The Lukacs Baths
It's circa 1900 and five women have gathered here in semi-darkness, prepared to prophesy their own extinction.
The water shimmies down a pebbled wall, a fountain hesitates. Their swimming costumes are wasps-nests soaked through, softened by the rain, their bathing caps are a green efflorescence.
They are the light at the bottom of deep pools, wobbling in uncomfortable sunshine.
Inside every grandmother there sits an attractive young girl mouthing pieties, complaining of sore lips or God knows what. History for them is painful gossip half way between myth and memory.
They are on nodding terms with skeletons who take the shape of husbands in dull rooms, and they can tell the future as it shrinks into its faint determined pattern.
It's hard to like them, harder to dislike them. Their faces are light wrinkles in the water.
An enormous beech is jutting from the yard. The walls, just as in crematoriums, are stuck with plaques in a handful of languages. My shoulder's better. I can move my leg. God bless these healing waters. I can walk. Inside and on the roof the swimsuits bulge. I'm watching two old women as they swim and push the past away like tired waves. George Szirtes
Previous page
