Translator: Austin Wagner

On her way to work, Judit stepped on other people’s feet on the train just to see if they’d lose their temper. She wondered what it’d be like to sleep with one of them. In her university years, she’d been attracted to the people you could only get to know during sex. But with Tamás, her husband, that didn’t get her anywhere. For as long as she’d known him, he had consistently shown himself to be the same person, considerate and composed. Judit didn’t buy the façade, she tried over and over to catch Tamás out. She spilled coffee on him and lied that it was an accident, she never returned the books he lent her. Once they were finally dating, she baselessly told him off for not paying enough attention to her. And yet not once did Tamás raise his voice or lose his patience; no matter what the problem was, he always asked what Judit wanted. He did the shopping, he walked the dog.

You got yourself a dependable husband, not like I did with your dad, Judit’s mom said on the day of their wedding. But Judit’s annoyance just kept growing. She resented Tamás. His starched-and-pressed rigidity, his consistency, her inability to catch him in his true form. She paused at a half-open door and stared at him. They said their morning goodbyes and she waited thirty seconds, turned around, and followed him to work. She bought his presents plenty early, but only gave them to him days after his birthday.

There’s nothing for it, Judit thought while cooking. She’ll never be able to unmask the real Tamás. She was so annoyed by the realization that four eggs shattered in her hands. She slid the food into the oven and informed Tamás she wanted a child.

She had just entered the second trimester when they got a wedding invitation from Bea, one of their old classmates. They hadn’t seen her in six years. Tamás was doing the dishes, he accidently sliced his hand open when Judit read out who else was coming. They spent all night in the emergency room. On her way back from the hospital’s coffee machine, Judit froze in the hallway. The cups of coffee were scalding her hands, but she simply couldn’t keep going, couldn’t take her eyes off her husband. She watched him staring drowsily ahead, sitting in the white hospital chair with chipped paint, blood soaking through the bandage wrapped clumsily around his hand.

Tamás had fallen asleep hours ago, but Judit continued to toss and turn. She reread the list of names. No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn’t remember at which name the accident had happened.

Five more of their old classmates had been invited. Every day she chose one of the five names and went over the time they’d spent together, trying to imagine what Tamás might have been like when he was with them in private. She imagined them in all sorts of situations, the everyday and bizarre alike. Sára and Tamás sitting in the university library and peeling oranges behind the shelves. Bence and Tamás standing at the urinals, pissing while they discuss which of them will be the first to ask Judit out to the movies. She couldn’t place Dávid at first, she had to look him up to jog her memory. They hadn’t had many classes together in those days, and she’d never spoken to him. She clicked through his social media and saw him snowboarding, holding a big unopened present and grinning for the camera, playing handball. She poured over the holiday photos of his family and determined that Dávid takes after his father. That he doesn’t keep in touch with his older sister, and that he’d gone through a handful of girlfriends in a short amount of time. But even with all this, she still felt like she could imagine him in an overwhelming number of situations with her husband. She saw them in her mind’s eye, getting into fights, cheating off each other’s exams, listening to the Beatles, slipping strawberry slices into each other’s mouths.

Ever since they’d gotten the invitation, Judit had noticed changes in Tamás’ behavior. When she wanted to go shopping with him to get some decent clothes for the wedding, he said he couldn’t, he had to work overtime. Arriving home from the bachelorette party, she saw that he must have returned from the bachelor party even sooner, seeing as he was asleep on the bed with his shoes on. She asked whether she should add vanilla cream or jam to the croissants she was baking, and got the sense Tamás would’ve given Dávid a different answer. That he would’ve said vanilla cream to Dávid.

On the day of the wedding, Tamás was surprisingly out of sorts. He couldn’t get his tie right despite multiple attempts, he rushed to the store for wrapping paper at the last moment, he dropped the wedding gift and nearly broke it. When they were called together for the group photos he was nowhere to be found, but Bea was feeling nostalgic and insisted they wait for him. The wedding party loitered outside the courthouse for a quarter of an hour, the children jumped up and down the stairs or balanced on the curb out of boredom. When Tamás returned with Bence, who had been sent off to find him, he made some excuse about not being able to find the building’s bathroom.

Dávid didn’t end up coming, which was a relief for Judit, who was worried that if she saw him, she wouldn’t be able to contain herself. She might even have slapped him. By then she’d put together that the photo of Dávid grinning with his present had been taken by Tamás. Her husband’s pinky finger had a tendency to creep into the edge his photos, and he’d chosen the same tacky wrapping paper for the wedding gift too. In the group photo Sára was blinking, Bence stood behind them giving bunny ears, Tamás had his arm around Judit’s shoulders, pulling her in close, and Judit had never felt more alone.