“Terrible?” he inquired in a thin voice, his head tipped to one side as he looked at me. “Why terrible?” He was tall, a head, at least, taller than I am. Gulls were swooping between the arches of the great bridge. There were very few people to be seen. Dusk was a dangerous time to be out.
How strange he should ask me why I thought it terrible that all these marvelous bridges should be destroyed. He seemed to be surprised at my agitation.
“Why?!” I repeated angrily. “Wouldn’t you regret the loss of such bridges? The loss of life? All those innocent lives?”
“Me?” he asked, still in that thin, surprised voice, as if I had accused him of not having given war and human suffering proper thought.
“But of course!” he declared, waving his hat. He was suddenly full of life and passion. “You think I don’t care about bridges and people! For heaven’s sake! Me?” he clicked his tongue, grimacing at the ridiculousness of the idea, its sheer stupidity. “Never — never, you understand.” He turned to me, his face close to mine, staring into my eyes like a hypnotist. “I’ve thought of practically nothing else. There is nothing I’ve sorrowed over more than the destruction of bridges and humanity!”
He was finding it difficult to breathe. He looked hurt, as if he was holding back tears. He’s an actor, I suddenly thought. A clown, a comedian! But I looked into his eyes and was shocked to see those gray-green eyes clouding over. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was no doubt about it, the man was crying. Tears were rolling down his face. Nor was he ashamed of his tears. He didn’t care. His eyes seemed to have a will of their own.
“Poor bridge,” he muttered, as if I weren’t there. “Poor, lovely bridge! And poor people! Poor humanity!”
We stood perfectly still. Then he brushed away his tears, wiped his hands on his coat, and dried them, sniffling a little. He gazed at the bundles of explosives and shook his head, as at a scene of desperate neglect, as if the charges were a disorderly mass of rogue humanity, a bunch of useless adolescents that he, the writer, was helpless to address, having neither the words nor the power to bring them to their senses.
“Yes, all this will go,” he said, and sighed. But I thought I detected a note of satisfaction in that sigh. Perhaps he felt everything was going to plan, that somebody had worked all this out on paper, done his sums and demonstrated how certain human instincts were bound to produce certain consequences. So, while he was full of tears and lamentation at the prospect, some part of him was pleased that his calculations had proved right.
“All right,” he said simply. “Let’s go home.”
He tended to talk in the plural like that—“Let’s,” “Let us”—as if we had agreed on everything. And you know the strangest thing? I really did feel we had discussed and agreed on everything, talked things over at great length: everything important, that is, everything that mattered most to us both. What had we agreed? It might have been that I would become his lover some time in the future or that he might employ me as a servant. Without saying anything more we set off “home,” the pair of us, over the doomed bridge. He walked fast, and I had to scurry after him not to be left behind. He didn’t look at me on the way. For all I knew he had forgotten I was there, following him like a dog. Or like a member of his household staff who had accompanied her master on some errand. I kept a tight hold on the satchel in which I had stowed my lipstick, my powder, and my ration cards, the way I had guarded the little luggage I had once carried to Budapest when looking for a job. I was his servant, running after him.
And as we went along on our way I suddenly felt calm. By that time I had spent some years as a lady. I could blow my nose as delicately as I would at a garden party at Buckingham Palace, though I occasionally recalled that my father never used a handkerchief, because he simply didn’t have one. He had no idea what a handkerchief was. He sneezed by pinching his nose between his fingers then wiping his fingers on his trouser leg. When I was a maid I blew my nose the way I learned from him. But now, jogging along beside this man I felt the kind of relief you feel at having finished some tiring, pointless task so you can finally rest. I knew that if we got to the statue of Széchenyi and I felt an urge to sneeze I was free to pinch my nose, then wipe my fingers on the skirt of my fine shantung-silk dress without him even noticing. Or if he did happen to glance at me that moment, he would feel no contempt and would not look down on me but simply observe how a woman in expensive clothes was blowing her nose like an ordinary peasant. He’d observe my habits the way he would the habits of some domesticated animal. And there was something reassuring about this.
We arrived at his apartment. I was as calm as if I were going home. When he opened the front door and let me into the dark, camphor-smelling hall, I felt at peace the way I did when I first left home and came to Budapest to find employment as maid-of-all-work for my future husband’s parents. I was at peace because I knew that I had finally found somewhere to shelter myself from the wild, dangerous world outside.
And I stayed, already determined to spend the night. I fell asleep immediately. I woke at dawn feeling I was about to die.
It wasn’t a heart attack, darling, or rather, it was that, but something else too. I felt no pain. I wasn’t even afraid. A delicious calm spread through my whole body: a deathly silence. I felt my body had stopped functioning, that my heart was no longer beating, that its mechanism had run down. My heart had simply got bored and given up, I thought.
When I opened my eyes I saw him standing next to me, beside the couch. He was holding my wrist, touching my pulse.
But he didn’t hold it the way doctors do. It was more the way a musician touches strings, or the way a sculptor taps at the stone, he was using all his fingers. His fingers were holding a conversation with my skin and blood, and through these, with my heart. He touched me as though he could see something in the darkness, like blind people who see with their hands, or the deaf who hear with their eyes.
He was still wearing the clothes he had worn in the street. He hadn’t undressed. He didn’t ask me anything. The hair that remained on his bald head was tousled round his brow and on his nape. The desk lamp was burning in the neighboring room. I understood that he had been sitting, reading, while I slept and suddenly woke to find myself dying. He stood beside me on the couch where I had made up a bed, and set about making himself busy. He brought a lemon, mixed some sugar in with the lemon juice, and made me drink the bittersweet mixture. Then he made coffee in a little red copper pot, a cup of Turkish coffee strong as poison. He took a medicine bottle and put twenty drops into a glass, diluted it with water and poured it down my throat.
It was well past midnight and the sirens were sounding again, but we didn’t listen to their frantic howling. He only took shelter if he happened to be outside at the time and a policeman ushered him into one or another cellar. Otherwise he’d remain in his apartment and read. He liked reading at such times, he said, because finally the town was quiet. Indeed, there was an otherworldly silence … There were neither trams nor cars, just the thud of anti-aircraft guns and bombs. But that didn’t disturb him.
He sat by the couch, occasionally feeling my pulse. I lay with my eyes closed. There was heavy bombing that night, but I had never felt as calm, as secure, as protected and hidden. Why? Maybe because I was aware of human care. That’s not at all a common feeling with people, and it’s no more common with doctors. This man was not a doctor, but he could help. Artists are the people who can really help you in times of trouble, the only people, it seems … Yes, you, my darling, you and all artists. He once happened to mention that a long time ago the artist, the priest, and the doctor were all one man. Anyone who knew anything was an artist. That is what I somehow felt, and that’s why I was so much at peace — at peace and almost happy.