Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Szilárd Podmaniczky
The old man was sleeping peacefully in the bed; he was warm enough
to have pulled the bedclothes lower down off himself. I perched on the
side of the bed, and all I could think of was that time should roll on and
the doctor come as soon as possible. My eyelids were drooping, and I
thought to myself that I could do with a spot of shut-eye, so I cautiously
snuggled back next to the old man.
It must have been after noon when I woke, but I was no longer alarmed;
I was partly reconciled to my position in that I had managed to gain some
control over things and I had a plan for deliverance.
Dusk was drawing in; the fire had burned down to embers, so I went
out to chop wood. The dull axe blade had trouble splitting the thick logs,
and in the gloom I was fumbling in the earth in the hope of finding something
on which to whet it when my hand came to a halt. I sensed that
someone was watching me. I raised my head. A shadowy figure was standing
behind the garden gate. I tried to make it out in the twilight. Blow it, I
thought to myself, I’ve overplayed my hand and come unstuck. Tossing
the axe to the ground, I went over to the gate. After a few paces I could
see that it was a woman, her oval face glistening in the light that was filtering
out from the kitchen window. Good evening, I said. Good evening,
she replied. May I come in, she asked. Of course, and I opened the gate.
In the kitchen I offered her a seat then went to fetch another chair
from the next room. She was mopping eyes alarmingly red from weeping.
At first I thought she must be the old man’s daughter, but because she
did not seem to want to see him, and did not even ask after him, I quickly
dismissed that notion and trusted I would be able to carry on coolly playing
the role of the son - at least until the morning.
The woman could hardly have been over forty, and if one discounted
the eyes swollen and a mouth-line puffed-up from crying, I would go as
far as to say she was pretty. She began by saying she didn’t even know
where to begin. I listened to her for about an hour as it meanwhile grew
quite dark.
She was in a big jam: everyone in the village looked on her as a city tart,
because she was pretty, and round there they hated outsiders; they were
all supposed to marry someone from that village or, at worst, the next
one over. Her husband drank like a fish; he had plenty of money, farming
a few hundred hectares with his workers, but he now did little else except
hit the bottle. She could not leave him, because he would go after
her and kill her, he had promised as much; either that or her husband’s
brothers would kill her, for what difference that made. She did not have
the nerve to kill herself, and since I too was a stranger there, maybe I
would understand.
I clutched my head in my hands. Somehow I felt unable to trot out that
if only she would give me some money, I would not be seen for dust. That
was clearly not going to solve the problem for her.
Come with me: bring some money from home, and we’ll make ourselves
scarce, I said. It’s impossible, because they’lI be after me, she replied,
and from the way she said it I too sensed that it was too big a price
334