So I did it.
Let me tell you what it was like the morning when Judit Áldozó first appeared at the door of our dingy yet magnificent abode. She was like the poor girl in the fairy tales — she arrived carrying nothing more than a small bundle of possessions. Folk tales are generally pretty reliable. I had just returned from the tennis courts, had stepped into the hall, thrown the racket onto a chair, and stood there flushed, about to pull off my sleeveless knit sweater, the kind people wear for exercise. That was the moment I noticed that there was a strange woman standing in the gloom beside the Gothic chest. I asked her what she wanted.
She didn’t answer. She was clearly confused. I thought at the time she must have been disoriented by the unfamiliar setting, and put her silence down to a simple case of embarrassment not uncommon with servants. Later I found out it wasn’t the unfamiliar setting or the arrival of the young master that confused her but something else. It was the encounter. The fact of our meeting, and that I had looked at her and something happened. I too knew that, of course, knew something had happened that moment, but not as deeply as she did. Women, strong, instinctive women, and she was one, know precisely what is important or decisive the moment it happens, while men, such as ourselves, are always likely to misunderstand events or explain them away. This woman immediately knew, the moment she met me, that our fates were inextricably linked. I knew it too, but I chose to talk about something else.
But not straightaway, because she hadn’t answered my question and I felt a little insulted, inclined to be high-handed. We stood dumbly in the hall for a few moments, facing and staring at each other.
We gazed at each other the way people do when coming across something rare and strange. What I was gazing at that moment was nothing like a new servant. I was gazing at a woman who, in some way, for completely mysterious reasons, because of certain impossible factors, would play a major role in my life. Do people realize when this happens? I’m sure they do. Not intellectually but with their whole being. And at the same time they go on thinking other things in an absentminded sort of way. Consider for a moment how unlikely a situation this was. Imagine that, in those moments, someone had come up to me and told me that this was the woman I would one day marry, but that much would have to happen before that came about; that I would first marry someone else, another woman, who would bear me a child, and that the woman standing opposite me then in the dingy hall would go abroad, vanish for years, then return, at which point I would divorce my wife and marry her instead; that I, the persnickety bourgeois boy, the rich, polished gentleman, would marry this insignificant servant girl clutching her bundle while anxiously staring at me just the way I was staring at her … scrutinizing her as if I were seeing something I had never seen before, something I really had to take into account … Well, all this seemed most unlikely back then. If anyone had predicted it, I would have laughed at him and dismissed the very idea. But now, afterwards, from the distance of a few years, I’d like to answer my own question as to whether I knew how it would work out. And also the issue of whether we know when we meet someone that the meeting is of vital importance, a turning point in our lives … Is there a moment when someone steps into the room and we know, yes, this is the one? The one intended, just for us, exactly as in novels?
I don’t know the answer. I can only close my eyes and recall the moment. And as I do so, I see that, yes, something happened back then. An electric charge? A form of radiation? A secret intuition? These are just words. But of course people don’t communicate their thoughts and feelings through words only. There are other forms of communication between people, other ways of conveying a message. The term people tend to use now is “shortwave.” Apparently human intuition is no more than a form of shortwave transmission. I don’t know … I have no desire to con you, nor indeed myself. For that reason the best I can say is that the moment I first saw Judit Áldozó I was transfixed, and however impossible the situation, I stood there facing this unknown servant figure quite unable to move. So we carried on gazing at each other for quite some time.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
She told me. It sounded faintly familiar. “Áldozó” is much like the word áldozat, meaning sacrifice, so there was something ceremonial in it. Even her given name, Judit, had a biblical ring. It was as if she had stepped out of history, out of some biblical condition of solid simple materiality: like eternal life, real life. It was as if she had arrived not from a village but from some deeper level of existence. I was not much concerned with the propriety of my actions. I stepped over to the door and turned on the light so I could see her more clearly. Even my sudden movement failed to disturb her. Readily and obediently, not like a servant now, but in the manner of a woman acceding to the desires of the one man entitled to demand anything of her, she turned to one side toward the light so I might examine her more closely. She stood there in the lamplight. It was as if she were saying: “There you are, take a good look. This is me. I know I am beautiful. Look as hard as you want, take your time. You will remember this face even on your deathbed.” So she stood there calm, immobile, her bundle in her hand, like an artist’s model, silent and willing.
And I carried on gazing at her.
I don’t know whether you got a decent look at her just now. I alerted you too late. You only saw her body. She is as tall as I am. Her height is in perfect proportion to the rest of her. She is neither fat nor thin, but exactly as she was at the age of fifteen. She has never put on weight, nor ever lost any. You know, there are powerful inner laws that govern the way these things balance out. It was as though her metabolism burned at a constant, steady flame. I looked into her face and found myself blinking at the beauty of it, like someone who had lived for many years in a fog and suddenly found himself in bright sunlight. You couldn’t see her face just now. But she has been wearing a mask for a long time anyway, a cosmopolitan mask made up of mascara, paints, and powders, false eyes emphasized with eye shadow and a false mouth drawn on with lipstick. But then, in that first startled moment, her face was still new and unscarred, untouched, direct from the Maker’s hand. The touch of her Creator was still fresh on her cheeks. Her face was heart shaped, beautifully proportioned. Each part of it echoed the other to perfection. Her eyes were black, a special kind of black, you know, as if there were a touch of dark blue in it. Her hair was blue-black, too. And one could immediately tell her body was as well proportioned and quite certain of itself. That was why she could stand in front of me with such poise. She had emerged out of anonymity, out of the depths, out of the vast crowd, arriving with something extraordinary: proportion, assurance, and beauty. Of course I was only faintly aware of all this. She was no longer a child, but was not quite a woman yet, either. Her body had developed but her soul was just waking. I have never met a woman since so absolutely certain of her own body, of the power of her body, as Judit Áldozó was then.