Spiritual vision and self-education: so many unknown spheres. Just as hard to believe as reincarnation and at the same time just as attractive.

It turned out that Mária spoke English, German, and French very well, and even some Danish. A lover of opera, she could also manage some Italian.

It’s true, thought Henryk, I really don’t know her well.

“Why did you never go to college?” asked Mária.

“I came here instead. This is my university.”

“Aha. So you didn’t have the courage to take on a degree.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s true anyway, isn’t it?”

Henryk thought about it a while and then admitted it was. “How did you know?”

“It’s typical of Pisces.”

“Pie seas?”

“The astrological sign. You are Pisces, aren’t you?”

Henryk had no idea. Mária asked when he was born and when she heard the date, nodded: “Yes, that’s Pisces.”

Mária was well versed in the art of casting a horoscope, something she had learned from her grandmother. She cast one for everyone she came into contact with and who gave their permission.

“You ask for permission?”

“Of course. It’s a very intimate matter. Things can be revealed that the natives… the person concerned won’t perhaps be happy about. Or they won’t be happy that I’m the one to have revealed them. So… can I cast yours?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the exact time of your birth? Hours and minutes. I need it for the ascendant.”

“I’ve no idea.”

He called his grandmother to ask, but Grammy did not know. “In those days we were not on smiling terms.”

“Smiling terms?”

“Yes. You know, we were not very pleased that she had married your father… In fact, not in the least pleased.”

“And why have you never mentioned this before?”

“Did you ask about it?”

“How can I ask about something that I have no idea about?”

There was silence at the other end of the line, then a quiet sniff or two.

Henryk changed the subject. “You haven’t asked about Mária…”

“How can I ask about somebody I know nothing about?”

They both put down the receiver offended.

Mária said that she could calculate the ascendant only on the basis of the exact place, day, hour, and minute of the birth, though she had heard of astrologers who were somehow able to calculate it from the subject’s most important life events. She wrote to such an astrologer in Szeged, giving her the dates of the death of Henryk’s mother, the disappearance of his father, his arrival in Hungary, and the date the two of them had first met. She was not satisfied with the answer (which had cost an astronomical ten thousand forints). “She says your ascendant is Aries. But I see nothing of Aries in you. Aries are fiery, liable to set their home ablaze, repeatedly dashing their heads against brick walls. Of course, you may be Aries nonetheless, but the planets in the twelve houses are so arranged that your ascendant is less typical of you than your Sun, that is, Pisces.”

“Well, now, is that good or bad?”

“I can’t put it like that. How interested are you in this?”

“Very.”

Mária nodded and launched into a detailed explanation. She did not tell fortunes from the stars, she only drew conclusions about the subject’s personality. That is, certain basic traits, with which the subjects can do what they wish and are able to. In her view one’s horoscope influences the nature of one’s fate no more than some 25 percent; the rest is down to genes, family background, upbringing, and self-development. Be that as it may, those born under the sign of Pisces have some difficulty in negotiating the boundary between themselves and the world. They are often lonely. Being the twelfth sign, the most complex, it yields the most sophisticated personalities. Pisces generally evince some sensitivity to art, perhaps even some artistic ability; there are, for example, many musicians among them. “They put on the pounds easily… though you show no sign of that yet. Have you heard of Enrico Caruso?”

“No.”

“He was a world-famous opera singer. Some say the greatest tenor of all time. He is a Pisces. I mean his Sun is. Then there is Elizabeth Taylor. Or Zorán. Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

“He’s a Hungarian rock singer. Then there is, let me see, Sharon Stone. You must know who she is.”

“How come you know so many people’s sign?”

“I’ve looked them up in Who’s Who. These days I can sometimes tell just from the face. Especially Scorpios, Virgos, and Geminis.”

Henryk took extensive notes from Dane Rudhyar’s The Astrology of Personality, which he found on Mária’s bookshelves. He still found it easier to read English than Hungarian. Astrology was again something that he reveled in, which made his spine tingle, though his doubts were never allayed. How can one claim that a person’s character could, even in part, depend on where and when he was born? Well… surely you can’t. At the same time it was beyond doubt that the Moon is implicated in the movement of the tides and the menstrual cycle, yet it is one of the smallest planet-like objects of all. Can one then say for certain that the heavenly bodies do not have any influence over us? Well… surely you can’t.

He tried hard to memorize the order of the signs of the zodiac, to master them like a poem: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer… Here he always got stuck and had to sneak a look at his notes to continue: Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio… Again he needed help: Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. He could not understand why he was unable to hammer into his brain these twelve words, let alone the dates of each. He envied Mária and her memory of cast iron: whatever that girl once set eyes on, or heard, or experienced, it was forever seared on her brain. Before the sculptor József, Mária had been in love with a Danish boy and had learned Danish for his sake-in effect in two months (the list of rarer verb forms was still pinned to the toilet door). Henryk failed to make any inroads even on the Magyar vocabulary he targeted.

“If you are so troubled by your poor memory, why don’t you develop it?” asked Mária. “You can improve every aspect of yourself, it’s just a question of willpower.”

On her instructions, Henryk started by memorizing lists of numbers, and then progressed to names. He began to feel he was making some headway.

Mária did not move in with him, nor did she let him share the workshop-cum-flat with her. “It would be a bad omen.”

“Amen?”

“Omen. Sign, premonition. I think it’s Greek. Or Latin.”

“But surely we know each other now!”

“Not well enough. I still don’t know what the most import ant thing in life is for you.”

“You.”

“Don’t be silly! I’m serious.”

“Only you could ask a question like that. And right away you make me feel like some stupid toddler.”

“A toddler would be able to answer on his or her level. Think about it.”

Eventually what I came up with was that you should be happy. Whereupon she says: who is the “you”? I replied: “Me.” Whereupon she: “A selfish view, but OK. So what is needed to make you happy?”

This again was a typical Mária question. I gave her the list: “Money, then good health, a secure family background, I guess that’s about it. Now what about you?”

She looked grave. Because we don’t agree on anything. The things I mentioned are, in her view, cliché ideals of petty bourgeois life. Health is like the air: it doesn’t make you happy as long as you can breathe it, in fact you barely notice it. She would not put a secure family background here either, because in the end you must count on yourself.

In her view it’s not these sorts of thing that you need for happiness, but abstract things, for example: firm and consistently followed moral principles, then knowledge, willpower, endurance. And good fortune. She was sorry that I hadn’t learned even that much yet. She could hardly marry me.