So this man appears on the smoking stage set of the city, a man who has not changed, who is untouched by siege or suffering. I worried for him. The mood was for revenge: you annoyed people at your peril, and once people were annoyed, there was nothing to stop them doing something. Guilt was at the bottom of it: it was guilt behind the fury and the desire for revenge, behind all those glowing eyes and lips spitting hatred. People spent whole days rushing around to grab what they could: a spoonful of lard, a handful of flour, one solitary gram of gold. Everyone kept a crafty eye on everyone else. No one was free of suspicion. Why? Because we were all criminals, all guilty one way or another? Because we had survived when others hadn’t?
Now here was my husband calmly sitting beside me, as if he were the one innocent among us all. I couldn’t understand it.
I closed my eyes. I had no idea what to do. Should I call a policeman to take him away? He hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t taken part in any of the terrible things that had gone on, not then or before, all over the country. He hadn’t killed any Jews, he hadn’t gone after those who thought differently from him, he hadn’t ransacked the apartments of people who had been dragged away to death or exile: he hadn’t harmed anybody. Nobody could point a finger at him. He hadn’t so much as stolen a crumb from anyone. I never heard anything bad about him, not even much later. He hadn’t gone looting like the rest, far from it! In fact he was one of those who were robbed of almost everything. When I met him on the bridge at the Buda end, he was, for all purposes, a beggar like everyone else. Later I discovered there was nothing left of the family fortune, just a suitcase of clothes and his engineering diploma. That’s all he took with him when he went to America, or so they say. For all I know he is working on some factory floor there. He had given me the family jewels long before, when we separated. You see how good it is that the jewelry survived. I know my jewels are the last thing on your mind, darling. You are just helping me to sell them out of the kindness of your dear heart. Don’t look like that at me. You see, I have come over all tearful now. Wait till I dry my eyes.
What’s that? Yes, it’s getting on for dawn. The first greengrocers’ trucks are out delivering. It’s gone five o’clock. They’re going toward the river, to the market.
Are you sure you’re not cold? Let me cover you up. It’s getting chilly.
What’s that? No, I’m not cold. Not at all; in fact I feel a bit hot. Excuse me, darling, I’ll just close the window.
As I was saying, I was looking at him, and what I saw gave me a cold shiver that ran through my knees right down to my toes. My hands were sweating, and it was all because this refined, familiar gentleman, my ex-husband, was smiling at me.
Please don’t think it was a mocking or superior smile. It was just a smile, a polite smile of the kind people give when hearing a joke that is neither funny nor dirty … the kind someone well brought up smiles at all the same. He was pretty pale, no doubt about it. When you really looked, you could see he too had spent time in the cellar. But his pallor was the kind you have if you’ve been ill for a few weeks and then got out for the first time. He was pale about the eyes. His lips looked bloodless. Otherwise he was exactly as always, as he had been his whole life … let’s say after ten in the morning, after shaving. Maybe even more so. But maybe I just got that impression because of everything around us, because he stood out from it the way an object in a museum stands out when they take it from its glass case and put it in a grimy working-class apartment. Imagine if that statue of Moses we were looking at yesterday in the dimly lit church were to be displayed in the home of some local mayor, between two cabinets. “My dear sir, this is not a masterpiece like that statue of Moses.” But he was simply being himself that moment, a museum object that had found its way onto the street. Smiling.
I’m very hot now! Just look how red my cheeks are — all the blood has rushed to my head. That’s because I have never spoken to anyone about this. Maybe it has been preying on my mind without my knowing it. And now I get a hot flush as I am talking about it.
There was no need to wash this man’s feet, my dear; he washed them by himself in the morning, in the cellar, you may be sure. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that something had changed — he needed no sedative, no consolation. From start to finish he insisted that life had only one meaning, one point. It was courtesy. Good manners meant invulnerability. It was as if he had guts of marble. And this marble-inside, flesh-and-blood-outside figure, dressed in touch-me-not armor, would not come an inch closer to me. The recent earthquake that had shaken and shifted whole countries had no effect at all on his stony constitution. I felt he would sooner die than say a single word other than “I think” or “I’m afraid.” Had he actually inquired how I was, or if I needed anything, I would have told him, and he would, I’m sure, have done anything to help: he’d immediately have taken off his coat or given me the wristwatch some Russian had absentmindedly forgotten to steal, and he’d have smiled just to show me he was no longer angry with me.
Now listen. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. It is not true that people are invariably greedy and feral. Sometimes they are very willing to help each other. But doing people favors is nothing to do with goodness or empathy. The bald man was probably right when he said that people are sometimes good because there are too many obstacles to them being bad. The best we can say is that we are good simply because we’re afraid of being bad. That’s what the bald man said. I’ve never said it to anyone myself. Only to you now, my darling, my dearest love.
We couldn’t sit at the cave entrance, opposite the natural springs, forever. After a while my husband coughed, cleared his throat, and said “he thought” it might be best if we stood up and, seeing it was nice weather, walked about the ruined villas of Mount Gellért for a while. And, yes, “he was afraid” that he would not have many more opportunities to talk to me in the near future. He thought we should use the time left to us. He didn’t say it quite like that, but there was no need to, as I myself knew this would be our last conversation. And so we set off on our walk up Mount Gellért, along the steep roads, among ruins and dead animals. It was a sunny winter’s day.
We strolled about for roughly an hour. I have no idea what he was thinking as I walked the slopes beside him for the last time. He spoke calmly, without apparent feeling. I asked him tactfully how he had got here and what had happened to him, and wasn’t the world extraordinary and topsy-turvy? He replied very politely that everything was fine just as it was. It was all as it should be. What he meant was that he was utterly ruined, had nothing left, and was preparing to go abroad to make his living doing manual work. I stopped on one of the bends of the winding road and very carefully asked him — I did not dare look directly at him — what he thought might happen, how the world would turn out.
He stopped too, looked at me solemnly, and thought for a while. It seemed he took a deep breath before answering. He tipped his head to one side, gazed sadly, first at me, then at the bombed house in whose gateway we were standing, and said: