As for the lilac ribbon — I don’t have it anymore, it vanished along with the wallet and everything else in life, like the people who had once worn such significant objects of superstition — I found it in the deepest pocket of the wallet, where I kept nothing except a lock of my little dead son’s hair. It took me some time to understand what the lilac ribbon was doing there, how I had come into possession of it, and when Judit might have smuggled it into the wallet. My wife had gone away to a spa, leaving me alone in the house, and my mother had sent Judit down to oversee the spring cleaning. I must have been in the bathroom when she slipped into my bedroom and hid the ribbon in my wallet, the wallet having been left lying on the table. At least, that is what she told me later.
What did she mean by it? Nothing. All women are superstitious when it comes to love. What she wanted was for me to have something of hers permanently about my person, something she herself had worn on her body. That was her way of binding me, communicating with me. Bearing in mind her position and our relationship, this was an act of genuine subversion. She undertook it because she was prepared to wait.
When I understood this — the lilac ribbon did communicate something of it in its own eloquent way — I felt strangely irritated. I was annoyed by this minor act of sabotage. You know what it’s like when a man discovers that all he has planned has come to nothing, that everything has been knocked sideways. Now I discovered that this woman, who lived just a few blocks away, had been waiting ten years for me. But beyond the irritation I also felt a certain calm. I wouldn’t want to make too much of the feeling. I hadn’t in fact made plans, nor did I prepare new ones. I didn’t say to myself: “You see, that was what you’ve been covering up all these years, the thing you weren’t prepared to admit, that there is somebody or something more important than your normal way of life, your role in society, your work, and your family: some twisted passion you have been denying … but the passion remains and is waiting for you and won’t let you go. And that’s all right. Now the tension is over. Your life and work were not entirely meaningless after all. Life still wants something of you.”
No, I couldn’t say I thought this, but the fact is that the moment I found the ribbon the tension was gone. Where to locate these vital psychological processes: in the nerves, in our minds? My mind had long forgotten the episode, but my nerves still recalled it. And now, when she sent me that signal, such a well-mannered, servantlike signal — women are like servants in love; all of them would prefer their love letters on paper decorated with motifs of brightly colored roses, entwined hands, or pairs of amorous doves, and would, ideally, stuff the pockets of their intended with locks of hair, handkerchiefs, and other superstitious mementos! — now, finally, I was at peace. It was as if everything had suddenly been endowed with a mysterious purpose: my work, my life, and yes, even my marriage … Does this make sense?
I do understand now. The thing is, there are some things that simply have to happen in life: everything has to find its place. But that is a very slow process. Decisions, ideals, intentions are of little help here. Have you noticed how difficult it is to arrange the furniture in a room so it is perfect, so you never want to move it again? It takes years, and you think everything is just where it should be, while all the time you have the vague, uncomfortable feeling that it is not quite right after all, that maybe the armchairs are not in their proper places and perhaps there should be a table just where that chair is now. And then, eventually, after ten or twenty years have passed, years in which you have never felt fully comfortable, when the furniture and the space available for it seem to have been at odds for ages, you suddenly see how it should be, you spot the mistake, you understand the secret inner dimensions of the room, push the furniture a little this way or that and find, or so you think, that everything has finally found its place. And for a few more years you feel convinced that the room is finally perfect, a complete success. But then — say, after ten more years — you grow dissatisfied again, if only because you change, as we all do, as does our spatial awareness, so that there never can be perfect, final order. That’s how life is: we develop strategies to tackle it, and for a long time we believe the strategies are the appropriate ones, so we go to work in the morning, take a walk in the afternoon, and engage in cultural activities in the evening. Then, one day, we discover the only way we can continue to bear or make sense of it is by turning the whole thing on its head, and we can’t begin to understand how we could have tolerated the idiotic system as it was. That’s how things change around us and in us. And it is all temporary, even the new order, the inner peace, because it is part of the process of change and works according to its laws, so eventually it too stops working … And why? Maybe because we ourselves come to a stop sometime. As does everything that is of any consequence to us.
No, this was not what they call a “grand passion.” It was simply that someone brought me to understand that she lived nearby and was waiting for me. It was a cheap way of doing it. A servant’s way. It was like a pair of eyes gazing at me in the darkness. It was my secret, and the secret lent a certain bearing, a certain tension to my life. I didn’t want to betray the secret; I didn’t want to be faced with painful, idiotic, murky situations. I simply felt a little calmer after that.
That is until, one day, Judit Áldozó disappeared from my mother’s household.
The story I am telling you extends over years, and much of it has grown indistinct and lost importance … It’s the woman I want to talk about now, this proletarian creature. I want to concentrate on the important parts and ignore the parts involving the police, if you don’t mind. All such stories involve the police or a magistrate somewhere along the line. Life punishes one a little, as you may be aware … Lázár told me that once and I took it as an insult at the time, the idea of it, but later, once proceedings started, I understood. Because we are not innocents in the eyes of life, and one day we find ourselves on trial. Whether life finds us guilty or not guilty, we ourselves know we are not innocent.