Tempting the Goddess

Heti continuedfrom previous page moment, the old woman nearly breaks through her near-senility and vaguely glimpses the truth behind their lies. The reader wonders, is it a cruelty to the old lady, a mockery of her dignity, to trick her this way? Or are their deceptions compassionate? Déry doesn't lead us to an answer, or if he does, the answer is that there will only be more of the same. As the story ends, the daughter-in-law has received a letter from her imprisoned husband. Filled with joy at the prospect ofvisiting him, she returns to her mother-inlaw 's only to learn that the old woman is dead. At the conclusion, the young woman, nervously fingering a glass of brandy, wonders, "Now what am I going to tell him on next Sunday's visit?" Personal honor is a great virtue for Déry, and it seems to pain him that his characters cannot perform truly noble acts. But nobility is perhaps an impossibility in a time of madness, or, more specifically, under totalitarianism. If the country is sick, then the people are sick. Can the hand be virtuous ifthe body is corrupt? In "Aunt Anna," the titular character refuses to live in the cellar with the others like another "rat," and joins them only afterher apartment has been bombed; she literally crawls out of the rubble. Once in the cellar, she is arrogant, aggressive, pushy, rude—not one's image ofahero. And yet at the end ofthe story, she is shot for trying to save her son; she does not literally put herselfin the way ofthe bullet, but that's the idea. As she lies on her bed dying, she delivers an insulting speech to her neighbours, condemning them for lacking courage, for having lived meekly, uselessly, and for profit: [T]he best among you claim salvation on the grounds that you have neither cheated nor stolen. The good were good because they arranged a pillow under someone's head.... [T]he loyal were loyal because they didn't bite their mother's ankle when she turned her back on them—but that's all there was to your virtue.... Yet the poor have duties to perform. . . . Because the poor alone need God, let them reject him!... Because the poor hear no other music than the rattling of their chains, let them rattle those chains until their unborn children's eardrums burst with it! Do you think, my little birds, that because you cover each other up, share your rations, and put up with each other's bad smell, you have paid creation even that one measly onion it claims in taxes? One is tempted to buy her judgment, though she is such a flawed example of virtue herself, until one discovers the thoroughly, convincingly noble B., the political prisoner from the title story, who, returning home after seven years in jail, speaks very little, does not complain, and modestly observes his new world of freedom. He does not rattle his chains. If he has paid his onion, it is because the onion, his life, was wrenched from him, and he bears it quietly, privately, stoically. Nobility is perhaps an impossibility in a time ofmadness. When he sees his wife coming down the street, Déry writes, "She surpassed everything he had treasured about her for seven years in prison." And when they are alone together in theirapartment, he can only ask ofher, "Do you love me?. . . Can you get used to me?. . . Will you stay with me all night?" The time at last has come for love. There are no missteps here. He has been liberated by political will, and in Déry's world this is grace. It allows the man to live honorably. At least for a little while. Sheila Heti is the author of The Middle Stories (McSweeney's) andTicknor, to bepublished by Forrar , Straus & Giroux in Spring 2006. Tempting the Goddess Elizabeth Searle Out of Oneself András Pályi Translated by Imre Goldstein Twisted Spoon Press http://www.twistedspoon.com 142 pages; paper, $13.50 In Budapest, my niece bought me Hungarian paprika. It smells of earth. It startles...