The Door

The incident deepens the bond between Magda and Emerence, though Emerence shows this “unqualified and unconditional love” (88) in strange ways. Magda offends Emerence, however, when Emerence shows up bearing items from a junk clearance sale in the neighborhood, including a painting, a boot, and a statue of a dog with a chipped ear, leaving them around Magda’s home. This awakens an unexpected “blind fury” in Magda’s husband. Magda tries to explain that this is Emerence’s way of showing affection, but he wants the objects removed. Magda deals with each piece individually, thinking about Emerence’s love for “fantastically useless objects” (92) such as the dressmaker’s dummy she gave Emerence that once belonged to Magda’s mother. The dog statue proves the most difficult to rehome or remove. Magda tells Emerence that she put it away because it isn’t “fit to be seen” (94), which riles Emerence. Magda pleads with her to see that the statue is “a piece of commercial junk” (95). She claims that it’s kitsch, and Emerence, after learning the definition of the word, accuses Magda of being scared of her husband. Magda is shocked that Emerence has hit on “something that [is] in a way true” (96): She fears her husband’s pretentious taste more than she dislikes the statue. Emerence scolds Magda and leaves. Magda feels “deep shame.”

Emerence doesn’t appear for several days, and Viola pines for her. Through Józsi’s boy, Emerence sends the message that she’ll quit. Magda tries to explain herself, but Józsi’s boy insists that Emerence has “impeccable” taste and that she’ll hold a grudge for a long time. In addition, he speaks about Emerence’s plans for her will. She has a lot of money, he says, and plans to leave it all to him and his family. Magda, her husband, and Viola all notice Emerence’s absence from their lives. Magda, unable to work, realizes how much she loves and misses Emerence. She decides that it isn’t worth losing Emerence over a small dog statue, especially as Emerence’s absence makes her domestic life more difficult. She visits Emerence and apologizes, saying that the dog statue will be placed in the Master’s study. Emerence smiles and enters the house. She smashes the dog statue and stands “among the fragments, like a queen” (108).

Gradually, the Master and Emerence become friendly, “somewhat to their mutual surprise” (109). Magda notes their similar adherence to unwritten and idiosyncratic social conventions. Polett, Sutu, and Adélka are likewise prominent figures in Emerence’s life. Magda notices that Polett is losing weight and becoming more taciturn, but is surprised when Polett dies by suicide, “hang[ing] herself in the garden” (111); she chose outside, Sutu notes, so that the neighbors wouldn’t need to break down the door. Magda shares the bad news with Emerence. However, Emerence isn’t shocked or upset, revealing that she discussed the problem with Polett many times and expected her to die by suicide. Emerence claims that hanging was the best option, as she has “seen enough” of other types of death to know. She adds that Polett was lonely, and Emerence was unable to help, so Polett was “welcome to hang herself” (115). Emerence convinced her to leave a note to make things easier for the authorities. Magda is taken aback, but Emerence criticizes her for not understanding Polett. Emerence claims that she alone “understands people.” At Emerence’s instruction, the Lieutenant Colonel handles everything.

Emerence comes to take Viola for a walk. She speaks frankly, asking Magda whether she has “ever killed an animal” (120). Magda hasn’t; the day will come when she needs to put Viola down, Emerence says, and this won’t be because she doesn’t love Viola. She compares this to Polett’s situation. She speaks about her own past, asking how many “innocent people have been killed here in Hungary” (122). In her youth, she was engaged to a baker, she says, who was torn limb from limb by a mob after the military ordered him not to sell bread to civilians. He disobeyed the order, but the mob didn’t believe him when he said that all the bread was gone, so they killed him. Then, Emerence leaves. Magda is left to ponder this small aspect of Emerence’s past, trying to fit it into something like a coherent biography. Emerence never mentions the baker again.

Emerence never mentions Polett again. This is one of many ways, Magda notes, that their very different world views are evident. While Magda is a writer, Emerence is “an anti-intellectual” (124) who insists that real work involves physical exertion. Gradually, however, Emerence becomes convinced that using a typewriter is at least working with “a machine of sorts” (125). This idiosyncratic view of work has emerged against the backdrop of massive social upheaval in Hungary, as political parties and authoritarian governments vie to define the concepts of workers and bourgeoisie. Emerence doesn’t participate in political discussion. Under certain circumstances, Magda can easily imagine Emerence dominating the country and wielding immense power, but she knows that Emerence would never entertain such power. To her, dictators and rulers from any ideological background are all crooks and bullies.

Instead, Emerence holds the worldview that society is made up of “those who swept and those who didn’t, and everything flowed from that” (129). She deplores the local politicians and anyone who attempts to coerce her. She deplores the space race and astronauts. Instead, her “compassion [is] all-embracing” (133) for the guilty and innocent alike, as long as she feels a “sense of fellow feeling” (133) toward them. During the war, she helped Russians and Germans alike. She hid many people who were on the run, often in the basement of her building, including Mr. Brodarics, whom she eventually buried in her garden. She hid a member of the secret police. At the same time, she never handed anyone over to the authorities. Magda wonders why someone so “very different” from her could become so close a friend.

Though Magda and Emerence are from the same rural region of Hungary, Magda notices that Emerence never talks about her hometown. Emerence hasn’t returned there since 1945 and doesn’t share Magda’s nostalgia. When Magda receives an invitation to lecture at the Csabadul library, she invites Emerence. In her own way, Emerence accepts the invitation and seems excited to visit the small town. On the day of the trip, however, she cancels because (due to an administrative issue) Sutu can no longer cover Emerence’s duties. Emerence is furious. She visits Magda on the day of the trip and gives her instructions: Magda must visit her family’s graves and Emerence’s old house in Nádori and then report back to Emerence. In addition, she must walk to the end of the station goods platform and tell any remaining relations that Emerence is “alive and well” (142).

Magda visits the “lovely little village” (143) of Nádori. She finds the graves of Emerence’s family members, but there’s little to see. In Csabadul, distant relations tell her a story about Emerence returning unexpectedly to the town “with a little girl in her arms” (145). She had no documents for the child and told them nothing. Many people thought that her difficult grandfather would kill the child. Instead, she lived with the family for a year, developing a close friendship with the old man that lasted until Emerence returned to take her away. Now, the family is “widely scattered.” Magda visits their graves and sees old photographs, including one of Emerence with the baby in her arms. In the young Emerence’s eyes, Magda sees “attractive cheerfulness, rather than malice” (148). At the end of the goods platform, Magda finds Emerence’s childhood home. Surrounded by this “unquestionable theater” of Emerence’s early life, Magda tries to determine how Emerence became the woman she is. She returns home.

Magda finds Emerence washing laundry and gives her a full account of the trip. When Magda shows her the photograph, Emerence explains that the child is Eva Grossman, who now lives in the US and sends Emerence parcels and money. Emerence will use this money (and the rest of her savings) to build a family crypt to honor her dead. Emerence helped Eva escape the persecution of Jewish people in Hungary, she explains. She sacrificed her reputation as a “clean, respectable girl living a sober life” (153) by pretending that the baby was hers, born out of wedlock. The Grossmans were smuggled out of Hungary, but Eva was too small to go with them; they returned for her a year later. In gratitude to Emerence, the Grossmans left her everything they had. Emerence still sees her hometown in her dreams. She tells Magda about another dream, in which she returns to the memory of a cow that was badly injured in the station because Emerence, as a child, distracted it. The cow was then killed and butchered in front of her. She reveals that the cow was called Viola. Magda returns home, thinking about the “primal wounds” that shaped Emerence’s life.

Magda reflects on how rarely she grew close to anyone because she feared making herself vulnerable. Her life has become entangled with Emerence’s to such an extent that she always considers the old woman when acting. Despite their closeness, she can’t convince Emerence to read any of her books. Whenever Emerence learns that someone has criticized Magda’s work, however, she flies into “a rage of exasperation” (159). When one of Magda’s books is being adapted into a film, she wonders whether Emerence will be more interested in the creative process of filmmaking than she is in writing. She takes Emerence to the film set, and they watch a scene being shot from a helicopter. Magda is surprised that Emerence becomes “hostile.” She’s angry that everything is fake and manufactured, right down to the helicopter moving the leaves in the trees to pretend that a wind is blowing, and decries the filmmakers as “worse than con men” (162).