“At that time we too lived in that weed-ridden, dusty street, obliquely opposite. Because of that I know what happened next. In actual fact, nothing happened for months, until early October. It was, I remember, a cool, clear autumn night. The full moon was so bright that one could have taken photographs or even shaved by it. It must have been almost eleven o’clock. I heard a scream followed by repeated shouts for help. Women were wailing, men shouting. Sleepers jumped out of bed. Everybody ran toward the Szücs house. By the time I got there all was quiet. Ropes and ladders lay in the yard, as did a long walnut-gathering pole. Somebody had lit a lantern. Around the well stood silent, shocked people — some bowing their heads and even kneeling — and in the middle of this dark group, dressed only in her nightgown, lay Zsuzsa, dripping wet, having been just pulled out of the well. The water had been shaken out of her and now she was just spluttering and shivering, her lips blue in the moonlight. The soaked nightgown clung to her youthful breasts. The poor girl had tried to drown herself, like Ophelia.
“She had jumped into the well. See, nature will out. It had been no good Zsuzsa’s going to the convent school, no good her knowing La Fontaine’s fable about the ant and the cricket in the original French, no good her practising a few of the simpler finger exercises from Köhler’s piano tutor; at the decisive crux in her life she had yielded to the murky instinct and grim traditions of her ancestors and had done what so many peasant girls and women had done over the centuries, women who had conceived of suicide only as taking death into their arms one night in the icy water of a well among moss-green bricks and toads.
“Her father was standing a little apart from the group, wringing his hands. This even he had understood. If a girl jumps into the well, she loves somebody. That was a clear, meaningful, plain statement. There could be no argument about it. Nor did he raise further objections. He immediately gave his consent to the marriage, opened his heart and — in wondrous fashion — his purse too. He gave his daughter as a dowry forty crisp thousand-korona notes. Pista led her to the altar before Christmas.
“Now then. After this incident the old man began to waste away; he shrank to a shadow of his former self. He suddenly went to pieces. People thought that he would kick the bucket. What’s that? No, you’re wrong. Of course he hadn’t gone mad because she’d jumped into the well. He wasn’t even very upset that Zsuzsa’d left him alone in his old age. It was the money that upset him, that heap of money, those forty thousand-korona notes out of which — he himself couldn’t understand how — he’d been diddled. That he never forgave.
“So he vanished from public view, was no more to be seen even on the wooden bench in the street. He huddled in his earth-floored room in boots and hat, stick in hand, like any peasant waiting for a train in the third-class waiting room. He jabbed at the floor with the tip of his stick and spat. By evening he had spat a whole nice little puddle. A man who spits is thinking. I grant you that Immanuel Kant didn’t do his thinking quite like that when he was writing the Critique of Pure Reason. But we all have our ways. With old Szücs, spitting always meant intense contemplation. He was contemplating his son-in-law, that good-for-nothing gold digger, who had so craftily trapped and robbed him.
“Pista, however, was not a gold digger. He would have married that girl without the forty thousand just the same, without a thing to her name, in the nightgown in which she’d jumped down the well. He loved little Zsuzsa, and grew to love her even more. I’ve never seen a husband so worship his wife. He didn’t swear a vow to himself or to her, but from that day on he was dead as far as the world of debauchery was concerned; he stopped drinking and playing cards. He was just tied to her apron strings. He hid her away in his bachelor flat, which is where they moved to, and didn’t rent anywhere else. They put their money in the bank. All they bought was a gig, in which they drove about. In the evening they strolled hand in hand in the deserted streets. If ever there was a love match, this was it.
“Even a love match, however, can have its other side. He that that brings love to a marriage is not much wiser than he that establishes a lovely, graceful leopard in his home to see to its tranquility. It’s quite unsuitable.
“They were always arguing. Pista was possessive toward his wife, and she toward him. She was even possessive toward his thoughts. They were both very young, little more than children. After the storms came the rainbows, and they would make up in tears. So they argued and kissed, like doves.
“After one reconciliation a couple of months went by, and they fell out again over some trifle. It was a morning in spring. Pista slammed the door behind him and rushed to the office. When he came home at midday the place was empty. The kitchen fire wasn’t burning. Nor had young Zsuzsa made lunch. He looked everywhere for her, even under the bed. He waited for her until three in the afternoon. Then he went to see his father-in-law.
“The old man, whom he’d met only once since the wedding — and even then they’d visited him — received him coldly. On this occasion too he didn’t shake hands, and he addressed him as maga.* What he heard didn’t surprise him. He merely shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, hemmed and hawed; his daughter hadn’t been there, goodness knows where she might be, he really didn’t know. Anyway, he wasn’t particularly interested.
“In the yard Pista looked into the well and then rushed home. He was hoping that by the time he arrived he’d find Zsuzsa there. But she wasn’t. Now he began to worry. Where could she be, where could she have got to? Zsuzsa had no close friends. She was still too shy to go into a restaurant alone. Pista searched the town, looking down every street and alley. As evening approached he — in despair — reported her disappearance to the police. The officer advised him to take another look at her father’s house.
“There was nothing else that he could do. First, however, he approached the house from behind, up the other street. There he saw a light in the window. Never in all his life had the old man lit the lamp — he begrudged the expense. So Zsuzsa must be hiding there. Pista tapped on the window. At that the lamp inside was blown out. It was she, it was she.
“He did not dare resort to force. He knew her. She was as obstinate as her father. She met force with greater force. He rang at the gate.* After a lengthy interval the old man opened it. Pista informed him that his wife was hiding there. The old man didn’t deny it, but neither did he confirm it. Pista resorted to pleas, begged him to soften his daughter’s heart, reconcile her to him, he would be grateful, promised him all sorts of things. The old man pondered. Then he spat out that it would cost him a cool five hundred koronas.
“Pista thought that it was all a joke — even laughed — but it was no joke. Next day too his father-in-law would not let him in, merely spoke briefly through the window, and when he saw that Pista had come empty-handed he shut it. Pista couldn’t get near Zsuzsa, nor did she accept his letters. So Pista didn’t get his wife back until he withdrew from the bank the five hundred korona and counted every one of them out into the old man’s hand.
“Thus he blackmailed Pista the first time. Then it happened twice more. The second time it was more expensive — fifteen thousand korona were extorted from him. The most serious, however, was the third occasion, which happened one Whitsun, in the second year of their marriage.