Read Online Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó, George Szirtes - Free Book Online Page A

want you to be involved in the removals,’ she told her mother, ‘you wouldn’t be able to stop helping me and you won’t be in top condition after the funeral. You’re going to take a couple of days off in Dorozs, mama, I’ll phone the sanatorium this evening. There you can relax, have a lie-in, look at the trees, read, sleep and buy a couple of sessions at the baths because it looks as though your bones need it. Once I’ve arranged everything I’ll come to fetch you. Dekker is going to Pest on the eleventh and can give us both a lift in his car.’
    Dorozs was a nearby town some fifteen kilometres away and had a sulphur-iodine spa whose hot waters had been described three hundred years ago, though the spa-sanatorium in the park was only six years old. It was a place they had longed to go to and had several times decided to take a trip there but, though there was an hourly bus, something always got in the way so they never went, just as they had never made it to the seaside, or to a good many other places in the world that they had talked about and prepared for. The old woman looked down into her lap as she listened to Iza’s offer, then felt around for her handkerchief. It made her so happy to think how much Iza loved her and took care of her, but she had never been so sad in her life as when she finally went to Dorozs.
    It was an enormous relief to her that she wouldn’t have to live by herself in a house bereft of Vince, but it was terrifying not to be present while Iza packed up ready for the removal men. ‘You’d only torture yourself,’ retorted Iza, ‘you have spent enough time crying. I know my flat, know where I am taking you, I know where things will fit and what will look best. I want you to be happy from now on.’ The thought that she would be looked after, that someone else would do her thinking for her, moved her again: her eyes filled with tears of gratitude. Iza was right, of course, she always was, it really would be awful if she herself had to pack Vince’s belongings, it might be quite beyond her to fold away his familiar old-fashioned clothes and his brightly coloured caps. Ever since he got older, Vince had refused to wear proper hats and always wore caps with visors. Let Iza get on with packing those, once they are up in Pest and she feels better, she can put them into some order and stow them in the wardrobe. It will be as though both of them had moved up to live with Iza and maybe she would even talk to Vince’s walking stick sometimes, or his heavy glass, his tin can, the one he used to warm shaving water in on the stove when the winter was extra cold. She secretly hoped that they could take everything to the city with them. Iza hadn’t received a proper trousseau when she got married and Vince in particular felt very ashamed that it was only their own belongings they could share. Now she could happily make a gift of the lot, let it all go to Pest. She watched the girl’s face in hope that she might like the idea of the gift but Iza shook her head and told her not to worry about things like that but to leave the job of moving to her. She calmly accepted: Iza always knew everything better than she did and no doubt she knew better now. Pity it seemed she couldn’t take everything. Well, no doubt the girl would choose what she thought they would need in the big city, and as for the rest . . .
    It does no good to think about that, she thought, so she turned her mind elsewhere.
    She had spent a lifetime with this furniture that had grown old and tired along with her, every piece with a history of its own. It hurt that she couldn’t take it all. It hurt that she couldn’t take the entire house and carry it with her to Budapest, because the house was only frightening if she had to be alone in it; if her daughter could be with her it would the most desirable of residences. But Iza had a freehold flat, why should they continue to pay tax on the house – if she wants to sell it, that’s