Then she sensed that this was not what was soothing and lulling her, but the glance with which the Persian caressed her from time to time. It was a tender, warm, emotional glance, quite different from the cold blue gaze of a European eye. In the Persian’s glance there was animal warmth and reassurance. Soothing and lulling. Yes, this man loved women … but not merely as … he loved them not because he was a man, but because they were women, dear creatures, needing love. That was it: he loved them the way a true dog-fancier loves dogs. And perhaps that is the best love a woman can have.
In her half-trance she became aware that, under the table, the Persian was holding her hand in his and stroking it.
He did not betray himself by the slightest movement as he conversed politely with the hosts. Yet Erzsi still felt that everyone was posing, so outrageously that she almost expected them to stick out their tongues at her. And the Persian was just waiting, perhaps without any particular plan in his head, at that late hour of night …
“Does he think I am some unapproachable Persian woman? My God, we ought to go out for a stroll … but it’s raining.”
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. The peasant-woman brought in a thoroughly sodden youth, who was obviously known to the host couple. From what the lad had to say it transpired that János had reached the neighbouring village but had not found a suitable fan belt there. However he had sprained his leg, and thought it best to spend the night with the local doctor, who was a most kindly man. He asked if they would come and collect him, should they somehow manage to repair the car.
This news was received with dismay. Then they decided that if that was the way things stood, it would be better to go to bed, as it was already long past midnight. The lady of the house conducted them upstairs. When it had been tactfully established that Erzsi and the Persian were not together, each was assigned a separate room, and the hostess took her leave. Erzsi took her leave of the Persian and went into her room, where the old peasant-woman made up her bed, and bade her goodnight.
It was as if everything had been prepared in advance. Of this Erzsi no longer had any doubt. The little play being enacted in her honour was no doubt the brainchild of János: the problem with the car, the little château by the roadside, his accident, and now the final scene with the happy ending.
She looked round her room. She carefully locked the door, and then had to smile. There was another door in the room, and this had no key. She cautiously opened this second door. It revealed an unlit room. But in the far wall of the darkened room was another door, under which a strip of light appeared. She tip-toed over to it. Someone was walking about in the next room. She thought back to the arrangement of the rooms as they had gone along the corridor, and decided that the one behind the door was the Persian’s. He was certainly not going to lock his door. Through it he would make his way comfortably to her room. And this was quite natural, after the intimate way they had sat together down below, under the lamp. She returned to her room.
Her mirror showed her how deeply she was blushing. János had sold her to the Persian and the Persian had bought her, as he might a calf. He had made her a down payment in the form of the tabatière (which Sári had established was a great deal more valuable than you might think at first glance) — and János had certainly had his ‘pocket money’. She was filled with deep humiliation and anger. How she could have loved the Persian … but that he should treat her like a commodity! Oh how stupid men were! By this he had spoilt everything.
“Why do they all try to sell me? Mihály sold me to Zoltán — even his letter made it clear that there had been a deal — and now János sells me to the Persian, and, God knows, in time the Persian will sell me to some Greek or Armenian; and after that I’ll be sold again and again by men who don’t even view me as their own property.” She racked her brains to discover what there might be in her that made men do this. Or perhaps the fault lay not in her, but in the men she fell in with, Mihály and János, and the fact that both of them had loved Éva, a woman who was for sale, and were therefore unable to see her as any different?
A few minutes more and the Persian would come, and, in the most natural way in the world, would wish to complete the transaction. What nonsense! She must do something. Go to the lady of the house, and make a great scene, call for her protection? It would be ridiculous, since the people of the house were the Persian’s hired lackeys (Who could they be? They had played their parts very well. Perhaps they were actors, since he was now a film entrepreneur.) She walked up and down, at her wits’ end.
“Perhaps you’re quite mistaken. Perhaps the thought never entered his brain.”
It struck her that if the Persian didn’t come, that would be every bit as insulting as if he did.
If he came … Perhaps it wouldn’t be so insulting and humiliating. He knew perfectly well that Erzsi admired him. She herself had issued the invitation to come. He was not coming as to a slave-girl in his harem, but to a woman who loved him, and whom he loved, after carefully removing every obstacle in the way. Had she been sold? Indeed, she had. But properly speaking, the fact that men laid out vast sums for her need not really be so humiliating. On the contrary, it was very flattering, for people spend money only on the things they value … She began suddenly to undress.
She stood in front of the mirror, and for a few moments studied her shoulders and arms with satisfaction, as a sample of the whole item “for which men laid out vast sums of money”. The thought was now decidedly pleasurable. Well, was she worth it? If she was worth it to them …
Before this, under the lamp downstairs, she had longed for the Persian’s embraces. Not perhaps with the most single-minded passion: there was more curiosity in it, a yearning for the exotic. For she had not thought at the time that it might become reality. But now, such a short while later, she was going to feel, with her whole body, the volcanic glow she sensed in the Persian. How strange and fearful was the preparation and the waiting!
She was filled with trembling excitement. This would be the supreme night of her life. The goal, the great fulfilment, towards which her road had always led. Now, now at last she was putting behind her every petty-bourgeois convention, everything that was still Budapest in her, and somewhere in the depths of France, that night, in an ancient château, she would give herself to a man who had purchased her, would give herself to an exotic wild animal and lose forever her genteel character, like some Eastern whore in the Bible or the Thousand and One Nights. Always this same wish-image had lurked at the base of her fantasies, not least when she was deceiving Zoltán with Mihály … And her instinct had chosen correctly, for the road taken with Mihály had really led all along to this.
And now here was the man who would perhaps prove final. The real tiger. The exotic one. The man of passion. A few minutes, and she would know. A shiver went through her. Of cold? No, a shiver of fear.
Quickly she pulled her blouse back on. She stood at the door that opened on to the corridor, and pressed her hand against her heart, with the naïve, artless gesture she had so often seen in the cinema.
In her imagination she was confronting the great secret: formless, headless, terrifying, the secret of the East, the secret of men, the secret of love. With what appalling, tormenting, lacerating movements and actions would he approach her, this stranger, this man with the tiger-strangeness. And might he not annihilate her, as the gods once annihilated mortal women in their arms? What unspoken, mysterious horrors? …