And so we were prepared for all eventualities. Naturally the mausoleum was equipped with electric lights, lights in two colors, blue and white. When everything was ready we called the priest to consecrate this house of dead pleasure. Everything you could possibly think of was provided, darling — gilt letters above the entrance, and, on the elevation, modestly small, the aristocratic family crest, the crest they wore on their underpants. Then there was a forecourt where they planted flowers, with columns at the entrance leading to a sort of marbled waiting room for visitors should they fancy taking a breather before they died. You then passed from the zinc hall, through the wrought-iron gates, into the parlor, where the elders were arranged. It was a proper mausoleum, set up for eternity, as if the dead interred there were not to be thrown out after thirty to fifty years. There they were, including the most illustrious among them, for eternity, until the last trumpet called them forth in their distinguished pajamas and privileged dressing gowns.
I earned an eight-thousand-pengő commission doing the mausoleum, the builder wouldn’t give me more. I had an account in a bank and one day, stupidly, I deposited this little extra cash. My husband came across the statement quite by chance, the statement revealing how my little-here and little-there had started to amount to a reasonable sum. He didn’t say anything — of course he didn’t say anything, what a crazy idea! — but I could see it upset him. He thought a member of the family shouldn’t be making a profit on his parents’ family vault. Can you credit that? I couldn’t understand it myself, not to this day. I only tell you the story to show you how strange the rich are.
There’s something else. I got used to everything, I bore it all silently. But they had one habit I really couldn’t stand. Even today I have to take a deep breath because I feel sick just thinking about it. It was that one step too far! I have learned a few things in my time, and there is never an end to learning. But I can bear it all; I am resigned to it. You never know, perhaps I might even get used to the idea of getting older. Silently. But that habit of theirs I couldn’t bear. I redden when I remember it, red with helpless fury, like a turkey.
You mean bed? Yes, but not the way you think. It was related to bed, but in another way. I mean their nightgowns and their pajamas.
You don’t understand. Well, I agree it’s hard to explain. What I mean is that I looked around me, amazed at everything in the house: I felt an almost religious awe, the way you do when you see a giraffe in the zoo. There was the colored toilet paper, the Swedish chiropodist, the lot. I understood that such unusual people could not live by ordinary, everyday rules. They had to have food served a different way, the beds made a different way, like no ordinary mortal being.
Naturally, their food had to be cooked differently because their digestive system had to be quite different, like the kangaroo’s. I’m not absolutely sure how it was with their intestines, but they certainly digested their food in a way no ordinary mortal does. Not naturally, in the regular way, but in a way that forced them to use peculiar laxatives, strange enemas … the whole thing was a great secret.
So I looked on while they did all this, gazing in wonder, mouth open, often with goose pimples. High culture, it seems, is not just a matter of museums but something you find in people’s bathrooms and the kitchens where others cook for them. Their way of life did not change, not a bit, not even during the siege, would you believe it? While everyone else was eating beans or peas, they were still opening tins of delicacies from abroad, goose liver from Strasbourg and such things. There was a woman in the cellar, who spent three weeks there, the wife of an ex — minister of state whose husband had fled west to escape the Russians, who stayed here because she had some other man … and believe it or not, this woman was on a diet, a diet she maintained even as bombs were falling. She was looking after her figure, cooking some tasty something on a spirit flame using only olive oil because she feared that the fat in the beans and the gristle that everyone stuffed themselves with out of fear and anxiety might lead her to put on weight! Whenever I get to thinking about it, I marvel what a strange thing this thing called culture is.
Here in Rome there are all these wonderful statues and paintings and grand tapestries, like the castoffs of a lost world, the kind we get in junk shops back home. But maybe all the masterworks of Rome offer just one view of culture. It might be that culture is also what happens when people cook for the rich, with butter or oil, with complicated recipes prescribed by the doctor — as if it were not only their teeth and guts that required nourishment but they had to have a special soup for the liver, a different cut of meat for the heart, a particular blend of salads for the gall bladder, and a rare form of pastry with raisins for the pancreas. And having eaten all this, the rich withdraw into solitude so that their mysterious organs of digestion can get on with digesting. That’s culture too! I understood it all, admired it, and full-heartedly approved of it. It was just their way with nightshirts and pajamas I failed to understand. I could never reconcile myself to it. Damn the God that invented such things!
Have patience, I’m about to tell you. After making the bed I had to lay the nightshirt on top of it facedown, folding the bottom end of it back and over, spreading the sleeves. See what I mean? Looked at this way, the nightshirt or pajamas looked faintly Arabic, like some Eastern pilgrim at prayer, stomach to the ground, his arms spread over the sand. Why did they insist on this? I have no idea. Maybe because it’s more convenient that way, because it involves one movement less, because you just need to pull it on from the back and there you are, ready for bed, without having to struggle into it and tire yourself out before going to sleep. But I hated this kind of calculation, absolutely loathed it. I simply couldn’t tolerate this affectation of theirs. My whole nervous system rebelled against it. My hands shook with fury whenever I made their beds, folding and adjusting their nightgowns, pajama jackets, and trousers the way the manservant taught me. Why?
People are peculiar, you see. They are born that way, even when they’re not rich. Everyone is annoyed or driven mad by something. Even the poor who tolerate everything for a while, who resign themselves to everything and bear the weight of the world on their backs with a certain awe and helplessness, accepting whatever comes their way. There comes a moment for them, one that came for me each evening when I was making the bed, putting out their nightwear in the required manner. That was when I understood that soon people would no longer put up with the world as it was. I mean individuals as well as nations. Someone would scream out loud that they had had enough, that things had to change. And that when this happened, people would take to the streets and go on the rampage, smashing and breaking things. Though that’s only the circus part, a sideshow. Revolution, I mean real revolution, is that which has already happened inside people. Don’t stare at me like an idiot, gorgeous.
I might be talking rubbish, but not everything runs according to the laws of normal logic, not everything people say or do has to make sense. Do you think it’s rational or logical that I should be lying with you in this bed? Don’t you get it, sweetheart? Never mind. Just keep your mouth shut and carry on loving me. Our logic makes no sense — but here we are.