The Quiet Mother

11

Konrád took a bite of the sandwich. It wasn’t good and he looked at the sell-by date. It was well past it, and he envisioned the satisfied face of the kid at the petrol station who sold it to him. He actually considered eating it, all the same, because he was starving and it didn’t smell rotten, but he didn’t want to take a chance on old mayonnaise and put the sandwich down. He opened his Thermos and took a gulp of the coffee, lit a cigarillo and blew the smoke through the crack in his window. The entire time, he’d kept his eye on the three blocks of flats standing practically on top of each other. It was evening, and he was watching for a gleam from one of the windows. Ideally, he wanted to catch the peeping Tom with his binoculars in hand.

Two days ago, Marta had sent officers to those buildings to check whether any of the residents had witnessed Valborg’s murder and alerted the police. The building where Valborg lived was about three hundred metres away, and a person with good binoculars could easily see into her flat, as Konrád said when he spoke to Marta. It took a good deal of persuasion to get her to promise to look into the matter, as she considered some gleam in the neighbourhood to be irrelevant to her investigation.

The officers still didn’t know who it was that Valborg’s neighbour thought was spying on the neighbourhood’s residents. They went from one flat to another and spoke to those who were registered at those blocks, and the residents allowed them to enter. Most of the flats were occupied by married or unmarried couples of various ages, with or without children, most of whom were very surprised by the policemen’s visit. Some dug out binoculars or spotting scopes that they’d acquired during their lives for various reasons; a few had travelled a lot around the country or were birdwatchers, others had been given them as a confirmation or graduation gift and never used them. From the flats that were on the third floor or higher, one could easily see over to Valborg’s building and in through her window.

Konrád sighed heavily.

His son, Húgó, had called from the United States. He and his family were in Florida, visiting friends, a doctor and his wife whom Konrád didn’t know much about, but who had a house out there. Apparently, they were great golf enthusiasts, and Húgó and his wife were slowly heading in that direction, too. The twins, Konrád’s grandsons, were with them and he’d spoken to them on the phone and asked if Florida wasn’t a terribly boring place. He enjoyed teasing them. They practically shouted ‘no way’ over each other and talked about the sea and the beach and said they’d gone to the movies. Konrád missed them.

He looked at the sandwich and didn’t know how long he could keep up this stakeout of his. It was an awful lot of windows that he had to keep his eye on. He was cold and hungry and his concentration wasn’t at its best. His mind went back time and again to his conversation with Helga. She hadn’t been able to tell him anything new, except about the smoking kilns. They must have been filled that day with brined pork bellies and legs of lamb before being lit, and then the smoke transformed the meat into delicious bacon and juicy smoked lamb.

Konrád took a sip of coffee and, as often happened when he let his mind wander, his consciousness filled with memories of Erna.

It took him a long time to tell her about his father and he didn’t actually do it until a week before their wedding. He’d managed to deflect her questions about his family by speaking in general terms about his mother and sister who had moved east. He hardly mentioned his father by name, saying that he was dead and had been a labourer, which wasn’t entirely untrue. Konrád didn’t want to ruin his relationship with Erna with stories of his father. He feared losing her. As time passed, his silence became deafening and she could tell how difficult it was for him when family matters came up. In the end, he gave in and tried to choose his words carefully when he told her what happened at the slaughterhouse. She remembered the murder and admitted that she’d never been so surprised in her life. Little by little, she got Konrád to tell her the whole story of his father’s criminal activities, the domestic violence and divorce, and little Beta, who’d fallen into their father’s clutches.

‘But... how could you stay with him?’ was the first thing she said, as sensible as she always was.

‘He wouldn’t let me leave,’ Konrád said. ‘And that’s how he got his revenge on Mum. He kept me there, and Mum didn’t have the energy to deal with him any more. She tried her best and always met me if she was in town, and kept track of how I was feeling. She contacted the child welfare authorities but Dad played them and got things postponed indefinitely, and when I was asked, I said I wanted to stay with him. But I didn’t know everything. He was clever in that way, how he got people on his side.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Konrád. ‘I didn’t want to ruin anything for us. It’s all one big sad story.’

‘You wouldn’t have ruined anything.’

‘I didn’t want to take the risk.’

‘So you grew up with that horrible man?’

‘He treated me OK,’ said Konrád, ‘but yes, he wasn’t an easy person to be around. On the other hand, I had a certain freedom that my friends didn’t. And I didn’t know about Beta. My mother told me much later. The day Dad died,’ he added hesitantly.

What that might insinuate didn’t escape Erna.

‘What did the police say about it?’

‘They don’t know,’ Konrád said. ‘They know that Dad and I argued that day because the neighbours heard the commotion, but they don’t know the reason why. By that time, we argued quite often. I was on the verge of moving out.’

‘And was it because of Beta that you two argued that day?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who knows that, then?’

‘No one. Mum. Beta. You.’

Erna looked into his eyes. A week later, they would be married. The question hung over them, but she refrained from asking it. Nevertheless, Konrád answered it, and then they never talked about it again.

‘I have an alibi,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me.’

Konrád noticed at the wedding how caring Erna was of his mother. They’d only met very briefly once before, but became good friends that day, and from then on, Erna made sure to keep in almost daily contact with his mother and see to it that she lacked none of the affection she could give, despite the two of them living in different parts of the country. The same went for Beta, who could be difficult to get to know. Over time, she and Erna became good friends.

Konrád sipped his coffee and the memories came to him like microwave background radiation from the distant past.

‘Why don’t you try to find out who murdered your father?’ Erna asked one winter’s night a few years later, after they’d gone to bed. Konrád’s mother had just died, and a storm was hammering the house. The topic had come up earlier that evening and, as always, he’d been reluctant to discuss it. Erna hadn’t given up. ‘No one is in a better position to do so,’ she said. ‘What are you afraid of?’

He didn’t answer her, and all that was heard for a long time was the whining of the wind. The city’s residents had been urged to stay indoors while the storm did its worst.

‘The truth,’ he finally said.

‘Did you ever ask your mother about it?’ whispered Erna after a moment’s thought.

‘It would have been like an accusation.’

‘Is that why you’ve never wanted to look into it?’

‘Yes. Among other things.’

‘But... can it be...?’

‘Sometimes, I can’t think who else it might have been,’ Konrád whispered, his words almost drowned out by the storm.

He finished the coffee in the Thermos and was fishing a cigarillo out of his pocket when he looked up at the blocks of flats and saw a gleam in one of the windows on the fifth floor.