A Fabulous Liar E-Book

Susann Pásztor

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Joschi Molnar is an enigma: father, Holocaust survivor, wit, and fabulous liar. After his death his three surviving children are left with contrasting versions of his life, yet corresponding attitudes to their childhood: thirty years since Joschi Molnar died, his lasting legacy is one of confusion, unanswered questions, and irrevocable differences. On what would have been their father's 100th birthday, the Molnar children - along with Joschi's sixteen-year-old grand-daughter, Lily - stage a reunion: but in a lively Italian restaurant, as they remember the man that none of them really knew, their shared history dissolves into tall tales, fights, confessions and laughter.

Leseprobe

First published in Germany in 2010 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag, GmbH & Co. KG.

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Susann Pásztor, 2010

Translator Copyright © Shaun Whiteside, 2013

The moral right of Susann Pásztor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

The moral right of Shaun Whiteside to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 848 8

EBook ISBN: 978 1 78239 143 2

Set in 12.5/15pt Granjon

Designed by Nicky Barneby @ Barneby Ltd

Atlantic Books

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Contents

Prologue

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Prologue

ONE SUNNY AUTUMN MORNING in September 1959, József Molnár prepared to put an end to his life. The previous evening, in a station bar, he had sought suitable words of farewell for his loved ones, and posted the three letters. He booked himself into a city-centre hotel that he knew from previous visits. It let rooms by the hour, and was in a former underground air-raid shelter. After he had choked down several sleeping tablets with a little water, he lay down on the once-pink bedcover, studied the mould stains and the flaking plaster on the ceiling, listened to the dripping tap and the traffic trundling away above his head, and waited for death.

But what he took for dying was only another beginning of the end, and instead of death the landlord appeared, followed by a gruff emergency doctor, because József had only been able to pay for two hours, and that wasn’t long enough to die. And so it was that the following day three people gathered around a different bed – a hospital bed this time, with clean white sheets – gazing with concern at József’s pale, exhausted face. (He had every reason to look pale and exhausted. Stomach pumping is no small matter, and neither is a failed suicide, especially since its cause had not yet been erased from the world.)

It was three women who were bending over him, all careful to keep their distance from one another. Two of them had never met before and never would again. Both were pregnant. One was about to give birth, while the other had known only for a few days that she was expecting, and was full of expectations in fact because there was nothing that she wanted more than this tired, skinny man who would rather have been dead. The third already had a child by him. The child was twelve years old and far from happy.

They were all crying, because each of them had reason enough. After all, one had nearly lost her husband, the other the one she finally wanted to marry, and the third an ex-husband from whom she had once separated with the heaviest of hearts and despite a powerful sense of commitment. They sobbed with pain and with helplessness, but also with embarrassment, because lashing out at one another by the bed of an attempted suicide was simply unthinkable, and making a scene wasn’t on either, at least not straight away. József knew that too, but it didn’t make the situation any better.

After they had, one by one, expressed their concern, silence fell in the room, because none of them was sure what should happen next. But we are, after all, talking about the late 1950s, and in those days something like a social hierarchy was still respected: wife came before ex-wife who came before lover. And so, after a while, two of the women discreetly, if reluctantly, withdrew, one for ever, the other for at least half an hour, and József Molnár was left alone with his wife.

1

IN MY FAMILY people often get to know each other very late, and sometimes not at all. On the other hand, a lot of thinking is done about other family members, particularly when we dont know anything about them or would prefer to know nothing. And stories are told, and you can never be sure whether theyre true or not or who could have made them up. Because what other families call their family tree is, in our case, a kind of Sudoku that people have been working on for years, and with lots of rubbings-out, because theres a different result every time. The stories simply wont fit. Some rule each other out, others outdo one another with florid details, and anyway its too late to check because theres no one left who knows the answer. Because thats the only thing the stories have in common: all their heroes are dead.

This weekend my grandfather Jzsef, known as Joschi, would have turned a hundred. My grandfather was a man who lost his wives and children the way other people lose socks or biros. If it wasnt fate that took them away from him, he made sure that he lost them himself. Sadly I never met him. When he died, my mother and Hannah were just a few years older than I am today. Im sixteen. Hannah and my mother are half-sisters. They were fourteen the first time they saw each other, and since then theyve met each other quite often. Hannah is five months younger than my mother. My family has done a lot of thinking on this subject, and there are tons of stories about it.