Another Love by Erzsébet Galgóczi

Author:Erzsébet Galgóczi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cleis Press Start
Published: 2012-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Magda started to cry. Again Marosi gave her his handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and her nose. It was barely possible to understand her mumbling: “I really gave her morphine . . . but I didn’t think that she would take it . . . I was happy that she was still alive . . . even though I had lost her.” She was really crying now. Marosi thought: I have no more handkerchiefs. He paid and asked the waitress—who was not the least surprised about Magda Módra’s condition—to call a cab. He put his arm around her and helped her into the cab.

“Can you give me your address?” he asked. Magda Módra mumbled her address and a second later she had fallen asleep. Tightly, Marosi put his arm around her, but he awakened her when they arrived in front of her house. He pulled her out of the cab, dragged her to the elevator and rang for the concierge. A man in a striped robe came shuffling along.

“She doesn’t feel well,” Marosi said and put ten forints in his hand. “What floor does she live on?”

“Third floor, first door,” the man said with an expressionless face and took them up. Pointing at the door, he asked: “Shall I call a doctor?”

“I’m a doctor,” Marosi replied, supporting Magda’s weak body with one hand and searching her handbag with his other. He took out a set of keys and with one of them he opened the door to her flat. He pulled the woman in, turned on the light and, terrified, he stepped back. The flat was empty. A mattress with rumpled sheets was in the middle of the room, and on the walls, a few clothes hung from nails. In one corner of the flat, there was a disorganized pile of books. Marosi put the weak woman on the mattress, took off her shoes and her stockings, opened her bra and covered her with a sheet. He went through the flat. Kitchen, bath, hall—empty, there was not one chair in the flat.

“Who gave you this flat?” he woke her up. With closed eyes, she stretched her arms towards him.

“Come here,” she whispered. “Come, take my hand. I love you, because you love Eva.”

“Who gave you this flat? The ministry of the home department?” he pressed her.

“Does it matter?” Magda Módra moaned in pain. “Do you think that I’m an informer?”

Marosi put a glass of water, an ash tray and some cigarettes on the floor right next to her, turned off the light, closed the door and threw in the key through a small, open window.

“My god,” he said despondently, “my god, that’s also our generation.”

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