“She did not add,Rossi charmed her, so why not you? I thought it better to leave the subject there.
“‘I hope you let her know we’re coming.’ I wondered, looking at her across the table, if she would tell her mother about the librarian’s attack on her. The little scarf was wound firmly around her neck, and I tried hard not to glance at it.
“‘Aunt Éva sent a message to her last night,’ Helen said calmly, and passed me the preserves.
“The bus, when we caught it at the northern edge of the city, wound slowly in and out of suburbs, as Helen had predicted-first old outlying neighborhoods much damaged by the war, and then a host of newer buildings, rising high and white like tombstones for giants. This was the communist progress that was often elaborated upon with hostility in the Western press, I thought-the herding of millions of people all over Eastern Europe into sterile high-rise apartments. The bus stopped at several of these complexes, and I found myself wondering how sterile they really were; around the base of each lay homely gardens full of vegetables and herbs, bright flowers and butterflies. On a bench outside one building, close to the bus stop, two old men in white shirts and dark vests were playing a board game-what, I couldn’t make out at a distance. Several women got on the bus in brightly embroidered blouses-a Sunday costume?-and one carried a cage with a live hen inside it. The driver waved the hen in with everyone else, and her owner settled in the back of the bus with some knitting.
“When we had left the suburbs behind, the bus lumbered out onto a country road, and here I saw fertile fields and wide, dusty roads. Sometimes we passed a horse-drawn wagon-the wagon made like a simple basket of wooden boughs-driven by a farmer in a black fedora and vest. Now and then we caught up with an automobile that would have been in a museum in the United States. The land was beautifully green and fresh, and yellow-leaved willows hung over the little streams that wound through it. From time to time we rode into a village; sometimes I could pick out the onion cupolas of an Orthodox church among the other church towers. Helen leaned across me for a view, too. ‘If we kept on this road, we’d reach Esztergom, the first capital of the Hungarian kings. That’s certainly worth seeing, if only we had the time.’
“‘Next time,’ I lied. ‘Why did your mother choose to live out here?’
“‘Oh, she moved here when I was still in high school, to be close to the mountains. I did not want to go with her-I stayed in Budapest with Éva. She has never liked the city, and she said the Börzsöny Mountains, north of here, remind her of Transylvania. She goes there with a hiking club every Sunday, except when the snows are heavy.’
“This added another little piece to the mosaic portrait of Helen’s mother that I was constructing in my mind. ‘Why didn’t she move to the mountains themselves?’
“‘There is no work there-it is mostly a national park. Besides, my aunt would have forbidden it, and she can be very stern. She thinks my mother has isolated herself too much already.’
“‘Where does your mother work?’ I peered out at a village bus stop; the only person standing there was an old woman dressed completely in black, with a black kerchief on her head and a bunch of red and pink flowers in one hand. She didn’t get on the bus when we pulled up, nor did she greet anyone who got off. As we drove away I could see her staring after us, holding up her nosegay.
“‘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.