It’s quite true that it was me who first sneaked into his apartment and then into his life. Just as there are cat burglars, you know, people who sneak into property, there are cat women who sneak into a man’s life at an unguarded moment and, once there, make off with anything they find: memories, impressions, the lot. Later they grow bored of these things and sell them — sell everything they managed to stow away. Not that I ever sold anything I got from him, and I am only telling you this much because I want you to know everything about me before you leave me — or I leave you. He simply tolerated me being near him at any time, morning, afternoon, or night … The one rule was I was not to disturb him. I was forbidden to talk to him when he was reading. Often he just sat with a book and said nothing. Otherwise I could come and go as I pleased in the apartment, to do whatever I felt like. Bombs were falling all the time, and everyone lived for the moment, making no plans from one minute to the next.
It must have been a terrible time, you say? Wait, let me think about that. I think it was a time of discovery. Questions we never really consider, that we wave away with a gesture, became all too real. What kinds of things? Well, the fact that life is without meaning or purpose, for example — but much else too. We quickly got used to the fear: you can sweat fear out the way you do a fever. It was just that everything changed. The family was no longer the family; a job no longer counted for anything. Lovers made love in a hurry, like children gobbling their food, keen to grab as many sweets as they can, stuffing their cheeks with them when the adults aren’t looking … then the children skip off to go play in the street, out in the chaos. Everything broke down: apartments, relationships. There were moments we could still believe our homes, our jobs, people at large had something to do with us, if only in a psychological way, but come the first bombing raid we suddenly discovered we had nothing at all to do with whatever was important before.
But it wasn’t just the bombing raids. Everyone felt that beyond the air-raid sirens, the yellow cars rushing to and fro, the dispossessed, the armored patrol vehicles packed with booty, the soldiers making their way home from the front, the fugitives in covered peasant wagons, beyond the multitudes drifting around like Gypsies in caravans, something else was happening. There was no distinct war zone anymore: the war was happening in whatever remained of civilian life, in our kitchens, in our bedrooms, in our selves. A bomb had gone off in us, and everything that had previously held society together — even if it was no more than indifference or laziness — was blown away. Something blew up in me, too, when I saw my husband on that new humpbacked bridge over the Danube. It blew up like a bloody great bomb left at the side of the road by a Russkie or a Nazi.
It blew up the entire movie-style affair between us — a movie as dumb and trashy as those Hollywood productions where the managing director marries the stenographer. What I understood in that moment was that it was not each other we had been seeking in life, that the affair for him was about something else: the terrible guilt he felt under the skin, a guilt that had eaten its way into his flesh. He wanted to transfer to me the thing he couldn’t lay to rest. What was it? Wealth? The fact that he wanted to know why there were rich and poor in the world? Everything the writers, the politicians, and the demagogues say on this subject is worse than useless. Forget the bald professors with their horn-rimmed glasses, forget the sweet-talking preachers and the hairy, bellowing revolutionaries. The truth is more terrifying than anything they tell you. The truth is that there is no justice on earth. Maybe that is what that man, my husband, was after: justice. Is that why he married me? If it was only my skin or flesh he wanted, he didn’t have to marry me — he could have had that cheaper. Maybe he wanted to rebel against the world he grew up in, the way the sons of the rich rebel and become refined, faintly scented revolutionaries. Who knows why? Because they can’t bear being who they are; because they are too lucky; because sport and perversity is not enough for them, and they must go and play on the barricades. Well, he could have gone for another form of rebellion, not the backbreaking torture of living with me. You and I, people who have risen from the depths, from the wetlands, or from Zala, don’t understand such things, my dear. The one sure thing is that he was a gentleman. Not the way most of the titled nobility were. He was not like Sir This or Baron That, people who elbowed their way to a coat of arms. He was a decent sort of man, made of finer stuff than most bastards of his class.
He was the sort of man whose ancestors took land by conquest. They marched with axes across their shoulders, entered primeval forests in unknown territory, bellowed out anthems, and chopped down trees as well as the locals, while still singing. One of his ancestors was among the Protestants who migrated to America shortly after the initial voyage. He took nothing with him on the journey, just his prayer book and his axe. My husband was prouder of him than of anything else the family later achieved, such as the factory, the money, and a sackful of distinctions.
He was reliable because he was in command of his body and his nerves. He could even control money, which is harder. But the one thing he could never control was his sense of guilt. And what the guilty want is revenge. He was a Christian, but not in the way people tend to think of it now — it wasn’t a business opportunity for him, not a certificate to flash at the Nazis so that he could get a rake-off, make a deal, and grab some of the spoils. He felt bad for being a Christian then. And yet, somewhere deep in his guts he was a Christian the way some people are doomed to be artists or alcoholics: he couldn’t help it.
But he knew that thirst for revenge was a sin. All revenge is a sin, and there is no such thing as justified revenge. The only right a man has is to justice and to act justly. No one has the right to revenge. And because he was rich and Christian, and because he couldn’t give up being either of these things, he was sinking under the weight of guilt. Why are you looking at me as if I were crazy?
It’s him I’m talking about, my husband. The man who suddenly appeared on the newly constructed bridge walking toward me. And then, in front of thousands and thousands of people, I embraced him.
He stepped out of the queue but didn’t move. He didn’t try to push me away. Don’t worry, he didn’t bow to kiss my hand in front of that ragged, shivering crowd of beggars. He was too well brought up for that. He just stood and waited for the painful scene to be over. He was calm, his eyes closed, and I could see his face through my tears, the way women see the baby’s face when the child is still inside them. You don’t need eyes to see what is yours.
But then, as I was clinging to him for all I was worth, something happened. I smelled him. I smelled my husband and the smell struck me … Now listen carefully.
The moment I smelled him I started to tremble. My knees shook, I felt my stomach cramp, as if I were tortured by some peculiar illness. The point was that the man walking toward me on the bridge did not smell the way others did. I know that won’t make any sense to you, but it meant something important then. What I mean is that he didn’t have the corpse smell on him. Because even if, by some miracle, there happened to be a bar of soap or perfume in the cellar, the overpowering closeness, the lack of air, the stench of body functions, the blend of different foods and all those people with their chattering teeth and with the fear of death on them — all this had soaked into our very skin. Those who had never stunk before now stank in a different way from those who had. They covered themselves in cologne and patchouli: a different, artificial patchouli that smells far worse than the natural kind. It was positively sickening.