His mother, it seemed to Attila, had never been a happy woman. Given the post-war privations, the lack of choice in grocery stores, the lineups for pretty much everything — milk, fruit, shoes, even fabric for her dresses — unhappiness was one of the few things that remained easy to come by. When she could no longer afford a dressmaker, she had learned to sew her own clothes. Her first efforts hadn’t been successful, but by the mid ’60s, she could make most patterns, no matter how complicated, and she offered her services to richer women. Most of them were wives of Party members. Attila would sit at his mother’s feet with a pin cushion, pressing in pins one by one as she passed them down while feeding the fabric through her sewing machine. It was an old German model, black with metal curlicues and a worn-out foot pedal that sometimes bucked under her foot and, at other times, resisted all pressure.
She would recite poems to keep him amused while she sewed. He was a small boy, eager to play with his friends in the street, resentful that he had to stay inside, not much interested in poetry or stories. When her clients came to try on their dresses, he was allowed to go out at last and, even in winter, he preferred to stay outside.
He’d told his mother he wanted to be a peasant. “I want to work with chickens and pigs.”
“Seems to me you have fulfilled your ambition,” she told him when he signed up for the police force.
In 1990, she had moved from her old apartment to a more spacious one on Naphegy, but the new lodgings failed to make her happy. But, since her recent acquisition of a boyfriend, she had begun to take better care of her looks, wearing more makeup, dying her hair a rusty red, and buying clothes in the new shopping mall. Her unannounced visits to Attila’s apartment had become less frequent, and she had stopped making him indigestible casseroles.
“A surprise,” she said, when he opened the door with his key. “Not much crime in the city today?”
She was sitting on the balcony with a long drink, a grim expression on her face, talking on the phone, while sweeping her hair back with her free hand. Even during the dreadful 1960s, when she was making clothes for Communist Party ladies, she would go to the hair salon a couple of times a month — always before his father had a day off from his job at the Csepel factory. He would come home smelling of oil and grease from handling tractors on the production line, and every time she would pretend to be surprised — but not pleasantly — at his arrival. Whether it was intentional or not, they never managed to make Attila a brother or a sister. He had had no misgivings at the time, but now that his mother was older and indulging her whims with boyfriends, it would be helpful to consult with a sibling.
At eighty-four, she was still a good-looking woman. She wanted the company of men and liquor, and the single life, all of which had been denied her by the post-war economy and the disillusioning presence of Attila’s father. But now that he was dead, even getting what she wanted had failed to make her happy. She used her dead husband to underscore her unhappiness. He had somehow taken on the mantle of “provider,” a role he’d never managed while he was alive. His loss, which she considered hers alone, opened up a whole field of recrimination, where Attila’s failures flourished undisturbed by his paltry contributions to her well-being. In her view, he had never earned enough money and persisted in disappointing her even after he left the police force.
He placed the bottle of Olasz Riesling (her favourite wine) in the fridge. She asked whether he would like a glass of vodka, since that was what she was drinking.
He poured himself a finger, and without much interest, she asked about the girls, his ex, the charming woman down the hall from his apartment (“She’d be good for you, likes cooking, likes dogs, even likes you”), and whether he was looking for a steady job. Something more reliable than this. When she said “this,” she spread her hands palms up to indicate she considered his current occupation to be worth nothing.
They were working on their refills when the new boyfriend arrived with a “mind if I join you,” and lit a cigarette that he said, apologetically, was only his third of the day. He had given up smoking in his forties but took it up again now that he was seventy-eight. That made him a few years younger than his mother, but he had a definite stoop and walked with a cane. She didn’t.
“You may as well. Not much chance of an early grave,” Attila’s mother remarked, with her customary good humour.