The Acts of My Mother - Softcover

For decades, writer and translator ANDRÁS FORGÁCH has been a recognized and respected figure in Hungarian public life. A prize-winning writer and literary translator, he is also a screenwriter, playwright, and visual artist whose works have won numerous awards in his native Hungary and have been adapted for film.

Mrs Pápai arrived at the meeting right on time. The gentlemen were fifteen minutes late, for which they humbly and repeatedly apologized before greeting Mrs Pápai with a bouquet of flowers on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday. All of this occurred on Batthyány Square. The gentlemen were still apologizing when Mrs Pápai, with a flick of her hand, brushed aside any further protestation, and with a disarming smile, an unmistakable accent and a melodic voice, which together accentuated the charm of her pronouncement, said among the swirling snowflakes (which, by the way, the report neglected to mention): ‘May this be the biggest problem, gentlemen.’ True, she in fact addressed the gentlemen as ‘comrades’. But in the interests of the solemnity this story merits, let us stick with ‘gentlemen’, which is, after all, more in keeping with the compliments the men extended alongside the lovely bouquet.

The formalities over, the little coterie, as agreed in advance, headed off along the edge of the square towards the patisserie situated beside or behind (depending on perspective) the twin-spired church and below the square, in the basement, evoking the time before the great floods, when the basement was at street-level. On hearing Mrs Pápai’s tinkling laughter, even the river’s grey spume seemed to cheer up momentarily – yes, even Hokusai might have envied the slanted curtain of huge snowflakes falling on the grey-silver water of the Danube. At that very moment, Tram 19 embarked on its journey along the river towards the Chain Bridge from its terminus behind the concrete cube of the subway station, its ear-piercing rattle drowning out Mrs Pápai’s laughter.

Not that Mrs Pápai cut such a strikingly elegant figure, with a colourful winter cap knitted from thick wool pulled down over her forehead and a rather plain-looking, beige winter coat – the product of the Red October Clothes Factory – that wasn’t quite the latest model either. She wore a simple pair of flat-bottomed shoes; her sole item of jewellery consisted of her glittering emerald-green eyes, twinkling with speckles of grey and blue. As if she deliberately hadn’t bothered with her looks. ‘Ach! It’s not how you look, gentlemen, not what you wear that makes a man!’ she would have said, had she been asked. In fact, her unobtrusive appearance was well suited to the occasion. Certainly, Mrs Pápai hadn’t told the gentlemen that today was her birthday, taking pains to let everyone around her know ‘not to make a fuss’: she didn’t care for ceremonies, for needless celebrations. ‘Oh dear, there are much, much more important things than this in the world! People starving, people without shoes, people dropping dead all over in diseases and wars.’

And yet a bit of uncertainty did float around Mrs Pápai’s date of birth, though the three gentlemen couldn’t have known this. From time to time her birthday fell on the first day of a famous moveable feast, and in her childhood, her family – which back then was still at times strictly observant – celebrated Mrs Pápai’s birthday on this double holiday, sometimes for days on end, depending on the mood at home, for the lighting of candles, as is well known, lasts for eight days, and Mrs Pápai’s parents, yielding to their bohemian, artistic inclinations, sometimes departed from the original, prosaic date; for the little girl’s arrival, which in fact fell on 3 December, brought them just as much joy as the famous holiday itself. And it was because of the moveable feast that Mrs Pápai’s mother – whose memory was by no means infallible, and who was famously coquettish and of a passionate nature – sometimes gave the wrong date when asked for it in colonial and other offices, of which, because of the dual administration, there were irksomely many, needlessly rendering the lives of immigrants that much more difficult. Yes, on the spur of the moment all she could recall was that her daughter’s birthday was at the time of Hanukkah, and this presumably explains why, in various documents, Mrs Pápai’s birthday is listed by turns as one of several days – 1 December, 2 December, 3 December, and, in one instance, even 6 December! This was enough to justify, for Mrs Pápai, given her professed nonreligious frame of mind, the indifference, even antipathy, she felt towards her own birthday.

But the gentlemen could have known none of this.

So Mrs Pápai descended the short but steep flight of steps to the Angelika Patisserie, escorted by the three gentlemen, Police Lieutenant Colonel Miklós Beider (renderer) and Police Lieutenant Dr József Dóra (receiver), not to mention Police Lieutenant Colonel János Szakadáti (sub-department head).

That this did not resemble a prima donna’s entry onto the stage was thanks solely to the fact that two of them, Dóra and Szakadáti, in accordance with the rules of a conspiracy, lagged discreetly behind. But the surprises were not over yet. Having descended the steps, they were now sitting in a comfortable booth, though not before the three gentlemen had vied for the honour of helping Mrs Pápai to remove her winter coat, Miklós proving the most deft. As soon as the coat came off Mrs Pápai’s shoulders the three gentlemen took in for a moment the bygone beauty of the no longer young, not so tall woman before them. It was conjured up by the shapely hips and full bosom whose loveliness had been revealed in its entirety by seaside photos – photos that, by the way, were unknown to these gentlemen – especially in those taken in the after-glow of sunset, which only enhanced her magnificent twilight silhouette and the profile of her radiant face, whose beauty stemmed as much from its exquisite proportions as from Mrs Pápai’s unconditional love of life and cheerful character.

That these exotic pictures had been taken in the course of conspiratorial rendezvous of a different sort would surely have piqued the three gentlemen’s imaginations, had their provenance come up, but the conversation did not touch on what had happened in those bays hidden in the shadows of the cedars of Lebanon, where ladies and gentlemen of diverse nationalities and religions had swum and flirted; had had their pictures taken in the company of donkeys, waterfalls and the Mediterranean Sea; and had discussed the most important tasks of the local Party organization while the world war raged to their north.