—Eszter, get that look off your face. The live broadcast is in an hour, and you look like you just came in from the barn after milking the cows, — Benedek remarked, adjusting his snow-white shirt cuff and disapprovingly staring at my reflection in the mirror in the hallway.
I adjusted the collar of my blouse without a word. The last time I saw a cow up close was fifteen years ago, when I moved away from my village to continue my studies at the university’s Faculty of Humanities. In the eyes of Benedek and his elegant entourage, however, I forever remained the “girl who ran away from the hayloft.” On the screen, he is Benedek Korkin: the conscience of the nation, the voice of the downtrodden in his own talk show. At home, however, he is the man who browses through the store blocks with a magnifying glass and speaks up if there is a pinch of salt left in the soup.
“Dad, Mom’s face is perfectly fine,” Lilla said softly, without looking up from her thick book. “This is called natural skin color. But you can see the streak of foundation on your neck.”
Benedek flinched and turned back to the mirror, cursing. My eleven-year-old daughter was my silent ally in enemy territory. She devours encyclopedias, and her objective comments usually hit her father like some disturbing ultrasound.
The bell rang. The “escort” arrived.
Erzsébet entered the apartment as if she were arriving on the stage of the Hungarian State Opera House and she was the celebrated star of the evening. László rushed after her, always giving the impression that he was just carrying the luggage. Vivien entered behind them, enveloped in a sweet, expensive cloud of scent.
— Oh, my Benedek! — Erzsébet snapped at her son, almost pushing me aside. — How much weight have you lost! Don’t you get proper food? Of course, how would he know what a balanced diet is, where he grew up, everything is fried in fat.
“Good evening, Elizabeth,” I replied with the smile I had perfected during long meetings. “We’ve run out of fat, so we’ve switched to oysters. The only problem is that it screams when we open it, and it makes Benedek nervous.”
My mother-in-law froze for a moment, blinked, tried to interpret what she heard, and then decided to ignore the mockery. Tonight was her triumph. Márk, the producer, came up with the theme of the broadcast: “Benedek Korkin in the midst of a loving family.” Erzsébet’s obsession was to prove to the country and the world how the long-standing Korkin family had elevated “rural simplicity,” and that that simplicity still didn’t measure up to them.
“My dear,” Vivien sighed, plunging onto the couch and crossing her legs, “would you like to make some coffee? I’ve had a terrible day. One of my clients went completely crazy. I told him that that color wasn’t energetically on his level, and he made a scene. People are ungrateful.”
I looked at him calmly, not moving.
— Vivien, according to the law of conservation of energy, if something decreases somewhere, it necessarily increases somewhere else. If you have lost energy, then somewhere else there must have been more of it.
