Lilli’s stepfather told me this. Red as a bed of poppies, he said. And when he said it, I thought of cherries.
The boy has
fallen asleep in the sun. The father tugs at the handkerchief, the fingers loosen, the boy goes on sleeping even while his father bends the little arm back so he can return the handkerchief to its jacket pocket. Even while the father stands up, spreads his legs, and turns the boy around so his back is facing forward and his open mouth is pressed against the father’s shoulder. We’re almost at the main post office. The father carries the child to the door of the car. The tram comes to a stop, the temporary silence makes the car seem even emptier. The driver reaches for the second crescent roll, then hesitates and takes a swig from his bottle. Why is he drinking before he eats. The giant blue mailbox is in front of the post office, how many letters can it take. If it were up to me to fill it, it would never have to be emptied. Since the notes meant for Italy, I haven’t written to a soul—just told someone something now and then: you have to talk, but you don’t have to write. The driver is munching away at his second roll, it must have dried out a little, judging by the crumbs. Outside, the father carries the sleeping boy across the middle of the street, where there isn’t a safe crossing. If a car comes now he won’t make it. How’s he supposed to run carrying a child, and a sleeping child at that. Maybe he checked to make sure there was nothing coming before he crossed. But he’d have to look over the boy’s head to see what might be coming from the right, and he could easily miss something. If there’s an accident, it’ll be his fault. This is the same man who, before the boy fell asleep, said: Our Mami doesn’t wear sunglasses. If she did, she wouldn’t see how blue your eyes are. He walks up to the post office, carrying the child
like a parcel. If the boy doesn’t wake up, he’ll put him in the mail. An old woman sticks her head in the open door and asks: Does this tram go to the market. Why don’t you read what’s on the sign, the driver says. I’m not wearing my glasses, she says. Well, we just go and follow our nose and if that takes us to the market then we’ll get there. The old woman gets in, and the driver starts up. A young man takes a running jump on board. He’s panting so loud it takes my breath away.
I had spotted
Lilli’s stepfather at a table outside a café. He pretended not to recognize me, but I said good morning before he could turn his head away. That morning it had looked like rain, and many of the sidewalk tables were unoccupied. I sat down at his. It’s all right to bother people sitting at sidewalk tables. He ordered a coffee and said nothing. I also ordered a coffee and said nothing. This time I had an umbrella crooked over my arm, and he was wearing a straw hat. He looked different than he had at Lilli’s funeral. As he tossed shriveled acacia leaves from the tablecloth into the ashtray he looked more like Lilli’s officer. But his hands were clumsy and ungainly. Once the waitress had set our coffees on the table, he put his thumb on the handle of his cup and turned it around and around on the saucer until it squeaked. Grains of sugar stuck to his thumb, he rubbed them off with his index finger, then lifted his cup and slurped.
This is so weak it’s thinner than pantyhose, he said.
Was that supposed to make me think about his love in the kitchen. I said: It could be stronger.
At that he gave a brief laugh and raised his eyes as if he were resigned to my presence.
I’m sure Lilli told you that I used to be an officer too, but
that’s long ago now. I managed to visit Lilli’s officer in prison. I didn’t know him earlier, only his name, from years ago. Did you know him.
By sight, I said.
He had better luck than Lilli, he said, or maybe not, depending. Things look pretty bad for him.
He flattened a crumpled acacia leaf with his index finger, it tore down the middle, he threw it onto the ground, spluttered, coughed, cleared his throat, looked in the ashtray, and said:
It’s almost fall.
That’s something I can talk about with anyone, I thought, and said:
Pretty soon.
You asked at the funeral what Lilli looked like. Are you sure you want to know.
I gripped my cup so he couldn’t see how my hand was shaking. More and more drops were falling onto the tablecloth, nevertheless he pulled his straw hat down over his eyes and went on:
The officer paid a fortune. A man with a motorbike and sidecar was supposed to be waiting on the Hungarian side. And he did wait, the week before, but only long enough to get his money; after that he didn’t wait to go to the police and pick up another nice little bundle. Look over there, said Lilli’s stepfather, it’s clearing up again behind the park.
Lilli had loved a hotel porter, a doctor, a dealer in leather goods, a photographer. Old men, to my way of thinking, at least twenty years older than she was. She didn’t call any of them old. She’d say:
He isn’t exactly young.
But until the old officer, none of the men had ever come between Lilli and me, had ever caused me to feel one way or the
other. He was the only one who made her neglect me. It was the first time I’d been left to my own devices—as happened that day in the officers’ mess—for an extended period. Here this man comes shuffling along, having already enjoyed the best years of his life, and snaps up Lilli. I was sad and jealous, but not in the obvious way. It wasn’t the old man I envied, but Lilli for having him. I didn’t find the old man the least bit attractive, but there was something about him that made you sorry for not liking him. Even sorry that he didn’t care for you. Between the old officer and myself I felt regret, but it was regret about something I neither would have wanted nor allowed. He was a man who aroused no desire and who left you no peace. That’s why I had to say his stomach was round as a ball, like the setting sun. The remark was directed at Lilli, not him. And that makes me, too, part of his coming to terms with her death.
Lilli liked old men, her stepfather was the first. She forced herself on him; she wanted to sleep with him and told him so. He kept her on tenterhooks, but she refused to give up. One day, when Lilli’s mother had gone to the hairdresser’s, Lilli asked him how much longer he was going to go on avoiding her. He sent her out to buy bread. There was no line in the shop: she got her bread and was back in no time.
Where do you want me to go now so you can get a grip on yourself, she asked.
And he asked in return whether she was sure she could keep so huge a secret.
Even a child has secrets, Lilli said to me, and I wasn’t a child anymore. I put the loaf down on the kitchen table and pulled my dress over my head as if it were a handkerchief. That’s how it all started. It went on for over two years, nearly every day
except Sundays, and always in a rush, always in the kitchen, we never touched the beds. He’d send my mother to the shop, sometimes there’d be a long line, sometimes a short one, she never caught us.
Apart from me, only three others from the factory dared attend Lilli’s funeral. Two girls from the packing department came of their own accord. The rest refused to have anything to do with an escape attempt and the way it had ended. The third person was Nelu, he came on orders. One of the two girls pointed out Lilli’s stepfather to me. He was carrying a black umbrella on his arm. That day it didn’t look like rain, the sky was soaring in a great blue arc, the flowers in the cemetery smelled of fresh breezes, not pungent and heavy the way they do before a rain. And the flies were flitting about the flowers, not buzzing around your head the way they do before a thunderstorm. I couldn’t decide whether carrying an umbrella in that weather made a man look dignified or affected. One thing was certain, it made him look different. A little like an aimless idler, but also like a practiced scoundrel with crooked ways, who visits the cemetery at the same time every day and not for the peace it affords. Someone who might keep tabs on who shows up at this grave or that.
Nelu was carrying a small bunch of sweet peas, little ruffled white flowers. In his hands, snow on a stem was as wrong as the stepfather’s black umbrella. I walked over to Lilli’s stepfather without introducing myself. He guessed who I was.
You knew Lilli well.
I nodded. Maybe he could sense from the aura around my forehead that I was thinking of his kitchen love affair. He felt closer to me than I did to him, he leaned forward to be embraced. I remained stiff, and he straightened up again. His
umbrella swung as he drew back, then he stretched his hand out as a greeting, keeping his arm bent. His hand was wooden and dry. I asked:
What did Lilli look like.
He forgot the umbrella and it slid down to his wrist. At the last moment he caught it with his thumb.
Inside that wooden coffin is another one made of zinc, he said. They welded it shut.
He merely raised his chin, keeping his eyes lowered, and whispered:
Look over there, the fourth from the right, that’s Lilli’s mother, go to her.
I went to the woman dressed in black, whom he had called Lilli’s mother and not his wife—in keeping with his kitchen affair. She had shared him with Lilli for nearly three years. She quickly offered me one yellow cheek and then the other. I kissed them far to the side, halfway on her black headscarf. She, too, realized who I was:
You knew, didn’t you. An officer, and he didn’t know any better.
I was thinking of the kitchen. What was she thinking of. When the mourners filed past, Nelu threw his white sweet peas onto the coffin and a clod of earth after them. At the very least I wanted to knock the clod of earth from his hand before it hit the coffin. He nodded to me. I can’t say what Lilli’s mother felt at that moment.
Lilli might have listened to you. It’s better if you go now.
Her hatred had slipped out into the open. He sends me over to her, and I go. She blames me and sends me packing, and again I go. What did the two of them think they were doing, why didn’t I say:
Listen, I’ll stay as long as I want.
A number of velvet shoes with embroidered leaf-patterns stood on the ground. They belonged to Lilli’s relatives from the village. Their white stockings were soiled at the toes and at the heels. Behind them was Nelu. He whispered:
Psst, got a light.
He held the cigarette in his cupped hand, the filter peeping out under his thumb.
You’re not supposed to smoke here, I said.
Why not, he asked.
You seem nervous.
Aren’t you nervous.
No.
Come off it. These things get everybody all shaken up.
What things, I asked.
You know. Death.
I thought you were assigned to Italy. I didn’t know Canada was in your department.
Are you crazy.
Tell me, how can you stand it all, the fresh earth and everything.
The exchange was fast, we were talking too loud. A walking stick rapped against my ankle, and an old man in velvet shoes said:
Good God Almighty, is nothing sacred. If you two want to quarrel, at least don’t do it here.
My heart was thumping inside my head. I took a breath in order to change my tone, and said, as if I were sweetness and light itself:
We’re sorry.
I walked off, leaving Nelu standing there. The earth had
still not settled on one of the other graves in Lilli’s row. A new wooden cross and beside it a plate, smeared with food, and I simply couldn’t believe that I had apologized for Nelu as well as myself.
You give the dead food to take on their way to heaven, to distract the evil spirits. On the first night, the soul sneaks around them, past hell, to God. Lilli’s mother will give her a plate too. During the night, the cemetery cats will enjoy a feast on her rectangular mound of soil. The echo of my steps on the paved path was louder than the spadework at the grave. I held my hands to my ears and started running toward the gate. If I didn’t want to understand Lilli’s love for the old men, it was because . . .
A bus was waiting at the entrance to the cemetery gate. My father was sitting asleep at the wheel, with his face buried in his hands—despite the fact that he’d been dead for years. Since his death I had frequently spotted him sitting at the wheel of a moving bus or one that was parked. The reason he died was to get away from Mama and me; he wanted to go on driving undisturbed through the streets, without having to hide from us. And so he just keeled over right before our eyes and died. We shook him, his arms swung limply back and forth and then went rigid. His face drew taut against his cheekbones, his forehead felt like vinyl—cold, with a coldness that shouldn’t occur in humans, it’s too unforgettable. I kept caressing his brow and prying his eyes open so that they’d roll back around, so that the light would enter and force him to live. But every touch seemed indecent. I kept tugging at him while Mama turned away as if he’d never belonged to her at all. His keeling over showed us exactly how a person can shun help, how a person can simply decide to grow cold like that, with utter disregard for anyone else. From one moment to the next, he had unhitched
himself from Mama and me and left us to ourselves. Then the doctor arrived. He laid Papa on the couch and asked:
Where’s the old man.
My grandfather is at his brother’s in the country, I said, they don’t have a telephone and the postman only comes once a week. He won’t be back until the day after tomorrow.
The doctor wrote the word stroke on an official form, stamped it, signed it, and left. With his hand on the door, he said:
It’s hard to believe—your husband was in great condition, but his brain just switched off, like a lightbulb.
A glass of sparkling water, which the doctor had requested but not drunk, was standing on the table, fizzing away. When he keeled over, Papa had brought the chair down with him. Now the backrest was lying on the floor and the seat was vertical. It was upholstered in a reddish-gray houndstooth check. Mama tiptoed into the kitchen with the glass of water, glancing back at the couch as if her husband were taking his afternoon nap. She didn’t spill a single drop. From the kitchen came the one brief sound of a glass being set down. After that she came back into the room and sat down at the table where the glass had been. And then there were two people in that room who weren’t fully alive and one who was dead. Three people who for years had been lying every time they referred to themselves as “we,” or said “our” about a water glass, a chair, or a tree in the garden.