darling Daughter yakirati, what can I say, fifty-five was a pretty strange year, it's not a lucky number for me, I was always afraid of it, hamshimwaychamesh, fifty-five, what can I say, we better skip it, I can't wait for 56, I don't even like being 55 years old, it feels older than if one were sixty, just think, it dawned on me one day that I am always exactly a year older than the century, no matter how much you gloss over it, but of course my birthday itself was really nice, Daddy was in hospital, but he still came, so it made for a really nice birthday! your Dad gave me a coloured cover for the sofa, I can't imagine where he got the money to pay for it because there is none and I am so much in love with him all over again like a little girl who's still wet behind the ears, the colour is a sort of peaty brown, the colour of fallen leaves in autumn and that is the one thing that really pains me in this desert of a country, that there's no proper autumn to speak of, or even a decent forest where one could wade through the fallen leaves, when I first got to know your father it was autumn, I was on a tram with Papa, your grandfather, I was seventeen, we were going to pay a visit on someone somewhere in Buda, we got off the tram at the end, there were just three of us left on the No. 59 so I noticed this boy in his soldier's uniform on the tram, it looked good on him, how I loved to stand on the platform letting the wind blow my hair, I lost sight of him until all at once he was there sitting on a red bench and Papa was talking to him, because there was a star of David marked "Zion" on his K & K uniform, he just looked straight ahead and Papa was yelling: "Zion's a long way off, no need to sit!" and that's when I became infatuated with him, dizzy with love, true back then I could have been infatuated with anyone, dizzy, dizzy, and when later he asked me to marry him and I said yes to the wise rabbi to be, the only thing I didn't want, was to cut off my hair on that account, I was proud of him that's for sure, but to be bald! no way! never!, Papa never took him seriously, Papa said they are poor little peasants, they stuffed goose in Ada, or rather paid others to do it for them, but we weren't that rich either, I don't know what Papa was bragging about, he didn't have anything to brag about, but he loved to brag, he loved the swagger, Mama served him, was a slave to him, and is a slave in the old people's home, the bet avoth, even today, and they don't even live on the same floor, and she has to climb the stairs with her broken heart every day, don't ever do that my darling baby girl, learn from your grandparents' example, when we set out to leave the country my Papa's crowd didn't get your Dad an immigration permit for Palestine, I went on ahead with your brother, a suckling baby via Alexandria while he hung around in Yugoslavia, and almost got himself shot because they took him for a spy, but then the Jews brought him out, they paid off everyone over there, went in the synagogue at the entrance, and left on the other side, have you seen the Moulin Rouge film? I liked the book immensely, I thought it was better than the film because it is more full, and allows you to round it out in your own head, the way you like, do you still remember those Toulouse- Lautrec reproductions in the three-volume Meyer-Graef? a man alone in a top hat, I love this picture since a quarter of a century and only now have I begun to understand the amazing talent that found expression in that man's expression, I've been wanting to ask for ages which nursery school do the two tots go to? and is the bigger one in a day-time school in the afternoon? and do they get a decent meal? that skin rash on my face that is my nemesis, it's called shingles, it's been itching for three or four months now, but I am only going to see a doctor about it today, it's now spread a lot and looks very ugly, but then does one ever find the time to go to the doctor's? and anyway who cares what a grandma's mug looks like, the trouble is there's nothing I can do about it anyway, of course I nearly forgot to write the most important thing of all, a few days ago I posted a box of halvah which I would be happy if it doesn't give you any trouble as for example I had trouble enough as it's not on the list of things that can be sent to Hungary, so what we wrote on the parcel in Hungarian is that it's honeycomb, halvah is not made in Hungary, so I hope it reaches you and it isn't sent back, there are such big changes everywhere that it leaves one's head in a spin, but to tell the truth I was just a wee bit surprised that in your last letter you casually mentioned just "by the way, I hear there's no money for your travel", no money, that was all, never mind it felt like a slap in the face, I hope that when you reach my age and you want to visit your daughter far, far away she will be more thrilled to see you, the older one gets, the faster one sheds the fading leaves and only the person herself is left, one's main thoughts are for the children, not that I'm old in my mind, but still it's the family that comes to the forefront, but as the years go by I have learnt that a cock stewed in its own juices never gets any wiser, it just gets all the tastier for others to fatten up on, we can't go there to live, you have to understand that my sweet daughter, you could come here to live, but then what would be the point?

[...]

András Forgách
has published several collections of plays and essays, as well as two novels, Aki nincs
(The One Who Isn't, 1999) and Zehuze (2007). Many of his plays are regularly
performed. His translations include plays by Shakespeare, Heinrich von Kleist and
Tennessee Williams. The novel from which the above extract is taken is reviewed by
László Márton on pp. 119–125 of this issue. Its title means "that's how it is" in Hebrew.