Books, reviews
August 7, 2022
Livorno 7 August 2022 – “It’s never too late to read a good book”
Reviews column, edited by the writer and translator Maurizio Grasso.
They are not always necessarily reviews of newly released books, but of “good books”.
Today Maurizio Grasso will introduce you to The door by Magda Szabó, a novel that enters the reader on the sly
The door by Magda Szabó
A growing story
The door by Magda Szabó is a novel that enters the reader on the sly, clandestinely, with an uninterrupted crescendo. There is no narrative change of register. Not that Szabó’s language is monotonous. You say what is necessary, with simplicity, without frills. You belong to that group of authors who try to discover the depth in the surface of things, without heroic introspective efforts. This crescendo does not have a lyrical reason, but a thematic one; you simply feel sucked into a secretthat of old maid Emerenc. She is the absolute protagonist of the story. It is a sort of energy center, a star around which all the people in the neighborhood gravitate willy-nilly. Among the many houses, she too works in that of a couple of middle-aged writers: the writer is the narrator. She is the one who gives us Emerenc, with the slowness with which she herself (at her own expense) has learned to know her. The further one delves into the enigma of this out of the ordinary woman, the more complex her personality appears. She is ignorant only on the basis of educational qualifications that she does not have; she was forged by an existence that reveals itself of unexpected richness and profound drama.
The magnetism of a character
Emerenc is not a person like any other. She of indeterminate age, endowed with Herculean strength and bestial endurance, she does alone what five would not succeed. She is capable of unthinkable outbursts of generosity as well as destructive acts of violence, all without a reason and, above all, without a premonitory warning. Emerenc always surprises, for better or for worse. Sometimes she is suddenly insolent, other times she is unexpectedly caring. She does not accept gifts. She has a Manichean vision of life, she treats pills of wisdom, not with the posture of a philosopher, rather with the militaristic manner of a sergeant. Nobody can cross over the door of its hovel, beyond which lies the core of its secret.
The secret of Emerenc
Without showing it, he grows fond of the couple of writers. One day she, particularly well-disposed, she tells her “mistress” her vicissitudes of her childhood, which appear to those who listen to her as nonsense, as far as they are fantastically improbable. Two twin brothers under her responsibility had been electrocuted and charred under a tree, her mother had thrown herself into a well because of her pain. For years she has been accumulating savings to guarantee her distant dead a sumptuous mausoleum in the cemetery of her village. All these revelations seem at first to brag to the lady, who has not yet learned to know her well.
Surprise
There is something feline in the elusiveness of the inconsistent Emerenc, who does not allow himself to be bought by caresses and beautiful words; however, when least expected, he manifests boundless, disinterested love. It is the “lady” who is the object of it, with unconventional ways, which the recipient tries, if not to understand, at least to respect, with alternating successes. It is a strange love, similar to that of a gruff grandmother who, by scolding, tries to educate and protect a granddaughter who is inexperienced in her life and also a little hard on the uptake. Such she considers her mistress of her, although she is an educated and famous woman. For Emerenc, the world is divided into two categories: slackers and those who work; the real work is only manual. She is suspicious when she hears the reply that husband and wife “work” by hitting typewriter keys.
A strange love
This tyrannical love of Emerenc towards his lady is reciprocated. Those who try it become aware of it overnight. She wonders and discovers that she has gone beyond mere affection for this mysterious, fearsome volcano. Emerenc erupts violent crises and noble sentiments without a shred of regularity or predictability, “anarchically good, recklessly generous.” When, for a foolish misunderstanding, Emerenc resigns and leaves for a few days, the writer feels the emptiness that the angry and prodigal being has left in her existence. The emptiness prevents her from regaining a creative vein. She ends up humiliating herself to get her back. The conciliation scene would be hilarious, were it not also disturbing and emblematic of a character that the reader has not yet been able to decipher. The teaching that the lady draws from it is enlightening. For Emerenc, every love bond that comes to form in her life, sometimes without her wanting it, is like a wound. It is an unprotected channel through which it can be hit. Looking back over Emerenc’s violent crises, she realizes that there is always a disappointment received by a person. Moreover, one day Emerenc herself confesses it to him: one must never love anyone in an endless way, because it will end up causing their ruin.
The unexpected testament
One day the old woman summons her to the hall of her house and tells her that it is in her will: she will inherit what is “beyond the door”. There will come a day when that door will open for the lady. It will be an unparalleled gesture of love, not compensable in any way, because no one has ever been admitted into the Sancta Sanctorum by Emerenc. The reciprocated love of these two women is the fuel for so many foolish pretexts, the result of their opposite characters, of their irreconcilably distant visions of life. Yet the lady realizes that Emerenc, with her alleged ignorance, is always a step ahead of her in understanding things; when her own love for her drives her to rebel, she always takes a lesson from her old woman that she will keep in her mind and will force her to lick her wounds. It’s a fact: Emerenc can teach her things about her life that she thought she knew and she doesn’t know.
The door opens
At the door of the Forbidden City, as the lady calls the inaccessible door of Emerenc, something unexpected and violent will happen; will be the point of no return of the story told. “Emerenc was pure, invulnerable, she was what all of us, the best of us, would have liked to be.”
It is not appropriate to reveal the ending; however, a circle must be closed, and the circle closes as might be expected. The star, extinguishing itself, leaves in the cold all those who have taken advantage of its heat. An old woman of unspecified age has acted as an exoskeleton for many people younger than her, made them somehow dependent on it. Of course, not only will a new balance arise from these spiritual rubble, they will get used to her absence, but nothing will be the same for anyone.
Invention or biography?
Who is Emerenc really? A figment of Magda Szabó’s imagination or a figure who inspired her, attributing legendary virtues to her for the novel to work? The author comes out in the open at a crucial moment in history, when the old woman is in the hospital, where she seems to have recovered from the stroke that hit her. Emerenc calls her Magduska and, for the first time, touches and kisses her as if she were her daughter. The character Emerenc calls into question his creator Magda Szabó and drags her into the novel. The author puts her avatar on the dock. As a bona fide traitor to a woman who loved her, is she some kind of atonement for something that actually happened? We will never know. We only know that this novel, published at the age of seventy in 1987 and by us only in 2005, is considered by many to be her masterpiece. It was also made into a film starring the great Helen Mirren.