The Rebels

4

THE COLONEL’S WIFE STOPPED BETWEEN THE two beds. She was carrying Tibor’s black uniform on her arm, and held the brilliantly polished black lace-up shoes in her hand. She came on tiptoe and, still on tiptoe, stopped on swollen, unsteady feet in the half-dark. The square window glimmered between the beds. She gave both beds a furious, feral glance, shifting her attention from one to the other and back.

Lajos lay propped high on his pillow, as stiff and unmoving as a corpse. His remaining hand rested on his chest, the sleeve of the missing arm hanging off the edge of the bed, his face calm, serious, smooth. Tibor lay slightly across his bed, one foot sticking out from beneath the covers, his hand gripping the bolster.

The colonel’s wife raised the clothes to her face with difficulty and took a good sniff. The boy’s smell was detectable through that of the broadcloth and the cheap perfume that had lingered round him on his return that night. So there it is, she thought. The boy has spent the night with some woman.

Incontrovertible proof, she thought. The boy has been with a woman, doing what all men do. That was the odor he brought back with him, on his body and his clothes, while she was stuck at home, waiting up in her bed, with her straggly hair let down over her skinny shoulders, in her nightgown, imagining the most terrible things, weeping and sobbing because she could just see him as a man, his angular head nestling between an unknown woman’s breasts, his groin rubbing against the woman’s groin, the woman who was robbing her of her motherhood, disputing her ownership of the family. That was what really mattered, what she should never forget: that she had been robbed. They are all thieves, she reflected with contempt. That’s how it was in her most agonizingly jealous years too: she was being robbed. This furtive miserliness that had held the family together, a family that was continually straining to break apart, whose members were always set on wandering off, always resented and coveted anything her menfolk took from the house, every farthing, each drop of blood. Everything here belonged to her because it was she who kept guard over the family, indeed was the family, an island in the greater world outside, an island on which they built houses and settled people—all of this was hers, everything that grew here grew out of her flesh and blood. But the men went straying after other women. They were robbing her, so she was jealous of every word the three men took with them when they left the house. They gave money to other women, fed them with endearments that were hers by right: their very movements, their blood and sweat, were offered up to them. One day they all deserted her, left the island, gave false, conniving excuses for their absence, citing the call of duty, the needs of the nation, the binding oaths they had made, and when they came back they were never the same again. One came back without an arm. She looked at the empty dangling sleeve. That arm was unquestionably hers: she had given birth to it. That was her flesh the boy had squandered somewhere. He said it was the war, but she knew these were just words, that men made war just to escape their homes, because they didn’t want to fulfill their obligations and earn a proper living.

The little one had slept with a woman last night. She leaned forward carefully and her eyes sought out her son’s mouth in the half-dark of the bolsters. The mouth was open, the lips swollen with blood. His father had just such a mouth. That’s how it goes, how it always goes, one is left alone on a sinking island.

She arranged the clothes on the chair. She knew she was nearing the end of her life, and was quite aware she had to die. It might be a year, it might be tomorrow. Her foot was swollen and dropsical. There were nights she couldn’t hear her own heart beat. She was accustomed to the thought of death and spoke of it as she might speak of a much-loved, intimate family occasion. She had no difficulty accepting the thought of death, she was only concerned that her sons would come in, call for the doctor and Mrs. Budenyik, the woman who washed corpses, and Mrs. Budenyik would strip her and wash her wasted body and swollen dead legs, those legs that had died before her sensations and reason did, with acidic water. She had no intention whatever of intruding upon Mrs. Budenyik and her business with the dead. Mrs. Budenyik had been a midwife once, and had seen her naked and more than naked when she gave birth to her sons. She was part of the family, first as an associate member of the great family of woman, secondly as a member of Colonel Prockauer’s family. She was the last to wash Granny and the first to wash little Tibor. It’s laughable, she thought, that Mrs. Budenyik should complete her work here, prepare her nice and clean for her final journey, wipe the death sweat off her with a cloth soaked in acidic water, not allowing the boys to remain in the room as she did so. The thought that tortured her was that the boys would be allowed to remain, maybe out of pity, or for lack of a firm hand, while Mrs. Budenyik washed her down. This fear never left her during the period of her illness while she lay helpless in bed. She knew why the boys should not look upon her naked body, alive or dead, it made no difference. She wore high-necked nightgowns that buttoned to the chin. The boys had never seen her while she was washing or lightly clad. She knew that if a look of theirs should burn a hole in the wall that had, for decades, divided her from them, everything would fall apart. The boys would only see the mother in her, and nothing but the mother, the guardian of the majority of the laws of behavior, as long as it never occurred to them to look upon her flesh, to notice that their mother was a woman too, someone her husband might take in his arms, into whose ear he might whisper endearments, a person whose body his fingers might explore. Whenever she thought of this on her sickbed she gave a groan. She must discuss the business with Mrs. Budenyik before it happened. Now that the youngest had taken leave of the house and spent the night with a strange woman she felt she could abandon her resistance, that her death was very close.

Making a great effort, she returned to her room and lay down once more in the bed she had only stolen from at night when everyone else was asleep. There was no need for the boys to know that she was still capable of moving about. For years now the boys had believed her to be bed-bound. And that was how it should be: there were certain advantages in the strategy she had developed for holding the family together. She kept the keys under her pillow along with the letter of credit from the pawnbroker for eight thousand crowns. Her few items of jewelry—her diamond-encrusted black enamel medallions, her earrings, her long gold necklace, and her little gold watch—she stored under the bolster. The silver, the antique beaten silver, the remaining glitter of her once glittering family, she kept in a leather trunk under the bed, and across her chest, in a small deerskin pouch, she hoarded the ready cash her husband sent her back from the front. That was all. The longer she existed in this state of pretended helplessness the better she understood the advantages of central control, of keeping everything hidden but close to hand. It was indeed a considerable advantage and a vital element of her strategy that she should be lying helpless in bed. Her bed was the epicenter of the entire family, the heart through and around which the blood flowed. She had been lying there for three years, apparently without moving. She knew there was a war on but in her heart of hearts thought it a mere excuse, a quibble that enabled her husband to go philandering and prevented him sitting at her bed. The older boy had made off with much the same excuse a year before. Now it was the younger one’s turn. What a fraud it all is, she thought, exhausted.

She lay in the bed unmoving, dreaming of teeth. She dreamt all her teeth had vanished. She knew this meant death: her lifelong experience and her various books of dreams told her as much. She was going to die: the boys would search her room, find the silver, the valuable papers, the jewels. She was planning to set up some kind of trust that the orphans’ court would handle, something that would allow the father and the sons the quarterly installment of a silver spoon or fork. She lay in bed with her eyes wide open, listening to the first sounds of morning. Every so often she tired and dropped off. In bed she always wore an old and not entirely clean mantilla shawl as if she were expecting visitors. She thought it natural that the wife of Colonel Prockauer should have plenty of callers. She had long been oblivious to the fact that no one visited her. All her life she had dreamed vainly of a soirée that she, the wife of Colonel Prockauer, would organize, opening up all three rooms of the apartment as well as the garden where there would be lanterns and items of improvised furniture, and small tables laden with wine, cold meats, and pastries; a soirée with perhaps a Gypsy band, with all the officers of the garrison present and even the commander dropping in for half an hour, not to mention various local dignitaries, with the mayor at the helm. She had often calculated whether the rooms would be big enough and tried to estimate the cost of the evening. She would stand at the garden gate in the gray silk dress made for her on the occasion of their silver anniversary, the dress she had never worn since, with her two sons by her side welcoming the guests. The colonel would wear all his decorations for the occasion. Whenever this frequently imagined but never realized dream came back to haunt her she began to cry, but no one was aware of this.

The boys woke. There was the sound of running water. They were washing and talking quietly between themselves. The maid was searching for something in the kitchen. The work of the day was beginning, that curious, complex struggle in which she took part despite her immobility, not relaxing for a second but directing the affairs of the household as well as every stage of her sons’ lives from her bed. The sideboard opposite the bed contained the food. She had arranged it in such a position that she could keep an eye on the girl’s every movement, so that not a cupful of flour, no slice of bacon, no single egg should leave the sideboard without her observing before the girl closed it and deposited the key back under her pillow. She willed herself upright in bed when the boys went out of the house, gazing after them through the walls, mentally escorting them, watching them all the way. There were times she could swear she could see them hanging about some street corner in town as clearly as if they had been standing in front of her and could even hear their voices as they chatted with this or that person. In the evening when they returned she would interrogate them about their movements and sometimes their accounts tallied with what she had imagined.

The maid came in, kissed her hand, and set the breakfast, drawing open the blinds. The mother handed over the key and watched anxiously as the maid searched out items in the sideboard. She held the box of sugar in her lap and counted out five cubes. The boys received one and a half, she and the girl one each. The hot sun poured in through the window with the full strength of summer.

“Get some meat for dinner today,” she told the maid. “Open a jar of cherries. Use the old plum jam to make some jam pockets, it’s there next to the soap.”

She closed her eyes. Let everything be as though it were his birthday.

She should give him something today. She took mental note of her valuables, but every gift presented a risk and could lead to temptation. If she gave him the gold necklace he might sell it or give it away to some woman. Lajos once sold his watch. Her husband had once taken out three thousand crowns and gone off to a spa where he went through it all while she stayed at home struggling to bring up the boys. She had to make up the three thousand from the household budget and it took eight years, taking out ever more loans, saving pennies out of his captain’s and then his major’s salary. Prockauer needed white gloves every day of the week. In summer he changed shirts every other day. When time allowed he would blend cologne with the water he washed his face with while she, the mother, had to wash herself with crude soap.

“He said I smelled of tallow,” she said quietly to herself.

The maid’s hand hesitated in the act of laying out the food, but she didn’t look up, being familiar with the invalid’s habit of occasionally making strange comments without introduction or indeed any connection in the same low voice, some statement that did not require an answer. Mother looked sideways at the maid to detect whether she had heard. She didn’t mind being heard, in fact it gave her a certain satisfaction that under the cover of her illness she could time and again give voice to whatever incurable state of affairs preoccupied or tortured her. Prockauer had once admonished her for not using scented soap or perfumes. Her hands, like those of many officers’ wives, carried the permanent smell of paraffin since Prockauer’s gloves needed daily washing. These slights were a constant pain to her. Photographs of Prockauer hung on the wall opposite, above the bed, showing him at the various monotonous stages of a military career from second lieutenant to colonel in full dress and on horseback at his last frontline post. She had been talking to the pictures for the last three years, conversing with them through long nights and endless afternoons, silently or in a muttering whisper. Prockauer had made off to the front where he was undoubtedly carousing and getting into debt. It gave her a certain pleasure to think that Prockauer would have to be dealing with his creditors by himself. She sought out the colonel’s face in the picture and glared at it from under furrowed brows, mocking and ironic.

THE BOYS KISSED HER HAND AND SAT DOWN TO breakfast. Lajos had been wearing civilian clothes for a while now. He put on old summer outfits that he had slightly outgrown, whose waists were now a little tight so he looked like a schoolboy in them. He tucked his armless sleeve into his coat pocket. Ever since the amputation he had grown fatter and more suspicious. He complained of the small portions provided for him. He accepted offers of extra helpings from his mother and brother at dinner, put on a wheedling voice to plead for the tastiest parts, offered to swap things, and the maid sometimes complained that he had eaten the leftovers from dinner that she had put away for supper. Just as well that I keep the pantry in my room, thought Mother. In the few months since Lajos had returned from the hospital he had grown a belly and his mother suspected he was eating in secret somewhere. His mouth and his eyebrows had stopped twitching but the glazed, indifferent look in his eyes persisted, relieved only by the odd flash of curiosity or malevolence.

He is still handsome, thought the mother, his hair and brow reminiscent of the colonel. But his suddenly plump body and the awkward, uncertain movements of his remaining hand seemed grotesque. His voice too was strange: slow, drawling, singsong, faintly babyish and complaining, just as he did as a child when he wanted something and was not given it. He was sluggish and gluttonous. She did not dare send him out to work. She had to tolerate her twenty-year-old son idling away the day with his younger brother’s friends. There were times he put on his ensign’s uniform, pinned his medals on his chest, and stood staring at himself in the mirror in his mother’s room, turning round like a model, talking to himself as he used to do in childhood, completely ignoring his mother’s presence, as if he were playing at soldiers. He felt no shame before his mother nor did he answer her questions once he was deeply immersed in what he was doing.

It’s money they ask for, she thought and closed her eyes. It was morning and battle was about to commence, the battle that never ended, not at night, not even in her dreams. She tightened her thin bloodless lips. She had calculated last night how much she would give Tibor: five crowns for the photograph and ten for the banquet. She wanted to give him an icon too, the picture of St. Louis, the patron saint of the family, because the elder Prockauer was named Louis, after him. She wasn’t sure whether her gift of St. Louis would delight Tibor. All the same she extracted it from her prayerbook and put it out ready on the bedside table.

“Mother,” Lajos wheedled in his singsong voice. “Tibor needs some money.”

They had discussed this final two-pronged attack at dawn while they were washing. No one else could help them now. Mother would give them the money so they could pay Havas off in the afternoon, then they could smuggle the silver back into its proper place. Tibor would volunteer for military service and the gang would break up in the evening. No one mentioned the night that had just passed. Lajos had taken Tibor home, laid him down on the bed, pulled off his shoes as though he were an invalid, covered him up, and sat at his bedside until he fell asleep. Tibor surrendered himself entirely, offering no resistance. At night he woke, went over to Lajos’s bed, and, when he saw the one-armed one’s eyes were closed in sleep, quietly stole over to the basin and gave his face a good wash with soap and brushed his teeth. He rubbed at his face a long time, then went back to bed.

He lay restless and wide awake, occasionally raising his hands to his mouth to rub his lips. The bed was slowly spinning with him but there was something reassuring about the dizziness: he felt he had stopped dancing, in a moment the record would stop turning and it would be quiet, and they would be standing perfectly still, the sun would rise and there would be light. I’ll go to the swimming pool in the morning, he thought. He felt he had plummeted from a great height to a deep, very deep place, the kind where one could lie flat out, quite calm, because nothing more could happen and it was only that he did not dare to move in case he discovered he had broken his arm or his leg. From time to time he would put his fingers to his lips and smile in relief. No more harm could befall him now: he was over it all. Mother would give him the money and they could all go on living their own lives. I could recover, he thought. Once I’m away from here I will be well again.

“I don’t know anything,” said Mother instead of answering. “No one tells me anything. I lie here, helpless, I might not even make it through to morning, but you come home at dawn, climbing through that damned window. Tibor, my baby, I don’t even know whether you passed your exams.”

The fact that Tibor had failed, and the consequences of that failure, had completely slipped their minds since yesterday so now they quickly had to think of something to say.

“Where’s the certificate, my dear?” asked Mother.

The one-armed one looked around as if their mother were quite elsewhere and said encouragingly:

“They’ll give you one, you’ll see. Trust me. They have to give you one, no question about it.”

Tears began to roll down Mother’s cheeks. She could cry at will. Tibor watched her with a desperate indifference. He had got used these last three years to his mother crying each time he was asked something.

“They haven’t given them out yet,” he assured her. Mother continued crying exactly as before, her tears neither more nor less copious, as if some engine had been turned on and now had to run its course before switching itself off. Once she had dried her tears she picked up the icon and presented it to Tibor.

“This will protect you,” she said, sniffing. “I daren’t even ask where you were last night. I know you need money today, Tibor, my baby. I have already made inquiries. The photographer will cost five crowns. How much is the banquet?”

“They’re not giving a banquet,” Lajos answered. “They are arranging a May picnic.”

“A picnic? What a strange idea,” she said disapprovingly. “You’ll only catch a chill in the end. Lajos, be sure to take your coat.”

“Mother,” pleaded Lajos, “I spent four months bivouacking by the Isonzo, in a trench, in the rain. There’s nothing I don’t know about cold and damp.”

He stood up and put his hand behind his back, standing as the Prockauers tended to do, and walked up and down the room. Mother watched him timidly. It had been Lajos’s habit, as it was his father’s, to put his hands together behind his back and crack his fingers. Of course he can’t do that now, she thought with forbearance. She was frightened because there was no discipline now. Any moment now they might rebel, come over, and gently, without any violence, lift her from the bed, deposit her elsewhere, and fall to searching the mattress and the bolster, and there, before her very eyes, seize the silver, the jewels, and the money, her cries and entreaties falling on deaf ears, the boys triumphantly ransacking the whole apartment—and should she scream for help they might even stuff a napkin in her mouth to shut her up. Something had happened. She had lost her authority over the boys. She gazed at the various photographic images of Colonel Prockauer’s military career as if beseeching his help. It was, when you came down to it, easier with Prockauer. She understood that what wrecked a life were those unpredictable moments when a person loses courage, remains silent, fails to open his or her mouth, and allows events to take control. Maybe she should have asked Prockauer not to go to the front. Being a high-ranking officer he could, presumably, have stopped the war.

Every nook and cranny of the long room was stuffed with unnecessary furniture, objects to which the foul smell of the sickroom clung, the smell of isolation and neglect. This, the room in which Mother lay, was where they had to eat. Once, in a circus, she had seen a woman in an evening dress control two wild wolves with no more than a look and a whip. She felt she had to engage her sons’ eyes, and that once she had done so order might be restored: one flash of her own eyes would draw the boys back into her magic circle. But the boys avoided her eyes. The contact was broken. She no longer had power over them. They were silent when they entered her room nowadays. She knew this silence spelled danger. They had been silent for months. She was wholly ignorant of the reason for their peculiar absences: they did not share their thoughts with her. They were preparing for something. Maybe their plans had already come to fruition and they were only waiting for the opportune moment when they could rise in rebellion, they might even have accomplices, the maid, or some other person. Maybe they had already agreed that on some given signal they should seize her and pick up her thin body, though maybe Tibor could do that by himself while Lajos searched the mattress and the bed with his remaining hand. But they wouldn’t dare touch the ready cash she carried on her own body, she quickly thought. She clenched her hands. She felt the onset of fear and started shivering.

Suddenly she sat up and pushed the bolster under her back.

“Get out,” she said. “I’ll give you money. Now out with you!”

The one-armed one shrugged, gestured to Tibor, and they returned to their room. Mother listened carefully, her hands on her chest. They’re on the alert now, she thought. They might even be spying. Fortunately she had positioned her bed so it could not be seen through the keyhole. Whenever she was obliged to give them money she sent them out of the room. Her hand tightened on her breast and she wondered what she would feel at the very end. She thought back to the moment of Tibor’s conception, in the eighth year of their marriage, after several months of sleeping apart. Prockauer returned one afternoon from the training ground wearing his riding boots, dusty, whip in hand, his brow lightly perspiring, and threw his military cap on the table. They were alone in the room. Little Lajos was outside, playing in the garden. They had hardly exchanged a word for several months. Prockauer slept in the dining room on a divan, while she slept with little Lajos in the double bed in the bedroom. They were past the stage of looking for excuses to loathe one another. They struggled with it for a long time, but by the eighth year all loathing had faded, as had the times they had fallen back into each other’s arms. The constant battle that was consuming both their souls, the war they were fighting with and against each other, had run out of steam. For the past few months they had silently, calmly, almost forbearingly, as if out of a common sympathy, settled down to simply hating each other. She was sitting in the rocking chair by the window attempting to remove a grease spot from Prockauer’s yellow breeches, a particularly fine pair of twill breeches, the grease spot presumably caused by the oiled saddle, somewhere near the knee. This spot, which was larger and eye-catching, much like everything else in Prockauer’s life, seemed more than usually vivid to her now as she recalled it. She felt peculiarly compelled to remove such spots. Prockauer came up to her, quite calmly, and without saying a word, put out a hand and grabbed the scruff of her neck, raising her some way from the chair the way he would have lifted a sleeping dog, gripping it where it was least likely to hurt. While struggling in Prockauer’s embrace her body was infused by a delicious pain that told her she was alive, that she was still living, inhabiting this specific moment, and that what would follow would be a downward slope that led, possibly, to death. She thought back to that moment now, to that one moment of perfect consciousness, struggling in Prockauer’s arms and, somewhere between sleeping and waking, felt alive, quite alive for a moment. Never again was she to experience such a feeling. Tibor was the product of that moment. Prockauer had touched her a few more times later, but she couldn’t remember those occasions. Gently, with some trepidation, she opened her nightshirt and brought out the pouch: this was what she now had to attend to. The pouch was attached to her nightshirt with a safety pin. She sought out fifteen crowns, deposited the coins on the icon on the bedside table, then, somewhat assured, leaned back on her pillows.

She called to them in a weak voice and timidly pointed to the money. Lajos stared at her without saying anything, then sat down in a chair opposite her bed. Tibor counted the fifteen crowns, nodded, and pocketed the coins.

“I know we have no money, Mother,” he addressed her cordially. “I wouldn’t in fact ask you for any. I have to go out now. When I return this evening I would like you to provide me with the sum of six hundred crowns. Do you understand? Six hundred.”

“Six hundred crowns,” said Mother rather fast, as if addressing a natural request in a perfectly relaxed manner.

“Will you give it to me?”

“Six hundred crowns,” she repeated. Her hand grasped the air. Six hundred. She collapsed back onto her pillow and stared straight ahead of her with a frozen smile. Their father is fighting on the front. Six hundred. She let out a few faint shrieks and vigorously shook her head.

Tibor sat on the bed next to her, put his hands together, and waited for her to calm down. “Don’t excite yourself, Mother,” he said. “I see you don’t understand. But don’t get overexcited.”

He stood up.

“Something will come along.”

“Six hundred crowns,” Mother repeated. “Six hundred silver crowns. Good lord. St. Louis.”

She had to be laid down on the pillow again. Incomprehensible sounds bubbled from her lips. Tibor put his hands on his mother’s brow and indicated to the one-armed one that it was hopeless.

“There’s one hope left,” he said and leaned close to Lajos. “I’ll speak with him this afternoon.”

The one-armed one solemnly nodded but never took his eyes off their mother who was gasping quietly now, her closed eyes mimicking sleep. Just as solemnly, he leaned forward with an expression of utmost curiosity and carefully examined his mother, as if he had discovered some new feature on her. Curiosity and confusion mingled in his smile: he was wholly absorbed in her.

“In The Peculiar tonight,” said Tibor quietly by way of farewell, and tiptoed towards the door.

“Tonight,” echoed the one-armed one, but his eyes never left his mother and he placed a finger to his lips, demanding silence. Once Tibor had closed the door he stood up silently to look down on her. He gazed at her for a few seconds, listening for any noise, his curiosity taking on an officious air. Suddenly Mother looked right at him and the two pairs of eyes met with hardly any distance between them. They regarded each other, round-eyed, the way people stare at each other for the first or the last time. A sudden rigid horror blazed in Mother’s eyes, like two safety lamps, and her dull eyes started to burn. She raised a hand to her breast in defense. The one-armed one sat down again, as if determined not to move from here until he had discovered something.

The maid entered and cleared the table. Mother wanted to give some instructions, she wanted to sit up, to say something. Her eyes followed the girl with undisguised anxiety but the one-armed one raised his finger to his lips and indicated that she should be silent. Mother began to shiver, her teeth were chattering. Once the maid had gone out he pulled his chair closer to her and leaned forward.

You have to give us the money, Mother, he said, his voice calm and quiet.

There was no severity in his voice, no hint of threat, but Mother immediately closed her eyes as if in a faint. From time to time she opened them to find the boy still there, still calm, insistent, his gaze never leaving her, and she closed her eyes again. They remained like this for a long time, unmoving. Mother stopped trembling as the odd sidelong glance assured her that the boy was still at his post. Time passed infinitely slowly. Mother drew the nightshirt tightly about her chest, closed her eyes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. She knew there was no longer any point in doing anything, but before surrendering herself she would stiffen, play dead as a termite does when it senses danger. The one-armed one drew the chair still closer, propped himself on the edge of the bed, and made himself comfortable.

ÁBEL SLEPT AT THE PECULIAR. THERE WERE NO curtains so he woke early. Through the glass the mountain and the pine forest had just emerged from their covers in the warmth, their shapes lazy and rounded, like a plump girl’s. He sat down at the window in shirtsleeves and held his face up to the sun. One could get drunk on the sun on an empty stomach. He had slept deep and remembered nothing. Such giddy happiness flooded through him that he didn’t dare move in case the giddiness vanished. His body warmed through, his frozen limbs relaxed.

He had to be in town by ten. The class photograph that was to join the others in the gallery, the gallery that included their fathers, was to be taken in the yard of the institution. He picked up his clothes. The building was deserted: the owner was hanging lanterns in the garden. Aimlessly he walked up and down the room among the accumulated hoard of things. It was all junk, boring, rubbish. He spun the globe and waited for it to stop. He carefully put his finger on Central Africa. Good heavens, he thought. What does it matter that the actor has kissed Tibor Prockauer?

He hadn’t gone home that night. When they parted in front of the theater he took a few steps homeward then turned and took the route leading to The Peculiar. He ran part of the way to get out of town as fast as he could, then slowed by the river. The night was warm and bright. He never considered going home. Perhaps I shall never go home again, he thought vaguely. There’s a change coming, something different from everything up till now, something other than Etelka or Papa or the teachers or Tibor or the actor, perhaps something much simpler and nicer, everything’s up for grabs, the whole thing needs careful, independent, rational thought. But that’s just a feeble consolation, he thought. The various buildings of The Peculiar glimmered white in the moonlight, picturesque, improbable. He crept quietly up to the room, the musty closeted smell mingling with the scent of rum, choking him. He opened the window, threw himself across the bed, and immediately fell asleep. The actor was coming towards him, his chest bare, his wig crooked. Tibor’s head fell back. Ábel was tugging at the actor’s arm. It’s cooled down! It’s a starry night! He was bellowing.

The dream faded. He slept deeply, his body still.

He put on his clothes and set off for town. He was hot in his black formal garments. A tuft of hair was sticking from his pocket. He drew out the wig, then, looking round to make sure no one could see, threw it away. The hairpiece lay on the road like a squashed furry animal. He raised it with his toe and gave it a disgusted kick. Whoever once grew this tuft of hair, he said to himself, is, from this moment, dead forever. He hurried past the repairman’s fence. He had lost his hat somewhere the previous night. The air was pure and clean, the sound of bells swam in it. May eighteenth. Friday. The photographer. He wanted to have a word with Tibor afterwards. Then it’s Havas at two. He might look in on his aunt. In the evening they would come out to The Peculiar. None of this was of particular interest really. He stopped, looked round, and for a moment considered going back to The Peculiar and waiting for them till evening. But then he thought he had to speak to Tibor. He lengthened his stride.

Over the fences peeped the branches of various fruit trees. The previous afternoon’s rain had beaten down the flowers. He passed the swimming pool, then stopped on the bridge to look at the yellow-colored river of his childhood, now in flood, the long grass bending over it into the water, his nose crinkling to the sharp sour smell.

Judge Kikinday, the man the mandarin had condemned to death, was just crossing the bridge.

Ábel leaned over the rails. If there was any justice Kikinday would have died long ago because it was three years now since the mandarin had sentenced him, in the belief that that would be the simplest course to take. Kikinday had himself sentenced several men to death, and hanged seven, overseeing the executions personally. The last was a Gypsy.

The mandarin was Ábel’s first friend, his own private discovery, the only mythical figure he had not found in old tales, but had personally invented. Maybe somebody once said something about what might happen if a mandarin in China were to press a button. Soon after Ábel rebelled against the town he found what remained of an old, dysfunctional bell, and whenever his enemies got him down he pressed the button and arranged their execution. Say he told a lie, for example, and his lie had been discovered: the accuser had to perish. In three short years he had been obliged to order four persons’ executions and in three cases the order had been carried out. Szikár was the first, the biology master who had hit him in fifth grade. The second was Canon Lingen, who had spied on them in the park. The third was Fiala, his classmate in sixth grade, who had betrayed a secret Ábel had entrusted to him. And the fourth was Kikinday, Colonel Prockauer’s friend, who had threatened to write a letter about their doings to his father when he came across them in a bar.

The mandarin was Ábel’s personal secret, someone he never spoke about, not even to the gang. The mandarin lived somewhere in China in a room with yellow wallpaper and had long sharp fingernails, a two-foot-long pigtail, and sat at a lacquered table with the mechanism on top of it. He had but to touch the button with one of those fingernails and someone somewhere in the world would perish. The mandarin was neither good nor evil: he administered justice disinterestedly. If someone in San Francisco looked askance at somebody, or spoke roughly, the mandarin would frown and examine the matter and, having done so, take action. His power extended over the whole planet. He touched the button with those refined long fingernails of his, a button that was no different in Ábel’s opinion from the button on a common doorbell, and someone in a distant corner of the world dropped dead, his head flopping over. Very few people knew this. People in general believed that Szikár, the biology master, drank himself to death, that Canon Lingen died of hardening of the arteries, and that Fiala’s early death was due to tuberculosis. Ábel, however, knew that all this was beside the point: the true cause of death was the mandarin. Ábel regarded himself as the mandarin’s local representative and that it was incumbent on him to act in a disinterested yet, of course, more conscientious spirit in such matters of judgment. The mandarin was Ábel’s most closely guarded secret. Everyone is happy to play the hangman in their imagination. Of the four sentences handed out by Ábel, judgments conducted in utmost secrecy under conditions of emergency in a form of martial law, three were approved by the mandarin and carried out with remarkable expedition. Kikinday, on the other hand, who had been sentenced some years ago, was clearly in a state of conspicuous health, and crossed the bridge now, panting a little but with the greatest possible dignity. Ábel knew the mandarin was simply delaying the execution. The game had long been imbued with a greater significance than he had earlier thought possible. He had recently sought out the instrument of execution, the dysfunctional hall doorbell that had been gathering dust in a drawer. After the resolution of the Fiala case Ábel felt tortured by uncertainty. The judgment, though not in itself unjust, might have been a touch severe, and maybe it would have been enough to commute it to lifelong hard labor, condemning Fiala to work out his time in a bank or the tax office. One can be wrong, thought Ábel. Now here was this Kikinday character…

“Nebulo nebulorum,” the condemned addresses him with the impeccable courtesy so often remarked in town. “And how do we like being an adult?”

Ábel looks up at Kikinday’s swollen face, the black teeth grimly glimmering under the Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, the whey-colored eyes swimming in the air above Ábel’s head. They cross the bridge together on their way to town. Kikinday asks after Ábel’s father and inquires in due patriarchal manner when Ábel and his friends hope to join up and move to the front. It was the way he questioned Lajos too before he went out. There is no malice in the question, for Kikinday stops every young man between seventeen and nineteen years of age and makes the same inquiry concerning their military plans.

They make their way slowly past the line of poplars, ever closer to town. A thin fog hangs over the river, the kind of early fog expected on very hot days.

Kikinday observes encouragingly that military training takes much less time now than it did in his day.

“You are lucky not to know the meaning of real training,” he sighs. “How would you know? You haven’t hung about in barracks, followed by three or four weeks of drill, no, you can go straight to the front. In my time,” he stretched his arms wide as he always did when talking about “his time,” a time he did not describe in any precise detail but indicated with a gesture that spoke of some half-forgotten, never-to-return golden age of mankind, “in my time we had to squat, lie on our stomachs, and march in the baking heat. Your generation? Three weeks and you’re off.”

Kikinday had wasted few opportunities in recent years to wave his hat at the younger generation as they departed in cattle trucks. He was always first among the local dignitaries at the station bidding farewell to the troops: this role befitted his social standing and established him as a friend to youth.

They took leave of each other by the courtroom. Kikinday made Ábel promise to inform him when he was about to set off on his travels. With the greatest tact Kikinday always referred to such military leave-takings as “setting off on one’s travels.” Tower-like he made his way up the cool steps. Ábel watched him reach one of the landings. He began to feel sick. He himself ascended the three steps that formed the entrance to the school with great care. The class was standing in a semicircle under the linden tree. He squeezed himself in at the end of a line, the form master sitting at the center with an expression of the greatest historical gravity while Béla and Tibor lay like two chained mastiffs couchant at his feet. The photographer had set up his equipment complete with black cloth and was barking out a few words of instruction, the last words of instruction they would ever hear in this yard. At the very last moment, just as the camera was about to click, he quickly spun around and turned his back to it. Ernõ noticed and did the same. And so the class ceremonially entered the school gallery’s version of eternity.

“Future generations may well scratch their heads,” said Ábel, “wondering who they were, those two figures turning their backs on immortality.”

The various groups dispersed while they hung back, loafing in the sunshine, sleepless and shivering. Béla’s teeth were chattering from exhaustion.

“I must sleep,” he said. “I can’t go on now. Till tonight then.”

“Till tonight.”

Ernõ suddenly butted in.

“I went by his place this morning,” he whispered.

They stopped and listened with downcast eyes, somewhat coldly and against their wills, as he quickly continued.

“He wouldn’t let me in. He spoke through the door, saying he was all right, he felt fine. He said not to wait for him.”

A deep silence followed his words and he himself suddenly fell silent. Tibor lit a cigarette and offered a light to the others.

“Then we don’t wait,” he shrugged, perfectly courteous. He stood there for a while, then extended his hand for them to shake. “Very well then, tonight.”

Then he linked arms with Ábel.

They had to wait at the swimming pool. It was still the hour set aside for women. They sat down on a bench by the ticket office. The smell of rotting boards, damp sludge, and the familiar stench of stale underwear hit them. They could hear the women’s cries.

“Hairdressers,” said Tibor.

The leaden weight of the heat smoothed the water and gave it a metallic sheen. The heat was sticky, dense, almost tangible. Tibor leaned back and started whistling.

“Please stop whistling,” said Ábel.

Tibor examined his nails. In a distracted singsong voice he declared: “I don’t like the look of Mother. Her behavior was distinctly odd this morning. But what I meant to say was…we’re seeing Havas at two.”

He whistled a few more bars and blinked at the river, his mind elsewhere.

“What I really meant to say,” he continued, “was that half an hour ago I walked into the local recruiting office. The commanding officer there is a reliable officer of my father’s. I volunteered. He in turn gave me permission to enlist as a volunteer. I start tomorrow morning, first thing.”

When Ábel did not respond he put his hand on his knee.

“Don’t be angry, Ábel. I just can’t go on like this.” He raised his arm and indicated everything around him. “I can’t go on like this,” he repeated. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

He rolled a cigarette, sat down on the wooden railings of the bridge, and dangled his feet over it.

“What do you think we should do? I think everyone could take away whatever was important to them from The Peculiar tonight…I must return the saddle whatever happens.”

He licked the cigarette, lit it, and when he had waited for some time in vain for a response, he repeated uncertainly:

“What do you think?”

Ábel stood up, leaned against the boards of the cabin. His skin looked gray and pale but his voice was calm.

“So it’s over.”

“I think so.”

“The gang, The Peculiar, are all over?”

“I think so.”

“In that case there’s something I must tell you,” he said and took a deep breath. “I should have told you long ago, I wanted to tell you. Please don’t be cross, Tibor, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

He rested his head against the wall. In a plain, almost chatty way he said: “I had to tell you this just once. I love you. Does that surprise you?” He stretched out his arms, and quickly, feverishly continued, his voice reassuring. “Don’t be angry, but I’ve suffered a great deal on your account. More than a year now. I myself can’t explain what it is I love about you. I had to tell you sometime. Maybe it’s because you are beautiful. You’re not, if I may say, particularly bright. You must forgive me saying so because I’m an unhappy creature. I would give you everything I own, whatever I am likely to own in the future. Do you believe me?”

Tibor leapt off the railings, threw away his cigarette, seized Ábel’s arm, and tugged at it frantically.

“You must swear!”

He was shaking Ábel with all his power in sheer desperation.

“I swear…”

“You must swear that you’ll never mention this again.”

“I’ll never mention it again.”

“You want to remain friends?”

“Yes.”

“So not another word about it, all right?”

“Not a word.”

They were breathing hard. Tibor let go of Ábel’s arm, sat down on the bench, and put his head in his hands. Ábel slowly crossed the bridge, stopped, leaned against the railing and out over the water. Someone’s feet were tapping on the bridge behind them. Tibor waited until the steps died away, then moved over to Ábel, leaned on his elbows beside him, and put an arm around his shoulder. He had tears in his eyes.

“Do you believe in God?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think?” he asked timidly. “I think we will survive.”

They looked at each other. Tibor leaned towards him carefully and, very gently, touched his face with his hands, first on the left side, then on the right. For a moment they stared at each other, then Ábel threw himself to the ground, facedown in the earth. He was shaken by wild uncontrollable sobs, his hands scrabbling in the mud as he pressed his face into the softness, his whole body racking and tossing. He wept quietly, at the back of his throat, with a slight wheeze. Then he stopped moving and lay there a long time while his weeping subsided. When he sat up he wiped his face with his muddy hands and looked wearily around him.

“It’s finished, I think,” he said slowly, with surprise. “I’m quite certain now that we will survive.”

He looked straight ahead and gave a shiver.

“I wasn’t so sure of it before.”

AT PRECISELY TWO O’CLOCK THEY STOPPED OUT-SIDE the pawnbroker’s. It was the only two-story house in the passage. The gray heat spread everywhere, thick as glue. Metal shutters covered the entrance. They rang at the side door and waited, and when no one answered, Tibor turned the door handle and led the way in. The damp sour smell of cabbages greeted them in the dim stairwell, where narrow wooden steps led up to the pawnbroker’s apartment.

Plaster was peeling from the wall. Dirt, cobwebs, a squalid sense of neglect enveloped them.

“Are you scared?” asked Ábel.

Tibor stopped and looked around.

“No,” he said uncertainly. “Not exactly. What I feel is loathing, just as the actor said I would. And the air is foul.”

He turned round.

“Leave it to me and don’t say anything,” he said quietly.

They had dined at the riverside café, having spent the remainder of the morning in silence. Only occasionally did Tibor emerge from the water and venture onto the shore to lie on his back, gently rocking. They had undressed in the same cabin, their talk general and louder than usual, Ábel laughing a lot, rather nervously, and once outside they shouted ribaldries at each other across the banks. They seized every chance of rendering the memory of what had earlier passed between them as uninteresting as possible. They talked of things that were of no great consequence, of their plans, of what the future might have to offer should things work out well, providing that the insignificant event that was waiting for them—the enlisting and what Kikinday had tactfully referred to as “setting off on their travels”—did not prevent them. Tibor wanted to set up a stud farm in the lowlands. Why specifically a stud farm he could not say, but he confessed that he had been reading up on the subject and had secretly struck up acquaintance with horse dealers. Having dwelt on this for a while he suddenly stopped as if he had just woken up and courteously asked: And you?

Ábel shrugged. “Might go abroad,” he said.

The sky was gradually clouding up. There was a distant rumbling but the rain couldn’t quite rouse itself to fall. They were helpless. They couldn’t think of anything more to say. Ábel went into the cabin first, then waited in the street while Tibor got dressed.

There were two doors along the upstairs corridor and they looked and wondered what to do. But before they could knock one of the doors opened and Havas stepped out.

Later, when Ábel thought back to this afternoon, to these days generally but specifically to this afternoon and this night, it was, above all, to the shock he experienced the moment he saw the pawnbroker emerge through the door of his apartment. Havas is standing in the doorway, wiping his walrus mustache with the back of his hand, smiling, he bows a little, and, using one hand only, fusses with the unbuttoned collar of his shirt. As he smiles his eyes are almost entirely obscured by the rings of fat that surround them. He makes a welcoming gesture towards the door and allows them to pass through it ahead of him. His breath reminds Ábel of kitchens, of washing-up and cold lard. That might be because the hall too smells strongly of stale food and the table of the room into which they are ushered is covered with the neglected remains of food in bowls, on plates, and in cups. None of this would strike him as shocking were it not for some glimmering memory, larger than life, that he has seen all this and experienced it before. But at the same time he knows for a fact that he has never been here. It was a dream, a dream in which he had met Havas, who had appeared, exactly as he has just done, in his doorway, wiping his walrus mustache with the back of his hand, buttoning up his collar with the very same smile. It is as if he has experienced it all: the smell of cold food, everything down to the last detail, the smell, the quality of light, the sounds, all exactly the same. He knows that this is the only possible way for the pawnbroker to appear, smoothing his mustache, fussing with his collar, but never before has he been quite so shaken by a sense of déjà vu, to the extent that he takes a startled step back. But the pawnbroker fails to notice his shock, bows low before them and ushers them into the room, then closes the door.

“Please be so good as to take a seat,” said Havas, pushing two chairs up to the table. “I assume the young gentlemen have had their dinner. I would be greatly obliged if they would permit me to continue mine.”

He waited courteously while Tibor indicated that they did not mind, then sat down, tied the napkin around his neck, and took a brief survey of the pots and plates.

“I do believe I had got this far,” he eventually said and pulled a dish of what looked like pâté towards him, dipped into it with a soup spoon, and pushed the spoon into his mouth. “Do not be astonished that I eat meat without bread,” he said, chomping with what seemed like a modest smile. “Bread is fattening. Meat is not. I have got used to doing without bread altogether as you can see. May I offer the gentlemen something?”

“Please do not trouble yourself, Mr. Havas,” said Tibor.

“A nip of kontusovka? No?”

The uncorked earthenware bottle lay on the table within easy reach.

“A sickly overweight person like me has to be very careful what he eats,” he said, taking a swig from the bottle. “I have to maintain a diet of sorts.”

He waved his enormous hand over the table with its bowls, plates, cups, and salvers where slices of meat, pâtés, and various kinds of sausage lay in cold melted fat. There was no fresh food anywhere. The pawnbroker was clearly a carnivore, and kept every small remnant of meat.

“I’m a lonely old widower and must watch what I eat,” he repeated, cutting a slice of beef, picking it up, and biting substantial chunks out of it.

“So I have worked out my own diet. Flesh is the most easily digestible material, gentlemen. It breaks down so readily. I only have to cook twice a week, on Saturday and Wednesday. Nothing but meat. I can’t eat in restaurants,” he said closing his eyes, “because the portions I allow myself there are so minuscule they attract too much attention. You get to an age when you don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself. In my case,” he hesitated as he licked a finger shining with grease, “I have to eat two pounds of meat at any single sitting.”

He picked up a hunk of half-chewed ham on the bone, raised it to the light and took a bite out of what was left on it.

“I feel positively ill otherwise,” he declared. “I must have precisely two pounds of flesh, without bread, once at dinner, once at supper. I cook such meat as will keep for a few days. I have to watch that there is some variety too. I have an extraordinary digestion. It will accommodate four or five kinds of meat, and indeed desires two pounds of it, but if I eat only one kind, say for instance two pounds of beef at dinner, my stomach demands attention by the afternoon. Pâté is my chief source of nourishment. I keep a constant supply of various pâtés because they keep best without going bad. Sometimes I have to eat in the afternoon too. May I offer you a slice?”

He pushed the gray pâté in front of them.

“Ah well, as you please.”

He took a big bite out of the ham, his teeth tugging at an obstinate shred of meat, and tore some gristle from the bone.

“I take the odd sip of kontusovka between bites. This is genuine, pure, Polish kontusovka. It keeps your stomach in order. One’s intestines are constantly in rebellion, gentlemen, and kontusovka works through the system like a hose, like a fireman’s hose, a squirt or two puts out the fire, brings peace. I commend it to you.”

He put his head back, raised the bottle to his lips, and took a few gulps. He looked round with red eyes.

“I believe,” he said uncertainly, “that with the gentlemen’s kind permission, I might finish now. Please allow me to put the food away.”

He stood up with difficulty, picked up several dishes at once, put his thumb through the handle of a bowl, opened the doors of an old shelved cupboard in the corner, and put the food back there in precise order, one dish at a time, throwing the chewed ham bone into a box by the stove. Once he had put everything away he carefully turned the key in the cupboard.

“I am a lonely widower with family troubles,” he complained, “and I cannot allow myself the luxury of servants. My habitation is cluttered with objects whose care I cannot leave to strangers. In any case I like being at home by myself.”

He dropped the key into his trouser pocket and stood at the window so the room suddenly darkened for a moment. He searched for a cigar, lit it ceremonially, then sat back in his chair, and made himself comfortable, skillfully adjusting his stomach. With elbows on the table he blew the smoke in the general direction of the lamp and focusing on a spot above their heads asked:

“What can I do for the young gentlemen?”

The smell of decaying rancid fat was so intense Ábel felt as though he were choking in the room. They sat for several long minutes, silent and unmoving. Havas’s manner of eating, his sheer being, had overwhelmed them: it had the power of some inflated natural phenomenon. They could not have been more surprised if he had dragged a live kid into the room, dismembered it in front of them, and proceeded enthusiastically to consume it. The room was full of blackflies. The smell of the food had attracted them through the half-open window and they fell furiously to stinging legs and faces.

“There’ll be a storm,” said Havas, scratching the back of his hand. “The blackflies are acting up.”

He smoked his cigar patiently, prepared to wait. The room was full of curious objects. Three chandeliers hung from the ceiling but not one had a light in it. A huge camera was propped on a tripod by the wall. A crowd of tin tankards jostled dustily on top of a cupboard. There was a row of seven-branched candelabra ranged on a table as for an exhibition and various musical clocks were fixed to the wall, not one of them with moving hands.

“A first-class piece of machinery,” said Havas, who had followed their glance to the camera. “Nothing I could do. It was never redeemed: I was stuck with it. There are so many articles on my hands. Are the gentlemen acquainted with Vizi the photographer? He specialized in baby portraits. Now he’s abroad. His wife brought it in. She was left without a penny. She knew nothing about photography. I’m looking after it for the time being. Should Vizi return he can have it back. Its estimated value is two hundred crowns. He can go back to photographing new babies and their firstborn siblings. Do you remember him? He took your pictures too, gentlemen. He stood behind the box, wiggled his hand for your amusement, and said: watch the birdie! A ridiculous profession. Once I had a picture of that sort taken too. I lay naked on a bearskin, my strong little legs kicking in the air. Who would ever think that was me? Imagine me lying naked on a bearskin now like a well-behaved infant, kicking my legs…But Vizi can have his camera back. Havas has a heart.”

“It’s a fine collection you have here, Mr. Havas,” said Tibor, quietly clearing his throat.

They ran their eyes politely and admiringly round the room as if that had been the sole object of their visit, as if they wanted no more than to inspect the private collection of a genuine aesthete. There was a decided orderliness in the room, though not one you could detect at first glance. A casual visitor might have thought he had strayed into the chaos of an overcrowded junk shop, but once his eyes had gotten used to the half-light and had adjusted to the mess before him, he would have noticed how everything was in its proper place. A stuffed fox stood on top of an American traveling trunk. An empty birdcage hung on the wall. Ábel’s attention was caught by the birdcage. It seemed such an unlikely object for Havas to possess that he couldn’t help asking if Mr. Havas was fond of birds.

The pawnbroker was busy with his bottle of kontusovka, sniffing the top of it.

“Dear God,” he muttered with distaste. “They’re making cheap imitations of this now. It comes from Poland, so the fakes must be made there too. Genuine kontusovka burns your throat…Birds?” He turned to face Tibor. “We get what we get. It was pawned like the rest if you please. It was offered to me though I cannot think why I accepted it. I’m not a pet shop. But it was such a tiny singing sort of bird…a siskin, if you know the species, gentlemen. A person gets lonely. It sang when I woke in the morning. You wouldn’t believe, gentlemen, how quickly a lonely person such as I can get used to a singing bird. Trouble was, he couldn’t get used to meat. He only sang for two days.”

He looked straight ahead, seemingly lost in a sad memory.

“Why should I buy him seeds and millet, I thought, when I have so much meat? Swallows eat flies. Why shouldn’t a siskin eat meat too? The cupboard is always full of meat. I gave him tiny snippets of the finest veal. He couldn’t get used to it.”

He waved the matter away.

“I couldn’t keep him long. I am not, I repeat, a pet shop. This was a piece of speculative business, you understand, gentlemen? I never take animals as surety. But Havas has a heart and one day a lady comes in, a lady of mature years who has seen some troubles in her time, and pushes this cage over the counter. What is your ladyship thinking of? I ask her. What is the value of a siskin? Now I really have seen everything. Tears and words. It was this thing and that thing. She desperately needed four crowns. She was expecting some money in three days’ time and she swore by all she loved that she would bring it in because this bird was everything in the world to her. Call this business! I said to myself. But she wouldn’t go away and the bird started singing. Three days, I said, fine, because I was in a good mood and I have a heart. The young gentlemen cannot begin to imagine what people bring in. People of the utmost refinement…the entire town. Naturally, I don’t say anything. But the bird kept singing. It’s hungry, I thought. But it didn’t eat the meat and then it stopped singing. I knew it would remain on my hands. What would a lonely widower want with a caged bird?”

He propped his heavy brow on his hands and stuffed the cigar into a cigar-holder.

“Now imagine, gentlemen. On the third day the lady returns. She stands at the counter. Here are the four crowns, my dear sweet Mr. Havas, may God reward you for your kindness. May I please have my bird back? What bird? I say. She begins to tremble and stands there, her mouth wide open. The bird, Mr. Havas, she says, my bird, the siskin you kindly agreed to take for a couple of days, my darling little siskin? And she grips the bars on my counter. I look at her and think, yes indeed you should return that bird. The problem was that it was no longer singing.”

He indicated the litter basket full of bones and leftover food in front of the stove.

“Fortunately the cleaner only comes in last thing in the evening. So I let down the shutters, go up to the apartment, search through the litter basket, and find the little creature. It was already rather stiff. Lucky I still had it, I thought, now Havas, go out and show the client that you don’t lose anything through carelessness in this business. I picked the little bird up, and placed it in a box, properly packaged as the contract regarding all returned articles requires. It was no bigger than a pocket watch. I tie the box round with string, as is proper, and seal it precisely as required by the contract. I pass it back over the counter to her and wait for her to say something. What is this, Mr. Havas? she asks and turns the box round in her hand. For God’s sake, what is it? You should have seen the lady, gentlemen. She was wearing a pair of knitted gloves that only half covered her hands. She had a little black straw hat on her head, worn high like this. One siskin, I answer. I wait. She breaks the seals, tears the string, and there’s the siskin. She lifts it out, holds it in her palm, and gazes at it. I thought she was going to make a scene. But just imagine. There was no shouting, all she said was: oh, oh.”

“What did she say?” asked Ábel and leaned forward.

Havas gave him a glance. “She said: oh, oh,” he repeated. “Nothing else. Nor did she go away but just stood there with the bird in her hand, the tears dropping from her eyes. Then I grew angry because isn’t this just the kind of thing that happens when a man listens to his heart? Why cry for the bird, your ladyship? It wouldn’t touch meat. Are you not ashamed of yourself, all this fuss about a bird? Ashamed, Mr. Havas? she asks. Then I got really angry, as I always do when I pay too much attention to my heart, then have to bear the consequences. Does your ladyship not know there is a war on? I said. Are you not ashamed to weep over a bird when so many are dying day after day? You should be ashamed of yourself, I said, and slammed the shutter down. I am not an evil man but my heart wasn’t up to it. Do you know what she said? Who should I cry for? she asked. Then I started shouting: You scarecrow, you bird fancier! Millions die and you have no one to weep for? No one, she answers. Then weep for those millions, I tell her, and by this time I don’t know whether to shout or laugh. Can you imagine what she said to me then? I don’t know those people.”

He half filled a glass with water and drank a long draught.

“I don’t deal in birds. Imagine, gentlemen!” He smashed his fist down on the table. “I’m sorry. But I get into such a temper each time I think of that old woman and her siskin. One should pay no attention to one’s heart. I accept everything: silver, binoculars, slightly used clothes, but birds, no.” He raised his head defiantly and blew out a dense cloud of smoke that he dispersed with his hand. “No, and again no.”

The room grew darker. The wind was whipping the dust off the road and the first shimmering twilight of the storm settled on the room and on the scene through the window. The blackflies were mercilessly stinging Ábel’s face and the mixed odors of the room were making his stomach heave. He glanced pleadingly at Tibor. The pawnbroker was taking regular sips of water: the thought of the bird that had so excited him was still bothering him. His fingers drummed on the table and he kept grunting. The acrid, almost refreshing smell of mothballs triumphantly overcame the smell of rotting food.

“We’ve come about the silver, Mr. Havas,” Tibor said in the sultry silence.

They waited with bated breath. The pawnbroker ran his eyes over the room as if seeking a fulcrum, some familiar landmark to help him understand what they were talking about.

“The silver?” he asked. “What silver?”

Tibor took out his wallet and handed him the ticket.

“It’s the family silver, Mr. Havas,” he said quickly. “I have to tell you Father is rather fond of it. That’s why we have come.”

“But this ticket is long out-of-date, gentlemen,” the pawnbroker said. “The contract is perfectly clear. It expired a month ago.”

“But we thought…,” said Tibor, then got stuck. “Didn’t Amadé explain?”

Havas stood up with the ticket in his hand.

“Amadé?” he pondered. “Do the gentlemen mean the dancing master? No, he said nothing. But perhaps the gentlemen don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” asked Tibor. He too stood up, and took a step towards Havas.

“Oh!” said Havas, surprised. “I thought you knew. He went away at noon. He’s gone for good. He was here this morning to say goodbye. It’s usually the way with actors,” he said shaking his head, then went over to the window and carefully reread the details on the ticket.

“I’m sorry to say it’s out-of-date. Was it family silver? An old much-loved heirloom? Generally we only lend according to the value of silver, pure and simple. We can’t take sentimental value into account. But I am surprised to hear he didn’t take his leave of you gentlemen. For, as far as I am aware, it was specifically the gentlemen, his friendship with the gentlemen, that is, that was the occasion of his departure.”

He carefully closed the window.

“We shall have a hurricane. Just look. Once it’s over we’ll have a nice cool evening. But no, it’s a real surprise…the young gentlemen should certainly have been aware of his departure.”

They were so tense they were ready to leap. Ábel was unable to speak. The pawnbroker sat back down at the table. Second by second the room was growing darker. They couldn’t see each other’s faces in the gloom. With his back to the window the pawnbroker was indistinct, a large dark shapeless mass.

“May I suggest the young gentlemen sit down?” he addressed them courteously. “Let’s talk this over.”

He waited, then continued with the odd pause for breath.

“He was here this morning. He came in a carriage laden with trunks. He came for money, of course. They’re real characters, those actors. Not all the wealth of Darius is enough for them. Being a foolish man with a foolish heart I naturally gave him some, especially once he explained why he had to leave town. I couldn’t remain indifferent to his plight…He was, I had to admit, in serious danger.”

He gave a dull, flat laugh.

“How extraordinarily mobile these people are,” he remarked in acknowledgment. “It’s nothing to them to pack everything in a few hours and move on. I’m not the sort of person who could make such sudden decisions. Look around you. Then try to imagine the storeroom below, the real thing. Because all you see here is the stuff people have abandoned. People are extraordinary. They find themselves in a spot, pick up the nearest valuable thing, be it silver, a clock, or a pair of earrings, and over they come to Havas. They think six months is a long time. But most of them haven’t a clue what is likely to happen in six months’ time. Then one day there they are in front of me, begging.”

He looked over the ticket again, holding it slightly away from him as though he were nearsighted.

“Six hundred crowns. A pretty sum. Many people could live for six months on that. A silver dinner service for twenty-four…” He stood up, went over to the bed, groaned as he bent down, and drew out a worn old green leather trunk. “Was this the item?”

He opened the trunk and the Prockauers’ family silver lay pale and glimmering before them. Tibor seized Havas’s arm.

“I knew it would still be here, Mr. Havas. You couldn’t have done that to us! You have no idea how terrible it would have been! But everything will be all right, Mr. Havas. You will have our bond.”

The pawnbroker removed Tibor’s arm and, without a word, closed the trunk and pushed it back under the bed with his foot.

“The customer offering items for pawn is not obliged to give his name,” he said. “Please to consider that I cannot know who the silver belongs to. This ticket,” he sat back down at the table and handed the ticket over, “has expired. The customer failed to extend the term of the agreement. The pawned item was auctioned off at a public auction.”

“Who bought it?” Tibor asked.

“I did,” said Havas calmly. “I made the highest bid. Auctions are publicly advertised well in advance.”

“But in that case, Mr. Havas,” said Tibor in his singsong astonished voice, “everything is all right. You give us the silver and we give our bond that the money will be repaid in the shortest possible time. You know us, know who we are. You must understand. Please don’t think ill of us, Mr. Havas. But back then…Didn’t Amadé say anything about it?”

“Whether he said or did not say anything, gentlemen, by law and by right the silver is no longer yours.”

“By law and by right, Mr. Havas?” asked Tibor.

“By law and by right. I go strictly by the terms of the contract. The young gentlemen will not understand: it is a delicate matter. I am not permitted to ask anyone’s name.”

“We graduated yesterday, Mr. Havas,” Tibor exclaimed. “Please understand. We are no longer schoolboys. That which was, is in the past. Please think it over…We will recover the money in no time…Amadé was your friend too.”

“Actors are such peculiar people,” said Havas pleasantly, considering the matter. “They come, they go. People like me are like rocks, we sit firm. That man seemed to have been born with wings. No ties bind him. But he really should have taken his leave of the gentlemen…”

The gale shook the window.

“It’s starting,” he said calmly. “Don’t the young gentlemen understand? Amazing. A detective was asking after him in the morning.”

He made a movement with his hand.

“He was advised, in strictest confidence, to leave the town immediately. Or be kicked out.”

He leaned on the table.

“Someone had made a complaint against him. It’s an ugly business, gentlemen. The complaint was that his behavior regarding a certain circle was drawing attention to him. He suspected his fellow actors. But the point was that a complaint had been lodged. That’s a very unpleasant business, gentlemen.”

Ábel held on to the table. The question he asked was so quiet they could hardly hear him.

“What was the complaint?”

“Allegedly, the corruption of certain young people. There are such folk. It’s a bad business. Bad for the young people’s future too. It’s a small town.”

“But it isn’t true,” said Tibor in a cracked voice.

The pawnbroker nodded.

“I know, I know. Allegedly there are witnesses. It’s a small town and a whisper quickly spreads, gentlemen. People in small towns have time for such things. Scandals blow up quickly. It is hard to imagine what might happen if witnesses actually appeared.”

“Witnesses to what, Mr. Havas?” asked Ábel. “What did they witness?”

“The corruption. Be so good as to think it over. The actor, they say, was himself corrupt to the core. I take a different view. The charge is that he corrupted young boys. They say he organized orgies. The complaint has it that he dragged a lot of boys off to the theater, boys from good families, and set up an orgy there.”

“That’s not true,” screamed Tibor.

“That’s what the complaint alleges,” the pawnbroker went on unrelentingly. “The young gentlemen would no doubt know better. There must be something in it, though, or he wouldn’t have left in such a hurry. He shot off as if pursued by the four winds, gentlemen. There is only ever destruction in the wake of such a man. According to the complaint one witness saw, strange to say, the actor kissing the son of a prominent family.”

Ábel stepped up to him.

“It was you in the box, Havas. You…you were watching us. You arranged it all. You put the actor up to it…O God!” He swayed. His lips were white. “What do you want?…Tibor, ask him!…What’s going on here?…Let’s go!”

“Unfortunately the rain has started,” said Havas. “Perhaps the young gentlemen may care to sit the storm out here.”

HE WATCHED THE STORM. THUNDER SHOOK THE window and the rain swept in waves over the pavement. He gently wagged his head.

“The young gentlemen know nothing about life,” he said in a quiet, even voice. “We are very slow to learn anything. I myself was ignorant for a long time. Please be so good as to hear me out. It’s pouring out there and you have nothing better to do. I come from a humble family with no pretensions, but perhaps I may help to enlighten the young gentlemen. Things are not so simple as people imagine. I was forty before I learned anything. It is impossible to say one man is like this, another like that. Be so good as to consider that. I once had a family, a wife, and a daughter: I know life. Nobody can know what awaits him the next morning.”

He was breathing heavily, asthmatically.

“I eat heartily and I drink heartily, gentlemen, but I have a heart and no one can say I haven’t one. I understand the delicate situation in which the young gentlemen find themselves very well. I will do what I can to help. Given certain conditions, if the young gentlemen can produce the appropriate amount by, say, tomorrow night, the original loan and the interest owing, I am prepared to return the items previously pawned. No one can force me to do that of course, but Havas says to himself: these are young gentlemen of good breeding, or rather, excuse me, children. Extraordinary children. Help them if you can. Havas is listening to his foolish heart again. Deep down he has qualities of which the world knows nothing.”

“Tomorrow night?” queried Tibor. “It’ll be there, Mr. Havas. One way or the other you’ll have the money by tomorrow night. But for heaven’s sake, what are you talking about here? What do you mean Amadé corrupted us? What do you mean that we were observed? It was only a game, Mr. Havas. There was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do about anything.”

He began to tremble.

“For God’s sake, Mr. Havas. What kind of complaint? What are they saying? What has happened?”

“I beg the young gentleman not to ask me questions I cannot answer. Please be kind enough to agree that I should give you explanations for such matters as I deem right. What I consider right is that I inform the young gentlemen of the situation in which they find themselves. What the actor did? Are the young gentlemen to blame? I cannot answer questions like that. And even if all happened as the complaint has it, it is still an open question for me whether they were actually guilty or not.”

They could no longer see his face. Only his voice emerged out of the murk, grave, stumbling with a dull resonance, sometimes like the warning growl of some animal.

“You never know how the devil gets into a man. Allow me to furnish you with an example. The young gentlemen will keep quiet. They will have every reason for keeping quiet. And I am glad to offer them this example because it is important that they should understand something of life. As I said before, it is not so simple. Take a man. Let us say he is married, with a daughter. He goes about his work. He has a thriving pawnbroker’s business in some town, but the devil gets into him, he eats a lot, drinks a lot, and chases every skirt he sees. He needs money and it is as if the devil himself were guiding his hand, for everything succeeds, whatever he touches turns to gold, so much so that he grows overconfident. He travels to Lemberg, ready to supply the regiment with soap, when, there in Lemberg, he makes a mistake. It is all too possible, alas, to make mistakes in the course of business. The devil gets into him. Four months. He sleeps on the prison mattress for four months, his diet reduced to that fit only for an invalid. Two rolls and two pints of milk a day. This for a man who needs meat, who must have his meat. He is a number, number 137. He sits, he sleeps in a cell for four months, debating with the devil. He doesn’t understand. Kindly consider that the bucket that is put aside for such purposes as are necessary is there in the cell with him. However much milk he drinks he longs for a little slice of bacon. So he lies there and dreams and doesn’t understand why he should have to be number 137 in Lemberg, and the thought tortures him, as he is a big man with big appetites. He is a widower. His daughter is running the business and he writes to her: My dear daughter, pressing business has unexpectedly delayed me here, look after yourself, Mein gutes Kind, write to me care of Poste Restante, Lemberg, Central Post Office, 137. Four months. Such things happen.”

He was struggling for breath. He relit his cigar.

“As I understand it the young gentlemen are not yet acquainted with the lives of adult men. So a little bird tells me. Never mind. I must stress that the man we are talking about is a big man with big appetites. Give him a decent meal and a nip of brandy and he can’t pass a skirt without chasing after it. He spends four months practically in cramp. I once saw a hunting dog out in the yard. It was in a crate that had been misdirected so the dog had arrived a day late, but it never once messed the crate where it slept, if I may so put it, it would rather suffer cramps, and that was how it arrived. The doctor had to lift it from the box and give it a dose of salts. Now imagine a human being. At long last he goes out into the street, it’s the end of October, afternoon, he is a little unsteady on his feet, he waves a carriage down and says, take me to the best brothel, the nearest brothel, and be quick about it. The rain is falling. He takes his hat off and sits like that in the open carriage, his face up to the rain, wishing for more rain, heavier rain, let it pour, he thinks, his tongue licking at the rain, never having realized before just how good rain tasted. The carriage rolls along the cobbles, a woman has stopped at the side of the road, she holds an umbrella, she wears brown shoes and black stockings, in four months hers is the first female face he has looked on, the woman laughs and shouts out: Hey, meshugener. Do the young gentlemen find this difficult to understand? He is taken to a high-quality house. There are palms in the salon. Yes, madame, he says, one, two, whatever you have available; the ladies only arrive in the evening, will a brunette do? The woman is indeed brunette, she has gold teeth and a mole at the side of her nose, but she’s quite pretty. He doesn’t even see her. He takes his coat off and sees that prison leaves a man with a certain smell on his skin. On the mirror is written Happy New Year, in gold.

“Now please to imagine,” he continued and raised his hand as if for attention, “that after all these preliminaries nothing happens. I am not sure if I am making myself clear. Nothing. He slowly gets dressed, his clothes are almost dry by then, the warm smell of rain and the smell of prison emanating from them. What’s going on? he thinks. The girl is sitting at the mirror in her nightdress, smoking a cigarette, looking at him over her shoulder. Ahem, he says. Pardon. It can all be explained, the man has come a long way. A long, long way. Next time then. He is already standing by the door. Idiot, he thinks. You are forty-two years old, what’s this to you? Can’t you dance on the billiard table till six in the morning, drink two or three bottles of bubbly by yourself, and top it with half a bottle of cognac, plus a stick of dry salami and four or five hard-boiled eggs? He turns his hat round and round in his hands. He doesn’t understand. He can’t find it in himself to leave. He can neither leave nor stay, he is worried that he’ll make a nuisance of himself, that he is going to hit somebody. The girl moves towards him, every part of her body swaying as she approaches, looks at him with desire, throws her cigarette away, puts both hands behind his neck, rises on tiptoe, closes her eyes, and kisses him, very gently. Come here, she says quietly. They move back into the room, the girl with her arm round his neck, keeping close to him. He sits down and looks around. He feels like a fool. He understands nothing. The girl silently goes about her business, flitting here and there in the room, puts on some perfume, adjusts her hair, applies some powder, takes off her nightdress. She is wearing black stockings and red suspenders. She is very attractive. Drink has ravaged her face a little but she is still attractive. Her body has a yellow tinge, is very cold to the touch, her body hard, in fact just as you like them, he thinks, not an ounce of fat. She comes up to him, close your eyes, she says. He closes his eyes, the girl leans over him and kisses him: flesh is simply a kind of mechanism, he thinks, and she is a good mechanic. Think of something, he tells himself. Something cheerful. The patriarchs. David. Solomon. Solomon had a thousand wives. No, that’s not a particularly cheerful subject, he thinks. He reaches for the girl’s neck.”

He held his hand out. They backed away. His arm described a circle in the air.

“The girl throws herself on him, all of her. That’s the kind of girl she is. She embraces him, kisses him while he continues shaking his head like an idiot. The girl’s body is seized by a cramp: the smell of mouthwash, cigarettes, and something a touch sour emanates from her mouth, she hasn’t eaten a thing all day, she’s working on an empty stomach. He will never forget that. The girl kisses his eyes, throws herself this way and that. Time passes. He removes the girl’s hands from his neck, he must sit up, he feels he is drowning. The girl slowly withdraws. She is wearing lacquered shoes, little half shoes. She pulls at her stockings and sits at the edge of the bed, and never stops staring at him. How long haven’t you been able to do it? asks the girl. He shrugs. It is always somehow comical when a supine figure tries to shrug. I don’t know whether the gentlemen have noticed that?”

He waited anxiously for them to answer for a moment as if it were a matter of the utmost importance to him.

“Somewhere along the line you have made a mistake, he thinks. But when? Where? It occurs to him that his mother used to have a black brooch that she wore on a black ribbon round her neck and when she leaned over him the brooch swung to and fro. Isn’t it strange, gentlemen, how at the most important moments of life a person thinks of the most irrelevant things? For example, how they made a party coat for him out of his father’s black coat, and how the sleeves were too long for him. The girl keeps her eyes on him, never looking away. That’s the kind of girl she is, he thinks, she’s a living creature like him. She is sitting at the head of the brass bed, wrapped in a piece of scarlet silk, her hair over her forehead, slowly raising the long cigarette-holder to her lips, solemnly watching his every movement, saying nothing, only staring. What are you looking at? he asks her. You want me to give you a smack? The girl just continues staring, her two elbows propped on the brass bed frame.

“You’re impotent, she says.

“He moves in her direction and raises his hand but she is already at the door, and says it again, loudly, just imagine it, gentlemen, as if she were passing sentence: You’re impotent.

“Then she’s through the door. The madame is waiting, it’s a top-notch house, we hope you may favor us with another visit, she says. We offer an unparalleled range of girls. He goes down the steps, why of course, he’s sure to come back. The rain is beating on the pavement. Nice town. A little dull perhaps for a longer stay. He calls in at a café to drink a glass of tea. The place is full of Polish Jews. He drinks his tea with brandy and eats a meat pancake. In the evening he returns to the brothel. He is going nowhere for a week yet. He returns every night, calling for different girls, for the same girl. By now they are all laughing at him. The girls stand in the hallway in their chemises, waiting for him, pointing and laughing at him. He can’t bear to leave. He grinds his teeth, beats his head against the ground, weeps, gets more money. He stalks the streets like a maniac during the day, looking round, perhaps even talking to himself. He doesn’t understand. It is as if suddenly, for no reason at all, he were utterly paralyzed. It is like suddenly going blind. Like losing an arm. I hope I am not boring the young gentlemen?”

Rain beat against the glass and thunderclaps continued to shake the window. He spoke more loudly, as if wanting to outshout the thunder, not moving.

“Lemberg is bad for his nerves, he thinks. One night he steals out to the railway station. You had a home once, he thinks. Frida cried a lot when she was alive, because you led a riotous life, a big man with big appetites, but at least you had a home, you were somebody, you used to have visitors on winter evenings. You could have been on the town council. Now you are nobody, you are less than a flea. Why? He doesn’t understand. He feels like dying. The dead find a home in the bosom of Abraham. I don’t know whether the young gentlemen are acquainted with the scriptures? The train moves forward in the rain, two Polish peasants at his feet, they smell of garlic and cheap spirits. He looks down and shakes his head like someone who has been knocked down, he mumbles. People look at him. A pity his daughter ran away two weeks ago. The young gentlemen might not be aware how far everything is connected. Trouble never travels alone, they say. His only daughter has run off with a crippled Uhlan lieutenant. He tears up her clothes, won’t say a word about her to anyone. You’re only human, he tells himself, you only want to enjoy your brief time on earth. No, you are a louse, a flea, he says to himself, a nobody, nothing. A piece of dirt under God’s foot. What did the girl in Lemberg say? Just thinking of her he begins to tremble, he feels dizzy, he sees the girls sitting on the stairs in their chemises, pointing at him and laughing. Months go by like this, he comes and goes, says nothing to anyone, but he won’t visit the girls any more. When he thinks of that specific Lemberg girl he sees red, the blood pounds in his temples, he wants to smash and break things, and wants nothing more than to get on a train again, go back to Lemberg, find the girl, and beat her head against the wall. When he is alone he prays or drinks or curses. You’d hardly recognize him. You didn’t have a good word to say to your Frida while she was alive, he tells himself: God gave you the cell as punishment, he has bound your strength, you feel the curse of your fathers on you when you remember what the girl in Lemberg said. Nothing is as it was. He goes to the rabbi, gives him money, talks with him. Rabbi, he says, God has punished me, I can’t make love any more. The rabbi looks at him, saintly man that he is, what does he know of life? Be patient, he says. God is putting you to the test for your sins, be patient and wait. Yes, God, I am waiting, he says. You were an impulsive man, says the rabbi. You didn’t keep the feasts or the laws, you cheated and chased skirts and drank as if there were no tomorrow, you were a lush, a coxcomb, what do you want of God now? There is a season for all things in life, says the rabbi. There are ups, there are downs, there’s plenty and starvation, do you think the scriptures and the law mean nothing? Go to the temple and pray. So he goes to the temple and prays. He feels so miserable that he can’t look anyone in the eye, he just stands by the pillar like a leper. And he doesn’t understand the prayers, he just stands and bends this way and that, and mumbles to himself, but he is no longer capable of crying or wailing, and there’s no improvement. He spends a whole year like this. He doesn’t talk to anybody. He goes around town but once he is on the street he fears that he might suddenly start running and knock over anyone in his way. He says nothing, is silent, he bites his tongue, that’s how he goes round. A year of this. A whole year.”

He fell silent, nodded, and grasped the table with both hands. A thunderclap.

“That was a close one,” he said respectfully, but did not turn his face to the window.

“The gentlemen would do well to realize that things are never simple,” he said slowly, his voice loud now. “You never know what you will find the next morning. He no longer wants to wander around the town. The fury builds in him until he is like a walking bomb, an explosive device in his chest, and he is afraid, afraid of being alone with another man because he fears he might strangle him, fears he might be a danger to people, to the town generally; he feels such fury and power he thinks he could set the town on fire, to cover it in salt and plow it all up. The girl in Lemberg, he thinks, she told him. How could such a girl know something he himself didn’t know until fairly recently? Does someone like him bear a visible mark? Can others see it too? God, oh God. It’s impossible to live like this, he thinks. He walks the street with his eyes on the ground, he dare not look young girls in the face, no, not the young men either. He hates young gentlemen, the healthy vigorous ones who can go with girls. One day I shall have them in the palm of my hand, he thinks. He weeps like an old woman, blaming himself. One can live neither by the stomach nor by any other appetite, he thinks. The patriarchs were right to lay down the law, but you, you laughed at their laws. You were a lecher, a lush, a glutton, you wronged your friends and acquaintances, that is why God is punishing you. That’s how he talked to himself. Impossible to live like this, he thinks. The Lord rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, he burned both flesh and bone. We are all sinners, he thinks, and God has sent his rain of fire on me too for my sins.”

He raised the bottle, put it to his mouth, and drank as if choking, in loud gulps.

“One day he is sitting in the shop and a cripple comes in, a man with a great long false-looking beard. He wants to pawn a cuckoo clock with a chain. Rejected, he slowly hobbles to the door where he stops and says: We are all sinners. The very thing you said a moment ago, he thinks. He calls the other back. The man comes over to the counter and starts preaching. Only sinners may be cleansed, he says, and mutters something about the brazen serpent. He listens, a fool at last after all those clever people. Miss, he says, write down one cuckoo clock, but secretly he thinks, another thing connected with birds, a bad sign. The bearded man goes away but not before leaving his name and address and offering his friendship. When it comes to money he is not such a fool. Meanwhile the man goes on living but he can’t taste his food, his drink is bitter, sometimes he has trouble with his vision, and whenever he sees a woman he turns away and hangs his head. It is the hand of God that smites you, he thinks. One afternoon he picks up an old pair of shoes and thinks of the fool down fishmongers’ alley. He calls in. The man immediately rises from his three-legged stool and as soon as he sees him hobbles over and begins a rant about the exodus from Israel and about sitting by the fleshpots in the land of Egypt. How does this man know I am a lover of flesh? he wonders. The bearded man sits down on the stool, continues his oration, his speech somewhat confused but perfectly amusing. A little boy is sitting in the corner reading by candlelight, paying no attention to them; my son, says the bearded man, one day he will be one of the gentry, stand up, Ernõ, say hello to the gentleman.”

He leaned right over the table, his chin propped on his hands, his face glimmering close to the boys’ own faces. He was speaking more quietly now, in broken sentences, panting slightly. Ábel sat back, his hands grasping the legs of his chair, not moving a muscle.

“A very bright little boy,” said Havas almost whispering. “A scrawny little sparrow of a boy, but very bright. Next day he brought the shoes over. You could have the most remarkable conversations with him. He came often, always at the same time, after dinner, I could talk to him for hours. Oh, he was so bright, he knew everything. He listened very attentively when the talk turned to serious matters. He was an ideal listener for a serious person to talk to, to reveal his innermost thoughts and troubles to. He was a very poor boy but with a lively sense of ambition. He had plans. He wanted to travel abroad. It was a delight spending time with him. His clothes were so ragged that any sensitive man’s heart would have gone out to him. He wanted to be rich when he grew up, a scholar, a powerful man. He wanted to live in town, in the town where he had been poor, where he had had to carry books for his better-off classmates, to teach so he could eat and drink, to polish, on occasion, his classmates’ shoes. That was because his better-off friends often took pity on him and, wanting to help him and his family, sent their shoes to his father to be resoled. He had much to learn because his lot was harsh, because he could not afford to pay school fees, and because his very body was frail and awkward, like his father’s. You couldn’t even begin to compare him to his better-off classmates. He was vastly ambitious. There was a time when he would come every afternoon, dine here, not scorning the fleshpots served up by his lonely widower friend. He would take gifts home to his father, who would also call sometimes but never when the boy was here, and would bow and scrape and say: only sinners may be cleansed, and, I am most grateful to the noble gentleman for his kindness to my son. Meanwhile the little boy continues to call and there are many things a growing boy like him requires, clothes, books, underwear, because he is preparing to study abroad, and he has gone to the post office to open a savings account where he puts whatever money he occasionally earns. He talks about everything under the sun, particularly about his friends. He has three friends, he says, and a fourth one too who is not at school but hangs around with them.”

It seemed the thunder had stopped for a moment, that they were utterly frozen in the sudden silence, as if they had fainted away or simply couldn’t move. Then a single great gust of wind tore the window open, knocking things over, sweeping the rain in. The pawnbroker did not move so much as a muscle. It was as though he had lost the powers of both seeing and hearing.

“They have so much to talk about. One day he tells him what well-brought-up boys they are. Everything is different with them, even now when their fathers are away. The way they greet each other, the way they talk, it is all so different from the way we do such things. Because that is how intimate the talk is now. He talks about their games. They have decided to tell lies, he says. Then, another day, that now they are stealing. One day soon they’ll be coming over. The actor is a fascinating man. Even on the basis of such a brief acquaintance they can tell he’s a fellow spirit. There is something sorrowful about him. And when the actor calls in he tells me what interesting and well-brought-up boys he has befriended. Rebels, all of them, he says. They are in rebellion for some reason or other. One day young Ernõ fails to call. He is only to be seen together with the three other young gentlemen, something has happened to him, he is constantly tracking one of the other young gentlemen. One day the actor says: now’s the time, what if we arranged a little private performance with the boys? Absolutely private. You sit up there in one of the boxes and watch. No one will know. It will cost, of course. The actor offers to arrange it.”

He went over to the window and closed it. The water was lying in puddles on the floor.

“What a storm!” he said, shaking his head. He feared it might wash away whatever entertainment the young gentlemen had been planning for tonight.

He gazed at the empty bottle, pushed it away with disgust, and walked round the table.

“Unfortunately by that time the actor has a bad reputation,” he said, stopping in front of them and crossing his arms. “He is being watched. Someone from the theater might be keeping an eye on him. Or maybe someone else. They report him and the young gentlemen would be ruined if there proved to be a witness to that private—should we call it—performance. The young gentlemen continue to be subject to the authority of their parents and others senior to them. A witness, someone who knows the problematic affairs of the young gentlemen, could bring about a situation of the utmost unpleasantness. The young gentlemen would never be able to face their kind parents and relations again.”

Tibor was slowly backing away towards the door. He hadn’t said a single word throughout the pawnbroker’s speech, but now he swallowed and stuttered.

“What do you want?”

Silence.

“Ábel!” He leapt over to him, seized him, and shook his arm. “Speak!…What’s going on?…What does the man want?”

Ábel put his finger to his neck as if adjusting his collar before saying anything. The pawnbroker smiled.

“Havas has a heart. The position is clear to the young gentlemen now. Extraordinary boys like these, thought Havas, were certain to call at your den sometime. You must amuse them as best you can. Now here they are.”

He surveyed them, still smiling.

“Havas is ready to oblige the young gentlemen. Until, let us say, tomorrow night. Master Prockauer can put the pawn ticket related to the family silver back in his pocket. Tomorrow, at this time, shall we say, I would be pleased to see the young gentlemen with or without the money. In the meantime I wouldn’t want to spoil tonight’s entertainment. The young gentlemen should think the matter over and do what seems sensible to them. Havas is not going anywhere, he is not to be moved, he sits here like a rock. His financial circumstances, his physical condition, tie him to the place. One at least of the young gentlemen’s friends can reassure them that Havas is always friendly and generous. His personal relationships are, as ever, first rate. The young gentlemen should act according to their perception of the situation. Havas doesn’t like shady deals. He is perfectly open, has nothing up his sleeve. It is up to the young gentlemen to decide.”

He looked around.

“You can’t hear the rain now. If the young gentlemen would like to take their leave now…”

He opened the door.

“I bid you a pleasant evening. Till tomorrow, at the same time.”

He courteously ushered them through, bowed a little stiffly and painfully. They heard him turn the key in his door as they stood in the stairwell.

THEY WAVE DOWN A CARRIAGE AND ASK TO BE taken to The Peculiar. They draw up the carriage hood and sit in the cabin that smells of mice, not too close to each other, hearing the rain’s gentle pitter-patter on the leather above them. Ábel is shivering. It has just occurred to him that he has not had a proper wash for twenty-four hours, has not changed his underwear or eaten hot food. His teeth are chattering as he sits in the corner, the carriage bumping over the uneven cobbles, opening his eyes whenever there is a particularly violent jerk to see the wall of some house, a pile of stones, the trunk of poplar, a garden fence. It seems to him that this is the longest journey he has ever made. They are just passing the cobbler’s wall when he feels Tibor’s hand on his. Ábel, croaks the colonel’s son. What is this? Are we dreaming? The wheels of the carriage rumble on. Ábel would like to answer but hasn’t the strength to shout over the noise of their passage. He weakly raises his hand to indicate that he wants to say something but can’t find his voice. Do you believe it? asks Tibor. Ábel mouths silently back at him. What? He is cold and shivering, yet is seized by hot flushes. His teeth continue to chatter. He feels feverish. Do I believe what he says about Ernõ? About us? Is it true? He can’t answer. He closes his eyes.

They stop the carriage near The Peculiar and walk over swollen muddy fields. Everywhere there are fruit trees devastated by the storm. In the plowed furrows there is the delicately sprinkled sparkle of ice. They make their way across the field, muddy themselves, reeling a little, pass the fence, avoid the garden by entering through the back door, and steal up the stairs to their room.

The room is still as Ábel had left it that morning. He walks uncertainly to the window, closes the shutters, and collapses on the bed. Tibor sits down at the table. There’s no one in the garden. Lanterns, painted scraps of paper, hang soaked and useless on wires. Overturned tables. A shroud of mist descends from the pines. But there is a rumble and a clatter from the hall below: conversation, the clinking of glasses rise through the floorboards. The picnic crowd must already be here, sheltering in the dimlit restaurant. The damp fog settles and darkens into evening. Tibor glances at his wristwatch. Half past six. They spent over four hours with Havas.

“Answer me now, Ábel,” he says, his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “What did you know of all this? What’s this about? Did you know about Havas, the actor, and Ernõ?…”

Ábel hears the question as from a vast distance, his eyes are closed, his arms and legs spread wide. It takes a great effort to sit up, then he feels about on the bedside table and lights what’s left of the candle he had used the previous night. The room is dark by now.

“I knew nothing,” he says slowly, his tongue heavy in his head, half-asleep. “I told you all I know this morning. There are no secrets. There’s nothing in any of this that we should keep quiet about.” Nevertheless, he falls quiet for a while. Then, uncertainly but more animatedly he continues.

“Did it never occur to the rest of you that Ernõ was always talking about something else? It’s hard to describe, but whenever I said ‘tonight,’ or ‘pen,’ or ‘person’ and he repeated the words ‘tonight’ and ‘pen’ and ‘person’ he meant something else by it. I often feel this way when I’m with strangers. I never felt it with you, not even when you didn’t understand what I was saying. With Ernõ I felt it all the time. Something separated him from us.”

The colonel’s son reached over for the tin of tobacco lying on the table, rolled a cigarette in his trembling fingers, leaned over to the candle, and lit up.

“So you knew nothing?” he asked, his mouth dry.

“Nothing.”

“And what you said to me this morning?…”

Ábel props himself on his elbows and with a new kind of carelessness, with a curious joy and sense of liberation, answers: “That I loved you? But of course I love you. But wait, Tibor. I am just beginning to understand. I love you, I like looking at you, there were secrets we shared, and so we told each other more or less everything we could tell. Or at least I did…I don’t have anyone else. Auntie, poor thing, the servant, and Father, and, well, you know all about him. One day perhaps, if we are still alive, once I have forgotten everything, he and I will be friends. I don’t know. Wait, maybe I can explain it to you now. I was jealous of you too. I wanted you to be my friend, mine alone, not Ernõ’s or Béla’s or the actor’s, none of whom were worthy of you. Of course I loved you. It’s not what Havas was talking about though, Tibor, not at all. I know that now. And I prayed for you. I have a special friend you don’t know about, the mandarin, who is disinterested and fair. I prayed that you should remain young, handsome, graceful, light in spirit, and that you should escape the filthy struggle in which our brothers and fathers are currently engaged. I prayed you should always be as elegant and refined as you are now, that you should suffer no crisis of doubt, that nothing should trouble your conscience; that you should always blush when someone addressed you. And loving you was a painful feeling, agony and humiliation, but there was nothing sly about it. Nothing. Do you believe me? And now, after all this, I no longer know if at bottom—that is, at some depth I cannot see—everything was in fact as simple, pure, and well-meant as I had thought it to be. But I knew nothing about any such arrangement, Tibor, believe me. You and I, we had to be together because something was drawing us that way. To me you were beauty and friendship, the ideal if you like, but never fear, I never thought of you that way. Maybe I would have liked to touch your hair, but that was all. No, no, no!” he cried and stood up. “Oh, Tibor, what has happened? Why is this happening to us? Look round this room, these things we stole, the things we said, all the games we played here. Can’t you see what it was all about?”

His voice was feverish, his passion high, his hands squeezing his narrow face.

“It really was intolerable the way they lied and tortured and hid everything from us, as by right, as if their world were the only one that was wise, mature, and decent. It was they who dragged Lajos away and tore his arm off, I don’t even know where, and so they went on torturing us with foreign languages, with the higher mathematics, and with rules of ethical conduct, while all the time they were sharpening their knives against us…I know you’re joining up tomorrow, Tibor, but I want no part of them, I want nothing of Havas’s world or Kikinday’s world or your father’s world…I would sooner die. We rebelled, Tibor. We defied their laws. That’s what this was all about. That was behind the games, the pretense, this room at The Peculiar. We had to escape, we had to be revenged on them somewhere, hence this room, and look, the saddle and the globe…! I love you, but I know now that my love is quite different from what Havas was talking about. I am your friend because you are more beautiful, because there is something in you I shall never possess…some lightness, some crucial difference in the way you move and speak…I don’t know. And it was all beautiful, The Peculiar, the secrecy, everything…But someone cheated, and that changed everything. Do you understand? Someone has cheated and now everything is foul. Are you as sick as I am? I can’t bear it…”

He bowed his head and rested it on the bedpost, as if about to throw up. The door opened without knocking. Ernõ and Béla stepped in and quickly slid the bolt in place. Béla was already drunk.

“After the rain stopped,” he said, his tongue heavy in his mouth, “our superiors, our mentors got drunk as quickly as they could.”

ERNÕ STOOD BY THE BOLTED DOOR, LEANING against it.

“Have you seen Havas?” he asked. He was without his pince-nez, his hands in his pockets. His voice was sharp, aggressive, shrill. Tibor took a step towards him.

“You stay where you are,” Ernõ ordered in a commanding tone, extending one arm. “And you too,” he said to Béla who was looking around, puzzled. “Stay on the bed,” he advised Ábel. “We’re listening. Go ahead, speak freely. What did he tell you? Everything?” And when Tibor moved he repeated: “I told you to stay where you are. If you attack me I will defend myself. I’ve had enough of punishments. It had to come out sometime. I’ve waited a year for this. No more superciliousness, Prockauer.”

He half withdrew his other hand from his pocket, then quickly slid it away again.

“Go on, Prockauer. Speak.”

His voice sounded quite different. It was as if a stranger were speaking.

“Have you gone mad?” asked Tibor quietly, mesmerized in the stillness.

“Ask me something else,” said Ernõ. “Out with it. Did he tell you everything?”

His eyes were constantly challenging theirs, seeking out now one, now another.

“You entered his den, did you? And was it interesting, Prockauer? And my delicate Ábel? How did you like it?”

When they remained quiet he continued.

“I have warned you once. It’s all the same to me. You can scream and shout, you can spit in my face, it’s all the same to me now.”

The silence disturbed him. He went on a little less certainly.

“I was there this morning, begging him to listen, to give up the whole thing…You don’t believe me? But he’s not human…”

He was thinking. Suddenly the flow seemed to have stopped in him.

“I don’t know…there are such people. That’s just the way it is.”

He immediately recovered.

“I will not allow myself to be insulted, I warn you, not even if he told you everything. I will defend myself, against all three of you, even if you bring the whole school, the whole town and the army, I insist on defending myself. If you don’t lay off me I will tell them everything. You can learn one or two things from Havas. He’s not alone, you don’t know this yet, but there is a considerable power ranged behind him and within certain limits he can do what he likes. If he takes against someone, that person is done for. He probably lied to you. Did he tell you some pathetic story? No? And what about me? What did he say about me?”

In his terrible impatience he was stamping on the floor and screaming.

“Why don’t you say something?”

“Is it true?” asked Tibor. The cobbler’s son threw back his head.

“It depends on what he said.”

“That you, and Havas, and the actor…?”

“What?”

Tibor sat down at the table, put his head in his hands, and spoke quite gently.

“It seems to me that everything I see here has only served to put us to sleep. Doesn’t it seem that way to you?”

There was no answer. He quietly turned to Ernõ.

“Havas claims that you used to visit him.”

“I have nothing to say about that,” said the cobbler’s son.

“But this is a very important matter,” Tibor continued quietly but intensely. “If you don’t want to answer, that’s up to you. What concerns us is your betrayal. Is it true that you told Havas what we were doing? Is it true that you told him everything, all we said, all we planned, about this secret life of ours about which no one else knew anything?”

“Yes,” he answered sharply.

“Good. And is it true that you and the actor…that you worked together against us in some way, and that Havas put you up to this?”

“Claptrap!” he declared vehemently. “The actor was a vain monkey. What did he know? Havas had him in his grasp, but in quite a different way from me. The actor was working entirely for himself.”

“But then it was—you?”

“Yes, me.”

“But why? What did you want? What was it all about? What did you think would happen once we got mixed up in this mess? What’s the point of it for you? Were we not your friends?”

“No,” he said very loudly.

They fell silent. They listened.

“Are you not one of us?” asked Tibor quietly.

“No,” he repeated.

He too was speaking quietly now, as quickly and deliberately as if he had prepared for just this speech, every word of it ordered long ago.

“You were not my friend, Prockauer. You were not my friend, wealthy Ruzsák. Nor you, you genteel beggar,” he turned with a contemptuous flick of his head to Ábel. “I would have been happy to be your friend, Prockauer, delighted in fact, like the others here. Now I can tell you because I myself haven’t been aware of it for long, that there’s something about you that will be a source of much trouble to you throughout your life…something you can’t help that draws people to you. A particular set of people. But I couldn’t be your friend because you are who you are and I am who I am, my father’s son, and I cannot simply wriggle out of that. I would like to have been your friend. Your mother was generous enough to give me a pair of shoes for repair that first afternoon when I visited you, years ago, because she wanted to help my poor sickly father. You gave me coffee, Béla’s father gave me bread and cheese, and Ábel’s ancient aunt stuck a jar of preserves into my pocket each time I left you. No one had to stick jars of preserves into your pockets when you visited somebody. Shall I tell you everything? A thousand days, a thousand minutes per day, you hurt me in such ways. No, there was nothing you could do about it. Nobody can ever do anything about it. You were all sensitivity and goodness.”

He spat.

“I loathed your sensitivity. I loathed your goodness. I loathed you each time you took a knife and fork in your hands. When you greeted someone. When you smiled. When you thanked someone for some object or a piece of information. I loathed your movements, the way you looked, the way you stood up and sat down. It isn’t true to say that one can learn such things. I learned that there was no money, no power, no strength, no knowledge that could produce the same results. I learned that I could live a hundred years, that I could be a millionaire, that you might all be rotting in your graves, in your crypts I should say, since even in death you would have your private mansions, not like us, we dogs who live in cellars and kennels all our lives, that even then I would have no luck because I would recall how Tibor Prockauer could simply give a wave, smile, and say ‘Sorry’ when he unintentionally upset someone…Whenever I thought of this I would groan in my dreams, scream and groan ‘Tibor,’ and it would sometimes happen that I would turn and see my father who had been sleeping at the foot of my bed, and he would sit up and nod and say: ‘You are suffering on account of the young well-born gentleman. One must be cleansed.’ Cleansed, yes. I cannot cleanse myself, but I feel a little more cleansed when I think how you too are in the mud now. And that you too will die. I live in misery, I set out from another shore and there is no way over to your world from there, there never has been and never will be, not ever! Locusts and bears, says my father. I loathe you all. May you all drop dead, but let me first torture you a little. You may deny the world I set aside for your torture but it matters to you. I cheated. I lied. I betrayed you. I cheated at cards too, I cheated at everything. Every word of mine was a cheat.”

He drew a greasy pack of cards from his pocket and threw it on the table.

“Tomorrow Prockauer goes to Havas. You’ll go whether you want to or not. The chains that hold you are strong. Don’t bother struggling. May God have mercy on you.”

He stopped. The words stuck in his throat. He looked around, frightened. His voice was quite different now, almost tremulous.

“I would have liked to be your friend. But I was always afraid that you’d tell me off for something. I mean, you did once. On account of the knife and fork.”

“That’s something you can learn,” Béla retorted furiously.

It was the first time he had said anything. They stared at him. He was embarrassed and looked down at his feet. The candle had burned right down. They could only see outlines in the darkness. Tibor silently stood up.

“Well, then,” he said, somewhat at a loss. “We could go now, I suppose. I can’t think why we should carry on sitting here. We know everything now. And the candle has almost gone out,” he added as if that sealed the matter.

“You go ahead,” croaked Ernõ. “I want everyone in front of me. I don’t want any of you behind me.”

He kept his hand in his pocket and moved away from the door. Tibor raised the candle and held it up to his face. He gave a silent cry. Ernõ’s face was so twisted, it spoke of such unknown, unbearable sorrow that Tibor had to take a step back.

“We should tidy up here, of course,” he muttered uncertainly as he stood on the threshold. “We should all take what belongs to us before we go. We can leave the costumes here,” he said, pointing to the pile of clothes. “I don’t suppose any of us will need them again. In any case the game is over.”

“What a pity, Tibor,” said Ábel, almost weeping and feverish. He hadn’t said a word until now. “Look around you. It will never be like this again.”

They descended the stairs on tiptoe, Ernõ bringing up the rear. He followed them down the short way to the ground-level guest room in a state of inexplicable terror, as if he were in the gravest danger, almost fearing for his life. His elbows were tight against his waist, his hands never leaving his pockets. Not one of the others said anything to him on this short journey, not then, nor later in the night. It was a considerable surprise to all of them when, later, they had to look for him.

IN THE LONG, ALE-SMELLING, FRESHLY LIME-WASHED bar all done up for the picnic, they discovered a surprisingly lively atmosphere. Considering the early hour, the party must have been in full swing for a while.

At a folding table set up in the corner, at its narrower, upper end, sat Moravecz, Gurka, and the headmaster. The new arrivals hadn’t expected to see Kikinday sitting on the headmaster’s right. The town clerk was sitting between the gym teacher and the art master, while his son, who had been their classmate, was seated opposite him, silent and nervous, out of place. Now and then he would stand up, go over to the counter, and throw back a glass of pálinka, so that finally, much to the father’s surprise—for as far as he could see his son had not touched a drop of alcohol all evening—he suddenly collapsed about midnight, showing every sign of alcohol poisoning. In the succeeding chaos somebody indicated that they should be on their way. Laying the boy on an improvised stretcher, the majority of them departed.

Those who remained, Kikinday, Gurka—the master of festivities, who employed formal courtesy to maintain a proper distance between himself and his ex-students despite the intimate atmosphere of the occasion—and Moravecz, drew closer together at the head of the table and permitted such students as still kept company with them in these late hours to join them. Ernõ spent the whole evening sitting silently beside the tight-lipped Gurka. When the gang and a few other hardy partying souls somewhat reluctantly accepted Moravecz’s invitation and the tipsy group moved closer to him, Ernõ stood up and left the bar.

Memories of this May picnic survived for several years, not only in the unwritten annals of the school but in the town at large. The general opinion was that it was one of the most successful graduation parties the venerable institution had ever organized.

Because of the unusual heat the assembled gentlemen had left the town in the early morning and, together with their students, had settled down in the shady, lantern-lit garden of The Peculiar before being sent running into the bar by the storm. Considering the airless and damp hall, the company, including the more moderate among them, rather surprisingly succeeded in drinking themselves into a party mood in the time the rain continued to fall, so much so that the various courses of the banquet, together with its customary toasts, tended to dissolve in a spirit of universal good humor. The effects of alcohol were amplified to an extraordinary degree by the intense heat. Feeling decidedly jolly, Kikinday beckoned over every young man who was liable for military service, felt his muscles, and addressed words of encouragement to them all regarding their shortened period of training, referring particularly to the one-armed one.

“It was Prockauer’s idea,” he kept repeating. “Where’s the one-armed Prockauer?”

Tibor, who represented the two-armed branch of the Prockauer family, politely informed him, more than once, that his elder brother was probably at their sick mother’s bedside. When this information failed to register on the well-oiled Kikinday’s consciousness, and when, within a few minutes, he began to call again for the one-armed Prockauer, Tibor fell silent. The gang was secretly of the opinion that Lajos had been delayed by the bad weather. The one-armed one tended to lie in bed during storms with a pillow over his head.

“There might be other reasons,” Ábel suggested anxiously.

Tibor pretended not to hear. After midnight when the hall emptied they set about serious drinking. They hadn’t had much real practice with drink and Ábel, who had a high fever, behaved out of character, speaking loudly, banging the table, and demanding to be heard. Tibor listened broodily, casting occasional dark looks here and there as if seeking someone, then bent over his glass. Béla tried to annoy Gurka. He sat down opposite him and would now and then lean over the table, screw up his eyes, and like an underprepared student hungry for knowledge demand to know the significance of this or that quotation from Tacitus. Ábel stood up with the glass in his hand and began to make a long feverish speech. No one paid any attention to him.

Round about three o’clock they went out into the yard. A shadowy figure stood there with a lantern in one hand and a big hooked stick in the other, a stick far taller than himself. He was in quiet conversation with the landlord. He approached them slowly, holding the lantern above his head, raising the enormous stick high with each step.

“Here they are,” he said and shone the light in their faces. “I was just looking for the young gentlemen. My comrade at the front, young Mr. Prockauer, asked me to look for you tonight.”

Now they recognized him and stood amazed. It was the cobbler.

“IT IS IN FACT THE YOUNGER MR. PROCKAUER I want,” said the cobbler in his normal steady manner despite the strangeness of the meeting. “Though if I understand the nature of the message correctly, it is addressed to all the young gentlemen.”

Tibor stepped forward.

“What news of my mother, Mr. Zakarka?”

The cobbler turned the lantern and the stick slowly towards him and gave a nod as he might to anyone asking an intelligent question.

“The noble lady,” he declared with satisfaction, “is as well as can be expected in the circumstances. There was a decided improvement in her condition tonight. Sometime during the afternoon she had appeared to weaken to the point that at about five o’clock young Mr. Prockauer called me over to the house of the honorable gentleman, me being his fellow soldier at the front, so that I should be nearby in case I could be of use. I should mention that young Mr. Prockauer had been tending his sick mother with remarkable selflessness the whole day, literally not shifting from her bedside, watching over her. By the afternoon things had proceeded so far that her heart had almost stopped. There was a moment when Mr. Prockauer came to me in the next room with his finger to his lips indicating that the unhappy event was at hand. But a fortunate turn in the evening suddenly rendered the lady back to health.”

He hesitated. “Praise be to God,” he added. He put the lantern down beside him on the ground and leaned on the stick with both hands.

“It is a fine night, though walking is difficult for me nowadays, alas. But young Mr. Prockauer’s request was so heartfelt I couldn’t refuse him. He told me to take a cab at his expense, but I chose to come on foot as walking is more appropriate to my humble station. The disciples went on foot. So the message is a little late in arriving but a few minutes is as nothing in eternity.”

“What message, Mr. Zakarka?” asked Tibor, trembling. “Do tell us.”

“Of course,” he replied slowly, like a machine that once started could not be stopped by any human intervention. “There has been a wondrous turn of events. The hour of cleansing is nigh. Especially for the young gentlemen. My benefactor, the colonel, has come home.”

“The colonel?” asked Tibor, gasping for air. “What colonel? You mean my father?”

The cobbler kept nodding, deep in thought, as though he hadn’t heard the question.

“God has been merciful to me,” he declared with satisfaction. “When the colonel entered the room in full battle order, escorted by his batman, and saw me sitting there counting my rosary beads, he was good enough to address a few words to me. What are you doing here, you old hangman? he asked with obvious hostility. He was kind enough to address these words to me. The colonel was referring to my cleansing. The young gentlemen should understand that as far as the colonel is concerned it is an act of considerable grace on his part to engage people like me in conversation at all. Having got so far it is almost a matter of indifference what he actually says. The joy of seeing him again was enough to pull the noble lady back from death’s door. I had the opportunity of overhearing the exchange between them. After the first words of warm greeting the noble lady was quick to ask a question of the noble colonel. Where have you left your gold wristwatch? she asked him. The noble colonel gave a lengthy reply. I do not think it fit that I should apprise the young gentlemen, particularly young Master Tibor, of the full details of his answer. Young Master Lajos immediately came out to me with the request that I should seek out the young gentlemen and tell them the good news. He made me swear that I should mention the matter of the saddle to young Master Tibor.”

Tibor started to laugh, waved his arms in the air, and took a few steps.

“My father is home,” he cried. “Ábel! My father is home.” He stopped and wiped his brow. “It’s the end, Ábel. The end, you hear.”

The cobbler looked around attentively.

“My son Ernõ,” he said in a flat voice. “He must be in there with the teachers, I suppose.”

Béla pointed upstairs. Candlelight filtered through the window. Tibor turned to the cobbler.

“Your son, Ernõ, is a traitor,” he said quietly. “Look after him well. You know the fate of traitors?”

“Indeed I do,” said the cobbler and nodded. “A bullet.”

“THE SADDLE,” CRIED BÉLA. “THE GLOBE! LET’S take what we can!”

Dawn was very faintly breaking in the valley. The cobbler raised his lantern and walked steadily into the house. He went up the stairs as though they were familiar to him. The stairs groaned and creaked beneath him. He went straight to the door, leaned his big shepherd’s crook against the wall, carefully put down the lantern on the threshold, and opened the door. The cobbler’s son sat at the table, his head on his arm. He was wearing a yellow frock coat as he lay over the table, the flame-red wig the actor had given him on his head. The cobbler stood calmly for a second, then, just as calmly, hobbled across the room, bent down, picked the revolver off the floor, examined it carefully, and threw it on the table. He lifted the body with surprising ease, laid it horizontally in his arms, and bent over the face with a smile of apology and whispered confidentially:

“Be so gracious as to look at him. You see? He is pretending.”

He looked at the face and shook his head.

“He was just like this as a child. He always loved comedy.”

He took him over to the bed, laid him down, and closed his eyes with his fingers, smiling playfully as though he didn’t want to ruin a good joke. A scream issued from Ábel’s mouth. The cobbler hobbled over to him, put his hand over his mouth, and pressed the hysterically shaking body down on a chair with irresistible strength, whispering:

“Let’s not wake him up. Please be so good as to pick up the saddle. It would be best if we returned to town before dawn.”

He picked up the saddle himself and threw it over Tibor’s shoulders. He looked around and passed the globe to Béla. His stick and his lantern he handed to Ábel and whispered to him in gently cajoling tones: “If you would be so kind as to go ahead. The light is already beginning to break but the road is full of ruts.”

He lifted the body in his arms and slowly descended the stairs. The landlord and the servants were standing yellow-faced in the glow of the gate. They drew back when the cobbler appeared with the body in his arms. He frowned at them disapprovingly.

“Psst!” he whispered and gave a wink. “Out of my way.”

He crossed the yard undisturbed. Tibor followed him with the saddle across his shoulder. Béla’s arms were full of the globe, and Ábel stumbled at the back with his lantern and the shepherd’s crook that was twice as tall as he was. The cobbler pressed on with the body in his powerful hands, firmly hobbling, so fast that they struggled to keep up with him. Béla’s shivering and crying gave way to loud sobs. At the end of the garden the road turned and from there they could see the lit windows of the bar of The Peculiar, and heard the laughter and singing drifting towards them in the cold silence. Ábel recognized Kikinday’s voice. The road was steep and Ábel ran beside the cobbler, lighting the way. The light was growing brighter with every passing second. Down in the valley glimmered the town with its towers and roofs. They stopped for a second on a bend of the slope. The cobbler was quietly talking to himself. They heard him though their teeth were chattering. He was leaning over the face whose wire wig was hanging strangely independently of the skull, talking so quietly they couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then he set off again and hastened down the valley, the town becoming clearer with each step, and so they dropped as through a trapdoor out of the panoramic landscape, into a street, the cobbler’s feet tapping unevenly on the paving stones. And that was how they proceeded down all the streets, the only noise the knocking of the cobbler’s shoes and Béla’s regular sobbing.