No Live Files Remain by Andras Forgach

Author:Andras Forgach [Forgách, András]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner UK

5

The next morning Lieutenant Dóra knocked once more on the door of Mrs Pápai’s flat in the veterans’ home.12 As he entered, after a loud ‘come in!’, he was almost overcome by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins, which filled the room. Mrs Pápai was sitting by the record player at the far end of the room, silhouetted in front of the picture window as she moved her head gently in time with the music. She seemed to be sewing something or other: glasses set low on her nose, she kept pricking a dark blue piece of velvet with a needle.

Comrade Dóra expected that Mrs Pápai would turn off the record player the moment she saw him, but this is not what happened. Not this time. Instead she only smiled, and said that he should take a seat, and that the concerto was almost finished. The two violinists were Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh. Not that the lieutenant had the slightest idea. He had a strange relationship with music. He had nothing against it in theory, but he was one of those people in whom classical music provokes a boundless impatience. He regarded it as a waste of time, an irritating reminder of a bygone age. It was of no interest to him, and he found no beauty in it – no, it was just a noise, as if someone, somewhere, was sawing. That was it. But, now, he kept his opinions to himself. Sitting down in the armchair, he cast a hard stare at Mrs Pápai, who seemed simply to ignore him. That, too, irritated him. And yet this time the lieutenant had not arrived empty-handed.13 The volume he’d finally chosen in the bookshop the day before, after much hesitation, was still in his bag. This will do just fine, he’d thought.

‘Was your son home?’ Lieutenant Dóra asked as a matter of routine the moment the arm lifted from the record with a little click and the player stopped. A momentary silence preceded Mrs Pápai’s emphatic ‘No!’, a silence the lieutenant turned this way and that in his head before collecting himself. Was she still under the influence of the music? He shook his head.

‘Haven’t you spoken to him since?’

‘Of course I have. I speak to him every day. He’s such a blessing, my son. He went to visit his father in hospital. And that’s when I went up to the flat. Beautiful, no?’

She was referring to the music. But she spoke as if it were something she’d learned by rote.

‘How is your husband?’

‘The same. He is always the same. I’m only happy if he’s not worse.’

No, she isn’t lying, thought Lieutenant Dóra. Besides, even if she is lying, it’s all the same – the men got into the flat, and we’ll see what comes of it.

‘My children and I argue about a lot,’ Mrs Pápai said suddenly.

The lieutenant had been preparing to leave. After showering Mrs Pápai with praise for her conscientious work over the past year

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