Educated Walking Lady Wanted

The small white card, a little tattered on the edges, was tucked in with other notes and cards requesting services or offe.ring things to sell: “Gas cooker – nearly new!”; “Tutoring: only advanced students”; a pram, a sofa, oddments of furniture. I stood on the windy corner of Highgate Hill and scanned the notices on the board outside the news agent. I was recently divorced, living in London for the year with my two daughters on a salary of $400. a month supplemented by a per diem expense account of £7 a day – hardly enough for a family of three, even in 1978. I habitually scanned the board hoping to find something an American without working papers could do to earn a little extra money. “Educated Walking Lady Wanted” the card proclaimed. Well, I was educated. And I could walk. I liked to walk.

When I called the number on the card a rich, heavily accented voice curled out of the receiver, “Hell-o.”

I fumbled a few sentences: had seen the ad on the Highgate notice board, was interested ….

” Ah! Yes! You are an American?”

I open my mouth, I thought,   and what comes out is a dead give away.

“Ah, yes! You must come and see me. ” The voice was warm and imperious at the same time and her conversation seemed peppered with exclamation marks. She gave me directions: 7 St. Albans Road. Just beyond Mill Village. “Come in by the gate and go to the back of the house. It’s just a small blue door. Ah, yes! There is a name: Szeban. All right, then, Tuesday at 2:00. See you!” The voice rose and fell with welcome on that “See you!”

The following day, a little apprehensive, a little intrigued, I made my way by a collection of twisting back streets up to Highgate Village and down towards SoutPond. Finding my way through the devious maze of London streets was still an adventure for me. I found Number 7 on a quiet street in a neat row of modest two story brick houses, each set back in it’s own garden. I slipped through the gate, under the arms of a large cherry tree, and walked past the garden, past a rather fine dining room glimpsed through the window, and came upon the blue side door of Number 7a. I knocked and yesterday’s voice called out cheerfully, “Come in! Come in! ”

She was sitting in a comfortable armchair at the opposite end of a pleasantly cluttered room, a small plump woman with a round smiling face haloed by a wave of thick, rather unruly white hair. “Come in! Come in!, Sit down. Take off your coat. It is cold outside? It’s the vind, isn’t it?They have the most dreary weather in England! How long have you been in London? Where are you living?”

The questions flew out, and hardly before I’d answered the first another appeared. She explained that she had a little trouble with her eyes – in all the time we spent together she never referred to herself as blind – but, “Ah!”, she cried, “I love to walk.” It is impossible to convey the way in which the vowel in that word stretched out and embraced us, suggesting realms of glory. “Ah! I loo-veto walk!” And she did.

I navigated the twisty streets through Highgate at least twice a week for the rest of the year. Eventually I could find my way without getting even slightly lost and learned a baker’s dozen of different routes. In that first meeting we negotiated payment: 3 pounds for about a two hour walk. It wasn’t much but the idea was intriguing and I had already fallen under her spell. Later, when we were dear friends, what had been compensation for services rendered became testimony to the fact that my attendance upon her was not an act of charity.

On any given Tuesday or Thursday afternoon I threaded my way along the edge of the heath or down Highgate Hill, across the Kentish Town road, and in through the gate for No. 7A St Albans Street. On my first visit the cherry tree which hung over the dining room windows shaded the path. By the time I had to leave London the tree had lost its leaves and regained them, showered the path with delicate sweet smelling blossoms and was beginning to show the small green beads which would ripen to an ornamental red. A little breathless from the half hour walk, I knock on the blue door .

She is always expecting me and calls “Come in! Come in!” in a voice fruity with welcome. I come in and sit for awhile so that we can catch up on the details in each other’s lives over the last few days. The girls and I have each other but there is no one else in this new place I can talk with so freely. Then she stands up and reaches for the coat which lies to hand. I help her on with it for courtesy’s sake only; we both know she can do this for herself. Then she puts her arm through mine and we begin our walk through the back streets of London, sometimes to South Pond for chocolates, sometimes to Mill Centre to mail a letter, but most often across Hampstead Heath.

She walks vigorously, head thrown back, looking straight out at the world, refusing to make any accommodation to weakness, regal inspite of her short stature. I try to match her stride. It is my responsibility to indicate with a gentle pressure from my elbow to hers when we need to pause for a curb, a car coming or another obstacle. She hates people to think she’s blind or disabled and perhaps they don’t. We are an odd pair; the impoverished American school teacher and the Hungarian aristocrat striding across Hampstead Heath shouting intimacies at each other. She has trouble with my accent and I have trouble with hers, and so, as people are wont to do, we both talk louder. She is endlessly fascinated by people and their lives. She extracts from me most of the story of my life, my children and family, my in- laws, my hopes and fears. In turn she tells me about her own family: about the son who had married badly, about the grandsons whom she adored, about Thomas, (pronounced To-mas’ )the doctor son who lives in the front of the house, and his poor dead wife, and about her own writing career. In time these people become part of my life too. We talk about politics, what she’d heard on the news, about music and books, about the differences between England and America. “These British, they are so cold, so stiff, but funnily enough you Americans are just the opposite.”

We walk for almost two hours as I steer her unobtrusively out of the path of on­ coming pedestrians and around puddles and dog turds. Between questions, she comments: Did I see the garden there? A love-ely garden! Are the daffodils out yet? Vere there children in the school yard? She knew all the routes; could tell when we had been walking too long in one direction. She led me on, for although I was the person who could see she was the one who knew the way.

I soon learn that I am only one in a long line of “walking ladies” and only one in a series of past and present factotums who pass through that small flat on St. Albans Street. A cleaning person comes several times a week; there is a young English woman who takes dictation; an elderly cousin who can read and respond to letters in Hungarian; former helpers who look in to say hello, the two sons and the daughter; their children; the adored and indulged grandchildren; a recent emigre she is befriending; many friends and acquaintances. Sometimes we pass each other on the way in or out, smile, nod, are duly introduced and when they’re gone I learn all she had managed to extract and surmise about them. In this way she makes sure that there is always activity in that little sitting room. Always people coming and going, always news to be interested in, people to enjoy and think about; lives to imagine. Unable to get out into the world, she brings the world in.

It’s different, being alone in conversation with a blind person. We sit facing each other but although eye contact is irrelevant it’s a habit hard to change. However, as we talk I can gaze around the room, note the furniture, the Braille books beside her chair, and the special Braille typing machine. It seems a little sneaky but that’s only my conditioning speaking, I tell myself. There is a small dining table, with flowers and a few books scattered on it today; another comfortable chair, and behind a curtain, I catch a glimpse of her bed. In the entrance way there is a door into this room and an opening into a small kitchen. She knows her way around so well she can make coffee for herself, but meals are usually brought over from Thomas’ part of the house.

A large painting of a courtyard with a stone plinth in the center hangs over her head and I frequently study it as we talk. The background is a silvery gray, old stone buildings are barely intimated in the fog, but the monument is dark and striking, with a figure at the top like a Celtic cross. When I inquire about the painting:”Ah, yes! Zat is by To-mas. Funnily enough he would always be painting if he didn’t have to be a doctor. It’s our courtyard, you know. The Esterhazy cross.”

She was a writer, she tells me early on. “Ah! If it were not for my writing I would kill myself!” She writes short stories for the radio and she is working on a book about Semmelweis, the Hungarian doctor who discovered the cause of puperal fever.

Perhaps, she muses, she should write an autobiography. “One sees the world differently if one doesn’t see it.” Eventually she asks me to retype some of her stories to send to the publishers. Her writing process is laborious. She writes in Braille, translates the Braille aloud to one of the factotums who types it out and reads it back to her. She jokes about this. “I must advertise ‘Bad Typist Wanted’ because they must not be too good or quick for me.” My job is to make the typing suitable for sending to a publisher, and tidying up the English.

At the time I was living in London I began to think again about writing. I have always liked to write and thought I would like to be “a writer”. Now, for perhaps the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to try because my job was not very exacting and, away from the happy distractions of friends and community events I had time to spare. I thought about what I would like to write, but every time I tried something it never seemed good enough, and the more I read from good writers the more intimidated I became. I could never write like that!

Mrs. Szeban was a published writer and, frankly, her writing was not very good. I thought, “Even I could do better than that. Someone would enjoy it.” If she could get these stories published then there was hope for me. It seems a strange way to get a start as a writer, but that is how it happened for me. What I learned then has been helpful in many other situations since. The saints and Shakespeares give us a glimpse of the height of human possibility, but the model provided by those just a little bit better than ourselves opens us to our own, though slighter, possibilities. That year in London I wrote the the first two things I ever got published – both about teacher centers – and have been writing short pieces, mostly about education, ever since. I couldn’t tell her why she was my writing inspiration, of course, but I shared my modest successes for the pleasure of hearing her cry, “But dahling, how vonderful!”

On one of our walks across the Heath she says to me, “Oh, before the war in Hungary we were very rich. Perhaps we were the richest people in Hungary before the war.

One had 120 people to do things. It was vonderful for us, – but it probably wasn’t very good for anyone else.” I am gradually getting a course in European History. I learn through her that “before the war” – a phrase frequently evoked – Hungary was still essentially a feudal state. There were rich landowners with large holdings and considerable power. The plinth in the courtyard with the great stone buildings beyond was a memorial to cousins and uncles killed in the last great war. All of the children of the servants and retainers born on their estate, for instance, carried the surname Esterhazy, the name of her father and all her ancestors. She herself had an English governess “Whom I just adored, darling! I was mad about everything English. That is why I called my daughter Daisy.” Eventually she married a wealthy business man, perhaps the second or third son of an important family, but not the one to assume the title, and they had three children. Her older brothers were dead; she had been the heir to the Esterhazy estate and fortune.

I learned about “the war” too. They were in England at the outbreak of the war, visiting Anthony Eden, but they returned to Hungary to be with the rest of the extended family, and, at first, Hungary was neutral. But then the Nazis came and after them the Communists. They were evicted from the family estate by the Germans who knew a good thing when they saw it, and the Germans were consequently driven off by the invading Communists a few years later. Mrs. Szeban and her family lived out the rest of the war in a small flat in Budapest.

There is a story she told me on one of these walks which brings a shiver to my heart, even today. Thomas, the eldest son, was sent down to the police station to check on some official documents they were supposed to have. He started chatting with some of the young German officers: a situation where the interests of youth superseded their separate national identities and politics. He came back from the station, cheerful, mission accomplished. Later in the day some German officers rode into their street and started herding the Jews into the trucks. Thomas, his mother and younger brother were pushed into the trucks as well. John was four. “He didn’t say a word,” she told me,”but the mark of his nails, digging into my arm, stayed with me for days.” The three were crowded to the rail at the rear of the truck when a few of the men who had been chatting with Thomas earlier came by. “Hey!”, they shouted “He’s no Jew. We just saw his papers.” And so the three were decanted from the truck.

That was the first of two very nearly fatal incidents. In the other she and her husband and another couple made plans to escape from occupied Hungary. They planned to travel to a less guarded part of the frontier, and to slip under the fence. The children were safe with relatives in the country, and could be brought out later. Arrangements had been made with rescuers on the other side. But on the night of the escape Mr. Szeban was so ill with fever he couldn’t move, and the other couple went without them. They were caught, forced to dig their own graves and shot. “How can I believe in God,” she said to me, “after what happened then?”

Sometime after Christmas she began to talk about her husband: “He vus for me a friend, and for me a friend is a tremendous much.” And once, “The trouble is that when one loses somebody there is no one when you put down the telephone to say, ‘Who vus that?’ She began to talk about going back to Hungary for the anniversary of her husband’s death “to put ze flowers on his grave again. I vus in Hungary last year, and I will tell you what is not good in Hungary, the chocolate.” We were very good friends by now: Mrs. Szeban had become Clara – and I began to dream about a trip to Hungary. Nonetheless I was surprised when she actually suggested that I accompany her and offered to pay my expenses. It was an opportunity too extraordinary to pass up – a visit to what was then a country behind the iron curtain with a real Hungarian – and a person with such history. I made arrangements for friends to stay with my children and got myself a visa.

I had assumed that I was invited because I would be useful but was disabused of that notion the moment we stepped off the airplane. As we descended the outside steps of the afrplane, moving gingerly down the steep steps, I saw an elderly woman in an old brown coat standing right at the bottom. Almost before we reached the last step Clara must have known what to expect .”Evie, darling!” she cried, took her arm out of mine and inserted it into that of the waiting woman. They kissed and chattered, she introduced me and we moved on in a pattern which became very familiar in the next week. Evie and Clara arm in arm, striding forward, with me in hot pursuit, while they talked in loud voices about old friends, old times, new events, what we should do next and, often, what I might like to do or see. “Evie, dahling! What shall we do for Heidi today?”

However, I am getting ahead of my story. The only airplanes flying between London and Budapest in 1978 were small and ancient propeller craft. I maneuvered my charge through various lines for customs and security and, finally, up a set of steep movable steps, and through a small doorway into the airplane. The strangeness of the situation and the extent of my responsibility made me as tense as a violin string. I helped her to get settled and fasten her seat belt and then sank back into my seat with a sigh of relief.

The rest of the passengers were silent, waiting for take off perhaps, and Clara, of course, was unaware of how tightly crowded we were in the little plane. Perhaps she was also unaware of how many lines and inspectors we had had to negotiate, how many times I had had to produce the right important document out of a slew of important documents, but now she turned to me and said in her bright, loud, Hampstead Heath walking voice, “You know, darling, you never told me why your husband left you!” Every head in the airplane swirled toward us. I don’t know what I said. I must have swallowed hard, realized I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t explain and limped through a short and evasive version of the most painful event in my life to the edification, if not the amusement of two dozen gray suited businessmen and a few elderly ladies. No one was making pleasure trips to Hungary in 1978.

We stayed a week, at one of the oldest hotels in Europe, The Gellert (pronounced Gell­ y-aht). The ceilings were extraordinarily high, the rooms narrow, and none too warm, but floors and bath were marble and the furniture: a bed, a chiffonier, a desk and chair were of wood, old and elegant, with elaborate carvings. The hotel staff treated her like an old patron, which I suppose she was, and service was immediate. Evie came every day, after we had each had a continental breakfast in our rooms – delicious coffee and buns with cheese, jam or butter-, and then we three sallied forth to enjoy the pleasures of Budapest. Not that there were many in that ravaged postwar city. I remember blocks and blocks of large institutional buildings: new, cheap utilitarian housing built hastily to fill the bombed out spaces and meet a pressing need; and streets without neon, without advertising, indeed, with barely any light at all, and shops with very few goods. But Hungary was on an even keel by 1978. Although there were few consumer goods and no night life, people were not starving or sleeping in the streets. Outside the hotel there was always a long line of taxis, with drivers, reading. When I asked about this I was told that they were probably University graduates who couldn’t find any other work: concealed unemployment. “In a Communist country everyone must work, you know.”

And there was the river, the still beautiful blue Danube which flows through the city separating Buda from Pest. We might be driven over one ornate iron bridge from Pest into Buda and come back over another. The wrought iron bridges and the marble floors of the Gellert were a rich and decorative contrast to the somber gray, all of a kind, no frills feeling of the new concrete buildings flooding the urban landscape.

Behind the Gellert was a high hill, with a big red hammer and sickle on top which could be seen from almost anywhere in the city. While the two old friends gossiped I would sometimes walk up the tended paths which crisscrossed around the hill and look out over the embankments to the river flowing far below. It was early spring, warm in the middle of the day but even then with a nip in the air. The park was well kept, with a few bushes, trees, and some open spaces of grass newly greening, but I missed the bright flowers and variety of the London parks. However, the hill was steep and that provided many wonderful lookouts, down and beyond to the small pockets of old buildings and the vast stretches of new buildings: very little of Budapest had been spared in the bombings. And there was the Danube, sometimes a glistening blue in the sunlight, or a snake of gray on the overcast days, with ornate markings from the numerous arched and elegant bridges.

Going up and down in the elevator I noticed a sign saying “Massage 10:00 – 5:00 ” so one morning after breakfast when they began their usual “Evie dahling, what shall we do for Heidi today?” I said I would like to try the massage.

“Oh, such a good idea, dahling. Funnily enough, I haf never done it but Madame Curzon, she come every time to the Gellert for the massage. But we must go to this adorable little tea shop for lunch, so perhaps later…?”

In the late afternoon I went up to the top floor where there was a special elevator for the massage hall. The elevator was glass and gold with brightly polished brass work, and walls of glass in contrast to the double iron grillwork doors and small cramped dark interior of all the other “lifts” at the Gellert. There was no operator; there was no one around; I was reminded of the phantom toll booth. I stepped into the magic elevator, pushed the bright brass button – the only button – and the elevator swooped silently down four floors. I was deposited in a huge hall, dimly lit with large marble pillars and a high domed ceiling, painted in intricate patterns and many colors: blue, red and gold, green. There were alcoves and benches on the side but no windows – were we under ground? – and the hall stretched, it seemed, for as far as I could see. It reminded me of Penn Station and may have been as large.

In the uncertain light I was gradually able to make out the fact that men were sitting on one side and women on the other so I moved toward an arched opening on the women’s side. A matron in a white uniform promptly ushered me in, handed me a gown and towel and pointed officiously to a dressing stall. I had no idea what was happening, and no way to ask, but I obediently put on the gown, hung my clothes up and stepped hesitantly out. The waiting matron grabbed my arm, indicated I should also leave my glasses, and thrust me toward a door. Without my glasses the world becomes distinctly hazy and my self-consciousness melts away. On the other side of the door a thick mist rose from pools of water at either end of the room, barely visible in the foggy steam. Was this the under world? There was a strong smell in the mist – sulfur perhaps? – and years of reading ninteenth century novels came to my aid: these were the hot springs! I was in one of those spas my heroines were always frequenting with their mamas, taking the waters for their health.

Feeling like something out of a novel myself, I approached the pool on the left cautiously. Gradually I made out shapes,- people,- women, sitting in the pools or on the edge. I couldn’t see them well which seemed fortunate because I had the feeling they were all old and suffering from debilitating illnesses. Without my glasses, and therefore unable to make out details, I felt protected since, irrational as it seems, I have always felt that if I couldn’t see then I couldn’t be seen. The ultimate in egocentric perception, perhaps, but useful sometimes. The mist rising from the pools and my lack of visual acuity added to the sense of dream like unreality. I dropped my robe beside the others at the edge of the pool and lowered myself cautiously into the foggy water. It was about waist deep and clearly meant for dipping, not swimming, with a sitting shelf under the water. The water itself was warm and sulfurous and, all resistance melting, I gave myself up to the experience. After languishing for some time in the left pool I tried the right pool which was warmer, and finally, thoroughly waterlogged, my skin red and wrinkled, I came out, forgetting my robe, and stumbled around the pools and through the fog until I found another large arched doorway which led into a corridor with, on one side a sauna, on the other a large whirlpool. I joined a few other women spread eagled out on the wooden benches of the sauna and steamed with them, listening to the sounds of the coal fire in the center, water hissing occasionally as it condensed on the hot stones and the cathartic breathing of one of the women. No one said anything; no one, I realized had said anything out loud since I entered the elevator. When I could stand it no longer I staggered out and fell into the shocking cold of the whirl pool. Whether I did this two or three times I do not know. Whether there was anyone else in the pool I don’t remember. Everything was dreamlike, hazy and unreal.

As limp as a piece of spaghetti I groped my way to yet another doorway and here yet another beefy white coated matron pushed me unceremoniously through a second door into a room which looked a little like a hospital ward. There were perhaps a dozen tables with bodies on most of them, and although there was still no human speech I could hear water swishing and the thud and slap of hands on flesh. The matron seized my arm, – no gentle pressure here – shoved me toward one of the tables and I fell upon it gladly. Armed with a large pail of warm soapy water she proceeded to remove every lingering bit of tension or purposefulness in my body. She rubbed and pounded, massaged and pulled; I decided this wasn’t a dream, it was heaven. After that, naked as the day I was born, I somehow got back to my clothes, my glasses, the Romanesque entry hall, the elevator and real life.

We had other adventures in Budapest but none were so surreal. We went to wonderful little cafes, and ate Hungarian goulash with veal and sour cream and half a ton of paprika while being serenaded by violin playing gypsies. The chocolate may not have been good, but oh, those little pastries with real cream inside! We met the school teacher niece of one of Clara’s old friends, who told me that the baths at the Gellert went back to Roman times. We went to the cemetery to put daffodils on Mr. Szeban’s grave and at the end of the week Evie took us to the airport. When we entered the first security clearance she slipped her arm from Clara’s and I became again the walking companion.

When the end of the spring term came and I was expected home I took a nostalgia colored last walk over to #7 St Albans Street to say good -bye. “But dahling! I hate good-byes. We will just say ‘See you!” I felt the tears sting but she, smiling gaily, would not see them. “See you!” I said dutifully, as I slipped out the door.

A Year Later

As it happened, we did see each other again, for I returned to London to visit my mother-in-law the following Easter. I called as soon as I arrived.

“Who is thees?”

“It can’t be! Dahling, when will I see you? I want to spend all of the time with you before you go. I am so happy to see you…” It was the same warm delighted vocal embrace: “But dahling, you must come at once! We must talk about Ostende – I am going to Ostende! You will come to Ostende with me, won’t you? And Evie will be there! Such a happiness! And do you know, I have hurt my arm, I will tell you about it tomorrow. Yes, yes, you must come tomorrow.”

I felt warmed and excited for hours afterwards – what charm and what genuiness she could put into these exclamations and exaggerations. The next day, almost before I got in the door and had given her the hyacinths I brought – the only flower I could find with a strong smell – “Ah, my favorites! But I am going to diverse for a moment..” She began immediately to tell me about her trip to the hospital. I wrote it down afterwards because I was beginning to understand the loss I would feel without her charm and warmth and wanted to capture it now. A little like the hyacinths, I thought. There would be something to remind me of what I could no longer see or hear. The story was completely characteristic of her.

“I went with Daisy because I know she will do anything. She is absolu-tly easy. The nurse came in to take my temperature and I said No. Now why must I have my temperature taken when it is the wound in my arm that we are operating on.

And then another nurse came in and said she wanted to weigh me. How ridiculous! I do not need to be weighed for a wound in my arm so I say no. Then comes a very sweet Indian doctor and he wishes to take a blood test. Come, I say, why do I need a blood test for a wound in my arm. But he is so sweet and he says, “Ah, but won’t you do it for me?”.

He has such nice manners I allow him to take a bit of blood. And then they come with a wheelchair to take me to surgery. But that is ridiculous! It is my arm, not my legs, that are hurting. I absolutely refuse to go in the wheel chair. We walk down the hall to surgery and they follow with the wheel chair. I am in surgery two hours, I believe, but when I wake up from the anesthesia I have a headache. So I ring for the nurse and ask for two aspirins. But she said, Oh, I’m terribly sorry but you can’t have anything until tomorrow.

Well, that is just foolish. Why can I not have two aspirins? So, I said to myself, I am going home. I can lie in my own bed so why should I lie here? And I shall have two aspirins as well.

Daisy was there and she is so agreeable. I said, Daisy, I will get dressed and we will go home. You have your car here, not? So we went out the back door and we did not meet anyone and we came home here.”

“What about the aspirins?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, Daisy found my little bottle of aspirins. I could have had the whole bottle but I did not – only two.

Ah, I haf two sons who are doctors but they are absolutely hopeless. I say, Thomas, what shall I do about my rash? And he says,’Ah, yes, it is nothing.’ and that is all. Useless. Absolutely useless.

And then this Dr. Gull, he is not very smart but he is very sweet and he is afraid of my sons because they are doctor professors so he must hem and haw, but it does not come to much.”

The next day again I went across the heath and picked up my old trail at the foot of Highgate Hill. After a short exchange of greetings and exclamations she suggested we go for a walk and as though I had never left, I slipped my arm through hers and we took one of our old walks across the heath. She began at once to extract from me all that I had not yet told her about my work, my children, the year that had passed, but when I turned the tables to ask her, she only said,”Ah, I have been so terribly forlorn and my only hope in my life is my writing.”

But then she rushed on to tell me about the latest family crisis with Sophia who was having husband trouble again. “Anyone would be shattered but Sophia is three times shattered. Funnily enough she is unhappy if he comes home and she is as much unhappy if he doesn’t come home. When he talks to her she thinks she jumps out of her skin. ” By the time we had finished with Sophia and all the troubles of a recent Hungarian emigre coming through customs, and the marriage prospects for her last “educated walking lady”, a young girl from Japan, we had covered our usual route over the windiest part of the Heath, and wandered into the shop which sold “the very best chocolate; I ado-re it!”

Before I left that day we talked about our plans for Ostende, and I discovered that the gambling tables were a big attraction. I was intrigued and curious. I had never been to Belgium; I had never seen a gambling table, but romantic scenes from the movies flashed before me, and even better, countless descriptions from my ninteenth century novels, where the hero comes to ruin over the gambling table, or the villain ruins himself and justice triumphs. It would be yet another adventure and I did love adventures!

My mother-in-law, Marjorie, with whom I was now staying was curious about this Mrs. Szeban whom I was so keen to visit. I had told her enough to pique both her curiosity and her disapproval but, loving both of them, I wanted to bring them together. Naively we assume that those we like will like each other.

Marjorie and I walked across the Heath to #7 St. Albans Street and those two fine formidable old ladies interrupted each other, interrogated each other and took it in turns to tell stories illustrating their association with the great and famous, and each assured me that she was too busy with her multiple interests to do whatever the other had proposed. Marjorie, who had recently read two books about Maria Theresa, said later, “Well, she did have her information right about Austria”, in a tone which indicated both surprise and suspicion. Then she dismissed the visit, saying “Welt she is a character.” I knew that they would never meet again; and even if they did they would continue to dislike each other because they are so much alike. Mrs. Szeban was a character, I suppose, in the slightly dismissive way Marjorie intended, but she also had tremendous force of character and it was for that I loved her.

At the end of my Easter holiday we went to Ostende for the weekend.. “Ah, I absolutely loo-ve gambling.” On the very first night in Ostende we went to the smoky , downstairs gambling room in the hotel next door, and again I took notes. At first she stood behind my chair while I leaned with my elbows on the rail of the green plush table, watched the colored chips and the croupier’s sticks flashing across the board, glanced questioningly at them, surreptitiously at the others, and tried to figure out what was going on.

At the head of the table, on a higher seat, sits the man in a tuxedo who oversees the action. In front of him the little white ball which makes and breaks fortunes rests in its decided place while the wheel turns idly and we place our chips. Every five minutes or so, the little ball spins frantically around in the wooden bowl like a squirrel in a cage until, that burst of energy spent, it falls into the hole marked: 31. We have placed a chip on 31-35 which means we gain 5 more chips – and will go on playing. Clara has a definite pattern: she plays 24-28 and 29-33; 7-11; 31-35, at least tonight, never a single number or a number smaller than 7. She hears the ball going, hears the winning number called out by the croupier, hears the whispered, barked or muttered instructions when players ask for certain numbers, but she no longer sees the raised finger, the nod, the look which passes between croupier and player or the croupiers themselves as they wink, smile, and gesture to each other. She does not see the slump of weariness as the red headed croupier rests his stick on its end for barely a moment. We are not meant to see that either.

Did she ever see the gambling tables and the croupier? Or, for that matter, did she ever see Ostende, London, Budapest? Evie told me once that by the time her youngest son, John, was four, while they lived out the war in Hungary, her sight was almost gone.

Clara alluded to an operation which had not been very successful, and a childhood illness – perhaps scarlet fever, – but beyond the odd remark in passing she never talked about her blindness, her tragedies, her disappointments.

The game moves very quickly as the chips are placed on the green, many hitting the table even as the ball is rolling toward destiny, chips raked in, counted out and returned to some of the players but not all. Although there is a bright light over the table the room is otherwise dimly lit and thickly carpeted. Men and women, some with glasses of wine, some with cigarettes, are moving from the cashier to the tables or from table to table. With us are several people who are playing two tables at once. “Ah, yes1 Jack, he is a terrible gambler; three tables at once he plays..”, she tells me when I mention this. The air is thick with cigarette smoke and intensity, but the only sound is the click of chips, the ball rattling in the cage and the croupier calling out numbers.

There is another chair available now, beside the croupier, which suits her well and we sit together, she handing me the chips 1 with instructions: on 24-29, on 22-24, “Darling do you mind?” also on 31-35. We are beginning to collect chips now. We began with 20, which we lost with little difficulty in the first half hour, but our second batch of 20 is beginning to multiply: five coming to us on that last roll from 31-35; and another five from 33-37. By the end of the second hour we have doubled her money, a profit of 100 francs or about $20.00. As we left she said again, “Oh, I absolutely loo-ove gambling.”

I didn’t. What I remember from that trip is my initial delight at going to a new place, and at being with her, and then becoming bored and disench anted. The gambling scene, after the initial novelty, made me uncomfortable. Evie joined us and the two chatted endlessly as we trailed from cafe to gambling rooms, hotel, boulevard and back. I was restless, wanted to relive the magic as I remembered it; wanted to be back in London. If I were in London I could go where and when I wanted; I could immerse myself again in my growing professional identity as a teacher of teachers. I could visit schools, be recognized as a professional and have long talks about topics that interested me. I was not interested in who won or lost in the gambling rooms. I was irritable. The weather was cold and grey; it rained all weekend. All of Belgium was out there, calling me to visit places I had never been before, but off limits because I was confined to, and defined by, my role as companion to a blind old lady. The romance was over.

I wrote a lot in my journal, took long walks by myself on the windy seawall, and wondered at my own change of heart. A hot friend cooling. What exasperated me? What had brought me here? Why had I agreed to come? How could I have made such a mistake? And then, why was I so fickle? Why couldn’t I be more patient? Did I resent being seen as the paid companion? Was it self-image suffering or a relationship gone stale? I remember feeling irked when I was with them, but left out when she gossiped at length with Evie. She remarked on this on the way home – “I should have spent haf time with you, dahling.” and my feelings flip flopped again. Her intuitions, her feeling senses were always so acute.

We collected our winnings and returned to the hotel, walking slowly but firmly, arm in arm along the hard pavement. We negotiated the elevator and the key to her room. I did a few helpful things at her direction: located the gloves buried in the bottom of her case, put the key in the lock inside, and counted out the roulette chips we had won. We agreed that I would come in at 10:00 the next morning and I said good-night.

“And, dahling, would you turn out the light when you leave?”

I see her still as I turned out the light, standing by the window, fully dressed, a small round woman, upright and staring straight ahead, with her suitcase, her radio, Braille book, and roulette chips on the table beside her. I realized then that the light was on for me; she was always in the dark.

We returned to England and I knew it was the end of a love affair. Smitten almost as soon as I heard her voice, I succumbed to her warmth, her charm, and her eccentricities. I was looking for romance and adventure and she offered me both. I loved her for the worlds she opened up to me and all she taught me about: “Hungary before the war” and Hungary during the war; Budapest in 1978; The Szeban family with its historical and personal complexities that I would never fully understand; the world of a blind person fiercely independent, living alone and coping in creative ways, and for showing me that I too could be a writer. I loved her most, perhaps, for what I learned about myself. One of the things I was learning is that in the flowing stream of life you can never swim in the same water twice.

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London, England 1978-79