Snippet #1207617

Gerdi

People always say do what you do best. But what if you are not particularly fantastic at doing anything of merit, I am thinking, and the camera tells me what I have gotten into, where I'll be in the next five years or so, how is your life and how are you doing? Tibor for example, he is a very successful man, a very higher-upper man, five suites high, in fact, but he always has his hands dirty, dirtier than mine, and this is quite dirty let me tell you. Yet it is his forte, like they say in the music world—his greatest asset. So I am wondering if I should keep up with this little best talent of mine. Is a man at fault for excelling at the strange, rather than the respected? I shrug my shoulders at this.

There were six, seven women on film that day, and they were doing what they did best, too, and they were also getting their hands dirty. They were getting many other things dirty as well, but that is another matter. They smiled when they were required to; they gave you the look and you knew you were sold; they made those noises and made you blush and hard. When it was done for the day, I had retired, but I could not help thinking that the men on film were more enticing. More beautiful and real. It was the same beauty that Tibor had. People say Tibor has a Jewish nose and a non-Jewish (Goy, that is what they call it) everything else; I say he looks a bit like Stravinsky if Stravinsky were as beautiful as his compositions. He is also blond. I kept putting him in place of the six or seven women on film and found myself happier than if I hadn't, and when I told him about this in the evening he scowled like he always does, but I knew this was all right because his frown is just a disguise for a smile.

“You're not as subtle as you think you are. Admit it,” he had said, and he leaned forward from the other end of the dining table, and the conversation from then on was spoken in very harsh Magyar. “Szeretlek, Gerdi.”

It sounded like a reminder. Something I could not believe right away. I could have said the same if I didn't go quiet, for suddenly the bowl of goulash was the most interesting thing in the world.

Igen, Kozma úr. I love you, too.

He had put his coat on, did some convincing with me, kissed me roughly on the cheek—because what else can a man such as him do but claim a man such as myself—and then he was gone, out the door. When he will return I cannot say. I still cannot say. It's just something you do not ask about. You sit, and you wait, and you cry tears in his lapels when he finally comes back, and you scoff at everyone knowing it's all right because your frown is just a disguise for a smile.

San Francisco, he had said. Go up and down the strange and slanted roads of San Francisco to get your woman back, if you desired her so much. I decided this was not of worth, however; Dawn and young Frida were in town till the end of the week after the horrible news of the Danube spread, so Dawn, she sighs and makes a note to visit us, say how is your life and how are you doing and when will you get the funds in? Soon, I usually go, and her scowl is not a disguise for a smile—just a scowl.

And now Frida had the big red balloon secured to her wrist, for she had just turned seven, you see, and so still had that right amount of energy to make the older folk very jealous. I was one of them. When she ran and made the park her playground, I could not keep up. For all her wishes, Uncle Gerdi was not the greatest of playmates. He was much better at watching the puppy on its leash even after the animal itself could not keep up with her joy, until her mother returned not in lapels, but in overpriced heels and labels, and just looking at her was causing my wallet to hurt rather badly.

She, too, was beautiful, a different kind of beautiful.

Time to go, she said, when Frida had finally exhausted her small feet from running across the lawn. She leapt up to hug me, and seeing how she'd grown was very hard because every feature of hers was clearly, obviously not mine; she looked too pure, her eyes too blue, her overall person too bright with too promising a feature to have any quality of mine. She was the result of something, someone better. Her mother knew this as she came over and took her hand and held the leash in the other, and when will I see you again?, and like with most things I could not say, just wait till life wanted it to happen, if it ever wanted it to happen.

Smiling is one of the things I do best. I tried.

Just smile.

Just...smile!

I am trying. I am trying so, so hard.