Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó, George Szirtes Read Free Book Online Page B

in the kitchen and that she’d only be allowed into the parlour when there were guests. ‘She’s the orphan of my poor departed Margit.’ To them she was a servant one moment and a member of the family the next. Of course, if she married Vince, who would read to Aunt Emma in the evenings, and who would get up and keep her company when she had a fit of asthma? She didn’t allow servants in her room: their place was in the cellar because all kinds of criminal acts are committed at night and a servant might steal or even murder a person.
    She took the empty cup but she didn’t run off into the kitchen with it, she ran to the gate instead. Vince was waiting for her on the small bench outside, his hat in his hands turning it over and round, and he laughed when he saw how she was out of breath from running, and there in her hand was Aunt Emma’s coffee cup. ‘Are you bringing that to me?’ he asked and she just stood there not knowing whether to laugh or to cry because she had a fancy to do both. She answered, ‘Ask her!’
    The university handbook: Vol. 1 of the Gaius Institution. One hour per week. Hungarian History and Constitution. Two hours a week . Two picture postcards from Szentmáté that she sent to him when Aunt Emma took her there as a companion. Bills. Ilona Dávid’s Certificate of Merit from the Girls’ Finishing School, academic year 1904–5. Gergely Dávid, teacher’s nursing expenses at the hospital in Békéscsaba 4–27 November 1907. Receipt for the payment of costs of gravestone for Gergely Dávid, teacher, erected Karikásgyüd, 22 April 1909.
    Gergely Dávid.
    ‘You don’t know what he was like,’ said Vince. ‘Six foot six, thin as a rake, always smiling, though he was so poor he could hardly feed his children. When the river burst its banks everyone headed for cemetery hill, which was the highest point in the village. It was night and they were ringing bells. Two of my aunts ran after my mother towards the dike and I followed them but I fell and the people running behind me trampled over me. The two biggest terrors of our lives were Karikás, the river, and the dike. It was the teacher who found me, picked me up and carried me up the hill. I clung on to his neck and cried. I never saw any members of my family after that, my father’s body was never even found. I’m really scared of water, Ettie.’
    Two pebbles, clearly from Endrus’s grave or from the teacher’s, two smooth snow-white pebbles. One broken ivory paperknife, one unaddressed plain envelope, green, with a wax-paper patch in the middle, an ivory cigarette holder, also broken.
    This ribbon was the one she wore in her hair. She never sat down in the Lion Ballroom, not for a moment, but kept spinning and twirling while the chandeliers danced in the mirror. It was a night to make her forget poor Aunt Emma and that she’d been an orphan since she was eight. She was waltzing with Erno ̋ Szekeres, with Aunt Emma looking on, her knot of hair full of sparkling flame-like feathers, like an ageing parrot. Her gaze was disapproving because Erno ̋ Szekeres was not one of us , with nothing to his name except a few more names. ‘There’s a lad there who never dances.’ She pricked up her ears when they had completed God-knows-how-many circles of the hall. ‘Vince Szo ̋ cs,’ said Szekeres. ‘A court clerk. He can’t dance.’ She almost missed her step, astonished that a young man should not know how to dance and simply stand there under the mirror watching other people dancing. She stared at Vince Szo ̋ cs in an insensitive, unbecoming manner. He in the meantime had just waved at Szekeres and made eye contact with him.
    Here was Aunt Emma’s obituary notice in which her name did not appear. Klári, the next poor relation in the line, whom Aunt Emma took in after Aranka, had sent it to them. And there was some earth in a box, and an empty piggy bank. Press cuttings dating to back to 1907. South Hungary News , 18 March.