The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1991 (32. évfolyam, 124. szám)
Kálnay Adél: This Side of the Curtain and Beyond
grandmother as if she were a light cushion or an armful of sweet-smelling hay. Effortlessly and jokingly; people carry small children the way she carried her mother. She never let anyone else do it for her; several times a day for many years she lifted her, carried her, sat her down, propped her up and straightened her, and never once did the tiniest sigh or complaint ever pass her lips. Others would have collapsed under the strain by now, my mother whispered to my aunt. I don’t know why she does it. We’re a big family, and any of us would gladly take over from her, but no. I overheard them, and I thought to myself, how stupid they were: it must be because she loves her so much. One day when we set out together to get cottage cheese and sour cream from the other side of the hill, I put the question to her: the reason you don’t let anyone else carry Dédi is because you love her the best, isn’t it? She looked at me as if she’d just realized that an elf or a dwarf was trotting along beside her in place of her grandchild, then she took a deep breath. I saw that she had a lot to say, and I also saw that she had second thoughts about it, and all she said was: It’s my duty, and, with an assertive gesture, she put a stop to the thoughts welling up inside me too. We continued without speaking. That sentence came with us down the path, sometimes getting in front of us, sometimes lagging behind, but it never faded, on the contrary, it became stronger. I didn ’t like that sentence, I didn’t know what to do with it, it radiated cold, dry, hard winter cold which made me shiver, despite the pleasant early summer weather. My view on duty in general was that it was a boring, unnecessary thing, which one had to get over with as soon as possible, like a bitter medicine. From then on I watched my grandmother closely; I would like to have seen her as I saw her before our woodland conversation, but that sentence came all the way home with us and made a home in Dédi’s room. I was astonished to see that although she really did take care of everything properly and very thoroughly, answering and asking questions even, the only thing was she didn’t seem to be paying attention, or at least only partly; nothing escaped her notice, yet her attention was somewhere far away as well, and that seemed to be more important. I looked at my strong grandmother and I knew nothing about the source of her strength, nothing about her struggles and her ups and downs; I only got to know about all those things much later, when she too had gone beyond the curtain of light and dust along with the others, all those who had been chosen together for a drama lasting seventy to eighty years. On three occasions though I did manage to glimpse moments which bore out my suspicion that love was smouldering there in my grandmother’s heart, however much she denied it. One of these I’ve already mentioned. You’re economizing even now, mama, and although I had no idea what she was referring to, the tone, the caress and Dédi’s rewarding laughter suggested a harmony which could only exist between the two of them, and drew a mysterious warm cover around them which excluded anyone else. The next proof came on a cold winter afternoon. The setting sun had painted the twilight red; I was standing by the stove, putting my hands against the hot tiles now and again. Outside, the snow was crunching under someone’s footsteps. Not long ago I too had been treading on the crunching snow, I had slipped and fallen This Side of the Curtain and Beyond 33