“You can’t cook properly for your husband, you wretch!” Maria screamed, and the heavy, silvery spoon bounced off the edge of my plate and hit my wrist painfully.
I glanced at the clock in the kitchen: half past one. This old lady had exactly nine hours left in my apartment.
Imagine, girls: we’re sitting at the dining table, spooning soup, so quiet that you can hear the seagull’s scream from the downtown canal, here in Székesfehérvár.
I cooked the borscht for three hours. With bone-in meat and beets, which I roasted in aluminum foil beforehand to give it a deep, rich color… you know, that thick, ruby hue. This city is hard on light and color anyway, so at least everything in the kitchen should be vibrant.
The spoon flies towards me. It’s an old piece, heavy, with an “M” monogram on the handle. It’s an heirloom from my husband’s family, a legacy from their great-grandmother – Mary waves it as if it were a scepter in her hand.
The metal clanked across the parquet floor, and a red welt immediately appeared on my wrist. My first thought was stupid: “At least it’s not a fork.”
Maria sat across from me, her nostrils flaring. She always smelled of mints and a musty, warehouse smell. No wonder—she had spent thirty years as a wholesaler. She was used to everyone standing at attention around her.
“Júlia, why are you silent?” said Gábor, my husband.
He stared at his plate. As if he were finding the answers to the universe at the bottom of the soup. He was stroking his phone under the table, his shirt sliding up over his stomach. He was supposedly “cleaning” the device. He had almost wiped a hole in it.
“Mom is just delighted,” he grumbled without looking at me. “She says it out of love. She’s worried because I’m too thin.”
I measured his jeans, which were already tight, and my own wrist, where the stain was getting darker. My arm was throbbing, yet a strange calm settled in my stomach. It was the kind of silence that came when a decision had been made but hadn’t yet been put into words.
I understood: if I swallow this now, tomorrow a gnat will fly after me. And the day after tomorrow it will also dictate where I breathe. No. In my home, only dust can fly, nothing else.
I stood up. Slowly, measuredly. The chair scratched the parquet floor – I had re-polished it five years ago when I bought the studio apartment I inherited from my aunt. Mária was already frowning: “What’s the point of downtown? It’s too noisy. You could have moved to the suburbs, closer to me. It’s quieter for me, and it’s shorter for Gábor.”
Of course, to make it more comfortable for him. So that I can adjust to his pace? Not anymore.
I grabbed a white linen napkin and wiped my wrist, even though I knew it was useless. The heat was creeping up to my elbow.
“Julia, where are you going?” asked Maria, her voice steady. “I haven’t finished yet. The soup is as salty as the sea. You’re almost sixty and still in the clouds? Or are you just clumsy?”
I didn’t answer. I looked at the spoon lying on the floor, its dull glint on the parquet grain, and I felt that in the next moment I would finally speak.
— Have you looked in the mirror lately? Tell me, who would need you like this? No money, no benefits, no sense at all, but your face is as big as if you were at least a minister! — Erzsébet’s voice rang out sharply throughout the narrow hallway, as if she wasn’t even arguing, but rather wanted to break through the walls with a hammer.
“Please don’t yell,” I replied, not even taking off my coat. “I got off work ten minutes ago. Five urgent cases since morning, two yelling incidents in the department, and the bus broke down in the middle of the bridge. Let me at least take off my boots without giving you a lecture.”
“Take off your boots!” he snorted, adjusting his shiny bag on his shoulder. He looked me over as if I had deliberately rolled in mud just to annoy him. “Tell me, how long have I had to ask permission to enter this apartment?”
Gábor was standing in the kitchen doorway, wearing a faded gray T-shirt and sweatpants, his hands in his pockets. He looked as if he were discussing the weather. Only his eyes betrayed it: he glanced at his mother, then at the floor, then somewhere next to me.
“Mom, stop it,” he said weakly. “Don’t start at the threshold.”
“Then when? In the cemetery?” he snapped immediately. “Or when this woman completely pushes us out of the apartment? Look at her! She walks around as if she owns the world. If I say a word, she makes a face as if we were begging her.”
I slowly put my bag on the dresser. Fatigue surged up from within, like a heavy, nauseating wave. I knew this scenario exactly in a minute. First comes some small household excuse. Then money. Then my appearance, my age, my nature, my family background. Meanwhile, Gábor stands as a set. I listen. And at night, I stare at the ceiling with a pounding heart.
Five years. It’s been the same scene for five years, except for the season and food prices.
“What’s the problem now?” I asked. “Is there not enough salt in the soup? Are the towels hanging wrong? Or did I say hello with the wrong accent again?”
“Are you even mocking me?” he stepped closer. “I’m just telling the truth. My son carries everything on his back, and you just grimace. You push papers, sit among dusty documents, and then come home as if you were the breadwinner of the family.”
“Mom, that’s enough,” Gábor grumbled.
— What do you mean, enough? Isn’t it? — he turned his whole body towards her. — Does the utility bill pay itself? Does the food grow in the fridge by itself? Does the car’s gas tank fill by itself?
I smiled, bitterly. The car. The holy cow. Gábor’s foreign car, bought on credit, which he adored as if it were a relic. He took on extra work for it, he put off renovations for it, he sighed that “times are tough”. But he never noticed when he ran out of washing powder, toilet paper, oil or medicine, or when the kitchen tap dripped. Moreover, the electricity bill came in my name, and somehow I always paid it.
— Utilities — I repeated. — And food. Cleaning products. The internet. And their son, who promises to buy himself winter boots for the third time this year, but instead spends on another “urgent” car repair.
“Don’t go rummaging through other people’s wallets!” screamed Erzsébet.
— In someone else’s? — I finally looked at him straight. — So it’s not my money? Then let me ask you: who has been buying continuously for three years? Who paid the washing machine repairman? Who ordered the new refrigerator when the old one finally gave up? Who paid for the installation of the doors after his son said, “Someday”?
— You’re lying! — he slammed the dresser. — Gábor takes care of everything! Everything! And you clung to him like a leech! Even your nature is unbearable! Who did he need you for? What did you come here with? With only a suitcase! No family, no dowry! He raised you!
— Mom, be quieter — Gábor interrupted, but not because of me. Not to protect me. Just like when someone is arguing too loudly in the stairwell. — The neighbors will hear.
Something icy cold clicked inside me.
He didn’t say, “Mom, I can’t stand this.”
He didn’t say, “Don’t talk to my wife like that.”
He didn’t say, “You’re wrong.”
Just say: “They will hear.”
So the problem isn’t that I’m being humiliated to the point of smithing in my own home, but that someone could witness it.
“Impressive,” I remarked quietly. “A model husband.”
“Don’t start, Kata,” Gábor sighed, as if I had caused the scene. “You’re overreacting to everything.” Mom was blunt, but the point is…
“The point?” I asked calmly. “I’m listening. What’s the point tonight?”
He shrugged like a student facing an exam.
— The way you act like everyone owes you these days. You talk back. You’re disrespectful to Mom. You’re always unhappy. When I get home, your face looks like you’ve just come from a funeral.
“Maybe,” I nodded, “because I get up at six, cross half the city, work all day, go shopping, and then come home to hear how worthless I am according to your family. That doesn’t make many people shine, believe me.”
— Do you hear, Gábor? — Erzsébet immediately picked up. — He even blames you! Just look at him.
