on an off-white crocheted doily, a set of blackened silver candlesticks, and a crystal decanter full of whisky next to three unmatched glasses. The table is set for one: a basket of rye bread with caraway seeds, a plate of roughly sliced pickled cucumbers, a large, steaming bowl of hearty beef and potato goulash soup and a plastic cup of soda water.
Anyu shuffles into the lime-green Formica kitchen to continue her pottering as I sit down. The sliding door separating the kitchen and the dining room is half open, and I can see her intermittently as she bustles to and fro.
But I have no problem hearing her.
I’m ready for it: today it’s Monologue Number 43.
“It makes me awfully mad …,” she begins.
My grandmother’s monologues come in all shapes and sizes. There’s the gentle but patronising lament on the plight of the peasant; the fiery rant about right-wing politics; the romantic and nostalgic account of Budapest in the 1920s; and the passionately paranoid tirades on world anti-Semitism. Then there’s the lecture about living in a country whose kind but simple butchers give the best part of the meat to the dogs and the sermon on the absence of God during the war. And there are my favourites about how the Chinese and old men wearing hats are genetically pre-wired to be dangerous drivers, and how nothing is more barbaric than piercings, tattoos and chipped nail polish. The monologues are so well rehearsed and vary so little from recital to recital, that I sometimes find myself mouthing along to the words like I do with an old song. I’m not always in the mood for a monologue. Sometimes I can feel one about to break as it hangs heavy in the atmosphere and sometimes it comes out of a clear blue sky. Sometimes I find myself listening to one as if for the very first time, and sometimes I feel so lonely that I simply long for the comfort of her words.
Her monologues remind me of that famous joke about the old Jew who moves to a retirement home in Miami to start a new life. He is taken by a new acquaintance down to lunch where the gang meets daily. They are all sitting around chatting, when one of the group yells out “43!” which is met with roaring laughter. Another screams out “27!” Again, the place explodes. “What’s going on?” asks the newcomer. “Well,” the other explains, “we’ve all been together so long that we know every joke and every anecdote. So why bother repeating them? We just number them.” The newcomer, eager to fit in, takes a deep breath, clears his throat, and goes for it. “32!” he says. Silence. When the chatter finally resumes, he turns to his friend. “What did I do wrong?” he asks. “Well,” says the friend, “it’s the way you tell it.” And no one can tell a monologue quite like Anyu.
“… but whatever we do,” she continues, “we must never let them think they are the powerful ones. For years we had them fooled and then came those bloody feminists who tried to be more and more like the men and you know what? Well, they become as stupid as the men in the end. Tell me, daahrlink, who said that women never had any power? We have always controlled men … until these idiots came and tried to be like them … it’s your generation, Lily …”
My mother is allergic to Anyu’s monologues, in particular this one that ends with the bit about me being single and alone at twenty-two. By the second sentence, Mama is always up and out the door. My grandmother has been worried about my prospects since I graduated from high school. It’s okay, she once explained to me, not to be a virgin when you get married, but it’s not right for everyone to know it. My mother says she’d never let me get married so young, no matter what Anyu thinks. Neither has ever asked me what I think.
“… and we can’t blame them either, poor daahrlinks. They are only simple creatures. They are made like that. You see, they are wired in such a way that there is only enough blood to go up or down, but not both ways at the same time. And then come all these women who couldn’t find themselves a man, claiming that we need to have power over ourselves first. Vot rubbish! I’ll show them power. All they need is an hour at my hairdresser’s and a splash of red lipstick. Now that’s power! Imagine, daahrlink, when I was a young girl, I had legs … oh, all the way up to my armpits, and they queued around the block for just one dance …”
Mama’s told me all about my grandmother’s legs, those same legs, she said, that just couldn’t stay closed and got everyone into trouble.
“… when I was your age, daahrlink, things were different …”
All of a sudden, I hear a scuffle at the door and smell a familiar, pungent concoction of perfume and cigarette smoke. Saved by the bell: rummy night.
“Ah, so they haven’t forgotten me, the kurvák!” Anyu mutters, scrambling to undo the last of her hair rollers.
Dotsi, Zsuzsi and Punci are my grandmother’s best friends and worst enemies. They come over faithfully every Thursday night at eight-fifteen on the dot for cards, whisky, chit-chat and the occasional scandal or two. Anyu calls them kurvák, or whores, but that’s just her way of being affectionate. I call them néni, or auntie, even though we are not related at all. In Hungary, children always call older people in their lives uncle or auntie as a sign of respect, but they may as well be my real aunties. Apart from Mama and Anyu, I have no other family in Sydney. Both my mother and father were only children and Mama’s parents passed away before I was born. There’s a second cousin of Anyu’s in America and Mama’s great-uncle who never made it out of Hungary. I think Mama has a reasonably close relative who married a Russian soldier and moved to rural Poland, but no one talks about her anymore. The rest of my grandparents’ family members never made it back from the war.
Anyu and the aunties are like real family. They are always arguing, but I can never entirely figure out what they are fighting about since they all talk at the same time. Regardless of the topic, they never agree. From the trivial, like money and men, to the more important, like money and men, I don’t think they have ever suffered a harmonious conversation. They are so quick to disagree with each other that they’d rather contradict themselves than accidentally be caught with the same opinion.
But when it comes to an outsider, any outsider, they stick together like glue.
They are colourful creatures, with big hair, big diamonds and big boobs. Dotsi, the naïve and gullible one, has tattooed eyebrows and lives with the constant embarrassment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It can come at any time, but when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. She has a beautiful penthouse apartment with harbour views, but is, I’m told, too stupid to appreciate it. Zsuzsi, my favourite of the three, has flaming red hair and a temper to match. She always wears oversized sunglasses, day or night, and lives with the nuisance of an over-educated, over-liberal, WASP-y daughter-in-law and the shame of a homosexual grandson, although at least he is a doctor and has a good-looking boyfriend, which is more than Anyu can say about me. Punci, the envy of her generation, is the only one to live with a man. Always referred to by Punci and the gang as The Special Friend, he has managed to make it to the fabulous age of ninety-four with all his own teeth. He still plays tennis every Wednesday morning at the club and walks the two and a half kilometres down to the beach and back every morning come rain, hail or shine. He speaks seven languages fluently and still drives himself to the opera.
I turn to see them jostling and elbowing their way through the front door with arms flailing and air kisses all over the place. Dotsi’s necklace gets caught on the balustrade. Punci drops her purse, knocking heads with Zsuzsi as they lose their footing on their way to the floor. It’s like The Three Stooges in sequins.
I don’t have time to laugh. Instead, the dance of disentanglement that follows has me and Anyu retreating to the sanctuary of her kitchen doorway.
“Idiot,” says Zsuzsi. “A simple staircase she can’t even climb without breaking all of our necks!”
“Come on Zsuzsi now, move that big arse of yours before you really hurt someone. And get rid of those glasses, would you? Really, I can’t imagine how you made it up these bloody stairs …” It isn’t always Punci’s fancy to protect Dotsi, but she often takes advantage of Zsuzsi’s outbursts to slip into the role of defender, whoever the victim may happen to be.
“Well quite