Rózsa came to the door with her aunt Piri. We were staying at Piri’s house, which was bigger than Rózsa’s parents’. Rózsa and Piri were small-boned, with fair skin and black hair, but Rózsa was taller and thinner. Piri wore a yellow sweat suit; Rózsa, a turquoise plaid shirt and turquoise sweatpants. Rózsa was silent and severe. Piri, a piano tuner who spoke fluent Esperanto, stroked my hair and uttered mysterious exhortations. “Saluton!” she said. “Bonvenon!”
Margit left right away. Rózsa showed me my room. We carried the suitcase upstairs. Then we sat in silence. Having noticed a washing machine in the bathroom, I asked if I could do laundry. It turned out that the machine was broken. Rózsa proceeded to wash all my clothes herself in the bathtub, scrubbing every item, even the underwear, with a little brush.
“What’s this?” She held up a dripping white T-shirt—it looked huge in her hands, like a flag—and pointed at a yellow stain. “There, under the arm.”
“Well, I think it’s from deodorant,” I said.
“I don’t like that,” she said darkly. “I don’t like it at all.”
I repeatedly proposed washing the clothes myself, but she said that since I was used to a machine, I wouldn’t be able to manage.
We loaded the wet clothes into a plastic basket, took them outside, and started pinning them to a clothesline that hung between two trees. After I had pinned up two of my sodden flaglike Tshirts, there was a cracking sound, one of the trees split in half, and the line fell down.
We collected the wet clothes and went inside to Emese’s bedroom—Emese was Piri’s daughter, who worked in a store. A length of fishing line ran across the wall, for hanging posters. One poster hung from the line: a portrait of Beethoven, mounted on foam board.
“I think it’s a nice surprise for Emese, to find your clothes on the wall,” said Rózsa, climbing on the bed and pinning up my jean shorts.
“Couldn’t we hang the clothes in my room?” I asked.
“Why? Are you frightened of Emese?” She looked searchingly into my face, as if for signs of fear.
“What? I’ve never met Emese.”
“You mustn’t be afraid of her, you know,” she said. Her face was so close to mine that she couldn’t see both of my eyes at once, and kept looking from one eye to the other.
“Okay, but I still don’t want to get her bed all wet.”
In response, Rózsa pinned a pair of my panties next to Beethoven.
We went back to the bathroom to dry our hands. The towel rack came off in a cloud of plaster dust. Detached from the wall, it resembled a prehistoric bone.
Piri brought out the pieces of a white plastic table and said we should reassemble it; then we could have dinner on the patio. Rózsa and I unfolded the legs and screwed them in, but when we stood the table up, the legs buckled and collapsed. Piri mirthfully brought out a roll of duct tape. We taped the legs straight. The minute we got the table to stand, there was a clap of thunder and rain started pouring from the sky like from a giant overturned bucket. We didn’t have dinner on the patio.
? ? ?
Rózsa and I sat in the mustard-colored living room, where four incredibly loud clocks each told a different time. Crashing noises came from the kitchen.
“Piri is cooking,” Rózsa said in a voice heavy with significance.
“Should we help?”
“No. Piri does not know how to cook. And she puts medicines in the food.”
“Medicines?”
Rózsa checked her dictionary. “Laxatives,” she said. “She puts laxatives in the food.”
“Why?”
She consulted the dictionary again. “Because she believes that everyone has a constipation.”
? ? ?
Next to each place setting at the dinner table lay a square paper cocktail napkin. When I unfolded mine and put it on my lap, Piri jumped from her seat, whisked away the napkin, and rushed to the kitchen.
“Why did you do that?” asked Rózsa. “Why did you do that with the napkin?”
“I don’t know. In America, people put napkins in their laps.”
“Why? Do Americans always spill food onto their clothes, like little babies?”
I thought it over. “I suppose they do.”
Piri came back with a large checkered cloth, probably a tablecloth, which she handed to me with a flourish. “She says this will protect your clothes better than a little napkin,” Rózsa explained. I tried to decline, but Piri was too excited about the tablecloth. I thanked her and covered my lap with the cloth.
Emese came home in the middle of dinner. She was tall, with a beauty mark on one cheek, and a gap between her front teeth that gave her a sheepish expression when she smiled. Kicking off her high-heeled boots, she sank into a seat with a luxurious sigh, rubbing the back of her neck.
Emese noticed that I liked the summer cucumber pickles, and kept moving them near my plate. I could have eaten a bucket of those cucumbers, which had been pickled in the sun, without vinegar. I saw that she liked the corn, and slid the bowl closer to her.
“I do not understand people who gorge themselves,” Rózsa said.
? ? ?
After dinner, Emese changed into a miniskirt and went out. Rózsa and Piri and I put on our nightclothes and sat in the living room, talking about Esperanto.
Esperanto had words from every language in the world. However, the only Hungarian words were papriko and gula?o. Reaching for her phrase book, Piri knocked over a silver mirror and it broke into three pieces. She and Rózsa dissolved into helpless laughter, and Piri went to get the glue.
She returned with a phrase book, published in the eighties, which translated between Russian, Esperanto, Hungarian, German, and English. “We would like to know more about the rest cures (sanatoriums) of your country,” I read. “We would like to talk to the workers.” “I am a Communist (Socialist, Democrat, Liberal).” “I am an atheist (Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim).” “I would like to see this lathe more closely.”
The list of frequently used nouns included: struggle for peace, woman, love, constitution, deputy, congress, delegation, friend, mother, little girl, salmon, sturgeon, red (black) caviar, champagne, vodka, watermelon, cherry, sour cherry, horseradish, and beefsteak.
“Fini!” exclaimed Piri happily: she was done gluing the mirror.
? ? ?
On the way to bed, I almost fell down the stairs; the carpet on the staircase was attached only to the top step. In the middle of the night, when I got up to use the bathroom, I saw a tall figure looming near the top of the stairs. It was a young man with a carving knife. He looked me over from head to toe. “Hullo,” he said moodily, and stumped downstairs. I hurried to the bathroom and locked the door.
? ? ?
Piri had made croquettes for breakfast, which I was supposed to eat with jam. Nobody else was eating jam.
“We know that you like jams,” said Rózsa, handing me a soupspoon and a big jar of jam. “No, you can take more than that. We made a lot.” Piri handed me the checkered cloth. “Here is Selin’s towel,” said Rózsa. “Because you’re a little baby!”
“Oh, thanks,” I said.
As we ate, I asked Rózsa about the young man I had seen wandering around with a carving knife. She said he was Emese’s boyfriend, András, and had come to cut a watermelon. “He is very usual. He comes at midnight or one o’clock, with a watermelon. But he gets up very early and goes to work. You must eat more jam.”