Iza's Ballad Read Online Free PDF

garden, the still bare garden, was rustling around her. Blackbirds, she thought. Then again they might not be blackbirds. The light is on. Anything at all might be making that rustling sound. It might be angels. Or clouds. Anything.
    By the time she looked up, the window was dark again.
    The disappointment was so profound that she hadn’t even the strength to shed tears. She leaned on her thighs and covered her face with her hands. The rustling faded away and there was no more noise at all: it was as if some deaf creature were living nearby. Then the front door creaked open and there was Iza standing in the doorway.

3
    SHE HAD COME. Her daughter was standing next to her. She wasn’t alone.
    Iza was wearing a black jumper and you could see from the state of her eyes that she had been crying. The old woman felt ambivalent about this; she resisted the implied call for help – it would have meant running over to her, stroking her as she used to when she was little, calming and consoling her, saying there was nothing to cry for. She was too much aware of her own need to lay her head on Iza’s shoulders and let it all out. It was a strange moment: they hadn’t experienced one like it before. Iza had never needed anyone’s help: if something went wrong she took it on the chin with no complaints, and when it came to decisions she didn’t ask for advice, she simply announced what she was going to do. There was the time after matriculation when she suddenly declared she was going to apply to medical school, another time when she announced she had found a job, that she was about to marry and, later, the time she told them she was about to be divorced and had found new employment in Budapest. It was the first time in her adulthood that Iza showed she was capable of suffering like everyone else. The old woman was relieved. It was as if her daughter had escaped some terrible danger. At the same time she was in a panic on account of her own suffering; it upset her deeply to see Iza crying and she was desperately wondering how to help her.
    Iza didn’t kiss her, didn’t even touch her. The old woman realised what her daughter was thinking: she was thinking this was a bad time to touch or hug each other because then they’d have no strength left to cope with everything that had happened.
    ‘Come along,’ said Iza. ‘You’d better get an early night. Come along.’
    Iza picked up the string bag, put her arm through it and set off indoors. The old woman stumbled after her. There was a fire lit in both rooms now and all trace of the unwashed breakfast things had vanished. It was tidy, that particular Iza form of tidiness so characteristic of the girl. It was as if she’d been doing nothing but tidying for hours.
    Antal must have been shouting that he had rung Iza in Pest and that she had got tickets for the afternoon flight. Her heart gave a great lurch and she closed her eyes. She was terrified of flying, wouldn’t get on a plane, not for all the money in the world, and she hated it when Iza wrote to say she was coming by plane rather than rail. Every flight was a form of blasphemy, unnatural, terrifying, especially this swoop over the clouds, racing against that certain something , to get to where Vince was.
    Iza took her hand.
    Now she had her right hand too, in the same way she tried to deceive Vince all those months, her fingers open as though in affectionate play but really to check her pulse. Her heart rate was all over the place. How odd that Iza could tell all that just by feeling with her fingertips.
    ‘I’ll make you some tea,’ said Iza. ‘Your hands are cold as ice.’
    She went out to the kitchen. The big room immediately seemed unbearable, almost frightening. Iza had put on the main light as soon as they came in, the light they only used when there were guests. It was unusual, this light, somehow harsh, improper. She turned it off and turned on the small one instead, then she stopped the wall clock and covered