful parsimony that emanated from Gyöngyvér’s supple body. And because she had done this not once or twice but on a more or less regular basis, as if to keep track of what was taking place among Gyöngyvér’s belongings, Ilona slowly began to figure out what the lady of the house was up to.

She used some inexpensive, insignificant perfume; still, Lady Erna had to admit, that, well, she had got it right. The scent was almost too sweet, yet overall it was rather dry and acrid; on her skin it was as if the sweetness came from summer hay and sun-dried spices. It matched her bodily endowments, as did the style with which she wore her clothes. This was her maddening quality, and no doubt what intoxicated her son.

When she opened the closet door, Lady Erna felt her heart thump in her jugular vein. This wasn’t completely unjustified since her son kept his shirts there, too. She imagined she was doing some harm to her heart with such powerful excitement and also felt that what she was doing was somewhat ­absurd, but she did it anyway. And if not in the clothes closets, then she rifled through Gyöngyvér’s shoes in the foyer.

Gyöngyvér’s feet, as is the case generally with dry beings, probably did not smell.

And she told Ilona, but more for her own benefit than anything else, that she couldn’t find this or that item.

Gyöngyvér did not wear down the heels of her shoes, either; the sight of her graceful feet filled Lady Erna with particular envy.

She removed the cambered silver lid of the ground-glass candy box in which Gyöngyvér kept her cheap costume jewelry and a few pitiful real pieces. She looked at the thin little trinkets Gyöngyvér must have received from her previous admirers. She glanced at the sloughed-off skins of cast-off lives. The pretty candy box was among the objects Lady Erna had managed to save from her grandfather’s manor house in Jászhanta the night before the inventory was taken for the public auction. She reached in only with her fingers, to expose everything to her eyes, and chuckled, a little ashamed to think that her son, cheap and stingy as he was, would probably add nothing to this poor collection. But she did not take out a single piece, seeing none she cared to examine.

In the depth of her soul, she would have liked to have a daughter-in-law, even one like Gyöngyvér. But not one with such an empty head. Yet even her resistance to the idea filled her with a certain pleasure.

A kind of physical sensation, as if experiencing her son’s secret joy, or at least understanding it.

See how cleverly she covers her ugly forehead with that pretty little round hat.

Gyöngyvér’s forehead was indeed not attractive. Convex and decently proportioned, but her hair grew in close at the edges, and there wasn’t anything she could do about that; it was not the kind of forehead that could carry off bangs. Of course Lady Erna did not fail to notice that once or twice Gyöngyvér did have her hair styled with bangs cut square above the eyes. Her thick dark hair lent her appearance a wildness, and, probably because she couldn’t abide this, she resorted to removing superfluous strands of hair with the aid of resin wax; but the tiny bloody craters caused by the violence had barely healed when fresh bristles would crop out in their place.

Dark shadow on her forehead.

She longed for tenderness, sensitivity, and refinement; she simpered and grew touchy, and what the little goose could not obtain, except perhaps accidentally, she tried to accomplish with outward show. Of course, her pug nose told the world what a low mark the little waif had earned in intelligence.

And that filled Lady Erna with contentment, if for no other reason than that her persistent physical attraction to the young woman sometimes so confused her that she behaved more brusquely, meanly, or maliciously than she could afford even by her own standards.

All of this, however, had a less ordinary, more delicate aspect, a more intimate map. She was still a little girl when she had discovered this map; it was drawn up in advance.

The buggy was taking her somewhere from the house in Jászhanta, perhaps to the train station, when they turned onto a long plum tree–lined ­allée. The trees had been planted when the handsome manor house was built, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since then they had grown enormous, some had lost branches so there were gaps in their rich foliage, and she could see clear summer sky through parts of the towering crowns.

She put her gloved hand on Gyöngyvér’s gloved hand for a long moment, lightly. But as soon as they made contact, the light touch gained weight, as if the other hand had been waiting for hers. She felt as if they might lock.

Gyöngyvér, my little girl, she wanted to say. If she had said it out loud, and the very thought of it made her choke, not only would it have sounded false, but it could have been misunderstood in any number of ways, and then she would only act out a newer, more absurd scene from one of the usual dramas. But that was what she was thinking at that moment. She acutely felt the loss of her little daughter and, with it, guilt. She had been a big girl when they carried her off; she was in her first year at the university when they took away my little girl, though she still wore her hair in thick braids. For two weeks they left no stone unturned trying to get her back from the Gestapo on Melinda Road. Maybe not every stone. The daughter’s appearance now clung to Gyöngyvér’s mature exterior, because the daughter had never become a woman.

She never experienced the things this silly woman enjoys to her heart’s content with Lady Erna’s son. Perhaps it’s for the best.

Still, she could not forgive herself, or anyone else.

Whatever flowed from body to body through their gloved hands would not necessarily be identified as maternal love. If only one could shut off the current so easily, she thought suddenly. Still, there was something maternal here; after all, this woman belonged to her son, and she, being his mother, had to feel something of what her son found attractive in her. Or rather, it did not resemble the sensation she had not felt for quite some time at the sight of men.

In time, her desires slightly shifted proportions. She would dishonor the memory of her little girl if she called this strange woman her child.

Perhaps what she was meant to forgo had already been marked on that map which, as a little girl, she saw in the sky framed by the treetops.

Still, even now, and forever, she must be restrained, self-possessed: no use asking why she couldn’t lose her mind, why she couldn’t spin out of control just one more time.

Lady Erna’s other hand, perturbed by this welter of emotions, stirred a little, of course; and her small lips edged with wrinkles likewise trembled. Helplessly and hungrily, seeking and avoiding each other’s gaze, they looked at each other while the car sped along the boulevard with the noise of rain lashing at the windows.

I don’t know what this afternoon will bring, she said, keeping her voice low if only because of the cabbie, as she grasped the young woman’s gloved hand. The cabbie was obviously observing them. I don’t really know how, she continued, her voice trailing off awkwardly, but I must come up with something. And in her effort not to alarm Gyöngyvér with a sudden gush of emotion, and not to lay herself open either, she sighed but also, with her upper lip retracted like an animal snarling in pain or joy, burst out laughing.

Sigh and laughter followed each other.

You may not believe it, Gyöngyvér, but I’ve no mourning clothes.

And when she said this, she felt strong enough to break the flow between the two of them. As if asking for indulgence, signaling that the other person should not give the moment too much weight.

There is one big role left she would not mind playing.

Some other time.

She must now go on in a reasonable tone of voice.

            I must get to the downtown stores, if only for a short time. I’d be really grateful if you would come along, Gyöngyvér. I’ve got shoes, I’ve got handbags and coats, actually I’ve got everything, but black stockings, for example, I don’t have at all. Actually black is not my color. Well, I’m lying. If the moths haven’t eaten them, I must still have a black velvet cocktail dress and a black taffeta suit. But those aren’t exactly right for now, they won’t do at all. You can appreciate that in the circumstances I can’t deal with things like this by myself.

But I would entirely trust your judgment.

Gyöngyvér was not quick to answer, she remained silent, or she did not grasp the meaning of the unfolding scene; but she did not alter her pained smile. After so much mute and treacherous humiliation, this unexpected trust was like an even more treacherous attack; it paralyzed her. It deeply shocked her that a person could speak like this about her own husband’s impending death, so openly, so shamelessly and brutally. She could not consciously gauge all the places Lady Erna knew and visited, how many things she had had her hands in; even what she experienced unconsciously of Lady Erna’s deeds and existence was too much for her—the familiar strong attraction and familiar proximity, which she could not avoid. Besides, she had a problem concentrating on more than one thing at a time.

When Ágost or other men before him called her at the kindergarten when she happened to be playing with the children or singing to them, when someone came in to tell her she was wanted on the telephone, she had to pay very close attention to understand the other person at the end of the line. When she left the house in the morning, she became distant from him; it was as if she did not have another life besides the kindergarten.

And the same was true the other way around.

If they went out in the evening, to the Fészek Club or anywhere else, and people she did not know asked her what she did, she would say, I’m a kindergarten teacher, but suddenly she’d be unable to explain what that meant. Hours would go by and still she could not recall what she did there. In a matter of seconds the partition of her soul would rise between things, and it was wider than the Great Wall of China. She was in constant fear of not understanding what had happened or was happening in a given moment. She got the idea that others could not grasp her incomprehension. She kept it a secret how difficult it was for her to get into the present from her various pasts. She did not comprehend how others could connect these different things and times in themselves. This is why she did not feel at home except among children. She would stand by the telephone, listening to the familiar voice to which no face or expression belonged, only a possible name and a pure sensation.

Although they had been living under the same roof for about half a year, she had not been this close, even in the simple physical sense, to Ágost’s mother. Their shoulders touched, their thighs a little, too, and neither of them found it necessary to move away. Sometimes Gyöngyvér keenly perceived how different mother and son were in many areas; at other times she was surprised, it nearly overwhelmed her, by how alike they were in other ways. Now, from the moment they walked out of the apartment, she had sensed nothing but their similarity. Neither physical nor mental difference existed any longer between aging woman and young son. Her entire attention was taken up with the sensation that she was in the presence, not of that barrier broader than the Great Wall of China, but of a familiar attraction, an intimacy she could not avoid yet could not make her own.

This led to the insane thought—perhaps she should reach Ágost through the person of the elderly woman.

The realization struck her like lightning: If she could manage this, she would truly be saved. It was no longer about mother and son having identical tones of voice, skin color, deep and close-set eyes, piercing and constantly inquiring looks, an almost perfect reflection of each other. Which would explain everything.

Gyöngyvér, contrary to all appearances, was not stupid. True, what she could formulate for herself, based on the reports of her senses, was usually flatter, more banal, more boring, and much simpler, almost primitive because it was so much less than what she had sensed. Now, for example, she kept telling herself that if she succeeded in winning over the mother, she would not have to move out of the apartment. Which she dreaded.

Like a child, she was euphoric that Lady Erna would save her.

The survival instinct compels no less greed from her than from other people. Still, she often became entangled in situations where she appeared to have committed some unforgivable impropriety or done something immoral.

As was happening now, when Lady Erna failed to see why Gyöngyvér responded to her overture with silence. She could have gone on looking at the younger woman’s pained little smile, but she was increasingly impatient. She preferred to turn away from her and look, through the rainwater dripping down the taxi window, at the buildings of the boulevard rushing by. A good thing she did, because the pain and the dissembling made Gyöngyvér’s lips tremble violently. Pain assailed her in merciless waves. She nearly fainted. It was so clear to her that she was not going to lose the man.

They had to stop at the intersection with Podmanizky Street; the windshield wipers creaked and clattered. Lady Erna grumbled to herself, I have only myself to blame. I had to bring her along. If I only knew why I’m so stupid, even in my old age; why am I going out of my way for this silly goose. How can I be so stupid. And how could this little foundling understand how insanely generous I have been.

Gyöngyvér sensed the rebuke, but from afar, for now she was pre­occupied with what might be the great discovery of her life. Not only was the dread gone, but it was replaced by the kind of happiness that until now only this one man had given her. As if a footpath across one person’s body led to the soul of another. As if in Lady Erna’s proximity, she knew Ágost’s body better. Not only did she think these general thoughts, she literally saw the path before her or, more correctly, the circuitous but ineluctable paths that lead from one person to another. She must choose one, she must set foot on one of them. In the exhortation lurked an unpleasant urging or ­reproach. But I am already on the path. As if she were failing in some way.

I’m going to fuck it up; I’ll make a mess of things again.

She sensed, of course, that she should have returned the touch, she should have squeezed Lady Erna’s gloved hand in return.

Now she could no longer reach for it.

That meant something irreparable.

She was barely nineteen when on a winter morning she stepped out from the gate of the teachers’ training college in Szeged. A small suitcase in one hand, in the other a cardboard box tied with string. She started out on the wet street in the hazy December cold. In her coat pocket she had a slip of ­paper with an address where she could stay for a few nights. Ever since then, she had had to find a roof for every single night. This was not a figure of speech; it happened many times that she returned to her lodging only to find, in front of an office door or in a filthy stairwell, her hastily packed and discarded belongings, and she was out on the street again. Then, there was only the streetcar, the train, or the train station, until the police chased her away. She had lived in workers’ hostels, abandoned farms; for months she slept on a folding cot in the locker room of a gym, and, sometimes, for a single night or a few weeks, she would find shelter in the beds of pitiful, questionable, or revolting characters, about whom no one would ever know. In those places, her head held high, she had to let her hosts ejaculate into her body. She had been a night lodger, sleeping in beds rented by others for a day; when she had it a little better she became a real subtenant, first in Kecskemét and later in Budapest. From there, however, she had no place to go. The singing lessons were expensive. And her decision to marry a rich fellow made no difference. Either no sugar daddy presented himself or the men she managed to snare did not want to marry her.

One man would have been ready to marry her anytime, but she did not want to; she was disgusted by him even though he worshipped her.

Slowly she outgrew the marriageable age.

As soon as she got to know someone new, the familiar dread returned, and no matter whom she went to bed with, in what fashion, she felt she had an intestinal obstruction and should spend these trysts farting rather than making love. And the moment she broke up with someone, even the destructive excitement went away.

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 was very like happiness.

She thought she should say thank-you, she was happy.

Oh, my, suddenly I am so happy. 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 dared do the same in return. Maybe after she had been discovered as a great singer. But now she wanted to talk to Lady Erna in the familiar form; 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 lived with him in a state of constant agitation. The passion so unceremoniously unleashed in the mother may have matched in every respect the passion that alternately flared and died away, though not completely, in the son. Gyöngyvér had to catch at the mother.

The enormous, murky river with its deep current, this is the familiar river, but familiar from where.

Unfortunately, I’ve 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, coming much too late, and almost insultingly. 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 out every little fault one by one. Every little mistake. Every little weakness. As if in this manner 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.

There was no empathy or love, nothing, there was nothing without a beginning, and in that case why should not 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 rather more persistent, unfortunately, but even hatred wears out 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 trouble. Now Gyöngyvér managed to say something that made Lady Erna turn around.

At least I’d get to see 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. In black or 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 they 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’d like to have a black English suit. I’ve never said anything so asinine, and why would I.

Please believe me, Gyöngyvér went on, any seamstress can come up with a nice little two-piece 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 more scope you have.

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 to 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 had never heard English tailoring called overly severe. What idiocy. As if it did her any good to find out about English suits. Still, the contact of the shoulders felt good. Like a surreptitious advantage taken of what seemed accidental. What had been cut off between the gloved hands a moment ago now streamed through their coats and dresses. Although she would have liked to deny the feeling, for the sake of her self-respect, she could not. And she indulged it for another reason, too; 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 more or less settled her two attacks of the 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 their rush to find the taxi.

Very close to a fatal ventricular fibrillation.

It seems I’ll be indisposed again, she thought suddenly and the thought was justified. What she felt was less than the usual forewarnings of an attack but more than a mind made for self-preservation could ignore. She grimly monitored the functioning of her body and could not help feeling more and more afraid. The tension diminished somewhat, thanks to the accidental touch of 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, tense with dread, and her pulse slowed. In proximity to the other ­woman, the cardiac tension she had dragged everywhere 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 will take it back or make you work it off. And to one’s system the ­assaults of pain or pleasure are all the same. 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 the heart’s pursuit of pleasure and danger alike.

A compromised system will, however, after a perfidious silence, avenge emotional excess with an acute shortness of breath. Not when first stimulated to excitement but a little later, when the heart muscles can no longer meet the demands of rising blood pressure, a speeding pulse, and localized hyperemia. Pressure and asphyxiation are warning signals when the shoulders or lips or loins, engorging with blood, are no longer points of stimulation, but the entire body is—from the hair on the head to the nails on the toes, when the very flesh of the heart labors under the spell of stimulation.

It does not have the reserves to supply the system’s center and peripheries at once.

But by then it’s too late.

Gyöngyvér, my little girl, said Lady Erna, her voice hoarse and reduced to a whisper by the sudden urge for self-preservation. She was loath to say aloud what she was about to say. It was exactly the thing she wanted to keep to herself. I don’t want to frighten you, but I haven’t been feeling well since early this morning, and I think I had better prepare you. If you see that I’m getting worse, my medicine is here, in my handbag. If I become very weak or even faint, you should put it under my tongue.

Yes, I know the medicine, Gyöngyvér answered dryly, as if she too wanted to move past this, as if she wanted to get it all behind her.

Contrary to Lady Erna’s expectation, neither fear nor surprise showed on Gyöngyvér’s face. Indeed, her pretended empathy and genuine curiosity only grew.

With the excuse of having to look for her medicine, Lady Erna turned and moved away on the seat, with a small laugh. As if to apologize for ­clinging to her miserable life. Which is truly laughable. Common sense told her it would be more pleasant to slip into the hereafter in a state of ­unconsciousness than to continue wide-awake, trembling for her wretched life. And if that was how it was going to be, and could not be otherwise, why bring her back with the help of medication, why couldn’t she be content to simply faint away. No matter how hard she tried to find her ­instinct for self-preservation ridiculous, her fear of death won out. There was another creature within her, too terrified to make light of being terrified in the hope of overcoming fear. Efforts to master her fear had never been successful, though she never gave up. The exact opposite happened. Laughter did not help overcome the dread; and the elemental fear, much stronger than she, deeply abased her and repeatedly made a mockery of her faith in common sense.

Common sense failed to stop the symptoms; her hands shook visibly. The tell-tale spots caused by disorders of the nervous system, going from flushed to pale, made their appearance, along with imperceptible dewdrops of fear gathering along the rim of her upper lip. And there was no good reason for why she was unable to click open the clasp on her handbag.

Even if I confide in this woman, I can’t expect anything from her except hypocrisy. In her restrained fury, she practically tore the gloves off her hands. She didn’t regret it. She had noticed at times that Gyöngyvér’s eyes were glued to her. At least her hands had not yet lost their shapeliness. The young woman had something to envy. Leaning back from the edge of her consciousness, she somehow gathered that what she was doing now had nothing to do with her heart; it was a false alarm, a fit of hysterics, there was no threat of another attack. But her inner tensions with their various origins and vectors raged so furiously that she genuinely feared being unable to control herself.

Then it must be death I am so afraid of, after all. No matter how I’ve tried to deceive myself, telling myself that he’s been dead to me for so long that no matter what happens the actual death won’t be a shock.

She finally managed to undo the clasp with her trembling fingers. She glanced up to assess their progress. She did not want to be shocked. She saw they were still far from their destination. We’re only just driving up the ramp to the Margit Bridge. She did not understand herself. Why is her body producing such absurd hysterics in front of this young woman, and also because of her. What need does she have of anyone’s empathy, why make a stranger feel sorry for her. She couldn’t say.

I’ve been having such a migraine since early this morning, said Gyöngyvér dolefully, I’m nauseated, my head is about to explode.

The handbag was the kind in which one could never find anything. Just let your head explode, my dear, there’s nothing in it anyway, said Lady Erna to herself; she was furious that instead of empathizing, the young woman was looking for pity. What a stupid hen you are. What a primitive soul. A decorated pouch of a handbag held together by a strong metal frame. Just recently very fashionable and particularly to her liking because it reminded her of the sporran-like pouches her mother carried to soirées and balls. And now the two of them in the taxi were holding two all but identical handbags on their laps. This annoyed her, too.

Lady Erna’s handbag was made of soft, dark gray calfskin, just like her shoes; Gyöngyvér’s was so-called Negro-brown, a fashionable hue that also matched her shoes, but it was made of imitation leather. Which, at the time, was considered more chic than real leather. This insignificant little difference made Lady Erna feel the distance of light-years that separated them. The rage for successful imitations had shattered her image of the world. She could not conceive of owning a bag or anything else made of artificial material. The whole world, as it was, must be considered one big forgery anyway. Still, no effort should be spared to prevent the display of falsehoods; or at least everyone should hide her own.

For heaven’s sake, how would you know about this stupid medication, she asked irritably when she found it at last and lifted the antique silver etui. What problems can your heart have.

You are young, strong.

While she was silent for a moment, the young woman pressed her hands to her temples; squeezing and kneading them, she moaned and whimpered.

Nobody can get trinitroglycerin except people with serious heart problems, though as a medication it’s not dangerous.

In the meantime, Lady Erna’s hand also found her handkerchief, of snow-white, lightly starched lawn. The absentminded movement with which she put it to use was among the imperceptible supreme achievements of her upbringing. Looking deep into Gyöngyvér’s eyes—and it was these apparently incidental gestures that Gyöngyvér absorbed and internalized most ­eagerly—she dabbed and blotted up the pearls of perspiration under her nose without either the immaculate kerchief or her fingers touching her lips. The lipstick was not smeared and the movement was not in the least conspicuous. This was the trick of the proper use of a handkerchief. The gesture must be rapid and restrained but not fussy.

In her other hand, she was still holding the little silver box.

It’s an explosive, I know, believe me, nitroglycerine, Gyöngyvér’s words tumbled out. By the way, I have what they call an athletic heart, really, it’s like steel. She felt she was making no headway with her headache. But I did have an old lady colleague, with very serious heart problems. I liked her a lot and helped her often, believe me. I lived at her place for months, and while she was telling this story she blushed and her face showed signs that it might be painful for her to remember this friend.

The little chameleon has finally betrayed herself. The artificial pained little smile, which she had built on a real headache, might have been provoked by a memory of real pain, but, she had buried that memory under the unceasing pain she felt because of Ágost. Her pain filled out her skin, it made her face beautiful, even though her soul was full of scab-encrusted injuries, purulent sores, and open wounds.

While her gaze was wandering elsewhere. Unblinking, with an all but shameless lack of empathy, they kept looking into each other’s eyes.

Who in fact was an elderly gentleman, this dear elderly female colleague of yours, if I’m not mistaken, came Lady Erna’s venomous response.

Immediately she thought she shouldn’t have said this, but the sentence­ spilled out of her with elemental force. As if she had said, I know you were nothing but a whore and still are. And now, with your mawkish sentimentality, you are trying to put one over on my son.

She could see through the young woman, who herself had the feeling she shouldn’t have come up with such a big lie.

And I’m blushing, too, so the old bitch can see how big a lie it was.

Both women were slow to speak. The two statements remained hanging in the air. Neither one could be retracted.

But why say such things to me, why, Gyöngyvér whined under her breath, as if she were still moaning and whimpering about her headache, as if, above all she must convince herself that something terribly unfair had taken place. Though she sensed that this childish self-pity led her into an open clearing where there could be no shelter. I don’t understand, she whined, I don’t understand at all why you hate me so much.

What are you talking about, may I ask.

I feel it, yes, I feel that you hate me.

Well, if that’s how you feel, one can’t argue with feelings, Lady Erna answered severely. But you constantly prevaricate, my child. And that’s putting it mildly.

Their faces seemed to be glowing in a peculiar light.

They could not acknowledge the source of the light, they could not look aside, and neither of them could afford even a flutter of eyelashes without risking the other drawing conclusions. Neither had space to budge or let the other pass by. As if they had been trying to avoid this very moment, or rather, as if they had been on the way to it. This is what they both felt. Lady Erna was filled with restrained expectations, Gyöngyvér with light-headedness, with the mature vitality and explosive superiority of youth. As in a game of handball when her movements were most intimately her own, dexterity, anticipation, and strength all working together. And these feelings now painted vaguely ironic smiles on their faces, and each face spoke to itself as well as to the other.

At least for a moment, they both laid down their weapons.

Which made Gyöngyvér the more audacious one; Lady Erna’s audacity had given permission. The way it usually happens on the handball court when she gets the ball, makes a lightning-quick movement with it, feints, steps to the side, and takes off. She seized Lady Erna’s hand, the older woman was ready for anything but this, and did what she should have done minutes earlier but could not without permission; she pressed it, held it in her hand and kept it there.

The elderly heart-patient friend had indeed been a gentleman who kept her, she admitted, but fortunately he was no less seriously ill than her female colleague might have been. Somehow, there was some truth in all her lies. She apologizes for every one of them, belatedly and in advance. And here I am holding your hand because for a long time I’ve been admiring and envying your beautiful hands, your delicate fingers, your exquisite rings, and the fine, thick gold bracelets that slide down your bony wrists. I love it all, love it. Perhaps the way I love every bone in your son’s body, his skin, his hair, his smell, his voice, his breath; to me they are jewels. I’d like to adorn myself with them every night. I love him, love him. There is no part of him I can do without.

Oh, I would die without them.

Now, as at other times, she turned her self-pity into a passionate humiliation. With her slippery self-abasement she matched the selfishness, rejection, and superiority emanating from Lady Erna. It was eerily reminiscent of how she treated her son. She rejected him; there was hardly anyone in her life she had not rejected for the sake of some unfulfilled desire. Her daughter had rebelled against her and perished because of her; but her son, nevertheless, followed her loyally and unconsciously. Like a dog. For not only their flesh, but also the quality of their selfishness and sense of superiority were alike.

Gyöngyvér went so far as to bend over and kiss the beautiful hand. She usually took men’s cocks into her mouth when she bent over so sweetly.

Surrendering to their childlike selfishness.

In this fleeting moment, the silver box in her hand both confused and somewhat hindered Lady Erna. It would have felt good to clasp Gyöngyvér’s gloved fingers. The skin of the glove was smooth, tight, and cool. She glimpsed the nape of Gyöngyvér’s neck and was strongly tempted to kiss the closely shaved female nape, thin as a child’s. Her sense of aesthetic proportion would have demanded as much, as did her desire, erupting from the depths, swift and blunt.

She shuddered; she was so moved her body grew damp.

If only Gyöngyvér’s lips had tarried a moment longer on her hand. They were soft, silky, and cool, like the touch of a lizard. But Gyöngyvér quickly sat up.

She could never count on mutuality or reciprocity; Ágost had never pampered her with either.

The dark gray clunky Pobeda reached the entrance to Margit Island and slowed down. Not so much because of the turn but because of the terrific northerly gusts of wind. This is the highest point of the bridge as it rises from the two riverbanks. Arriving from the Pest side, and with nothing else to do, one registers the sight of the hills ahead. But the cabbie could not have seen much of them now. The windshield wipers were working at top speed and the wind pressed the rain’s myriad drops like a robe around the taxi. An opaque curtain was dripping down each window. It was as if nocturnal darkness had descended on them, but with something continually illuminating or flashing in its darkness. The sky turned black and dense over the entire city, but beyond the city, somewhere in the south, over the flatlands of Csepel, and in the west and north, behind the hills of Buda, the clouds opened up. The rim of the sky was clearing fast in a wide arc, and from there the light, flat and white, shone into the bottom of the darkness. The mass of clouds, gathered and piled up by the strong winds, slowly began to move eastward where flatland, clouds, rain, and city seemed to touch. And the flatly falling light was reflected in the mud-darkened foam on the surface of the Danube, illuminating from below, under the swirling firmament, the faces observing each other. There was something frightening, otherworldly in this phenomenon, though it may have had a simple explanation.

The cabbie correctly sensed that something unusual was happening between the two women behind him.

They were both laughing, but very quietly. It was a vocal confirmation of the knowing twinkle in their eyes.

As if Gyöngyvér were saying, you see, I’m not lying now, I admit it; and Erna were responding, my dear, as far as I’m concerned you can lie all you want. I understand you even when I pretend not to. And the laughter had nothing to do with the old lady in Gyöngyvér’s life who happened to be an elderly gentleman with heart trouble; they were beyond that already, had forgotten all about it, had brushed it aside. And they were laughing not at the sudden revelation, but out of embarrassment, at their mutual state of exposure.

Each sat facing the other as if facing her mirror image.

As if each had drawn in her breath, thrust out her chest and with thighs closed tight had pressed herself to the seat. It was pleasurable to be here together, at each other’s disposal. They were entrusted to each other, and that is something far outside the usual, everyday routine; it is something deeper and more carelessly familiar. If this was true, then it was possible to get to Erna through Ágost, and Gyöngyvér hardly even noticed how it happened. Whatever the moment contained had no opposite pole, no charge of attraction or repulsion, and therefore the moment’s space and duration became infinite. And Erna did not even notice that the dying man, who might no longer even be alive, had vanished from her life. A burst bubble would leave more of a trace. By their looks, opened wide onto each other, each revealed that she was not unacquainted with these lesser-known territories where no males ever enter. Of the two, Gyöngyvér was more experienced, but also the more cautious and reticent. Lady Erna had always relied more on her imagination and memory, which made her demanding and greedy. But now the cabbie, much as he would have liked to, could not look in the rearview mirror. The wind was shoving the taxi this way and that; the entrance to the island, the road, was still paved with the same smooth yellow tiles produced in Demén’s brick factory in Budakalász back in 1898, when they began building the ramp off the middle pier of the bridge, resting on the tip of the island; the yellow ceramic was slippery.

A careless thought or a wrong move while taking the curve would have been enough to send the cab into a spinning waltz.

The two women did not notice.

Their sensation was much more brutal than what is felt by little girls crazy about their female teachers, or by female teachers dazed by their own feelings for their frenzied pupils.

Every emotion has a primal state, the seat of instinct. Laughter had thrown them back into this primal state, whence they could continue, arm in arm and led by instinct, down another path. Instincts work the same way in everyone. But primal states, to which everyone always returns, are not the same and may not even resemble one another. In some people, the primal state lives on as a single experience that the person remembers only vaguely or would prefer to forget. Others forget so successfully that a vacuum is created where the experience had been; and the only reason to be aware of ­deliberate forgetting is that one cannot fill the vacuum with any old thing, for then it becomes a burning lack that can no longer be named. In yet ­others, the primal state means a chain of rippling and interwoven experiences that cannot be untangled, and whether a person remembers which sensation produced which subsequent sensation, the primal state reveals itself according to the person’s instinctual needs.

 Showing one of its pulsating and throbbing countenances—now this one, now that one.

Lady Erna, from the distance of several decades, looked back to the sole experience she cherished above all others as a sacrament. Gyöngyvér might have looked in several directions but did not want to see her experiences, neither yesterday’s nor yesteryear’s.

Ágost had made love to her yesterday, this filled the place of everything.

Instinct cannot be steered.

Once it stirs in its reeking den, nothing can keep it from flashing into view some few unavoidable images from a primal experience, even if it does not show the entire storehouse. One of Gyöngyvér’s primal experiences was that she had no one in the world and therefore felt as though she herself did not exist either. Or the very opposite of this: She did have somebody somewhere in the world, and the moment she could find this somebody would mark the beginning of her existence. Until then, pitying, cruel, caring, and indifferent girls and women would keep passing her on from hand to hand because they didn’t know what to do with her. She does not even have to look at them; one is just like the other. They are different in everything but similar in that none of them is the woman she belongs to.

Who does not exist.

The stream of others never dried out, however; they kept coming, replacing one another as though there was a magic source somewhere from which women sprang. She had had enough of women.

She’d preferred to look for a man who would supplant the only woman she had been looking for, who would fill the empty space.

Although she had spent her life looking, she never found what she was looking for, or rather, she always almost found it, and it was always a man.

Only one young woman had seized Lady Erna’s attentions, one very special creature, in whom once, and only once, she had had a clear glimpse of herself. In her mind, she always returned to the same one and only young woman whom she had not seen for many decades, though she knew she was still alive, and whom she did not truly wish to see in the flesh since she could always see her in other women.

In the half-light of the storm, in the taxi saturated with their perfumes and the acrid smell of tobacco, each stared coldly at the other’s strange face. As if the head of the young woman had been cast of bronze. Lady Erna had no use for a living person. But Gyöngyvér could see a double face in place of the single one. One of them wore face powder hastily applied, unevenly painted lipstick, and fatty beads of mascara as superfluous and clumsy armor.

No traces of their little laugh together remained on these faces.

Mother and son looked at her simultaneously, and if the son belonged to her, then she belonged to the mother.

This was terrible. This was no laughing matter. Once again, both ­ women’s lips trembled with emotions. Which could not be strained any further. What is this, fumed Lady Erna to herself, in place of her own infuriated mother. And she fumed for Gyöngyvér, too, because she had to be a mother to the younger woman. If the taxi hadn’t swerved a second time, in their embarrassment they probably would have leaned back on the seat and continued their chatter in an entirely different direction; it had strayed into dangerous territories and times.

The cabbie swore quietly to himself; the women heard only his muffled grumbling, not the innocent curse.

The swerve made them fall on each other, and they couldn’t have said whether it was by accident or whether their instincts, quickly and almost shamelessly, took advantage of the moment. And once in this situation, they would have liked to touch each other’s faces with their lips, lightly and fleetingly, to put an end, as it were, to the painful comedy that could not have been avoided. But this, too, turned out differently because of the taxi’s slipping and swerving. Lady Erna’s soft, lipstick-covered lips did encounter Gyöngyvér’s firm, perhaps too firm, dry lips—not directly, but as if the edge of one mouth enclosed the corner of the other. And each of them felt the other was the initiator, and deliberately so. That was horrible. Before one mouth could slip over the other completely, they both recoiled and ­restrained themselves. The swerve, the inevitable pleasure, the jostling, their fitful protestations, the entire turmoil was enough for Gyöngyvér’s hard ­little forehead to push Lady Erna’s wide-brimmed hat off her head.

Gyöngyvér reached for it carelessly. She did not catch it but managed to knock the silver box out of Lady Erna’s hand. Both women squealed, one after the other; and the large black hat adorned with a shiny cluster of ribbons landed gracefully on the front seat next to the cabbie, while the silver box snapped open and the blindingly white pills scattered on the ribbed rubber floor mat.

Relieved and squealing, they laughed simultaneously. The cabbie, steadying his vehicle, was unable to help them. They fell silent in almost the same instant.

They were both gripped by the fright they had caused each other.

The residual sensation of the other’s lips clung to their own like a painful mark that brands rather than rewards. But it was not so easy to dismiss the whole thing. To arrive at the bedside of a dying man with one’s loins swelling with blood, squealing and laughing, as they were doing now, was a bit much. Sane persons do not behave like this; they expect better of themselves. In their confusion they froze for a few moments, the silence turning icy between them.

At the same time, she was suckling a baby on an un-upholstered Dutch chair.

Gyöngyvér moved first; bending down, she began to collect the pills from the rubber mat.

Oh, I’m so ashamed, she said, switching back to her plaintive tone, I’m so sorry. Don’t be angry with me, I always wind up making trouble.

Come, come, never mind, replied Lady Erna, and she too bent down to look for the etui, which had disappeared under the front seat.

Oh, leave it, let me, I’m so sorry.

Oh, come on, you silly little thing.

I’ll pick them up.

To do the job, Gyöngyvér had to remove her gloves. The little white pills were stuck between the ribs of the rubber mat. She took off the gloves but felt as if she had indecently bared herself in front of the wrong person.

She did not understand why she would feel this way about the mother.

And then, like a huge splash, the mass and loud noise of the wave fills the entire cavity in the rocks. For a second, between the uprights of the railing of the bridge, she can see the churning, windblown water below.

Would you mind giving me back my hat, said Lady Erna to the cabbie.

Right away, just give me a moment, please, replied the cabbie coolly
and readily.

The young men, glittering with perspiration, interrupting their even, and until now most powerful strokes, suddenly drew in their oars with a single decisive movement. She could not take her eyes off them. All she could think of was that they too were capable of it, and might have even done it during the night. She saw, and she wanted to shout to them, that in the next instant they’d be smashed against the rock. This sight appeared to be closer than the nape of Gyöngyvér’s neck; she was still looking for the pills on the taxi floor. With a loud report, the waves slapped against the side of the boat. It was a light, narrow boat, but much heavier than the dinghies used on the Tisza.

Signora, heads down, mind the hats, Signore, your head, down, the young men shouted in their bright voices, in the early sunny hours, as they were tossed by the murmuring, gentle waves of the sweetly fragrant sea; then the boat slipped through the narrow, craggy opening of the cave.

They were in nocturnal darkness and silence. She could continue to moan to herself, as she had done all night long, often outdoing the crickets. Nothing separates the different worlds. There is no way to separate pain from pleasure.

She put on her gloves again, adjusting them on her hand and fingers as if that were the most important task in the world. She leaned forward a little, reached across the back of the front seat, but the driver still hadn’t returned her hat.

She had to press her knees close together to keep from feeling this rapid little slipping and sliding across the seat as the powerful, rhythmic slippings of the previous night. Her vagina was still sore. Just as it was back then, years later, when with her knees apart she sat on the hard Dutch chair suckling the baby, and the weak wintry light glimmered through the long, tall row of square-grid windows. Barely penetrating the fog and clouds. But under the gaze of the other woman she did press her knees together. To the demanding sound of the little mouth’s sucking, her womb contracted. She had plenty of milk though. She had to press her bottom to the seat to lessen the pain when her womb’s opening convulsed; she could not help emitting tiny hissing sounds. Which she found pleasurable. The soft, glowing countenance of the other woman pampered, all but caressed her. The other woman knew well what caused those little hissing sounds. Wanted confirmation of her impression. When their eyes met, she knew the woman’s body was hungry. In the meantime, the opening of her womb repeatedly contracted and relaxed, and she couldn’t have said, not even to herself, what she was hoping for and what she wanted to devour.

A sober, bright morning; the baby is working on her swollen breast. Does she hope that the turgid body of the cock and the large mass of its head, taut to the point of explosion, will still reach the mouth of her womb; or that this senseless and humiliating pain will dissolve in the enormously grotesque mouth of this woman, and that her parts will never be pried open again.

The first time they journeyed to the island of Capri was in the first year of their marriage, in the spring of 1924.

They stayed in the Villa Filomena, in Anacapri, the quieter, less expensive side of the island. The villa, with its antique columns and ornate terraces built on the edge of cliffs, hovered about a hundred meters above the sea. That morning, they went down to the water on the narrow, ominously steep steps cut into the rocks. There was no end to them. She said not a word of complaint about the steps, though her knees were trembling, albeit not only from fear. The small boat with the men floated below them like a blown dry bay leaf fallen onto the back of the waves. She held on, moved step by step; the depths attracted her irresistibly, as though another being were breathing inside her, one she ought to fear because it was ready to fall and take her with it. A gentle breeze flattened her light blue silk dress against her skin.

This provided pleasure enough to stifle the complaints.

Down below, the small boat rose, dipped gracefully, and on the shady rocks the waves kept roaring and rumbling, the water foamed white.

The woman who years later in the wintry light glimmering through the thick northerly fog watched the suckling was Geerte von Groot, daughter of the hotelier in Groningen. A peculiar creature, to whom she could not help returning in her mind because she never saw her again. Geerte was a few years older, herself a mother of two. After a few years of marriage, for reasons they would not talk about for a long time, she and her little ones moved back to her parents’ home. In a tall, narrow, Gothic house in Groningen, maybe the wallpaper changes, but otherwise everything stays the same for centuries. Geerte von Groot lived in the mansard apartment of the house adjacent to the hotel, in the same little room where she had lived as a little girl.

A connection between the apartment house and the hotel was made by tearing down the wall between the two on the second floor.

The baby slowly had its fill and grew tired. It stopped sucking, only kept munching on her breast, at times on empty air, though its little lips retained enough power to not let go of the nipple completely. The small body sank into sleep, relaxed; there was a moment when it could be seen struggling against sleep. As if the approaching slumber were taking the milk away from it and it would get no more. What sleep had to offer instead had no taste, was unfamiliar and therefore was rejected. It would not satisfy the baby. The little face twisted in pain, the legs kicked a little. It almost cried out. Then it added two quick smacking sucks, and all its tense efforts seemed to exhaust it completely.

Well then, let sleep have its way. The baby’s open little mouth remained as it was, a bit of milk dripping from its corner.

The mother used a damp rag to wipe off first the baby’s mouth and then her breast. Geerte von Groot sat opposite her on an identical hard-backed chair.

This wasn’t a hotel room but a veritable hall of knights with a row of tall square-grid windows that now stared into fog. Neither the bare crowns of trees in the palace garden on the other side of the small river nor, through the other row of windows, the red facades of houses on the old city’s narrow streets could be seen. The sun twinkled through the fog, wearily, with a silver sheen. In the hall, it was cool and dead silent. The fire in the fireplace barely flickered, crackling and fizzling now and then.

Without a word Geerte took the baby from her and carried her into the adjacent bedroom.

She should be burped.

I’ll lay her on her stomach.

And cover her well.

Their words died away as if vanishing in cotton. The old floor creaked, almost cried, under Geerte’s steps, which echoed in the high-ceilinged hall under the blackened beams. She should get up. This has been nothing but a kind of extra suckling. She should have left long ago. But she didn’t have the heart because the baby cried so hard. The suckling had so loosened her body she was unable to rouse her sense of responsibility ­toward her own child. When Geerte returned after a few minutes, she found her in the same position. Including one breast hastily freed from her beige silk blouse: blazon of the ample body. She wore a long, close-fitting, dark, heavy silk skirt that opened into two wide inverted pleats above the knees. With her hands in her lap, she was sitting rather like an old person. Her heavy, dense, chestnut hair, gathered in a chignon at the neck, had come somewhat undone.

Geerte lowered herself on her own chair, for only a minute, she thought, and scooted a bit closer; their knees almost touched. They were looking at each other, smiling imperceptibly. Their smiles softened the glances with which they grazed each other’s surfaces; they kept returning to each other’s eyes, spending more and more time, one might say lingering more and more impersonally, in them.

I’d like to ask you something, Geerte, something rather personal.

Go ahead, ask away, Erna, anything, replied the other woman quietly.

If it’s too embarrassing, you don’t have to answer it, Geerte, that would be perfectly understandable.

For a long time now, I’ve had the feeling that I have no great secrets from you, Erna. You can hardly have any questions I wouldn’t willingly answer.

I’ve been meaning to ask you for days, how long after the second birth, or after the first one, after giving birth in general, when did you give yourself to your husband.

Never.

There was silence for a while.

What this means, continued the other woman, is that never after the second birth, never again.

Erna had not expected such a quick and unequivocal reply. And she thought, no, it’s not possible that this would be the end of her life. And that happiness would last such a short time. Geerte’s answer hit her as a well-aimed coup de grâce. And gone, too, was the confidence she had had in Geerte. Never again, that just wasn’t possible.

She looked at the strange woman with aversion and pity. One simply cannot be done with life at the age of twenty-eight. Involuntarily, the next round of their glances set off in opposite directions. They had to avoid each other. As if to obey the dictates of decency.

But maybe it is like that, after all, only no one ever told her; it seems that it’s indeed that way, in which case there’s no point in doubting or protesting. She must accept it.

Geerte had on a light gray-and-white-striped housedress with a high collar. She had the air of a schoolgirl who had been deliberately dressed in uninteresting clothes and who herself had done nothing to make herself interesting.

Yet she was very interesting.

She showed no penchant for joking or lightheartedness; if she says this is the way it is, then this is the way it is. She kept her legs, in their coarse cotton stockings, pressed tightly together as if she had been ordered to behave decently.

Just as she said.

Her statement created such a tense silence that she was the one who had to break it.

But don’t go outside like that, Erna, one shouldn’t go out on the street like that, she said, her voice hoarse, and she pointed to Erna’s blouse to show where the milk had soaked through.

She had to change clothes anyway.

As though she had shouted, stay with me for a while, my love. Take no offense, no matter what I say. Each with her own strong accent spoke a kind of schoolroom German. Erna with her open vowels, Geerte with the consonants rolling from her throat. Nevertheless, Erna’s impression now was that she had misunderstood something; perhaps the other woman had said something the wrong way in the language that was foreign to them both. As though she understood a sentence that had not been uttered or that had been said but had a very different meaning.

Thanks for telling me, she responded, a little embarrassed, I’ve noticed it myself. My bras, slips, my blouses, everything is full of milk all the time, she added, laughing a little and a little irritated, and she took a deep breath. But if you don’t mind, I’m still interested, could you possibly tell me why you never let him come to you again. Please don’t be angry for asking such a thing, you probably understand I’m asking this for my own sake.

Which sounded like an unnecessary confession.

As if assuming Geerte hadn’t understood why she asked.

She simply wanted to compel the other woman to continue, to speak, to tell her everything. Not to let modesty hold her back. She felt she was entering unknown territory, violating all the rules of propriety. And that was exactly what she wanted. It helped that she was speaking a foreign language; that way she could go much further than in her own. And Geerte was turning her head this way and that, as if showing her willingness to speak; ­after all, her openness also had its selfish side. But she was still thinking; she opened her mouth as if in the next instant she’d find the right word, but then she merely nodded to what she thought to herself.

She was struggling.

She did not dare or could not say it.

Erna found so much seriousness rather comical, even though she understood the hesitation.

She struggled stubbornly with herself; she did not want to be false or ­vulnerable. She lowered her heavy eyelids, her large lips trembled several times. She was thinking, weighing things; and it was beautiful how she let it be seen that she had to reach back into the past for the answer. With her thoughts, she obviously grazed herself several times—while she was thinking, contemplating, and while Erna, in pleasurable anticipation, waited for her response. On every occasion, no matter what they talked about, Erna was moved to the depths of her soul by the seriousness and openness of this exceptionally structured white face. Absentmindedly, she continued unbuttoning her blouse to free her other breast, too, from which milk was visibly seeping. Under her blouse, she wore not a bra but a tight white camisole. Earlier, to free one breast quickly and pacify the baby, she had undone only its upper buttons.

When she was done with the blouse, she had to continue with the buttons.

I’d like to, I’d really like to tell you. Still, I’m not sure I can, said Geerte after a short while, drawing out her words, and as she spoke, her eyes absently focused on Erna’s ringed, nervously busy fingers as they looked for the tiny buttons sewn closely one below the other. The camisole was so tight that the base of each button, sewn with strong thread, stretched every buttonhole to the limit. The impression was that at any moment the strong and ample body would split the fine material and pop all the buttons. It’s also difficult to talk about something like this because I don’t know, I’ve no way of knowing, how you feel about it, Erna. Or anybody else. I believe people don’t talk much about this sort of thing. They think it’s such a simple matter it’s not worth talking about. And perhaps they’re right. I don’t know. A woman gets pregnant, gives birth, and that’s that. That’s the end of it. And then she suckles the baby. But it was never like this for me; for me it was never that simple, and that’s the reason I could never talk about it to anybody.

Not even to my mother, least of all to her.

My mother is the kind of woman, you can believe me, Erna, who gives everything, and I mean everything to her only son, and denies everything to her daughters.

If she could do it, she’d take the food out of my mouth.

To my mother, I couldn’t either, interrupted Erna vehemently, not a word, never. Imagine, my mother didn’t even tell me, listen my little girl, there will come a time when you’ll bleed.

The deep resentment she had felt for her mother subsided as rapidly as it had awakened. Her vehemence had more to do with how much she understood Geerte, how closely she followed what she was saying about this difficult, painful matter. Not only did she want to identify with her, she was identical to her. No, this is indeed not simple, she added, a little confused. And quickly stopped talking because she did not want to catch herself in a lie.

She fell silent because until now she too had thought that it was all very simple. More precisely, she did not understand why it wasn’t as simple as it should be.

One feels, at least I always felt, that I could not be away from my child anymore, Geerte continued. And I shouldn’t put the blame just on my husband. The relationship between two people is difficult enough; how much more complicated is the relationship between three or four. Though I must say, he behaved badly, what I’m saying is that he became rough already after the first one. He’d been rough before, but maybe I hadn’t noticed earlier what kind of man he was.

The feeling that even when we were alone together, I wasn’t there by myself, as he was, that is what he wanted to extinguish in me. As if he wanted us to be just the two of us again.

I’ve been ashamed ever since, or rather I’m ashamed for him. But the point is that one can’t break free of one’s child, not even for a moment, because one is not a separate body. Or maybe one can’t break away from oneself, and the whole thing is nothing but terrible, animal selfishness. That you can’t give of yourself, or what you can give only your child deserves.

Perhaps one shouldn’t say it, but maybe I’m not a good enough mother, said Erna quietly after a little while, because I don’t feel anything like this.

She does not.

Believe me, I do not. And my husband is not rough with me, he is patient, considerate, cautious, and likes to show his happiness. He strokes me, calls me pet names and wants to pamper me. I feel and I know he isn’t thinking only about himself when he wants us to be together again, just the two of us. Sometimes he’s quite touching. Once, we even cried together.

They were both silent for a long time before Erna could speak again.

But that’s not it, no.

It must be something else then.

Something else.

I don’t know.

It’s as if we have been split, broken up, for I don’t know how long, as if we’ve been hacked apart. And then how could I wish him to come inside me again the way he used to long ago. No, I couldn’t. I’d rather never do it again, ever. I am not whole. Well, at first, one thinks it’s because of the torn perineum. When I gave birth to the little girl maybe it did not
tear as much as it did with the boy, or maybe it healed faster. Or I just don’t know, really, that’s why I’m asking you because I really don’t know what’s happening, and I am beginning to be afraid. And to be honest, what sort of thing is this breast-feeding. Don’t be angry that I’m talking about things like this. Now, with the little boy, it didn’t hurt as much, or maybe I knew what to expect and that’s why it didn’t. But since then my whole body has been a wreck, my whole system, my everything, and no matter what I do, it does not pass. Everything. Maybe I’m just impatient, but I don’t know, compared to what should I be more patient—with him, or with myself, or with whom.

And you can see, I am literally flowing away, in all directions. All right, eventually that will stop, but sometimes it disgusts me so much. Is this what I have to put up with, every time.

While I feed the baby from one, she said, laughing a little and raising her breast, I’m dripping from the other. And there are other things one doesn’t talk about. The other things one must endure in the meantime.

Yes, I’m a wreck, I’m devastated, all the time. And I don’t want to feel that it’s good to be like this. Yet it’s good to be this way, good, very good, this agitation, she cried out.

She had to get hold of herself.

Haven’t you felt, and this is what I want to ask, as if you’d been thrust out of your own body, that you can’t find your way back to the old one because in the meantime everything has changed. That’s what frightens me, that’s what I’m dreading; where have I got to, where is the me I was before.

Or who am I.

That’s what I want to ask; is that what you feel.

No, I never felt anything like that, answered Geerte dryly. Everybody must feel it differently.

You probably never got as fat as I have.

No, I didn’t get fat at all. I was surprised by that myself, that I could breast-feed all right from these small breasts and that my child was very satisfied.

Because you’re a good mother. And not unlucky with your body the way I am.

Geerte did not reply, because she thought this sentence was offensive and unjustified. How can somebody so rich and beautiful be unlucky. It was hard for her to take her eyes off the other’s body because she could not get enough of it. With a single movement of her wrist, she indicated that she was ready to take the blouse and camisole from Erna and have them washed.

She may have been saved; she could leave now.

For that to happen, Erna would first have to stand up, because while sitting she could not pull the blouse or camisole out from the waistband of her tight skirt. She knew she was pretending to get up to do just that, but that was not the reason. In her excitement, her knees were trembling a little and, although she knew perfectly well what this excitement was all about, she could not believe it.

As if she had but one impersonal passion, and what was happening now was only another, hitherto unknown variety of the same passion.

Had she not been talking to this woman about how, in the absence of physical excitement, she could not give herself to her husband, how she did not even feel the urge to expose herself, how she did not understand why she didn’t; yet now, in its other variation, the urge alarmingly and powerfully made its appearance. It was shaking her knees, and it was impossible to tell whether it was joy or fear. Geerte stood up, too, as if to follow Erna in ­everything, so as not to make her late for brunch at the university, which every month was an important event in the small town’s social life; at least that’s what she thought of her own helpful effort, as she sought, even more desperately than Erna did, to conceal her real intentions. A faint smile ­appeared on her heavy lips and began to spread, as if to signal the opposite of her thought.

Contempt.

Or something she disliked in Erna’s behavior.

She is rejecting her.

Perhaps the awkward trembling that Erna feels in her body and that is now visible.

What do I care whether it’s visible or not, Erna said to herself; she was definitely angry at Geerte von Groot, now ready to take her leave with that contemptuous smile of hers.

Well, in the end you haven’t told me anything, Geerte. You’re giving me only empty words. You’ve evaded all my questions, she said, and she openly laughed at Geerte.

The laughter was indecent and alluring, because with her lips she broke through her own bashful trembling, even though the lips kept quivering.

Geerte had a good mind to slap her.

Teeth flashing wetly in the mouth are precursors of a bite. She handed over her blouse, and then quickly slipped out of the camisole, too.

I did the talking, she said, I always talk too much, and now here I stand before you, completely ignorant and defenseless.

But with this reckless little coquetry she was unable to shake the other woman’s seriousness.

Geerte von Groot took the blouse from her and then the camisole, carefully folded one into the other, lifted the mildly starched batiste and the slippery silk and attentively, slowly, buried her peculiar, flat nose in them as if to seek Erna’s fragrance. Or to kiss the wet spots left by the seeping milk. In the intermingled odors, it was the milk’s fatty bouquet she could not resist.

Not only was it clear what she was looking for but also what boundaries they had crossed.

What are you doing, Geerte, for God’s sake, moaned Erna reproachfully, beseechingly, her modesty deeply insulted; what are you doing, please don’t, yet her entire body, with shuddering waves of hot and cold, showed its approval.

Indignation, beseeching, and reproach emanated from the same pleasure.

In truth she had fallen into another world, and measured against the enormity of this event, the signs she gave of how she was shrieking inside, while everything was ripping, creaking, and breaking up around her, were far too faint. Feeble groans and whimpers came from her. As a saw when stuck in knotty wood. She wanted to flee, to protest that what had to happen should not happen, and quite involuntarily her hands flew in front of her breasts.

From the garments raised to her lips, Geerte looked up at her, actually rather surprised. She seemed paler than usual. The curls of her unruly hair were aflame around her gleaming white forehead. Her face turned coarse, grew demanding, aggressive, and somber. When she raised her head and began to speak, forcing out the words, evil appeared in her features: hate, raw terror, a profound desire for revenge. Erna should have turned away. She should have run for her life.

I’d so much like to help you, I can’t tell you, she moaned. I want so much not to hurt you, not in any way.

But I don’t have anything besides my body, nothing, believe me. In what way could I help. I also know so little, nothing really.

And then, in her own language, she screamed.

Oh nothing, nothing.

The scream, somehow, remained very controlled.

Her face was no longer suffused with the quiet intimacy of a Dutch painting.

Silence reigned between them.

She saw that this woman was really a criminal. As if the tenderness and kindness she had forced on her had another, hitherto unknown side. This woman is capable of anything. Nevertheless, her desperate scream became stifled in the absolute silence of the house.

She saw the horrors of the Thirty Years War on her features. To restrain her, to frighten her away, or to keep her from coming close to her, to steer all events in a different direction, she should have dressed very quickly. Too late, and she knew it. Horses were trotting with her under the elm trees of Jászhanta. Everything is plotted, written in advance. Nothing you can do about it. And none of her things were at hand. She felt cold, her arms and shoulders had goose bumps, her nipples twitched, and she trembled more and more violently.

Why haven’t I noticed how hungry she was. And I’m so starved for her.

No, there was nothing close by she could throw on herself. She was standing in a large cool space; no help anywhere.

There was no God to whom she could pray. The only little help came, at least for a brief moment, from the ability to see herself from the outside, as she stood, caught in a truly absurd situation, in this strange, cool, and austerely furnished hall.

And suddenly she hears the baby cooing quietly and contentedly in the adjacent room.

The only object within reach was a wet cloth, lying on a plain silver tray at the edge of a small table. She bent down for it. To use this movement, for lack of anything else, to cover herself. Immediately the hope that she still had a chance to leave this scene gave her some strength. As if an invisible tentacle were reaching over from the adjacent room, a secret power, the binding umbilical cord; then what Geerte had claimed and what Erna had never felt before was true after all.

Her baby was indeed binding her to itself and would hold her back.

I think, she said moaning and stammering and feeling a little stronger, I think it would be best if first I pumped this breast, it’s so full. But she could already tell by her own voice she was no longer master of herself or of anything else; neither did the cooing bind her. Her baby could not hold her back.

And if this was so, if she was going to betray everything and everyone, then she had better not see what she was doing; she closed her eyes.

But she would not give up, could not accept that there was no way back. When she spoke again, the voice coming from her throat was unpleasant, meant to be used with a disobedient servant.

Geerte, would you mind bringing the pump from the other room.

Their hands met on the wet cloth, and the silver tray rattled slightly with this sudden touch.

Geerte had meant to put the folded garments there because she wanted to free her arms and hands as quickly as she could.

She clasped her arms around Erna’s hips, though she did not immediately draw her close. Her swollen lips, which seemed so strange and out of place in the white face, were quivering.

Please, let me go, said Erna, gasping feebly.

Her protest would not have been laughable if a man was forcing himself on her. But this was a woman, which made her feel she had no place to run to, no way to escape. Seeing Geerte’s approaching lips, she quickly turned her head aside lest the lips reach her mouth.

As if saying to herself, this won’t do. Which meant that anything was possible.

Something was really breaking through and opening up.

She was standing in such a small space she had no room to back away. The baby was cooing and perhaps not entirely innocently. She tensed with ­elemental resistance, but the moment Geerte’s lips touched the skin below her cheekbone, her body went limp. There was no external sign of ­protest. But it wasn’t the contact of the lips that loosened her—it only turned the feverish shudder into shivering heat and back again—but, ­rather, feeling each other’s pubic bone strain and pulse through the fabric of their clothes.

But it could not have disturbed what one might call inner sensation or sober thinking.

She thought she saw more clearly than ever.

From a distance, she heard the baby cooing, the dim thuds of horses’ hooves on the tree-lined path, her carriage flying between patches of light and shadow. One protuberance registered the throbbing other as if they were inside one identical rhythm; that was why each felt the other’s body pulsing through their clothes. The earth in Jászhanta is dark, heavy sand that becomes clumpy in the spring rains and condenses in the summer heat. Luckily, I haven’t lost my mind yet, she thought to herself. She found some comfort in her alertness. Perhaps it was Geerte’s heartbeat, or her own, that she heard as thudding hoofbeats on the sand.

For the first time they felt each other in a way that was inseparable from their feelings for each other. As though she was observing from afar and would not dare experience her own findings, while the other person could no longer see out of herself. That was the difference between them. Or as though it wasn’t she who was feeling the other woman inside her but her husband, of whom she was constantly and not baselessly jealous. As if in contact with the other woman’s pubic bone she’d have to feel her own, yet as if not she but a man was thrusting against her.

At last she has the chance to feel what her husband feels, this man, these men, and to experience her own desires in their stead.

In her fear, she called him by his name, István, as if summoning him, the only one, asking for his help. She exchanged herself for the only man whom she had come to know through her body and to whose two children she had given birth. Which immediately reassured her that she loved him.

I love him, I love him, he’s the one I love, no matter what happens. In reality, it wasn’t the woman she loved, the one she was now clasping more tightly than the woman was hugging her back. This will turn into a mere episode in her life, she need not take it seriously. And yet she had embraced the woman without noticing, so even though she must be thinking straight, she might not be aware of her intentions.

And that meant there was another self inside her.

Geerte was the stronger, or her feelings guided her more profoundly and confidently. It was almost coarse and very common. The two pubic bones thrusting against each other did not come to satisfactory terms. Erna was not certain whether she could want anything this other woman would not want from her. Her search for excuses and her doubts completely occupied her, though this did not decrease her pleasure.

At most, she enjoyed the other woman more slyly, enjoyed the way the other woman took pleasure in her.

Geerte had a definite goal.

A fantastic image hovered before her and she was determined to follow it. As if she were trying to force living matter into an ephemeral vision.

Erna pressed her body against Geerte’s, but Geerte thrust back as if to oppose her.

Erna felt clearly that Geerte wanted something. And this aroused a clear image that quickly washed away all other images. Even though the baby was still cooing evenly and by way of warning.

There was only this plump protuberance, with its pubic hair, as they rolled under each other. Only a kiss was missing to make it all possible; the contact of lips, the full taste and sensation of hollows opening into each other; and it was this lack, all that was missing, that now appeared to her as an image. Precisely what a moment earlier she had denied herself.

No, she shouldn’t deny anything. To open up, like two slow-turning, rippling, muscular snails sticking to each other.

She had long imagined Geerte’s pubic hair as a fiery red. If she rolled down, their labia would open and nestle against one another. Her imagination mixed, mingled, and blurred the horizontal with the vertical, lips, kisses, and labia. She saw how Geerte’s opened up at her touch and how her own opened into the welcoming hollow.

But she could neither move nor roll anywhere because Geerte’s lips took aim at her tense, resistant neck—a snail, clinging, leaving a shiny film on tree trunks in the dim park—and simultaneously she shoved her back on the chair where she had just finished suckling her baby. The chair wobbled under the double weight, swinging a little on its back legs.

Geerte had a kind of grip on her, and she, for lack of anything to grasp and because of her fear, held on to Geerte, trying to keep them from falling.

She would have liked to laugh.

Then, in a flash, she saw Geerte’s frighteningly agitated face above her; her rounded lips, the darkening countenance, strands of her mad, reddish, scattered curly hair, and many other things ran across her mind. This is war, then, touched by the whirlwinds of horrible plague and conflagration. And now she will say something, now. And just as Erna wondered whether at moments like this every woman is repugnant, as repugnant as men are, the chair tipped over.

She fell, but not only on her back. The back of the chair hit the floor before her head did, which prevented a hard impact, and the two of them, arms around each other, were hurled from the chair. This happened more or less because of Geerte’s clever maneuvering. With their legs intertwined, they rolled onto the rug. The tipped-over chair remained where it was.

As if they had been running alongside each other for a long time, they panted together.

Did you hurt yourself, my dear, asked Geerte, fearing her clumsiness might have caused Erna pain; her face returned to its former state, her features cleared.

How laughable the whole thing was.

Last time she had been involved in such horseplay was when she was a little girl, and always with boys. Arms around each other, they were lying lazily on the cool floor. And how pretty she is. As though this were happening to strangers whose warmth she could feel.

No, I’m not hurt, she replied, as if breathing words into the other ­woman’s breath. But you were about to tell me something, Geerte.

I’ll die, she shouted, keeping her voice down, I’ll die if you don’t tell me.

Geerte, in surprise, held her breath.

How could she possibly know I wanted to tell her something.

And then, along with the next sentence, hoarse with pain and shame, she spat the words out.

I wanted to say I’m hungry, I wanted to say I’m starved, Erna.

I’m thirsty, and I absolutely don’t feel like bringing you your stupid pump from the next room.

That’s what I wanted to tell you.

Silently and perhaps involuntarily they both laughed, which had the ­effect of a sobering wink, indicating how well they understood each other.

Erna freed herself from the embrace and slowly sat up, but neither of them let go of the other’s eyes.

Geerte, not to be alone, not to be left desperately to herself, suddenly reached after her.

She has finally understood; and this filled Erna with great serenity.

She felt enormous, powerful; with her blue-veined, swollen breasts, she ruled over and could have fed all humanity, but she no longer had any weight. They made barely perceptible movements. Even if in their own minds they were addressing themselves to each other, from this moment on they spoke each to herself, and about strange things that had no connection and very little to do with the situation. Erna said to herself, I must check the dates, the years. She had a great urge to grab her coat, go to the library and look up the years, and she felt it so naturally that Geerte sat up, startled, sensing something of Erna’s strangeness.

However, she was wrong in assuming she was being rudely rejected.

Simultaneously they let go of each other’s gazes and hands.

And as they came off the bridge onto muddy Margit Boulevard, the convex basalt cobblestones began to rattle and toss the heavy taxi, whose springs were too stiff to absorb the shocks. I’ll give it to you in a minute, be patient, please, said the cabbie, raising his voice against the noise, almost shouting. Just let me get through this damn section here.

Above Geerte’s huge, meaty, heavily ribbed lips, a sharp-edged vertical scar disappeared into the cavity of her wide-winged flat nose. She had come into the world with a cleft lip. At the time she was born, during the last years of the nineteenth century, this condition was far from harmless. A cleft-lipped baby cannot suckle because the lobes of its face have failed to join. Moreover, a baby with a cleft lip cannot be operated on immediately, it must first gain strength. But feeding it artificially, not suckling it, was not a simple matter in those days; babies easily got infections from the utensils used to feed them. Geerte was three weeks old when she was finally operated on. They carefully sliced away the edges of the severely inflamed and suppurating cleft and sewed it together with three stitches. Her mouth was indeed a surgical masterpiece, but her flesh lacked the usual tripartite division on the rim of the upper lip. Even now, her lips did not close completely, making them especially round looking—at once fascinating and repulsive, as are all injuries that affect the body’s wholeness or hint at any threat to it.

It seems, Lady Erna thought, fate always brings me together with these thick-mouthed ones.

The dying man also had huge lips.

The road ahead was clear all the way to Török Street. Piles of stones and sand towered on either side, pipes and cables were strewn everywhere. The wind whistled, boomed, at moments screamed down at them as it swept off the roofs and around the chimneys; the windshield wipers creaked, now smearing, now wiping away splashing dirt.

The roadway had been dug up, revealing a long, winding wound; supposedly the city had been replacing gas pipes for weeks, but nobody was working at the bottom of the soaked ditches now, and the spring hurricane had toppled all of the safety barriers and their paraffin lamps.

And while with her fingers she grasped and then raised a little the swollen nipple of her left breast, she saw that milk was indeed seeping from it, as driving between the gaping ditch and the curb at the first great turn of the Margit Boulevard, the cabbie grasped the steering wheel with his left hand and reached across the front seat to pick up Lady Erna’s beribboned hat from the ribbed rubber mat, where it had fallen.

Geerte at the same time lowered her eyes but not completely, and from then on the two memories ran side by side.

Sometimes it’s best to separate tactile sensations from visual ones.

Nevertheless, Geerte does peek out from under her eyelids to see the nipple’s nodular, purple areola at a time when Erna entrusts her senses to its power of attraction. It never even occurred to her that she might deny herself this pleasure or that there might be any moral reason why she should. She’ll find me; let her lead. And Erna was admiring Geerte’s heavy, lazy eyelids, her auburn lashes whose roots were a transparent blonde. It seems that her face, like the seventeenth-century Dutch painting, has hidden features. That is the secret they have in common.

Perhaps no one has paid attention to this or analyzed it until now.

The Thirty Years War with all its horrors is concealed in her special sense of family and home, in her inimitable tenderness and all-embracing attention, and in her gentility. It is like a benevolent drapery; it hides those aspects of human nature that the uninitiated should never see again. Or like a wrinkle, she thought, a soot-covered groove, sign of a fiery inner ache.

The driver’s arm made a very strong impression on Lady Erna. The way he was safely navigating the car across impossible terrain with that backhanded grip on the steering wheel. She did not resist acknowledging the impression. The movement swept even Geerte’s lips out of her memory. Only the feeling coursing through her nervous system kept the recollection alive.

At this moment she failed to understand why she’d been attracted all her life more to the beauty of men. What Geerte’s lips had done to her and what she had done to Geerte was something no other sensual experience could even approach.

The reality of the memory touched the reality of the sight before her.

In a certain sense unfairly, since Geerte and the driver made contact in her consciousness without her gaining any moral insight. This was so beyond anything acceptable that fortunately she could find no words for it. Sometimes, such little things, at times little lapses of memory and short circuits, can make one free.

Should look up those years, to see if this is really so.

Geerte’s strong arms were again around her waist.

She was looking at this male head and she was looking at this memory of hers, observing the fleshy lips closing in on her nipple, tugging it away from her fingers. She released it, let her take it.

As if it were not pleasure but a noble deed to quench the thirst of these deformed lips. The gesture of nourishment acquired new meaning in this carnal pleasure. She sank the fingers of one hand into Geerte’s woolly red hair; she thrust the other hand, a little clumsily, as much as the stiff, striped cotton dress allowed and a little bashfully, between Geerte’s thighs. Still, for a little while she wanted to feel as if she felt nothing. She deflected her senses with thoughts, or rather, she seemed busy with something other than what she was experiencing directly.

What she was thinking about was the question of how the painting of a given era could deflect itself from the horrors of that era.

And that is why several minutes may have passed before she let out a loud moan.

She was thinking so hard about all this that she did not see the nape of Gyöngyvér’s neck, did not notice when she had gathered the pills and when she took her place again on the taxi seat. It was very painful to immerse herself in this old pleasure. She even berated herself for having torn herself away from Geerte. Though the years had passed the memory had not faded. She should have stayed there.

If not in Groningen then in Venlo, where they traveled together with the children. Then, maybe her little girl would still be alive. Why can’t one stay in the moment. Or know which moment to stay in and never move again until one dies.

—Translated from Hungarian by Imré Goldstein