Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

"Oh, ce cher Gyllenborg," she exclaimed, "quelle immense joie de vous voir aujourd'hui!"

He drew the ring-studded hand to him and kissed it gently, the gesture being at once less and more than gallant.

By then a waiter behind us whispered something into the councillor's ear, and at the same time the hotelkeeper appeared in the doorway, looking shocked, and then with a dumb expression in our direction seemed to be looking for our reaction to something that was about to happen.

Before taking his seat, the young man hastened to the delicately slender older lady enthroned at the head of the table. She leaned back in pleasurable anticipation of a kiss and offered up her clear brow framed by an elaborate silver-gray pompadour.

"Avez-vous bien dormi, Maman?" we heard him say.

At this point the councillor rose, kicking the chair out from under him with such force that it would have fallen over had a waiter not caught it, and dispensing with all etiquette, he dashed out of the dining room.

His squat figure had almost vanished in the dimness of the lounge beyond the glass door when he evidently changed his mind, turned, for a moment he and the hotelier stared at each other, and then the councillor rushed back and whispered something into the elderly lady's ear, who was none other — at last I can reveal it — than the Countess Stollberg, the mother of my childhood playmate and also the mother of the gloved young lady.

I had known this all along; I could have revealed my identity on the train but chose not to, because then inevitably my father's name would have come up, and in view of what had happened to him, I would have found it impossible to talk about him.

There was no one in the room now who did not sense that he was witnessing not just an unusual but a very grave event.

Suddenly there was silence.

The young man was still standing next to his mother's chair.

The two women rose slowly, and then all three of them hurriedly left the room.

The rest of us remained in the silence; no one wanted to stir; some clinking was the only sound to be heard.

And then in a voice touched with emotion, the hotelier announced that Count Stollberg was dead.

I stared at the prawns on my plate; perhaps everyone was staring at his plate; the young man stopped in front of his untouched place setting and picked up his scarf from the chair — I could see all this without taking my eyes off my plate.

"Bien! Je ne prendrai pas de petit déjeuner aujourd'hui," he said softly, and then added, somewhat inappropriately: "Que diriez-vous d'un cigare?"

I looked up at him, astonished, because I wasn't sure he was talking to me.

But he smiled at me and I stood up.

I couldn't cry; the last time I cried was about a year and a half earlier at my mother's funeral, when the frozen clumps of earth began raining down on the coffin, knocking and rumbling, echoing inside it, and I felt the rumbling in my brain, in my stomach, in my heart, the dreadful noise knocking apart an inner peace of the body I hadn't even known before, making me aware — abruptly, with no warning — of the misery of my physical existence.

And if up to then no crying, emotional upheaval, fear, joy, or shock could touch this darkly unconscious inner peace, from then on everything seemed to function as it turned inside out: colors, shapes, surfaces, and textures that could be described as beautiful or ugly simply lost their meaning, yet the stomach went on digesting with nervous spasms when food was shoved into it; the heart beat cautiously, as if looking out for itself, to pump the blood through the veins; intestines grumbled reluctantly, stinking as they twisted with irritation; urine stung the skin it issued from; with each breath the raw pain of having a body wanted to escape the lungs but couldn't, and remained within; and this anxiety— for no physical function could expel the soul's oh so profound pains— made me hear my own breathing, which sounded as if any minute I might gasp my last breath; I was nauseated by my own physical existence, yet every nerve in my body was trying to gauge what was happening inside me, or what else might happen, though outwardly I remained calm, impassive, nearly indifferent to everything around me, and of course I couldn't cry, either.

From time to time, however, something did break to the surface, like phlegm coughed up, and each time this happened I hoped that the warmth of the tears would take me back to the radiant oblivion of childhood, where the gentle strength of an embracing arm can offer consolation; but it was that very thing, that embracing warmth, that was missing, and what forced itself through from time to time was not crying but bursts of cold, wrenching shivers that no one would have noticed had anyone cared to watch me, because they passed quickly and with scarcely an external sign.

Actually, I was playacting, even finding pleasure in my new role; it pleased me that I was burdening no one with complaints about my physical and mental anguish.

On the afternoon about which I'd like to speak, now that I'm nearing the end of my story, I was lolling in bed and aware — if it's possible to describe the state of fatal anticipation with such an intimate word — of silence, a silence in which one feels the total absence of grace; that's the kind of silence that pervaded the house as the cloudy December twilight was descending, softly, heavily; considering the state I was in, this was the most welcome time of the day, since light repulsed me at least as much as did the sensations of my own body or darkness itself, and only the dimness of dusk promised relief; all the doors were wide open, no one had turned on the lights anywhere in this suddenly alien house where, because of the coal shortage, the radiators were only lukewarm, and now and again Aunt Klára's powerful voice reached me from the distant dining room, as she kept up her unrelenting dialogue with Grandmother's silence, which had become more or less permanent: the day Father took my little sister away from her and put her in an institution somewhere near Debrecen, Grandmother had stopped talking; although I could not make out the faraway words, not that I was listening especially, my ears did register this curious, one-way, emotional pulsation that, in another sense, seemed to echo my mother's voice, as if something of hers had lived on, something familiar and vaguely reassuring.

This was the twenty-eighth day of December in the year 1956; the reason I remember so clearly is that the next day, the twenty-ninth of December, was the day we buried Father.

When the doorbell rang for the second time, I heard footsteps, the door opening, and muffled words; a short while later, not to make it too obvious that I didn't care who might be coming or what else might happen that day, I sat up in bed; Hédi Szán was standing in the doorway.

If I wanted to be more accurate, I'd have to say that an awkward creature with arms much too long dangling at her side was standing there, a human form in the dimness reflecting off white walls, a little girl dressed as a woman, a frightened child who bore little resemblance to the beautiful, captivating, grown-up, womanly Hédi I had once known.

She stood there in her mother's fur-collared coat, an ancient coat fished out of mothballs, but everything she had on looked wrong, and she appeared to be exhausted, in need of sleep; her hair — that luxuriant, beguiling golden mane that used to flow and bounce with every step she took, its thick strands rippling with her slightest move, that fragrant forest I so enjoyed sinking my fingers into — was now hanging down like a piece of strange fabric, a limp and colorless frame for her face; her skin was chapped by the cold, she seemed to shiver with fright, looking as if she had got into a predicament against her will; perhaps she was very much like everyone else in those days.