Iza's Ballad Read Online Free

visible, smoke billowing from them, blinding, supernaturally white and fat against the steely sky. The triangular roof was also clear in view and she could see the pigeons roosting between the strangely bent mythological figures that served as statuary. She sat down on a bench and gazed at the water.
    The fringes of the lake were still iced up but the water was alive now. She couldn’t see the fish and could only trace their movements as they suddenly formed rings in one or other part of the lake and broke the surface. The lake was full of brown, ever-hungry carp. A long time ago, when Iza was still a little girl, they’d come down here in summer and feed them, entertained by the way they fought over scraps. You couldn’t see the bottom of the lake and the banks were bare, last year’s grass blown tensely down the gentle slope. The fern was restless, continually moving. ‘What will I do all by myself?’ the old woman wondered.
    Children clattered along the bridge, playing there for a while, yelling, throwing stones, then clattered off again, running towards the open-air theatre on the far shore. The amphitheatre seats were still in storage and the concrete blocks that in summer were topped by red wooden benches poked stiff thumbs into the afternoon; they looked like a set of clumsy hand-hewn gravestones. As soon as she noticed this she rose and turned her back on the hill with the amphitheatre. Her string bag seemed heavier now, unbearably, comically heavy. She reached into it for a handkerchief, wiped her eyes with one and stuffed it in her pocket. The full-bellied lemons were swelling out the bag: she took out all three, gazed at them, turned them in her hands, then threw them into the lake.
    If you set out into town on foot the shortest way was through the new estate.
    Last year, when building started and they knocked down the old sty-like wooden shacks and bitumen-roofed buildings of Salétrom Square and those around Balzsamárok, she wept over the loss of the old quarter. She and Vince had even gone for a walk to bid farewell to the streets where they had seen out their youth, their shoes sinking into the soil of the loose sandy lane that people in the area, for some incomprehensible reason, referred to as the Gázló , the ford. Iza happened to be home then and she didn’t want to tell her where they’d been, but Vince could never keep a secret and as soon as they were back in the hall he told her. Iza gave a wave, stretching her lovely long waist as she leaned backwards. ‘So there you go, turning back the wheel of time,’ she said, ‘two old sentimentalists.’ There was no severity in her voice, but the words were not a kind of joke: Iza always said exactly what she really thought. Vince felt ashamed and muttered something about Balzsamárok and the artesian well there. ‘Balzsamárok,’ scoffed Iza as though the very word was repugnant. ‘Balzsamárok! What about the chemists, why not mention that? Balzsamárok! Look at the statistics, nearly everyone suffered from tuberculosis there.’
    She was in the kitchen buttering bread for the sandwiches and she too felt ashamed for having mourned Balzsamárok. Vince came out to join her and mumbled a few words. They avoided each other’s eyes. He started singing a tune; his sweet, mellifluous voice had lost nothing of its old quality. It was some chorus of his long-gone school days. ‘ Her cheeks and breast / Like hills under a shroud . . . ’ They burst into laughter because Iza had always taken song lyrics seriously as a child: you couldn’t sing anything sad to her and certainly not this, as she would tearfully beg that the maiden should not die but be restored to health. Vince kissed her face as she bent over the sandwiches. A long time ago, when they first got engaged, it was to Balzsamárok they went courting and kissing. They’d never meet anyone they knew there. Iza opened the kitchen door and they sprang apart. ‘Well, well,’ cried Iza and