“For a long time?”
“Long enough. He—” again that extending “he”—“wanted to talk to me, to take a good look at me. To persuade me. But he didn’t say anything. There were a lot of books in the room. All those books! I had never seen so many books … He didn’t sit down, just leaned against the stove. He just looked and smoked. He carried on looking at me till it grew dark. Only then did he speak.”
“What did he say?” I asked. I could see them clearly, Lázár and Judit Áldozó, standing silently in the darkening room, struggling over my husband’s soul without saying anything, with “all those books!” around.
“Nothing. He simply asked how much land we owned.”
“And how much is that?”
“Eight acres.”
“Where?”
“In Zala.”
“And what did he say then?”
“He said, ‘That is little. Four people have to live off that.’ ”
“Yes,” I said quickly, confused. I’m not familiar with such things. But I understood enough to know that it was little.
“And then?”
“He rang the bell and said, ‘Judit Áldozó, you may go now.’ Nothing more. But by then I knew nothing would come of it.”
“Because he was against it?”
“He and the whole world. And that’s not the only reason. It was also because I didn’t want to. It was like a sickness,” she said, and slammed her fist on the table. I hardly recognized her. It was as if something in her had exploded. Her limbs jerked as if in an electric shock, as if a flood had hit her. Her words were quiet, but it was as if she were shouting. “The whole thing was like a sickness … I didn’t eat for a year, only tea. But don’t go thinking it was for him I starved,” she quickly added, and put her hand to her heart.
“What do you mean?” I asked, astounded. “What does it mean to starve for someone?”
“They used to do it in the village, a long time ago,” she said, and looked down as if it weren’t quite proper to betray the secrets of the tribe to a stranger. “One person remains silent and refuses to eat until the other does it.”
“Does what?”
“What the other person wants them to do.”
“And does it work?”
“It works. But it’s a sin.”
“I see,” I said, and she knew that whatever she said now it was likely that I would think she really did “refuse to eat” for my husband. “But you did not commit that sin?”
“No, not I,” she quickly answered, and shook her head, blushing, as though she were confessing. “Because by that time I wanted nothing; because the whole thing was like a sickness. I couldn’t sleep; I even developed a rash on my face and thigh. And I was racked with fever for a long time. Her Ladyship looked after me.”
“And what did she say?”
“Nothing,” she replied, dreamily reminiscing. “She wept. But she didn’t say anything. When I had the fever, she fed me sweet water and medicine with a spoon. Once she kissed me,” she said, her eyes gentle, as though this was the nicest thing that had ever happened to her.
“When?” I asked.
“When the young master went away …”
“Where did he go?”
“Abroad,” she simply replied. “For four years.”
I listened. That was the period my husband spent in London, Paris, in the north, and in Italian cities. He was thirty-six when he returned from abroad to take over the factory. Sometimes he talked about it: his years of wandering, he called them … It was just that he never told me that Judit Áldozó was the reason for his four-year absence.
“And then, before he went away, did you talk?”
“No,” she said. “Because I was better by then. To tell you the truth, we only spoke once. That first time, before Christmas. That’s when he gave me the locket with the photograph and the lilac ribbon. But he cut off a piece of that. It was in a box,” she solemnly explained, as though this somehow changed the significance of the gift, as though every detail was very important, including the fact that the locket my husband gave to Judit Áldozó came out of a box … But I myself felt that every detail was of great importance then.
“And the other picture? Did you get that from him?”
“The other one? No,” and she looked down. “I bought that.”
“Where?”
“At the photographer’s studio. It hardly cost anything,” she said.
“I see,” I said. “You got nothing else from him?”
“Something else?” she asked, opening her eyes wide in wonder. “Oh, yes. He gave me a piece of candied orange peel once.”
“You like candied peel?”
She looked down again. I could see she was embarrassed by this sign of weakness.
“Yes,” she said. “But I didn’t eat it,” she added, as if in mitigation. “Would you like to see it? … I’ve kept it. Wrapped in a twist of paper.”
And she turned to the cupboard, keen to produce her alibi. I quickly extended my hand.
“No, Judit, leave it,” I said. “I believe you. And after that? What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” she said, as simply as if she were telling any old story. “He went away and I got better. Her Ladyship sent me home for three months. It was summer. Harvest time. But I was on full pay,” she boasted. “Then I came back. He was away a long time. Four years. And I felt at peace again. When he came back he no longer lived with us. We never talked again. He didn’t write, not once. Yes, it was a form of sickness,” she declared, as if going through an argument she had had with herself a long time ago before coming to a wise conclusion that she was determined now to prove right.
“And that was that?” I asked.
“That was that. He got married. Then the child was born. Then it died. I cried my eyes out and felt sorry for Your Ladyship.”
“Yes, yes. Let’s drop the subject,” I replied in a nervous, abstracted manner, clearly rejecting her offer of empathy. “Tell me, Judit. You say you never, but never, spoke after that.”
“Never,” she said, and looked me in the eye.
“Not even about that?”
“Not about anything,” she solemnly affirmed.
I understood that this was the truth and that it was carved in stone. Neither of them was a liar. I began to feel sick with fear, with the shock. I felt generally unwell. There could be nothing worse than the news that they had never spoken since. That they had remained silent for twelve years: that told me everything. And all the time one of them went about with a locket round her neck with the other’s photograph in it, and the other carried around a strip of lilac ribbon that he had cut away and hidden in the deepest recesses of his wallet. And one of them got married, taking me as wife, and when he came home not all of him arrived, because someone else was waiting for him. That said everything. My hands and feet were frozen. I began to shiver.
“Just answer me one more question,” I said. “I am not asking you to swear to the truth of all this. As far as I am concerned, I swore not to tell my husband and I will keep my promise. So just tell me this now, Judit. Did you regret it?”
“What?”
“Not accepting his offer of marriage?”
She crossed her arms and went over to the window, staring down into the shadowy yard of the inner-city house. After a long silence, she spoke over her shoulder.
“Yes.”
The word dropped between us like a bomb: it was as if someone had thrown an unexploded grenade into the room. In the silence we could hear our hearts and the invisible bomb, all of them ticking away. The bomb carried on ticking. It ticked for two whole years, and then it exploded.
There were noises in the hall. My mother-in-law had arrived. Judit tiptoed over to the door and, with one practiced movement, silently turned the key in the lock. The door opened and there on the threshold stood my mother-in-law in a fur coat with her hat on, just as she had arrived from town.