The town of Ajka was ideally situated on the north-eastern slopes of the Bakony hills.
It was there that Edith had a clerical job. She felt herself really fortunate, since there were practically no employment opportunities in Úrkút. Today was the fifth day of school for her little daughter and she was in a particular hurry. She rolled her battle-weary jeep into the schoolyard anxiously, afraid that, sooner or later, her extraordinary offspring would draw attention. She jumped out of the car and rushed to the building, whose pale yellow plaster was covered with thin pads of moss. The ledges of the windows had been chewed away by centuries, and paint was flaking off the window-frames. She paced along the deserted, echoing corridors. Sometimes she met mothers coming the opposite way with their children. Some chattered like birds about their adventures that day, some were gabbling and jumping, but others just dragged their feet along beside their mothers. And what about my sweetie? How did she feel today? Doesn’t she … stick out? The thoughts flashed in her head as she turned into the classroom. She said hello with a smile. Most students returned her greeting.
While waiting for their parents, the children were diligently drawing the day’s letters. That their letters were spindly and scratchy was obvious from afar, but the persistence, which compelled the children to restlessly re-draw the immature forms, was a source of happiness to the spectator. Angela was also drawing away but, when Edith came closer, she saw in astonishment that the letters Angela had drawn, although familiar to her, were not Hungarian.
‘Alef, Bet, Gimmel, Dalet, Hey, Vav. Angela, what are you writing?’
‘These little letters, Mummy. Hungarian letters are so boring, I’ve seen more beautiful ones in your prayer book,’ she said in an innocent voice and waved her hands as if wanting to write her letters in the air as well.
‘But, Angela, I never use that book for prayer. I got it as a present from an old Jewish lady I used to talk to outside the synagogue. You were inside my tummy then. How have you learnt the Hebrew letters and how—?’
She clipped the end of her sentence because she noticed the other children were listening. The day-care teacher also looked up from planning the timetable. Heavy silence ensued in the classroom; only one little girl chuckled to herself. It came to Edith’s mind that there was a spelling page in the prayer book. She must have been looking at it for a long time, but how she has memorized their form and order so precisely, I can’t fathom.
‘What are you staring at?’ the teacher asked the children. ‘Practice what I’ve given you.’
Edith hastily packed up her child’s things and looked around, but the curiosity had soon subsided. She kissed her daughter on the forehead.
‘Come on, Angela dear, we have a lot to do at home. I see there are a couple of things I have to explain to you about Hungarian letters.’
‘Mummy, I could hardly wait for you to come. I miss the house, the garden, and I’ve missed you too. I want to go home.’
She pressed her velvety face to her mother’s wrist. Edith was overcome by emotion.
‘I’m very happy about that, dear, from the bottom of my heart. I could hardly wait to see you either.’
She glanced at the teacher surreptitiously and started towards the door.
‘Please say goodbye to the teacher and the children,’ she whispered to Angela, subtly pressing her hand.
Angela did so and hurried after her mother. Their hands were entwined. The little girl felt safe and her heart leapt for joy as she was again able to be with the person she loved so much. Her head was reeling with experiences, fears and questions. For as long as she had been able to speak, she had always needed someone able to comb her confused thoughts into neat order and to part mismatching threads, someone who could tie up the disorderly strands of her thoughts. This is a mothers’ real task. If she succeeds, the child will grow to become useful for lots of people, just like a grain of corn is useful for bread, Edith remembered the words of the old Jewish lady who had given her the prayer book. They left for the yard with swift steps and soon reached the jeep. Thrilled, Angela threw her satchel on the back seat, threw herself on the upholstery, which smelt of petrol, smiled happily and tried to fasten her seatbelt. This time she was successful.
’I’m ready, Mum, you can start. I can’t wait to be at home, playing.’
Edith closed the back door of the car and climbed up into the driver’s seat. The engine roared, pieces of limestone shot up from under the rolling tyres with a rude noise. She turned onto the asphalt road. As they got out of town, she accelerated. Autumnal trees ran past them in single file. The smell of the forest drifted in the air, the solitude prevailing among the trees and the feeling of tranquillity enchanted the little girl. Only the tyres could be heard murmuring on the asphalt.
‘Mummy, can I study those letters that I saw in your book? You know, in the one you got from the old lady on the bench,’ she asked unexpectedly, gazing searchingly into the rear-view mirror.
‘Oh, dear, you know very well that you have to learn the Hungarian letters first of all. But, if you feel like it, you can draw those ones in the evenings. Only children in Israel need to learn those letters.’
‘Israel? Where is that?’
‘It’s a faraway country, in the Near East, sweetie, where a lot of Jewish people live and speak in Hebrew.’
‘Then is it near or far away?’
Edith laughed. ‘Well, rather far away.’
Angela’s face lit up and she stroked her mother’s shoulder.
‘You’re the sweetest mum in the world!’
‘I know. But it’s easy for me since I have the sweetest little girl in the world!’
The sun’s rays scattered far and wide on the road like sparkling glass beads, but bluish-grey rain clouds waited over the summit of the far hills. Edith wondered about her daughter’s sudden changes of mood over and over again. Last night’s events, Angela’s eyes, the dream she had recounted and the broken clay jar were still fresh in her memory. She was astonished at her little daughter’s unconscious ability to vibrate together with trees, grass or even ants when she was playing in the garden.
‘Mummy, did you know that, if somebody didn’t hold us in his hand, we would break just like that clay jar at home?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Edith asked in a sharp tone.
The girl did not look at her, she was digging around in an eyesore of a hole in the upholstery. The woman lost her temper.
‘Angela, I swear I sometimes have no idea what you’re thinking of! Try to speak a bit more clearly. You must simply realize that I don’t really understand your little dream world.’
Hardly had she uttered the last word when she regretted what she had said.
‘All right, sweetie, I’m sorry. You know I like you just as you are. Go on dreaming, that’s your thing, you’re a child.’
Sunshine, which for a while had been shrouded by the sombre clouds of what it might mean to become an adult, spectacularly returned into the little girl’s eyes, whereupon she went on watching the lines marking the lanes playing tag with each other. Tiredness, with its thurible of frankincense, overpowered Edith like an invisible kobold. The Bee Gees were playing on the radio. Her eyes closed: first for a split second, then for a few seconds. As if the jeep had been waiting for this, it turned its wheels off the road with grating delight, crushing the ragweed lolling about at the roadside. ‘How deep is your love …’ came the refrain, lulling her to sleep. Her relaxed hand was no longer holding the steering wheel. The tyres kept on bumping against the shoulder of the road as if unable to decide whether to stay or let go. Angela jerked up her head.
‘Mummy!’ she howled as loudly as her thin vocal cords would allow. Though it was no howl really, more an ominous last scream. At that moment Edith, waking up with a start, clutched the steering wheel by instinct. But she had run out of time. The surging mass of steel ran into the crash barrier, grinding the bumper, throwing sparks. The woman threw herself upon the steering wheel with all her might, twisting it and turning it, but it held its own. The odoriferous stench of scorched paint and plastic wafted through the compartment, the tyres belched steel-blue smoke and skidded unhindered along the ground covered with pea-size pebbles. Edith was unable to match the centrifugal force pulling the car further into the barrier even though she managed to turn the wheel in the right direction at last. Angela kept screaming. The murderous equation of momentum determined the direction of the jeep, and their vector was pointing along the slope. They cut down a road sign. The seatbelts stretched with the sudden impulse; Angela was jackknifed into the headrest of the front seat. Trembling, she grasped the seat cover. Metal strained against metal, mass against mass, force against force, but the jeep came off victorious in the battle at last. The crash barrier bent, and tore at a weak point, like a sheet of paper. The steel monster made for the slope with its engine rattling. Desperate cries escaped the lips of both its passengers. Edith’s pupils dilated. She felt an icy scarf entwine her throat. She was aware that the other end of this scarf was being held by Death himself. The only question was, would he give it a final tug? She had only one thought milling around in her mind and she blasted it out.
‘I’ll die! We’ll die! Angela, hold on, hold on tight, dear! I love you!’
Dread flashed through her mind. She foresaw the jeep falling into the rocky ravine below them, dashing through the masses of ferns, smashing the shrubs into smithereens, then pirouetting like a spinning top. Reaching the bottom of the slope, they would crash into the ground, the petrol dribbling from the tank would start burning violently and the leaves of the green bushes beside them would wither with harsh whimpers. The upholstery would be dyed red with blood oozing from their heads. Smoke-smelling silence would fall over them. Death would whisper to them in his mysterious language, proclaiming the power of evanescence over everything alive.
The usual script for car accidents, however, was re-written in this case. By heavenly hands.
The jeep did not tumble down the slope. As if an invisible fishing net was keeping it in the air, all movement ceased, reality froze into a bizarre stillness. The light-blue beads of the rosary that usually dangled from the rear-view mirror were floating in the air. A majestic fog descended on them. The woman turned back to find Angela looking at her.
‘Mummy, have we died?’ she asked with a troubled face, but her mother was in a trance. She shook her shoulder.
‘Mummy! Mummy? So have we died, or what’s happened?’
The woman came to and shook her head.
‘I don’t know … I don’t understand. Even Newton couldn’t grasp this …’ she mumbled inarticulately.
‘What, Mummy? What is new?’
‘Newton, dear. He was a physicist who proved precisely that this, that this is impossible.’
‘What is, Mummy?’
‘For God’s sake, Angela! Look around. Can’t you see? We are being held by good old nothing.’
That was correct. The abyss the size of a football field below them seemed sickeningly deep.
‘Or have we got stuck on something?’ she asked herself.
She wound down the window and looked back.
‘Well, Mum, are we being held by nothing?’
Mesmerized, Edith pulled her head back.
‘Correct.’
‘Mum, do you remember when we were skiing? This is like the cable car.’
‘What shall we do now?’ Edith turned back towards the windscreen and looked steadily at the precipice.
‘I think we’d better wait for New Tom,’ the little girl replied.
Newton, however, who had been walking about heaven in a body of light, did not notice anything unusual on that road basking in the afternoon sun. Laws of nature that neither he nor his contemporaries had even suspected came into force. Even angels took flight from the area, and Newton would only have been able to observe events from afar, because He was there. Because of His presence, the ether was trembling so much that the noise of its chattering made it up to the spheres of eternal silence. God quivered the atoms of the physical world. Lots of creatures of the invisible world peered into the small area which was now receiving such particular attention. Heaven was waiting in silence until, upon His word, the sky swelled and a huge, cone-shaped cloud reached the jeep stranded in the air. The mysterious field of energy made some parched weeds burst into flames. Time almost came to a standstill. Trees and their leaves glowed dazzlingly, the air began to sparkle. It seemed as if the sky had been cleft open, its contents running down over nature like molten wax. Slowly, the light covered everything, stirring pebbles and the roadside into pulsating flames. Earthly matter in the way of this heavenly river began to pulsate. Atoms were enlivened and rejoicing at the loving touch of their creator. Then the flood of light reached the jeep too. Streams sparkling like diamond dust appeared on the windscreen, wound across the dashboard and, finally, dripped to the floor. The seats were sparkling too, their dark pattern no longer visible. Edith was shaking all over.
‘Angela, are you all right?’ she would have asked, but her words were reduced to a slur.
With each intake of breath, her lungs filled up with the haze of light swirling inside the car. Tears were beginning to seep from her eyes, though she managed to keep down the sobs that threatened to burst from her. Rationality failed her; her arguments and explanations disappeared into thin air. A floating sensation possessed her, as if gravity had been switched off at the push of a button. She had last felt like this as a child, when she had jumped off a swing and stopped mid-air for a second. She felt completely free and happy. For a second.
This inexplicable, childhood happiness appeared inside her now too, although she was in the grip of mortal fear. What kind of a perverse joy it is! I’m terrified like never before and I’m overcome by happiness. She was about to burst out laughing, but that failed too: no sound left her pale lips.
‘Mummy, Mummy, don’t be afraid!’ Angela implored her, caressing her face. ‘I’ve told you he won’t let us break like a clay jar, only you didn’t understand.’
She was ‘talking’ with her lips still, but her teeth flashed in her smile. How did she know she did not have to speak? Her thoughts rang out as if somebody had declaimed them. Edith was still struggling with speech, her eyes incredulously scanning the windscreen which was vibrating with millions of little orbs the colour of the whole rainbow.
Whispering reached Edith’s ears and she suddenly had the frightening suspicion that there was somebody else besides them in the car. She glanced back. The sight gave her a shock. Angela was whispering to two angel-faced creatures. She wanted to shout, her lips twitched, but then she recalled that speaking was impossible. She also heard, “Impossible”. Afterwards, “I’ll go mad! I’ll blow up! What’s this?” Then, in a flash, it became clear to her what she had to do. She knitted her brow and looked straight at the light-creatures.
‘Who are you and what do you want from my daughter? Answer me! Why are you here? What’s all this about?’
Angela shielded their surprised guests protectively with her arms.
‘Mummy,’ she cut in with her own thoughts, ‘they’re helping us. They’re my guardian angels, don’t talk to them like that. They’re good and holy. We can never be so, so …’
The girl wanted to say something sublime but could not put it into words. Edith was surprised by Angela’s confidence and, although trembling like a leaf, she took a better look at the angels. Colourful rings, with patterns like a futuristic map of the starry sky glowing inside them, ran up and down their skins. The air around them was vibrating. She glanced at Angela, who was smiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be sitting between two angels. One of them extended her hand towards Edith.
‘Don’t be afraid, Edith. Your daughter was born to be a very special child. Few diamonds like her are bestowed upon this fallen world by heaven. Take good care of her, very few like her are born in a thousand years. Return home in peace.’
Edith looked at them in bewilderment.
‘I see. But what’s going to happen to us? Are we going to keep floating until someone finds us here?’
The angels did not reply. They put their hands on the top of the girl’s head and disappeared in the blink of an eye. The woman stared before her, as if brooding, but was suddenly startled by some infernal honking. The cream-like fog had disappeared, she only saw a human head a few metres away from the car window. It was shouting. She could not completely comprehend the sounds, they appeared so distant and weak, but they were getting louder fast.
‘What are you staring at, you stupid goose? Pull your fucking jeep out of the way so that I can get past. What’re you waiting for? Thirty people are late because of you, including me!’ She now heard the driver of the coach crystal clear. ‘I bet you’ve broken the crash barrier too. Who lets such idiots on the road?’ His bald head went red with anger.
Edith automatically reached for the ignition, turned it and slowly pulled over to the roadside.
‘Thank you, lady. Did you win your licence in a raffle? You’d better cycle!’ The man went on raging but, getting no reaction, shut his door, puffed the air brake and rolled on. Angela’s nose was stung by the exhaust of the bus so she pinched her nostrils shut with her tiny fingers.
‘Phooey, Mummy, this is terrible. There surely aren’t any buses over there.’
The woman did not answer but reached for the key to stop the engine.
‘When did we get back to the road?’
‘Didn’t you see it, Mum?’ Angela shouted.
Edith shook her head.
‘And you were staring at them so much, mum. Have you never seen angels before?’
‘Where could I have seen any?’ She dug her fingers into her hair nervously.
‘But angels are like these, Mummy.’
‘”Angels are like these.”’ Her mother imitated her. ‘You just know, my all-wise child. Come here now, I’d like to give you a hug.’
Angela crept up to her and Edith embraced her and rocked her long.
‘I’m glad you’re my daughter. I love you.’
‘I love you too, Mummy.’
All became quiet again. The warbling of the birds in the early autumnal forest was dancing under the foliage and filtered into the car as well. A squirrel on a branch opposite watched the windscreen them for a while, then disappeared with a start.
‘They can still see us, it’s only us who’re so blind!’ burst out the little girl, who stretched her arms towards the sky.
‘You must be right.’
‘Mum, promise me that you won’t fall asleep next time. You’ll tire out poor God if He always has to send his angels to save us.’
Edith burst into guffaws, though her eyes were clouded with tears.
‘I promise! Oh, Angela, you’re such an oddball, you know that, don’t you?’
‘I know,’ the girl whispered and held her mother tight.
They were hugging for minutes, then the woman stepped out and walked around the jeep. She stroked the dents, tapped the half-torn-off mudguard with the heel of a shoe. Her pulse raced at the sight of the ominous marks the hot tyres had left behind on the asphalt. She walked back to the ruptured crash barrier. You couldn´t misread the signs: tragedy had been inevitable.
She climbed back into the car and snuggled up to Angela. She felt her daughter’s naked shoulder leaning against her side. Her skin was burning. She must have become feverish with the anxiety, Edith thought and hugged her, fondly looking into the glowing blue eyes.
‘Dearie, what has just happened must stay our little secret, don’t tell anybody about it.’
‘Mum, are you afraid to tell Daddy?’ the girl asked her in surprise, frowning at once.
‘No, my dear, I don’t mean him. But I’m not sure your two angel friends would be pleased if you talked about them, right?’
Angela freed herself from the embrace. She could smell her mother’s rose perfume.
‘I know you’re afraid, that’s why you’re saying this.’
‘I’m not afraid, my dear child, but you have to understand that I don’t know exactly what’s really happened. Perhaps we only hit our heads when the car spun around and we both lost consciousness.’
‘Mum, what did we lose? What is consciousness? I don’t understand. Does it mean our mind? If you don’t even believe your eyes, why do you believe in God’s existence? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the other world?’
Edith realized that her doubts had cost her her daughter’s trust. She sat back behind the steering wheel and set off. The engine made strange noises all the way but it did not matter to her. Something might be scraping against the mudguard. What is important is that we are alive. My God, I’ve almost killed us both! She was scratching nervously at the steering wheel. Angela’s eyes were throwing lightning.
‘Why don’t people believe that there’s another world full of benevolence and love?’
Her mother thought for a moment, then replied gently, ‘Because they don’t know the way, and neither do I, my dear. Nobody has ever come back from there to recount what it’s like. I don’t know how I could get to the other side alive. Until now I’ve always thought it’s only possible after we die.’
‘Daddy said before that you can get into that other world through your heart, didn’t he?’
‘That’s only a metaphor.’
‘Metaphor? Is that something else, like consciousness?’
‘No, it isn’t. It means that …’ she began and glanced into the rear-view mirror, but Angela was no longer listening to her. The sunshine was gone from her eyes. She was back to the ordinary world, at least for a while. Since her first experience in the bathroom, light had spread over her mind. It was as if the cover of her brain had burst. Something inside her had lit up in the way a smouldering torch hidden inside an earthenware pitcher lights up in the fresh air when the pitcher is broken. Some huge, unknown flame. It filled her with confidence in the existence of the other world, and brought meaning into her ignorance.
She watched the landscape fly by. Trees raced past the car like brown-booted, green-haired champion runners soon lost in the distance. Titmice were gossiping on the kilometre stones. There was a strung-up dog hanging from a roadside pine tree. Flies buzzed on the string that cut deeply into his throat; a five-pointed star had been burnt into the fur on his bloated belly. Shocked, Edith turned back towards the carcass rocking in the wind. What people! Angela also stared at it, mouth agape, then her little face changed as if a ghost had passed through her.
‘Death got only this far, but has no power over me. He is fighting a losing battle,’ she told Edith, and drew another pentagram on the window with her fingers.
The woman’s face went white as a sheet. She had never heard her daughter speak like that.
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