Abigail – Magda Szabó (1970)

Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix

This is the fourth of Magda Szabó’s to be translated into English by Len Rix, and for me it is an early contender for my books of the year list – which is a very long way off I admit. I have previously loved each of Magda Szabó’s other novels available in English, The Door, Iza’s Ballad and Katalin Street, and it is quite hard to pick favourites when the books are so different, but Abigail might just be it. I found Abigail to be such a fully immersive novel – I was glad it was a fairly chunky 440 odd pages because I didn’t want it to end.

Other Szabó novels hark back to the war and how it has impacted on people – though from a distance of years, this theme is continued here, though Abigail by contrast takes place during the war. It is 1943, and in Germany, Hitler is becoming frustrated by the direction the so called ‘Jewish question’ has been moving in Hungary. A senior army General in Budapest, sees the way the wind is blowing, knowing that their allies Germany will surely invade soon, he decides to send his fourteen year old daughter Georgina Vitay, across Hungary to a boarding school in Árkod, an old University town in Eastern Hungary.

Gina is rather spoiled, having had her father’s undivided attention for years, and with a doting aunt nearby who only encourages her romantic aspirations. Despite being only fourteen Gina already has her eye on a handsome young officer, only in his late teens his uniform gives him an irresistible glamour. Her French governess Marcelle has been sent home, because of the war, and Gina finds all the changes happening in her life overwhelming. Always able to persuade her father of things she wants in the past, she can’t imagine why he is determined to stick to this plan of a boarding school so very far away from home. She can only imagine he wants her out of the house, perhaps he is going to be re-married. As she and her father start out on the journey to Árkod Gina descends into a hopeless misery.

The school Gina’s father takes her to, is a fanatically puritanical school – compete with a black wholly enveloping uniform – and dozens of rules. It’s an environment unlike anything Gina has experienced before – the building itself more like a fortress than a school is impenetrable from the outside world. Her father promises to telephone each Saturday, explaining he will be too busy to write letters, then he leaves her with Sister Susanna, a Deaconess with whom Gina is destined to have a sometimes difficult relationship. Gina is shown to the year 5 dormitory (each year group stays together almost all the time, having little to do with other year groups) where all Gina’s belongings are taken from her and replaced with school issue – including her extraordinary uniform.

“As she pulled on the black ribbed stockings and the tall black boots she thought that that would be all. But she was wrong. What came next was, in its own way, even more horrifying than the new outfit. Susanna teased out her long tresses with the new wooden-handled brush that had replaced her old silver backed one, then chopped them short to match the other girls’ and added a parting down the middle and plaits, tied by the same black shoelace. Gina was now trembling with shock. They have swallowed me whole. I am no longer myself, she thought, and her breathing became a rapid pant.”

She meets the first of the girls with whom she will be spending her time. Gina; devastated at being separated from her father – is completely at sea in this new and strange environment. Gina starts to learn something of the strange traditions that exist in this place – several she decides are absurdly childish – and in her disdain she makes an early serious error – which puts her at serious odds with her classmates for weeks. During this period, Gina is horribly isolated and miserable – and she knows now she made an error of judgement, she has in fact a lot to learn. Gina begins to plan to run away. However, that won’t be quite as easy as she thinks. Gina’s superior attitude doesn’t always go down well with her teachers either. The school Director is Mr Torma a forbidding, inflexible presence whose niece is one of Gina’s classmates.

One of the most important traditions at the school centres round a statue in the gardens. The Abagail of the title, where since the First World War girls have been leaving notes asking for help with their problems and receiving advice in return. No one knows which adult in the school is ‘Abigail’ but in time Gina starts leaving her own notes.

“…she saw that they had reached the end of the garden, where a high stone wall marked the school boundary. A curving recess had been cut into its considerable depth, and in it stood a statue, the statue of a young woman. Curly locks spilled out from under her headband, over a gentle brow, and she held a classical-style stone pitcher.”

One of the school’s ‘old girls’ who became romantically engaged during WW1 lives nearby – and sometimes girls are invited to tea parties at her home. To most of the girls Mitsi Horn is a generous, glamourous intriguing figure – but Gina is not so easily beguiled and is irritated by the adoration shown towards the woman. She has several battles with Susanna who she loves and loathes alternately, and early decides Latin master Mr Kőnig is an idiot, while the handsome, patriotic Mr Kalmár she casts as a kind of hero.

One day Gina’s father appears for an unscheduled visit. He takes her out for cakes, and urges her to settle down, trusting her with a desperate secret. Filled with a new purpose Gina returns to school after waving her father off again with a new determination to make him proud and do as he asks. She involves herself in the life of the school as much as she can, building bridges in time with her classmates, making friends and learning that not everyone is as privileged as she is. Confronted with some of the more sinister aspects to the war, Gina keeps her father’s secret – but there are darker forces at work outside of the school gates.

I loved every bit of this novel – I had seen some readers say that not enough happens in the novel until quite near the end – where the drama is racked up – but I like that kind of narrative. Fantastic characterisation and brilliant storytelling, no wonder that this was Magda Szabó’s most popular novel in Hungary.