Eszter's suicide

Eszter pressed her pale forehead against the cold glass of the window. The pane was fogged with the moisture of her breath, and for a moment she thought she might draw something with her index finger, any drawing, or perhaps a word, but she didn’t; she let her hands rest on her thin legs. Below, the crowd moved—a beautiful, noisy chaos; it felt like it was squeezing her chest. People brushed past each other without looking, men and women who would never meet, others spoke on their phones. They dragged shopping bags as if pulling a part of themselves. Eszter was both fascinated and repelled by that relentless tide of faces and napes. Each face presented an enigma she didn’t want to solve. She watched them with the same mix of curiosity, disgust, and resignation she had when observing ants in the yard as a child.

Her legs were crossed on the chair, covered by a short black nightdress; they looked pale under the artificial lamp light. White as marble, she sometimes thought, though marble doesn’t bleed or suffer. She did. On her skin, fine lines, some recent, others scarred by time that heals everything… or perhaps not everything. She had learned to hide them with long jeans, dark stockings, with gestures that had become automatic when sitting. Cutting herself was not a gesture of rebellion, for she no longer had anything to prove, but rather an intrinsic necessity. When the inner pain became unbearable, when everything became a mass stuck in her throat suffocating her, a line on her skin brought her back. A confirmation that she still existed among the living: I am still here. At least it still hurts.

The room was in shadows; she rarely turned on the lights. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed with red numbers on a black background: 6:42 PM. On the walls, photographs torn from magazines, doodles on canvas from her time as a painter, pages with her own phrases and others copied from books she had read so many times that they had become hers, as if the author had dedicated them to her. One of the phrases read: “The world is collapsing, and no one can hold it up; who can hold me? A mere mortal.” No one would understand why she put these things on the wall. She didn’t put them up for anyone to understand. Moreover, the friends who once visited, before she chose to isolate herself, never returned. They were reminders, nothing more than echoes that reminded her she was alone in her shipwreck. No one can save another. Everyone has the absolute right and duty to sink into their own decay… with dignity.

She looked at the street again. An older woman argued with a man, perhaps twenty years her junior, next to a parked car. He waved his arms in the air, perhaps trying to conduct the rhythm of the argument like an orchestra; she lit a cigarette with a distant gaze. No one seemed to care that someone’s life was falling apart in public. Everything went on the same; the world remained indifferent: pedestrians walked by, a dog barked at a cat on a bench, a bus stopped. The indifference was so perfect it felt pleasant. Eszter thought that if she disappeared at that very moment, the city would keep moving the same. The crowd doesn’t stop. Chaos prevails.

Her fingers played with the nightdress, pulling at tiny loose threads. A gesture she had repeated so many times she barely noticed. She remembered her mother yelling at her for ruining her clothes. She always said, though not directly, that it was stupid, that she looked like an animal tearing its own fur.

She never replied. She only listened while, in her head, she traveled through some book she had read recently. What could she respond? That the gesture calmed her a little, that it was better to pull threads from her clothes than to tear her own skin. That there were nights when the sadness was stronger, when she felt most disoriented, and when only a frayed thread kept her busy, away from the razor calling from the drawer of her nightstand. No one would understand. Never.

The room smelled of dampness and dust. On the table was a cup of coffee, already cold, forgotten hours ago. She couldn’t remember when she had made it. Sometimes time felt slower than usual; other times, it fell vertiginously, so that nights became days and days nights without her noticing. While people talked about routines, schedules, the future, Eszter barely managed to hold the present as if it were a rope she tried to keep from one side while five strong men pulled on the other.

She rose from the chair with the patience of someone who felt centuries of life ahead. She walked barefoot to the old wardrobe mirror. She stared at herself for a long while. The face in the reflection returned a neutral, almost foreign expression. Her hair was dark, long, and messy, her eyes sunken from insomnia.

Yet, she retained the beautiful features of her face. She had always been beautiful. In the times she had been happier and found refuge in painting, she had many admirers. Now, those memories seemed from another life.

“Is this me?” she thought, and the question repeated over and over in her head, like a drop falling without end: plop… plop… plop… torturing her. “Is this me? Is this me?” She felt that the one in the reflection was her from other times, a smaller Eszter, trapped behind her eyes, screaming at the top of her lungs without anyone hearing. That was the real Eszter. The outward one, who answered “I’m fine” when asked how she was, was just a hollow, polite shell.

She returned to the window; it was no longer fogged. The woman arguing was no longer on the street. The car drove off, only the man inside. Eszter thought that arguments always ended like this: someone leaves, and someone stays; the one who stays always suffers more. And the world goes on its relentless path, not stopping to see what is left broken in the path of no return. She herself was like a wet street after the storm. A cold, abandoned surface where the remains of something that once mattered lay—no one cared anymore.

In the distance, she heard laughter rising above the car noise. A group of young people walked together down the avenue, laughing too loudly, trying to draw attention, perhaps trying to show the whole neighborhood they were alive. The forced laughter pierced her head immediately. It wasn’t envy, not exactly. She simply couldn’t understand. “How do they do it?” she wondered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “How can they laugh so loud, so confident, while the chaotic world falls apart second by second?”

She closed her eyes tightly. The memory of the razor in the nightstand drawer struck her mind like lightning. She didn’t feel like reaching for it—not yet. But just knowing it was there gave her a sense of control, even in something so trivial. If I want, I can. If I want, I can stop all this so easily and quickly; no one would know for weeks. It was a dark thought, but also a kind of comfort: knowing you could end all suffering and confusion with a simple act was gratifying.

The clock read 7:05 PM in red numbers. She liked that color. Outside, the relentless crowd continued. Inside, Eszter breathed slowly, sometimes holding her breath, counting mentally. One, two, three, four. It’s impossible to hold your breath until you die, she thought. She once read in an article: the human body always seeks survival. If you stop breathing, carbon dioxide levels in the blood rise; this triggers a reflex that produces an irresistible need to breathe. Fortunately, it’s not the only way to die.

Outside, the car noise had ceased; neither was any loud laughter heard. Silence in the room became heavy, and then the real commotion appeared: the one resonating in her head. She was not afraid of this chaos in her mind. It was more like the feeling of being accompanied by Eszters from various times, as if each one tried to bring her thoughts together with the others. She rose, walked to the desk with lethargic steps, and opened the drawer slowly. There it was, among old papers and pens, most of them dried out: the silver razor. It wasn’t new or shiny. It was worn, with rust stains, but she always ensured its edge was as sharp as the day she bought it. It wasn’t a romantic object, but a vulgar tool, like a spoon or scissors. Yet for her, it was more than just an object.

She held it between her fingers, unhurriedly, feeling the metallic texture. She liked holding it, feeling its weight. The faint light coming through the window cast small muted reflections on the metal. She didn’t use it. She wasn’t that down yet. She just held it a while longer, like someone caressing something familiar. Then she placed it back in the drawer, closing it with exaggerated softness. Not today, she thought. Though that promise meant nothing to her; if anyone knew how to break promises, it was Eszter—especially the ones she made to herself. Days were interchangeable, coming and going like worn-out bills; nothing ever stays in the same place, everything changes.

She leaned over the desk. A book lay open on page fourteen, with several notes, cigarette ashes, and coffee stains on it. She tried to resume reading, but eventually left it open on the same page. She took a matchbox and a cigarette from her coat pocket, put it to her lips. She lit it and took several drags without exhaling; it relaxed her a bit.

Without removing the cigarette, she grabbed a notebook and a pencil. She began writing fragmented sentences, one of the few pastimes she still found bearable. Sometimes it was meaningless, just the act of letting words bleed onto the paper. When her mind settled and she read what she had written, she would tear the page to add to the rest or burn it in the trash. When finished, she slammed the notebook shut. She couldn’t stand looking at it for long; in her, everything consumed itself too quickly.

She walked to the bed and fell on her back. The ceiling was covered with tiny cracks resembling a map of some lost world. She always stared at one in particular, which ran diagonally to the right corner. Sometimes she imagined the crack slowly widening while she slept, until it became so large it could split the ceiling in two. The house would collapse over her, and no one would notice until long after. Perhaps that would be best, she thought. A casual tragedy, without guilt, without explanations. A clean, elegant disappearance.

The phone vibrated on the table. She hadn’t heard it ring, always distracted, yet there was the notification. She didn’t want to know from anyone; text messages seemed dull. She picked it up reluctantly; the screen’s brightness blinded her for a few seconds. A message: “How are you?” from a school friend, the last one who still wrote, though she barely responded lately. She stared at it for a long moment, tempted to throw it out the window, but she didn’t. “Fine,” she typed and sent. The word left a bitter taste in her mouth. Lying was automatic, instinctive. No one wanted to hear anything else. If she said “bad,” the conversation would become awkward, one message leading to a call; a call to a visit; intolerable. “Fine” served as a safe pass, a ticket not to be seen.

She turned on the bed and hugged the pillow. She felt tears gather behind her eyelids, but they didn’t fall. She hadn’t truly cried in a long time, no matter how much she wanted to. Her tears had dried long ago, or perhaps she had grown tired of explaining to the air. Crying alone was like talking to walls: useless, or perhaps a luxury she could no longer afford.

The clock read 9:17 PM. Night slid over the city. The street noise faded even more, though never completely. There was always some engine running, a distant shout, a dog chasing an unfortunate cat. Eszter returned to the window. The glass reflected her face, superimposed on the darkness outside. She felt depressed once again.

Across the street, a man appeared, staggering; his movements exaggerated, as if he were about to fall, but he righted himself and continued swaying, probably drunk. He shouted obscene words and spat every two steps. No one looked at him. Once again, no one seemed to care about anything. He passed swaying in front of Eszter’s building, disappeared around the next corner, and silence claimed the street again. That scene seemed amusing to her: at last, she had seen someone sane insult others simply because they could. I’ll do the same one day, she thought, if I’m still here.

She moved away from the window and searched for a book on the shelf. She opened it at random. A highlighted phrase struck her eyes: “People are the worst thing that can happen to a person.” She barely smiled; it took great effort, and she did it well. She felt that this person had understood something of what she carried. But the feeling didn’t last long. She closed the book and tossed it under the bed.

On the table, the notebook still awaited her, ready to offer its pages, to let her do with it as she pleased; she was a goddess in her decline, no one else could write words more honest. She opened it again, this time with determination. She wrote: “I am not made for this world” and completed it in her mind: nor is this world made for me. She didn’t write the last part. The sentence hovered on the page, incomplete, as if waiting for an ending that would never come. Eszter stared at it until the letters blurred into stains; she felt tired. Then she tore out the page abruptly. She crumpled it in her hands, burned one edge with the lighter, and threw it into the trash until it was completely consumed. She couldn’t bear to see herself written so precisely.

The clock continued its march, indifferent. 10:04 PM. The red numbers looked more vivid in the dark. Exhaustion continued to take over her body, but not her mind. She tried to close her eyes, but it was in vain; her mind always prevented her from falling asleep easily. Crowded thoughts came to her, memories she chewed over repeatedly, voices of loved ones she hadn’t forgotten. She got up again. She went to the bathroom, turned on the yellow light, and looked in the mirror. She was dark-circled; they contrasted with her pale skin. She touched her face, as if to make sure she was still there. She saw her white pill bottle on the shelf, picked it up, twisted the cap, and the click sounded in the silent bathroom. The smell of medicine felt familiar, almost comforting. She let two green pills roll into the palm of her hand, watching them for a while. “Compressed doses of forgetfulness,” she murmured. She swallowed them without water, feeling them scratch her throat.

She returned to the room. The window was wide open. The cold air stirred the loose pages of the notebook. Eszter sat back in the chair and let the icy wind raise goosebumps on her skin; she liked that feeling. She leaned back, the pills slowly taking effect, and continued waiting to extinguish.

Dawn found her awake. Perhaps two pills were no longer enough. It wasn’t the first time she had spent a night staring at the clock as one number after another changed. 2:37 AM. Outside, the street was nearly empty. A homeless man collected garbage, filling the sack on his shoulders. A taxi stopped at the corner, dropping off a drowsy passenger who staggered toward the door. The silence of the nocturnal city had a hypnotic atmosphere, quieter yet more unsettling. It was as if the whole world had let down its guard, and what she saw was true: the naked loneliness of buildings and nocturnal animals. She was tempted to go down, walk two blocks, maybe finish her cigarette; then she discarded the idea, giving herself a small tap on the chin.

Eszter remained in the chair, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked like a fifteen-year-old; her slender figure and paleness gave her a childish air, though she was thirty-five. Her bodily exhaustion was more evident; she no longer felt cold, though the air coming through the window was icy. The numbness in her feet and arms pleased her. Physical fatigue was a threshold that could be ignored if one remained still long enough.

She thought of the people asleep at that hour. In houses with lights off, where someone dreamed without knowing it, where someone breathed in the tranquility of home. She thought of shared beds, bodies embracing in the middle of the night, families. Then she stopped wandering and returned to herself: a room, a chair, a table, a refrigerator, a kitchen, an open window. At least it was hers, her place, where no one could judge her, where she could drift without being interrupted.

The buzzing of an insect broke the silence. It’s incredible how many things disturb a person’s peace: insects, cars, shouts, laughter, people. The moth hit the lamp glass, drawn to a light that would ultimately kill it. “Doesn’t it know it’s committing suicide?” she thought. Eszter watched it for a long while. She didn’t move a finger to save it. “Why would I? What right do I have?” Everyone lives and dies as they see fit. She stayed still, her face resting in both hands, watching the moth strike over and over until it fell to the floor, dead. She sighed. She picked it up from the table and placed it on the window frame.

By mid-morning, she put on her coat and, with a slow gesture, adjusted her Parisian beret. Those details gave her a bohemian air; her beauty, which remained intact, descended with her to the street. She had slept barely a couple of hours but forced herself to go out. The city air was thick with smoke and noise: car exhausts, horns, shouts, conversations. All mixed with the smell of bread and freshly brewed coffee filtering from the doors of the old shop where, years earlier, she had talked about painting and literature with her circle of friends. She had been tempted to go in for breakfast, but she abandoned the idea; she opted to light a cigarette.

People passed her in a hurry, each with a clear destination. She had none. She stopped in front of a store, looked through the glass where faceless mannequins displayed seasonal clothing. Then she looked at her reflection, confused; perhaps she too was one of those mannequins. The reflection depressed her: her messy hair under the beret, dark circles under her eyes, her paleness unhidden, not a trace of makeup. I am a living mannequin, she thought. The idea stuck.

A couple passed by laughing; they held hands affectionately. He cupped her face and kissed her right there on the street, with the urgency of those who hate to wait. Eszter looked away and exhaled smoke. A violent cough seized her until she was nearly breathless, then returned the way it had come.

She took refuge in the café she had just passed. The aroma of coffee hit her again as she entered, mixed with the soft jazz music playing in the background. She ordered unsweetened black tea. She sat by the window and rested her head on her hand. She observed the people at other tables: a group of students with laptops, a woman talking on the phone while gesturing with her hands, an elderly man reading a newspaper while grotesquely chewing a piece of croissant. They all seemed to have a role assigned. She had none.

The tea arrived, and she took a long sip without letting it cool. The warmth slid down her throat, then she set it aside. She took the notebook from her bag, looking for any blank page. She picked up the pen, held it above the paper, motionless. She found nothing interesting to write. Everything she wanted to say seemed either too obvious or too useless. She ended up drawing circles, one after another, until she filled the page, until she was interrupted.

A restless little girl at the next table was throwing a tantrum. Eszter stared at her. She must have been around seven, with her hair tied in two braids and wearing a blue polka-dot dress. The girl stopped crying and stared back at her curiously, as if seeing something strange. They held each other’s gaze. The girl smiled. Eszter looked away, but that simple gesture, that pure smile, seemed almost mocking. It pressed on her chest, as if the girl, unknowingly, was showing her everything she had lost.

She paid and left without finishing her tea. Outside, the sun was high, no longer cold, but she didn’t want to take off her coat. She walked back to her building, climbed the stairs as if measuring each step. She entered her room and locked the door.

She collapsed on the bed, sighed. The exhaustion was unbearable, but she knew that if she closed her eyes, only confusing dreams awaited her—fragments of memories, voices she had begun to hate. She looked at the ceiling again, the same crack that kept advancing toward anywhere.

The clock read 4:12 PM. Only half the day had passed, and the thought of enduring the other half seemed unbearable to Eszter.

She got up and went to the window, pressing her forehead against the glass again. On the street, people marched endlessly; faces that, if stared at long enough, would distort. She felt nauseous and tried to hold back vomiting, but it was in vain. She threw the sips of black tea she had just drunk into the trash can. The burn in her chest hit immediately. She held her breath: one, two, three, four… and continued until she could no longer.

Night arrived without her noticing; she didn’t turn on the room light. She lay on the bed, listening to how the city changed pace as the red numbers on the clock continued their endless march. The sounds were different at this hour: less traffic, more murmurs filtering through the window, distant laughter slowly dying, a door slamming somewhere above. The silence between these noises weighed most heavily on her. She hated having time to listen to her inner noise, which was more annoying than that outside.

The vomit in the trash began to emit a nauseating odor.

She struggled to her feet and walked to the window. She opened it wide, making sure no one was below. The trash can fell to the floor with a dull thud, a sound that reminded her of a revolver shot. Her room was on the fifth floor.

The cold wind lashed her face. She felt so exhausted she thought she could faint at any moment. Her mind wandered, cruel and obsessive: whether she should end like that trash can. For a moment, she almost saw herself jumping from the top floor.

Then, the phone rang. The sound pulled her from her abyss. She blinked, confused. She was alive. She had dreamed it. It was a message from her mother: “Princess, will you come for lunch tomorrow? We haven’t seen each other in a while.” Eszter read it but didn’t reply. She left the phone face down on the table. Another notification sound would have been unbearable.

The clock read 11:58 PM. Eszter closed her eyes, defeated by exhaustion. She took a deep breath. Counted again, silently: one, two, three, four. The count never ended.