Fiction: Magda Szabó's The Door is a story about a relationship, which began as the fulfilment of practical needs but over time developed into a powerful and demanding bond. A masterclass in fiction writing, writes Eileen Battersby
Most servants tend not to interview their employers. But Emerence is so valued a worker, she is something of a local legend: "I don't wash just anyone's dirty linen." She can pick her clients. Anyone interested in her services must first pass the test, that of earning her approval. The Door is a story about a relationship begun through the fulfilment of a practical need which in time develops into a powerful, demanding bond. It is also a breathtaking performance: sad, subtle, angry and very funny. This is a masterclass in the art of pitch-perfect fiction writing.
When the narrator, a writer whose career had been "politically frozen" for 10 years, now has the chance to apply herself full-time to her vocation, she panics. The problem is, she can't run her home and needs domestic help. A former classmate comes to the rescue; she recommends Emerence, "someone with a bit of authority" who is neither dangerously young nor likely to burn the house down.
From the outset, the narrator makes clear that she is living in a state of guilt. The story she has to tell is confessional: "I killed Emerence. The fact that I was trying to save her rather than destroy her changes nothing."
Magda Szabó is one of Hungary's most distinguished writers. Hermann Hesse praised her and is quoted on the cover, describing Frau Szabó as "a golden fish". "Buy all of her novels, the ones she is writing and the ones she will write," Hesse advises. Never has a jacket blurb proved as trusty. Born in 1917, Szabó was initially published as a poet and then turned to fiction. Respected throughout Europe, she has been translated into several European languages and is revered in France.
The Door, which was published in Hungary in 1987, has now been astutely translated into English. It has been well worth waiting for; it is a marvel, thanks to the genius with which the narrative voice with its various mood shifts is handled. It is also a love story based on profound feeling that far transcends sexual desire. In her narrator, a writer with an ailing husband and her own store of anxieties, Szabó has created the perfect foil to the bizarre, volatile and utterly human Emerence. The old lady is a fighter, and has endured life through hard physical work. Being useful has been her salvation. It has also constructed her myth.
The narrator not only is presented as a writer, she thinks like one, and her thought patterns are wholly convincing as is her tone of laconic regret. The opening sequence is virtuoso in execution - and in intent. "I seldom dream. When I do, I wake with a start, bathed in sweat. Then I lie back, waiting for my frantic heart to slow, and reflect on the overwhelming power of night's spell. As a child and young woman, I had no dreams, either good or bad, but in old age I am confronted repeatedly with horrors from my past, all the more dismaying because compressed and compacted, and more terrible than anything I have lived through. In fact, nothing has ever happened to me of the kind that now drags me screaming from my sleep."
She is articulate and sensitive and now wracked by guilt. Her fascination with, and nervous love for, Emerence frequently reduced her to tears of anger. It is through the eyes of the narrator that a portrait of the formidable old female emerges. The narrator is struck by her powerful physical presence. Emerence works like no other: she cooks, cleans, sweeps the snow from the paths. She works for everyone and tends her clients as if they were all children in the same family with shifting needs. No, Emerence does not keep regular hours; she is capable of long disappearances only to return bearing the right foods, or a special treat. Above all, her existence depends on being needed while retaining her distance.
Emerence is tough - this is a fact. Szabó makes no pitch for pity or understanding for her. The old lady has admirers; she also has her secrecy. Her little flat in the building she caretakes is famously clean but unwelcome. No one enters the inner sanctum. Early in the novel, the narrator, having secured Emerence's approval, has her services. "She'd been working for us for over a year when one day I had to ask her to take in a parcel for me, which was supposed to arrive that afternoon . . . I called for her to be quick. I was in a hurry and there was something I wanted her to do . . . She came out, slamming the door behind her, and screamed at me not to pester her outside working hours." The narrator returns to her home and waits for the delivery which she does not receive.
Sometime later Emerence arrives, goes into the kitchen and leaves without speaking. At suppertime the narrator discovers a chicken dish which she accepts as an apology. The following day she finds the parcel which Emerence had waited for after all and silently intercepted. Such cat-and-mouse tactics colour the old lady's method. "For a long time afterwards," recalls the narrator, "I thought her slightly insane and felt we would have to make allowances for the idiosyncratic ways in which her mind worked."
Despite determined efforts to win her favour, the narrator concedes Emerence was determined to keep everyone, including herself, at a distance. So when her husband becomes seriously ill, she does not inform Emerence who is outraged and storms off - only to return with a goblet of mulled wine and the horrific Brothers Grimm-like story of her own youth. The long night of shared secrets is followed by a return to the familiar detachment. The narrative voice moves from fondness to regret to anger. Emerence herself is magnificent: half aristocrat, half barbarian. A maverick on the run from the law and the Church, she keeps forbidden cats in her flat and when the narrator rescues an abandoned puppy, it is Emerence who names it Viola.
A bond is formed. The narrator is both eager suitor and beloved child. The women become closer, Emerence selects her for the privilege of, in the event of disaster, dealing with her cats. But fame has finally beckoned and the narrator is divided between fulfilling Emerence's wishes or answering the call of the television. Good intentions collapse into betrayal and a series of humiliating disasters undermine the old woman. The door itself becomes a barrier as well as a symbol.
Recently included among the six outstanding titles shortlisted for the London Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, The Door explores the complex layers of feeling that feed real love. It is also about as fine a novel as anyone could hope to read.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
The Door. By Magda Szabó, translated by Len Rix. Harvill Secker, 260pp. £15.99