Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘She works at the village cultural center, filing papers and typing a little and making coffee for the mayors of the bigger towns when they drop by. I have told her it is degrading work for someone of her intelligence, but she always shrugs and goes on doing it. My mother has made a career of remaining simple.’ There was a note of bitterness in Helen’s voice, and I wondered if she thought this simplicity had harmed not only the mother’s career but also the daughter’s opportunities. Those had been provided abundantly by Aunt Éva, I reflected. Helen was smiling her upside-down smile, a chilling one. ‘You will see for yourself.’

“Helen’s mother’s village was identified by a sign on the outskirts, and in a few minutes our bus pulled into a square surrounded by dusty sycamores, with a boarded-up church at one side. An old woman, twin of that black-garbed grandmother I’d seen in the last village, waited alone under the bus shelter. I looked a question at Helen, but she shook her head, and, sure enough, the old lady embraced a soldier who got off ahead of us.

“Helen seemed to take our lonely arrival for granted, and she led me briskly down side streets past the quiet houses with flowers in their window boxes and shutters drawn against the bright sunlight. An elderly man sitting on a wooden chair outside one house nodded and touched his hat. Near the end of the street a gray horse was tied to a post, drinking water greedily from a bucket. Two women in housedresses and slippers talked outside a café, which seemed to be closed. From across the fields I could hear church bells, and closer by, the songs of birds in the linden trees. Everywhere there was a drowsy humming in the air; nature was only a step away, if you knew which direction to step.

“Then the street ended abruptly in a weedy field, and Helen knocked at the door of the last house. It was very small, a yellow stucco cottage with a red-tiled roof, and looked freshly painted outside. The roof overhung the front, making a natural porch, and the front door was dark wood with a big rusted handle. The house stood slightly apart from its neighbors, and with no colorful kitchen garden or newly laid sidewalk leading to it, as many of the other houses on the street had. Because of a heavy shadow from the eaves, for a minute I could not see the face of the woman who answered Helen’s summons. Then I saw her clearly, and a moment later she was embracing Helen and kissing her cheek, calmly and almost formally, and turning to shake my hand.

“I don’t know exactly what I had expected; perhaps the story of Rossi’s desertion and Helen’s birth had led me to imagine a sad-eyed, aging beauty, wistful or even helpless. The real woman before me had Helen’s upright carriage, although she was shorter and heavier than her daughter, and a firm, cheerful countenance, round cheeked and dark eyed. Her plain dark hair was drawn back in a knot. She had on a striped cotton dress and a flowered apron. Unlike Aunt Éva, she wore no makeup or jewelry, and her clothing was similar to that of the housewives I’d seen in the street outside. She had been doing some kind of housework, in fact, for her sleeves were rolled to the elbow. She shook my hand with a friendly grip, saying nothing but looking right into my eyes. Then, for just a moment, I saw the shy girl she must have been more than two decades before, hidden in the depths of those dark eyes with the crow’s-feet around them.

“She ushered us in and gestured for us to sit at the table, where she had set three chipped cups and a plate of rolls. I could smell coffee brewing. She had been cutting up vegetables, too, and a sharp aroma of raw onions and potatoes hung in the room.

“It was her only room, I now saw, trying not to look around too conspicuously-it served as her kitchen, bedroom, and sitting area. It was immaculately clean, the narrow bed in one corner made up with a white quilt and ornamented with several white pillows embroidered in bright colors. Next to the bed stood a table that held a book, a lamp with a glass chimney, and a pair of eyeglasses, and beside that a small chair. At the foot of the bed was a wooden chest, painted with flowers. The kitchen area, where we sat, consisted of a simple cookstove and a table and chairs. There was no electricity, nor was there a bathroom (I learned about the outhouse in the back garden only later in the visit). On one wall hung a calendar with a photograph of workers in a factory, and on another wall hung a piece of embroidery in red and white. There were flowers in a jar and white curtains at the windows. A tiny woodstove stood near the kitchen table, with sticks of wood piled next to it.

“Helen’s mother smiled at me, still a little shyly, and then I saw for the first time her resemblance to Aunt Éva, and perhaps also some of what might have attracted Rossi. She had a smile of exceptional warmth, which began slowly and then dawned on its recipient with complete openness, almost radiance. It faded only slowly, too, as she sat down to cut more vegetables. She glanced up at me again and said something in Hungarian to Helen.

“‘She wants me to give you your coffee.’ Helen busied herself at the stove and served up a cup, stirring in sugar from a tin. Helen’s mother put down her knife to push the plate of rolls toward me. I took one politely and thanked her in my awkward two words of Hungarian. That radiant, slow smile began to flicker again, and she looked from me to Helen, again telling her something I could not understand. Helen reddened and turned back to the coffee.

“‘What is it?’

“‘Nothing. Just my mother’s village ideas, that is all.’ She came to seat herself at the table, setting coffee before her mother and pouring some for herself. ‘Now, Paul, if you will excuse us, I’ll ask her for news of herself and what is happening in the village.’

“While they talked, Helen in her quick alto and her mother in murmured responses, I let my gaze wander over the room again. This woman lived not only in remarkable simplicity-perhaps her neighbors here did, too-but also in great solitude. There were only two or three books in sight, no animals, not even a potted plant. It was like the cell of a nun.

“Glancing back at her, I saw how young she was, far younger than my own mother. Her hair held a few gray threads where it was parted on top, and her face was lined with years, but there was something remarkably sound and healthy about her, an attractiveness completely apart from fashion or age. She could have married many times over, I reflected, and yet she chose to live in this conventual silence. She was smiling at me again and I smiled back; her face was so warm that I had to resist an urge to stretch out my hand and hold one of hers where it gently whittled a potato.

“‘My mother would like to know all about you,’ Helen told me, and with her help I answered every question as fully as I could, each put to me in quiet Hungarian, with a searching look from the interlocutor, as if she could make me understand by the power of her gaze. Where in America was I from? Why had I come here? Who were my parents? Did they mind my traveling far away? How had I met Helen? Here she inserted several other questions that Helen seemed disinclined to translate, one of them accompanied by a motherly hand smoothing Helen’s cheek. Helen looked indignant, and I didn’t press her to explain. Instead, we went on to my studies, my plans, my favorite foods.

“When Helen’s mother was satisfied, she got up and began putting vegetables and pieces of meat in a big dish, which she spiced with something red from a jar over the stove and slid into the oven. She wiped her hands on her apron and sat down again, looking from one of us to the other without speaking, as if we had all the time in the world. At last Helen stirred, and I guessed from the way she cleared her throat that she meant to broach the purpose of our visit. Her mother watched her quietly, with no change of expression until Helen gestured at me on the wordRossi. It took all my nerve, sitting at a village table far from everything familiar to me, to fix my eyes on that tranquil face without flinching. Helen’s mother blinked, once, almost as if someone had threatened to strike her, and for a second her eyes flew to my face. Then she nodded thoughtfully and posed some question to Helen. ‘She asks how long you have known Professor Rossi.’