Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 1993 (5. évfolyam, 31-51. szám)

1993-12-17 / 49. szám

AMERICAN Hungarian Journal WAITING FOR WINTER II. She went out, knowing that Francoise would be waiting in the small drawing room. She had made an appointment with the German publisher for two o’clock and didn’t want to keep him wait­ing. When she came in, the solemn gentleman stood up and made a brief bow. He was stout, obese in fact, and somehow this cheered her. Francoise was sit­ting down with a notebook on her lap. "If you prefer to speak in your own language, my secretary will serve as interpreter." The corpulent gentleman nodded. He spared her banal outpourings and came straight to the point, in honest, businesslike fashion, a procedure that had its ad­vantages. "I’m buying the diary," he said in French. "Your hus­band lived in my country during crucial years; he knew important political and literary people, and his memoirs are valuable to us." He gave a slight cough and fell silent, in anticipation of a response that was not forthcom­ing. This seemed to perplex him because he stiffened and ad­vanced, boldly, into the area of money. "I’ll pay in marks," he said, "right away, before there’s a contract; all I need is an option." He spoke in German, and Fran­coise promptly translated. The interpositon of a translation made the proposal less vulgar, and she was grateful to him for this subtlety. Also it facilitated her reply; her words, passed on by Francoise in other words that were to her incomprehensible, took on a life of their own, which did not belong to her or concern her, which no longer had a mean­ing. She would have her secretary write to him, she said, but surely he understood that this was no time for decisions. Of course she would take into account that this was the first offer, but for the mo­ment, if he would excuse her, she must fulfill other obligations... She looked to Francoise. Other obligations... she didn’t quite know which, and didn’t care. Francoise was looking at her notebook and taking care of everything. As she followed Francoise, she gave in to this childish feeling. The sensation of being an abandoned child rose from the buried depths of her weary old body and broke through the ruins of the interven­ing years, giving her, once more, an overwhelming urge to sob and weep without restraint, and, at the same time, an almost feverish lightheartedness. For a moment she felt that the child reawakened within her might jump and dance or sing a nonsense song. Whatever had given her the urge to cry also took the urge away. And then a harsh light was com­ing out of the library, the floor was covered with wires, and someone was talking overloudly. "They’re after an interview for the TV eve­ning news," said Francoise. "The agency president called in per­son. I set a limit of three minutes, but if you don’t feel up to it, I’ll send them away. They are fools," she said scornfully. It wasn’t actually so. The TV reporter was an emaciated, intel­ligent-looking young man, tor-This page written by ATA accredited translator SUSAN JANCSO menting the microphone with his bony hands. He seemed to be very well acquainted with the dead writer’s work, and began by quot­ing from one of his youthful books. Beneath his acute but casual manner she felt a touch of embarrassment. He asked her to interpret a sentence which had become proverbial, symbolic of a whole generation, a sentence which even schoolbooks had picked up, in a positive sense, of course, because schoolbooks go for the positive. And here he was, asking her whether, in that defini­tion of man, there wasn’t a grain of irony, a perfidiously disguised negative hint. The insinuation made her feel happy. It allowed her to make an evasive reply, dis­guised as improvisation, to take refuge in the role of the great man’s widow, who can reveal his taste in neckties. And so her answer was disarmingly banal, so inadequate that it lived up to ex­actly what the reporter expected. It confirmed, in the highest de­gree, that she was a subtly intel­ligent woman, the perfect helpmeet, who could provide precious first-hand information. All of which led, inevitably, to a biographical indiscretion, a sub­tle indiscretion, because the reporter was well-mannered and hoped, for the benefit of the TV audience, that she would tell him an episode of their life story. Which meant his Ufe story. And she obliged - why not? - with a moralistic tale, one tinged with nobility, because that is what the public relishes, especially the everyday public. As she spoke, she had a feeling of bitterness towards herself. She would rather have told a quite different story, but not to this well-man­nered young man, under the daz­zling lights. She fell silent and smiled, in an exhausted but dig­nified manner. Of the drive to the cathedral she registered nothing except for such confused fleeting images as the senses take in but do not retain. She was driven in a black car, upholstered in grey, with a muffled engine and a silent driver. At the service, too, she was there and not there, present with her body alone while she al­lowed her mind to range at ran­dom through the geography of memory: Paris, Capri, Taormina, and then, suddenly, a picturesque humble cottage which - it was al­most funny - she couldn’t place. She concentrated her efforts on a room whose insignificant detals she vividly remembered, on a plain brass bed with a simple pic­ture of the Holy Family hanging above it. Incredible that she coudn’t recall the location. Where was it? Meanwhile the archbishop had pronounced a long homily, doubtless of a very high calibre. She felt cold. This, she thought, was the only sensa­tion, indeed the only feeling that could hold her attention. Her stomach was cold, as if a huge block of ice were pressing against its walls, so that during the rest of the service she kept her hands tightly folded on her lap. Then the cold spread to her limbs, not into her hands, which were burn­ing, but into her arms and shoulders, her legs and feet, which were without feeling, as if frozen, although she spasmodi­cally wriggled her toes. Shivers ran through her body, and she couldn’t hide them. She clenched her teeth so that they would not chatter, until she felt pain in the muscles of her face and neck. Francoise became aware that she was ill at ease; she took her hands into her own and whispered into her ear something which she did not catch, perhaps that she should leave. It didn’t matter, because the ceremony was over, the coffin was being borne down the central aisle, and she found herself back in the same car with the same driver, who was taking her home, while Francoise had thrown her coat over her and put an arm around her shoulders in an attempt to warm her. It wasn’t easy to part company graciously, to convey to Francoise, tactfully but firmly, that she didn’t want her to stay overnight, that she wanted to enter and remain in the big, empty house unaccompanied, that the maid could attend to any need, that this was the first eve­ning of her solitude and she wanted to enter into her solitude alone. Finally she drew herself away, Francoise kissed her, her eyes shining with tears, and she went into the silent front hall. Im­mediately she rang the bell for the maid and told her to withdraw because there was nothing to be done, except, please, to discon­nect the telephone. As she went up the stairs she heard the odious Chinese clock strike seven times. She stopped on the landing and opened, almost greedily, its glass case, then deliberately advanced the minute hand to eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve o’clock. When it reached there, she said to her­self: It’s already tomorrow. After that she went through another full cycle and said: It’s already the day afteer tomorrow. Then she turned the hand the other way, and the clock obediently struck decreasing numbers. She went back down the stairs and into the library, where there was a vague smell of stale cigarettes. In order to drive it away, she lit a stick of incense and threw open a window. It was pouring rain. In the fireplace the maid had laid a little pyramid of logs, with pine cones for kindling. At the touch of a match flames shot up so brightly that there was no need for the hanging lamp. She turned it off. Then she opened the safe and took out a mahogany box. The manuscripts were piled up in perfect order, like banknotes, with rubber bands around them. On every bundle there was a date, and the writer’s signature. She pulled them all out and looked them over. It was difficult to choose. She thought of the novel, but decided against it. The novel should come last, perhaps in February. And it was too soon for the play. She paused over the other bundles. The poems would be a good choice, but perhaps the diary would be better still. She weighed it in her hand and looked at the length. Three hundred was the number on the last page. Good God! She sat down on the armchair in front of the fireplace and crumpled the first page into a ball, so as to be able to throw it into the fire without having to lean too far forward. It turned a tobacco colour before turning to ashes. Poor fool, she said, poor dear fool. She leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling. The winter would be long; it had scarcely begun. She felt tears flood her eyes and let them run down her cheeks, abundant, un­controllable. MAGYAR AUDIÓ-KAZETTÁK KAPHATÓK A legnépszerűbb számok: Csongrádi Kata: Nem boszor­kányság Poór Péten Szent Kará­csony éjjel, Koós János, Máthé Ottilia, Szécsi Pál, Sztankay István dalai, Elvis Presley ma­gyarul, Ludas Matyi, stb. CSÁRDÁS Étterem, 5820 Melrose Avenue Telefon: (213) 962-6434 MALÉV HUNGARIAN AIRLINES Hetente öt alkalommal közvetlen járat New'York és Budapest között, csatlakozás a USA valamennyi nagyvárosából Ha még nem utazott a MALÉV repülőgépén, kellemes meglepetésben lesz része. — | Információért, felvilágosításért hívja utazási irodáját, vagy a Malév Hungarian Airline-t MALÉV 1888 Century Park East #410 Los Angeles, CA 90067 (310) 286-7980 A KÉPES EURÓPA társasági és családi lap Magyarország egyik leg­népszerűbb hetilapja - színes, érdekes, szórakoztató, hírt ad a mai magyar életről. Megrendelhető az Amerikai Magyar Hírlapnál, a (818)786- 0315 telefonszámon. Előfizetés -1 évre: $60. Minden új előfizető ajándékul megkapja a gyönyörű kiállítású, nagymé­retű, 3()0 oldalas CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN HUNGARY című színes ismertető könyvet (amíg a készlet tart). DR. SZABÓ GÁBOR ügyvéd Personal injury Immigration Válás Workman Compensation .Szerződések Végrendelet Autóbaleset Bűnügyek Real Estate 8484 Wilshire Blvd. #235 Beverly Hills, CA 90211-3245 Tel: (213) 653-488^ Fax: (213) 852-0845 ....... ............................................... 1993. december

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