Magda Szabo; translated by Kathleen Szasz
The Fawn by Magda Szabo, translated from the Hungarian by Kathleen Szasz, unfolds in the first-person voice of Eszter Encsy, an accomplished stage actress in Soviet-era Budapest. To describe Eszter’s narrative voice as unreliable, intense, blunt, spiteful, and vindictive is to apply a heavy coating of sugar on it. Her monologue consists of an angry and bitter tirade to an unnamed reader who is later revealed to be her lover.
The novel opens with Eszter describing her poverty-stricken childhood. She is an only child, always hungry, shoeless, and consumed with rage at the world. She is virtually ignored by her parents who have eyes only for each other. Her father is a lawyer who is more concerned with nurturing plants and insects than his daughter. Her mother gives piano lessons to help support the family. With hands apparently too delicate for cooking and cleaning, the mother delegates all household chores to her daughter. Eszter has to cook, clean, and shop for the family while attending school. Snubbed by their rich relations, Eszter takes on additional tasks to help make ends meet.
Eszter’s rage at the world coalesces, manifesting itself with a vengeance on the figure of her classmate, Angela. The daughter of a judge, Angela is a beautiful, kind, and gentle young girl from a wealthy family. She is compassionate, sensitive, generous, and eager to share her good fortune with her classmates, especially Eszter. She is everything Eszter is not; she has everything Eszter has been denied. Eszter’s interiority is full of venom and spite toward Angela while externally, she pretends to be her friend. She is consumed with an obsessive and palpable hatred toward her. As a young girl, Eszter steals Angela’s pet fawn and is ultimately responsible for the fawn’s death. As an adult and a successful actress, she projects a façade of being Angela’s friend while conducting an affair with Angela’s husband.
Eszter learns to cultivate an ability to conceal her opinions and emotions at a young age. She fakes an interest in others while her thoughts spew venom at them. She simultaneously avoids and seeks people who care for her. She is hell-bent on a path of self-destruction, suggesting she has internalized feelings of insignificance and thinks herself undeserving of love. Her abrupt shifts in time can be confusing, especially during the first few chapters. Eventually, the narrative begins to make sense. Her monologue takes on the form of an attempt to explain to her lover why she is the way she is by unfolding the story of her life. It constitutes an apology of sorts, but it comes too late.
This is a compelling tour de force by an extraordinarily talented author. In Eszter, Magda Szabo has created a psychologically complex character, tormented by her past, riddled with envy, consumed with rage and regret. Beneath it all, she is full of self-loathing. Through Eszter Encsy, Szabo shows how a traumatic past can haunt us and influence our life’s trajectory for good or, as in the case of Eszter, for ill.